to make sure my microphone's working and everybody can hear me we're about to call this meeting to order please find your seats um yeah just i don't know what was all right i'm gonna call this meeting to order welcome everybody it's an amazing day in brevard county isn't it mayor medina can i get a hoorah awesome thank you very much first of all i want to say thank you so much for the the faith you've shown in me to to be elected chairman of this board i'm very very excited about what we're doing here in brevard county and us working together collectively to not only be more efficient and effective but band together for resources and that's what this means about is us coming together and so this year i definitely want to focus on providing resources to you to take home to your local municipalities so it's worth your time to come here so if there's a topic that you think is important for us to cover that we can address please come see me because i want to make sure this is worth your time and then we're also going to focus on bringing uh folks like fdot along for the ride being a partner at the table space florida as well because we are quintal modal form of transportation per the state legislature this is not just andrew saying it it is per the state legislature so we need to make sure that they are uh partners with us so this is the space coast tpo governing board meeting today is february 12th 2026 please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag thank you very much miss zoe can you please conduct a roll call yes okay all right uh delaney i'm gonna do this in non-alpha order i didn't bring the right piece of paper delaney goodson atkinson feltner altman allender blake present here hanley smith hammer present medina present ma'am jaffe present forrester cole here connors here young morrison here osmer here i didn't see any alternates are there any alternates here do we have a quorum yeah we do thank you very much now we're at item two which is public comment currently members of the public are invited to offer general comments unrelated to agenda items do we have any public comment any comment cards turned in no seeing none let's move on to reports i'd like to share vision zero crash data slide and i think georgiana's going to cover that right well welcome members it's great to see everyone um this is our latest vision zero crash data slide as you can see crash fatalities in 2024 were 82 in 2025 82 crash fatalities year to date uh so far are four and crash fatalities since the last tpo governing board meeting in december were 16 so a few of the headlines here that we just want to bring to your attention a 27 year old passenger died after a vehicle overturns and ejects them uh this happened at us one just south of valkeria road passenger was not wearing a seat belt but the driver was and survived with minor injuries so seat belts save lives 25 year old woman hit and killed by a 64 year old driver having a medical emergency and that happened at brevard ave in coco village then there was a 72 year old motorcycle driver crashed pronounced dead at the scene the 59 year old passenger later died from her injuries and this was southbound i-95 and mems so you know mistakes happen there can be lapses in judgment and risky behavior but you know part of one of the um focuses of vision zero is safer people you know we we all need we all have to have a part to play and so moving on to the next slide a few things i want to call to your attention um we issued our annual call for projects this is uh what the tpo annually will uh request projects new projects to be added to the priority list or a new phase that is moving forward we held our kickoff of the transportation subcommittee which by the way these are your uh city planners your public works directors we bring them together uh in a room and we uh talk about um you know projects that may be upcoming and so this is just the kickoff that link is where you can find the resources to submit the application and we will be having discussions uh with staff throughout this process in fact the city of palm bay has reached out on several projects that they want to move forward and we will be working with them on that but this is the process that you go through to be able to submit new projects also i want to mention the mpoac institute board member training uh is may 1st any members that have not been we certainly encourage you to attend you have a flyer at your place so just let zoe know and we will register you for that also want to mention the federal state partnership for inner city passenger rail this is for our coco multimodal station and rail project the city of coco submitted it on february the 4th and the tpo is a co-applicant the city is the applicant and this is technically our second submission you know they rescinded the last uh grant in december so this is the second time around and um we this is a very strong application we have a very strong funding package and um and so we we feel really good about this we um had a total of i think it was uh almost 30 letters of support from municipalities uh agencies which is really good there's a lot of competition out there um but there is five billion dollars for this grant um we have learned that the city of stewart excuse me martin county has submitted for their station uh in the downtown stewart they're asking for a little bit more money than we are um and fdot has also submitted for a project under this program and has asked for letters of support which we supported them for some rail safety improvements so that just goes to show you there's a lot of competition um and there's more uh even in florida so we feel really really good about this and um we're going to be successful this time all right next slide um there's just some information in your package concerning um an mpo 101 brief typically the first meeting of the year we hold an orientation well we didn't have a lot of turnover in fact several of our uh members here uh are um you know have been on the tpo before and um so this is a really good group of folks here so we thought that this year instead of an orientation we would have a funding presentation presentation and really kind of dig into that so that is our only presentation today but there is some information you know about um mpos and the importance of mpos and the local control and regional reach that is what we're all about also an introduction to the reauthorization of mpos i think you all have heard that the iija bill expires september 30th of this year and there has been a lot of conversations going on uh you know with fdot and influencing certain policies within that bill um you know there is the american metropolitan planning um association the national association of regional councils that um is is advocating for mpos specifically uh instead of discretionary funding uh that there should be a more emphasis on formula funding so that federal money can actually come down either to the mpos or local governments or both and that really puts the local governments uh more in control of the funding so there's a lot of conversations going on so um we're looking forward to to that and um the mpoac legislative newsletter you are getting those via email from amanda carpenter the mpoac executive director if there's any transportation related um legislation you want us to dig into or you have questions about just let me know and the brand new board member orientation guide is at your place that is hot off the press and that's just uh some informational um uh tools for you and then next slide um i want to recognize joe robinson who has been you know he was a member of the tpo for four years the tpo governing board between uh 21 through 24 he served on our executive committee um and he was also a member of the central florida mpo alliance and so he was uh we appreciate his leadership and we will certainly miss him very sad to hear this and the last thing i want to mention is um at your place the um the traffic transportation management center groundbreaking is tomorrow and you have a flyer at your place and you of course you are all invited and so that concludes my report thank you very much any questions commissioner delaney commissioner delaney has the floor thank you um georgiana mentioned to me that i could give a a very short update on my cfx board that i serve on as well i'm the liaison between the two boards and so i just wanted to mention that um there is a new scam text that is going out um asking for payment for tolls and things like that uh tolling agencies do not text so um for any of the public that's listening any of us if anybody wants to mention this at at your board meetings please implore people not to click on those text messages um because they they're getting pretty good at tricking and making it look official but they um it's not real they're fake and um scams also they're um today we just approved the 417 um sanford sanford airport connector so there's going to be another way into sanford airport which is going to be really great and help with congestion of the area and whatnot so thank you so much thank you very much councilwoman hanley did you have a question thank you council member hammer yes at our last uh council meeting we were discussing uh some issues that we're having with babcock and we're going to be we're going to be uh coming up with a letter to send off to our secretary um we were hoping that our tpo would like to sign on to that letter it would be amazing once it is done i will bring it in for you to look over it but uh we had an accident on 995 that shut down 995 both ways and the only way to get around it was tulane babcock so it completely gridlocked our city and we couldn't get services around we couldn't do anything for probably for a little over four hours yeah and we had 63 fires so things things things were bad in our city for for a few days and having a two-lane road there and then the other side was just san filipo which is a residential two-lane road i mean it's one of our collector roads but it's not something that um the largest traveled uh highway in the united states um needs to be going down should something happen so we're going to be uh putting a letter together and we would we're asking for support for the local cities malabar vulcaria everybody that's part of babcock but uh to ask for for uh the tpo to sign on to that would be amazing thank you councilmember hammer uh please submit the letter to staff and we can get it added to our next agenda item and take action on it then thank you mayor medina yes sir i i just wanted to take an opportunity to share in the extremity of of the what my colleague is discussing those fires literally caused a disaster along along our roadways in that as much as both directions of 95 were shut down and so i'm not saying it's going to continue to happen but there has to be an alternative way uh the t our tpo joining fdot to see what solutions we can have the highest populated city in our county and plus all that traffic on 95 being dumped on our city uh there's got to be an alternative way whether it's uh an additional interchange or increasing the capacity on babcock street but certainly we we truly experienced a devastating time it was a disaster moment for us and it was more than one day uh and on separate occasions so i'm i'm really encouraged that councilman hammer bought this about but i think we're on a cusp of understanding the gravity of public safety in our in our corridors and moreover within our county thank you thank you mayor medina vice mayor cole i just want to by what they said because uh this past whenever the fire were coming back from my son's house in west palm which normally takes two hours and five minutes took me six and a half hours to get home because 95 was blocked both lanes and the traffic was diverted onto two lane highways which really backed everything up so just to support what they're saying thank you very much i appreciate the feedback um when the letter gets presented to staff and we added as an item uh we'll we'll get with dot and see if they have any studies or an action plan or have them kind of present a little bit at the same time i think that makes a lot of sense we can have a good and fair conversation about it and all be prepared to have that conversation mayor blake yes sir i just want to amplify about the fire burn i think var county has a a burn fire right now well anti-burning going on right now currently because of the uh dry conditions so thank you very much yes appreciate it got that chuck all good from a staff perspective thank you for your report georgiana uh can we go to public engagement please i believe abby and leah will be presenting thank you chair connors good afternoon everyone just um quick plug for the tmc groundbreaking tomorrow there will be a reminder email with parking information so if you do plan on attending and you have already rsvp you'll get that reminder for me probably during this meeting so uh good afternoon today's public engagement report is going to look a little different uh for those who might be new to our board leah and i provide an update every meeting on recent publishing public engagement efforts and communications and outreach initiatives but since this is our first meeting of the new year we're going to take the opportunity to reflect back on our impact in 2025 specifically our methods and tools and they're captured in our annual measures of effectiveness report the complete report was in your agenda package and i know it was enthralling information and you all read it but while we won't delve into it into detail today there we will highlight a few areas it's important to note that this report is not a requirement like our public participation plan which you did approve and adopted back in december but instead it functions as an accountability document really and it also helps us track our engagement tools and our efforts it also provides a transparent assessment of how we're doing with our platforms and whether or not we need to strengthen them or perhaps reassess what we're doing so here's a brief overview of some of the various public participation methods and tools that we currently use to utilize to engage the public in planning and you know i want to underscore that traditionally for government agencies face-to-face meetings have kind of been the standard practice for a really long time but of course over the past few years that has drastically changed and with how we both host both external and internal meetings so now we're observing kind of a shift where post-covid now people want to reconvene back in public in face-to-face they want to have those workshops and open houses but it's still vital to also have that virtual component such as lines streaming like we're doing today hosting a webinar remains beneficial for many people who like that virtual participation and all these