MINUTES OF MEETING
DOUBLE BRANCH COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DISTRICT

The regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors of the Double Branch Community Development District was held Monday, February 14, 2022 at 6:00 p.m. at the Plantation Oaks Amenity Center, 845 Oakleaf Plantation Parkway, Orange Park, Florida 32065.

Present and constituting a quorum were:

Cindy Nelsen	Chairperson
Chad Davis	Vice Chairman
Scott Thomas	Supervisor
Tom Horton	Supervisor

Also present were:

Marilee Giles	District Manager
Mike Eckert	District Counsel
Jay Soriano	Operations Manager
Chalon Suchsland	VerdeGo
Crys LaFata	S3 Security

FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS	Roll Call
Ms. Giles called the meeting to order at 6:00 p.m.

SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS	Audience Comments
Mr. Jim Haynes, 468 Hearthside Court, stated I’m organizing pickleball clinics, tournaments, and things like that to try to get the program going. We started coming about a year ago and you wanted to see evidence of growth. We have a lot of people here who play with us, but Kimberly also has a list of 50 residents who are regular pickleball players, so I think we have a strong program going. If we really want a good program, we need to have better facilities. We have four courts that are basically temporary on top of tennis courts and there are a lot of problems with that, so that’s why we’re back. We’d like to see some solution to that, permanent courts. I think we’re doing a lot of good things. We have a free learn to play session every Saturday morning, so we’ve had a lot of people come and join through that. Several of them played their first tournament this past Saturday and I think they had a fantastic

time. It’s an opportunity for them to get children involved. We’ve done a lot of hard work to get the program going strong. I’m here to answer any questions you have about how it’s going and Kimberly also some thoughts she wants to share.
Ms. Kimberly Farrell, 716 Drakefeather Drive, stated I’ve put together a list. This is not an all-inclusive list by any means, this is just names that I know of. September of 2020 I started a Facebook group for Oakleaf pickleball. There are now 266 members. All this list represents is members, residents and non-residents, that I know of that play on a fairly regular basis or regular basis. It’s a total of 85 people. Of those, 54 are residents, so we have a significant number of residents versus the non-residents. It seems to be growing every month. This was about a month ago and I know there are new players that we’ve added since then. This last month was the cold weather so I haven’t met a lot of those people yet, but we are continually growing and having those permanent pickleball courts I think would make it grow even more.
Mr. Thomas stated I noticed when I left on Saturday there were a ton of people at the pickleball court, enough so that when I went by, I had to do a double take because I didn’t know if there was a party going on or not. It seems like it would be well used. My question though is of the residents and non-residents, how are we collecting a fee for the non-residents who are coming in? Are they using somebody’s guest pass or something like that? These are the logistics we have to work out.
Mr. Soriano responded they’re collecting regular guest fees just like anybody else would right now, so they pay a couple bucks at a time, and it adds up. Jim sent me records because it will help pay for the stuff too.
Mr. Thomas stated Jim, it seems like you’re spear-heading this. Let’s say in a year or so you decide you want to retire from pickleball, who would pick it up after you?
Mr. Jim Haynes responded Kimberly and Tim and a few others had it going pretty strong even when I wasn’t up here. It’s really a community group. It’s very social and I think as long as there are people who want to play, it would keep going. I live within walking distance of the courts, so I don’t have any plans to do anything different. As long as I can keep doing clinics and stuff, I’m committed to staying with the program if they want me to do that. Ms. Kimberly Farrell stated just to add on to that, Jim isn’t even there during the week.
His clinic is on Saturday mornings, and he has one senior session on Friday morning, but these

players I’m talking about are usually there in the evenings just out there playing pickleball. We aren’t at clinics.
Mr. Jim Haynes stated what you saw on Saturday was a tournament. We had a free beginner’s tournament for the people who just come through our free clinics, and we had twelve of those, but we had over 50 in all, so there’s potential there to generate some income that we could kick back into the costs, especially if we had a more suitable facility. Pickleball is so popular, and I think it’s a great amenity to offer to the residents.
Vice Chairman Davis stated I know you guys enjoy what you do, and we think it’s great and I don’t have a problem with it either. I am the president of Oakleaf Athletic Association and our baseball program is 1,000 people strong and I would never do this because it would complicate things for soccer and I-9 and everything else that we’ve worked hard to protect and give them somewhere to play, but if I said we could build a covered batting cage up here if enough of you show up, I could have 500 people in there. You’re talking 54 people. I could double, triple, quadruple that with people that want something else, so my question is how do we justify what we’re spending the money on? I’m having a hard time dealing with that because I could have people flood this place and want to do away with the soccer field and build an enclosed hitting facility and practice facility for baseball. I would never do that. It’s just detrimental to other sports. I’m trying to look out for all sports and accommodate all people. I just have a hard time with so much money for 54 residents. I don’t mean to sound negative to your project, but I don’t know how else to approach it.
Ms. Kimberly Farrell stated right now we only have four courts. We’re at maximum capacity a lot of times with people waiting. You can’t do much with four courts.
Vice Chairman Davis stated there’s a very large community here and there are so many different interests. I’m sure you could probably get 54 people in here that want a driving range instead of a soccer field. Do you see my point? You guys have been here advocating for what you want, but I just feel like if other people had that same mindset you’d be blown away by other sports and other interests. Where do we draw the line and what do we spend the money on? To me, it’s a very hard approval process for a small group of people.
Mr. Jim Haynes stated we have tennis in our community and that’s a small number of people compared to how many you’ve got, but we have a lot of money invested in the clay courts here and the maintenance on that, but if you want a tennis program in your community,

