Village Community Development District No. 13 (2024-11-07)

Call the meeting to order for CDD 13. Okay, we have roll call. We have everyone here except for, um, Mr. Mr Law. Is that better? Can you hear me now? Barely. Barely. I'll try to talk loud. Uh, count. Supervisor Law is not here, and Supervisor Oli is not here, but we do have a quorum, so we're good. So if we could all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, and then after that, a moment of silence. I pledge Allegiance and through Republic for which stands, one ation under God in the middle of liberty and justice. So we'd like to welcome everyone here to the CDD 13 meeting and all of the attendees that are here. And if anyone has any public comments, please approach the podium. State your name, your address, and your comment. Good afternoon. My name Cliff Weiner. I live on, Hi name is Cliff Weiner. I live on Duvet Lane in District four. I'm district four chairman of the board. I am here before you to ask you to request staff hopefully to become part of the multimodal pass discussion group. Tina, you're well aware of this as I've been before them many times. The last resolution we had, they turned down. So now I am doing it by going through districts. Yesterday I was at the A a C, and before this I was at District 12. They both agreed to become part of it. 1, 2, 4 is part of it. Five will be part of it next week, and seven, and probably six, hopefully, and some others. So I'm asking you guys to consider asking staff to bring the resolution back because PA will not be part of it this time. It's gonna be the individual districts and staff needs to know which districts wanna participate so they can include that in the resolution. Hopefully you guys will choose to join us. There are many safety issues on the multimodal paths in districts one through 13 that need to be addressed. Hopefully you guys will choose to join us. I hope so. Thank you for your time. Thank you. So for this item, um, it is up to the board as, uh, supervisor Weiner stated the project wide. Um, and Ms. Williamson, you know, as well, elected not to participate in that. They thought that the decision should all be made at the project wide meeting. Um, the multimodal path discussion group is just that, it's a discussion group. No action can be taken or formal decisions made. Um, but what staff is looking for is a, a essentially a final decision from each board. Would you like to participate in that group? And if so, then we will bring that resolution as you will be a party to it. It is completely up to the board, um, each individual residential district to, um, determine whether or not that's something you would like to send a member to. Knowing that no decisions would be made there, everything would have to come back pretty much in your area to PWA for consideration. And is that something we discussed today or do we add it on our agenda for our next meeting to discuss? Um, you would add it on your, I mean, if you don't want to do it, it dies. Now. If you want to include yourself, then we will add you as a party to the resolution that will go on everybody's agenda next month. Carrie, we we wanna be on that board. I agree. Okay. Do I have consensus? That's fine. Okay. So the resolution will be, um, on your, your agenda next month. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Regarding the flooding, uh, recently in Una on the streets, I'm gonna read a statement here For two years, officials were informed by UNA residents. The standing water was always visible near the top of the large grate in the middle of the road on Mabel Terrace, with a concern expressed that the system would be easily overwhelmed if a large storm order would occur. Officials said they would look into this as predicted. Dozens of homeowners were impacted by the stormwater drainage system being overwhelmed. All the northern end of Woodington circle, about a quarter of a mile, as well as numerous streets intersecting with Woodington Circle had large ponds of deep water, standing water covering driveways for up to three days. Cars going through this flooding were sending waves up into people's garages with many residents standing vigil outside their homes, signaling approaching cars to slow down to prevent these waves. Residents posted countless photos and videos of this flooding on Facebook. So the exact impact of this is well known and is not being exaggerated. There were weeks of posts and conversations about this flooding on Facebook. If the rain had continued for even another day, the flooded marsh already over the return retaining walls and on people's backyards would've submerged the houses in swamp water. At one point, an official commented on Facebook that the system was designed to handle storms that only occur one every 100 years. Also, someone mentioned that the system is functioning as designed. It is worth noting that a storm of the strength hit the villages in 2017 and caused a lot of damage. So rather than every 100 years, we might expect to see this again. More recently, people in official vehicles came to the area to look at these large ponds in the roads. In some cases, these officials spoke with residents who came out of their homes seeking information about what was planned to prevent this from happening again, only to be told again, it was being looked into. I was required to pay a $20,000 bond that I was told was for infrastructure. This is a lot of money myself and all my neighbors expect that our bonds will provide, at the very least, basic functioning infrastructure, basic functioning drainage. The system did indeed function as planned in the rest of Una. So telling us that flooding was normal, um, is on unacceptable residents who changed the exterior of their homes without permission can be fined for being out of compliance and expected to bring it back into compliance. We believe that your drainage system in this portion of deluna is not functioning and is out of compliance, and we expect you to bring it back into compliance. My remarks are not intended as re as rhetorical. I'm asking you to please address the remarks that I've just made. Thank you, Sir. Sir, sir, we do. I'm sorry. We need your name and address for the record, please. Uh, yes. My name is Bill Steele. The address is 3 2 4 6 Mabel. Thank you. And deluna. Yep. And Madam Chair, this is on the agenda, so if you would like, we can certainly move this up. Um, we do have the engineers here as well to, um, answer any questions that the board may have. So it's up to your prerogative if you would like to wait till that piece of the agenda or pull it up. Should we ask how many people are here in support of this that night? I, I'm okay moving it up. Are y'all okay? I, I agree. Yeah, let's move it up. So Mr. Harris did put together, um, a presentation on this as well as we have attached a lot of information and correspondence that we've had, um, with both the board and residents. Good afternoon. Mike Harris, district Property Management. The stormwater drainage system in the villages is designed to manage excess water. The stormwater drainage system in the villages is designed to manage excess water, directing it into surrounding basins, in some cases overflow from these basins into nearby wetlands. In nature preserves the stormwater management system complies with all federal, state and local reg regulations. Key requirements include sizing pond systems prevent flooding for homes during a