Good evening, and welcome to the Plantation City Council September 14, 2026 Stormwater Hearing. Ms. Biggerow, please call the roll. Council Member Anderson. Here. Council Member Andreu. Here. Council Member Fadgen. Here. Council Member Horland. Here. Council Member Reinstein. Here. Mayor Sortel. Here. Assistant City Attorney Morgan. Here. Thank you very much. And opening remarks will be provided by Council Member Andreu. Thank you, President Horland. I'm going to do a short invocation this evening to get us started on the right foot. If you would be so kind to stand, and then we'll go right into the Pledge of Allegiance. We gather this evening as stewards of our plantation community, entrusted with decisions that shape the daily lives of our neighbors, the strength of our neighborhoods, and the future we leave to those who come after us. We ask for wisdom to see clearly, patience to listen fully, and the humility to know that good decisions come from careful thought and honest disagreement. May we conduct tonight's business with civility, even where we differ. May we remember that behind every agenda item is a person, a family, or a neighborhood counting on us to get it right. We give thanks for the opportunity to serve and to the residents who take the time to be a part of this process with us. Help us to remember that we are not here for titles or self-promotion, but we are here to serve with love and compassion. Let us proceed with clear minds and goodwill toward the work ahead, and let us all work together to make plantation beautiful. And now, the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Council Member Andreyu. And Ms. Shailan, you have a brief stormwater presentation. Good evening. Samira Shailan, City Engineer. I have the presentation that was presented in the workshop, and then I briefed it on the council meeting on July 29, and I would like to request the council president, do you want me to run quickly through the presentation for the sake of public, or council will be okay to skip the presentation? I think we've all been through it, but since we do have members of the public here, if you could do a very brief update, that would be great. Okay. There is no brief in drainage, if you know me very well. No brief in drainage. Thank you. So I'm going to breeze through it. Some of the slides can be very quick, but please stop me if you desire to stop in certain topics that you would like. So we're going to – the vision and the mission of the stormwater utility is to – the stormwater utility division is responsible for managing, maintaining, and improving the stormwater infrastructure to reduce flooding, risk, and protect the quality life and preserve the waterways. So, for a couple of years now, council approved us to have a distinct division. We hired a stormwater manager. We have a stormwater specialist, and currently we have six staff members, field staff members, full-time operating the stormwater management. That's in addition to the engineering division that does the technical aspect of the engineering stormwater management. In the last couple of years, the city acquired a lot of equipment. We have been fortunate enough to utilize funds other than the stormwater fund, whether it is ARPA fund or G-Bond fund, and for the sake of public, these are grant funding and not city assessment or city tax dollar. So this is a list of equipment equal to 1.3 million have been purchased in the last three years using funds other than the stormwater fund. What we do in daily basis, we inspect and maintain our assets. When we say the word assets, it's our roadways. We street sweep the city roadways, and the slide speaks for themselves. You see the equipment in operation. We clean, inspect, and clean our assets, which is the catch basins and pipes. On a rotating basis, the city is divided into 27 zones. Zones 1 is further east. Zone 27 is Maliluka Isle on the west. In between is the 27 zone that we inspect and maintain on a rotating basis. We inspect and maintain our waterway, whether utilizing our vendor, Tigris, for the aquatic weed management, or city staff, as seen in the pictures in front of us. We also this year developed an app that is published on the city's website where any resident can look at the map, see who owns and maintains the waterways, and can contact the right person for that. We also this year did a lot of inspection of our assets, the pipes, and we found a lot of corroded pipes, and we fixed them. And I just want to highlight over here, which was something discussed with you all, between 25 and 26, the city had repaired almost a million dollar worth of collapsed culverts and pipes, specifically in the historic district area. On an engineering aspect, we finalized the stormwater master plan, which was presented publicly sometime in January. And by the way, the master plan was funded by ARPA Fund, and the master plan set the framework for the priorities of the stormwater management within the city. Today, I'm going to go over briefly a couple of the projects that the master plan had provided as priorities, and council had approved us to proceed, at least with the design of these projects. Project number one is Country Club Estate. The area had experienced