Brevard County Board of County Commissioners on 2026-04-07 5:00 PM - Regular - Apr 07, 2026

If you wish to speak to any item on the agenda or during the public comment portion of the meeting, please fill out a speaker card. Each person addressing the board shall have three minutes to complete his or her comments on each agenda item for which he or she has filled out a card. The chair has the discretion to determine or alter the time limits on any agenda item. The Board of County Commissioners requests that speakers appearing under the public comments section of the agenda limit their comments or presentations to matters relating to county business that are within the board's control, authority, and jurisdiction.

Okay, I'd like to call the meeting to order. Our invocation today was going to be delivered by Pastor Bawana Bostic of the City of Refuge Christian Center.

Good evening. Blessings to each of you. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, God, we are so grateful for who you are, your awesomeness. And while we gather today, God, we're asking for your guidance, your divine wisdom in this meeting, God. And we just thank you for touching every heart, every ideal. God, we thank you for moving this committee forward in Jesus' name. And God, as we stand as a county, as a country, we're praying for your grace and your mercy. We pray for our military, that you bring them home safe. And for all of our families, God, all our commissioners and their families and all of us as a unit today, we pray for your divine protection. And we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Thank you so much, Bawana. Our pledge will be led by Commissioner Delaney.

I pledge allegiance to the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible liberty and justice for all.

Yes, I do. A motion be in order to recognize Commissioner Goodson as...

So moved.

I'll second. As participating in my phone. ...being here telepathically. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimous. Good to have you with us, Commissioner. Okay. Our first order of business is approval of the minutes dated January 2nd, January 13th, and January 27th. So moved. I'll second. Motion second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. Okay. I'd like to first start with the resolutions. I'm going to move a little bit out of order. Our first resolution will be recognized in April 26th as Child Abuse Prevention Month. And I think we have Divine Vincent here.

Yes, sir.

Come on up to the podium.

Good evening, everyone. We definitely are so grateful on behalf of the Child Abuse Prevention Task Force of Brevard. We're very grateful for your support. Because with thinking of April and being able to declare it Child Abuse Prevention Month, this is a mission and a vision we can all stand behind. The task force is made up of representatives from various agencies and organizations across the county united in that mission and vision of being able to prevent child abuse and to increase awareness. So we're very appreciative of the support that we receive from the commission's office, just showing the solidarity of the mission and that this is something that everyone can get behind from the greater ones to the lesser ones, you know. And just having that unification of this mission across our county just shows how important it is. So thank you for taking the time to do this resolution for us.

Thank you. And I'd like to read the resolution into the record before we present it to you. Whereas the early experiences of a child impact them throughout life, both positively and negatively. And whereas child abuse prevention is possible with the right policies and investments that help families and children thrive and avoid contact with child welfare and other costly systems. And whereas families who receive the support they need before a crisis occurs are better equipped to provide safe, healthy, and nurturing environments, leading to children who are safer, healthier, and more hopeful about their futures. And whereas effective child abuse prevention activities succeed because of the partnerships created between child welfare professionals, education, health, community, and faith-based organizations, businesses, law enforcement agencies, and families. And whereas communities must make every effort to promote programs and activities that foster the social and emotional well-being of children and families in a safe, stable, and nurturing environment. And whereas investments in primary prevention initiatives, such as early childhood home visiting programs, policies that promote economic stability and mobility, and community-based child abuse prevention efforts reduce the likelihood of abuse and neglect and ensure children have the foundation for lifelong well-being. And now, therefore, be it resolved that the Board of County Commissioners of Brevard County, Florida, does hereby proclaim the month of April, 2026 as Child Abuse Prevention Month, and urge all the citizens to recognize this month by dedicating ourselves to the task of improving the quality of life for all children and families, down in order to adopt this regular session, 7th day, April, 2026. I'll make a motion to approve. Motion to approve. In a second, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimous. Thank you so much for what you do. It's so important. And we'll take a quick photo here. Okay. Our next resolution is I'd like to ask the artable Christine Zonka to come before us at the podium. She's going to receive this. Great honor to have you back in the chambers.

Yes, I.

Yeah.

And I asked my team to join me. At least some of our members. That's okay.

Oh, yeah. You know what you're doing. Not your first rodeo.

Do you want me to speak a little bit about DOH before the resolution? Right. Thank you so much for doing this. And thank you, board, for recognizing Department of Health. I think, you know, we're sort of that agency sometimes that is unseen in the community, even though we do a lot. So I did bring some statistics to kind of better amplify what we've done. So in 2025, we saw over 1,500 unique maternity clients in our clinics. We did over 12,000 visits. We did over 4,000 healthy start prenatal visits. We did over a million school health services, touching 417,000 students. We did over 24,000, nearly 25,000 EPH inspections. So environmental, public health, we do septic and well. And 3,350 construction permits, which is a 13% increase from the year prior. And that number goes up every year. We performed over 20,000 dental program services. We gave over 9,000 pediatric and adult immunizations. We served over 10,000 WIC clients and helped them with their nutrition. At DOH, we issued over 12,000 birth certificates and over 52,000 death certificates, 5,500 births and 8,100 deaths. Our epi department had 1,175 reportable diseases, and we conducted numerous outbreak investigations, including our local health department led one of the largest hep C investigations in the nation, that the nation has ever seen, which is quite remarkable. And we also operate special needs shelters in any, whether it be hurricane or any other emergency. And a new service we're going to be providing, and this is why I'm really excited to be here today, is we're going to offer EKG screenings for all students, 7th grade to 12th grade. It's now in legislation that all students that are involved in sports in the schools have to have this screening done. So we'll be offering that and starting in Vieira, and we'll be doing it in our Melbourne clinic in the future. But we're excited to be able to offer school physicals and sports physicals at our facility. And I brought some of my team here today. They're pretty amazing, and they keep us running, so we're pretty proud of the work we do at DOH.

Well, thank you for what you do. We really appreciate it. And I'll read the resolution. Whereas the week of April 6th through April 12th, 2026, is Florida Public Health Week. It's an opportunity to promote and raise awareness of important public health topics and engage with local communities. And whereas the Florida Department of Health in Brevard County uses Florida Public Health Week to highlight programs, initiatives, and resources specific to Brevard County. And whereas data-driven insights are used to establish statewide health priorities, such as injury and violence prevention, chronic disease prevention, Alzheimer's disease awareness, mental well-being and substance abuse prevention, and maternal and child health. And whereas residents are reminded to prepare for hurricane season by having a medical plan set ahead of time, as well as understanding of what special needs shelter is, where they're located, and how to pre-register. And whereas protecting our communities through disease prevention, outbreak detection, and response, and actively working out in the field. And whereas recognizing and celebrating the expertise, the commitment to serving others, and resilience of the public health professionals who work to protect and improve the lives of Floridians. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Board of County Commissioners of Brevard County, Florida, does hereby proclaim the week of April 6th through the 12th, 2026, as Florida Public Health Week. And encourage residents, health care providers, community organizations, and local businesses to participate in activities to promote public health and wellness. Done, ordered, and adopted in regular session the 7th day of April, 2026. I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second. Motion, a second. Signify by saying aye. Aye.

Aye.

Motion carries unanimously. Thank you so much. Okay, we'll go to our next resolution, which will be resolution designating Gopher Tortoise Day. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Tom and Ida, if you want to come up, I'll read the resolution, and then we'll pass it, and then you'll be invited to speak. Okay?

Thank you.

I have a resolution designating April 10th, 2026, as Gopher Tortoise Day, and the month of April 2026, as Gopher Tortoise Month. Whereas, April 10th has been observed annually as Gopher Tortoise Day, and April as Gopher Tortoise Month, in order to raise awareness regarding their impact on the health of our local ecosystems. And whereas tortoises are one of the oldest species still living on Earth with their ancestors appearing almost 60 million years ago. And the Gopher Tortoise, having lived in Florida for more than 2 million years. And whereas the Gopher Tortoise is considered a keystone species, which has a large impact on its ecosystem relative to its abundance, including its burrow, which protects more than 350 other species, some of which are also listed as threatened. And whereas the Gopher Tortoise today, in the state of Florida, listed as threatened, and in parts of the U.S., is federally listed as threatened, therefore needing protection. And whereas having Gopher Tortoise and other species in Brevard County helps sustain our area's ecology and provides people with a source of joy and appreciation for nature. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Brevard County Board of County Commissioners does hereby recognize April 10th, 2026 as Gopher Tortoise Day in Brevard County, Florida, and April 2026 as Gopher Tortoise Month in Brevard County, Florida. And urges all citizens to protect this species by developing a better understanding of them and their positive impact on our ecosystem, done in order and adopted in a regular session the 7th day of April 2026. And with, Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to approve.

Second.

Motion to second. All in favor? Aye. All in favor say aye. Aye. Chairs unanimously.

Thank you very much. Since there aren't many Gopher Tortoises that could come up and speak, I'll kind of... I'll vocalize on their behalf. Thank you for this resolution and the recognition. As members of the board from 100 Acre Hollows, we also appreciate the county's action a couple months ago to set aside 100 Acre Hollows and part of the EEL program. And the Parks and Recreation Department and the EEL folks have been extremely helpful and cooperative, and we wish to also acknowledge and thank them. So, appreciate it, and we'll continue to do our best to try and keep the Gopher Tortoises happy. All right. Yeah, we just planted a bunch of plants, and they're going away. Not as we exactly planted. A smorgasbord for the Gopher Tortoises and the Rabbits. Very cool.

All right. Very good. I have the resolution for you here, okay? Thank you.

Mr. Chair, when we get to it, we do have two.

Okay, great.

Love those Gopher Tortoises. I really do. Amazing animals. So, the next item is the consent agenda. No, we have a... Wait, do we have one? Oh, that's right. We do. I'm sorry. I turned the page one time, too. I know. It's a little out of order. One more, yeah, one more resolution acknowledged in Bavard County is Purple Heart County.

Keith, you're welcome to come up with your group. Anyone who would like to come up?

Oh, come on.

I appreciate you guys. Everyone bought an entourage, so we did as well.

I'll read the resolution, and then we'll pass it, and then the chair will recognize you to speak. I'm honored you would ask me to do this. I have a Purple Heart resolution. Whereas, Brevard County Board of County Commissioners, located on Florida's Space Coast, has always supported the military veteran population. And whereas the Purple Heart, the oldest military decoration in use today, evolved from the badge of military merit created by General George Washington for the common soldier in 1782. And whereas the Purple Heart is awarded to members of the United States Armed Forces that have been wounded or killed in combat with a declared enemy of the United States of America. And whereas the mission of the military order of the Purple Heart is to foster an environment of goodwill among the combat wounded veterans and their families, promote patriotism, support legislation, and most importantly, make sure we never forget. And whereas Brevard County has a large, highly decorated veteran population, including many Purple Heart recipients. And whereas the contribution and support of Brevard County is vital to the citizens of the United States of America as to our military history and heritage. And whereas Brevard County Board of County Commissioners, along with the military order of the Purple Heart, the Space Coast Chapter 453 of Florida, appreciates the sacrifices of our Purple Heart recipients have made in defending our freedoms. And we believe it is important that we acknowledge them for their courage and show them for their courage and show them the support they have earned. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Brevard County Board of County Commissioners does hereby proclaim Brevard County a Purple Heart County in honor of all combat wounded veterans and to fully support the military order of the Purple Heart, done order and adopted in regular session the 7th day of April, 2026. And with that, Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to approve. Second. I'd like to second. Second.

Motion second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Motion carries unanimously. Thank you.

All right.

You're on. So we... I got Don as watching Megatron. Doing right.

You might have to move the mic up a little bit, Keith.

So we'd like to thank the commissioners, the staff, and the people of Brevard County for always being supportive. Currently, our chapter has just over 140 members who call Brevard County home. However, we know there's many more out there that are not yet part of our chapter, and we just want them to know that we're here, and we welcome them to join our ranks and in our fellowship. As of today, 40 of the 67 counties in Florida are designated as Purple Heart Counties. Tonight, Brevard County proudly joins those ranks as the 41st county in Florida. The purpose of the Purple Heart Trail is to bring visibility and recognition to recipients and their families. While we honor many living recipients among us, we also never forget those who made the ultimate sacrifice and the Gold Star families. A fact that may not widely be as known is that Commissioner Feltner's father was a Purple Heart recipient. I've read the citation for the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart, and I just wanted to share a little bit there. So, hospital man, third class, also known as a corpsman, or affectionately called docs. We have a doc over here. Mr. Robert A. Feltner of the United States Navy served with Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 26 Marines, 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade, from February to June of 1969. On June 27, 1969, during Operation Daring Rebel in Kwong Nam Province, his unit came under intense enemy fire, and several Marines were wounded. When he saw one of the injured Marines lying exposed under fire, Petty Officer Feltner did not hesitate. He left his covered position and ran across fire-swept terrain to reach him. During that effort, he was shot in the leg, shattering bone and leaving him unable to run or walk. Despite his severe injury, he crawled the remaining distance and began administering first aid to his fellow Marine. He would later lose his leg after these actions. For his bravery that day, he was awarded both the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. That's just one story of a recipient who calls Brevard County home. There are many more stories that deserve to be heard and honored. All these men here today have incredible stories of perseverance and facing unknown odds. While many things in this world are beyond our control, we can control what we build here at home. We can choose remembrance, we can choose unity, and we can choose fellowship. The men standing with me today and Purple Heart recipients across this nation are living proof that even after experiencing trauma, a life of service can continue. They inspire all of us to keep moving forward, to not let the difficult days win, and to remember that there are people who still care. Even in 2026, we're continuing to add new Purple Heart recipients and Gold Star families as the result of ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. We must remain ready to support our wounded service members when they return home. We must never turn our backs on them. So we thank you all for your support in helping us carry our mission to never forget their sacrifice and continue serving in their honor. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, we're all getting organized for a photo. I just want to say to the county commission, Thad, you made an important statement. This county supports veterans like no other. On the 23rd of April at 4.30 in the afternoon, we will dedicate the $8.2 million Veterans Memorial Center Amphitheater and Park Improvement that you and Tourist Development and the state made possible. So we as veterans appreciate that we live in Brevard County and can do the best we can because of Brevard County. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for your service and everything we do here you made possible. Okay. Thank you so much. We'll move now to Item F, Consent Agenda, and I do have two cards that we are going to pull.