hundred year storm and ensures the downstream properties are not affected. During rain events. During Hurricane Helena, high winds caused an equalization pipe in the north end of the wetland adjacent to a residential basin to float resulted in elevate, resulting in elevated water levels. This issue was promptly addressed, which indicated initiated a reduction of water levels. However, the high water levels delayed the complete drainage causing standing water on the roadways. During Milton, no water entered residential homes. After the storm, we conducted comprehensive inspection of the drainage system and found that the stormwater outlet in the wetland to the west was severely clogged. The blockage was cleared and within 16 hours, water levels in the wetlands dropped one and a half feet. Additionally, debris along the outfall of wetland W three were removed to improve flow. Ongoing monitoring has shown significant reductions in the water levels, conseque. Consequently, the system performed as designed and we have implemented further basin monitoring, stormwater drain inspections and drainage maintenance to ensure continued effectiveness. We have a member of the engineer team and the district's water management team here to answer any questions you may have. So, Ms. Mr. Harris, when you say the, the system functioned as designed, it functioned as designed knowing that, not knowing at the time that there was a pretty big clog in one of the valves? That is correct. So there was not a necessarily a failure to the system. There was a failure in which we did not know that the valve was clogged. And, um, once it was corrected, it, it then functioned like it should. We did get calls from residents that said that they were afraid that something was happening. We did go out there numerous times and we did not see that clog. So that is something that we have moving forward that we know that in that area that is a potential issue. And so not only will it be checked more routinely, but before we have large storms events like this, uh, we will certainly make sure that that area is checked as well. Um, again, Mr. Harris is here, the engineers are here, um, that design and, and help function the system. So I I, I hesitate to have a whole bunch of back and forth. I don't know how you wanna handle it. If you want all of the residents to come up first, voice their questions and comments, and then have staff or the engineers address it, that probably would be best to, to do. I guess I have one question. I mean, I know we're gonna monitor it and we'll monitor it before a storm comes, but is there anything that we should do additionally preventatively to keep it from clogging? No, I think the two factors, again, the, the, the floating pipe. What was, what started the factors? It raised the levels there, which didn't allow the water to move, you know, successfully into that area as fast as it should. And then again, when, when, when the, the pipe was clogged, it just compounded the issues with those two issues fixed. The system is functioning properly. Okay, so the meetings are recorded, so unfortunately you can't speak unless you're at the podium and give your name and address. Um, and I think, uh, Madam Chair said she would turn it over to residents first and then we can have the engineer or Mr. Harris address any questions. My name is Enid Chela. I live at 32 34 Mabel Terra. Um, I, my street was impassable for four days, which is hard to believe that I couldn't leave the house. Nobody even came by to say, you guys, okay. The hydrant across the street from me was totally submerged. I could not see it when I called water management a couple days later, I was told that the pipe in the wetlands, or swamp, whatever you wanna call it, had broken free. I wasn't told that it was clogged. The other issue is I've called repeatedly that the storm drain in front of 32 30 Mabel is constantly have water in it. I, yes, Jacobs was there yesterday working on another issue. I showed them the water. They said there should be no water in there. There was still water in there today. It's never dry, even in the dead of summer. It's never dry. My name is Kim Platt and I live on 43 98 Shannon Loop. And I want to just address the storm sewers and the street flooding and the preserve as well. It all goes together. Um, there is over 282 inch diameter of storm drain pipes that flow directly into the preserve and the pond. And only one 15 inch drain that is far on the far end of the preserve that the drain water drains out of. I took a picture today to see where the water was at and it's still high. Um, we still have a lot of, um, water in the, what we now consider swamp land. Um, normally that's not the case, but for the last year, that is the case. Hence why we are having water in the storm sewers and, um, during the hurricane flooding in the streets. So how do we prevent this from happening? I like the fact that you did take action and you did clean out the, the drain discharge that you should have been watching all along. Um, second, you need to provide some kind of strainer or cage to keep this only 15 inch intake from being clogged again. Otherwise, we're in the same boat for the following hurricane season. We can't have, um, storm sewers that are being flowed into the, the preserve and in the preserve higher than the storm sewers. It doesn't, it doesn't work and it doesn't take a civil engineer to figure that out. Additionally, the drain that is already in existence in the preserve is way too high. I have pictures. I'd love to share 'em with you. It's way too high. The preserve is still underwater, and so we have a high potential of it turning into the same situation of the drain not flowing correctly. Um, so I wanna address the, the drain itself. It's only 15 inches, um, and it goes over 150, um, feet long to get to the other side of the next preserve, which I call woods. Um, and we need to have some kind of pump for emergency drainage. Um, we are in a location that, yep, we do get, um, hurricane conditions and yep, we do get flooding. So how are you going to prevent this from happening, happening again? We don't wanna wait till after the storm. We want to solve the problem before this storm. Thank you. Hello, my name's Mark, mark Mattis. Uh, 4 5 3 4 Bird lane. Just some local history. 2021 in 2021. Hear that We had the same storm problem in August of 2021. We had a massive rain. Who was the lady right here, front of her house, all flooded the same way. And all those basins I've been watching 'em and Belville is warn along, uh, within circle the back. No, we're all full. I was a plumber for 20 years. I know two things. SHI he runs downhill and those basins are not supposed to be full. Come on. Engineering. Who is the, come on really? Come on. That's ridiculous. Those patients should be empty and they go down to the pond, retention pond. And there either you're gonna make deeper those retention ponds or you're gonna do what this young lady said, put a lift station over by the, it's gonna, I know it's all about money, but we pay and pump that stuff. Dig a trench with a six inch pipe going across the street, March bend Trail down to those ponds that weren't that full across from the pool. Up the hell out of there. Why are we waiting for this to happen again? It's gonna happen again. This is the third time I know it costs money. And listen, I take construction. You put a pump's house there, it looks pretty behind the