that’s something you have to allocate for. I think pickleball is as big as tennis in the State of Florida especially going forward so it’s just a question of whether you want to have a quality program or not. I agree as far as number of participants, it’s not going to compare to some other things.
Vice Chairman Davis stated I’m not against it at all, I’m just looking at every aspect. We have a very diverse community with very different interests. We’ve visited the tennis numbers before. Jay, can you refresh my memory?
Mr. Soriano responded over here, this tennis program is very large and one of the better tennis programs in this area. Over there, I could probably name 30 to 40 residents that have used it; not use it on a regular basis, but use it, so it’s not a lot. With taking two away we could get some complaints, but if I change the position of an exercise machine, I’m going to get complaints. It’s like what we did with the heated pool. I have three people that are mad that because we took the heated pool away. We spend $25,000 a year so we took it away for two months to save some money. I’m going to get some complaints, but what we’re switching off with is going to be much better than the hard tennis courts. This issue is on my report, so let’s go through that and if anybody else wants to speak, there’s a public comments section. Because then I can go through those numbers that we have again.
Vice Chairman Davis stated we’ve gone through so many things I’m not sure if we’re talking new courts or just converting, so that would be helpful.
Mr. Watson, 3854 Chasing Falls Road, stated you already have baseball fields. We’re talking about just a playing court. The playing courts are temporary, and it falls apart now, so we’re just looking for somewhere to play; not for anything additional.
Vice Chairman Davis stated that baseball field is provided by the County and that’s why I mentioned indoor facilities provided by us. You guys are asking for money, but I’m just trying to figure at this point what we’re considering tonight. We’ve discussed so many different options with pickleball. That’s why I said that.
Mr. Eddie Cutwright, 3518 Silver Bluff, stated I’m the recreation director for the City of Palatka. What we’re asking for is not taking away from any sport. I’m a firm believer that we shouldn’t take away any sports, but I’ve been here two and a half to three years and those two tennis courts that we’re using for pickleball haven’t been used since I’ve been here, so with renovating them into pickleball courts you wouldn’t get two much kickback from

residents here. Like Ms. Kimberly said earlier, I did my own study and I’ve seen excess of 35 people out there on a regular night here that play when Jim isn’t’ there, so if we had more courts or better courts with better lighting and better facilities, that number would probably magnify by two. There are probably another 55 to 100 that wouldn’t come in here and talk because they just can’t make meetings during the day. I would support permanent pickleball courts. For renovating those courts, we can probably knock some things down because I’ve got some contractors that we can bring up from Palatka.
Vice Chairman Davis stated I appreciate that and that’s why I was asking because you’re talking additional lighting. That’s thousands of dollars. That’s why I’m trying to get to the bottom of what we’re discussing or wanting to do.

THIRD ORDER OF BUSINESS	Approval of Consent Agenda
Approval of the Minutes of the January 10, 2022 Meeting
Financial Statements
Assessment Receipt Schedule
Check Register
Ms. Giles stated included in your agenda package are the minutes of the last meeting, the financial statements as of December 31st, your assessment receipts schedule showing you are 95% collected, and the check register totaling $91,928.75.
Mr. Horton stated there were very few receipts this time. It seems like it should be fairly consistent from month to month.
Ms. Giles stated a lot of times it’s based on when the accountants can complete the financial statements.
Mr. Horton asked who does this?
Ms. Giles responded GMS has accountants.
Mr. Horton asked in your office down in St. Augustine? Ms. Giles responded they’re out of Palm Coast.
Mr. Soriano stated if we don’t pay a lot of bills out this month, you’re only going to see those receipts. You’ll see some months where we might have 20 or 30 big bills that we have to pay and other months there are five or ten. We’re going to report on those five or ten that were paid so it matches your check register. There’s nothing missing.
Mr. Horton stated there’s usually 20 pages in there and I’m sure they must bill you every month.

Mr. Soriano stated it depends on when it hits. It might be five weeks out or six weeks out, so we don’t get it to you that month, you’ll get it the next month. You’re a month behind too because the agenda package is done early, so you won’t see everything I’ve done in the last two or three weeks. The check register should match the receipts though.

On MOTION by Vice Chairman Davis seconded by Mr. Thomas with all in favor the Consent Agenda was approved.

FOURTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Consideration of Proposal for Updating the
Capital Reserve Study
Ms. Giles stated this is something Jay and I took the liberty to get proposals for to present to the Board. The last report is dated 2015. You have two proposals in your packets.
Mr. Soriano stated we did our first study in 2015. It goes through all of our large assets; things like buildings, roofs, air conditioning equipment, our pools and it even goes out to the neighborhoods and considers the fence lines and playgrounds and breaks it down into a spreadsheet by expected life and replacement cost. This allows us to plan out years and years’ worth of our expenditures. We fund our capital reserve to meet this so that hopefully we always have enough money in the bank that if a playground needs to be replaced, it’s not that big of a deal to spend $30,000 to $40,000 because we know there’s enough in that bank account to cover one this year and another next year. You guys have 11 playgrounds so adding up to a quarter million is easy. We can’t do that in one year, so we have to have a plan for it. This extensively considers everything whether it’s those items that residents see on a regular basis like the playgrounds, or the items that are buried such as the pipes in the ground that I have to repair every once and a while. Community Advisors is one of your proposers and that is the company that did the 2015 study for us. They are also the lower cost proposal. We reached out to a couple. You have one other proposal there, but the amount is outrageous at
$11,000. I would hope they would be really detailed. They did do a good amount of work by looking at our website and our expenses of what we have out there. Marilee also had to do an application for it, so she put in some of that, but they were pretty extensive at looking at all of the District’s facilities. That cost is just really hard for me to swallow compared to Community Advisors at $2,000. With Community Advisors it will be a little higher than the initial one every time they have to do a revision if I have to add things. They charge an extra $350 for