methods serve as a valuable channel to ensure that the public has multiple opportunities to engage not just one and it really expands our reach at the end of the day we also use many tools to communicate these opportunities and i'll discuss that here in just a little bit when evaluating our methods and tools it's really crucial to understand that how we connect and engage with underrepresented populations is just as important specifically communities of concern we realize that not every public citizen has equal access to information and and so during our projects and our plans we really develop well-rounded public participation by developing tailored messages and delivery techniques specific to the communities that they're going to involve and so here's just a short list of some of the community stakeholders that we work with to make sure that we have meaningful communication and dialogue and that they're receiving it in the way that's going to be beneficial for them and i also want to underscore that our outreach efforts have now taken on new life that we look at our high injury network and again our communities of concern where we're seeing upticks and fatalities and we plan our engagement efforts around those crashes this is a summary of our engagement strategies and i really want to emphasize that the summary report is really not a quantitative tool as a qualitative while we have an overarching target because we want to make our targets and our goals every year we're not making direct comparisons to year over year because our programs our projects they're so cyclical in nature so you can see for instance in this slide there's a big increase in attendance for our open houses workshops and webinars and that's because last year we hosted two significant workshops the north merritt island pioneer trail feasibility study and the southern brevard trails master plan workshop and those two meetings had extremely engaged communities so you're going to see that our while we always have goals and we try to meet them we understand that long-range planning is very cyclical in nature and we try our best to adjust when we can so what does this look like day to day we actively seek out the community we do not assume people to come to us we have to go in their backyards we have to go where they're breaking bread it's our duty to engage and educate them we collaborate with trusted community partners we connect with community influencers like chambers rotary clubs municipal partners and most importantly our committee and governing board members you are our biggest ambassadors we cannot do it alone mainly are two people and so you know we have a bigger reach anytime that you can share about our programs our projects our plans it's really helpful for us to have this village we are a collaborative organization and we cannot achieve these goals by ourselves everyone's favorite topic social media so as 20 as of 2025 approximately 5.4 billion people are using social media globally representing about 65 to 66 percent of the population and social media you know is becoming increasingly woven into our everyday it really opens up numerous opportunities for businesses and organizations like ours government organizations to connect with our audience online that is where the people live these days and the key takeaway is that whether your organization's online or not conversations are being had about it so why not be a part of those conversations it's our responsibility really to guide those discussions having that dialogue and engaging with our citizens the worst thing you can do is have social media and not communicate with your citizens especially when it comes to misinformation we want to make sure that we correct that and also provide the information each platform serves a unique purpose caters to different audiences and requires distinct strategy i know it looks like fun but it's not each platform has its own metrics of effectiveness as well which really showcases different engagement levels depending on the platform so speaking of here's a concise summary of our tools and their corresponding numbers the definitions of each tool is in your full a little report there but here on the right you'll see that after reviewing last year's metrics we plan to adjust our targets a bit to align with current algorithms allow us to track consistent growth on our platforms which is definitely something to be proud of and our data really shows that the majority of our public citizens and stakeholders want to receive this information in a digital format our digital communications including our newsletters and press releases have a consistent strong open rate which means they're actually opening the email when we send it so that's great there also has a steady click rate meaning they're clicking the links for our projects and our programs that might have a public comment period however in the coming year we will assess whether our current email marketing platform is something that could maybe integrate with our website looking at different tools just to see a side-by-side comparison and so when we look at our social media metrics i want to point out they're very impressive on their own but that's because we put a lot of time and effort into it when sharing our story we really approach it strategically we want our posts to be relevant meaningful educational we're very different we're multi-jurisdictional organization we're not secluded to one specific area where for all of brevard county we maintain content calendars posting schedules we monitor our platforms to make sure that we are having that open dialogue with our residents additionally our team produces fresh content by creating their own campaigns to incorporate specifically trends and data so that it's vision zero focus and we don't lose the mission of vision zero and despite launching those different campaigns each year we continue to enhance our engagement meaning we grow our audience and that's what we want to see we want to see new people coming to our organization and learning about it and so i'm going to end on this slide so while traditional measures of effectiveness kind of track output and reach it's really vital to take a deeper dive and see how our residents really interacting with our organization this is just a snapshot and it focuses on engagement quality and it shows the actions taken so not only are users reaching our content but they're engaging which means clicking through email spending time on the website viewing multiple pages and watching our video content and overall these metrics just demonstrate that public involvement efforts are actively reaching our audience which is important and sustaining full meaningful engagement so they want to learn more by taking actions and then ultimately we're converting them into uh citizens who are educated about the decision making process when it comes to transportation planning so with that i'll take any questions before i turn it over to leah to talk about our engagement efforts yes mr marcus good afternoon everyone so i'm wondering abby so with the new building coming up that's going to really be a very visible symbol it's probably hard to project just the impact that's going to have as far as engagement and just uh you know but i'm sure have y'all talked about that yes absolutely that building is going to be um such an amazing asset not only to our organization but it's going to be a hub for collaboration we're really excited not only for our beautiful boardroom but it can serve as a space now to host these important workshops and to also serve as collaborative spaces thank you sir thank you turn it over to leah leah neppo community engagement coordinator so through january and february the tpo remained a strong visible and active partner in the community through frequent outreach events we have continued to reach residents across all corners of brevard county reinforcing our commitment to safety education and collaboration during this uh period the tbo partnered with the city of melbourne at their touch a truck day engaging families and residents through hands-on safety education and in grant valkaria we served as certified helmet fitters at the bmba led community bike ride ensuring participants had properly fitted safety equipment before they set out for their ride and additionally at the beginning of january we partnered with the brevard homeless coalition for their build-a-bag day we provided hundreds of lighted armbands vision zero fans and other high visibility safety materials this event focuses on increasing visibility and safety for individuals that are experiencing homelessness and friday february 6 of this past friday marked crossing guard appreciation day crossing guards are a cornerstone of community safety and we were excited to celebrate these everyday safety superheroes throughout the county this year two brevard county crossing guards one from indian harbor beach and one from satellite beach were nominated for fdot's award of crossing guard of the year in addition the tpo attended celebrations hosted by palm bay elementary and melbourne police department where we were able to provide appreciation goodies to nearly 20 crossing guards to further support our partners we launched a crossing guard toolkit on our website in early january and this toolkit included easy to print thank you cards and student-friendly activities designed to help students engage help schools excuse me engage children in showing appreciation to their crossing guards and throughout last semester and continuing into this semester the tpo has been actively presenting in driver education classrooms across the county and four different high schools the purpose of these classroom visits is to reach young drivers at a very critical point before unsafe habits can fully form and to introduce them to the principles of vision zero and seeing traffic safety as a shared responsibility among all road users these presentations are designed to be interactive and engaging encouraging students to think critically about distracted driving and the real life consequences of everyday decisions these lessons include an interactive game and provides tips to students on how to mitigate opportunities for distractions in the vehicle on a bike on a skateboard in a golf cart you name it to ensure the effectiveness of this approach students uh were measured using pre and post test assessments and this data-driven approach allowed us to evaluate whether these messages were really being retained and understood as shown here every participating school demonstrated a significant increase between their pre-test and post-test scores indicating a meaningful gain in awareness and these results reinforce the value of early education as a tool for long-term behavior change and safer roadways throughout our county on social media throughout february and continuing into march we encourage everyone to like repost and engage with our content highlighting hit and run awareness month black history month and our upcoming florida bike month campaign and then this is just a snapshot of our upcoming weeks we have many additional events that are scheduled that are not up here but as you can see the tpo continues to remain actively engaged with some really exciting events as abby called out our tmc groundbreaking happening tomorrow and continuing to march we will be doing a series of crosswalk pop-up safety events at different pedestrian safety measures um in coco beach satellite beach and in west melbourne so stay connected with us if you have an event just like abby said we're two people but we love to go out to as many as we can and follow us on socials i'm happy to take any questions seeing none vice mayor cole my question is i know we've discussed this before about the electric bicycles and scooters are we looking into anything because i notice you have training for schools on attentiveness when they're driving but i think you know that there's no requirement to have any kind of license or any kind of training to drive a scooter a motorized scooter or and i think it's extremely dangerous and i don't know if it's left up to the individual municipalities or is it something that we need to look at because i don't know what the number of people that get injured or killed on that but it does look like an accident looking for somewhere to happen yeah thank you for your question so e-bike safety ordinances are up to individual cities um so in terms of going out to classrooms and teaching about specific laws um that's where it can get a little muddy because not every city has a specific ordinance yet and laws are still actively being made but in terms of safe behaviors that can happen on an e-bike those are things that are out there there's plenty of resources and i always bring e-bike brochures and teach them about making sure that you're staying attentive when you're operating such an e-bike another thing we go over in these classrooms is what really is an e-bike do you know how fast you're really going and what your risk of fatality is not only while you're driving an e-bike but if you were to crash into a pedestrian um i think they're doing a good job of getting the information out there to the people i think we have to kind of wait to weigh in on what the legislator is going to do in terms of definitions so once we kind of get past this legislative session i think we can regroup and have this discussion more fully as a tpo council member hanley microphone please councilwoman can you use the microphone i've learned a little bit more about the e-bikes an e-bike has to have pedals that's an e-bike but a lot of times what's happening is they've got the e-mose i believe that's what they call them and that's the peg now an e-bike can only go up to 28 miles an hour but the e-mose there's a gentleman that would like would like to come in here who sell urban urban bikes and he does the um he'd like to come and talk to us about what's the difference between e-bikes and e-mose and he explained to me that if it has a peg it's a motorcycle and it has to be those have to be licensed but a lot of people like you said aren't they're like oh well they're electric so they don't have to be registered um and then some of these scooters are going up to you know they're changing in a month they can go up to 40 miles an hour so there was a gentleman from urban bikes this is what he's done for 20 30 years is these bikes he just sells e-bike he would like to come and talk to us discuss what the difference between the e-bike the e-mose and the scooters and what we need to look at because like i said i didn't know if it has a peg it's a bike i mean it's a motorcycle but if it has other to be an e-bike it has to have regular pedals if if the electric doesn't work and if electric doesn't if the electric is going out then you can use the bike so if we can bring him forward