Two consent items we'll pull, F7 and F5, because we have public speaking cards filled out. Do we have any other items that the board would like to pull? Okay. My motion be in order for the remaining consent items.

Move to approve. Second.

Motion and second to approve the consent with the exception of F5 and F7. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimous. Okay. F5, Reallocation of the American Rescue Plan Act, funds to countywide sewer and menhole lighting installations.

Do you just have a speaker speak? Or is it something that the county comments on?

Well, why don't we have staff just briefly comment on this since the cards are pulled?

Thank you, Commissioners. So, with regard to this, what's on? It is on. Is it on? It's not coming. Maybe just... Maybe just point it to you. Okay. Sorry about that. Thank you. Thank you again. So, this item is related to the ARPA funds. As we know, when funds were getting distributed, there was the expectation for the funds to be spent by December of 2026. With the projects that were allocated over two years ago, our department has done an assessment to see how we were doing and trending on achieving that. With that being said, we have made some decisions to reallocate some of the funding for sewer and manhole lining. With that being said, for the projects that we are removing ARPA funds, we are backfilling this with utility projects. So, none of the projects are going away or going to be underfunded. They're going to continue through. And this would be a mechanism not only to continue what we've done with ARPA funds through the manhole and sewer lining, but also it's a continued commitment with regard to the fortification of our sewer system.

And, Mr. Chair, if I could, this was a county-wide exercise that we did with all the departments that received ARPA funds to make sure we ensure that we get it spent by December 30th of this year, which is a deadline. So, this is an effort you've seen that we had to bring back to the board. So, it isn't just Eddie or the utilities, it's where we're going on county-wide to make sure that we don't leave any of the ARPA dollars on the table.

Fantastic. Any other, Representative Delaney? Congressman, Commissioner Delaney. Thank you. Gave a big promotion there.

Eddie, would you mind just sharing with us where some of these projects will be happening, the lining?

Yes. So, as it's articulated in the agenda item, there is a table that shows what projects we'll be taking projects from and also keeping those projects within the same district.

Would you mind sharing, like, just for the public, just so that they could...

Yeah. So, with regard to that, all five districts will have a project. The sewer manhole lining will be utilized in all five. We have projects specific for all five districts. And, I mean, I can go through each of them, Commissioner, but I'm not sure. Do you want to articulate what projects were...

I just figured the public would be interested in knowing where these projects are going on.

That's all. So, we have Barefoot Bay. We have... I'm just looking through the list. We have North Brevard. We have South Beaches. We have the Vieira-Suntree area. And we also have also some more added in South Beaches. Okay.

I know Rick Helfinger filled out the form. Did he want to speak?

Yeah. Rick Helfinger, 2000 Juniper Drive, District 1. One of the questions that I had, you answered nicely, and that's the ARPA money goes poof. I was wondering, the first project that says there would be no requirement to backfill is the MIMS water main replacement. And I'm wondering, did that get done, or is that being pushed off to a future date?

That project was completed, and those are funds and access.

Oh, so those guys went bankrupt, and then you just... They didn't ask for any more money. Or they did it for less? Is that what happened? That contractor that went bankrupt?

Oh. I don't know. Leave that to the chair.

Okay. Well, that's... Now, all the ARPA funds that you're moving, are these new projects that you're moving them to, so it's use it or lose it? Or were they already planned and back previously?

Well, why don't we direct the questions to the chair? Yeah, if you care to answer, I'd... Go ahead, Eddie. So this is a continuation of our already existing ARPA projects. We're just expanding the purchase order to achieve the goals of the transfer of funds. Okay. Okay.

So it's true that at the end of... Or by December 2026, if those projects don't expend it, then you have to refund it to... It would have to be refunded to the state? Or to the federal. That's correct. Okay. And I guess you have high confidence that these are going to get burned through, then. They're short-term, getting closed projects. Now, if there's any rollover, that will be basically forfeit, right, if they get done? I think I understand that. Because there's some other ARPA stuff in the agenda later. That kind of answered my questions. I just hope we're using those ARPA funds to make sure we got projects that we can actually get done and maybe pull some stuff that was in backlog or some stuff that maybe we were looking at next year that was going to cost us a lot of money to accelerate. So I appreciate the effort there. Thank you. That's all I have.

Thank you. Okay. Any other discussion on F5? Motion be in order. Make a motion to approve. Second. Motion second to approve. All in favor say aye. Aye.

All.

Carries unanimously. Thank you. It's good we brought down that federal money. Send it up there. We should get as much back as we can. Thank you. F7, resolution approving the issuance of Brevard County Health Facilities Authority of Hospital Revenue Bonds.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Item F7 is a request from the Brevard County Health Facilities Authority. I believe their attorney, Angela Abbott, is in the audience and would probably be available if there are any questions. This represents a request by the authority for the issuance of bonds. In an aggregate principal amount not exceeding $475 million. The primary purpose for the bond revenue issuance is to finance new capital improvements, primarily expansion of the Vieira and Palm Bay hospitals for Health First, and also to refund all or a portion of outstanding bond debt that was issued in 2014, currently in an amount of $62,700,000. Our outside bond council has reviewed the proposed issue and provided the following statement. The resolution proposed to be adopted by the Board of County Commissioners satisfies the pertinent federal and state law requirements and provides that neither the county nor any of the elected officials or staff of the county will have any obligations or liability, financial or otherwise, with respect to the project or the bonds. Because these are tax-exempt private activity bonds, under federal law, TEFRA, an elected body is required to give final approval of the bond issue once a public hearing was held by the Health Facilities Authority, but they're appointed, not elected.

Okay. Any commission's question? Any commission as a whole? Rick, did you want to say a few words or ask any questions?

Again, Rick Heppelfinger, District 1. It says that the county has no fiscal impact on the agenda item text. Why does the county have to even approve this if it's not, because this is not any tax dollars. This is coming from these hospitals, right? So I don't understand why quite you have to approve, or why would you reject, for example? That's a lot of money.

Yeah. I'll just repeat what I said earlier, that under TEFRA, the federal law, that an elected body is required to issue an approval over the issuance of these bonds. The public hearing was held by the Brevard County Health Facilities Authority, so this is in order for them to meet federal tax regulations that require an elected body to approve of tax-exempt private activity bond issuances.

Okay. I think that answers that, as long as we don't get the hook later, right?

And probably to transparency, and probably somewhere, somewhere down the line, someplace, they abused this, and so this is a way of having public oversight, and good citizen advocates like yourself to keep an eye on it, too. So, all right. Motion would be in order. I'll make a motion to approve. Motion?

Second.

Second. Motion is second. All in favor say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Carries unanimously. Thank you so much. Okay, that disposes of the consent agenda. We will move on to item H, G. I'm trying to find it here. Oh, G. Yes. Okay, it was just hidden there. Public comments. This is our first public comments section of the board, and we do have, of the meeting today, we do have a few cards. Robert Pickert is the first card.

While they're handing those out, maybe I'll make best use of the time and start. Well, good evening, commissioners. I'm Bob Pickert, and I proposed a soil health moonshot to transform Brevard sandy landscape soils into a sustainable living filter for the lagoon. Biochar is similar to activated carbon, but made from waste wood. As a soil amendment, it absorbs and conserves soil moisture, adsorbs and retains nutrients and contaminants to make nutrients bioavailable to plants, but not leach to groundwater in the lagoon. It provides the perfect habitat for beneficial soil microbes, the magic of biochar. The intent is to create a healthy soil biome and landscape soils around the IRL to protect the county's investment in the lagoon. Over the past decade, the county has made great progress. But even if we continue to make progress through the soil programs, of course dependent on public funding, and implement new programs such as the low-impact development, the relative contribution of lawn maintenance, miscellaneous base flow, and atmospheric nitrogen deposition alone will grow from 25% to a majority of nutrients in excess of a sustainable balance. The soil health moonshot would create a third pillar to complement what sorrel is already doing in source control and legacy load removal. The idea is to reduce the use of polymer-coated urea and non-conforming fertilizers that continue to release nutrients to the sandy soils around the lagoon and replace them with a mix of biochar, worm-casting, seaweed extract, and other local natural ingredients to transform our landscape soils into a living filter instead of a nutrient pathway. There is no O&M required. Soil microbes do the work. That's the magic of biochar. I have proposed additional testing of muck to identify the highest quality muck and identify and quantify nutrient loading and leaching from a biochar-based fertilizer and assembling a group of soil health experts and stakeholders to establish a consensus around soil health objectives. The IRL muck would serve as a source of minerals, a binding agent for making pellets, and a galvanizing agent to inspire public participation. The result would create a soil health industry that would not only flourish here, but could be exported to other algae-plagued geographies. The circularity of IRL muck was intended as an idea to, quote, get a feel for how this could finance sorrel programs rather than a fully developed, shovel-ready project proposal. The sorrel COC responded by producing a self-described white paper that is more of a myopic whitewash to dismiss the idea than a white paper on the potential for biochar to help restore the lagoon. It is full of incomplete, inaccurate, and misleading statements, omits important biochar characteristics and sorrel applications, and does a disservice to Brevard residents. I have provided an edited version to begin setting the record straight and will reach out to the COC to get this straight. I'm not asking for a large new program today. My SEER recommendation proposes a roadmap beginning with additional muck testing that should be occurring anyway and a logical path forward. Today, I'm proposing a pilot-scale soil health project during the Indian Harbor-Satellite Beach dredging to demonstrate the potential to reduce the flux of nutrients that will otherwise re-fertilize the canals to be paid for with savings from using biochar as a treatment media for interstitial water treatment. The CEO of Gator Dredging has indicated he is interested. May I take 20 minutes, Chairman? 20 seconds? Sorry, 20 seconds? So my SEER recommendation included a couple of other recommendations. Reduce garbage pickup to one day per week. I don't know why we still do it twice a week. It isn't necessary. We have all the other pickups. And another comment is to discontinue the practice of excluding private companies from speaking to the COC and receiving sorrel grants. Sorrel is supposed to, quote, foster tools and techniques for restoration. The sorrel mission belongs to everyone and should be an all-hands mission. Why do we intentionally limit the potential for public-private partnerships? Thank you very much for the extra time.

Okay. Thank you. And if any of the commissioners have any questions, which I may follow up with some questions about biochar, probably could give you some insight when they pick up, too. We did that when I was on the commission the first term. I'll share the stories. One recommends if you do a pilot for that, don't do it in the heat of summer. But we understand where you're coming from. Okay. All right. Our next card is Tom Erdman. Erdman?

Like Mike Erdman, Toyota. Erdman, right. Yes. Famous name.

Yes.

Not rich. Yeah, not rich. Mike Erdman, Toyota. Okay. So my name is Tom Erdman. I live at 4791 Squires Drive, Titusville, Florida. And so I'm here to talk, ask you all to help. So I live in the Sherwood Golf Course Community. And we have a lot of oak trees there. And these oak trees are the reason why a lot of people live there. And it just happened yesterday. I happened to be home, and I see a guy looking at the oak tree on Squires Drive. And if you're familiar with it, we have two oak trees right in the middle of the drive, the roadway. And the guy's measuring it. And so I start talking to him. And he says that one oak tree is between 90 and 110 years old. So then I asked him, so what are you guys doing here? He goes, well, I'm going to give a bid on how to take about taking down these two oak trees in the middle of the road. And that will be devastating for the community. We have multiple times a year we get under the oak trees, have potluck dinners. I think Ms. Delaney's been there before when we've done it. And then not only are you talking about removing these oak trees, there's about 25 to 30 oak trees across the golf course that the county is talking about removing. And, yeah, I keep going back to a study on what they did in Columbia, Medellin. And the city was about three to four degrees higher than outside the city, Celsius degrees. And so what they did is they planted green pathways through the city and planted trees. And they lowered the temperature of the city by a little bit over two degrees Celsius. So why would we go in a different route and remove all these beautiful oak trees that, again, a lot of people have moved to Sherwood to stay? So I'm asking you guys, before anything is done, I think all of us that live in the Sherwood have the right to have the county, who's ever planning on doing that, come and talk to us. And let's see what their rationale is and why they do that. You know, I've talked to arborists, and there's ways they're worried about their sidewalks. I understand that. But you could trim the tree and do root trimming and put barriers up there. It would be more expensive than us wiping out the tree. But some of these trees, like this one, you know, it's that big in diameter. So it's expensive to remove that bad boy. And so just asking for help. Don't let them go hog wild and cut down our trees.

I have a question.

Yes, go ahead, Commissioner Dilley.

I just want to share some insight, as this has been something that I've been battling going back and forth with staff and whatnot since I've been elected and even before in some different areas. But this is, I think, getting bigger, this discussion is getting bigger than just a D1 discussion, just because I'm not necessarily on the same page as staff. And so I would need some support from the board to help redirect funds away from these projects. As we have such limited funds in D1 for maintenance, and when we have, you know, our dirt roads that are in a whole situation and whatnot, it's really difficult for me to rationalize tearing up and changing the dynamic of a whole community. And for those who haven't driven in Sherwood, I encourage you to take a drive. It's one of the most sought-after, beautiful communities in D1. And the biggest thing is everybody loves these trees. And so any support or help that I could get from the board in that, I would really appreciate it. And I know that the residents of that area would as well.

Say something real quick, Mr. Chair. I just, Commissioner, I appreciate your comments. And it's not just D1. We certainly have oak trees to deal with here. And I know I worked in North County for a while. I know Sherwood a little bit is, may I ask, is it, they're citing that the road is being torn up or a sewer underneath there or sidewalks are being lifted? There's a whole host of reasons.