revisions and $500 for walk-throughs so they have add-ons they will do. They have been at both districts multiple times. They’ve already gone through two other studies at your sister district. They have a lot more when it comes to their facilities. They are also doing this because they’re dealing with a refinance so they want to have a good idea of what they will be spending in the next couple of years. This is not something we said we were going to do this year, but I do think it’s a good idea to do these every five to seven years. I have my own 10-year plan of when we should be doing certain things such as replacing air conditioners or the slides and just like anywhere, if I can, I will try to make those things last as long as possible and still keep everything safe. A lot of times our problems are more cosmetic, but safety is the first issue, and we try to replace by priority that way. My plans are always backed up by this study too. It makes it easier when I bring something to you and you guys ask if we have the money. You guys are much better than the funding plan that was in there, so we have plenty of money to move forward with the way it’s planned right now, I just think it’s a good idea to update. You guys also have a lot of new facilities. We have replaced a few of the playgrounds and we have a whole bridge we need to add in. Those things will all go to extra expenses for the future for maintenance and replacement.
Mr. Horton stated I was here for the original in 2015 and I thought that the initial one was concise. It seems the original company would have a leg up on knowing where to start so I would lean toward Community Advisors.
Mr. Soriano stated I would think it would be much easier. The other company also has those add-ons if they have to come out and do a lot of revisions and they’re already starting really high so that would be my concern if we miss a lot in that first walk-through. It takes a couple of days to go through everything. The last time Charlie from Community Advisors was out here it took about a day and a half, and he’s been in these districts multiple times so for him it would be quicker. The new group took a couple visits for them so it would be a little higher than that.
Vice Chairman Davis stated with the current company, what is the life expectancy of the report, because I see with Reserve Advisors, it’s a 30-year reserve expenditure funding plan.
Mr. Eckert stated most districts that I work with revisit this every three to five years.

Mr. Soriano stated it’s a 30-year plan, so if you look through it, it goes all the way through 2045. But I can tell you that’s not going to be accurate at that point. There are some things that no matter how much experience you have, nobody expected something like the pandemic and now shipping issues at triple the cost, so a 30-year plan goes out the window at that point, but it is quite helpful. Both of them are going to give a 30-year plan. We don’t have to do an update that soon. We’re at seven years now. I think it’s a good idea and since we are doing it to get good numbers for your sister district, we brought it forward to you guys.
Mr. Thomas asked do we need to do a not to exceed?
Mr. Soriano responded you can do it on the quote. The revisions I can do under the amount I’m allowed, so unless for some reason those revisions started adding up and went beyond my discretionary amount, then I would come back to you guys, but I don’t see that happening.

On MOTION by Chairperson Nelsen seconded by Mr. Horton with all in favor Community Advisors’ proposal to update the capital reserve study was approved.

FIFTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Selection of the Audit Committee
Ms. Giles stated Chapter 218 of the Florida Statutes requires that CDDs go through an annual audit by an independent CPA firm. This is mandated for every form of local government in Florida to include cities, counties, and special districts. Chapter 218 requires that an audit committee be established to go through the RFP process, including approved evaluation criteria, publishing a public notice for an RFP, and ranking the audit proposals. Because we need quorum for the audit committee, it makes sense for the Board to serve as the audit committee, that way we can schedule an audit committee meeting immediately preceding the Board meeting and this ensures we have quorum at both meetings. We will need an RFP for the Fiscal Year 2022 audit. Right now, you have Grau & Associates and they’ve done your audits since 2017 and are scheduled to do your 2021 audit. I’m just looking for a motion to appoint the supervisors as the audit committee.

On MOTION by Chairperson Nelsen seconded by Vice Chairman Davis with all in favor selecting the Board of Supervisors to serve as the Audit Committee was approved.

SIXTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Consideration	of	Resolution	2022-02,
Designating Officers
Ms. Giles stated this is coming to you as a form of housekeeping from GMS. At GMS we have four district managers and our goal is to have all four district managers on every district so if something happens, you still have that coverage for a district manager. This is to add Daniel Laughlin. The remaining officers and supervisors would remain the same.

On MOTION by Chairperson Nelsen seconded by Mr. Horton with all in favor Resolution 2022-02, designating Daniel Laughlin as an Assistant Treasurer and Assistant Secretary was approved.

SEVENTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Staff Reports
District Counsel
Mr. Eckert stated the legislature has filed a bill this week to raise the limits on liability for local governments. The latest proposal is $1 million per person / $3 million per incident. What that means for this district is because you are a local government, you have the benefit of those limits of liability and where it could impact you is in your budget in terms of what you budget for insurance because when the insurance companies quote local governments for liability policies, they take those limits of liability into account. I know GMS is already talking to the insurance companies that serve CDDs about what kind of increase could be expected if something like this goes through. Whether they actually get anything done on that, I don’t know, but it certainly has a lot more momentum this year than it has in the past.
The other thing that is back is the bill to require all special district board members to do four hours of ethics training. I think it’s every year. Sometimes they talk about every term. City council members and County commissioners are already required to do that, but it may be something that gets passed for special districts this year. In the past, special districts have always been dropped given that it’s more of a very part-time nature of what you all do, but we will wait and see how that turns out. Those are the two bills that I think could have a financial impact on you or will affect how you carry out your duties.

Vice Chairman Davis asked so the insurance is not a done deal? It’s on the table and they’re proposing it.
Mr. Eckert responded correct.
Vice Chairman Davis asked and what is our current liability?
Mr. Eckert responded our current liability policy is sufficient for what we have right now. The limits of liability are currently $100,000 per person / $300,000 per incident, so they’re talking about raising it tenfold and there’s a couple of reasons for that. There are people who believe that the limits have been too low for too long and certainly there are statistics to show that everything else is going up, but the limits of liability have not been raised for about the last ten years. The other issue is what happens is if somebody gets a verdict against a local government for say $1 million, then the local government is only allowed to pay $100,000 or
$300,000 depending on if it’s multiple people, and then what happens is the plaintiffs file what is called a claims bill, which means they go to the legislature and they take up the legislature’s time to evaluate claims bills so the legislature I would say does not enjoy the claims bill process and one of the ways to reduce the numbers of claims bills is to raise the limits of liability for local governments.
Mr. Horton asked does this apply to city government too?
Mr. Eckert responded yes. Cities and counties are actively involved in trying to educate the legislature on what kind of fiscal impact it could have. For us it’ll be a smaller impact, but for a government the size of the City of Jacksonville it may be significant.