in maybe the next meeting so he could discuss to us what's the what more is the differences that we would know how to move forward in our own communities thank you very much for the the topic and while this is an ongoing thing like i said i think we need to see how the state's going to weigh in because a bike has to follow the rules of the road when they're on the road but there's basically no rules when they're on the sidewalk so as they kind of start to make distinctions at the state level we got to see what that looks like in regards to us i know council member hammers brought this up in palm bay in fact i was watching your meeting when you did uh you know just trying to figure out the rules of the road but you know i think even in titusville we don't want to undertake maybe some ordinances and then get preempted after doing all that legwork right so while the topic is community outreach i appreciate vice mayor cole and councilman handley bring this up but you know we're kind of focused on the education topic at this moment councilmember hammer i'm glad you brought up the legislation because in my time in tallahassee i spent probably 14 hours in the capital going to these committees and hearing what they had to say and literally in the committees they're saying exactly what georgiana said in the beginning it's not about safer roads it's about safer people and one of the things that people were touching on a lot when you would hear somebody come up and speak was about bringing this message into our schools so where i don't think our county or our area has the money to spend on safer roads we do have the ability to get in the schools and create safer people and i what you said just kind of hit me and was like this is exactly what they were saying all week so i would like to see if we could possibly work something with our school board to bring these into our schools do like a e-bike safety day and the schools because these are the operators it's not really a lot of adults that are doing this it's the kids that don't have driver's license they don't know the roads they don't know what the signs mean guess what now that you're in the schools all these kids are riding these bikes to school so i i think getting this message into the schools is what the legislation is going to push us too because it is it is it is up to every municipality to do this and creating safer operators is is i think going to be the point that we need to uh get on thank you thank you councilmember hammer and if you look at the the metrics they are making headway the challenge is how many schools are there you know and there's two of them in in there so you know maybe uh you guys can dive in and and try to figure out a way we can force multiply and figure that out definitely thank you for your comments i do want to add for um brevard public schools as our partner and how we're partnering with them so these four high school presentations that's just the beginning so this is a program that will expand and i completely agree education is how we're going to be able to create safer people now so some other ways is with e-bike safety we were able to provide e-bike materials to multiple schools newsletters constantly tabling at schools and additionally hopefully in time for march for ford bike month the tpo will be making an e-bike safety web page on our website um and it'll be available for anyone to click on to with all of this information because it's confusing and it's a lot but it's important so we are certainly trying to tackle it at all angles um and i agree there are a lot of schools in brevard county so right now we're doing 80 percent of the driver ed um classrooms though thank you very much and now on to the technical and citizen advisory community reports miss georgiana yes the tac and cac met on monday in your package you have the draft meeting minutes from december the 8th and also the uh 2025 uh attendance record if you would like to see the membership for all of 2025 um the tac we we had a tac member that made a rec recommendation uh after hearing the funding presentation uh to for us to add a slide which we did uh which is titled the cost of inaction so we added that slide towards at the end of the presentation so they were very interested in that presentation so that concludes the reports thank you guys uh thank you georgiana one thing i just want to encourage you all to do is something i did uh every time i came to one of these meetings and read the tac minutes is look at the attendance report of your city's representation to that committee that is very very important as we try to hold them accountable to making sure that they're attending because if they're just a citizen maybe you need to look at reappointing somebody or getting somebody else that's willing to volunteer but that is a very very critical committee uh now on to the space coast area transit report terry jordan i believe you're up sir i might have said that too fast and i apologize like that report so excuse me um good afternoon everyone once again terry jordan space coast area transit i'm going to give a brief update on uh transit services uh current comparison of your their year to date ridership shows a reflects a slight decrease of just around 1.5 percent compared to prior year's ridership although october november saw decreases our current ridership is showing a rebound currently when compared to previous year's numbers as well our paratransit ridership which is our door-to-door services uh show a slight also experienced a slight decrease over the last three months of the fiscal year of the calendar year excuse me but now reflecting a purple saint increase over prior months ridership once again um one thing that we're very much looking forward to at transit services is the delivery of new vehicles we are anticipating five new um fixed route vehicles which are the bigger larger vehicles that you see operating up and down the roadways um those are expecting to come and delivered within the next uh six months or so very much looking forward to it because they're going to give us the opportunity to take um 2007 model year vehicles averaging about 600 000 miles off the road so we're very much looking forward to that and once again thanks to our partners uh ft and fdot for allowing that to happen in addition we expect the delivery of three paratransit vehicles which take our paratransit customers from door to door to their doctor's appointments and things of that nature which is going to allow us to take three of those vehicles off the road and once again those vehicles are running about 700 000 miles roughly as well so last update that i have is one program that we're looking to implement for a very long time is our cdl training program which allows us to train individuals to drive our vehicles and operate our vehicles from pretty much an operator's license only and that's something we we are expecting will heavily influence the ability for us to capture and retain operators um to help with our driver shortage uh that is the conclusion of my report chairman if there are any questions glad to answer thank you very much council member smith uh yes thank you mayor connor so uh terry good afternoon so you just mentioned it i was going to ask about either driver shortage or just uh vacancies as far as your your agencies and i'm just sort of thinking about that really across the board but can you talk about that a little bit yeah currently our our our we have about 24 open operator positions um which is a significant shortage and uh what we currently do is our operators are working a significant amount of overtime just to fill the gaps but sometimes we still don't even have enough people to operate the daily service so we have to reduce reduce service things of that nature so this this program we anticipate is going to significantly influence the ability to provide the service at the level that we are that we typically do or expected to accomplish operators what about other areas maintenance uh customer service um so our maintenance service is contracted out uh so we actually don't have any areas any issues in that area our customer service staff is fully uh fully staffed and we only have about two administrative positions that are unfilled at this time thank you sir so our biggest shortage is the operators it's the hardest hardest area to fill because currently you have to come in with one year's driving experience and the credentials of a cdl and passenger endorsement we're going to fill that role ourselves going forward thank you council member smith vice miracle did you have something yes about seven maybe eight months ago we were giving a presentation presentation about you guys providing a form of uber service for low-income people to get to the bus stop the have that has that been initiated yet i remember it very vividly because everything was included except the north part of the county so um so the uh the discussion is about a service called mobility on demand and and what it allows is um for it well depends on how it's how it's set up sometimes it's first mile last mile where you have the last portion of the trip being serviced sometimes it's considered zone service which is what we looked at um travis with kidelson and associates actually was the one who gave the presentation if you can answer any specific questions that you might have on the presentation so uh we actually had the study that was completed the next steps will be for us to get back together and look at the opportunities to implement service uh if i can be blunt georgiana one of the biggest things is that we have to have a local match for any service that we operate and we would expect the cities where the service is implemented to support the service not only with our nods of our heads but also financially and that's the biggest area that we would be re-approaching the cities on uh in the future if there's any opportunities to implement the service everyone said no they don't have the money but my question is the survey that has taken did not incorporate the north part of the county so when the questions were asked were they asked of the cities which were located in the northern area of the county up north i'm not sure if i understand the question correctly but i'll say this well let me uh let me rephrase it when the presentation was given to us the survey that was taken for the need did not go beyond five points so it did not cover titusville mims that's more uh any of those cities in the northern part of the county it left that out completely why i want to make sure i understood the question because i i would say i disagree with that statement um the entire county was looked at for the services the locations that may have been identified may not have shown titusville or those areas however every area in the county was studied uh to to receive the service so it was determined that the northern end of the county didn't need the service no i wouldn't say that all right i'm gonna ask that we move on i understand where this is going uh what i also thought was a good idea in talking with staff is to have a more in-depth conversation on an agenda item regarding bus service bus stops how we can be more efficient because we know our communities pretty well and where the need is and hopefully we can give that feedback at a later date commissioner delaney thank you um i just have a follow-up on that um when when you say that uh you had you had gone to the different cities for um inquiring to see if people were interested was that brought to the boards or just staff are you asking if it was brought to this board no like the different municipalities or the county i'm not remembering if i saw this come up on an agenda item or anything like that so that's what i'm wondering so the presentation was made specifically to this board yes um of the result actually of the survey actually i'll tell you what if you don't mind i'll let travis answer specifically because he was responsible for the entire process again i i think this would be great for an agenda item we have a really important presentation that i want to get into today uh so i would ask that if there's more details on debating that to commissioner delaney's point this never came for our council either to ask if we were looking at matching something like this right and i understand what the vice mayor cole is saying i also remember that presentation very vividly as well but that being said we'll have an agenda item and we can get into it is that fair chair chair do you mind if i just wrap up yes so sarah crom senior transportation planner um so me and terry actually were just talking about mod mobility on demand last week fdot is currently conducting kind of a best practices review of not just our mod analysis that we did but the entirety of the region um and so what kind of we were wanting to do is wait see what comes out of the best practices literally today you guys are approving a transit consultant that can help us kind of take what travis did take what the best practices and try to get something going with it so we can definitely come back but i would like to come back once we've gotten more guidance from dot mayor blake did you have anything yes sir on a more harmonious comment i want to say thank you executive director gillette for your staff mrs mcneely and the cooperation of mr jordan one of my former fellow teachers had major heart surgery and her child requires special transportation and we met that obligation so on behalf i would just like to say from that parent they wanted to convey their thoughts and appreciation for the transportation that was provided for their special need child so kudos to the staff we appreciate you like the first and the 15th of every month deliver that check baby all right it's all yours thank you very much mr mayor blake and apparently i used my microphone too much and i broke it already so um transportation chair connors i'm sorry before we move on to that i am missing a slide if i could if we could have sarah crumb do her bpac report quickly is that okay yes ma'am okay thank you i i will be incredibly brief um the bicycle pedestrian trails advisory committee met on january 26th they held their annual elections and received the presentation on the public participation plan that abby gave to you back in december the next bpac meeting will be april 27th at 5 30 p.m at the brevard county government center thank you they took away my microphone gave me a broken one because it's on there we go you got it she has it transportation disadvantage local coordinating board report miss patty good afternoon patty rendon transportation planner uh the transportation disadvantage local coordinating board uh had its first meeting of 2026 on february 2nd highlights of the meeting include the annual member orientation and sunshine law presentations as well as approval of the