So it's a combination. So the arborist who was there giving the quote, I asked him point blank, would you remove that tree? And his recommendation is going to be no, that it's not tearing up the road, and the other tree is not tearing up the road. But then I asked him, I said, is the county going to listen to you? And he goes, no, probably not. They're going to do what they want to do. And so we're even looking at hiring our own arborist so we can have an independent study done. When you have 30 trees or so you want to remove, and we've seen them do this before, they just want to remove them all. And then when you force them to come talk to you, they said, okay, we could remove half of them or a third of them, whatever. And so that's what we want to try to force is do what makes sense, not just, hey, let's wipe them all down. Then we don't have to worry about them 10 years from now. Leave. I keep saying leave. What do you want to leave your kids, your grandkids? You know, we have raised our kids in Sherwood with these trees, and a lot of these kids are coming back. They like the trees, like the atmosphere, and that's where we want to leave the future generations.

Well, I appreciate where you're coming from.

Again, we have this in this district also, and if there's a way around it, I think we're going to figure it out. So I appreciate your comments.

Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Tracy Robinson.

Hello. My name is Tracy Robinson. I live at 3542 Angelica Street. Imagine buying your dream property and building your dream house. Imagine living there, raising your children, maybe the only home they've ever known. Imagine paying off that mortgage. Now imagine 30, 40, maybe 50 years later, after building this dream home in that perfect neighborhood, a city that you don't even live in, annexes the property next door, and they decide to build a community that doesn't match yours at all. Now imagine a decision to use your street as a corridor for that new mega community. This fundamentally and adversely changes your neighborhood. Decisions are being made that affect you, but you know nothing about it. I wish I could say this is a fictional story, but it's not. It's what's happening in my community right now. My suggestion is about partnering with your constituents. When proposals come that affect residents of particular areas or neighborhoods, I propose that the county directly notify those residents and seek their feedback. This could be done easily via letters or emails sent directly to residents, reverse 911-type phone calls, or signs posted in neighborhoods with QR codes linking to the county website. I know that agenda items are already posted on the county webpage and public notices in the paper and on social media, but residents are not seeing these. So while it's technically following the letter of the law, it's not matching the spirit. Residents are busy leading their lives, and they don't check the county's webpage. If they're reading the newspaper, it's normally online, and it's just articles, not ads or public notices. Most residents aren't following county government on social media. To truly reach residents, the county needs to reach out to those that are affected by the agenda items. This would allow a true partnership where you hear from constituents, and constituents know that you represent them. Cost-wise, this will add to staff's tasks, but by utilizing existing systems like the property appraiser's data, reverse 911, and county email, costs can be minimized. This outreach could be delegated to neighborhood HOAs and HOIs to help. We just need some way to reach out to impacted residents while items are being discussed and before decisions are made. I know that currently residents within 200 feet are notified for zoning purposes and such, but that's not enough. In my situation, that meant only two out of 50 homes were notified. If residents don't know, then you don't hear from them and are forced to make decisions in a vacuum. Simple notifications via already existing systems can bridge that gap. And don't you guys want your job to be easier? Resident feedback would help with that. Imagine an engaged populace helping you. Imagine a true partnership where the commission and its residents are working together. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Good question. I noticed in the card you put a speak up of art. Is this a speak up of art request that you're making? I think it's a very good one, and I think we could even take it further. And I think you would have a lot of people here on this board and staff that would agree with you. And it even is worse. You'll have a city come in, and they'll annex property next to a neighborhood. And I don't know if they still do it, but I know in recent times they wouldn't even allow you to speak. Yes. Because you don't live in that city, so you have no voice. Secondly, I think the county staff would agree, a lot of times these neighborhoods are far too dense, and they dump a lot of traffic on county roads that we pay for as a county, yet we have no control over the land use decisions. Yes. And I think it's still sometimes they use water or sewer as a hammer to make them go into the city before they get the infrastructure. And it used to be some of those actions were illegal. And it used to be, I remember when I first got elected in the 80s, we had a problem with exactly what you're talking about, city coming in, annexing, destroying the rural nature of a community. It used to be that counties had a voice. They had to approve it. It may be something we should take a step further, either through a charter amendment or through a local bill or legislation, somehow prevent it from happening, because it's preventing our county. We may do wonderful things in terms of land use, planning, wetland preservation, levels of service on roads, only to see these properties annexed and the people affected not even having a voice. So I appreciate what you're saying, and it's really a problem. Something needs to be done.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. Next speaker is Rick Heffelfinger.

Rick Heffelfinger, District 1. First of all, I'd like to do a shout-out to Tim Bobanek and company for answering an SOE question that I had. He replied very rapidly, did some research that I didn't do, and basically answered my question. So I want to shout-out to him, and also Don Walker, communications guy, because I had put in, because I was told that I don't have to put in a SEER. I could just make a recommendation on the website. So I did that with regards to the upcoming garbage contracts and things I think might help, and Don Walker sent me an acknowledgement and said, you know, I don't know if it kind of goes into the ether, but I watched the garbage contracts, so I'll make sure you don't forget about that. So what I really want to talk about is what's happening at the next budget workshop, because the last budget workshop, Commissioner Atkinson had submitted this wonderful letter of, where can we find some money so that you don't hose me down on my taxes next year? I like that idea. It spurred me to take a look at some of those and go, hey, wow, that's not a bad idea. One of the ones that I actually notated, holy crap, but it wasn't crap, but was one that said, eliminate funded vacant positions, $14 million. That's not chump change, right? That could go towards some nice stuff. We could build some docks or whatever you guys do with it. What it would really be nice to do is go towards some of the deficits we have in infrastructure, water plants, roads and bridge. It's a nice chunk of change, and I guess you're going to have to. My question is, I'd like to see this, and I can ask you that you won't make a decision on a public comment, but you can recommend the matter to a meeting agenda or request a staff report. I would like to recommend that a particular topic to discuss just these happens during the workshop. Because if you guys don't have an airing of this and give direction to staff to say, hey, you guys, every department, you need to come back and zero out your unfilled billets. I don't know if that's the right answer. Because, you know, or at least take a chunk. If you've been rolling the same billet, that money just sits there. It's allocated. It sits there. I'm sure you're earning interest on it. Somebody's got it in a fund, I would hope. But, hey, that's money that was allocated that's being unused. Why not? It's like a rainy day fund. And actually, the Citizens Budget Review had made a recommendation about Parks and Rec doing something with their unused money. That was a while ago, but nobody ever heard that, I guess. But I would like to see these pushed to that because there are some really good stuff. There's some stuff about eliminating these boards that everybody bitches about the use of staff. And, you know, $5,000, $3,000 staff time for each of those boards a year. Believe it or not, there's 48 of these little committees and things that, that's a big number. And I think you could go through and say, hey, based on the performance of some of those, I would not mind seeing some of them go away.

Particularly ones that haven't submitted any minutes for over a year, two years.

I guess that saves staff money because nobody wrote any minutes. But, geez, if you're not getting minutes and those committees are supposed to help you, get rid of them. Because if you're not reading anything, you're not getting. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Okay. Our final card, Michael Majak.

Speak on our Sear presentation. It was not too long ago when people would come a-run-in just to get a glimpse of that newfangled contraption called the automobile. Henry Ford, Ari Olds, Chrysler, the Dodge Brothers, among others, were literally transforming our economy, our society, and our way of life. No one at that time could have envisioned the outcome six score and three years later. Paved roads, stoplights, National Highway Traffic Safety Board, air fresheners. Today, four and a half percent of all jobs worldwide are now directly automotive-related. Manufacturing, wholesale and retail. Accessories, repair, maintenance, salvage. And it goes on and on. And all started with Henry Ford's assembly line back in 1903. And like Henry Ford, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, their contemporaries, are embarking on just such a seismic transition of our society. Only this time the rules are different, because there aren't many rules. Regulations have been relaxed hand over fist, especially where commercial spaceflight is concerned. Only this time the—excuse me. That's right. Your government has relaxed its National Environmental Protection Act policy for spaceflight. The EPA has abdicated its responsibility for protected species over to the FDEP, which is to say it's now controlled by Florida's executive branch. We all saw how well the FDEP listened to us at the Blue Origin wastewater dumping permit poster session. Pollution continues. And that brings me to my point. There is no coordinating, planning, and allocating body, no spaceport authority that ensures our combined, limited, and finite resources are shared equally across the spaceport. And that is bad for the region. That's why I'm advocating for a spaceport authority with full land use, planning, zoning capability, spaceport-wide. I'm not talking about efficiency standards, air pollution metrics, or the latest consumer report on first-stage reliability. Those will all come to pass. However, this will be life-altering. Make no mistake. When the full brunt force of the industrial space complex tsunami lands on Brevard, there will be no going back. Brevard County must tackle this now before the space coast becomes the sacrifice coast. I'm Michael Myjack, and I'm speaking on behalf of the Indian River Lagoon Roundtable in support of the Spaceport Authority to save us all. I'm here to answer any questions. Thank you.

Mr. Scherr. Commissioner Gallaty.

Could you share just a little bit about, like, what this spaceport would do and just a little bit more about what you're worried about?

Well, the simple thing is that I think that you—can I put this up on the screen? Is it possible that—I don't know which way it sits. Upside down. Upside down.

There you go.

All right. Something like that as a starting point. I believe—we believe that you, as the county commission, as our local government, you have standing where we do not. We can't stand up against the federal government or the state government, but we have a whole bunch of people that are certainly interested. And let's see. I've got a whole list of them here. These are the people that should be part of this task force. And what I'm proposing is that you initially stand up a task force that is made up of all the peers out here at the Space Center, all of the people that are being impacted or will have an input into what happens here. And I'll give you just a simple example. Let's talk raw water resources. With what's coming down, we don't have a big enough pipe into Orange County to feed the Space Center. I've got some updated data. I showed Commissioner Delaney this information earlier. Let's see if I can get it up here. Come on. That is water consumption permits already granted, not necessarily this year, but are already permitted by FDEP and the St. Johns River Water Management District. That's in millions of gallons in just the deluge water from the launches. The interesting thing is that that 227 million gallons does not need to be potable water. They actually don't want the chlorine in the water. They need it to improve, but not to potable water standards, to industrial water standards. And they need, without a doubt, to be reusing every drop of water that they have. Doing so, doing otherwise, is going to put all of us into jeopardy. Right now, the River Management District says that we're at capacity in Orange County. So what's going to happen? By 2044, the estimate is there will be 96 million gallons a day overdrafting. When we're running water into the lagoon as storm water, which does no good, that's a raw water resource. Our black water, our sanitary sewer can become part of that solution, particularly out there. They have huge ponds that they can reallocate into a common system that will allow them to manage the water for all of the players. As it is right now, each one has to make their own. One, SpaceX is already going and building their own wastewater treatment facility out there on Roberts Road. Great, so Blue Origin will build one, and then some other space company will build one, and how many are we going to have? There's no coordination. We have a comp plan that all municipalities, all counties follow. They don't. There's no cohesive plan between when you cross the border from one property to another. Space Florida is not managing this. They're just a property manager. Nobody is overseeing how these are going to coordinate and how we're going to grow. And if we don't coordinate and don't plan, we will be overrun. So we need a spaceport authority. And you guys are the ones to stand up for that. You're spending a half a billion dollars to save the lagoon, and yet you've got DEP allowing Blue Origin and SpaceX to dump a half a million gallons each a day, permitted, in the very place we're trying to save. You're spending your money, and the state's not acting in your best interest. Who's going to stand up for us if not you? And this is what we need to hold the line to. Resources are finite. They're limited. We're not going to have many going forward. We have to figure out how to use and reuse what we have. So I beg you, please, take this forward. Thank you.

Okay, I think that's our last public comment card. That moves us on to H1.

Is somebody saying they have a card?

They put it on a card? We're looking.

It's in the K's card.

It's in the K. It's in the second public section. Sir, I wouldn't care if she comes up now. I know we do five, but it wouldn't matter to me whether it's now or it's in the K section. She only gets to do it one time, though.

How many do we have?

I didn't count them.

Four for G?

We normally do five. Well, we'll add one. That's been our rule. Yeah, let's do five. We'll add one. Any idea who we want to add? We have five. I know. Did we do five? We did five. So we did five, so we'll do the other. Okay. Okay. Thank you for your patience. So we will go to H1, public hearing, approval, resolution, and adoption of state.

Staff, when we wrote it. Thank you, Commissioner. So item H1 is the public hearing component of our submittal to the State Revolving Fund. Just to recap, on January 13th of this year, we came to the board seeking permission to pursue State Revolving Fund for three specific utility service projects. Upon that, we've completed the due diligence needed for it. The last step is a public hearing as required by the State Revolving Fund, and based on this approval, we'll be able to forward that package on. Okay.

That's good. So we have this public hearing. We have a couple speakers. H1, Rick Heffelfinger.

Rick Heffelfinger, District 1. Yeah, it said that we were going to have this public hearing so that you guys could discuss with us. Required to be held to explain the proposed projects. There's three of them, I think. The capital cost. The long-term financial impact on the customers. Is that, that's me, a customer? Am I the customer there? I think I am. I'm paying for stuff, right? And give the public a, to participate in evaluating the project alternatives. This looks like you've taken all these water plant projects that we have to do. I think this is to be compliant with treated water to a different standard thing. And you're going to sell bonds. Is that, is that my understanding? Okay. So you're selling bonds. So people are going to buy these bonds. You're going to use the money. Then you have to pay the bonds back, I think. That's part of the deal. And there's an interest rate. It's low. It's like 2%, I think it states in here. But what, over what period is all that going to happen? I thought we had talked about some of these projects could possibly receive some sorrel money to offset the cost. I would love to see sorrel money go to something instead of borrowing for it. The sorrel money is already there. The reprioritization of sorrel was something was kicked around as a possible cost savings. So this stuff doesn't all fall on us. Because you are going to have to pay them back. And I don't know what the plan is. You guys could tell me, you're supposed to tell me, is this a four-year payback, five-year, ten-year bonds? Don't know. Maybe it's in here. But there's a lot of paper in here. And these are huge, man. 23 million, 22 million, 19 million. That's a crap load of bonds. I don't know what the interest calculation would be, but I wouldn't mind getting it. So I don't know. You pay interest only for a while. What's that going to do to my taxes in the next five years out, ten years out? I don't know. You guys just said you're going to sell bonds. I have no other idea. So I kind of like to get that idea and say, hey, what about sorrel? There's a few instances in here that there's some state grants. Great. Throw those at it, too. So how about some – we can't really throw ARPA, right, because this is too long term. Too bad we got some of that ARPA money. Hope we use that smartly. Maybe we could use some ARPA money on some projects now, and then we could take them off the budget for the next year and throw them toward this. But I don't know. Just thinking outside the box. That's all I'm trying to say is I thought there was a bunch of talk, and people are getting concerned about this term, busting the cap. I think I got the busting and cap expert right there. But if you're going to bust the cap, is that going to be busting the cap because you've written all these bonds and it's interest? Or is this the ultimate solution? I thought we were talking about some other solutions for this. Sounds like one gentleman had an idea. I said, hey, listen, maybe you don't need to treat all that water that you're sending over to the space center. Maybe you can give them some crappy water, and then they could use that. Would that cause us to reduce how much water we have to generate with these plants? I don't know if these plants are even factoring in space, what some of the space guys are asking for. I'd sure like to have a more robust decision before we go ahead and just vote for, what, $22 million, $60 million worth of bombs? Are we going to make that decision right now? Or is this just a public hearing when we talk about this later? I'm just concerned we're not talking about it enough. Thank you.

