- So it is August 6th, 2025, technically 3.31 PM, but the bell just rang. So we will call the Monroe County Storm Order Management Board meeting for Wednesday, August 6th, 2025 to order. We are in the County Courthouse Building in the Nat U Hill meeting room. And I see Surveyor Enright Randolph is present. I myself am present live in the Nat U Hill meeting room.
- online. We have Commissioner Thomas and we also have Stormwater Director Erica Pina here live and a number of other individuals. And so we are ready to start. So first I'd like to call for public input for items not on the agenda.
- Just to be perfectly clear, we have no one in the audience here live. And so is there anyone on Teams who would like to provide public comment? Seeing no hands, I will move on. I would like to move approval of the minutes for May 7th, 2025. So moved. Do we have any corrections for those minutes?
- I'm gonna second. I don't think we have any corrections mentioned for those meetings. So for those minutes, I'm sorry. So all of those in favor for approving the minutes for May 7th, 2025, please say. Do we have to do a roll call? Yes. Okay. Yes. We can do a roll call vote. So would you like to do that?
- sure. Okay, then we'll call the roll for that vote. All right. Julie Thomas? Yes. Jody Madeira? Yes. Tronin Randolph? Yes. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you so much. And we will proceed to approving the stormwater expenditure. I'm sorry, to hearing the stormwater expenditure report for April, May, and June, 2025.
- Okay, for April, we had 21,469 and 64 cents for backfill. And that was mostly from the bridge crew. We also spent 40,000 in public education, but that was 35,000 for an MOU and 5,000 for a summer intern.
- And then the other big one is 25,000 for Lake Monroe water quality. That was for grant 319 friends of Lake Monroe. And then any questions on? The MOU with SWCD, correct? Is that what you're referring to with the education line?
- No, we have a separate MOU with Friends of Lake Monroe under their 319 grant to help fund their Maggie Sullivan's position, I believe. Okay, so this is just some continuation of the watershed study Maggie did and also maybe some of our other support with kind of identifying kind of
- key issues like the septic maintenance. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to make sure. For May, we had fleet maintenance 9,161 58 and that's because this two months in there that's for April and May. And then backfill 32,174 18 and that's the bridge crew on call.
- Contracting is $7,593.81, and that was for 36 traffic officers. And then gas, $10,575.77, and that was also for the two months, April and May. And then the last one is $115,729.33, and that was tree and stump removal on Stipp Road.
- questions on that one. Not a maybe a question on that, but just kind of maybe a tracking comment is when we we have a number of on call contract services and I'm really kind of curious to start trying to get a number of what we spend for some of our plat reviews.
- It's been a kind of a point of curiosity for me for a while, and we send those out to be in compliance with some of our ordinances. And I'm just kind of curious if there's any way that we could kind of track that expense and maybe at some point, and I'd leave it to you to bring it to us, that is there a better option for the county as far as kind of getting a drainage engineer review versus tracking that out all the time?
- That's kind of just a comment there and it would be nice to start trying to track that because if there's ever an opportunity to kind of invest in our employees or bring in another specialist, it'd be awesome if those numbers started making sense at one point. And then last is June and in fleet maintenance, we had repairs of 13,900 and excuse me, 80.
- Six seventy seven. I think the great all was had to be repaired and some trucks and then also ten thousand eight hundred and seven dollars and fifty cents and that was for thirty one traffic officers and then thirty eight thousand one hundred and twenty five dollars and that was for a new truck. They retired the SUV.
- Thank you very much. Any additional questions on the report? Yes, I see Commissioner Thomas has her hand raised on teams. Thank you. Thank you so much. Hello, everyone. Sorry, I'm not there in person. So with the additional preparation on Stipper Road, Moores Creek, back in April,
- It changed the appropriation balance unexpended from 87% to 81%. Are we looking, and it's supposed to be done this year, are we on target to finish this year still? And are we going to expend all of that money?
- So we actually just had some emails on the status of this project today. The problem has been that most of SIPP Road down in the car top area has been underwater since I believe around the first week of April. And we did drive down there yesterday and has receded quite a bit. We are, ENB Paving is the contractor for that project. They're looking at their scheduling.
- They're hoping that if they can still start this project by September 1st, that it would be a 2025 completion. Our goal is to do that project and then in the highway budget, we have money set aside to pave the remainder of Stip Road. We're trying to do that all in 2025. It's just the water has putting a little damper on that.
- So that was my next question. So thank you so much. Excellent. Any other questions? I don't see any other hands raised on teams. I have one question, and I guess it's just because of the. I did a budget process is the next page in the packet.
