July 10, 2006 Bartram Springs CDD
MINUTES OF MEETING
BARTRAM SPRINGS COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DISRICT
The regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors of the Bartram Springs Community Development District was held Monday, July 10, 2006 at 10:30 a.m. at the Bartram Springs Amenity Center, 14530 Cherry Lake Drive, Jacksonville, Florida.
Present and constituting a quorum were:
J. Thomas Gillette, III Chairman
Thomas F. McMorrow Vice Chairman
Charlie Hillyer Supervisor
Leo W. Johns Supervisor
Martha Cotter Supervisor
Also present were:
James Oliver District Manager
Brian Crumbaker District Counsel
Scott Wild District Engineer
Rich Whetsel GMS, LLC
Darrin Mossing GMS, LLC
Roy Deary Amenity Services Group
Sarah Gabel Amenity Services Group
Several homeowners
FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS Roll Call
Mr. Gillette called the meeting to order at 10:30 a.m.
SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS Approval of the Minutes of the Minutes of the June 12, 2006 Meeting
Mr. Gillette stated item two on the agenda is approval of the minutes of the June 12, 2006 meeting. Are there any comments, corrections or changes to the minutes?
Ms. Cotter stated on page 4, correct me if I’m wrong about this but about half way down the page it states the section around the clubhouse, we will reseed with rye. I think we had reseeded with rye.
Mr. Gillette stated you are right.
On MOTION by Mr. Johns seconded by Mr. McMorrow with all in favor the minutes of the June 12, 2006 meeting were approved as amended.
THIRD ORDER OF BUSINESS Public Hearing Adopting the budget for Fiscal Year 2007
Mr. Gillette stated item three is a public hearing adopting the budget for fiscal year 2007. We have two resolutions to deal with after the public hearing.
On MOTION by Mr. McMorrow seconded by Ms. Cotter with all in favor the public hearing to adopt the budget was opened.
Mr. Gillette stated for members in the audience there are copies of the budget we are proposing to adopt and they are available to anyone who would like to have a copy. The purpose of the public hearing is to provide members of the audience with an appropriate opportunity to comment on the budget.
Hearing no comments, is it appropriate to close the public hearing?
Mr. Crumbaker responded yes.
On MOTION by Mr. Johns seconded by Mr. Hillyer with all in favor the public hearing was closed.
A. Consideration of the Annual Appropriation Resolution 2006-06
Mr. Oliver stated at the May meeting the Board approved a proposed budget and at that meeting and a subsequent meeting in June they directed staff to work on specific changes to the budget and I wanted to state for the record that those changes were made as directed. Those changes increased the Supervisors fees to $12,000 and we adjusted FICA accordingly. That is in keeping with the statute with the assumption being that there are five paid Supervisors on the Board. Right now there are four. We increased postage to $2,400, increase gas to $675, reduced security monitoring the budget last year was $10,000 and we reduced that to $2,000. We reduced the maintenance reserves to $20,000 and increased contingency to $30,000. Since the proposed budget was approved we have run into an alarming increase in property insurance rates. We budgeted the insurance to go from $40,000 to $46,000, which was a 15% increase as advised by the Florida League of Cities who underwrites the insurance. However, since that time the property insurance component of the insurance has essentially doubled for other districts that we are dealing with. I recommend to the Board that we actually raise the insurance line item to $75,000. We don’t have a quote yet because we simply will not be in the window for renewal until the November timeframe. If we were to come in at less than 100% increase, that money could certainly flow back into contingency or even reserves. The $75,000 figure represents two components. One component being the property insurance which may double and the liability and directors and officer insurance which is likely to increase only 15%. In order to do that we have to keep assessments level at what they were in fiscal year 2006.
Mr. Gillette stated I was going to comment that if you look at the proposed administration portion of the budget it is essentially the same as what we operated on in 2006 except for insurance which is essentially an extra $35,000, at least as we think it may be. That is the difference; otherwise it is the same.
Mr. Oliver stated one other thing I want to bring up and that is counsel has agreed to be budgeted at $20,000 rather than $25,000. The next to the last line item under administrative, the line of credit, that was inadvertently left off and we should have that funded at $2,500 just in case sometime during the year there is some type of unforeseen expenditure.
Mr. Gillette stated it is still almost a wash except for the cost of insurance and the control of the premium is beyond the control of this Board. We did make other comments last month.
Mr. Oliver stated we combined hydrology quality and mitigation and that number may be slightly higher or slightly lower but it would have been in an acceptable range for those services. That is the first line item under grounds maintenance.
Mr. Gillette asked did you skip over amenity center?
Mr. Oliver responded yes, I will go back to that. Security monitoring last year we budgeted $10,000 and that is an on call service if someone triggers the alarm and that was the first year we had that. We are only proposing $2,000 in that line item this year. Access cards we are increasing from $2,500 to $3,000 based on the advice of Amenity Management Services that we did not have enough in that line item. As suggested by the Board we reduced maintenance reserves from $40,000 to $30,000 but correspondingly we increased contingency to $30,000 which was previously $10,000.
Mr. Deary stated there are a couple of discrepancies that may lead you folks to believe that the proposed budgets for items that we are responsible for have gone up substantially but in reality they are not. The pool maintenance and supplies I think there is an accounting error there. We are actually going to be billing up to $32,000 budget amount so the projected amount of $20,000 in my opinion will be actually closer if not on the $32,000. If you compare to where we will be for the year of $32,000 the budgeted amount, those two numbers are fairly close. I don’t think it is a major issue but I want everyone to be aware of that. Under facility maintenance the Board approved giving us additional responsibilities for maintaining the facility as a whole last fall and I believe that amount is right around the $16,000 or $17,000 proposed for next year rather than zero. I think the accountant has not seen those amounts in our invoices and it is not being reflected accurately in the current numbers.