Sandra Sullivan, the next speaker.

Sandra Sullivan. So I run a group called Waves Action on Facebook. So I have some issues about this. So we talked about, or you guys talked about, busting the cap. So four of you, except for Katie, voted to direct staff to prepare a budget to bust the cap, to increase our taxes. I've been coming up here for years talking about AWT and other subjects. AWT, advanced wastewater treatment. So for the people listening, this is because the effluent coming out of the sewage plants is high in nutrient loading. So some of it gets used for reuse, and some of it goes into our wetlands, and some of it goes into deep injection. And so it's important to clean it up. So when the lagoon tax was sold to us 10 years ago, we were promised AWT upgrades to the sewage plants. Now, I just want to bring up here just a reminder that Feltner, when he ran, said, I will not vote to bust the cap. So let's talk about the lagoon tax. So on South Beaches, to upgrade to AWT, it's $50 million. For the deep injection well, it's $25 million. So I've been coming up here talking about what's in the lagoon tax. What is actually in the lagoon tax to go towards $50 million for AWT? $2.4 million. Now, you got a – when we were promised the lagoon tax to pay for AWT, we were also promised that they would match state funds. So you have a $12 million grant from 2023 for AWT at South Beaches, and in appropriations right now, there's another $10 million. So that's $22 million. You match $22 million from the lagoon tax, that is almost $50 million. You've really closed that spread. So for these projects, I would vote no. Now, what you need to do is go back and say to Virginia Barker and the lagoon board and redirect that money because it's about 2% of the lagoon tax is going to AWT. And you're under consent orders as a county because as of last year, in July of 2025, you can't discharge any affluent that's not the AWT. And then it gets – you know, then we get a little bit, you know, more into some of the AWT projects that are being funded that are going to bust the cap. So my ask right now in my last 15 seconds is to ask you guys to direct staff to go and reprioritize the lagoon tax. I think there's like $160 million that's not even allocated. And go do that and bring that back before you start talking about taxing us and raising our taxes.

Okay. That's our cards on this item. Yes.

I have a question. Thank you. Boris, could you talk to us a little bit about – is that possible? Is it possible to ask staff to bring us back another option to spend sorrel dollars on these projects?

Well, we've had that discussion several times with the board, and that's inconsistent with the prior board direction. The direction we have right now is to bring back a renewal of the existing sorrel tax.

I'm sorry to interrupt. I meant like with the monies that we have right now with our existing sorrel plan. Could we ask staff to reallocate the funds that are already in the current sorrel plan for this project?

To the extent that projects are consistent with the sorrel plan and that you can use sorrel dollars for them, to some extent we have some limitations because we have interlocal agreements with the municipalities who would otherwise receive the funds, so we can't just arbitrarily do that. But, you know, those are questions we could work through with staff.

So we could –

Especially during the project plan update process is when we consider, you know, the plans that are approved and processed with sorrel dollars.

Every time this has been brought up in the past, I keep being told that at any time, the commissioners could redirect and direct staff to change things. And so that's definitely something that I would be interested in looking into.

I could say one thing on this. Yeah. Certainly talk to the staff around here a lot about these issues. And I think being able to get to the advanced wastewater treatment standard quicker is something potentially from sorrel that could be done, but not in place of sewer fees and the other things. So I think that's the legal challenge with sorrel.

I'd like to say a few things, too. I'd like to point out in this agenda item that there are six extensive reports as attachments to the agenda item, very involved. This is not a willy-nilly public hearing and a willy-nilly vote to do these projects. There are significant engineering, economic, financial analysis and study, biologics. A lot of these projects are required as a very, very significant and complex set of federal and state laws. There's been a tremendous amount of thought and research and work into bringing us to this point. So any member of the public, all these reports are public knowledge that any member of the public can read if they have any specific questions. That's why we have the public hearing. This is not willy-nilly. This is a part of a very, very complex, sophisticated approach. As far as using sorrel money, I am vehemently opposed to that, using taxpayers' dollars to fund capital projects that are funded through user fees. Part of the analysis of these projects are economic analysis. And the basic theory is individuals using this service, let's say sewer treatment plant, what is fair and just is that they pay for the use of the service. That's why so many of our rates are based on consumption. The more water you use, the more you pay. The more you preserve, the less you pay. By moving into a big government tax liberal view is where you have general taxes, where you tax people in general to supplement these individual projects. This is a much more conservative and fiscally responsible way of providing service to the public. I think the idea of using sorrel money is a big government liberal tax and spend and less accountable way of addressing the problem. So I would oppose that. I think this is a good request. I think Brevard County has done a remarkable job in providing very, very difficult service, our water sewer services, and incredibly important for the public health. So I strongly support it. But I just want to dispel any of you that this is willy-nilly and not well thought out. Some of the engineering firms that wrote these reports are some of the smartest people on the planet when it comes to environmental engineering, civil engineering, and economics. Yes?

So I don't know who can answer this, but what happens if we don't meet the 2030 deadline?

2030 with regard to the state?

The AWT, the whole thing we're talking about right now.

We would get a consent order.

And what happens when that happens?

A consent order. They would send it to us. We would meet with them. They would look at where we are in the progress of the project, and it would be the discretion of the FDEP based on that, on what action they take.

Is it possible that we could get fines?

It is.

And so who pays those fines?

The department.

So would that be spread across all taxpayers, not just the users of that individual sewage plant?

So as we use the word taxpayer, commissioner. Ratepayer, whatever word you want to use. I'm not wordsmithing with you here. Ratepayer is the correct phrase, yes. Okay.

So I disagree that this is a liberal, big government discussion, especially when we implemented this tax, promising the people that we would be making these upgrades. The people of this county already said, yes, we want this. Yes, we want this money to go to these projects as fast as they can so that we don't all get fined. So I just, I take offense to that. I think it was a shot under the belt. And, you know, it's...

I'm recognizing myself. No. I mean, that's a healthy debate. That's a very healthy economic debate. How do you raise revenue for government? I would present, and I think most economists in political sciences would say, user fees are more conservative than across-the-board taxes. And that was my point. And I realize, I understand your point. There are probably some times where we have to do what you're talking about doing, especially when we have deadlines and broad challenges. But I just wanted to make that point. I wasn't addressing that to you in general. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I think...

Did I hear 2031 is the deadline to get this all done?

It was last year for not to start doing it to the weekend.

Why don't we have staff respond to that?

So the discharge rule started in July 1st of 2025. So that is... And with regard to the AWT, I believe it's 2032 or 2034 with regard to the completion. But let me just add some clarity to, Commissioner. The State Revolving Fund has changed the rules. So we are not going to get $60 million or the summation of this. The way the committee works is they have now capped it at $25 million per entity, not per project. So we are... But, however, you never know what project they're going to deem. So they could pick one of these. They could pick all of these. But regardless of it, the summation of it would be for $25 million. And with regard to the payback period, it's a 30-year payback period.

Okay. Any other questions? Yes. No questions.

I'd like to make a motion.

There's a motion?

I'd like to make a motion that we conduct a public hearing for approval. I'm sorry.

We've completed... I thought this was an opportunity to ask questions. You guys are going to be compliant with the... The reason of a public hearing is to get questions answered. I don't... You have a question? What's your question? Well...

Could you come to the podium, please? Yeah.

I mean, I had read that we were going to... Underneath this item, we were going to be able to answer questions about the program. And it's like you're... So there's only $25 million. That's good. So if they only give us $25, we match it? Or... Because you've asked for $60. We're not getting $60. We're getting $25. So we're only writing bonds for $25 million, maybe? Up to. Okay. So this is a match thing? I don't know.

They'll allow us to have $25 million of bonds we can issue? So for whatever we're going to match, we have the funding in place in order to do that. I'd have to check. But from State Revolving Fund, we would only get a maximum of $25 million per year. And obviously, if we want to pursue next year, the facility plans you see attached, we would redo those. Or as you saw in the budget hearing, we had multiple projects, and we could pursue those as well.

So we're only talking about maybe maxing out at $25 million, writing $25 million of bonds per year. So we don't have a three-year plan. We could get $25 for one of these. Next year, $25 for one of the ones that they didn't fund. And then $25 for the next one, right? We'd write bonds. So this would be a multi-year writing of bonds. Jack, did you have a comment?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Commissioners, as it's written in the agenda item, the advantage of the State Revolving Fund is that in a low-interest loan through the state via the Environmental Protection Agency, typically an interest rate is 2% to 3% less than the bond market. So we will not be issuing bonds. As Eddie presented at the last budget meeting workshop, we have about over $800 million of needs, and we'll be funding that. Potential sources would be grants, debt issuers, connection fee adjustments, and user fee adjustments. So we'll be going through everything that we can do on this, and I hate to be this way. This has nothing to do with General Fund. He's an enterprise fund.

So we're going to get maybe a maximum of $60 million here through this program, and you're saying there's $80 million we need to come up with? $800 million. $800 million. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. How are we going to come up with that, or is that we're still studying that?

$2,000 plus.

Oh, dudes. Can you give me any idea what the financial impact will be over the next five years to me as a taxpayer? With that $800 million sitting out there, and you've got a deadline you've already missed. This is looking really bad to me. I'm scared now. We need to have some really, really serious conversations at that budget workshop, and that needs to be an engagement of I can ask you questions. I don't know if you were there. We had a very lengthy conversation at the last budget workshop about this. I couldn't make that one, but I was surprised to see public comment. We did. But how about engagement like we're doing now? I like this. We had a lengthy conversation at our budget workshop about this.

This is a good workshop. Yeah.

So, okay. Can I also again ask that you have some of these topics on it?

Mr. Chair, as I explained just a minute ago to the public, potential funding sources are grants, debt issuance, connection fee adjustments, and user fee adjustments. I already answered the question.

Okay.

Thank you so much. Okay. I'm going to be paying. Okay. I think we had a motion.

I started to say a motion, yes. I'd like to make a motion to conduct a public hearing for the approval of a resolution adopting the facility plans for the following South Beach projects, one, two, and three, as written.

Okay. Is there a second? I'll second. There's a second. Is there a discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?

Aye. Nay.

Motion passes with Commissioner Delaney voting nay. Okay. H-2. Move to H-2, petition to vacate a portion of a public drainage easement. Okay. I'll let the staff explain that. We do have one card.

Okay. Good evening. H-2 is a petition to vacate a portion of a public drainage easement in the Platte of Sun Tree PUD Stage 1, Tract E, Platte Book 24, page 120. This is in Melbourne, and the petitioners are Walter and Mary Henker in District 4. There were no objections.

If there's not, do you have a card, sir? I do. Walt Henker? Walt Henker? No objections. Is that the property owner? You're the property owner? Okay. I'll make a motion to approve, sir, if there's no other discussion.

Second.

Motion, second, to approve. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Carries unanimously. Aye. Thank you so much. Okay. H-3.

All right. Good evening, Commissioners. H-3, this agenda item requests approval of the mid-year budget supplement and amends the projected balance-forward budgets that were developed before the closeout of fiscal year 2025. The 2026 adopted budget includes estimated balance-forward based on revenues and expenses from the previous year. And with that year closed out, this request reconciles those balance-forwards and presents requests for allocation. This supplement increases the current budget by $5.7 million, or 0.23%. Notably in here, the general fund is requesting to allocate $1.85 million to the North Government Center infrastructure, $500,000 to the Ag Center roof, and $50,000 to the Medical Examiner's Office. The agenda and supporting documents summarize each change as well as include a list of each change included in this request. Okay. We have one card.

Rick Heffelfinger.

Rick Heffelfinger, District 1. Wow. H-3, we had a discussion, I think, at the last meeting about putting the fiscal impact on these. Holy crap! This is a $5,764,000 budget increase. Now, I know we can explain that because some of this roll forward we didn't anticipate being as big. But can't we take some of that roll forward that we didn't anticipate? Do we have to spend it this year, or can we put it in a rainy day fund? Because to me, those are, these departments went back last year, they fact found with you guys on what they anticipated their needs were. They anticipated a certain amount of carry forward. That's not the right term I'm using. Yeah, whatever. Balance forward. And they said, hey, we're only going to get $5 million balance forward, so, you know, we can only do these $5 million projects and we really need, so you only gave them an allocation of $5 million. Maybe they're short, maybe they're not, but then all of a sudden they get a windfall. These look like windfalls to me because you look back at the 25-year and said, ooh, I'll tell you one that's really, really shocking, and I don't know if anybody noticed it but me. The sheriff, he blew his estimate of his fund by amount of, what the crap, he's getting a forward $4.7 million more than he thought because this fund performed better than he thought. Now, I'm pretty sure you fact found with him for this year and said, hey, you know, he was short, right? So he got money somewhere else. He wasn't as short as he thought. Shouldn't he give that money back somehow? Or are you just going to let him spend this on whatever he wants as a budget increase? Because it says right here, he's going to replace a bunch of stuff that was personal protective equipment, much needed public safety equipment. Was that on his request last year? Or is he just making up stuff to burn money on that became as a windfall to him? That windfall could go other places, I think. I don't know if these things are fenced. But it concerns me that there is a huge amount and a growth of the budget that you didn't really approve for this year. But all of a sudden, these windfalls are growing the budget bigger than it needs to be, I guess. Well, if we're not conserving any of the money and putting in a fund, I'd like to see a rainy day fund just like when you carry over for employees that you didn't hire. This is windfall. That fund is huge. Man, I'll tell you what, I would like to know who's investing for the sheriff because that windfall is big. He didn't anticipate that at all. But when he gets that money, are you going to give him any guidance about what he could be able to spend it on? You approved his budget. Now you're just going to let him have that to spend willy-nilly. And I see some willy-nilly things that I hope they're the right priorities. That wasn't discussed in the original fact finding. So this is unapproved decision to spend. And you guys are approving it. And I hope you kind of really took a hard look at some of this because this is a lot of money. And again, we talked about $800 million. You know, throw a million here, throw a million there. Maybe we could come up with $800 million sometime. I just thought, I thought that needed a little more attention. Thanks.