- Page 11 out of seven, is that what we're? Page seven will be looking at the 2026 budget. Okay, I didn't see that on the agenda, so I just want to make sure. It's under business. So that's our next item, 5A. Oh, I'm getting ahead of myself. Thank you, I just wanted to make sure that it was here.
- anything else. All right, then thank you so much. We can move on to new business and the first item new of new business is the twenty twenty six stormwater budget. So I apologize if if this is a little small for you to see I'll try to zoom in. So basically the the top
- um all of our current staff uh with the cola cost of living adjustment a slight increase there um moving down into our general um budget line we did
- Decrease a few items just based on the last several years. We looked at what the actual spent on some of those were. So we did decrease a few things. We increased our field crew supplies because over the last couple years, we did have to repeatedly transfer money into there at the end of the year. And so we're just trying to avoid that for next year. Keeping a few things the same, just fleet maintenance and repair.
- doing a little more sampling this year coming up. So we're keeping that the same with a little bit of extra cushion for some additional materials, looking into purchasing a salinity meter to help us assess impacts of salt, road salt, on some of our waterways, especially those that are directly adjacent to some of our roadways. Increasing our pipes line. We are doing a lot more pipe repairs
- and cost of those pipes has also increased. We contribute $75,000 annually to our backfill pavement repair materials to help the highway department with paving projects. Decrease to our signs. Haven't had to really use those in a while. Gas oil and lube is staying the same.
- The repairs equipment vehicle line was deleted by the auditor, so we're keeping that at zero. We're keeping our contractual services aligned the same. We added one full-time staff member this year, but we're still looking at how we're budgeting and we're able to keep our training and travel aligned the same. We had to increase our software due to increasing costs, Cartograph.
- cost us $24,504 in 2024. That went up in 2025. I think we had to do a transfer. So we're looking at trying to catch up with, keep that in mind. On-call was changed to a new account line, 30006. We do our annual yearly monitoring at Fieldstone Dam. We're keeping remote monitoring line the same.
- a few same items there for lab fees, disposal fees, and hydro seating, as well as our maintenance and good housekeeping line. We're increasing our professional fees in anticipation of really looking at our long range drainage plan. The current timeframe is through 2026, so we will want to start in 2026 looking at the next 10 years.
- And that cost increase was based on what it cost us the last time to do that. We are increasing our public education and participation line in part because of continued efforts to support the Soil and Water Conservation District for their summer intern, as well as increasing our own public education and outreach efforts. We're doing some more targeted outreach to HOAs, realtor groups. We're looking at some of the groups that have been neglected in the past or just
- need a little extra attention. We do plan to complete South Shore Drive this year, but we're holding that over just in case it's not completed this year. But fingers crossed that will also get completed this year. Look at a few of our notes here. Other insurance or non-health insurance did have to increase.
- We increased our refunds line just to account for a few more regular stormwater fee refunds that have been issued. We are continuing to do our Lake Monroe water quality, the 319 grant match as well as the Lake Monroe water fund water monitoring grant as well.
- We did decrease our rental equipment line because we did buy our crew the jackhammer. That was one of our most frequently rented items. So now we'll have our own. Keeping Baby Creek line the same, hoping to potentially make some progress on those. Stip road, again, this was anticipated to be completed this year, but keeping that line there just in case. Equipment line, we're hoping for a new sweeper.
- cost us about $450,000. That new sweeper will help our crews sweep up some larger debris, not have to get out of the truck in the traffic lane as frequently and just be able to keep on moving, get through their routes more quickly and more safely. We do have no other new vehicles planned for 2026. So that's our questions or comments. Excellent.
- Any questions or comments? Yes, Commissioner Thomas has her hand raised on teams. Thank you so much. I have a question about the long range plan store. It's really a storm water plan, right? And how how a? Vendor was selected for that.
- What was and how what was selected vendor how you chose a vendor? So Julie one will do a request for proposals Okay, and then I'm sure I wasn't I wasn't involved when you guys did the the one in 2016 really but I believe you probably did interviews maybe with some of the
- that were received. That would be kind of our process going forward. We'd probably we discuss this maybe sending out a request for proposals maybe in the fall to where we could get maybe do the interviews over the winter and then be ready for it to go when the twenty twenty six budget hits. Great that's wonderful I thought you named a company and I thought boy that's quick okay good that sounds perfect thank you so much.