District Engineer
There being nothing to report, the next item followed.

District Manager
There being nothing to report, the next item followed.

Operations Manager - Memorandum
Mr. Soriano stated we had the Polar Plunge this past weekend and had a good turnout. We had about 60 people there. I was surprised because the week before was our oldest week of this winter. At that point we had five to ten people that were planning on being there, so I thought it was going to be a small event. We got a couple of pictures of our families. One in

particular has been here for twelve of the fifteen Polar Plunge events and they wear the medal every time so it’s kind of neat. As the weather picks up, we should be getting back to the movies on the green along with the food truck nights. We have our vendor fair, which will be on your side. That is a resident run program for Easter, and then we have Spring Break the second week of March and we will open the pools full time and then shut back down until April and then we build up until Memorial Day when we’re open full blast again. I included a tentative schedule for you guys. It is pretty much the same schedule we’ve had for the last five years or so. It was five years ago we started the alternating days with your sister district during the week. That gave us a total of 1,341 operating hours that there are lifeguard staff at the pools. Unless there are any concerns with the tentative schedule, that is what I was going to post on the website to get the residents ready for Spring Break and they April and May hours.
Mr. Thomas stated remind me when the high schoolers are using the pool for the swim
meet.
Mr. Soriano stated that is in the fall season. We don’t have anybody using your pool,
that is over here at your sister district in the competition pool. That usually starts the first week of August.
Mr. Soriano continued with his report. Moving on to the operations side, I have a couple of items I want to go over. The first one is an issue with the Cannons Point playground. We had some vandalism that was actually caught by our residents. I had about 30 contacts; phone calls and emails that night. Some residents got pictures of kids lighting our slide on fire at the Cannons Point park. I have spoken to one of the guardians and she was very apologetic. They were looking for us to find a way to keep them out of criminal court. I explained that the biggest problem I have is that slide is a little different. It’s not like keying someone’s car where we could pay to have it repainted. We’d have to replace the whole slide and it’s that big triple slide, so that becomes more high cost and I warned her that I was looking at cost around
$8,000 and that I would be concerned with us dropping those charges because we have to pay somehow. I talked to Mike and discussed what other options we had if we wanted to do something like that, because there is the ability to go through this matter civilly and having them pay us. I was just worried about the long run of that happening. I haven’t been contacted by the other two families. I’ve called and left messages once because I just got their phone numbers from the police officer. The police report is done so I should be able to get it, but it

does take a while. The last thing they were waiting on was a quote from me to replace that slide. Unfortunately, the slide is not made anymore. There is only one company that I can find a triple slide like that with them next to each other rather than three single slides. This is all three on one giant piece of plastic and the only thing that I could find that matches up to that height so we can put it on the deck correctly is $6,017.13 to have it shipped to us. Looking at the specs it’ll bolt up pretty easy, so I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a good replacement for that slide. If you recall, this playground is one we are getting rid of, however we take that slide or say like the tic-tac-toe panel off as long as they’re in good shape and we reuse them on other units that aren’t in line to be replaced completely yet because we still have to make multiple years, or we have to plan on spending what could add up to a quarter million dollars at one time to replace everything. So, we are planning on using that slide but that unit is the one we were going to change out next. So, even if we were to talk about considering this a depreciation and giving them less, it’s still a lot of money. I did inform her that I’m leaving that up to the Board completely. That’s not something I want to address. I did just get the police report, so I would say no matter what we decide, we could always bring them in next month to speak to you in a public meeting but I’m not sure if that’s the route you guys would wish to go as far as dropping the charges.
Vice Chairman Davis asked there are three parties involved and you have information on all three, but you’ve only been in contact with one?
Mr. Soriano responded correct.
Vice Chairman Davis stated if this were my kid sitting right here, press charges. Chairperson Nelsen asked only one is a resident, correct?
Mr. Soriano responded correct.
Mr. Thomas asked how does that complicate anything for us as far as getting the money? Do we just charge the resident, or can we send small claims to the other families?
Vice Chairperson responded no, you press charges and go through the process of restitution that they have to pay.
Mr. Thomas stated I saw a Facebook post with the damage, the confrontation that ensued and all of the sneakiness that was going on. I’m all for pressing charges. There has to be a consequence. They knew what they were doing.

Mr. Soriano stated just to forewarn you, we have had vandalism issues before and there have been times we’ve actually caught kids. What they do is they go through a juvenile court process and there is restitution paid through that. I have never received restitution from Clay County Juvenile Court for anything we’ve ever done. I’ve received it from Duval when we’ve had issues that also involved jurisdiction with Duval.
Mr. Davis stated I have had a situation on one of my homes in Jacksonville and same thing, I was awarded restitution but did not receive restitution and followed up on it and was able to get a judgment, so there’s a follow up process. They’re going to tell them to pay it, but they don’t know they have to pay it and they’re going to pay it.
Mr. Soriano stated the payment comes from the court, so the restitution is paid back to the court. It’s not like I’m going to get a $6,000 check just because they go to court.
Mr. Eckert stated let me make a suggestion based on what we’re hearing today. I’m not hearing any board members say that they want to tell Jay not to go ahead and press charges on behalf of the District for the incident that occurred and if there is a board member that feels that way, speak up. If not, then Jay, I think your direction is to press charges on behalf of the District and then we will deal with the other aspects of it as that process works its way through.
Mr. Thomas stated are there any consequences that we can give? Like take away their card for a year like we would do someone else.
Vice Chairman Davis stated it has to be on top of and in addition to the charges.
There’s only one resident.
Mr. Eckert stated for the two non-residents we can say you can’t use the facilities or be a guest or anything like that. We can certainly do that. The one resident, we would have to do a suspension hearing like we normally would do. It does violate the rules that we have for damaging the District property and that would be appropriate and consistent with what has been done in terms of letting the police work their aspects of that. We can bring that back at the next meeting if you want to.
Mr. Horton asked was the one resident a repeat offender?
Mr. Soriano responded no. This is a first offence for her. One of the two that are not residents, her name was really familiar, and I was almost positive that she was a repeat offender with spray paint and things like that. I have not made contact. Until I talk to them, I