I think that's our last card. Any questions? Yes.

Jim, could you go into a little bit about how the priorities were set with this budget reallocation?

The one I would focus on is the $1.8 and change million that we put towards the, I call it the six-story, the North Brevard Government Center. Then there's $500,000 for the Ag Center roof. Oof. I always mispronounce that. Sorry about that. And I forgot the other number. But that was on the general fund. Those were really brought to you guys, showing this is critical needs that we have about infrastructure. And so that's where we're bringing, we have this money available at this point. So that's why we're highlighting it and why we made it a top priority.

Okay. Any discussions or motion? Can I ask one question?

Part of this was what we discussed at prior meeting with the parks versus, was that part of the same amount? Are you talking about the reallocation of ad valorem? No, that was done at the last meeting separate from this.

And I'll note here that a lot of these adjustments are within special revenue funds. And so they can only be used for very specific purposes, other than what Jim mentioned is general government, which is more flexible and discretionary.

I'd like to say one thing. I certainly appreciate staff. You know, this could be a shortfall in our budget. This is revenue that was over and above what we anticipated, which means we were being conservative in our budgeting process. To me, this is good news. And I think the decisions that are being made as far as using these funds are really well thought out. I toured the north of our facility yesterday. These are things that need to be done. Are they going to cost us a heck of a lot more in the future? So I, I, staff is on this. Um, they live this stuff and I, I think they've come up with a good list. I know they've conferred a lot with the governing body. And I think it's a good, good set of projects that we need to address. I'm thankful we're able to do that. I'll make a motion to approve. Second. Mr. Chair. Motion and second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Cares unanimously. Thank you so much. Okay. We are moving to I-1. We have one card. I'll have staff address the item that we'll hear.

Good evening, Mr. Chair and Commissioners. This is a request that the board adopt a resolution to amend the county's delegation of authority to the city of Melbourne and the Old Low Galley Riverfront Community Redevelopment Agency to conform with the 2025 interlocal agreement adopted by the board on December 16th and recorded in public record. This is just to approve the resolution that was approved, the interlocal agreement that was approved on December 16th, 2025.

Okay. We do have one card. Sandra Sullivan.

Sandra Sullivan from Waves Action Facebook group. So this is a resolution modifying the delegated authority to the city of Melbourne and O'Galley for the O'Galley CRA. So I had objections on this before because you guys don't have the final plans even what they're doing. So, I mean, one of the plans was putting the hotel on top of the parking garage, not necessarily the city's property being its own. And it just seems like this should wait. I also want to bring up that during that vote when you made it, Feldner made a promise to get funding to District 1 to address flooding. And in return, Katie supported this where she wasn't supporting it before, as my experience of that vote. And so that was supposed to be discussed at the Save Lagoon workshops, but didn't happen. So that's still a very big, outstanding item. So I just want to recap also and say kudos to Ms. Atkinson for putting in there, for cutting the budget to cut CRAs. We have three, we had three that had no debt that could be sunset and save a lot of money back to the general fund, because that's where it's coming out of. And we're giving $12.1 million to a CRA when, and this is my warning, hey, we have infrastructure crisis, our roof is falling down, that money is going to go there. Warning, you guys are going to bust the cap, and then what do you vote for at the last budget workshop after you give a developer, essentially, a developer interest, we'll call it, a $12.1 million of our taxpayers' money that could go to critical infrastructure needs. And then you vote, four of you vote, to direct staff to go prepare a budget to bust the cap to raise our taxes. When you should have done the responsible, fiscally conservative thing to close the three CRAs that had no debt, return that money back to the general fund. But you didn't.

That's our final card. Any discussion or motion for the sign? I'll make a motion to approve. Second. Motion is second to approve. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Carries unanimously. Thank you. New Business Development Environmental Services Group, J1. We've got one card. Why don't we have the speaker, Rick Heffelfinger, speak while the staff is coming up.

Rick Heffelfinger, District 1. You know, if I was going to come out in the rain, I was going to fill out some cards, so I apologize for that. But I got wet. I suffered. J1. My question with this one is similar to the others. Is this, this looks like a short-term pump rental to compensate while we're waiting to get pumps that we already bought installed. This is a short-term expense. This looks like a good place you could have rolled ARPA money to, because we've got to use it or lose it. So, I don't know where the 84, what else, what, 1.4 million? What is that? Oh, my God. So, I don't know if we already bought the 1.4 million pumps with money. It's already been expended, but we're renting these. How about we use ARPA money before it goes away to rent the pumps until we get our new pumps in? So, we're not using, what is this? Well, let's ask staff to respond to that question. Operating and maintenance fund. That's my only concern, that we've got ARPA money to burn, maybe, and we're burning maintenance and operating costs.

So, Commissioner, this item is related to the South Beach's wastewater plant. It's specific to a consent order. We received a consent order with regard to the potential to discharge to the Indian River Lagoon. As we worked with the DEP, we deemed that the bottleneck in the situation was not necessarily the well capacity of the deep injection well. It was the pumping capacity. With that being said, we took action on implementing rental pumps at a larger capacity to appease what the DEP has. And with this agenda item, it is basically the board giving us permission to continue with the rental and, in addition, for us to actually purchase the permanent pumps, all of which these actions will appease the DEP with regard to the consent order. Specifically, the question why we didn't use ARPA, is it because we just didn't have time? It was a question of time, because if the lead time for the pumps came close to December, we felt that was uncomfortable. The investment we're doing with the ARPA funds is absolutely necessary, so we didn't feel there was a multitude of good purposes we did, and that's the rationale. Okay.

And if I could just add to that, all of the ARPA funds have been obligated. As Jim mentioned earlier, we did do a county-wide review of the ARPA projects that are under contract and worked with the departments to make sure what's obligated is going to be spent by December. And that's why you saw those other projects come in earlier that Eddie was reallocating within the utilities department.

Okay. Okay. I figured if it was ongoing rent, the ARPA could have just gone there if that's true.

All right.

All right.

That's our only card for J-1. Any questions of the board? Any motions? Any actions?

Motion to approve.

I'll second. Motion, second, approve. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Carries unanimously. Thank you. J-2.

Good evening, Mr. Chair. J-2 is an appeal to denied sidewalk waiver for the Greenleaf subdivision in West Melbourne under application 26-WV-00001, located in District 5.

In front of you all, and it's different. My name is Jim Swan, and I was the manager of this project, Greenleaf subdivision, which has been sold, houses built on, completed long ago. So, we had to have a driveway permit from the county to connect this West Melbourne subdivision developed under the West Melbourne, you know, subdivision development ordinances. They never requested us to build a sidewalk. The driveway permit was issued with the plan specifically saying that the sidewalk conceptually shown was not part of this permit, so we had no idea that anyone wanted us to build a sidewalk, and so we didn't build a sidewalk. So, that's kind of how we got in this box. It came up when we asked, when we turned in our as-built for the driveway, and all of a sudden we get a letter back saying, well, you've got to build a sidewalk. So, this has kind of unfolded, it was a surprise. We need a sidewalk. The proposed sidewalk ends on the north end, next to the carriage gate subdivision, which has no sidewalks, and on the south side, it ends in a commercial already developed property that has no sidewalks, so there's nothing to connect the sidewalk to, as shown on the plan. And so, you think, who's going to walk on a sidewalk that doesn't go anywhere? Inside the subdivision, of course, we have sidewalks connecting everything. So, anybody who wants to go for a nice evening walk can. The other kind of difficulty, we looked at it and said, well, maybe we can build a sidewalk, since that's what the county wants. Unfortunately, there's a pretty substantial ditch, and since the design of the subdivision didn't allow for any more expansion of the right-of-way, and it's already been built, we can't build a sidewalk in a ditch. So, if someone wants a sidewalk, somebody has to take and change the drainage structure and build drainage structures and do away with the ditch. And, you know, of course, that would be frightfully expensive. So, that's kind of how we got here, and I really apologize. I've only been doing this for 50 years, and I don't come in front of anybody very often because we usually get our plans, we get them approved, we build it to the way it was approved, and everybody's, we kind of go on to the next project. Sorry, I'm done. Yeah, thank you. Any questions? I have none.

Let's hear the next card. Thank you, Jim. Cynthia Snay? That's it? Snay?

Hi, I'm with the City of West Melbourne, and I've been requested to read this into the record. On March 5th and March 30th, the City of West Melbourne communicated the following messages to Mark Bernath for the County Public Works Director. As part of the City's subdivision approval of the project, a sidewalk along Carriage Gate Road was included in the approved plans and is consistent with the City's requirement for sidewalks adjacent to a new subdivision. While we recognize that the county may have a different perspective on the installation of the sidewalk, it was an element of the plan approved by the City and is considered an important component of the project. If the right-of-way for Carriage Gate were in the City limits, the developers would have no choice but to pipe the drainage swell and build the sidewalk. Greenleaf Stanley Martin states there is not adequate space for both the sidewalk and an open swell drainage system. While it is true that the construction drawings do not show engineering of a piped drainage system with the sidewalk on top, it is staff's determination that by showing the sidewalk along Carriage Gate Boulevard, MBV Engineering made an initial determination the sidewalk could fit at the edge of the existing open swell drainage system or that they had plans to pipe it. In particular, the City views the sidewalk is beneficial. Given the proximity of the Seventh-day Adventist school located continuous to the south of the development, it is consistent with our Transportation Policy 3.4, which states, Promote an enhanced pedestrian biking environment that allows for the safe use of the community roadways for pedestrians and bikers by working with private developers to ensure all private and public roadway projects consider the pedestrian biking environment safety. If the applicant desires to deviate from the City of West Melbourne's code, Section 8655, for sidewalks, they need to revise their February 18, 2022 construction drawings to indicate how they are going to meet the City's sidewalk requirements.

That's it. Thank you. Then, did you have something you wanted to respond to? Let's ensure the applicant, I think you should.

I'm sorry, just a correction to what you said. The plans that they approved say the sidewalk is by others. It doesn't say sidewalk is part of those approved plans. Okay. And just to be fair and kind to the City of West Melbourne, there is confusion here. It wasn't, I don't know where the mistake came, but we didn't know about it.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you. So, I met with staff about this in the briefing, and there's nobody who's been an advocate more for sidewalks than I have, and I certainly believe they're necessary. Although, that said, I think if there was ever a situation that really met the criteria of a waiver, this is it. One, the developer did not know the sidewalk. They had to build the sidewalk. They didn't plan on building the sidewalk. They built sidewalks internal to their development. The relatively large development, I wouldn't say it's a large development, relative to this project, to the west, has no sidewalks, even interior to the development, no sidewalks. And the sidewalk does end prior to any other use. There's a church further down. I don't know. So, I think in lieu of the corridor and the fact there's no other sidewalks for use to connect to, and the fact that it was, the project's already approved, this is not a condition to the project, I would support the waiver. I think that motion would be in order to approve.

May I ask a question?

Yes. Sure.

Billy, I have a quick question. So, can you comment on the surprise realization that a sidewalk was needed?

So, I think as the city of West Melbourne representative stated, and I did look at the plans, I did see the sidewalk on the approved plans. I did not look at, like, this was permitted within the city of West Melbourne. So, I did not look to see what, whose responsibility was to construct those sidewalks per those plans. I know that was being questioned by the applicant. This is the first I've heard of that today.

And I think staff was doing their job under our code. It can be required, or we can give a waiver. It's up to this board, and I think they did the right thing in bringing it before us. But I was surprised when I later found out that it was a condition that wasn't predicated on the approval or even aware of the landowner.

I have a question.

Yes.

Billy, could you talk to us more about the other construction sites on that road, and when were they built? When did our policy change to require this?

That's a good question, Commissioner. If you just give me one moment. Sure. If I can bring that information up. I will say the parochial school, about 35 feet to the south, was built in 1988, so that would have predated the code. I think the sidewalk requirement in our code, we believe, was instituted somewhere around, at least the original version of it might have differed from what it is today, somewhere around 1995. The Carriage Gate subdivision to the west was platted in 1988. So, a lot of the development there, in fact, most of it that we can see, predates our current sidewalk requirement.

May I have a follow-up?

Yes.

So, what you're saying is that it predated our ordinance, but our ordinance now has been in place for quite a long time.

Yes, Commissioner.

Thank you. One more question, if I may.

Yes.

So, if the sidewalk is going to be necessary, you just said there's a school 500 feet down the road. Who pays for the sidewalk eventually when it gets put in?

That would be, I think, an open question. I mean, it's a county-maintained road, Carriage Gate Drive. On the other hand, it's a subdivision that's within the city of West Melbourne, used by the city of West Melbourne residents. So, there's multiple parties with different interests involved. So, I think that would be a question that we would reserve for the future on who would pay for it.

Okay.

And I think MSCUs is an example. If the community wanted a sidewalk, they would all participate into that. I might add one other thing, too. I think the developer, had they known that a sidewalk had to be provided, they probably would not have forced the kids out to Carriage Gate Road. They would have planned the internal development so that the sidewalk could have exited out of the south end of the project. That would have brought it right out near the school. It would have been a better solution. And I don't know if it's...