Mr. Oliver asked are you saying the $17,000 in the budget for fiscal year 2007 for facility maintenance is not accurate?
Mr. Deary responded it is accurate but it is not accurate compared to zero. We are not asking for another $17,000 that we are not billing for this year.
Mr. Oliver stated lake maintenance we have at $19,728 and is exactly what the contract is for as approved by the Board.
Mr. Gillette stated I am looking at the bottom number on the right hand column of page 2, $917,958 it appears to me that we need to adjust that upward a little bit based on the administrative insurance line item discussion. For round numbers I would say that is $35,000 so that $917,958 is going to come to around $952,000.
Mr. McMorrow stated plus you have to add the line item for the line of credit interest.
Mr. Gillette stated I understand but the District attorney backed off some of their fees too. $950,000 against last year of $930,000. The boxes below that set forth the assessments on a per lot basis based on lot size, needs to be adjusted slightly.
Mr. Oliver stated we worked up some scenarios with this insurance.
Mr. Hillyer asked what about the collections, is that a shortfall?
Mr. Gillette stated I see the $907,000 and the $917,000. Under the first box on page 2, the total number is $907,958 versus total expenditure of $917,000 and that represents what?
Mr. Oliver responded that is just the assessments and there are two other income line items, one for facility income and the other for interest miscellaneous which brings it to the $917,000 that was projected in this budget. However, that was before discussion of insurance.
Mr. Gillette stated this $907,000 needs to come up to the $950,000.
Mr. Oliver responded correct. In order to hit the mark I suggest that we would leave assessments exactly where they were during fiscal year 2006.
Mr. Gillette asked in order to hit what mark?
Mr. Oliver responded in order to have adequate assessments to cover the increase in property insurance.
Mr. Gillette stated then I guess I’m confused. I’m looking at the adopted budget for 2006 of $930,000.
Mr. McMorrow stated in the budget as it was printed out for us there was actually a minor decrease in the assessments for the year for the individual units.
Mr. Gillette stated my point is that the budget adopted for 2006 was $930,000. We just finished having a discussion in the neighborhood of $950,000. How can we adopt the same budget for last year and expect to have adequate coverage?
Mr. Oliver responded because part of it will be a slightly smaller maintenance reserve and slightly smaller contingency.
Mr. Gillette stated I don’t know that I follow that. If we are trying to collect a lump sum, we are approving $950,000 and you are saying you are proposing to assess something less than $950,000?
Mr. Mossing stated I don’t think it went up to $950,000.
Mr. Gillette stated it is $917,000 on the printout but that was prior to the discussion we had this morning about increasing the insurance from $46,000 to $75,000; that is a $35,000 increase.
Mr. Mossing stated I think it was anticipated to reduce the contingency and put that in insurance. I think that was the thought.
Mr. Gillette stated I don’t disagree with that. I made comments based on the wrong input. What sheet are we working from? I’m not going to call for any motion until I’m clear about what we are talking about. I am totally not clear at the moment.
Mr. Oliver stated the budget we talked about before was the budget pre-doubling the insurance. As a way to not increase the assessments, we provided the scenario no. 2 where assessments would stay level with the fiscal year 2006 level while insurance was increased to $75,000.
Mr. Gillette asked what did we reduce from the first version to get to $923,000? We increased insurance to $75,000, what did we reduce?
Mr. Oliver responded the contingency on page 2 from $30,000 to $6,000.
Mr. Gillette stated you are forecasting that we are going to spend $14,000 in contingency this year. I don’t know that that is a move that I would support. What else?
Ms. Cotter stated it is not reflected on this new page that attorney fees are going down.
Mr. Gillette asked what else did you move?
Mr. Oliver responded that was it.
Mr. Gillette stated before that contingency was $30,000.
Mr. Oliver responded correct.
Mr. Gillette stated I’m looking at the $923,000 total amount and I’m looking at the first box total for the computation of the assessment per unit and there is a $10,000 difference. What is that?
Mr. Oliver responded on the very top of the reverse side, there are two other income line items where we get $10,000, from facility income and interest on the general fund.
Mr. Gillette stated okay.
Mr. Mossing stated you didn’t add in the $2,500.
Mr. Hillyer stated there is still a difference between $923,000 which is the adjusted amount and the $913,000 which is the collection on assessments.
Mr. Gillette stated that is what Jim just described as two different sources of income.
Mr. Hillyer stated but they added right there, that is the total. It is still short $10,000.
Mr. Gillette responded you collect $10,000 from the two line items at the top and you collect the rest from the assessments. There has been a lot of work and thought put into this budget and I think it is reflective of what we talked about going forward as well as taking into consideration what we dealt with last year. For instance, we have reduced the landscape maintenance for the coming year from $315,000 down to $250,000 because we now know better what it costs to maintain it and we have brought all this plant material back to what it should be. I do think we should be looking at a higher number for contingency and I would propose that that number go to at least $15,000.
Mr. Oliver responded yes.
Mr. Gillette stated I don’t know what that does to the individual assessment but I suspect it is probably pretty much back to what it was last year.
Mr. Oliver responded yes. We know in some other line items we can find some money to put back into contingency.
Mr. Gillette stated that is part of what we do when we go through the whole year. Is there any further discussion?
Mr. McMorrow stated this additional $29,000 that we have for insurance is really a contingency.
Mr. Gillette stated whatever we don’t use we can move to the contingency line item but I would say starting the year we ought to start with $15,000 in contingency. We spent $14,000 this year.
Mr. McMorrow stated I agree.