flooding in 2023, another event. Even this weekend, I received some emails from residents regarding flooding after flash rain events. Therefore, we advanced the design of phase A of the project. We just received 60% of the design, and as we can see later, we slotted some construction money for this project if it gets approved. We talked about the master plan, project number two, which is Basin 2, or what we call the Park East Area. Actually, I'm sorry. This is still Country Club Estate. This is just highlighting some of the improvements, which include drainage facilities between exfiltration trenches, swale areas, and pipes connected to a stormwater pump stations, and then ultimately a connection to the turnpike system to alleviate the community. Park East Community is another community in 2023 and some other heavy rain event. Again, this weekend, I received from Sandra an email, the Homeowners Association president, expressing some flooding. We advanced the design of this project, and we're going to – actually, the city has received a grant in $450,000. We advanced the design, and some of that money is going to be utilized for the construction of some of these improvements, and we're requesting some additional construction money for this project. Some of the improvements for this project is indicated on the slide in front of us. Then plantation parks. This community, the roadway is in a severe, fair condition and require paving. The paving, we need to fix some of the drainage underneath the paving, so we advanced some design of drainage improvement underneath these roadways. And we're requesting some construction money in order to advance this project aligned with the paving program. Then we allocated some money, or we requested some money to study the waterways. Often, we receive emails and requests about the conditions of our canals, when we're going to dredge the canals, the erosion in the canals. So we're requesting some money to do citywide waterway study in order to provide priorities and act accordingly. And again, I'm just zipping through these projects. What we did this year? This year, we analyzed the methodology of the stormwater assessment. Our stormwater utility is based on a unit called ERU. ERU is the Residential Unit, Measuring Unit. So, back in the day, in 2012, the city did a study, and the study revealed that an average home of plantation have 4,489 square footage of impervious. What is impervious is the roof, the driveway, the pool, anything that's not drained and cause runoff. We did an update before that. Our current methodology, every home in plantation, small or big, is allotted one ERU. The multifamily is the number of unit. The commercial is number of impervious divided by the measuring unit of 4,489. This year, we did a major update. We did a digital update to all the properties in plantation, and we found that that number had grew from 4,489 to 4,838. Therefore, we requested that this will be our new measuring unit of ERU. Also, we proposed the tiering criteria because, as I discussed before, every home in plantation was allocated one ERU. Whether it is a smaller home or a larger home. So, we proposed a criteria of five tiers, as it is explained on the slide. And every tier have a measuring of ERU, starting by tier one, half an ERU, to tier five, two and a half ERU. Then, we went further into analyzing our fund. How much our fund, and is it adequate to handle our needs operationally and capital perspective? The red line indicates the current revenue. The blue in the graph is our current operation need, and the yellow is our capital need. From this graph, we noticed that our current revenue is not adequate even to handle a sustainable operation. Therefore, we did analysis of, and we presented to Council, a couple of options of funding. Option one, do nothing and keep the fee as is, which, as we can see on the slide, is not adequate to sustain our operation. Then, we went and proposed option two of funding, which is set the ERU at $90, which is going to generate $4.6 million, which is still not, it is improved, but not adequate to sustainable operation and capital needs. And then, $96 per ERU, much improved, however, still not enough to sustain and to provide for all the capital needs identified in the stormwater master plan. And we proposed also, per the request of Council, another option of $108 per ERU per annually. And this, as we can see in the needle, moved the needle, the first option that moved the needle into the green to sustain operation and start giving us enough fund to move forward for the master plan. I just want to go over this option. Under this option, a smaller home that have half ERU will pay $54 assessment, and a larger home that have more than 10,000 square feet of impervious area will pay 2.5 ERU, which equates to $270. We also presented where we stand among the county. I updated this list because a lot of cities during their budget hearing had increased their stormwater fund or their ERU and stormwater assessment. So as we speak, we stand on the third lower in the graph. We are the only municipality that have the tiering option, not the flat fee of residential. And we have also presented the pros and cons of each one of the