If I may, Mr. Chair, I just wanted to supplement what I said to the commissioner a second ago, Commissioner Atkinson. There is normally a sidewalk assessment agreement that goes with these waivers should the board approve them. So, that agreement would require the developer to be assessed at a future date when the county feels that there's a need for the sidewalk, and they would be required to contribute the value of that sidewalk towards it. So, I mean, that's a question that the board may want to consider as part of their waiver whether they're still seeking that agreement or they're looking for something different.

Okay.

Did the city sign off on the final plan? Was there a bond? Was that released? No.

The city's performance bond, the city's bond requirement would have been for internal subdivision improvements because this is a case where the subdivision is within the city, but the right-of-way is county right-of-way. So, the city wouldn't have required bonding of the county improvements. I'm hearing from the city, on the one hand, that the city plans show that the sidewalks required. I can tell you, being in somewhat of a unique position, having been city attorney for West Melbourne and county attorney for Brevard County, that we both require sidewalks and circumstances like this pretty clearly, and both entities have for a very long time. And folks are generally aware of that. I can't speak because it wasn't part of this permit application to what the plans say as to the requirement for who was going to build that. I'm assuming the city reviewed and saw that there was a sidewalk, you know, indicated and believed that they were getting a sidewalk. There is a question that the developer's attorney, Cole Oliver, raised with me about two minutes prior to this meeting as to whether our land development regulations in Chapter 62 even apply within the corporate boundaries of the city of West Melbourne. So that's an issue we could perhaps address with them and maybe even cause for tabling of consideration of this item if the board so desires. But if the applicant wishes to proceed tonight, you know, I suppose the board has enough information to consider it. The waiver request itself was just based on the representation of the constrained limits of right-of-way and fitting in the sidewalk adjacent to the existing open drainage.

Commissioner Altman and sir, if I may, I wouldn't mind tabling that if that's what you decide to do so that Morris can answer that question for the applicant or if there's something else you choose tonight.

But I think that's a fair question. I feel comfortable with the waiver. I think that for whatever reason, the requirements were not made clear to the landowner. They did not factor that in. They would have done something probably significantly different. They are building sidewalks internal to their project. The neighbor to the north and the west has none. If ever there was a need for a sidewalk, I think a larger public benefit, the cost should be more equally spread and fairly distributed. That's my opinion.

I have a question. Do we know if, did I hear that MBV Engineering was the ones who did this project?

I heard MBV. I don't know that personally, but someone said that. Is that true? Yes.

I just, I find it hard to believe that Bruce doesn't know this. I just really find that very hard to believe. So I mean, I would be more inclined to, you know, this is unfortunately the name of the game. When you're developing neighborhoods, you have to put the infrastructure in place. And this is part of that.

I think, I think if we tabled it so that the applicant can get that question answered with Morris, that would probably, I'd be more comfortable with that tonight. That's my two cents. Is that a motion?

I'll make that motion. Is that a motion second to table? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Nay. Nay.

Nay.

Motion fails. I want to table it. I'm sorry?

I do not want to table it.

Okay. Motion fails 3-2.

Chair, can I ask the city of Melbourne a question?

Absolutely.

Okay. What is, or maybe this is a county question. What is the right-of-way that the developer had to work with?

And that's the city of West Melbourne, sir. Don't confuse, don't confuse those two. They'll get upset.

So what is it, what is the right-of-way they had?

Carriage Gate Drive has a, there was a 66-foot public right-of-way.

Okay. That being said, you have a five-foot sidewalk, and then you have a stabilized slope at eight foot, then eight foot up to the asphalt, and the road's 24. Then you have eight on the other side and eight on the other side. But you didn't draw anything on your plan. There was, you didn't even do the right-of-way dimensions. Why didn't you do that, or why didn't your engineer do that?

I think that was a question for, who are you directing that question toward, Commissioner? City of Melbourne. City of Melbourne. West Melbourne. West Melbourne.

We didn't design the sidewalks in here. The developers designed that. But you approved the plans, correct? We approved plans that depicted a sidewalk on them, yes.

So therefore, were the contractor going to put the two-foot wide sidewalk in, and you would have been happy?

Do we have a copy of those plans? I mean, is that a public, do you have a?

I got a message from the attorney. I just have a portion of the plans that I can barely make out, but it does show, it says a five-foot sidewalk was not part of the submittal that I was sent, but it was part of submittals that were submitted to Brevard County's parts of other exhibits. So that's something, you know, it's hard to answer without having all the plans, but certainly something that went to the City of West Melbourne and indicated a future five-foot sidewalk.

Well, Chair, I don't want to table this.

Sidewalk all the way up on the northern portion and all the way down to the southern corner.

May I ask a question?

Yes, I'm looking at the, okay, I don't see a sidewalk that's a part of the approved plat.

It's right here.

But I, is that?

They did it with the shading on it, all the way around, and we highlighted it to show where that shading is.

Can I look at that up close? It's hard to see what.

And that's what was approved? Yes. Okay.

Does it have an annotation saying that that's a sidewalk? I don't see the text.

Yes.

Where is it?

It's right here.

Okay, let me look.

And we can also show pictures that we took today of the entrance showing where their sidewalks currently end. They don't even go out to here, which shows where the sidewalk, it would connect to another sidewalk going up, consistent with that plan.

Okay. Jim, did you want to see this? Or did you want to comment on it?

Sorry, Mike. The issue is, you'll have to leave, I don't say much. Can you speak into the mic? The issue is, there is a sidewalk shown, but there is notes in two places saying not part of this submittal, not part of these plans. And there is no cross-sections, there's no topo, there's no indication anywhere that that sidewalk is to be built by this development, which we would have done as we always do if we thought we were supposed to.

Yeah, I think the connotation says a sidewalk built by the contractor? No. Yeah, that's what that says. By the contractor. By which contractor? And I assume the sidewalks in the interior part of the development would be built by the home contractor. But the sidewalk, it doesn't. One says by home builder, one says by contractor. Yeah, right.

So they're both, I mean, they're both by the developer.

By contractor. Not necessarily. It says the home builder. The contractor. That would not be.

Home builder was the interior portion and the exterior portion said by contractor.

That's what it says on the plans. A little bit confusing, I think.

It is before my time, yes.

Yeah.

If I may, may I make a motion if we're ready?

Yes.

I'd like to make a motion to deny the waiver.

Okay. There's a motion to deny the waiver. Is there a second? Motion dies for like a second.

For tonight, Mr. Chair, if we tabled it, it would let the parties get together and with the county attorney and get it potentially figured out. That seems like the best way forward tonight. Okay.

Chair, I'd like to make a motion that we accept the waiver.

A motion to do what?

Accept.

Accept the waiver. Okay. There's a motion to approve the waiver. Is there a second? I'll pass the gavel and second that.

Is there a motion to approve? All in favor? Say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

All opposed? Nay. Nay. Motion carries.

Thank you all. I apologize for putting you through this, and I won't do it again in the next 20 or 30 years that I'm doing this kind of work. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We will move to the next.

Mr. Chair, I think Mr. Prasad has a follow-up.

If I just may, Mr. Chair, can I have some clarification on whether the board contemplated the assessment agreement as part of the requirement for that waiver? The code normally requires that for administratively approved waivers, but for board approved waivers, that is at the discretion of the board. So, I just, if it's not something the board is looking for, we won't seek it.

I'm not looking for it, Billy.

The making of the motion did not include that. Was there any second on the motion of those who voted in favor want that included? I think the intent was to offer the waiver, given the confusion that was taking place.

Okay. Could we take a quick break? Absolutely. And I had to, can I say one more thing just real quick? I think J-4 could be really quick if we took it up and moved it along after we get back from a quick break.

All right.

That's my... Want to do that right now, J-4? Sure. Sounds great to me. Okay.

So, J-4, legislation, intent, and permission to advertise an ordinance to amend, amending chapter 102. Sir?

That's my item. And Logan, sorry, that got my papers all messed up. Logan, can you please bring up slide number eight about the data centers? Thank you. I brought this item forward due to the heightening concern we're seeing around data centers and their significant local impacts on public infrastructure. These include substantial and continuous power demands, high water usage for cooling, large land requirements, and relatively limited long-term creation of these facilities. Sorry, I lost my place. And relatively long-term job... Would you mind saying that stuff into the microphone?

I'm sorry. I didn't realize you had slides tonight. I didn't see that. We need to have a quick break. Sure. We'll come back in 10 minutes at 7.20.

11 minutes. He didn't realize we had a card.

Sure.

Start over again so that it's cohesive. I brought this item forward due to the heightening concern we're seeing around data centers and their significant local impacts on public infrastructure. These include substantial and continuous power demand, high water usage for cooling, large land requirements, and relatively limited long-term job creation once these facilities are

operational.

As interest in these projects grow, it raises an important policy question for us as a board whether data centers align with the intent of our Economic Development Incentive Program. That program is designed to attract and retain industries that provide strong community benefit, particularly through high-wage job creation, workforce participation, and long-term return on public investment. While data centers can represent significant capital investment, they typically generate a relatively small number of permanent jobs. When you consider that alongside the infrastructure demands, the cost per job can be significantly higher than the industries we traditionally target. There are also broader considerations. These facilities can place strain on electrical infrastructure, affect long-term utility planning, and occupy large parcels of land while producing limited secondary economic activity. We're not alone in evaluating this or re-evaluating this. Across the country, jurisdictions are taking a closer look at how data centers get into their economic development strategies. I've included several references in the agenda packet that are available online for anyone who would like to review this issue in more detail. In Northern Virginia, local governments have begun reviewing land use impacts, infrastructure strain, and incentive policies due to the scale and concentration of these facilities. States like Georgia and Arizona have also revisited their approaches, with some communities pausing or applying stricter standards as they evaluate long-term impacts. So this item does, so what this item does is initiate the same conversation here in Brevard County. Specifically, I'm seeking board support for legislative intent to exclude data centers from eligibility for economic development incentive taxes, tax incentives, so that our program remains focused on industries that deliver the greatest overall return for our community. And I also would like to state, when we voted to put this in our policy, and specifically put data centers, it's something I personally missed. And it was one of our first, if not our first, board meeting after getting elected. And, you know, I dropped the ball on this one. And so this is, I'm trying to rectify this, and I feel very passionately about this. And I'd love to hear a board discussion on how people are feeling, in addition to the public.

Okay, we do have cards. Why don't we hear the cards first, and we'll come to the board. Tom Erdman, Rick Heffelfinger.

Can I have Sandra go first? I'd like to hear what she has to say.

If Sandra's okay with that.

Sandra Sullivan from Facebook group Waves Action. So Katie's done a lot of good research here, and if you're following the videos that are many videos out there about data centers across the country, there's quite an outrage nationally of the data centers going in their community and how intensive they are on water resources. And, of course, you know, the conversation in Florida is we don't have enough water to meet future needs for growth. So there's a really big organic conversation here that needs to happen. I was talking to somebody today, and they told me that they saw two men dressed up in suits, and they stopped to talk to them and asked them what they were doing. It was up in Mims on Irwin Avenue. And they said they were putting a data center up there. So, I mean, this is at our feet. And I also want to point out, Katie got elected in her very first meeting, very first meeting that she was county commissioner. There was an item on the agenda to change the EDC abatement for giving data centers 20 years of tax abatement. And I've brought this up at this meeting a few times because when you look at the, since 1994, the tax abatement, basically welfare for corporations, okay, we don't get the tax breaks. Our taxes keep going up while theirs goes down. Let's just be honest about it. But we just had voted over, I think, 71% of people, voters in Brevard voted for the tax abatement, which was a continuation of providing 10-year tax abatements, tax exemptions, for certain companies because they were creating jobs. Data centers don't create jobs. That's one of the facts to do with them. They should not be on that list. But Felder put an item on the agenda, and it read, so the change in tax was, an exemption may be granted for 10 years, up to 10 years, from the date of adoption of the ordinance giving the exemption. And then they added, or may be granted for a period of 20 years from the date of adoption of an ordinance granting exemptions for data centers. And so we're specifically giving greater incentives to data centers when they don't create jobs and when the very ordinance and the very program for these tax exemptions for corporations bringing a lot of jobs had been in place for 10 years. So, you know, I think legal needs weigh in on this one because it's not consistent with what the tax exemption has been for since 1994 and its renewal every 10 years. But so I think I am very appreciative of this conversation because data centers do not create many jobs. They're very water intensive. They're not paying taxes. They're very water intensive. And they're very electricity intensive. And they typically result in rate increases to the local residents across the country.

Okay, Rick.

Am I the last one?

Yep.

Well, I've seen the Rick Heffelfinger, District 1. I've seen the YouTube videos. I've seen all the stuff about, you know, the data center goes in. There's high frequency hums. They're getting zoning to put them next to houses. They're destroying people's lives. And then you find out, well, hey, they got this power requirement, right? Well, your power plant's not big enough. You better build a bigger one for us. Oh, you don't have enough water. You better put in some water. And these people are seeing rate increases because the more demand, the higher they can get, right? So they're seeing their utility bills go crazy only because these guys moved in and started sucking up all the resources. There's got to be a way. This is only one way to say, hey, we don't really, we're not going to incentivize you to come here. There ought to be another one. Maybe they need a special condition of when you look at their water use that they tell you they're going to use and their electricity, maybe they ought to come with a plan that says we're going to bring a small portable nuclear generator and we're going to pump water from the ocean or something and dump it right back in for cooling because we can't afford to be using our water for that. We can't afford rebuilding all of our power plants for that. So that's like 100% support, not making it so easy for these guys to bulldoze us. Thank you.

Okay, that's all our cards. Any discussion? Yes.