don’t know for sure. She’s with guardians so the name is different, and I can’t be sure until I make contact.
Mr. Eckert stated I don’t think we need to talk about it further unless the Board just has additional questions. Jay, I think you have what you need.
Mr. Soriano stated yes. Now that the police report is done, I can let them know we’re not going to drop charges and I just have to let the Clay County Sheriff’s Office proceed with their side.
Mr. Soriano continued with his report and stated let me move some of things around because I’m thinking pickleball is going to take the longest. We already talked about the capital study and you guys approved getting that done, which is very helpful in terms of I have good planning and a third-party company that backs up what I expect to spend every year. We’re doing really good in that capital reserve funding to where the last couple of years when I’ve brought stuff to the Board I can say yes, we have enough money. This includes those things that we have now, but it does not include new items. We have put those new items on there. I don’t think it’s going to bring down our funding amount that much. I still think you guys are going to be sitting high. Anything within reason that we talk about, we do have the funds. With that, let me go over a quote I have for the fitness center landscape improvements. The amount is $4,057.55. Chalon and I were talking, and I believe we can adjust that a bit because we do have left over from this last year’s contract. If you recall, when we went through the RFP, I explained that one thing I like to do is not to overseed every single year. You’ll take a break and that allows the grass to thicken up a little bit. However, one thing you get is a lot of yellowing in the winter. I have to double check, but I believe it’s a little over
$5,000 leftover so we can use that for some of the improvements that we planned on doing this year. I still want you guys to review the quote and make sure this is something we want to move forward with. This was a request to sod the back and add some trees and things like that. We may do a little more since we have money.
Mr. Horton stated I think it’s a good idea. Chairperson Nelsen stated I agree.
Mr. Soriano stated if you want to, let’s go ahead and approve it for that amount.

On MOTION by Chairperson Nelsen seconded by Mr. Thomas with all in favor VerdeGo’s proposal for landscape improvements behind the fitness center totaling $4,057.55 was approved.

Mr. Soriano stated back to pickleball. We’re still in the same spot, however last time I told you court repairs and resurfacing could be as low as $15,000 if I use a lot of our labor that you see here tonight to help out with things. I talked to a couple of painting companies, but there isn’t really a lot of surface painting. We can do some touch up work, but they definitely would handle all of the lines and that would be possibly closer to $10,000 on the low end. For nets, permanent holes, changing the fencing and adding surface to the corners for six courts you’re looking at about $25,000 to $35,000 on the high end. I believe I can stay much closer to that low end if I use some help.
Chairperson Nelsen asked so regardless, we need to resurface the tennis courts?
Mr. Soriano responded it’s not a full resurface, just paint and some repairs. If we really want to make this new standalone facility, then I don’t want any of those cracks. We’re going to have to dig some of that asphalt out, open up the holes and flatten everything out.
Mr. Thomas stated when you and I walked it you had shown me there was possibly a way to reuse one of those benches. Is that included in this too?
Mr. Soriano responded no, that’s just moving it. I’m going to reuse everything I can. A bench is right around $8,000 so I don’t want to just throw something like that away and those benches inside the tennis courts are actually in good shape compared to the ones out at the playgrounds. I’m also going to reuse the fencing poles that we cut out of the asphalt.
Chairperson Nelsen asked what was the timeline?
Mr. Soriano responded that’s going to be based on your decision. The lower end at
$25,000 was with us doing some of the work. I would really need for us to have some kind of conclusion so I can get started, because it’s going to be spring in five weeks. I have Spring Break coming up and my focus gets pushed to those pools. I’m still working on a rather large leak in your pool and we have to get that back up and running. After that, I’m limited in repairs on the pool deck even though we have to get ready for the summer. I get a couple of weeks in April, we’re open on weekends, but I have everything going and we have to keep that place running so it takes me away from the outer areas.

Vice Chairman Davis stated I know at some point we discussed some so-called skin in the game like I-9 and the soccer program and the money spent for them on the field and whatnot. Was that based on brand new courts or what we’re talking about now?
Mr. Soriano responded even now. That is part of the commitment. I’ve talked to Jim about this. Even those things like the guest fees. If we can change it around, that would give them a little more leeway to have more guests and not have to worry about paying every day, but they’re still going to bring in money almost like they do out here with the teams. That money goes to not only the pros, because I want Jim to make some money, and a little bit goes to the District. That also makes it easier for them to have access to those facilities. We might have to put rules and limits on that. We don’t want guests just coming in any time by themselves. It’s really going to be centered around that program. I still think we need to do that, but we can always bring that back to you. Jim has brought up money that could be turned in with tournaments, the same way we do with the tennis. A big portion of that should go to the pro and staff that work it, but the rest comes back to the District. It’s not a huge revenue generator, but it does help offset because if we are creating this nice facility, there’s always more maintenance involved. We do have small amounts of O&M that go to the tennis courts right now, but it’s not much at all. We resurfaced seven years ago, and we really haven’t gone out there to do much painting or anything because there’s not high usage.
Vice Chairman Davis asked what direction do you want to get this moving forward and make sure we also have some maintenance stuff built into the program?
Mr. Soriano responded I wouldn’t plan on money from them. It’s nice to say, but that is really on us. If we make that decision to put in any type of new facilities, we have to be prepared to handle that cost completely by ourselves, even in the future. We never know, no matter what the reason is, pickleball could just fall off and disappear. Is that likely, probably not, but we can’t plan on that. We have to ask if we’re going to continue that O&M and is this something we really want five or ten years from now. Hopefully it does build up. I think it will build. They’re doing really well out there.
Mr. Thomas stated in the last meeting when we were talking about budget in the last meeting you mentioned there was some money allocated that we could use for this improvement.