pool, the damn trench, not anybody's yard across the street, down the walkway, down to those other ponds. And when it, the storm's coming, just lower the level and that's all you gotta do. Otherwise, unless you're gonna dig up that pipe coming off of winding circle under those houses, which I know you're not gonna do that, that's not gonna happen. Uh, yeah, you're not gonna re you're not gonna reconfigure the pump the pipes from winding the circle. That's not gonna happen. But the lift station, that's something you could do. Yeah, it costs money, but we paid our bonds. We shouldn't be waiting for the next flood. Shouldn't wait. Do something about it. Amy Hoffman, 44 23 Whittington Circle. It's pretty clear that you're all prepared today with, um, your presentation and what you found and what has been done and that you're going to monitor. I have two, two things to address. How many of us here called before Helene to tell them that there was standing water in the storm drain? How many of you called before Milton to tell them there was standing water in the storm drains? How many of you got a call back? I did. How many got a personal visit when we were all sort of out in our streets in our driveways, trying to make people slow down and not whip water into our garages? We all talked about what we told Bart, Right? Bart? Bart and his, um, assistant very good, returned my call, came to my house twice, and their message was oddly similar. And when we talked in the streets, the people that we, when we were discussing, we were all noticing that we were told the same thing. And that was that this is not a problem. It's because the marsh is high, we're good, we're monitoring it. You will have a little bit of standing water in your road. But Bart told me, and I don't know if he told any of you this, that he said, we're gonna be monitoring this and we have trucks at the ready with pumps that are gonna come when needed to pump these out. So I don't want you to be worried Mrs. Hoffman, because we're watching this. I took pictures every two hours on Wednesday during Milton because I was watching the pond go up and I saw Bart at about one 30 come over to the part where the fence is. And I felt good about it because I thought someone's watching, they're gonna do something. We watched, I went to bed thinking I was gonna be okay. And when I woke up after a couple of hours and looked out my window and saw the water right near my cement pad, I was afraid. Like I I didn't think that it would ever be like that. We were told to call the emergency number if we were having a problem, which my husband and I both did that morning. They came out at four 30 and continue to tell us the same story that they can't do anything with the swamp because it's state and federal regulated. We can't move the water. There's nowhere to put it. I'm gonna tell you, we walk on ERO path and there are ponds there that are consistently not full. Were they fuller after this storm? Absolutely. But there is a place to put this water. You're Gonna put in place more monitoring. What does that mean to us? I like how many phone calls do, do you need before someone's gonna go and look and say, oh, there's a, there's um, you know, a blockage 5, 10, 20 people call. I mean, I mean, what's the, what's the threshold? How, how are you gonna monitor? What does that mean? What does that look like to us? And why were we told there were gonna be trucks that would pump things and they didn't do it. They didn't do it. If we had had one more inch of rain, we wouldn't have had it designed as it was supposed to be. Are there no answers to that? How many calls you need before you're gonna come out and take the, the residents serious that are living there every day looking at all the standing water? I mean, am I right? I've never felt so vulnerable. I used to think, you know, I haven't been here a couple years, came from mid Ohio, worried about hurricanes. I never thought like I, my house is built. Well though the drainage system, the water system here is awesome. We tell our families all the time when they're calling us, are you okay? Are you okay? We're like, oh, it's the best system. We didn't tell our family what it looked like after, Not to mention all the garbage and the snakes and everything that were left from all the water and, uh, goodness knows what else was in that water. I think some, I think we need to be told, I don't know. I think in, in addition to more monitoring, we need to know what that monitoring looks like to us. We need to know what that means. Are you gonna come 12 hours before the storm? Six hours before the storm? Three hours? How are you gonna let us know that you're doing that? Can we get some kind of like, communication, you know, like for the residents of Una, some email thing that goes out saying we're coming out at these times because we'll be watching. We're all, well not me, but most of us are retired. So we, and, and if there's, and if there's gonna be will there trucks, we are making notes for all of the questions and staff or the engineer based on who should respond. We'll respond to all of your questions once the public portion is finished. Cool. I know I had a lot. Hi. Um, good afternoon. My name's Debbie Billy, I live at 4 3 8 9 Casey Court Villa. Um, I'm gonna touch on a lot of things. I, with everything that everybody's said so far, I used to be an educator for many, excuse me, many years. And there is such a disconnect with what happened with this storm. Um, a vacuum there is, um, for example, I have a friend that's insert with the, um, villages and you have a commander. You have somebody in charge and that's delegate. Or there needs to be put in place to fill this vacuum then that before the next storm, there needs to be somebody in charge who, who will put out what steps are gonna be done to alleviate all these types of problems. Um, who's gonna touch base, whether it's by email or text with the individuals of DA Luna. There needs to be a very strong, and we have a lot of veterans here and a lot of military people. They're very capable. Sorry, They're very capable of helping. Sorry. Okay, sorry. I'm nervous. Okay. They're very capable of helping, um, to maybe put something in place. Um, and also the other concern is, and this is something we have in common with the developers, is resale value. The villages real estate do not want our, our property values to go down in value because it affects the bottom line of the, the developer. Okay? We as homeowners don't want our prices of our homes to go down either. So we have something in common together. So I think we all need to work as a team and get this resolved as soon as possible. To me, it's not a hard task to do. Engineering did what they did. Who was the per, who was the company that moved all that dirt and put in the drainage pipes and all, I will tell you, if it's Tri-County Landscaping and Fencing, they did a lousy job on my property. And many people throughout south of 44. Um, that's another story. But who, who, who are the companies? Should somebody be fired? I mean, there's accountability here and um, there's very upset, uh, resident. The other thing that happened and where now, uh, behind the privacy fences put in by Tri-County Fencing and Landscaping collapsed, found out this not only happened before the storm in different villas through different parts of duna, uh, different areas. I found out, um, Tri-County said they put it up decoratively