I would just like to add that I also read some articles that some cities are finding that the land temperature around these data centers is increasing as much as 16 degrees surrounding these data centers. So I think that there are a lot of effects that we don't even know of yet because all of this is so new. And the other thing, which is kind of, you know, God works in weird ways, when I was thinking about bringing this forward and I had myself and my staff were working on it, before it had published to the public, I had gotten a call from a lobbyist who, guess what their new client was, a data center. And so they're coming and I just really feel like we have to be prepared. We're already having issues with not having enough water and things like that. And so I think this would be a great first step. But I also agree that, you know, if these data centers do come, we should take it a step farther and, you know, maybe give them a special reader or something on their water usage. And if it goes more than what they said, then they're the ones that have to make the, you know, improvements to our water facilities and whatnot. I'm just throwing these ideas out there. But I think that it's definitely something that we don't want to be chasing from behind. We want to get in front of this and make sure that we're protecting our communities.

I'll second your motion, Commissioner. Was that a motion?

Yes.

I'll second. A motion to advertise an ordinance that would remove data centers from the property tax abatement program. Any discussion, any debate? Morris, did you reach for your button?

There was a question for legal earlier about the 20-year provision for data centers. That was a result of state legislation that passed. And when our program was renewed, it just incorporated the new state law. That said, it's absolutely fine to list data centers and add them to the ineligible list. We have the authority to do that. That item was brought by the Economic Development Commission and County Manager's Office as a result of a referendum to renew the program. Back in 2024, it was not brought by Commissioner Feltner.

Okay.

That's good.

For the record, I share a lot of your same concerns. You know, I have said many times on this board, I have concerns with noise and such. And I also, too, watch YouTube videos. I think we all see this now and what some of these future things may be coming. And I echo your same concerns, so I'm happy to second your item today.

Thank you.

You know, every community is different.

I don't doubt there are probably communities, and I've personally witnessed communities that benefited greatly from a data center. But they are totally different than Brevard. They may have the proper land. They may have the proper energy source. They may benefit because they're so economically depressed. But obviously, Brevard County is probably the most, not a very ideal place for a data center. Hurricane-prone energy costs are not necessarily. We have a very fragile energy grid that could go down. I'm not so sure if it would even be a desirable spot. And I like Elon Musk's solution, putting data centers in space environmentally. So I understand where you're coming from. And there's a motion and a second. Any other discussion? I'll signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Carries unanimously. Thank you.

Thank you, board.

Okay.

J3?

Yep. All right. I'm in the time to get my... Let everybody get there in a second.

Sure.

J3.

All right. Speak up Brevard. Logan, could you please bring up slide three? Thank you so much. I'm bringing this item forward as a follow-up to the March 17th meeting to keep the board and the public informed on the progress of this year's Speak Up Brevard cycle. Based on feedback from that meeting, participants who wish to provide oral presentations ahead of the May agenda have been directed to speak during the agenda public comment. Would you mind going to slide four, please? Thank you. Don, would you mind giving a brief update on the submissions and how the progress is going and when the commissioners can expect to receive the staff recommendations?

Good evening, commissioners. This year's SEER program, we received 61 SEERs from 44 individual citizens. The submission period ran from January 1st to January 31st. And under the Home Rule Charter, we have 90 days as a staff to analyze those SEER recommendations and then to provide recommendations to the board, we will meet our deadline.

Awesome. Do you have an about date of when we'll have those books?

It'll be in front of the May 5th meeting, but somewhere toward the end of April, toward the end of the month.

Okay. Because typically, I know that two years ago, the board got 30 days. Last year, we got two weeks. And so, I'm just hopeful that we're not going to have, the rumor is five days?

Our goal is to get them to the board in time that you've got time to review them before the meeting on May 5th.

Okay. So, more than five days?

That's when they all come in. I can't make promises. Okay.

And then, one quick follow-up. Based on what you're seeing so far as we're heading towards the recommendations, what are you seeing as far as recommendations being supported this year compared to last year? Are you guys seeing more yeses in that? Or can you give us a little sneak peek?

I can say, just from a quick glance standpoint, I think there's more accepting with revisions this year than we've seen in past years. You know, staff knows the will of the board, and we're working to, you know, make sure that we thoroughly analyze the recommendations and see what we can do to come up with one, so to speak.

Cool. Thank you. And I just wanted to transition. Before we move on, I wanted to briefly revisit a related discussion that we had last meeting in connection with the SEER program. At the March meeting, there was discussion about reading consent agenda items allowed, which was deferred to the May 5th SEER meeting as part of the cycle. As of now, there are no SEER submissions this year that address that topic. So, I just wanted to get clarification. Commissioner Feltner, are you going to be bringing that item forward on a future agenda, or should I bring it forward next agenda?

Say that one more time. I'm sorry. I was reading your thing there. Go ahead. So, at the last meeting, we were talking about reading the consent agenda out loud, and you had mentioned that we could talk about it during the May 5th. Okay. I appreciate that. Sure. And, you know, I would offer this to the board. I have resolutions that take four or five minutes. It's my opinion that I can read the whole consent agenda in less than three minutes. So, if the board decides collectively to do that in the future, I will volunteer to read the consent agenda for the remainder of my time on the board of county commissioners. I have, I have no problem with that. So, that's, that's if, and, you know, again, I think that is something that is three to four, four minutes maximum. I mean, just looking at the, each of the consent agendas that we typically have.

Okay. And then I just wanted to show you guys, I did some more research, and I found these agendas from Volusia County. And, um, if you wouldn't mind looking on page four with me when you get there. Sorry about that. This, I really felt was really cool because, um, and I did put it up. Thank you, Logan, so much. Um, so this is an example of how some, some of the other, you know, how Volusia County does it. And the, I thought it was really cool that they put not only the dollar amount, um, they put the, the match, the, the revenue, they put how it ties to their strategic goals. And then they also put, um, contacts. So, I mean, this is like a whole lot of information that just really informs the public, um, and gives them a quick, easy access to how to get informed. Because these items bring them directly to the people that are, um, you know, behind the items. So, there are just so many creative ways. Not saying that we have to do it this way, but it's just, I, I hope that it's something that we look in, into in the future, um, to see maybe if there's something we could do to just make our, our agendas a little bit more robust. And, um, uh, give the ability for our, our residents to, when they pick up the paper, actually get informed about something. Um, so I just wanted to show that. And I, um, can give my copy for the, for the clerk as well so that it's in the, in the meeting minutes. Um.

May I ask a quick technical question? How do they, how do they generate this? I mean, do they, do they use something different than, I mean, ours is probably a, starts as a Word document, turns into a PDF. I, I don't know. I don't pretend to know.

That I'm not sure. I'm not sure about that. But, um, like I said, it doesn't have to be this exact thing. It's just, I just wanted to show another example of, um, what some other places are doing. And, you know, maybe there's a way that we can make it a little bit more user friendly. So, not that we necessarily have to copy this exact thing. So, um, with that, I'll just turn it back to any additional comments or discussion by the board. And I appreciate you, uh, listening.

We do have comment cards. And I will, let me pull up in our very simple and straightforward and pithy agenda that I like. Um, we have a comment card on J3, first speaker, Mayat Shah, Mayati Shah?

Niyati?

I tried. Niyati Shah. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, that's an N, N-I. Niyati. Yes, sorry. Niyati. No, beautiful name. Thank you.

Um, all right. Well, hi, my name is Niyati. I'm the Headwaters Watershed Specialist at the St. John's River Keeper. And thank you, commissioners, for the opportunity to speak about the St. John's River and this wonderful public forum. We were invited to speak by Commissioner Delaney, and we plan to have a representative come to speak on the May 5th and May meetings as well. So we have three propositions. We want to implement a storm drain stenciling program and a door hanger program to reduce pollution. We want to install river access signage throughout the upper basin to inform the public. And we also want to install a fishing line recycling tube to reduce a program to install fishing line recycling tubes to reduce plastic pollution and protect wildlife. So I'll start with the first one. We propose a storm drain stenciling program in western parts of the county, West Melbourne and Vieira. We want to mark drains as sort of bilingual messages that, let's say, dump no waste, drains to river. That reminds residents that runoff flows directly to the St. John's River. This is a simple volunteer-driven pilot program, maybe about 100 drains. This can increase public awareness and reduce improper dumping at a relatively low cost. Studies have shown that 75% of people who had seen these sort of stenciled drains have more public awareness and they know where their water went compared to about a third who didn't see these drains. I know we'll meet with the Brevard County staff and the Parks and Rec Department to really figure out where the most optimal locations will be. And then in addition to that, we propose a volunteer-led door hanger campaign explaining the risks of stormwater dumping and ways to prevent pollution. We'll design that. We'll work with the Parks and Rec Department for that. And then the second sort of proposal that we had was a river signage and advisory campaign. Currently, important information like a map of the upper basin of the St. John's River along with the whole watershed, along with ongoing issues it's facing, ranging from biosolid dumping to flooding. It's not consistently available at popular access points. So we want to put signs that include the sort of watch tool that our team has developed that, you know, you can, folks can include the location and the details of the issues that they're seeing on the river. And with guidance from the Parks and Rec Department, we will install about 10 durable aluminum signs throughout the upper basin. And that includes Lake Washington, Lake Winder, Lake Helen Blazes, Sawgrass Lake. These are major access points, along with some of the fish camps that are really popular, like Camp Holly and Middleton that we all love. And then the last sort of recommendation that I have is this sort of we want to install fishing line recycling tubes at popular fishing locations in the Three Forks Marsh Conservation Area and the River Lakes Conservation Area. So these tubes are pretty low cost. They can be used, they can be built using simple materials, PVC pipes, hardware, end caps. And we would, again, work with Parks and Rec to determine the best locations. We want to recruit volunteers, host workshops, and even for maintenance, we were thinking to, you know, have them come frequently every month or so. So this is a solution that helps prevent, I just have like 10 seconds, helps prevent harmful monofilament lines from entering the environment and protects wildlife. So together, these proposals are a pretty proactive solution to protect the St. John's River. And out to prevention, as we know, helps prevent costs and water quality issues down the road.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Rick Heffelfinger.

Rick Heffelfinger, District 1. I wasn't sure exactly what this item comes up to keep the visibility, and I like that. But what I did like is that Katie brought up that we had deferred an item that she had on the previous agenda to add the costs to the items on the consent and then possibly have them read in. Did we approve last time to get the costs of the items on the consent? No. So that's still up to be discussed, right? I want to make sure that comes back because, just an example, we had an item on here, and I think it was H3, and that actually was a 0.23% increase in the budget. And that wasn't part of not understanding what that was. I almost missed that one. And I think that's an important one because that's the one I cried about where we're reallocating this money. Are we going back to the original budget and saying, hey, this is a windfall, right? So the fact that we're growing the budget when we're talking about busting a cap seems counterintuitive. But I appreciate Katie keeping the visibility. Thank you. Sandra Sullivan.

Sandra Sullivan, Ways Action. So I'm very appreciative because this is something I've brought up in the past about having fiscal impact, even if you have to put it in the title to work with the current software you have. But it should – the people have a – that should be on every item. And I wanted to bring up that – so you have a list of Speak Up Brevard, which is essentially DOGE, right? You have a list of them, and some of them are going to be more heavily focused on budgetary items. And so my request is a request that you guys work with staff and prioritize the ones that are about budget. For example, I put one in, and this mirrors actually what Commissioner Atkinson has on her list of an item to address. And that was she identified that there were seven tourist parks that – her suggestion was that the TDC, the tourist development tax, be used to pay for the maintenance on those parks, which fair and reasonable after all. Therefore, tourism is largely used by tourism. And you're talking about user fees, so maybe the TDC should be paying – but I would – my item that I had related to that also said that I felt that TDC should be paying also for the capital expenses for those seven. So their – their budget should pay for those seven parks, and you guys work with TDC to ensure that – that that is funded. So I – so again, just recapping, the recommendation I'm asking is that you look through the speak-up reward on the ones that have the most budgetary impact, and you consider and you prioritize and bring those ones back first, since you're going to be talking about the budget, and since we're talking about, you know, we have potentially trying to bust the cap. I mean, you may even – when I'm talking about user fees, I'm not saying this is my idea or not my idea, I'm just saying it might be something to consider. You look at our parks, you know, the ones that are most heavily used by the tourists. I mean, do we want to put paid parking at them like all the cities do? And if it's a user fee, because we don't have any more, the – the tax revenue being generated with those – so much with those – those bonds and we tax ourselves, those are now – those are now – this is the last year. You know, that – those have sunset, so you need parks revenue. So, you know, you can either increase our taxes or, you know, tourism can pay their share. Just a few thoughts. Please prioritize budgetary items.

Okay, that's our last card. And that's the last item on the agenda. What are you doing?

Oh, maybe public comments?

That's right. Might be the second public comment. I'm sorry, I missed the public comment. Do we have cards?

Yeah, it's in public comment. Not now. Yeah.

Okay, we have already heard J4, which was our last item, so we'll move now to public comments, the final public comment.

Did we – did we vote on J4? There's no action item.

There was – It was just a discussion. It was an update on the status.

It says it's requested that the Board of County Commissioners receive an update on the citizens' efficiency and effective recommendations as part of the 2026 Speak Up Brevard cycle. So did we receive an update without actually voting on receiving an update?

I think the staff just gave us an update. I did have a question on that, though. I'm glad you brought that up. But you had mentioned about trying to get the report sooner, but there's nothing that prevents us from looking at those requests, those items, ahead of time. It's public meetings. It's public records. So if we did want to get a peak preview and study up, we could do that sooner. It would give us more than –

We just don't have the staff recommendations. Right. So that's the only thing.

Yeah.

That leads me to another question. When you do the staff recommendations, is it chronological? Can we look at some of those recommendations? Are you bundled them all together at once and we can only see them after they're bundled? Like if you do half of them?

Yeah. Once the staff makes its recommendations, they're then reviewed by senior staff. So those reviews are just starting to begin. So we have to review all 61 of those. And we haven't received them all in yet. And then once those are done, then they're compiled into the books. They are put in there chronologically. And then they're submitted to the board.

And my question is, can we see them as they're done, maybe have them trickle in? Or do we have to wait until they're all done at once?

Yeah. They're all analyzed together. I mean, yeah.

Okay. Okay. Well, we appreciate all the hard work the staff has done on that. And let's go now to our second public. Bob Whitey. Here's our first card. Or is it Rob? Rob.

Oh, Rob.