- I'll just kind of share my involvement. When those came in, I was here during the adoption process, but not kind of putting the plan together. I did review all of the kind of preliminary plans that were submitted. And I think we did a RFQ for qualifications because then we selected the best fit versus the one that came in the cheapest. So I would potentially suggest RFQ approach. So we get the right
- consultant. That's kind of my very vague knowledge on there. I still have some of the old other service providers kind of preliminary studies still. I need to purge those records. I do have a couple additional questions. I want to make sure Commissioner Thomas was done. I'm going to assume she was.
- and I'll just run through these. I think it's nice to know once we get through like category one, that's already 1.19 million. So that's a big chunk of the dollars being spent. My first question, well, two comments, I guess. Two comments and then one, that's a question. One comment, it would be nice to just have the 2025
- next to the 2026 so when we see an increase decrease we get a better sense of kind of the difference there and then the other one is what how much revenue did we bring in last year and I'm always under the assumption we're at like 2.1 2.3 okay so that's good because we're not really high kind of
- eating into too much of our cash balance at a 2.7 budget. Seems like every year we have a pretty large vehicle expense, and I've gotten used to understanding that there's that need and that lifetime of equipment. Can I comment on that? Please. So we debated on putting in a sweeper, honestly, because we had the big expense of the grade all last year. And talking with the crew,
- Of course, prices just increase every year. The sweeper that we're replacing is from 2012. So it's got 13 years on it. I'm not sure of what the hours are on it. So we want to try and stay a little bit ahead of it to where, you know, we get sweeping requests, especially right after winter, continuously throughout the summer.
- of more subdivisions wanting more sweeping. We have the new lane on old 37 North that we've received continuous requests for sweeping there. Buying this again, as Eric has stated, it's a lot more efficient. We have a Tyco is the 2012. This one is an Elgin. It just gives us more flexibility, more efficiency, it's safer.
- So that's why we kind of threw it in there because we saw that we weren't eating too much into the cash. We can still save that for larger projects that'll come, especially from the new long range plan. So if you want to hold off a year, we wouldn't be upset, but we've kind of, after we did the budgets, we saw that it could still be a fit at this time. So. Yeah.
- I know I did some research on the Gradle. I don't really know kind of any kind of lifetime expectancy for a street sweeper. I will also say that kind of going through budget myself, I was looking at the potential increase or inflation on equipment and things. So I think if we have in the budget now, they'll save us in the long run. And also, you know, as potential budgets get a little tighter,
- might as well try to get what we need. So I'm comfortable with kind of having that in there. Like I said, I liked it. We debated and we went back and forth as like, you know, but it's, we saw it doable on for this, even though we did do the great all last year and the great alls great. It helps us with so many of the storms right now.
- with all the trees that are saturated and falling more it seems like each day. So yeah we're just wanting to stay a little bit ahead and not fall behind and I think this knock on wood should be our last big purchase. Great thanks for the further kind of explanation on there and your kind of consideration of really wanting to be you know a good steward of kind of the Stormwater Fund.
- The other one was kind of goes in line with Commissioner Thomas's question about the long range drainage plan. I absolutely am supportive of this. I think it's absolutely needed. I think that could really help us also with kind of trying to adjust some of our priorities due to the inflation of cost and construction material. So I'm really excited about that. And I just have,
- two more highlighted things. I like that the pipes are still kind of within a good budget range. I know that this is some of what you brought to us, Ms. Ridge, and I think that is a very great way to help kind of show that partnership
- with highway and stormwater needs because if we can help mitigate and prevent issues or even offset certain expenses, I think that's a great way of kind of balancing the stormwater and all your other duties that you have as highway director. And then finally what I have is it's just kind of a placeholder for that 3000 if if
- Are you thinking we'd go for additional appropriation on that or is it or in house. Sure that's in the budget now or for next year. For next year we just think we only. Sorry I just put the dollar in there to keep it active okay we hope to have that done this fall okay so this is just this is just over potential just in case we don't get it done but it's our goal to have that done this fall. And I guess the baby creek because I know there's always a
- certain elements of the project that have to be continued year on and year on. Is this kind of just a part of finishing the projects, the 95,000? It definitely would not be finishing. That is one that is lingering out there. I'm hoping maybe with the new long range stormwater plan, maybe we can address some of that. It was what was estimated for that project in the plan.
- was way under what we first quoted. When we bid out one pipe, one culvert replacement along that road, I think there's four and then one on Brock, just the one pipe by itself was a million dollars in the bid. We estimated being able to do all five for a million dollars. So it's, we've kind of moved it a little bit down on the priority list, just because of the stiff road, Morse Creek, we saw more that we wanted to utilize those funds.