one screw it goes in two inches to your knuckle into the, if they're on top of a wall, they said there's no support putting into those posts. So in the meantime, all that fencing collapsed. And we as homeowners now gotta pay the price to put it back up, which could cost 15 to 2000 a piece or more. I know there's also fencing, um, that were put in the ground that stood much better and didn't collapse as much. So that's another problem. The other problem I saw is driving back late at night, I had my daughter visit me, excuse me. And she's like, mom, why isn't there isn't anything on Marsh Bend Trail like a blinking light? Like caution or an officer there to say, don't go down on that street. Uh, same with Warnell. It was dark at night. If somebody came around and uh, uh, didn't know the area and and they would've gotten stalk or who, they would've been scared. There was no per precau, no, um, caution lights or anything. Safety is an and, and I know community watch was called by so many of us. Nothing was done there. Um, the other thing is that there needs to be, um, this is gonna happen again. Um, might not, I hope it doesn't, but it's probably gonna happen again. It, we had till November 30th till hurricane season's over. So we're all very concerned. But again, this is a problem. I think that needs systematically. There's a vacuum and we need commanders, people in charge. Um, there needs to be a whole thing written. We know what's going on for accountability for everybody involved. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. My name is James Tufe. I lived at 4 3 4 5 Whittington Circle. I was affected by the storm front and back. I were right on the preserve. We talk about the storm, you know, a hundred year storm, maybe they were designed for a hundred years for rain. They are not designed for two feet of runoff that came into the preserve or the ponds. Your drainage system goes directly into the preserves, directly into the ponds. There's no filtration system. You're polluting everything that it goes into off the road. Every oil drop of oil transmission fluid, Jacobs garbage truck, whatever they drop on the ground is being washed into these preserves and ponds and nobody's addressed that at all. So I live on a polluted reserve. Now the other part is you, what do you do with simple physics? Water seeks its own level. You have two feet of runoff, a foot of rain builds up three feet, three feet has to go somewhere. You wonder why you got water in your drains. The water was coming out into the road eventually raising up and affecting people's homes. I think more than a lot of things, you gotta address the runoff off the road on, on Facebook. I don't know who it was, talked about, the sewers, sewer, the seal has nothing to do with it. This is all to do about runoff. 12 inches of rain. Any pond of preserve could handle it. They cannot handle two feet of runoff, excuse me, coming off that road or whatever. People's lawns, everything that's running back into the pond of preserves that should be addressed. And if you can control that, you might be able to control your water. You know, in the meantime, I just had to pay $200 for pest control to get a rat outta my garage that came up through the water. There's rats all over the place now. It, you've created a total balloon of a mess by not having this water control. And to wait for a pump truck is too late. You must address it now before it happens again. And I appreciate your time. Thank you. Hello, my name is Beth Melling. I live at 43 89 Whittington Circle. Follow up with some of the things the other people said. You know, this gentleman came up and explained they had cleared the drain. Don't worry about it. No homes took on water. Well, I'll tell you, and I like the other gentleman that just spoke. Uh, we live on the pond and the pond came up over between us and our next house. So we were virtually on an island for several days. And I mean, the water was halfway up my front yard. I, if I didn't have an SUVI couldn't get out and I still couldn't get out the first day. And that's just ridiculous. And it's like, you know, so you tell us, you know, you don't have to worry about it because no water got in. It was two feet off. And it's like, and I was terrified. And that's not, that is totally unacceptable. And then we paid bonds. Some people said 20, our bond was like $30,000. And you know, we were told we don't need flood insurance, which I know, which we got the first year anyway, which is another thousand dollars we're doing. So I guess we'll have to get flood insurance now because I don't trust the answers I'm getting right now. But the question is, you know, we're doing all the things we're supposed to do. We're paying our bond, we're paying our insurance, we're trying to communicate when we have a problem. I don't feel like you guys are meeting the same standard. Hello? Uh, my name's Jennifer Wright. I'm at 4 3 8 5 Casey Court in Warnell Villas. And you know, um, we're talking a lot about monitoring and after the storm, but I wanna let you know, I bought my house in um, June. And in July the water was eight inches from the surface of the road in our drains in the, in the, I'm sorry. Um, the water in July was, was eight inches from the surface of the road in the drain grates in the middle of the road in Warnell Villas. So this was way before any storms happened. Um, so I, you know, talking about monitoring, um, you know, that's very important but you know, an explanation for why they were so high and in the middle of the summer. You know, they were, they were at risk of flooding in July. So that was way before the storm. So I just wanna, you know, some explanations for that, if that's okay too. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, uh, Tom Cap Bianco. 3, 2, 3, 1 Vinky Avenue. I'm in Mayville Villas. Uh, fortunately my house was high enough where I was not affected by the water. But some of the comments that were made here, I appreciate everybody's input 'cause it pretty much hit everything on my list. And I'm not gonna repeat 'em all, but a couple of points that stand, stand out for me. I spent 10 years on the West Haven Water Pollution Control Commission. We served 75,000 people. That was sanitary. But we also dealt with sewer and storm sewers 'cause we had impact, we had flooding, we dealt with it. And when someone says that, it acted as it was supposed to. I kind of take offense to that because when you see water encroaching on people's houses and using people's prop as part of your flood zone, I don't think anybody would've approved that plan, that engineering plan that said, Hey, we're gonna use the village of Una in all their front yards and backyards as part of our flooding. Because that's what happened. A lot of people's yards were used as over flood. And the only thing that kept it from the disaster was that the storm stopped. If another 10 inches had dropped, there would be a lot of people here would have flooding inside their houses. So to say that the system worked as expected, yes, under maybe some normal rain conditions, but the parameters in which this was designed was obviously not met for this area, for these types of storms. And so I would reckon that we need someone fresh from the outside to look at this design because the people inside are saying it's working as expected. If you put a one inch drain pipe and a one inch drain on your roof, it's gonna work fine if it's sprinkles. But if