Rob. Rob. Rob White. He must have left. Lisa Rinneman.

Good evening. My name is Lisa Rinneman. I'm the St. John's Riverkeeper out of Jacksonville, Florida. And real quick, I just want to mention to you we're very excited to be here. We are a 26-year-old nonprofit organization with a mission to protect and restore the St. John's River. And I just want to quickly celebrate two things. One, we've been working on better biosolids or sewage sludge policy since 2018. We've been very concerned about South Florida sending their sewage sludge to the headwaters of the St. John's in Indian River County, Brevard County, and Osceola. And this year, the legislature passed the most beneficial sewage sludge reform that we've seen in 20 years. And so we're very excited about working with you all to make sure now that's implemented properly. As part of the Farm Bill, they passed a ban on Class B biosolids, which South Florida is sending up here by 2028, as well as protective regulations on Class AA biosolids, which is a little bit cleaner, but it still has a nutrient pollution issue. The second thing I want to celebrate is for the first time in our 26 years, we have a headwaters specialist who just met, Nia T. Shaw, that will be working with us to make sure that we have a full-time focus on the headwaters so we can work on these issues together, work with Brevard County and the other headwaters counties to leverage opportunities to protect our waters together. So just wanted to thank you for your time and the ability to speak tonight and look forward to working with you all. Thank you.

Thank you for being here. We appreciate you coming here, and Ms. Shaw as well. I know we did meet earlier, and I know, having been in Tallahassee, I can attest to the incredible work that our river keepers do, and it's wonderful that we have a headwater specialist. You know, Brevard, we've had so many exciting headwater projects in the past, and it's sort of slowed down a little bit, but I know I would encourage our staff to work as much as we can. I know they already do. They're committed. Absolutely. So thank you for being here. Coming all the way from Jacksonville.

Happy to do it. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Sandra Sullivan.

Sandra Sullivan, Waves Action. Okay. So I want to first address Mr. Altman's comment about user fees pertaining to AWT. The issue is, well, we were promised by the soil tax, and it's even in the current lagoon plan, wastewater treatment facility upgrades for reclaimed water financial table. It's about 2% of the plan right now. So we were promised this because they knew that we legislatively had deadlines, and including last year in 2025, that, and we're under consent orders because we can't dump any AWT water that is not to AWT standard. So I want to talk about, specifically as it pertains to busting the cap, because this to me is very offensive and not to do everything you can. So for that reason, the request is to revisit, and I would like you to really think about this and go talk to them about the documents that says in there we were promised AWT, because it's double taxation. You promise us if you approve this tax, we'll put it to AWT, and then the tax gets approved, and 10 years goes by, and then you go, oh, by the way, we want to tax you again. We're going to raise your taxes to pay for this. That's double taxation. I also want to address the promise that was made when there was a meeting Tuesday, December the 3rd, 2024, and there was a motion here by THAAD to make a motion that the county staff meet with Space Florida, review all the letters that vet all the issues, and come back and give the board a report. So it was stated at the Titusville meeting, we have a short-term agreement with Space Florida, and when you look at your budget report, $30 million for AWT upgrade was the number used in December to upgrade Sykes Creek for Space Florida. So you put another label on it, and so now you look at Space Florida's budget. They don't have any money for infrastructure. So the appearance is that you're going to tax us to pay for Space Florida, and as you know, legislatively, it just passed legislation that they're now tax-exempt on sales tax, so they're not even paying towards the lagoon, right? So the burden, to put the burden on we, the people, to pay for Space Florida's space for their wastewater is very inequitable. So, and then that plant has got a lot of problems, as was stated in the budget workshop. You use that, you put your reclaimed water, which is high in nutrients, to the wetlands. Well, where was the bloom we had recently? That was after that rain event we had, when Meek's truck was driving up all the sewage up to that place. That plant has more dumps, them and South Beaches, that plant has a lot of problems because of INI, so I hope some of that INI money, where you're lining pipes, is going there. So the bottom line is, Space Florida needs to pay for their share of infrastructure, and this can't be put on we, the people, the taxpayers of Brevard, especially for things we've already been taxed for, which was AWT. And so I hope that you'll come back and revisit those two things, and fix those two things, before you decide to bust the cap and increase our taxes. Thanks.

Kevin Jeffrey?

Give me a second. There you go. Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Kevin Jeffrey of Titusville. You know, at the top of your flow chart for the commission, you have citizens, and then you have the rest of the offices. But when you come to the commission meetings, that doesn't line up. And so my problem is, and one of the things that I wanted to offer and speak up Brevard, is that the diocese is lowered, and the podium for the speakers are raised to be in keeping for what the Constitution says, that it's the people who actually are in control. Now, why do I do that? If you go back to the history of lecterns and dioceses in the Middle Ages, in the churches, do you guys know why they elevated the lectern? They elevated the lectern because it was seen that when the priest went up the stairs, he was going up to the mountain to talk to God. And the people then were looked down on. And so when they looked up at the priest, there was this superstition about the priest. Later on, in medieval times, the lords came up with the dais. They spoke from the dais, and the peasantry was out below, Rick. The peasantry was out below. And so what does this do? It creates a psychological disadvantage for the citizens. When they come to speak, and I know you guys are humble, and you don't think this way, but they're thinking that you guys are Mount Sinai, and that they're speaking to some godly people. I know. Sorry, you'll flinch on that one. But psychologically, for people who are not used to public speaking, this is intimidating to them. And there's a psychological disadvantage in the way that the dais is set up. And any normal person who came here without any public speaking background would be severely intimidated. And we don't know how many people have not even come here because of the intimidation factor and speaking before this dais. The cost, about $500,000, is what it would take to change it. As you see, I put my rendition up there, Brevard County, and then the speaker is in the middle. The commissioners are around. The seats are back behind it. I think it's worth it in order to increase public trust. It's a subtle but strong message to the public that they indeed are in control. One last thing the Lord said when he told his disciples, Those of the Gentiles, they lorded over their subjects. But whoever would be a leader, you should be servant of all.

Okay, that's our last card. And we'll move on to reports.

County manager? Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. I have one report. Based on the weather, we are a burn ban underneath the resolution or ordinance, our procedure, the burn ban will be lifted as of tomorrow.

Good. Thank you. County attorney? I have no report, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Commissioner One?

Yes, thank you.

I have no report, sir.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner.

Logan, would you put up my first slide, please? Thank you. Recently, a resident reached out to me and asked for me to host a citizen engagement event here at the county, and I was happy to accept. That event is scheduled for April 17th at 10 a.m. right here at the Space Coast Room in this building. It's open to everyone. It's open to everyone, and I'll share the information on how residents can become more informed and engaged in the government. And there is a registration link that the resident has provided, but registration is not necessary to participate in the event, and I hope I see everyone there. Would you mind going to the next slide, Logan? Thank you. I also wanted to highlight the 2026 Citizens Academy. This photo was taken at the last day of this year's cycle, March 26th, and you can see Angelica Keene, our coordinator, in the foreground, and John Scott from the EOC in the background. I wanted to give a big shout-out to all of the county staff who put together the special presentations that helped make this seven-week series so informative. And, of course, a big thank you to the citizens who participated. Your curiosity and engagement are exactly what this program is all about, and I hope that some of the participants will consider joining one of our many advisory boards and participating in the April 17th Citizen Engagement event. Our Citizens Academy is a great example of how we bring our citizens closer to understanding how their county operates. And would you go to the next one, Logan? Thank you. I spoke about this at the zoning meeting, but I didn't do it justice, so I wanted to make sure that I brought this back. Last week, I had a chance to visit the Brevard Zoo and see their amazing Illuminature exhibit. I had the pleasure of meeting with the zoo executive director, Keith Winston, during the visit. I would like to encourage all Brevard residents to come out and experience this exciting exhibit, and, of course, to support our local zoo while doing so. It's a wonderful way to enjoy a family-friendly outing and also support one of our community's treasures. Okay. Board, if you wouldn't mind please giving me some grace here. I have one more thing, and this might take a moment. I have some important news to share with our community. My family has been presented with a life-changing opportunity out of state, one that after much prayer and deep consideration, we are called to pursue. As of May 2nd, I will be resigning from my position as county commissioner for District 1. Serving this community has been one of the greatest honors of my life. I am profoundly grateful to the people of District 1 for the trust that you've placed in me, and for your voices, and for allowing me to stand in the gap and fight for what matters most to you. You have done something remarkable. You've stood up to the status quo, and you chose to be represented, not ruled. You elected someone who would listen, who would show up, and who would fight for you. And I want you to know that you can do it again. But what I will carry most with me is you. It's the moments that don't make the headlines, the ones that happen far away from the dais, that have meant the most to me. Sitting in your kitchen tables, listening to your stories, walking your ditch lines and dirt roads, taking buggy rides through your communities, and as you show me, piece by piece, the life you've built and the values you hold dear. It's the long conversations, the shared history, and the trust you've extended to me, not just as an elected official, but as a person. And that has changed me. This community is made up of strong, faithful, resilient families. Families who care deeply, who stand firm in their values, and who look out for one another. It's been one of the greatest privileges of my life, not just to represent you, but to truly know you. And that is something I will carry with me forever. Let me be very clear. This does not end with me. What we started together was never about one person or one seat. It was about changing the standard. It was about opening doors that had been long closed, demanding transparency and accountability, and ensuring that the people, not bureaucracy or special interests, were at the center of every decision. We didn't just show up. We shifted the culture. We proved that bold servant leadership still has a place here in Brevard County. And because of that, what we built cannot and will not end with me. District 1, this is now your legacy. You have seen what is possible when your voice is heard. You have seen what it looks like to have a representative who answers to you. Do not settle for anything less. Expect more, demand more, and hold the line. There will be others who step forward, and they will have big shoes to fill. But the standard has already been set by you. The expectation has already been raised, and that is something that cannot be undone. I also want to take a moment and speak directly to my team, Kristen, Ruth, and Megan. There are no words strong enough to fully capture what you have meant to me. You weren't just staff. You were my steady ground on the hardest days, my sounding board in the critical moments, and the cheering section in the many victories. You gave your time, your energy, and your hearts to this community in ways that most people will never fully see. And I have had the privilege of seeing it up close every single day. You made me better, you made this office better, and you made a real difference in the lives of the people we serve. I am so deeply grateful for each of you, not just for what you've done, but for who you are. Thank you for standing beside me through it all. I will carry this with me long after this chapter closes. D1, my mission has always been to inform, to communicate, and to empower. That mission does not end today, and it does not end with this role. I will continue to advocate for strong communities and informed citizens and for leadership that serves, not rules. And if there's one thing I hope you carry with you, it is this. The power has never been in this seat. It has always been with you, the people. And as long as you remember that, this moment, this movement, this momentum, this change, it will continue. God bless and thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your commitment and your willingness to serve and the courage to run and get elected and serve your people. It caught me by surprise. I had no idea, but we certainly respect you and the service that you provided. And it's always hard to watch one of our members have to leave, especially early. District 3?

I would just like to say I know how important it is to put family before things that are so important to us. So I commend you for putting family first. It's not always easy. You have anything to say? You want me to do my board report? Yeah.

Oh, you have a board report? I had a short one. Okay. Here, let me first. Not as interesting by any means. Commissioner, I have to imagine that it's an amazing opportunity, and I'm sure we'll hear about it soon. And because this couldn't be an easy decision. I'm sure it's one of the harder ones that you've ever had to make, but there's something amazing that's waiting out there for you. So I look forward to hearing what's ahead of you and your husband and children.

Mr. Chair, technical things. So Commissioner Delaney, Commissioner Goodson lost the connection. That was him calling me to let me know he lost that. And on behalf of the county staff, we wish you and your family all the best.

Okay. District 2 report? I think we lost him. Yeah. Yeah, we did. We lost him. We lost him, sir. Yes. He said no report at the beginning. He did say no. District 3 report?

I have two things. I had the pleasure and the honor of attending the first ever Palm Bay Police Department change of command ceremony last week. Retiring Chief Agelo served the city of Palm Bay with distinction, with dedication and integrity. Truly a role model for all future leaders. The respect that he has from his department was obvious. I want to congratulate newly appointed Chief Jeff Spears, who will continue to protect the citizens of Palm Bay and continue to lead the department successfully, no doubt, and the promotion of Commander Nick Zepanski is another exciting development at the Palm Bay Police Department and speaks to the great future of the organization. So I'd like to offer my gratitude to Chief Agelo and wish him well in his retirement, as well as congratulations to Chief Spears and Deputy Chief Zepanski on their promotions. So the second thing I have to say, if we could, Logan, put my picture up. Brevard County Fire Rescue was featured on the cover of the Florida Fire Service magazine. We had, as you recall, the manatee was trapped, and our public works and Brevard County firefighters, and let me just specifically say Austin from Brevard Public Works, were instrumental in rescuing the manatee. Melby was placed in the care of SeaWorld's manatee rehabilitation team and was nursed back to health. He was released today back into the Indian River Lagoon at Ballard Park in O'Galley, and I wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved in the rescue, rehabilitation, and release of Melby, the manatee. Go Brevard County. Well done.

Good job. Good job. Well done.

District 4. Yeah, good job. Good job, Brevard. That's okay. For Brevard County. Thank God our airman was rescued in Iran. I know we were all watching that. It's a proud thing this week when we heard that the colonel was rescued. So, again, Godspeed to everybody. It was inspiring, and I should remind everyone why our fighting men and women are the finest the world has ever seen.

I agree with that. Absolutely. I have no report, and that concludes our meeting. Meeting adjourned.

The opinions expressed by any member of the public during any period of public comment do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Board of County Commissioners of Brevard County, Florida, Space Coast, Government, Florida, Space Coast, Government, Florida, and the Program Sponsor hereby expressly disclaim any and all responsibility or liability for any defamatory or slanderous statements expressed by any member of the public during any such period.

Another one, which I see as crucial here, the extent to which the suspect is confronted with the evidence of his or her guilt. Here, they're told by the officer, the school officer, that I already have the proof, but I need to know details so I can help you. Do you see that? Do you see that as, as, as.

Do you see that as, as.