professional transit consulting services selection and annual community transportation coordinator evaluation recommendations um also be giving a brief uh informational overview of the role of the tdlcb as one of the space coast tpo's committees according to florida statute transportation disadvantage means person who because of physical or mental disability income status or age are unable to transport themselves or to purchase transportation and are therefore dependent upon others to obtain access to health care employment education shopping social activities or other life sustaining activities the transportation disadvantage local coordinating board or tdlcb works to ensure transportation opportunities are available for all residents regardless of age ability or economic status the tdlcb meets quarterly to oversee the transportation disadvantage program at a local level by providing input on various issues plans and programs the primary focus is directed to the needs of the td population specifically older adults persons with disabilities persons of low income and children at risk the tdlcb reviews price and service levels safety concerns eligibility and other pertinent issues and also advises the community transportation coordinator which for our area is space coast area transit this is the organizational chart of the td program the florida commission for the transportation disadvantaged of the ctd is an independent state agency created by the florida legislature within the department of transportation to accomplish the coordination of transportation services provided to the transportation disadvantaged population the ctd designated the space coast transportation planning organization as the designated official planning agency or dopa each county or service area has a dopa to assist the commission at the local level in accomplishing the coordination of safe efficient cost-effective transportation services to those who uh need transportation td services uh every five years the dopa designates the community transportation coordinator uh aforementioned uh space course area transit and every county in florida has a designated ctc that is responsible for the different delivery of uh those quality safe and cost-effective transportation services each local ctc is responsible for the actual arrangement and delivery of transportation services uh to the td population and those services may include door-to-door paratransit on-demand transportation and or a bus pass program if a fixed route service system exists in the community as an and is accessible to the individual as you can see here the dopa appoints members and provides staffing to the service areas tdlcb and the tdlcb advises the ctc and uh during the february 2nd meeting a carmen bias the transit mobility manager for space coast area transit gave a report on the transportation disadvantage record card data breaking down what types of td trips were taken from july through december of 2025 out of a total of 46 601 trips 24 were in the medical category 13.02 were employment uh 1.79 were educational uh 1.83 were nutritional and 59.37 were in the other life sustaining category this category includes trips for the purpose of conducting personal business banking social services offices visiting spouse spouses or parents in nursing homes any shopping including grocery shopping and also includes social or recreational reasons and after school programs volunteer workers and support groups would also be included in this category along with transportation to hurricane shelters and mr chair that concludes my report i'd be happy to answer any questions thank you very much any questions from patty councilmember smith yes uh marijuana thank you again uh patty so when i found out about this program i had uh one of the residents of melbourne and i was trying to really get her involved and to use the the transportation and we she finally got it figured out uh but i think that was a little difficulty in getting her started uh maybe um i don't know if there's a flyer just a little difficult getting her started but then it was also uh limits as to where the transportation would go so there were still some questions that it was a great program and i was glad that it was there for her because there was no bus and things like that and she needed to go to the dentist and other things so um so i don't know where um what would be the best way to maybe talk about additional you know capacities or additional things like that um so i i would probably direct that question to either terry or carmen specifically for the paratransit service i'm sure he'll be able to answer your question after the meeting you know regarding that specific situation okay thank you all right up next is the florida department transportation report mr chuck thank you mr chair thank you mr chair good afternoon board members chuck copernal with uh fdot mpo liaison to say space ghost tpo uh just a reminder the full january 2026 construction report is in the agenda packet so any project that i do not cover in my presentation please feel free to come to me at the end of the meeting and we'll discuss any questions you may have okay next slide please so for upcoming projects i have the resurfacing of 514 in palm bay including the redesign and rebuilding of pedestrian curb ramps to meet ada standards has started on monday february 9th of this week and with an estimated completion of summer of 2026 next slide please the resurfacing of state road 513 including adding bike lanes and reconstruction of sidewalk and curbs also to meet ada standards this project was originally should have started by now however the contractor had requested a an extension to move the start date to march 24th so we'll have another couple months on this project next slide please and as far as a completed project the resurface of us-1 southbound through titusville along with additional pedestrian safety measures has received its final acceptance on january 6 2026 next slide please okay as far as events uh fdot hosted an open house yesterday wednesday february 11th to present the resurfacing of state road 507 along with other safety improvements at the front street civic center in melbourne florida there was a small turnout of 20 residents curious about what the project will entail and leaving comments which we will respond to in a few weeks next slide please and another open house is coming up next week thursday on february 19th to present the removal of the existing two-way left turn lanes and replacing it with raised medians on north courtney parkway the event will be held 5 30 to 7 o'clock pm at the divine mercy catholic church in merritt island florida mr chair that concludes my report thank you very much any questions for mr chuck i see commissioner delaney thank you so much i was just wondering about the um i-95 um between titusville and highway 46 and i was wondering has fdot looked into what happened there what made the road degrade to the extent that it has i don't know okay i don't know but i can find out definitely absolutely if you could send me that and i'm sure titusville's probably interested in that too that would be great i'm sure it did raise their attention somebody's looking into but i'll find out exactly who it is and have we figured out what happened with the reflector things um on 95 and how do we not let that happen in north brevard okay i'll find that out as well the reflecting parts yeah okay because you know i'm talking about there is like a foot difference between the reflector and the lines yeah yeah okay thank you sure well i can speak on behalf of titusville we're just happy that the road's going to get resurfaced you know we'll just take our small victories where we get it and uh something that i did ask about that i have not got an answer on yet is the height of street lights because i know there's some bigger rocket type of projects potentially coming to us and right now i think their immediate need is 23 foot clearance and they're projecting up to 29 foot clearance so the question is is has we have we studied the nasa causeway corridor on 405 because whether we win it and it gets built here or gets built in texas bigger stuff is going to be moving across that bridge and are we reinforced along the way up to the bridge and i don't know if the street lights can go up and down like i i don't know and i hopefully you guys can look into that and uh let us know about the future okay just kind of planning it now but mayor medina so two two things the very first thing i wanted to comment is please pass on to the secretary how how blessed we are in palm bay that that pd and e study was conducted regarding that interchange on 95 and the improvement right along the lines of what mayor connor's is is touching on the quality of the road and the weight that it it has to sustain i'm not sure if that project right now from fisk and i'm not an engineer uh that project from fish to malabar road i'm not sure the quality of that surface is the same that is being replaced or that the one that we're replacing now i believe that might have been a higher quality i don't know but digging into that that's a good question it warrants us investigating uh because i don't think it's the same quality of road from when it was paved previously and so those those are my questions are are we digging into that and if if so what can we do to improve it or get it at to the same capacity that it once was okay i'll take those comments and send those up mayor thank you absolutely thank you mayor medina and i think to your point we all experience this everywhere is we pay a little bit more and we get a little bit less in quality and just even as road prices has doubled and with government contracting how it works is getting unfortunately the lowest price so hopefully we can have a good balance with finding a good medium there between price and quality commissioner delaney did you have something i was just going to add like i don't know if it was a if it was a different contractor a different material what what the thing was but just digging into that a little bit more to make sure that we can because we don't want to be back here in you know five years or whatever and it be just as bad as it was before so that's all they should you know last a bit longer than that thank you commissioner delaney seeing other questions we're going to move on to the consent agenda does anybody have any items they like to pull from consent seeing none georgiana hold on give me a second georgiana would you please read the consent agenda hello for the record please certainly um 4a approval of the tpo governing board meeting minutes of december the 11th committee appointments 4c is resolution 2610 our performance measure for safety which is zero serious injuries and fatalities 4d transit consulting services agreement and 4e is finance and budget these are some housekeeping items fiscal year 25 operating budget and fiscal year 26 operating budget amendment and a resolution 26-11 for a upwpd obligation amendment thank you very much executive director i have a motion by mayor blake and a second by commissioner delaney all those in favor say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously thank you very much and that brings us to item five presentations funding the future the reason you guys are all here and got your snacks the presentation thank you very much uh travis hill appreciate it buckle up this is gonna be a good one so uh good afternoon board i am travis hills with kittleson and associates to present i went forward a few slides uh funding the future so a little bit on the agenda so i'll talk through a brief introduction about why we're giving this presentation i think you all are very well aware based on some of the conversations that have been happening over the last few years some of the presentations that were shared last year with the lrtp adoption and then some of the workshops that i've seen with the board of county commissioners and some of the discussions that have been happening at that level as well we'll also talk through very briefly state managed tpo managed and current local revenue sources that'll really give kind of a foundation for where we're starting from before we can really move forward and look at those additional revenue options and then we'll take a brief look at potential next steps so in way of an introduction so as we all know current revenues cannot keep pace with the current infrastructure needs so i'll show a slide here in a little bit about what that shortfall may look like based on the previous lrtp or the current lrtp sorry but we all know the federal gas tax the local gas taxes those aren't keeping up they haven't been updated in decades and it isn't projecting into the future to get us the dollars that we need to implement our transportation projects so really the goal of this presentation is to understand the sources of that existing revenue where it's coming from where it can be applied to and how do we set that up for that long-term transportation planning lens and then look at those opportunities that exist for that revenue in the future and how we maximize that for our transportation projects so from the governing board strategic plan that you all adopted in december 2025 a few months ago this was the number one priority was to expand and leverage regional and sustainable funding sources to increase priority project implementation that was the number one priority that you all set forth in your board strategic plan so like i mentioned current gas tax revenue isn't keeping up and the performance measure that you all are going to hold yourselves accountable to is looking to take an active role in the local state and federal level funding to expand and leverage for our future transportation projects so with that being said this isn't a all doom and gloom presentation so what we want to do is really kind of take a look back at the last 25 years of investments that have been made in brevard county a lot of these projects were done with a lot of collaboration between the ft ot space coast tpo brevard county and our local municipalities so you'll see i have a few different uh kind of project types at the top of this table widenings new interchanges intersection improvements new trail facilities really kind of covering the full gambit of transportation that we deal with here in the county a lot of widening projects i-95 six lane widening that happened in the last 25 years i know it may seem a little bit long time ago but that was one of those more recent projects us-1 six-lane widening palm bay road six-lane widening barnes boulevard and the upcoming ellis road widening which took a really strong collaboration effort to get that funding to push that project forward into construction i also wanted to highlight the new interchanges so it's unprecedented to see five new interchanges within a county