options, from $54 all the way to $125. We requested part of the budget to advance construction for Basin 2, which is a country club estate, and we allocated $750,000, part of FY27, budget, waterway, restoration plan in the amount of $250,000, Basin 3, which is Park East, $250,000, in addition to the grant that we acquired, and Plantation Park, $750,000, with a total capital of $2 million this year. Our current, based on the $108, the revenue is, actually the budget that was presented was based on $96, because when we presented in June, that was the consensus of $96. So we prepared the budget based on $96. However, that option put us on the minus of $155,000. What does that mean? We need to pull $105,000 from our fund balance to balance our operating budget for that year. We went back and presented all the options to Council on July 29. Council voted on setting the preliminary rate at a maximum rate of $108,000, which the structure in front of us, from $54,000 all the way to $270,000. On a timeline, as I said before, it was presented on a workshop, June 24, with, we adapted a resolution to change the ERU measurement. July 29, Council adapted a preliminary stormwater rate of 108, and trim notices were published and mailed to the public. I just want to say I received several emails and requests from the public, which I addressed each one of them. There was a couple of adjustments to certain properties. I personally visited certain properties or communicated with these residents accordingly. And also, educated the public, we have updated our website comprehensively with all this information, with simple graphic that the app, also the Pervious Impervious app, is published. So any resident can go, simply put their address, and can see all the information of their property on the app. And today, I stand before you for adapting the final stormwater rate. Our request is to maintain the 108 stormwater fee per ERU per year, please. Thank you, Ms. Shailon. I'm going to turn to my colleagues. Council Member Fajan. Thank you, Council President Horland. Really, just a comment, a statement regarding that table showing, like, where we stand amongst other municipalities for ERUs. So, one, you said that we're the only ones that's going to have the tier. Correct. Okay. In Broward County. In Broward County. Yes. And then, sorry. So each of those ERUs represent basically one household in the other cities. Yes. Okay. So I think that we're actually higher up because our average is going to be higher than the 108 rate. So it's not really a fair comparison to say that our ERU is 108 and we're number 14 in the county, when the reality is some households, if we approve the maximum stormwater fee that we agreed to at the max setting, it's a higher number. Yes and no. No, it's yes. It's math. The number of properties on the higher tier is 400, from memory, 400, let's say 500 properties. So as an average, yes, the average will be. So what is the average? I didn't do the math. Okay. But if we could. It's not really a big deal. I was really just sort of, I would say in the future for that comparison, it's worthwhile to see in it, but I would say that the average is much more important since that's not, we're not comparing ERU to ERU. We're comparing what we're charging each household. Understood. That's really my only comment. Thank you. That's a good point. Thank you, Council Member Fadgen. Councilmembers, any other comments or questions from Ms. Shailon? I know you've seen it before. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Shailon. We're going to go into general public comment. Is there anyone here? I've got two for stormwater. Anyone for general public comment? Okay. So what I'm going to remind everybody is public requests of the Council regarding municipal affairs. To those who wish to speak, we request that you complete a speaker form. If you have not done so already, please do so. When you're called, please approach the podium. Make sure the green light is on, and you will have three minutes to make your request to Council. Please state your name and address. And please address your remarks to the Council President, not the Mayor nor individual members of the Council. Please keep remarks to the allotted three minutes. Please use your time efficiently. If extra time will be needed to conclude your remarks, please ask for it as your time is expiring and not prior to beginning your remarks. Okay. So I'm a tour. Go ahead. And then we've got Mr. – I believe it's Neckor and then Ms. Bentley. I just wanted to address that last meeting, I heard the recording that some ending comments were made by the President, that there is disinformation, misinformation being spread in the community, without giving any examples. And we would like to know what kind of misinformation or disinformation is being spread in the community. We are actually trying to inform the residents about the calm plan that the city was supposed to be doing, and most of them do not know about it, which we have already mentioned to everybody. Educating the people. We have been – our posts are being flagged. The information is not going out as it should. I don't know who's behind it, but as soon as we started giving out information, we were