you get a storm, you're gonna need a two or a three inch. So to make those kind of comments when people are here saying it's working as expected, it was working as expected to that poor design, not to the real world that we live in around here, number one. Number two is I agree, there was no action plan, there was no communication, there was no safety, there was no cones put up. There was no follow up whatsoever. Cars, people, whatever it may be, it wasn't at the point people were gonna drown, but it was at the point where people could have damaged their cars in their houses, et cetera. So I think the communication, the ownership, the action plan that should have been not done on Facebook, it should have been done officially through this body or some other body within the, I don't understand how it's all working, all the different systems. So please correct me as as necessary. But there was no communication other than Facebook in our Facebook groups. And I find that really disappointing. And number two is, if the problem was fixed by a clogged pipe, then to everybody's point here, for months we've been calling in and for months we were told that there's nothing wrong. So if there's one pipe that was clogged, how can we be four months with water at the top of the storm sewers, which I personally drove around and looked at for months prior to this last hurricane. And I personally called in. And so if they were high then then why weren't these pipes checked back then? And why were we told that there was no issue? And to the point of one of my neighbors called two days before this last hurricane, when the person came out, the same person that came out weeks before that said there's no problem. Said, oh yeah, we expect minor street flooded. So I ran out and got 30 bags of sand that ended up spending six, seven hours putting bags of sand because I had no idea how high the water was gonna come up. So one week we're being told, don't worry about it, it's not a problem. The next day before the hurricane, oh yeah, we expect some street flooded. Well what does that mean? We went from no flooding to street flooding to people's yards being flooded to people's front and backyards being flooded. So where was that communication? Where, where are the facts? I just want facts about this design, how it was put in, who approved it. Did they approve people's front yards to be drained part of the drainage system? Or did they only plan the streets being part of the drain? And if you go down to where they're building, the developers right now are pumping ponds with big massive pumps. There's no threat to any houses, but they're massive pumps right down by Eastport. If you go look now so that they could keep building houses so they're pumping water so they could keep making money. We're asking to pump water so we could save our houses and the houses that we already paid for and the bonds that we already paid for, right? And then to be told that, oh, we can't pump the water out because it's a natural preserve and we don't have the right permits. Well that should have been thought about long before, if we knew that the only way to get water out of there was to get special permission because it's a wetland. 'cause I'm still not sure I understand how this water is supposed to flow from pond to preserve and what water you could pump out and what water you can't pump out. Because the messages were very, very mixed. And the fact that we knew that water was that high and no one had taken the action to get the permits to actually pump that water out, if that was true. 'cause that was stated the day of the storm. There's so much contradiction here that I find I'm not sure what to believe because there's not, we're not getting the facts, we're getting bits and pieces of it. And out of the second note, for two and a half years I have been calling because our, my street, which is a higher street and oh by the way, on my street and Stravinsky the second half of my street 'cause I'm at the, the crest, the second half goes out to another section and drains out towards the power lines. They didn't get any water in their streets. There was nothing whatsoever on the street. Although storm sewers did eventually fill up after the storm. They had absolutely no flooding. So when it comes to a design and the system working the way it's supposed to work, I think it worked. Half of the Luna worked the way it was supposed to. The other half of the Luna did not work because some are underestimated the amount of water that was going in there as been clearly stated. The other problem that I have on Vinky is that for two and a half years we've had a drainage problem where there's water coming up, bubbling up through the street, the street is cracking, it is dirt is coming up through there. We have a massive drainage issue that we have been calling for two and a half years that they have sent engineers out. And I think last time I was at this meeting, some lady from Hawkins came up and she also spoke that they had the exact same problem. That when the developer built these, uh, certain properties, they did not put under the street drainage in. And so all that water, they were hoping and praying that the water would dissipate. And when it doesn't dissipate, that means the water sits under the street, sits underneath our houses. If you come down into Maple Villages, you'll see behind my neighbor's house, there's a constant water. It's like a river going between their houses. Now we've been paying our bond, we're paying our taxes on the roads. We had an engineer come out within the last year. We have nobody that will address when they're gonna resolve the drainage issue, which has nothing to do with storms and fix our roads because our properties are undervalued now. Because when you drive down our street and you look at our street, you start questioning why do they have all these cracks? Why do they have all these, um, holes in the, in the ground? And it raises concerns about the, the structure underneath the street. And I would like someone to answer that because we're paying bond money or we're paying tax money. The city of Wildwood said it's not our problem, it's the developer's gotta fix it before we take over the road. They're supposed to take over the road at 18 months. It's now two and a half years. Does anybody have a date? I would like someone to at least bring that up and address it and get us some answers. 'cause you're taking our money for our bond and for our taxes. And you're not addressing either the draining problem that we have over in the marsh or the drainage issue we have on Stravinsky and in Mayville V. Thank you. I appreciate your help. Renee Wallak 4 4 4 2 Heather way. I just wanna get brand east on the map during all this, uh, Heather way has three storm stores that all flow into a small pond that's an offshoot. And those storm sewers seem to have worked when we first moved in. So our question is, what's changed now that they're not working? Something is different. Is there blockage? What has changed that the, that the system is not working this year when it worked in the past because we never had standing water in the street. So that would be our question along with the fact that we still have, what did you call it? High, the, the water. Uh, and the retention pond behind Heather way is still extremely high. The preserve. So, and it's killing, it's killing all the trees and it's killing all the foliage. Thank you. Uh, good afternoon. My name is Alan Melling, 43 89 Whittington Circle. My question was just on the basic facts of how the system works so everybody understands it. My understanding is that the drains in the street passively flow into these ponds. There's no active pumping there. And that at least, uh, for most of these ponds, there's no way of getting water out of the ponds once it's in, other than overflow into, uh, the swamp area when, when the level gets that high. Um, people had mentioned the possibility of pumping water out of ponds. Is that something that's even in the plan? Is it something that's considered? Seems to me it would be very expensive. So I don't think it would be a, uh, an action of first choice. But is that even part of the plan? 