within a region and we had five come in in the last 25 years a few of those happening over the last decade st john's heritage parkway ellis road viera port st john and pineta so a lot of great accomplishments in terms of what we're doing for our limited access facilities and then at the more local level those intersection improvements to improve operations and safety babcock at malabar 192 a couple intersections along 192 at wickham and hollywood and then a few with a wickham nasa boulevard ellis road realignment and then a1a at 528 and then not to forget our ped bike our multimodal uses those new trail facilities the brevard zoo linear trail east central florida regional rail tail rail trail and the space coast trail so a few other major accomplishments and keep in mind this is not the fully exhaustive list but just a highlight we don't want to forget the phases that go in prior to construction so those design and those project development and environment phases the pd and e phases the funding that has come through fdot and the tpo for the 524 four lane widening design clear lake road design malabar road design and the babcock street pd and e and then we had numerous bridge projects as well the pineta causeway 528 westbound bridge replacement max brewer and the nasa causeway in partnership with the usdot and then some miscellaneous projects so covering a little bit more outside of those traditional roadway projects we had the new alignment of st john's heritage park that parkway that was built in palm bay and brevard county apollo boulevard the annual its allocation that goes for o m support to the county and then the upcoming tmc that's being constructed with the groundbreaking tomorrow and then hopefully funding will be going towards a potential uh or the intermodal rail station which georgiana talked about the grant submittal here earlier today so with that being said this list here a little bit over 1.1 billion dollars when we factor in all of the other projects you're talking about 1.1 or 1.5 to upwards of 2 billion dollars coming into the county for transportation projects over the last 25 years a great great investment so what does that mean moving forward so that's the historical number so looking forward this presentation or this slide was shown at the lrtp presentation back in july you'll see that we have a very big unfunded need moving forward so coming in the next 25 years or 20 years 2030 to 2050 that projected income or that projected revenue is looking to be about 460 million so keeping in mind i just showed 25 years of investment that was anywhere between 1.1 and 2 billion dollars now we're looking at only having about 460 that's coming into the county over the next 20. that leaves us with a pretty heavy shortfall you're looking at 2.6 billion dollars of projects with about 90 of that unfunded moving forward so what we want to do is also provide a little bit of an overview on the different funding sources that get funneled down through the tpo the state and the locals to fund these different transportation projects so at the federal level which is where the tpo gets a large majority of their funding we're coming in through fuel taxes vehicle sales heavy vehicle use and tire taxes that goes to fund the project types down below that's a little bit small to see but that's our regional projects the technology safety uh different capacity projects sidewalks ped bikes and transit those similar project types being funded with state funds at the fdot level come from state fuel taxes aviation fuel taxes doc stamps which i'll talk about that here in a sec and then motor vehicle sales and fuel taxes as well not to forget the locals there are also local fuel taxes and road impact fees or transportation impact fees those come in through brevard county the local municipalities to fund those similar types of projects so just as a quick overview of the project development process and for folks that have seen this graphic before you know that it doesn't just start with the dirt being moved the construction equipment that you see on the ground that's typically what the public sees but there are a lot of other phases that come in before we see boots on the ground making projects happen those are the planning phases those initial environmental those pd and e phases that i mentioned earlier the design phase and then potentially a right-of-way that then leads into that construction phase the nice part is that all the funding sources that we'll talk about in these next few slides can go to fund any of these project phases so we don't have to wait to get to construction to implement these funds to keep a project moving forward so transitioning into the different existing funding sources that are available to us so starting at the statewide level so this is fdot the first is the transportation regional incentive program otherwise known as the trip funding source this is this is uh primary primarily coming from document stamp taxes and allocated to the fdot districts by population and fuel tax share this can cover up to 50 of a project cost if it's being funded through this funding source and that other 50 has to come as a local match from the locals or non-federal funds so just kind of keeping that in mind that that can't be a tpo funded 50 maps that has to come from those local funds the eligible uses these are for a lot of those projects that i mentioned before regionally significant improving connectivity economic development those will be key buzzwords that show up throughout the couple slides for those fdot or those statewide funding sources the interesting part about this uh program is the project selection goes through the central florida mpo alliance so it's not necessarily what is the tpo's number one priority it's what is the number one priority of the top priorities for all of the counties and all of the mpos in fdot district five um so a great example of that the ellis road four lane widening that had been on the central florida mpos alliance number one priority for easily a decade if not more and and look at where that that has gotten us to this point where we were able to apply some trip funds to it i'll show a slide about all the other funding sources that go to get that project built but that was one of the projects that was put into the into the overall program to then get selected for this funding source a few other projects to list here the upcoming tmc barnes boulevard which got widened a couple years ago or about a little bit over a decade ago and then the st john's heritage parkway new alignment those are all projects that were funded partially with this funding source so the second fdot funding or the statewide funding source that we're going to talk about is the county incentive grant program also known as sigp so this funding source it's up to 50 percent covers 50 of your project coming from the florida department of transportation the state gas tax and then the other 50 similar to the similarly to the previous slide the county or the local government needs to come up with that local match or the remaining portion for that project these funding sources this funding source is primarily used for state highway systems so fdot operated maintained roadways it can include local road improvements to directly benefit those state facilities though so one kind of nuance there once again enhancing mobility safety economic development those are the key buzzwords with those fdot grant sources or funding sources project selection this one goes to fdot at the district level so once again central florida mpo alliance a little bit more local it's focusing on those counties those mpos this is coming up back up to the district level fdot district five looks at all of those projects that are being submitted and then determine the the district priorities and the readiness to allocate this funding different projects ellis road pops up there again like i said i'll show why a lot of different funding sources made that project happen and then a couple other projects that have been requested are hollywood boulevard four-lane widening and then a intersection improvement at wickham and post so moving into the tpo managed funding so there is uh the tpo gets their funding from the surface transportation block grant there's two different uh specific kind of funding pots that i'll walk through here the first being the urban su funds they average about seven million dollars a year and these are coming from the federal highway trust fund and its formula based taxes federal fuel taxes these can go to fund all the same project types that we've been talking about so those rotary reconstructions safety bridges widening basically anything that you can think of from a transportation perspective these su funds can go to fund a portion of that project so this one the project selection goes through the tpo based on list of project priorities and then going through that process to get it onto the lrtp and then ultimately the tip i will say the one nuance with this is that these funds will go directly to the locals for implementation so you need to be that local agency needs to be lap certified local agency program certified we can do a whole presentation on that i can get you know come to georgiana we can give you an update on kind of how if and how you can apply for that if you all are interested folks that aren't so then the secondary funding source is the transportation alternatives funds and those are about a million dollars a year so you see these funding sources are starting to get a little bit smaller and this is also coming from the federal highway trust fund but these funds the tpo typically uses for those smaller scale projects really targeting pedestrian bicycle sidewalk those types of safety and smaller mobility studies so just once again highlighting some of those priority projects that have either been built using these funds or are going to be constructed using these funds so looking at su a number of different projects that were funded through this funding source us 192 at hollywood and minton those intersection improvements that were constructed a few years ago melabar ellis and the 524 four lane widenings the su funding had been used to push forward the the design for some of those corridors and some other phases as well a1a at 520 intersection improvements and then a1a at north atlantic that north atlantic one is an upcoming project has not been constructed yet and then the annual its allocation i mentioned earlier the intermodal station and the brevard zoo linear trail like i mentioned ta funds those are those smaller projects and you have a cs you see a couple sidewalk projects that have been constructed using those ta funds keep in mind this is just a sample just a sampling of this of the projects that have been used for these funding sources so the ellis slide that i've been referencing a few different times what i want you all to focus on is the second most column with all those acronyms on there these are all of the different funding sources that were used to get this project funded for right away and construction ultimately there were 16 different funding sources that were utilized for that 92 million really what this shows is it takes a village it takes a lot of funding partners and it takes a lot of coordination to get these projects built especially when you're getting into these bigger widening projects emphasizing the local funding that 9 million coming from brevard county melbourne and west melbourne if that nine million dollars was not allocated to this project this project does not move forward you have to have that local funding you have to have that local support to leverage those other state and federal dollars to keep these projects moving into implementation so now more at the local level and this is focused mainly on the county so a little bit of a county slant here we'll talk a little bit about the cities and the locals but within this large majority of these slides are going to be focused on the county revenues that come out of the different gas taxes the first being the constitutional gas tax so this is a two cent gas tax this has not been raised in i think a couple decades if not more there is two different portions of this 20 cent there's a 20 20 portion and an 80 portion the 20 that is the portion that's really getting filtered down to the different municipalities to the counties that go to fund some of those transportation projects as you see up there the revenue generated for brevard county about 1.5 million dollars so not a whole lot from that 20 portion the 80 portion that gets collected is really going back to do bond repayment this is collected by fdot for either projects that have been built or projects that are going to be upcoming so a little bit of a different you see a little bit bigger number there but that isn't necessarily directly coming back to the county for transportation projects then to drill down a little bit deeper these are the fuel taxes that are currently being levied in the county so the first being the local option gas tax so the upper left box that's the sixth cent this is being collected on gas and diesel and this is collected within the county distributed to the county and the local municipalities based on interlocal agreements the annual revenue is around 13 million dollars for that for that funding source then to get a little bit more confusing there is a local option gas tax ninth cent i will i have a little table that shows kind of how all this stuff interacts here in a few slides but what this is is this is the statewide levied ninth cent on diesel fuel so this is getting charged on every diesel fuel purchase one cent per gallon and that's getting distributed to each county based on population it's collected at statewide level and being brought down to the county and that revenue is just over two million dollars a year for the county and then there's also the county motor fuel tax which is about one cent per gallon it's collected within the county distributed entirely to brevard county and that's about three point four million dollars per year so overall what you see is these these existing fuel or these existing sources just don't have enough of that annual revenue to really keep pace with the big projects that we're looking to get implemented to further drive the point home about the locally imposed motor fuel taxes so this is a graphic showing statewide how many counties or all of the counties and how much of the different fuel taxes are being levied everything in yellow those 35 counties are leveraging the maximum of the 12 cents for the gas tax and then brevard county is one of 11 that's only leveraging the minimum six cents so i'll just let that sink in that there is some revenue being left potentially on the table by not fully leveraging the local gas tax so one other local funding source that's