Mr. Soriano stated yes, the capital reserves. The capital reserve study is based off of things we have, and we do have tennis court resurfacing money. I’m going to change around that paint completely to match six courts and the fencing would be new, but if I break it down individually, those are small items; $6,000 here and $7,000 there, but add it up and $25,000 to
$35,000 sounds like a lot, but there is money in there we could use. This is not building a brand-new facility and I’m not looking at adding new lights or anything like that. This is just to get them their six courts with plenty of space that is dedicated for pickleball. We will still have the tennis courts on the other side, we’re going to leave the shadow lines, so they will still have a huge facility and will have ten courts if they’re having a big tournament.
Mr. Thomas stated I see the tennis courts as being not fully utilized right now. I see a sport that is increasing, not only in this community but in other communities around us and I think it would be another draw to our community. If you guys remember, a couple of years ago we added exercise equipment and took on the maintenance cost for that as well. We don’t know how many people are using that exercise equipment. I see an opportunity for the community to utilize that area more. It’s highly visible, it’s right there on the corner, so when you’re going by there on a Saturday, you’re going to say what is going on over there, that’s awesome, I’m going to peak my head over there. Is it going to cost us some money? Yes. In the long-term I think it would be better for our community so I would like the Board to consider voting yes on doing the retrofit to the pickleball courts.
Vice Chairman Davis stated Jay, you’re more in tune to the maintenance and usage of the facilities than any of us. I trust your judgment and it seems to me that you are okay with this.
Mr. Soriano stated we do get requests a lot and even if 100 people came out, that’s barely breaking 1% of our population. We’re getting ready to spend $25,000 to $35,000 for 1% of our population, however, we don’t have people show up at our meetings and they’re actually taking the time. If we look at it that way, we probably would never add any improvements, it would just be making sure the paint looks good and we’d do with what we had when the place was built back in 2005. We add new things, and we try to make things better. It’s been years since we had an assessment increase, so the residents are all pretty happy. If it’s a small amount of money and we can afford it, I don’t see it being a problem. But it does open that door and we do have a lot of programs that ask us for a lot of stuff. We do have to figure out a

way to gauge what is going to work out and what is not. I think we’ve beaten this one pretty well and looked at everything. Originally, we were worried about tennis. I don’t think that’s going to be a concern. In fact, the tennis players that have come and talked to me are not worried about it. There are a few that do tennis and pickleball and they’re looking forward to something like this, so I think no matter how much we go through the pros and cons, this is one we can go ahead with.
Mr. Horton stated if you all remember when we repainted the courts and we turned them into pickleball courts I was pushing for that at the time and I still think it’s a good idea to change them, so I’m on board.
Mr. Thomas motioned to approve repurposing the tennis courts into pickleball courts and asked for a not to exceed amount.
Vice Chairman Davis asked how many volunteers are we going to get?
Mr. Soriano stated this is not something I’m going to be able to get done in a month. It may not be done in three months, but if I can get started, it makes it easier for my summer because once the pools open up it’s tough on me and staff. We can do the $25,000 and if I need another $5,000, I can come back and explain what is leftover, what is needed and what they couldn’t help me out with.

On MOTION by Mr. Thomas seconded by Vice Chairman Davis with all in favor repurposing the tennis courts into pickleball courts at a cost not to exceed $25,000 was approved.

Ms. Suchsland stated if I can get another schedule that you leave out on the fitness counter, we can help you out with blowing the courts off.
Mr. Thomas asked are the branches still in front of the lights?
Ms. Suchsland responded we did a lot of pruning in December. They’re coming back in early March so if you can let me know what areas, we can add them.
Mr. Soriano continued with his report. That is it for the open items. We usually go through the rule adjustments and things like that at the nighttime meetings. There is one item I want to bring to you for the fitness center. We moved everything around the fitness center. We have a lot more space and we will have a lot more machines. The only thing that’s ever really been a point of complaint is the guest rule. I think at this point, seeing usage for it, it’s not

really needed the way it was when we first opened that building. Our usage is much lower than when we first opened, and people were waiting around for a half hour or 45 minutes to use a machine. We don’t have that anymore, so if we want to change the policies it does make it a little easier on staff. Your sister district never wanted to change it so that made it hard. We do have our differences, and I think it’s one we can change.
Vice Chairman Davis asked what are your thoughts? One guest? You can’t bring five guests in.
Mr. Soriano responded I would leave it the same as some of our sports courts, which is two. For the pool it’s five. If you want to go with one, we can do that.
Vice Chairman Davis stated I would say one because it’s still a small space. Mr. Thomas asked we’re not going to change the pool rule, are we?
Mr. Soriano responded this is just for the policy on the fitness center, just for your fitness center for guest usage. We’ve been operating pretty smooth for the last couple of years. In fact, the last rules that we changed were the weekend guest rules and that was three summers ago now. It was a little confusing because we closed down for the pandemic and then everybody had to relearn that the next year, but everybody understood why we were doing it and that helped out.
Chairperson Nelsen asked do you need a motion to change that? Mr. Eckert responded yes.