'cause my understanding right now is it's essentially a passively ma The ponds are essentially passively managed retention basins with an overflow to a swamp area. And that's really all that's done to control the level of the water. Uh, it sounds like there's some drainage of the swamp area itself, but not the pond. I just like those facts confirmed. What are the mechanisms by which this, this water level is controlled? Thank you very much. The name is Rich Ero. 44 51 Del Bau Court. A couple of things I have to say. This is not the first flood. Two years ago, our backyards were flooded. Everybody came out, they showed us the maps, they set our little clog in the drain. They never came out. They, they said that they were going to scope all the drains in the area. I never saw them do that. None of us saw them do that, but that's what they said they were gonna do. Second time, another flood, another 10 inches of water through the backyards all flooded coming up through the drains, not running down, just backing up through the drains, which means the pipes are clocked somewhere. They were gonna fix that. Nothing happened. Enter Milton new storm. They said that they were gonna come out and check everything. Clear the lines, nothing happened. Major flooding. This is two years now. No one's done anything. Who's responsible to do it? Them Maybe we should take the responsibility away from them and give it to someone else because we're not getting any satisfaction. That's the bottom line. We can't do anything about it ourselves. Our values of our homes are going down as we speak. I spoke to Bruce Brown and Ryan Millinger. Are they here? I spoke to you, rich Ero. You said you guys were gonna look into something, give us an answer. Matter of fact, I'm pretty sure you, you told me that. Well, contrary to what everybody believes, there's pump stations on every pond. You guys don't have 'em. Maybe you should put a pump station there and get the water out of those two ponds and pump it somewhere else where there's a low spot. Matter of fact, you said you were gonna gimme a call back. I hate to say it, I never got that call back. The assistant manager said they were gonna call me back. He didn't call me back either. I don't know what's going on. Maybe we should remove the responsibility from them and give it to someone else. That's all I have to say. Hello, my name's Paul Northfleet. I live at 3 1 7 9 Lutah Lane. Um, first of all to Mike Davis. I think, I think your presentation was a little shallow and a little weak in that you only hit it at a very high level and it was only, it really didn't cover what needed to be covered. It would've been a very beneficial to us and some of the other folks to know exactly how this system all works. Not every pond has a pump. Some, some ponds are irrigation ponds for irrigation water. Some ponds take storm drains and some, some ponds have other pipes that lead over into, uh, what I'll call the preserve. And then from the preserve it goes out an outlet, 15 inch outlet and it's fed to someplace else. Um, I think what I've heard here today is the remedy is, that's been offered is that we'll have more monitoring. Well what better monitoring do you need than these citizens, these residents that have been monitoring it for months and we've been telling you this is too high. It's not where it needs to be. There is something wrong. Those things went completely unnoticed. They were ignored and all we got was was the word was it's performing as design. You know? And, and it quite frankly, I mean, it it it's unacceptable to say that we need more monitoring. We need to know if there's really going to be a remedy put in place that's gonna satisfy us to the degree that we feel comfortable and, uh, and secure in that we're not gonna have structural flooding. That's, that's really the bottom line. We just want to know what is the remedy. It's not monitoring because we've been monitoring every one of us, some of us for over a year. And uh, so I'd like to hear in the end, I don't know if it's next meeting or, or today or when it is, but what is the remedy? What is the solution? And um, I'm not being totally critical, Mike, what I'm saying to you is folks need to understand how this all interconnects and how it works because a lot of people are misunderstand how it really works. Okay, thank you. And before the next comment, just make sure that you're addressing the comments to the board and not directly to the staff. The staff will respond appropriately at the appropriate time, but this is your time to talk to That's okay. That's okay. Etta veto 44 51 Heather, way from the Una verandas East. I'm not gonna go into further because I'm in agreement, especially with Paul. Um, and the last gentleman that was up here. But I wanted to add the preserve. My backyard leads into that preserve. And during I had been calling previous, like everybody else has, um, prior to all these hurricanes, I started a year after I bought the property because the water just seems to lay on the front lawn with this hurricane, these two hurricanes, it came into my backyard. So not only was it saturated in the front, but also in the back. I literally had a pond in my lawn where ducks were floating in it because they thought that was another little pond that was manmade. The preserve is now underwater. It has gone down, but not to the level that it should be. The wildlife, it used to have the egress back there. Um, now they have a very minor place to roost, so I don't know what they're doing to maintain that or to clean that up or to help, you know, preserve that. 