currently being used for revenue is transportation impact fees and this is a little bit like i said it's landed more towards the county but it's assessed on any new development so residential commercial anything multi-family that comes in at the county-wide level impact fees are collected for all municipalities within brevard county there are interlocal agreements between the county and those locals to how they distribute those funds at the county level it's about 10 million 10.5 million dollars on average that are being generated from transportation impact fees the fiscal year 24 balance was a little bit higher about 16 million at the county level impact fees have not been adjusted since 2001. so again sticking with that theme that these revenue sources aren't keeping up with the inflation for these construction costs the cities do review and adjust their own so there are a few cities throughout the county that have been raising them palm bay at the tac cac said that y'all look at that annually as well and can raise it if you all want to so moving from what we currently have to what we could potentially do so our first slide on discretionary sales surtaxes and i know that this has been talked about at the board of county commissioners workshops i know it's been talked about at the local levels as well so this is likely not new information to you all but just to kind of run down the list there's two different sales surtaxes that could be levied the first being the charter county and regional transportation system surtax so the florida statute permits a tax of up to one percent and this would be a simple majority of commissioners required for a referendum to be held at a general election so something as we're looking at this next election cycle something that potentially could be put on a ballot to help increase those potential revenues and we're looking at about a revenue generation of 25 to 100 million dollars at the county share and then more kind of regionally or not regionally more at the county wide level for all municipalities uh 35 million to 137 million so a little bit of a bump when you look at uh look at it more holistically versus just the the county share the second is the local government infrastructure surtax this one's a little bit more nuanced based on the florida statute i've learned a lot about florida statutes and taxes over the last couple months so counties are permitted only one referendum currently the lagoon tax or the save our indian river lagoon program tax currently levies a half cent so that's on the books right now from what we understand if the lagoon tax is renewed a half cent is still available for the transportation for that local government surtax could be applied to transportation would require modifying the current referendum this could also look to generate about 37 million upwards of almost 70 million for the county and the local municipalities so i know we were talking about gas taxes so to bring that full circle looking at leveraging the different uh five cent or the ninth cent the different gas taxes that you see like i mentioned a little bit of a table to help try to simplify things so i mentioned before the one to six cent levied for gasoline and diesel that's currently being levied by the county all those yellow boxes that you see those are the other cents so one to five cent up to five cents that can be levied on both gas and diesel can be adopted in addition to the sixth cent by supermajority or referendum and this also would be distributed to the cities based on a five-year transportation expenditure formula so good news is that it would be collected at the county-wide level and then distributed to the counties and the local municipalities as well we're looking at potential revenue generation of about 6.4 million dollars annually that's the county share and then highlighting the last piece of this which is that nine cent tax that i mentioned earlier that's the one highlighted in red or green so it's currently being levied for diesel could also be levied for gas and that would be a little bit lower generation about 2.7 million annually but this one does not have to be distributed to the cities so that's the slight wrinkle with this is that five cent gas diesel coordination with the county and the city and the cities the ninth cent could just be collected by the county and then to wrap up our other revenue sources looking at mobility fees and public services taxes mobility fees there these are an alternative to transportation impact fees mobility fees are something that have become a little bit more common over the last 10 to 15 years both throughout the country and throughout the state of florida if folks want you know if local municipalities want to shift away from a impact fee model transportation impact fee model to more of a mobility fee model we've seen local municipalities doing that really what this does is provide a little bit greater flexibility to fund sidewalks trails transit facilities complete streets projects um public services tax so this is getting into electricity natural gas those different public services that most folks pay for a one to ten percent tax could be levied by the counties and municipalities generating upwards of about 33 million dollars annually depending on the adopted rate uh that would get uh put put into play so a few more number slides and then we'll wrap up so i don't want you there's a lot of numbers on this table specifically i really want you all to focus on the lower right hand corner uh these are in millions and billions of dollars what we see here these are the projected revenues from the 2045 lrtp for the different funding for some of the different funding sources that we discussed half cent sales sales sales surtax one cent the loft is really the logt at the time it was loft and then that ninth cent for diesel or for gas and what we're seeing is that if you project out over those next 20 years 2026 to 2045 we're seeing anywhere between 1.2 1.3 to upwards of 2.3 billion dollars of potential revenue that could be generated when you look at these different funding sources so keeping those numbers in mind and translating it back to the graphic i showed earlier look at what that shortfall is about 2.3 billion dollars so if we're looking at potential revenue sources to close this gap we have some that are already in that could already be in play that could really help close that gap now i will say the previous slide didn't necessarily get into some of the nuance between the charter tax and the local the local sales tax so there's potential that this num these numbers could be a little bit higher depending on what funding sources are levied so with that i'll pass it off to georgiana to chat about next steps all right so last two slides um so i think we were going to start with the okay from the governing board strategic plan um you know it's important to acknowledge that the strategic advantage of local funds you know to be able to uh to provide the local funds uh to be able to secure that the additional state and federal funding and that really should be the takeaway today um you know and how the region can maximize the local money to further you know tap into the available state and federal funding so that really covers the first two uh bullets there uh under short term and these are action items from the governing board strategic plan if you remember you know more longer term um of course we need to monitor the reauthorization bill that's really not long term anymore because it's just around the corner because there could be additional formula funding coming to us which can really help engage our legislators in conversations about state legislation that negatively impacts the state transportation trust fund you know every session there seems to be funding that is moved out of the trust fund into non-transportation purposes and it's a killer it can be devastating to the work program um so it really is an education only pursue appropriations if they're drawn from general revenue i think appropriations are fantastic because we have been able to get some things done um but if an appropriation comes out of the transportation trust fund that is not new money all of that money is programmed on projects in the five-year work program so it needs to come from general revenue and then encourage our legislatures to support and fund dot's research on potential revenue replacement options that has got to be done at some point in the future um and then to kind of end and this is the slide that a tac member suggested that we add and you know this really kind of brings it home we've we listed some of the projects on the priority list identified in the long-range plan let's start with state road 524 uh basically london boulevard to industry is programmed or we have it funded in between 2036 to 2040 time band it is the only section of the 524 widening that we could afford with the available revenue that the dot gave us to build the plan um you know with inflation uh that's four million dollars more funding more money that it's going to cost us within that time ban a1a cape canaveral complete street um i know mayor morrison this is a big priority for cape canaveral it has been a priority for the tpo for many many years it's not a widening but it is an important project for safety and economic development it's not funded until 2046 to the 2050 time ban with inflation you're talking about 26 million dollars more funding and then uh some of our regionally significant uh highways off the state highway system hollywood boulevard uh it's a uh priority for the county um it is unfunded it is only a need in the long-range plan malabar road widening of course that is a top priority uh for the off system on the priority list uh design is underway but construction is unfunded in the 2050 long-range plan um right-of-way is funded for the project uh that we can move for for in the short term but until the design is completed and they start segmenting malabar for us to determine what sections we can actually afford in the future right now nothing construction is not funded south babcock widening we've talked about that project and how important that is the only section that we were able to fund in the long-range plan is conveyor to malabar and um you know that's just a very small section and then we get a lot of comments about mecca road widening i know in the south part of the county um that is an unfunded need it is not funded in the long-range plan so you know also a good example i think is ellis road a few years back um ellis road the the construction was probably around 32 34 million it was actually less than the con than the right-of-way phase and over the past few years um you know especially you know uh 21 you know in 20 uh fiscal year 20 21 and 22 when inflation just went off the charts that actually skyrocketed to like 90 something million dollars for construction for ellis and everybody was scrambling for a project that was now fully funded is not fully funded and luckily that stabilized and it went back down to roughly in the 50 million uh area and it is fully funded but who's to say that's not you know that could happen again and where does that put us so this is really the cost of inaction um we've got some problems and i don't know what the answer is i i appreciate the county is diving into this very difficult conversation um but where do you want us the staff to go from here i mean the county is working on what they can do um do we do you want us to dig into some examples of what cities are doing you know what uh we're here to assist but you know this is a top priority funding the future but the question is is how are we going to do that thank you very yeah thank you very much uh georgiana and staff i thought that was very important that we have this dialogue so that's why i was trying to speed along to the early part of the conversation because this is really what we want to talk about here today and have this discussion and before i call on mayor medina i just i did not rehearse this with deputy mayor jaffe but i want to ask him a question what does money make money yeah money right and so that's the important part is like you know all these different programs you know you have to have that local match but if you don't have any funds in the coffers to do that local match how are you supposed to extrapolate and get more grants and more federal dollars so that mayor medina so first of all thank you that was an outstanding study and i know it took a lot of hard work um did you considering to study our electric vehicles our hybrid vehicles you know i know that we're talking about potential uh revenue sources in the future but was there any indication on how that can fill up some of the gap because i might i might have missed that so yeah well are you referring to you know future legislation that may actually tax yes we have not looked into what that amount of funding would be but there is legislation is my understanding and so i think it will happen it's only a matter of time whether it happens this session or not i'm not really sure um there have been some studies out there travis are you aware of any information that we could get our hands on yeah i know around the country um different agencies are looking at uh kind of like mileage based user fees and so that would target you know any and all vehicles uh that would be traveling um i've seen a lot of that more out west um i don't i don't know if you know i haven't looked in to see what the results of those are but um i know that that's being that's a discussion at the national level yes sir right and i was looking at how how that could fill some of that gap right right so that that's what uh prompted me in that question thank you mr chair then moreover i wanted to follow up with the direction that we may want to take as a as a body um something to be cautioned about is we already have half a cent tax i believe the citizens are going to vote on here and so to add anything else um at this given time i don't think from my perspective we should even be suggesting that to our our brothers in the county brothers and sisters in the county those are my thoughts i just wanted to publicly say that um i also believe that there might be a way where we can collectively think about how we're going to handle this local option gas tank tax because i do know that you eloquently said it over two decades we haven't done anything but certainly we do have the authority to start looking in that direction and so though that concludes my comments mr chair thank you thank you mayor medina and something i just want to say because this is something i think about and it's not again not putting pressure on the county specifically but what can we do as a city to address these needs to go after matching funds uh to my knowledge no city has enacted their gas tax i believe in 2024 