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, October 10, 2022 at 4:00 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 (by phone)
Tom Horton	Supervisor
Scott Thomas	Supervisor
Andre Lanier	Supervisor

Also present were:

Marilee Giles	District Manager
Mike Eckert	District Counsel
Jay Soriano	Field Operations Manager
Chalon Suchsland	VerdeGo
Marla Dietrich	S3 Security

FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS	Roll Call
Ms. Giles called the meeting to order at 4:00 p.m.

SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS	Audience Comments
Mr. Conkey stated I’m the St. Johns River Water Management District inter- governmental coordinator for Northeast Florida, so I wanted to introduce myself. You have a lot of stormwater ponds and conservation easements, so at some point in time you may have an issue and I can help you through that. It’s good to see some familiar faces and catch up on how things have changed or haven’t changed over time. I don’t know if Senator Bradley represents this area anymore, but he’s the Chairman of our Board down in Palatka where we are headquartered. We’re working with the county on some water conservation initiatives. If you know anybody who has farmland around here, the wells that are constantly flowing, we have a plugging process that would pick up the cost and that saves millions of gallons of water a year. You’re unique because you serve two utilities. We do a lot of education. You have homes, you

have irrigation systems, you have a lot of stormwater, so be on the lookout for constraints. There is information that can educate them on the days and week that they should be watering. CCUA is a big help. Hopefully JEA does the same thing with their bills. We’ve started the Black Creek Water Resource project. Construction starts here in the next month or two in which we will be taking water out of Black Creek down by animal control on State Road 16 and piping it 17 miles down to Camp Blanding to cleanse it and change its color from Black Creek to a lighter color. The binary purpose is to recharge the aquafer. The secondary is as the aquafer gets healthy, Lake Brooklyn and Lake Geneva will get healthy. If you’ve been down there, it’s impressive how low they are. That is a multimillion-dollar project and it’s really heading the pack to see if these recharge projects are going to be beneficial. You’ll see that under construction if you go south on Blanding. There are ecosystem trip wires, so we don’t drain Black Creek. If it gets to a certain point, they can’t pull anymore because with anything we do we are always cognizant of the natural resources. Conservation is critical because water is a limited resource so we’re just trying to do a lot of education on adhering to the current rules of water conservation. Over 50% of the water you use in your house is probably used outside the house, so smart plantings, Florida-friendly landscaping and making sure water sensors are maintained. When you drive around and it’s raining and you see irrigation running, or the irrigation is more efficient at watering the sidewalk and the road, which stresses your stormwater systems because it’s liquefying the nutrients and the bad things on the road and running it into your stormwater system. Stormwater ponds are important for holding stormwater, but they’re also important because it’s supposed to remove those nutrients over time because you have a stormwater event, and it overflows. So, education is key.
Mr. Horton stated I would think that we have no problem with water around here because we are building a plant down the road here for millions of gallons of water for Niagara.
Mr. Conkey stated there is a lot of press that has been negative about plants because they typically come in and ask for a consumptive use permit. Utilities have a consumptive use permit, which means they are limited to how much water they can pull when they drop wells. The politics is they weren’t going to get a well consumptive use permit. They are actually buying their water through CCUA’s consumptive use permit. They have capacity for what they’re allowed to pull.

Mr. Horton stated well wherever they get it, it’s coming from an aquafer.
Mr. Conkey stated yes. With most developments, stormwater is going to be used for watering your common areas, so there is a tremendous amount of technology being put in place because to handle that all the treatment plants were stressed and when storm and the flooding shut down the pumps, now you have sewage going places, so CCUA and I’m sure JEA has hardened their facilities so you really don’t have that issue, but when you have somebody putting 15-inches of rain on top of your property, we all would be singing a different tune because what happens is the St. Johns is the laziest of lazy rivers. It flows very slowly south to north, so when the metrics are right and it goes up, now all of the sudden the Ortega River and all the estuaries and tributaries that feed into it have nowhere to go, so that’s where you start having people say I never expected my house to flood, but you just exceeded by a large amount the amount of water that the capacity can hold. If a land developer has 100 acres, 15 to 20 percent of that is going to go to your stormwater systems and if you capture that and hold it and remove the nutrients up to about eight percent required by law, unless it’s abutting a sensitive area, and it feeds down. I’ll work on getting more information to you so that you can get it out to your constituents and your staff and so forth. You’ll hear a lot of press because they’re getting ready to break ground on that project, and that is the largest project for the district right now and it’s a big deal for the State and it’s right here in our backyard.
Mr. Lanier asked state funds or county funds?
Mr. Conkey responded it’s a combination. Legislative appropriation, utilities all had to put in some money, and then obviously the district is putting some money in. Legislative appropriation is the bulk of that.