'cause we bought it as a preserve and right now it's a swamp. Thank you. Hello, my name is John Lewis and I live on 32 33 Bartles and Terrace right off of Whittingham Circle. And what I was wondering, um, when we moved in a little over two years ago and Ian came through, um, I had the same amount of water almost up halfway my driveway. And with the system clogged then too. I mean, it's happened three times now, but the house was brand new and we moved in. Neighborhood was maybe three quarters done. But why did we have that problem back then and still have it now? And um, I was just wondering, isn't there some way that um, you can run cameras down there inform us on what they see down there? Are they sure it's not clogged somewhere else where they're not, um, um, privy to. We need the answers on knowing that the system is clean, cleared out and then, and then move on from there. Um, you know, this, this, this, this water that backs up, you know, that's got a lot of bad stuff in it too. I mean, um, we're talking viruses and some nasty things that people could, could get sick from and, and I've had it three times now and, um, I'd like to see the address too. So thank you. Thank You. Hello, my name's Mike Ferguson. I live at the Brown House on slide number 2 44 31 Whittington Circle. Um, I mean, communication was just poor and you know, it sounds like someone just gave us lip service. Things are working the way they should, just, things aren't working the way they should. So that's it. Rich Kate, 44 51 Del Barno Court. I just have one question. Who's ultimately responsible for correcting this? Who's the person? Well, again, this Is the public comments portion. So after we close the public comments on this, then I, I'm not sure if, if Mike and the engineers are going to address this and what's not answered, then we'll come back and answer that at the next meeting. And because we're all expecting it to be fixed. Yeah, this is not, we didn't invite, invite homes here for no reason. Public comments is not intended to be a conversation. Okay. You know, and so, but we did move this up in the agenda because there were so many of you here and so many concerns. And so we wanted to respect that. So, okay. Good afternoon. I'm Karen Geiger. 44 0 3 Woodington Circle in that picture. All the water in front of my house and I live across from Maple Terrace. The pond is in my backyard and it goes into the marsh. The marsh has a mound that's probably, I don't know, three feet high. The pond overflowed into the marsh over that, um, mound. It also was within four feet of our lanai. And the people leaving three doors down, they have a swimming pool. The water from the pond was all the way up to the concrete on their pool. So all that debris that come over from the marsh and et cetera, all ended up in our yards. And so I spent three hours trying to rake all of that up out of there so it wouldn't ruin the grass. But the water is still very high, so the street couldn't leak into the pond because the pond was already flowing out into the street. So I think there is a problem with the drainage and it really needs to be looked into for our concerns so we don't have our houses flood. Okay. Thank you. Hello. Mark Mattis. Uh, 4 5 3 4 third lane. Uh, all these questions. Is somebody here taking all these questions and comments? Yes. Someone's thinking. So it all get answered. All these comments and concerns. Question. I think as soon as the public comment portion is over, I think the engineer going over how the system is designed, how the water retention areas, their primary purpose, their function, if are they connected, how they move water, I think that will answer at least half of them. And then we will follow up with the questions of what are we doing moving forward. Okay. This just so everyone, we to get Through this Part first, just so everyone understands, when you have water And on those basins in your street, it's Supposed to, that Needs to go down Sir, you need to turn back around and speak into the microphone please. Supposed to go downhill, sir. That's why they're all full. Sir, we need you to speak into the microphone so that everything is Recorded. All those basins in the middle of the streets, on the side of the streets, all around that area, they're all full all the time and water. They're not supposed to be full. I don't care what engineer told you otherwise. There's no way should they be full. They're supposed to be pitched downhill and going with retention pond that's lower. So those basins are not full. This is basic logic. Okay, Thank you. I am Roger Peterson. I live at 32 35 Mabel Terrace, right in the hot zone of the flooding in Mabel Terrace. I had, um, made three phone calls prior to the hurricane coming. And, uh, the third time I called, actually somebody came out, it was on Monday prior to the hurricane. And I am kind of like I an unofficial monitor of our drains in our street. And uh, it was right up to the top and this was on Monday before the hurricane. And the young man that came out, his comment was, oh, we're going to expect to be a little minor street flooding. Well, obviously a minor in his mind must be 12 inches of rain that falls down and floods our street. Um, and I do monitor, as I said, I do monitor that drain and I actually look at some of the drains as we're walking. 'cause we take walks every day. And a lot of the drains in that area had always have always been, at least in the last six months, almost up to the top. And to be told, you know, a little lip service that, oh, you're having street, minor street flooding, does that sound acceptable? That you're being warned about having flooding? They should be fixing the problem way before that's gonna happen. And in fact, since hurricane season pretty much is almost over, you have quite a few months before the next hurricane season comes in order to address this and fix it completely so that uh, all that bond money we're paying is put to good use. Our area is safe. Nobody's getting flooding. Even the possibility of flooding into their lanais, into their swimming pools, into their base. Oh, we don't have basements. I used to get flying in the basement, but, um, into your garages. And I have to say I was, my wife and I were standing out there near the street on Wednesday, slow down, slow down, telling everybody to slow down because as a matter of fact, last year when people still had a lot of pine straw, we had a huge downpour. It came down, washed the pine straw out of their, out of their yards, covered up the storm drain, the road flooded. Then we had at least four or five inches. I walked out there with a rake a long, you know, a little rake, and I raked it off and the water went away. But it didn't go away quickly. It took, its took its time. So that indicated to me that at that point there must have been a problem already. At least that problem that you said about being, being clogged had to have been happened already. But I will be continuing my job, unofficial job of monitoring these drains going forward. And you can be guaranteed that I will be making more phone calls if I see it's too high. But thank you very much for addressing this and I'm hoping to see good results. Thank you. Thank You. Are there any more comments? Oh, Mike Williamson 5 79 Nielsen Place. Uh, hear and hearing all of the comments, uh, and I heard the, and and certainly the pla the place to bring them is right here. But does this, when you start talking about the monies being spent, and I heard that comment, does that then fall? I know it would still fall up under property management, but it wa would it fall up under PA purview rather than district? We would have to look typically if it is a storm water management issue, yes, that is funded through project wide in this area. So if there are no other comments, Madam Chair, I think, um, if we can introduce vi um, a representative from VI and have them go through again, um, they heard the questions, they'll do their best to just kind of answer them all, um, at one time. And then we'll certainly follow up with, with district staff. Um, if there are questions that we can't answer, we'll certainly put this on old business and then report back to you next month. Okay. Good afternoon. Ron Ferris, uh, K climber farner barley 44 50, Uh, I'm sorry, Kleiner Farmer Barley. I was looking at Mr. Our net with Vicke. Sorry about that. Yes. Uh, our firm, uh, Vicki is in charge of helping to manage the irrigation system. Our firm. Our, uh, I apologize. Um, our firm is involved in the design of the storm