On MOTION by Vice Chairman Davis seconded by Chairperson Nelsen with all in favor amending the fitness center policy regarding guest usage to allow one guest per day was approved.

Mr. Horton asked Mr. Soriano for clarification on the item on his report regarding coordination of meeting and inspection of culvert on Laurelwood.
Mr. Soriano stated there’s been a barricade down there for eight or nine months. This is really just to make sure it gets done. We don’t own the roads and that work is not ours. It doesn’t really affect us, but we do deal with the side of the road and there’s constant sinkholes and what happens is CCUA comes out and says it’s coming from our irrigation. It’s not coming from our irrigation. They’ve dug that whole area up and drained out all of Loop Road to make sure there was no water running through those pipes. This water is coming up from the

underside of that box that sits about six feet down. We don’t have any irrigation that goes that far down. It is JEA’s pipe that goes along that road and it’s not their pipe either, so they came out and looked at it. It’s just a hole in the culvert itself and what’s happening is the water table below it is pushing up so when it rains, we can go out there and see it. The problem is when that happens it lets the water and mud up through the inside of the box and it goes down and drains into the pond so Clay Utility and the County will have to deal with that culvert. It’s going to have to be repaired, or they’re going to have to constantly patch that, which they have, until the point that it gets so bad that they have to replace a big chunk of that road. There is really nothing else I can do on that. I’ve gone through dealing with everybody in the last year on that. You’ll notice it’s been patched multiple times over the last 10 to 15 years.
Mr. Horton stated the security carts are ready to go as I understand.
Mr. Soriano stated yours is ready to go. I still have to put the backseat on Middle Village’s.
Mr. Horton asked are you going to turn it over to security yet?
Mr. Soriano responded I’m still working on some other problems with security, but it’s ready to go. Yours is completely ready. It’s got headlights and a backseat on it in case there is an emergency, and we need to carry somebody.
Mr. Horton asked how about the Village Center HOA issue with the lights?
Mr. Soriano responded I haven’t had contact with them because I’m still waiting on Clay Electric. I want to find out if there is a good way to cut them off. I don’t want to just drop them with a $10,000 or $20,000 install. I want to try to figure out a way, but I have to wait for Clay Electric to do that. There are going to be four lights that fall on the County road and we handle all the other County roads so what they would have to do is still hook the lights on the green to those four lights that are on the County road section. They own the roads in the back. My other concern back there, and I’m going to speak to them about this, is we paid for those poles, and they have very special tops on them. Those glass jars are about $900 a piece. I don’t want to give them away because I constantly have to replace those things so I’m not sure what we can do for that. If Clay Electric were to come in and set up their own electrical line for them, they will install the fiberglass bulbs that are about $500 a piece for the whole pole fixture.
Vice Chairman Davis asked do you think giving them a heads up would be enough?

Mr. Soriano responded that’s where I’m still waiting on Clay Electric. I wasn’t going to just cut them off and once we find out the only way to do this is they’re going to have to separate a couple different lines, it’s going to be a lot of work for Clay Electric and it might be
$20,000, if I go to them with that information, it may be that they don’t want to do that and they’d rather split the cost and then we go through making up a legal agreement and they pay every month for the electric bill.
Mr. Horton stated while we’re talking about the Village Green, at our last meeting we discussed those little islands in there. I went to the Clay County Appraiser’s Office, and I’ve got a map here if anybody wants to look at it. We own that right past the sidewalks.
Mr. Soriano stated the first thing that comes up on the Clay County Property Appraiser’s website is that is not a plat map. It’ll tell you they’re not accurate. We built the road, and we own that road. That’s where I was saying, the different here is you can consider those part of the right of way. If you want to view it that way, we probably also own all of the sidewalk area going over there, but our plat stops at the curb. That was a developer decision to build it that way years ago and the developer was the CDD back then with those plans that this was going to be a commercial area and they would put money into it, but now it’s a homeowner’s area.
Vice Chairman Davis asked why would we want to put flowers over there? It’s not our stuff. We’ve talked about it for three months.
Mr. Soriano stated even if we want to say it’s ours because we’re going to handle the right of way, we own that road. The asphalt there is like one big parking lot, but it’s a thru area. It doesn’t mean we have to do anything for those islands. We can just mulch it.
Vice Chairman Davis stated they live there. If they want it to look good, they can dress it up with their money and we can spend our money on maintenance, pickleball and whatnot.
Mr. Soriano stated it really depends on what you want to do there.
Mr. Horton stated I’m just going by what it says here. The appraiser says that’s our property and we can take care of it or not.
Mr. Soriano stated well like I said, even if we consider that our property, you guys have to decide if you want to continue landscaping that since that’s not what the original plan was.
Vice Chairman Davis stated we discussed this last month and the answer was no.

EIGHTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Audience Comments / Supervisors’
Requests
Ms. Crys LaFata of S3 Security stated I know I’m going to get a couple questions, so I wanted to just notate a few things that have come up in the last 30 days. A few positives, we’ve hired and are fully staffed, and the newest members of our team are a higher caliber officer. The reports that are coming in are a little bit more detailed. We’ve been able to notate safety and security concerns such as issues with the sidewalks, lights that have been out and we even witnessed and have notified police of suspected drug activity and property damage. Now that we are fully staffed, we can look into replacing officers that have not been a higher caliber officer. You may have been noticing signs of not partaking in the jobs they were hired for so we can move forward with disciplinary actions and with replacing those officers. We’re working towards improving security and customer service as a whole.