THIRD ORDER OF BUSINESS	Approval of Consent Agenda
Approval of the Minutes of the September 12, 2022 Board of Supervisors Meeting
Financial Statements
Assessment Receipt Schedule
Check Register
Ms. Giles stated included in your agenda package are the minutes of the September 12th meeting. Unless there are any changes, I look for a motion to approve.

On MOTION by Mr. Horton seconded by Mr. Thomas with all in favor the minutes of the September 12, 2022 meeting were approved.

Included in the agenda package are the financial statements as of August 31st, your assessment receipts schedule, and the check register totaling $180,072.84.

On MOTION by Chairperson Nelsen seconded by Mr. Horton with all in favor the check register was approved.

FOURTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Other Business
Mr. Soriano stated in front of you is a work authorization I had to bring back. I made a mistake last month. They were the work authorizations for Fiscal Year 2023, but they still had the Fiscal Year 2022 budget numbers. If you recall, it previously said $192,766 for Double Branch. In the budgeting process we did an eight percent increase, and everybody agreed to that part, but we didn’t put that in there, so the new number is there at $208,187. I’m not asking for extra, it’s the amount that was in the budget so we can bill properly starting this month. I’ll ask you to ratify the correction and the Chair to sign off on the correction.
Mr. Horton stated I want to withdraw my comment from last meeting where I said kudos to GMS for not raising the rates.
Mr. Soriano stated I didn’t catch that; I wasn’t quick enough. I thought he was talking about our job descriptions, but Tom caught that the amounts were last year’s.

On MOTION by Chairperson Nelsen seconded by Mr. Lanier with all in favor revising work authorization number one with GMS, LLC was ratified.

FIFTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Staff Reports
District Counsel
Mr. Eckert stated that he had nothing to report.
Mr. Horton asked what is the status on the revised disciplinary hearing rule? Mr. Eckert responded it will be brought before both boards in November.

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

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

D.  Operations Manager - Memorandum
Mr. Soriano stated I want to point out that for community events we will be extremely busy this month. This week we are back to movies in the park, so we will have a movie Friday night with food truck night. Next week on Saturday we have Pumpkin Plunge, which is one of our neighborhood favorites. The following week we have Spooktacular, which is an event we haven’t had for about five or six years, and everybody misses it. It’s a very large event. People line up in that parking lot. This will also be the first event in a long time where I will bring back adult beverages. In November we have the Turkey Shoot and then we will have an event every month other than in January and February we tend not to do anything because it tends to get too cold.
Chairperson Nelsen stated I’ll be curious how many people want the virtual scavenger hunt again this year, because I think everybody really enjoyed those.
Mr. Soriano stated they did and that’s really the only reason we’re sticking to those. Not just for Thanksgiving, but we had an Easter one too last year. It ends up working out well and we can do it for a longer period of time too.
Mr. Soriano continued with his report stating, to update you on open items, we should be dropping the asphalt seal on the front section of the parking lot at the end of this week. I had originally planned for a week ago, but with hurricane prep we pushed that around a bit. I have to move those pallets out of the garage so I can bring in the surfacer for the pickleball courts. We dug up a lot of cracks and we’ve pulled out all the posts and benches and filled them in with asphalt, but I do have to cover all the surface with the finer medium so we can paint over top. That is coming in this next week. We will do the parking lot first and then we can move to pickleball.
I finalized the fitness equipment staying under our original not to exceed, but I still don’t have a date for delivery.