water system. Um, I think the, as you mentioned, the first place to start is kind of how does this system function? Um, if we could go back to the, the possible to go back to the map. Okay. Um, on the right hand side is what everybody's been referring to as the preserve area. And there are a series of ponds around the preserve area that take the water from the streets and the front spots and, um, pretreat it in accordance with, um, water management district rules. Um, and then it, they discharge and turn to the preserve area. The preserve area has a discharge structure at the west end, as you see there on that pipe that flows to the west. I believe, um, one resident referred to it as the Woods or another Preserve area. Okay. Uh, is that better? Yeah, it's okay. I apologize. Um, but essentially the, um, just kind of going over, uh, in case you missed it, the, the ponds pretreat the water, uh, prior to discharging to the preserve, um, through a discharge structure that's similar to, um, they have boxes, concrete boxes that meter the water out to the, uh, preserve at the rates that are allowed with the water management district. Um, the preserve discharges through the pipe system, um, that I believe the, um, the plug issue was at the Western location where the pipe enters the, um, the, the other preserve on the edge of the, the left hand side of the screen. Uh, this area discharges through a series of pipes and ditches up just south of the intersection of US 3 0 1 in the turnpike and heads west towards Lake Panas Offkey. Um, so, um, that's kind of the general functioning and how the system is supposed to design, uh, drain and, um, work. The, our criteria for design is a 10 and a half inch rainstorm, which is prescribed to us by the Water Management District. Um, and, uh, we, uh, consult with geologists to give us starting water levels on where to begin our storage levels. So if the levels are higher due to prior storms or blockages or something like that, the water will lay, raise higher than the analysis shows. Um, so that's the general idea of how this system functions. Um, one issue we have though is, as was mentioned, there's a, uh, extra criteria associated with the preserve, it's wetland. Um, so, um, the, the outlets are designed to try to preserve that hydrology is what it's referred to. The, the idea of the water level stay, um, fairly consistent with the pre-development condition. Um, we also have to be careful about releasing water too quickly so we don't flood downstream properties. Um, so that's, uh, all that information goes into the design of the system. Um, one other comment I heard regularly was, um, the inlets should, um, not have water in them. Um, I'm from up north where we have a lot of elevation, uh, in Florida that's more of a challenge. So there are a lot of inlets. You may see water in the bottom of them, but you know, it should not be near the top. Um, so, uh, we have water in the inlets in my neighborhood. Um, it's just the elevation change is not there to, to keep the run dry, but, but they should function. Um, so, So what, what about the, um, so that's how is it designed? What about the water management? What are the things that you and Vicars and DPM, what are, what is it that we do to prepare for storms when it comes to the movement of water and storage of water? Well, this, as, as was mentioned earlier, this system I, um, is passive. So it's relying on gravity and the natural flow of the pipes within, within the area. So there's, there's not necessarily a lot that can be done other than bringing in, you know, it was mentioned earlier, pumps, um, when you do pump water, that water goes somewhere. And generally that'll require an emergency authorization from the water management district, which takes some time, uh, to make sure that where you're pumping it isn't gonna have an adverse impact on the people near that area. So, so the issue is we have how many thousands and thousands of homes and several hundred villages. This is the only village that has this problem, and all the villages were designed the same. There's something wrong with the design of this area. Well, you know, if I can address that, um, there was a discussion about a blockage in the pipe, and the system did not start where it was designed to start. Uh, water levels were high as, um, higher. So we did not have the storage, most likely that was accounted for in the design. The, the idea is now that that blockage is gone, water levels should slowly return to more normal levels and not be a problem in the future. You, So unfortunately, you do have talking to the mic, but I think what somebody is asking us to show the pipe on, is it the pic? Can you go to the picture of the pipe? Uh, it's the black line right there, and I believe the plug was right at the outfall. So yeah, now that's, um, I, I did see video of the pipe cleared on the, on the west side. So that's the, So, and again, you have to come to the mic. You, you cannot ask questions from the audience. And I don't know if you wanna open it back up yet to audience comments. Um, let, Let me, let me ask one thing I I've noticed in some of the ponds, especially over by, um, Hogge, they have built cement structures with drains on top, so they wouldn't plug. Is that not a solution that we need here? It looks like that, that that's a mess, right where that pipe is, and that's the only drainage for that area. So that at least that needs to be secured. Yeah, they, um, the, they're called skimmers, the me, the, the surrounding cage you're talking about. Um, they're not required by the water management district for various reasons. Um, that, that's a possibility. It could help keep the debris off the top. Um, one thing with that particular structure that's in the preserve on the east side, there's a pipe underneath it, um, that sticks out the side of the structure. And I was there, I believe, two days ago, and the water is flowing through that pipe. I can see water coming out of the preserve, even though it's lower than the top of the structure. And, um, if you go out to the west side where that pipe out falls into the woods over there, you can see the water flowing. So right now, it's clear, it's flowing good. It just, it is gonna take a little time to come back down to normal levels because we have to throttle it so we're not causing impacts downstream. So, so I at least would like to see some kind of evaluation of that, being able to make that pipe not get blocked in the future if that's allowed or possible. And the other thing we'd like to see is some kind of emergency plan on what we're gonna do in the future, because this, I, I think this area is just at a minimum acceptable level. So we need to have planning and make sure that we don't get into this situation again, because that, you know, water in the roads is not something that we want to tell people happens in the villages. Understood. So, um, if, if we could, I'm, I heard we want two things now. One, to look into some type of a skimmer to see if that can be added to the inlet of the pipe to prevent the debris. The second is, um, us to come up with a proposal or solution moving forward, um, where we're telling you how this is not going to happen again. That that's correct. Thank you, Carrie. So we can certainly work on that, um, over the next month and put this on your agenda for next month and have a little bit more. Um, Mr. Harris can, can come and answer some of the questions i