Supervisor Requests
Vice Chairman Davis stated based off the comments we just got from security, you mentioned there were other issues before the golf carts will be given out. Can you elaborate, please?
Mr. Eckert stated I want to remind the Board that any time you talk about your security plan, security systems and how they function and hours and things like that, you start to get into something we have to discuss in a closed session so I just ask Jay to temper his comments or response to you to make sure we don’t cross that line.
Mr. Thomas asked do we need to call for a close session?
Mr. Eckert responded we can certainly do that at the next meeting.
Vice Chairman Davis stated that’s fine. We value Jay’s opinion and he’s the goose on the ground, so I’d like to hear what he has to say.
Mr. Soriano stated like she was directing, there’s quite a bit still to work on. Vice Chairman Davis stated we will circle back next month.

Mr. Thomas asked have you heard anything from Sugarleaf?
Mr. Soriano responded no. In fact, they slowed down a little bit on their clearing and development but they’re still out there. Last week they dumped a big load of dirt, but I have

not heard anything from them as far as their request to get any kind of special deal from you guys.
Mr. Thomas stated that’s going to be a no-go. I’m talking about the sidewalks and right of ways and stuff like that.
Mr. Soriano stated no. I think we’re a long way from that. Just to inform you, that road that is back there was supposed to be going farther down to Kindlewood. There are other neighborhoods that are going up and there are going to be some on the other side that they’re not getting that connection to now and they’re the same way. They’re going to be 110 rental homes, so we are getting a lot of those neighborhoods in this area.
Ms. Suchsland asked do you have contact information for them? Mr. Soriano responded yes.
Ms. Suchsland stated we’re getting a lot of buildup in the curbs from the dirt and sand from those trucks. They’ve cleaned up once, but that is a lot on our guys so I’d like it if you and I can contact that person.
Mr. Thomas stated I’ve noticed the buildup too because I live in that area. It can get quite muddy.
Mr. Soriano stated just to remind everybody, it’s a County road, so one of the best plans of action is to complain to the County and they will say something directly to the developer.
Mr. Horton stated Jay, you mentioned the leak in the pool. Do you have any idea when they’re going to start on the repair?
Mr. Soriano responded I wasn’t able to start that one week that I told you guys I would and then it rained quite a bit. One of the concerns was doing any work in the rain because of the two large pipes underneath. I have to dig a lot more of that up and we don’t want to shift anything else back up. Hopefully it’ll be dry this week and I’ll get to that. Hopefully the way this works out is we will be closer to $2,000 in labor compared to $5,000. As I mentioned last time, the only way to completely straighten out that pipe is to dig up a lot of that deck so we had one commercial plumber and two commercial pool contractors come out and they all agreed that made sense to do it that way, plus they don’t want the job. Their suggestion was a mechanical fitting. We bought it. It’s not that expensive, just a few hundred bucks. Doing the work to get the old, cracked pipe out is going to be the hardest part, but their suggestion was

mechanical fitting and bury it. The only thing is if we see leaking in the future, that’s going to be the first place we have to check, but that is the route we’re going to go.
Mr. Horton asked what about the cardio room?
Mr. Soriano responded that’s all done. Everybody is loving the rowers and the arm machine. I do have to move to the treadmills. Two treadmills are facing the wrong direction and it is because of that measurement on my part for the electrical. I have to get a longer cord so they can face the correct way. It’ll take a little getting used to. The other thing is I will probably be buying a lot more mats. I got mats for underneath all of the machines. It’s very bright and loud in that room because of that floor so I’m going to temper that down with a little flooring, but it’s not a high dollar expense.
Mr. Horton asked have you heard anything more on the renovated equipment we’re supposed to be getting in?
Mr. Soriano responded no, we’re still at three units. If you want, I can move forward with purchasing just those units that are available. You guys approved five, but my concern with that is it increasing shipping costs. Right now, no shipping is going good whatsoever, so I don’t see getting all five anytime soon. That will be in an email I’m going to send out just to let people know because now that it has changed, the other fitness center room looks empty, and everybody is asking what we’re adding.
Mr. Horton asked are we moving on the stormwater analysis report yet?
Mr. Eckert responded your District Engineer is working on that. I believe his firm is working on it. They work with a lot of community development districts around the area.
Mr. Soriano stated I don’t think that’s anything that’s going to be done right away.
That’s a big report.
Mr. Eckert stated it has to be done by June.
Mr. Soriano stated yes, so we have a while. This is something that all local governments have to do.
Mr. Horton stated we’re supposed to be looking at 20 years. Do we have to do that every so many years?
Mr. Eckert responded yes; I think it’s every five years you have to update it. Mr. Horton stated the last question I have is for security. Anything of note?

Ms. LaFata responded we did have an incident with gentleman that were residents that were jumping from the bridge at the lake into the water. We asked them to leave, and they left on their own accord. The bathroom doors by the maintenance shed by the pool were left unlocked so we were able to report on that, but that was pretty much it as far as notifications for Double Branch. Everything else was from your sister district. There was a lot of activity we were able to address and move forward with.
Mr. Soriano stated one more thing. You guys are officially employees of the District. I have jackets that I ordered for all of my employees that were part of their uniforms. There is a small cost for all of the employees that are not full time, which would be you. I do have a few left over if you want to come see me.
Mr. Milton Harmon, 500 Tannerstone Court, stated we just bought a house over here. Is it just a four-man panel, or five?
Mr. Thomas responded five.
Vice Chairman Davis stated we’re missing one gentleman this evening who couldn’t make it.
Ms. Giles stated the CDD has a website. You can go to www.DoubleBranchCDD.com and it’s got a lot of the documents on it.
Chairperson Nelsen stated and then on www.OakleafResidents.com you can sign up for a newsletter.

NINTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Next Scheduled Meeting
Ms. Giles stated the next scheduled meeting is March 14th at 4:00 p.m. at the Plantation Oaks Amenity Center.

TENTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Adjournment

On MOTION by Mr. Horton seconded by Mr. Thomas with all in favor the meeting was adjourned.

Secretary/Assistant Secretary	Chairman/Vice Chairman