I don’t have a date for install of the historic marker. That is a county project, but this last month they did offer to come into a meeting to explain it to you and go through the history. I’m going to invite them to next month’s meeting. They had originally offered a few months ago, but we were in the middle of the budget process, and they hadn’t finalized whether we were actually going to get the marker.
Mr. Thomas asked how is pickleball going? You said you wanted to have it done before the Halloween event.
Mr. Soriano responded I think we will be pretty close. I must have the surfacer first and that only takes a couple of days once we get it in. Paint will be second and I’m relying on the pickleball group to help me. Painting may be done by the Spooktacular event. It is a third party that is coming in to do the lining. Whether they’re playable for competition, I don’t know, but we will at least have a flat, ready to go surface because we do use that area for the Spooktacular. They keep promising me to give me information on the nets. The nets were paid for and purchased by their fundraiser, but they still haven’t gotten me that information. I need to know when I get to the surfacing if there is an anchor that goes in the ground, so I need to know the size and shape of the anchor. That goes in first before we cover everything up.
I have a handful of trespass issues I wanted to go over. A couple were younger kids vandalizing our playground. The Clay County Sheriff’s Office did a good job of controlling the playgrounds this last month. These are not our off-duty officers. They’re either here as beat or working with the HOAs. The kids were trying to lift the roofs off the playgrounds. They caught them, gave them trespass citations, and called me. I went out and checked the playgrounds and there was no monetary damage. The officers did make them go back up the poles and put the roofs back on in the middle of the night, so everything was back in place. I don’t see anything occurring with that. One is a habitual offender that has been in trouble a couple of times. His grandparents are his guardians. The reason I wanted to bring up a discussion is there are two that we are going to send a letter to in order to take away their privileges. They were both adults. One occurred at this side, and one occurred on your side. The one on your side is straightforward. It’s somebody who did not agree with our fitness center rules and wanted their child to come in and work out. The child was 13 and they were told the rules and still wanted to argue. They still went in and worked out and were told we were going to call the Sheriff’s office and the Sheriff’s office would escort them out if they didn’t leave. She waited around for

the Sheriff’s office and received a trespass citation. Her first question was do I not have to pay CDD fees now that I’m no longer allowed back here. I don’t expect to see her showing up to the meeting. The other one occurred here at this pool. This resident doesn’t live on this side, but we want to act the same way. We have a lot of the same rules at both sets of pools. She has had a lot of interactions with our lifeguards. Not extremely bad, and these were not bad rules that she was breaking many times, but she is a consistent problem and she’s passive aggressive with the staff here. They’ve had multiple incidents throughout the summer and a lot of them center around the same issues. One happens to be her attire. This situation wasn’t just about those things, it was about her reaction to staff. She believes a staff member has it out for her. The staff member does not. They could care less one way or another but was just going over the rules. The staff member let her anger show a little bit once she started berating her and recording her, but she did her job and this lady continued to push the point where that staff member eventually called the Sheriff’s office to remove her. I talked to the lady, and she admitted the staff member told her she could go in to the pool. Well, why did you stay there and not go into the pool? You could’ve avoided this whole thing. So, more of this fell on her and I explained that to her. I think it’s a little extreme for a trespass on this situation, but at the same time, I don’t agree with rescinding it because she had the choice to change the whole outcome of this situation and she didn’t. I told her I would bring it to you and she’s welcome to come to a meeting. We will send the suspension letter to her, and she can show up and ask for a disciplinary hearing and go through the process at which point I will share all of the incident reports and everything I have whether it is pictures or footage of previous events. She even sent me a picture of her attire to try to prove it’s not too small. She is not here. I did tell her she could come to this one and that I’d bring it to you.
Mr. Thomas asked so her privileges have been suspended?
Mr. Soriano responded I turned her card off. The pools are pretty much closed.
Mr. Thomas asked there’s a documented history of this type of interaction with our
staff?
Mr. Soriano responded yes, with different staff members, not just the staff member she
thinks has a personal problem. I have statements from four or five different lifeguards, and it seems to be the same stuff every time.
Mr. Horton asked wouldn’t the Middle Village board take care of this?