- um served a better purpose than we just we did not realize that the baby creek would come in at the at that cost um i'm not sure if there's still ways that we can revamp the design of that project um so it's just kind of it is lingering out there for us um but and also on your comment on the long-range plan i don't know how they came up
- with the projects at that time, because I wasn't involved. But I'm hoping with what we have today, we know where our problems exist. In stormwater, in highway, we deal with it with planning, we know what issues are out there. So I'm hoping with the resources that we have, and what we have tracked, we can help build that long range plan that really fits our needs of where these problem areas are that's continuous. And I mean,
- That would be my big hope for the next long range plan. We have smaller areas that we need the assistant on for addressing those drainage issues, but we don't have the capability to do it. But I think we can be a big part of building that long range plan with what we've tracked over the last 13 years. Yeah, I think that was one element kind of missing out of our last one is kind of
- our internal institutional knowledge and also our ability kind of to reprioritize them. And I will say one more thing about that. It's great to have a 20 year plan, but once we get to 20 years, that cost has increased quite dramatically. So it'd be really interesting to kind of have more of a bite size approach, but that all like benefit like a long-term plan as well, because
- I don't even refer to that document for cost anymore or any kind of, you know, baseline. It's just, it's not, it doesn't work. And then I think that kind of covers everything I had highlighted. I wanted to make one more comment that I really appreciate kind of that educational outreach with like HOAs, realtors, builders. I think,
- That is a great use and anything we can do to help support those costs, I think, will get in return from people kind of dealing with their issues and mitigating impacts that would actually cost the county funds to repair or mitigate. And then finally, on this report, I'm the one that says elected official on the
- personnel of one one zero zero zero and then when you get all the way over to where it says Alery Alery where. Hourly rate. Let's just be clear I I don't make seventy three thousand one hundred and ninety six dollars an hour. So just. Wanted to mention that that's just so that the spreadsheet can do its magic math and have you it be the point two five. That we contribute
- the 25% that we contribute to your salary in the budget line. I see, I see. I just wanted to, it caught my attention, but that's it. It looks like we did a great job with the budget. Nothing too different from last year and I'll be willing, I'll be supporting it today. Yes, I just wanted to say about the new sweeper. I think that it's a good,
- expense to put on now because we're actually decision making in a condition of certain uncertainty. We read daily about new tariffs that are being imposed and I think that we don't know what's coming down the pike and we don't know what new restrictions on financing we will face. And so this is easily a piece of equipment that could experience substantial increase in costs. So unfortunately, or
- that or we could experience mechanical issues with the current sweeper and we could experience increased costs for repairs and maintenance. And so mechanical parts, sorry. So I think that's good to go ahead and put that in. What types of costs are incurred for long range drainage plans? Just I wanted to get a clear picture there.
- Again, I wasn't involved in the first one. I think it's more of the hours and putting it all together, meeting with the consultant that's chosen and going with all the information that we can provide. So it's basically you're really paying for their hours to put together that plan. Right. Right. Yeah. That makes perfect sense.
- And going with the RFQ makes sense as well. We really want the right person, not the cheapest person here. Of course, we were mindful as to cost, but the right consultant makes a difference. I don't think I have any other questions, although if you were making $73,196 an hour, you know. I'm coming for my job. Commissioner Thomas raised her hand. Yes, Commissioner Thomas. Yes, thank you.
- I just want to say that although it looks like we're planning on, I think an RFQ is, so request for quotes is great. An RFP is very similar. I think we do wanna find the best fit with some sample.
- plans you can look probably back at what we approved way back in 20 whatever it was 15 or 14 to get moving on it but it is I think one of the things we need to do before we issue that and I don't know when you want to throw this on our agenda Ms. Penna but
- I think we should look at the current one, the current long range plan because there are things on it we have not done. And I think we could have a discussion about which things we'd wanna carry forward. And if there are things that we thought we needed to do that we no longer think we need to do. I think having that done before we issue any kind of
- call for project requests from vendors would be a wise use of our time at a meeting. The other thing I will say is that I absolutely agree that getting a sweeper into the budget now is a very smart idea because hopefully by 27,
- we will be looking at projects to fund and we won't want to spend money on equipment as Ms. Ridge pointed out. I'm going to go ahead and make a motion to approve this budget proposal for 2026 for the stormwater department. I will second that motion. I just want to make a comment before we call the roll. Unless I have it wrong,
- I'm fine with kind of making, have another go around and making sure we select the right approach for kind of RFQ or RFP, but I thought RFQ is request for qualifications and RFP is a request for proposals. I'll let you get back to me, but that's my quick understanding. No, it is. It is, I said quotes, it is qualifications. But I think we are gonna need both, is my point.