16.2 million people sorry 16.2 millions of gallons of gas were filled in the city of titusville but what percentage of them were titusville residents right there you go i think it was about 60 percent so that means 40 percent transit 40 percent people going to and from the cape cape canaveral is a good example how many of those are actual residents and so if you look at that and go okay how do we get more money without putting on the backs of our residents so that's why this conversation needed to be had commissioner delaney thank you um i i just wanted to mention that i i brought this up a couple months ago the local gas taxes and unfortunately i didn't get support at that time to look into it but there was some conversation about um possibly putting it before the voters uh for the local gas taxes um what what we were talking about at our last meeting was um i wasn't necessarily advocating on behalf of any which direction all i was trying to do was start a conversation about what our needs are where we're at and what are the possible funding um fixes for this and um so i agree with you that i don't uh mayor medina i don't think that it would be a good idea to put an additional um tax along with sorrel the one thing that i was wondering about was um the possibility of possibly expanding uh the language in sorrel to allow for all infrastructure to be um paid for um you know that's something that we could look into and i know that some of the discussion that was had publicly at our meeting was um that it might be a lift because some of the city like we'll have to redo our interlocal agreements and whatnot and so i'm curious to hear about what the cities feel about about that and um like i said i'm not advocating on behalf of any of the options all i know is that i see two billion dollar debt that we're looking at and um i i would the inaction is something that i have uh an issue with and i would love to see um some kind of conversation about how we can move forward and uh fill fill some of these needs because i know especially down in the south end you guys are being you know really affected by uh transportation do i respond mr chair mayor medina so um thank you thank you for that question ma'am and and i i think i'd like to answer it this way i can't i have two of my colleagues here and uh i have to be cautious with what i say because this may come before our our city council but with that being said when i first arrived in brevard county back in 1988 it was such a pristine indian river lagoon and over my lifetime i have seen that deteriorate even though we had leaders during that time giving us advisement that we're going down a perilous road meaning with everything that was getting into that lagoon and nothing was being done and so it's been a passion of mine to to restore that lagoon from when i first got here and with that being said we're not there yet this is decades of harm that we've put towards a billion dollar industry of that lagoon ma'am i used to see families fish in the lagoon i would see an industry of clamming make money so that they could put food on their tables and that no longer exist and so i'm passionate about our lagoon i'll support that half cent tax as i did previously uh and as a resident i would always want to see that lagoon back to its its state when i first came here and when i first came as a marine to come and visit this county how beautiful and pristine that entire waterway was so i hope that helps you you know because i i'm just passionate about that and i'm not advocating hold on hold on mayor medina had the floor and we're not going to go back and forth everybody's going to get their opportunity to say their piece i understand it can cause some confusion and obviously there's a lot of different priorities the important part about this conversation is to see how we can kind of take ownership to find those matching grants again this is not specifically on the county obviously the numbers had to reflect the county because they weren't going to do just cocoa or titusville or palm bay but there's a lot of meat on this bonesville uh and unfortunately when you look at a usage tax versus a property tax property tax is going to affect your 40 year old resident that you know maybe a little grandmother goes to the grocery store in church once a week versus a usage tax you know property tax can affect her a lot more mayor our deputy mayor jeffy mr chair just so that i can conclude it was it's my experience i'm not saying what will be before us in council but as you take this and collect you know as we collectively learned such a deficit yes it is upon each and every individual city to to move forward with what we can decide on regarding that local option gas tax so thank you absolutely thank you deputy mayor um thank you chairman so you know i don't understand why the half cent sales tax for the lagoon can't be used for road and infrastructure improvements if you think about 407 you think about malabar road you think about babcock road none of those roads have curb and gutters none of those roads have retention ponds so you have all that untreated waste coming off the roads that are directly affecting the lagoon um so that you know i just want to make a comment about that there's oil gas construction debris accidents all coming off the roadway not being treated before it gets to the to the indian river lagoon so i don't understand why those conversations can't be had to expand infrastructure improvements for some of those roads that don't have carbon gutter or retention ponds thank you deputy mayor um commissioner delaney i believe had her hand up first and then i'll go to to answer your question um it was at least from what the staff has told me is it has to do with the language of the ordinance and it's a little restricting um in that capacity and so if we were to make any substantive changes it would it would be considered a new um half cent tax versus a renewal so it would still trigger the same new interlocal agreements and that sort of thing thank you um thank you mr chairman can i ask for a point of information are you deputy mayor vice mayor nope i just want to make sure i address you right for some reason i thought i read that i'll introduce myself my name is mark larusso i am a melbourne city council member representing district two uh the reason i'm here uh to be reappointed onto this board and i serve i know many of you for many years and thank you for your service and thank you for ellis road i really appreciate that um we um i'm the vice chairman of the melbourne airport authority and so uh during the legal consult uh conversations between our legal entities it comes to uh we come to realize that an uh an alternate is not uh satisfying that does not fulfill the position of the tpo for a um airport representative so having said all that you know hello everybody and thank you for having me i still you guys are doing awesome work you really do um but i did want to go back to one of your slides sir uh that you um as basically the airport representative we're trying to and i'll bring all of this information back to our board um there was a uh there was a publication that was put out by the transportation uh the tax information publication and it was by the department of revenue and it was on november 12th and i just got this information because it sparked the memory for me that we had the pleasure of having secretary purdue in our possession for about four four hours about five or six weeks ago traveling the entire uh airport and reviewing everything that we've seen and showing him what he's done so he could see you know the the hands-on and put his fingers into it and requesting additional opportunities to go along with it but one of the frustrations it seems is that there was a there's a repeal of aviation fuel excise tax effective as of january 1st 2026 and you had indicated in one of your revenue sources that there is a fuel excise tax aviation fuel however i just wanted to uh come back to you and say is are we misinformed by that because the beginning statement of that is beginning of january 1st 2026 uh part three of chapter 206 florida statute will be repealed as a result of jet fuel uh undyed uh kerosene and aviation fuel would no longer to be sub subject subjected to the 4.27 cents per gallon tax now it may only you know we're statewide you know we we reach out to for many different funding opportunities and melbourne airport doesn't necessarily bring a ton of money into it but it's still a funding source so we can reach out to other areas you know orlando airport sarasota jacksonville miami whatever that may be into that big bucket and we can't draw from that because now it's being repealed so i didn't i want there you go aviation fuel state funds aviation fuel taxes uh could you update us on that what i mean the information that i have here um am i correct in understanding that we can know that that the aviation fuel is no longer part of the funding opportunities for the state yeah so this graphic was from was created as part of the latest lrtp i think it's from 2024 so it is a couple years uh well i won't say outdated because obviously all these other funding sources okay so but i think the information that you have is current and we will update all right i'll just give you the number 25 bravo 05-03 okay that that that that'll be your reference for the uh transportation for the tax information publication from the department of revenue okay so anybody thinking about that we're going to get a couple hundred thousand or a million or something like that from the aviation taxes scratch it off your list because it's done and more to come okay so anyway thank you for the opportunity to speak and thank you for allowing me to be here again it was about 16 years ago it was the last time thank you council member la russo and also vice chairman of the the airport i think it's really important that all the models of transportation are represented here and unfortunately mr allender can be here today i believe he's uh dealing with some health issues but you know the port the airports fdot space florida they all interact in our communities so heavily it's i'm just happy that you're here i believe council member hammer had his uh hand up first and i'll get to you yes i was really excited to see the half percent tax for the indian river lagoon come forward um but in palm bay or even in the south i haven't really seen anything happen with it with us uh we actually house up house the mrc in palm bay ourselves and i think a lot of the problem is we're trying to treat water instead of trying to treat where the water comes from right now it's like think you're at your house and you had your line break and you're just cleaning the water instead of fixing where the line broke we need to be fixing what the water is coming from then start fixing the water because right now for example we have been going to dc we have been going to tallahassee to bring funding back to palm bay for baffle boxes we're we're bringing baffle boxes i think we've got almost 1.8 million dollars towards new baffle boxes in palm bay to treat the water before it hits our lagoon so i think that's one thing that we need to branch out on because i'm not seeing very much of it in palm bay and i think we're doing it backwards i think we should be fixing fixing what's got us bleeding before we start treating the blood we need to fix the cut and then start healing instead of just fixing the water for more bad water to be poured into it so i think there needs to be something in there within infrastructure um i have seen how much money this is bringing in it's bringing in a lot of money and i think it can be utilized smarter and better and be actually start to fix things instead of just kind of keeping thing at at a stalemate right now thank you very much councilmember hamber and and i know we all have different ideas and opinions about what the funds can be used for with sorrel but you know that's not really the topic conversation here um it's about how we can drive more funding and don't get me wrong i think we all have our own opinions but completely agree root cause analysis is important i know in palm bay you know getting everybody on septic tank would be a much help to the lagoon versus you know you know maybe doing a study right i get that uh but we really want to make sure that we're we're figuring out how we can bring those matching dollars here councilmember smith now just on that point uh great great presentation here but i i would have to agree with both points that have made uh all the points made out of palm bay i i don't see that adding an additional five point five percent at this time but i like what uh vice mayor jaffe had to say about looking at the additional uses which kind of coincides with with what they're saying uh but then you you brought up a point but i was going to ask okay i see aviation but i was going to ask where's the space industry and as far as fuel and things like that because i don't see that and is that a pot that would be also potentially accessible for us or usable bonds i think that's an interesting question and uh so i did invite space florida to join us at the table that's why they didn't come no it was a little short notice they had to be in dc but i think it's important for them to be at the table i mean they're a government entity just like fdot but maybe they would know the question of where the space industry buys their fuel because if they're not buying in brevard that could be why we might have a discount you know and i don't know about the port and whether you know uh you know that that's included in there as well especially all the fuel that they do ship in and out so those are all important questions but what i think is interesting is the idea versus impact fee versus mobility fee and i think that point got skipped over you know maybe kind of quickly but it's a very important distinction because when we have an impact fee there's so much red tape and regulation our impact fees go to the county i don't even know if we ever see them you know and of course they can only be used to expand and widen roads versus maybe fix repair make some improvements uh so i think you know what i want to take out of this is i'm going to go back and have a conversation with my council about definitions like do we charge an impact fee or do we charge mobility fee and what does that mobility fee look like so that we can start making some improvements and using that money to leverage more dollars above our city so and then to mayor medina's point about electric vehicles it did seem like for a long time it was a law of diminishing returns where more and more people were switched into the electric vehicles but now that the federal tax rebate has kind of gone away that market is kind of stabilized but i think it's important to look at how much we are