Mr. Soriano responded they are. I just wanted to inform you. The situation on your side is the one at the fitness center. We do reciprocate, so when one district rescinds or suspends privileges the other one does too, but they would address it first. If she decides she wants to show up at that next meeting after she gets her suspension letter, then they will address that and however they determine I can report to you. If they keep that suspension in place, then you would too.
I’m sure you saw all of the Facebook posts from homecoming this weekend. We’ve dealt with this year end, year out. The residents always want to make it out like it’s no big deal and we’re just kicking them out of areas. With this incident there ended up being five Clay County Sheriff’s officers here and really the only reason was because the one off-duty officer that we pay decided she wanted to call them in. There were enough people, and they weren’t listening. They showed up here Saturday before homecoming in a huge group and blocked the circle so people couldn’t drive through and then were upset that they were told they couldn’t have pictures on the stairs, and they needed to move their cars and they refused. Our security guards and the Sheriff’s officers had to be a little more forceful. Nobody received a trespass citation that I know of. There was a post on there that somebody says they were told they received a trespass citation, or they pay $250 to take their pictures. I have no clue where this came from. We have no option to pay to take pictures out here and there is no fine. It’s something we’ve dealt with every year. We’ve had some thoughts of what we could do to cut it down and there really isn’t much. We’ve talked about not having an event on that weekend, which cuts revenue from this district, but also on dates like this it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because homecoming was not originally scheduled for this past weekend, it was scheduled for the weekend before. So, we would’ve cut revenue for that weekend and still had a problem when they showed up this weekend. There are times if there is no event going on if there is a family or two that shows up, it’s not our problem and our staff usually lets it slide. This was not that case. This was just for informational purposes. Hopefully in the future when they finish the fencing project out here and we put some gates on this building it will separate out the stairs so people can’t come all the way up and bother the events up here.
Mr. Lanier asked what about access?
Mr. Soriano responded the access to the gate would be controlled by the party and the party attendant. The gate will stay closed. If there’s no event up here, you can’t come up and

just walk around the veranda. This whole floor, the elevator and the veranda only comes along with usage of this room. There are a couple reasons for it. We have a gate downstairs that is going to act like their entry point, so they have to scan to get into your amenity center. Once it’s sectioned off the stairs will be separated out and it won’t cause as much of a problem with the weddings and at that point, if people want to take pictures, our biggest concern is don’t park right in front. Park in the parking lot and then walk.
Mr. Horton stated it’s shame you have to do stuff like that for the few that don’t want to follow the rules. Are you still waiting on the playground equipment?
Mr. Soriano responded the biggest thing holding those up were we ordered the bigger pipes, so it was five inch. They are getting shipments of that now, so hopefully we will be on a four-to-six-week lead time to get that whole unit in.

SIXTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Audience Comments / Supervisors’
Requests
There being no audience comments, supervisor requests followed.

Supervisor Requests
Mr. Lanier stated thank you to Chalon and VerdeGo for the cleanup and help with the aftermath. How are we doing security?
Ms. Dietrich responded good. There’s not much to comment on from the last month other than the usual chasing folks out of the parking lot. I know there was a broken gate at one time, but that stuff has been fixed.
Mr. Lanier asked are they still jumping the fence at the pool?
Mr. Soriano responded not right now. Our bigger problem this time of year is we don’t have lifeguards or supervisors anymore, so families will go in and use the pool, but they’re not supposed to be there, and they’ll walk past the sign that says adults only.
Mr. Lanier asked how is the golf cart?
Ms. Dietrich responded they don’t really use the golf cart unfortunately. Mr. Soriano stated they’re worried about running out of battery.
Mr. Horton asked is it because they don’t plug it in and charge it?
Mr. Soriano responded sometimes. Every time I’ve gone to check it, it turns right on, but I know it has shut off on them a couple times. I had our cart guy come out to look at them.