- I mean, I'm not married to any one of these ideas. Because we need to know how much they're going to charge, right? I think this is very helpful to me seeing, you know, that this is all new, and so this is extraordinarily useful. I just wanted to add on to that just real quickly before we call the vote, because then everything isn't really related to this, is with our last plan, we had a lot of
- projects and I think we as we're going through it and this will be better for a work session or another meeting but like there's going to be certain ones where they'll put together this plan but maybe we could already allocate some costs for the engineering work and things of that nature and be more shovel ready so whenever there's another opportunity like ARPA or other
- unknown funds to actually have that engineering work done at maybe the cost that they are kind of predicting it will be more in that timeline after they get the plan ready could be very valuable for our long term goals of having some shovel ready projects on that list. And I think that's what started to get kind of a little wonky with our 2014 plan and never really having those
- engineered out and shovel ready. So that's it. Sorry for the delay on the vote, but I'm ready whenever the board is. Are we ready to call the roll? We need to take public comment. Oh, yes, let's take public comment. Seeing is that there is no one here in the Nat Hill, Nat U Hill room that's go online. I don't see any hands raised on teams.
- And so I will suggest that we call the roll. Julie Thomas? Yes. Jodi Madeira? Yes. Tron Enright Randolph? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. And the next item of new business is the Redbud Heights Drainage Improvement Project. Yes. So I will just remind you that you
- We did approve this under stormwater management board resolution 2024-1 last year. So now we are coming to you with the engineer's cost estimate of
- $306,759. So we did, Lisa was very helpful. She did submit to the council. It'll be taken to their August 12th meeting for a new account line and the additional appropriation for this year for $350,000 requested just to account for potential cost increases and a little bit of flexibility there.
- budget. As of July seventeenth our current cash balance was four million ninety seven thousand six hundred eighty six dollars and sixty two cents. I would like to move to approve- this drainage improvement project. Budget. Do we have any
- motion a second. No comments. Are there any public comments? Obviously, none here live. None from teams that I'm seeing. All right. I think we're ready to call the roll. Commissioner Thomas? Yes. Commissioner Madeira? Yes. Surveyor Enright-Randolph?
- Sorry, I'm taking that one in. Yes, and then just wanted to thank Ms. Ridge for her kind of moving things parallel both to the stormwater board and to the council just to kind of keep things rolling. I hated to put it on before we had this meeting, but it just gets delayed and then you might not be able to get to the project. But I could have always pulled it
- from the council agenda, if needed. I'm happy that you did. Excellent. And moving on to staff reports. We have the emergency watershed protection program. Yes, so some updates. I did bring this to the commissioner's meeting a couple weeks ago.
- maybe about a month ago now. So I did submit the letter to the USDA NRCS for the Emergency Watershed Protection Program. I am waiting for the damage survey reports, which are to be coming from a member of the NRCS. I know that they went out and were doing inspections last week, I believe, so we should get those reports soon, which will then outline their
- scope of work and remediation, stream bank stabilization, those kinds of things.
- our on-call contract with HNTB. We are looking to have them support us in this venture for the Emergency Watershed Protection Program through reviewing documents that are provided by the NRCS, helping us put together information as required, compiling data to make sure that we're in compliance with federal and state requirements, and just
- overall supporting us as we go through this because I don't have enough time in the day. So here is our draft scope with a fee estimate not to exceed $25,000. Excellent. Thank you for that description.
- Um, so I would like to move to approve the emergency watershed protection program. I have a couple of questions, but I'll second that just to keep things moving forward. Um, and if I may, um, so this fee only applicable if we end up receiving that grant or
- Okay, so this is just kind of getting everything in order. So if we do achieve that, then we can just bring them on and hit the ground running, so to speak. Yes. Okay. And if we don't receive it, then this just expense just kind of goes away as far. Correct. And they would not have anything to support us on. So there would be no work. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't sure if we had to kind of put some skin in the game upfront, but this is even better.
- So with that, no questions and looking to support it. Any other questions? Any public comment on this matter? Obviously none here live. Any online? All right, so I think we're ready to call the roll on approving the emergency watershed protection program. Commissioner Thomas? Yes.
- Commissioner Madeira? Yes. And Surveyor Tron and Rhett Rathal? Yes. Thank you. All right. Before we adjourn, does anyone have any comments they'd like to make? News? All right. Then I think we're ready to adjourn. The date of our next meeting is September 3rd, 2025. I have problems believing that it's already August. So thank you all very much. Thanks, everyone.
- Thank you. Thank you.