charging the public service tax and uh deputy mayor what would you tell me it was in your city what was the question uh your uh fpl yeah it's 5.9 percent 5.9 fpl franchise fee you know so again charging the the electric that they charge their vehicles in the city of tyusville it's five percent do you know what the highest is what you can legally do ten ten so again it kind of looks into all these different things of you know usage versus property and how that goes and unfortunately as uh bills progress in the house this is going to have to be a tougher more long thought out conversation because if ad valorem property taxes is a thing and going away we'll have to have more of these conversations user fees user fees deputy mayor jaffe then i'll get so i want to touch i made some notes during the presentation and i want to touch a little bit about impact fees primarily for example like large distribution centers like amazon for example one was built melbourne there's another coming to west melbourne they impact the entire region the entire county but only those municipalities get impact fees for transportation um so i almost feel like the study needs to be done or exploration needs to be done for a regional transportation impact fee study and furthermore amazon and a lot of these different delivery services are going to privatizing vehicles and their own independent entrepreneur contractors they're making deliveries i know it's business owner i had that business tax receipt and so now we have thousands of trucks on the road that are individual entrepreneurs that aren't paying business tax receipts um you know some other ideas that i've had and i think there's finance financing mechanisms in place to build new roads new roads if we have some toll authority like central florida's done um you know i personally believe that the port should have a toll road going into the port to expand 528 and i would support an expansion of 95 with an express line um you know not everybody has to use the express line you pay to play and i think that you know having some sort of finance financing mechanism to show that that income is going to come in to pay for those expansions and you know i'm not a big fan of adding taxes and surcharges but like nobody's talking about like what's what may or may not happen with property taxes you know there's a real fear that's going on right now and every single one of us doesn't know what that future is going to look like so um i think we need to explore all options we're not making a decision on these options i think all options should be put on the table because we don't know that property taxes are going to exist by 2028 so that's just my comments thank you deputy mayor mayor blake um since we're discussing petroleum fueling uh fuel what about the cruise line ships do they acquire their fuel or refueling here at our port and if so is there a a user fee assessed to that that's a good question could you answer that yeah you want my mic yeah take my mic i mean i just looked him like that guy works at the court let's ask him i mean since we're talking about petroleum help me understand i mean is that revenue getting away i don't know the answer is yes and no can you get closer to the mic sir i don't think his mic's working i don't think i can talk loud no man take it i'll start again bob muster i'm the senior director of environmental at the port canaveral the answer is yes and no um most cruise lines go and um handle their own uh fuel sources and everything and specifically for uh for lng they have their own contracts for that uh some of them do take on um marine gas oil and some of the other fuels at the port which would come from the fuel terminal within the port um seaport canaveral on the north side commissioner atkinson so my question is an uninformed one um any money that the port brings in for stuff like that do they share it with brevard county all right uh question back at you sir you got another question commissioner atkinson can you ask your question again sure so any money that the port brings in do they share it with brevard county in terms of motor fuel sales lng sales any taxes added to uh the fuel sales at the port oh my understanding the taxes at the pump is that is that correct do we get a share of this bavard county of it or does the port hold that money is that what you're trying to say yes she's talking about the the taxes levied on fuel sales at the port we we the porter only gets um the amount that it's based on the volume that comes across um comes across the dock seaport canaveral for instance is an independent um tenant of the port so that would that um the funds and taxes and everything would go through that facility there's another uh facility in the south side that's actually in the city of canaveral council member handley council member handling i i think uh unfortunately i put this gentleman on the spot so i would have to get well we'll have more information yeah we'll have to table this conversation um but i think that'd be a good presentation is about the import and exports into our community through uh port canaveral and how that impacts our our funds for transportation and then we'll also have one from space florida we'll we'll talk about all of them and then when bright line gets here we'll bring them to the table you know i got you man um mayor osmer so i know we keep talking about a lot of these things and and what i've gotten out of everything we've discussed these are all complicated things i think the simplest thing and and believe me it's very brave for any elected official to say i want to raise taxes right we all know the backlash that happens behind that but the reality of it is just looking at the local option gas tax and you can compare us with every county there is in the state and we're the lowest i wouldn't go out on a limb and say okay let's let's make it all up in one lump sum and let's go to the max that may be a suicidal venture to do that but not to take any of it at all even if it's the seventh cent or the eighth cent or taking the ninth cent for gasoline to me that seems like a more simpler easier something that we could do now without having to talk about the half cent going to the lagoon right again if we have to go through this and we have to change it and change the language and then i mean again that's that's that to me that's down the road type talk that that's not going to fix us today i'm looking at what are we going to do to fix this year 2026 what are we going to do to get more money because if we don't what we just showed up there is in action for all these years and we can't keep doing nothing and talking about it and again i i understand it is not popular to tell people and i also understand it it almost seems that if we don't include somehow evs then you are only taxing a certain percentage of people however that is what it is today right i don't know that we have the ability as the county or as municipalities to start charging evs so that's not on the table for us to try to go that way but i just say that we need to do something we need to do something sooner because in all these years we keep talking about this this local option gas tax has has been on our agenda every year since 2000 and every year for 25 years we haven't raised it a penny and you can see what the deficit is by not doing anything for every year for 25 years and and i think and i agree that if you're going to try to do some matching funds well again to everybody's credit who said this in order to get more money you got to have more money you you you got to put some money in our hands so that we can use that money to negotiate to double it to multiply it to get more money but we can sit here and talk about this for another four months to me that's just four more months we're losing dollars and and it's not going to get any better and if we get into another inflation issue again this is going to multiply the deficit to a point it's going to be unreachable for us so i try to say i understand looking way down the road what are we going to do today what are we going to do in the in the next three months the next six months the next nine months because nine months of not doing anything is going to be bad for us waiting four more years is going to be devastating to us but we have to do something and again to me this seems like the simplest apple to pull off the tree at this point this is not complicated it doesn't take a lot to ask for another penny in the local option gas tax and again i know that sounds counter to every elected official in the room i get that right but the reality of it is and you do we all do this with millage rates right we're all doing this with millage rates anyways a lot of times you have to raise the millage rates simply because you have needs that have to be made and you have to make that decision sometimes to to up your millage rate to solve your problem and in this case in in my eyes again in 20 years we haven't moved the needle at all i just think we should consider something try to come up with a plan again i'm not going to be brave enough and say hey let's go for the whole 12th cent and let's go grab everything however two pennies will get us further than where we are at this point thank you mayor i will call on the folks that raised their hand but i want to say it is after 3 30 and i do want to be conscientious of everybody's time so i'm going to start winding down the conversation i will call on you for your final thoughts something i just want to put a bug in your ear about i've been asking about how do we fund these things since i've been elected in the last year and a half we actually have it in our code that we can levy four cents a gallon but we haven't been so the question is have you dived into your code to see what is possible like maybe it's already there maybe you don't have to fight that fight right and the question is what have we been doing for the last 20 years right so that's just something that why we want to have this conversation can i just add one thing to that just to say that so in the city of satellite beach we have two gas stations okay and there's not a whole lot of use at those two gas stations much different situation for titusville palm bay melbourne coco where you have a lot of that and i just say the same thing where city is 98 built out i'm not getting no amazon i'm not building no houses my population is not going to grow could i put four cents on it sure on the two gas stations that are in my town the money i may get will probably be less than a thousand dollars at the end of the year and that's not going to help the county our overall problem that's why i always try to look at this as i i think we all should do something but realistically as a whole as a tpo we have to come up with some funding together and if you look at the other counties that have the full 12 cents levied their gas price is about the same as ours right absolutely so i'm going to go to commissioner delaney and again we're i just wanted to mention um we did when i brought this up a few months ago at our board um there was a cutoff time for us to be able to have these funds this year so we still even if we did something tomorrow we still wouldn't be able to see this until the following fiscal year so that's why this conversation is you know pretty open because and the other thing i wanted to mention if we levied up to the 12 cents um that would only produce i think if i'm remembering correctly 8.2 million per year so that's like not not a whole lot of money versus if we made say sorrel a one cent tax i mean it would fill our need and i'm not advocating for either one i'm just saying this is there's a lot of options here thank you commissioner delaney uh council member hanley can you use the mic please i like your idea but i think some of the taxpayers if we go into a gradual situation it's like maybe six months at one six months we do two percent raising it up so people get it you know we're not going to get it all we haven't had it for 20 years right right but we just gradually go up so people kind of get used to it i think that's i think that's our only option right now but going in a gradual and but not just doing a whole year maybe a half cent i don't know if we can do a half cent georgene you probably don't know that off talk with your city attorney talk with your city attorney but we could do things like that um but go up gradually because that's the only way we can do it i mean but i think if we go in smashed up like you said at 12 percent unless we were really desperate like sanibel was or something like that then that's a different story but i think if we go up gradually at a slower rate not a slow but a rate and remember that that's for the county to make their decisions and i know some of them are here at the table for them to talk about county-wide gas tax but each city has that ability and that's why this is important to give you the guys the resources to take home and have these conversations with your council members council member hammer final thought just real quick what what it's coming up with online is what it's saying i'm looking at the statute it's saying a lot of cruises are exempt because of their operation and international water on fuel but there are some there are taxes on the cargo ships and barges and tow boats that goes into what's the inland waterways fuel use tax and that is done by the r irs which regulates it and it goes into a fund that's what it's that's what the state's say if fdot would let me put a toll booth at the end of the nasa causeway i would you know we all got to get creative at this point but one thing i want to mention to you all before we get closer to adjournment one of the things i asked staff is to reach out to the other mpos because we know our deficit number 2.1 billion dollars it was actually in the front page of the florida today but what is the state number what are the other mpos showing as a deficit as they do long-term plan because i don't think it's compelling enough of a message when we go to tallahassee to go hey brevard county is 2.1 billion short because even if we convince all five house members and both senators they still got to convince the other members of their body so what we need to have is a collective number uh that we all as a you know tpo mpo members from across the state can go to our elected officials and go hey guys we are a half a trillion dollars short over the next 20 years you guys are balancing a budget keep this budget number in mind so that's the final thought i want to leave you with something we're working towards so we can get that number out to you so that we guys can have those conversations and with that being said i believe that concludes our meeting um at the next meeting has been set for march 12 2026 at 1 30. do i have a motion to adjourn so moved second thank you for the education great job