getting so many questions from the people. What is this? What is going to happen? What does it mean? Where can we get information? And we started giving out pamphlets online, you know, to people. Things that we know that we are finding online, and it's true. There is nothing made up. So, please look into it, you know, about misinformation or disinformation. Everybody was very upset, because we are actually trying to help the people, which you guys should have been doing. And we've been asking you guys to give out more information so people know in the city. Three things I want to say. Today, I've been hearing from you all that Marketplace Project will be done as per our terms, which is your terms. I want to make sure that the terms are as per the people, and people do not want residential on Marketplace. So, that's the first thing. Second thing is we have asked every one of you. We have sent emails after emails. We want an extension of 180 days, so the people can know how they're going to be impacted with this calm plan. Live Local Act is the third thing that we really, really want. The city wants you guys to really stand up for the city, for the people, rather, and fight the state, as some of the other cities are doing. It's very important for people to know that you guys are working, you know, helping us out, and we can trust you. So, please do what needs to be done. Thank you for your comments. Mr. Necker, I'm sorry. I see that you did sign up for Strongwater, so Ms. Bentley is the only other one signed up for general public comment. Ms. Bentley? Okay. With that, public comment is closed. We'll move into the legislative item, the public hearing on the resolution of the city of Plantation, relating to the provision of stormwater management utility fee. Would you like to read it? Sure. Requests to approve a resolution of the city council of the city of Plantation, Florida, relating to the levy and collection of the city's stormwater management utilities fees for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2026, approving, confirming, and adopting the stormwater management utility fees, and the management utility fee assessment role, providing for other matters related to the levy and collection of the stormwater management utility fees, providing for conflict, providing for severability, and providing for an effective date. Thank you, Mr. Morgan. Council members, do we have a motion on this item, and then we can move to public comment on the item? Motion to approve. Do we have a second or any discussion? Second. No discussion? Then we'll move into, we have Mr. Huizenga, then Mr. Wiggin, and then Mr. Necker. Okay. Go ahead. So we decided that 108 is the number we wanted to go with, because there was some discussion at the meeting when we were setting the maximum as to whether we wanted to go a little bit lower. I believe Councilmember Andreo and Councilmember Anderson were kind of talking to that point. Are we? Okay, my mistake. I was on the higher end. You what? It was on the higher end. Okay, my mistake. Okay. I was on the lower end. Okay. Councilmember Reinstein, Councilmember Andreo, do we want to have any further discussion before we just proceed with the 108 motion? If I may. If memory serves me correctly, I think that we couldn't get that number passed at that particular meeting. Um, and so that's how we landed here, and then in my communication with Ms. Shallon, again, I, I wanted to try to keep it under 100 and do this in increments, right, and revisit it. But in speaking with Ms. Shallon and seeing the need, um, and her budget shortfall, if you will, and having to go into, um, the general fund, I am going, I'm, that's why I made the motion. I'm going to approve the motion, I'm going to approve the motion, I'm going to approve the 108. Thank you, Councilmember Andreo, Councilmember Anderson, and then Reinstein. Just, just, again, just to reiterate probably what I said back then. This is a necessity. It's not a luxury. We need it. Um, I commend Ms. Shallon and her crew for cleaning our canals and cleaning our drains and being proactive. We're not like other cities that defer, defer, and then they wait until there's a tragedy or, or a massive thing. And I remember asking you that night, fixing something in an emergency situation is four to five to 10 times more than proactively fixing things. So it's a necessity. And I like that we're right sizing. A small home shouldn't be paying what a McMansion is. They should be tiered. So I think we're fairly assessing and we're appropriately charging for necessity. So, and, and honestly, it's a little lower than what she is really asking for. Thank you, Councilmember Anderson. And, and I think we had said it at the previous hearing too, that once that study was done, I think it was 2011, 2012, the city kept that rate artificially low at $30 a year, which was $2.50 a month for 11 years. Um, and unfortunately when you came on board, there was a lot of, um, deferred maintenance. And I think we all know that once that stormwater master plan was done and showed us, um, what needed to be addressed in the system, this was vitally important that you come forward with this plan. So thank you. Councilmember Reinstein. I didn't forget.