This one over here he was able to pinpoint a problem because the charger that came with it could have been matched better so he offered a smart charger that works better for those batteries and this one has been great. I think I’m going to get one for your side too. We didn’t go with the gas one for them. Those batteries are outrageously expensive. I did upgrade from the older batteries they had in there, but I bought used. You’re talking $300 something per battery and there are eight of them, so if I have to spend a little money on a better charger, I’d rather go that route.
Mr. Horton stated if I had a choice of walking or riding in a cart, I’d prefer riding in a cart. You’d make more rounds and cover the grounds like we’re supposedly paying for.
Ms. Dietrich stated absolutely they would, but after a couple of times of pushing them back, they don’t want to mess with it anymore. They’re very heavy and it’s always on the far side.
Mr. Lanier asked do we need to readdress the golf cart?
Mr. Soriano responded it was really there to give them the ability to make sure they do rounds. They do have some new employees so I have to work with them, so they know they’re expected every hour to go around and to clock in. I should see them scanning in at each location. If it’s easier for them to use a golf cart, I think they should.
Mr. Horton stated the people that were in the pool this morning, there is a sign there. I would suggest making another one and put it on the gate itself, so you have to walk through it to get to the pool. I assume she made it out of the pool with no problems.
Mr. Soriano stated I asked Lisa to deal with and when I started with our Middle Village meeting there was nobody in there. I can’t attach a sign permanently. I have to be able to take it off because it’s not all the time. At this point, once the pools close it is all the time from now until we get back to Spring Break that you’re adult only. Once the lifeguards get there, that’s when the kids can be there.
Mr. Horton asked where they were in the pool, can you see it from the videos?
Mr. Soriano responded yes. That makes it easier because if they’re working on something and not watching the walkway all the time out of the windows in there, they can see if somebody goes in the pool.
Mr. Horton stated we discussed me saying something to them, but you thought it was a better idea not to and I agree with you on that, but as I was going home, I was thinking if

something happens, there’s three little kids that have the floaties and they were all around the mother.
Mr. Soriano stated I don’t tell the board members what you can and can’t do and Mike, if you can help me out with a way to word this, but most of the time I would rather you stay away from interactions with the residents and leave that to the staff.
Mr. Horton stated I don’t have a problem with that. I was just worried when I left because there was nobody there.
Mr. Lanier stated I’d recommend a sign that you could swap out twice a year for when the lifeguards are there and when they’re not.
Mr. Horton stated yes, something you could slide in the gate there, so you’d have walk right by it. The sign is off to the side and it’s a darker colored sign.
Mr. Thomas asked is there any way to do a Bluetooth doorbell so when that gate is opened it lets Wanda and them know in the office?
Mr. Soriano responded it wouldn’t have done anything anyway. Wanda wasn’t here yet and Lisa had just left. I was over here getting ready for the Middle Village meeting. We don’t have the ability for staff to be there at all hours. We expect them to pay attention to the signage. In that case it’s a little different. When you have a 13- or 14-year-old that has a card, our cards won’t unlock the door for them. But, when you have little ones, they have to be with mom and mom is allowed to come in, so she can just scan her card. I don’t know whether she took the time to read the big signs that are right there, but we have lots of people that don’t pay attention, they just walk in, and we have some that don’t understand them. I think I’m going to have to start doing our signage in multiple languages. We’re getting a lot more families that don’t understand English.
Mr. Horton stated I don’t know if that’s going to be the answer either. You’d have to have a bunch of different languages.
Mr. Thomas stated my neighbors and I are on a mission to get a stop sign. The mission has been an absolute failure. The signs department at Clay County don’t pick up their phone, so each time you call the operator they send you to another department. I finally got somebody to tell me it’s the signs department, but I’ve left several messages. What can we do as a community to ask the county to come out and put a four-way stop sign, because I have almost been run over. Right now, since there are only four homes being built back there, they are

exiting that neighborhood, teenagers are now using that as a drag strip and when they come flying out and I’m at that stop sign, because of the signs that they are using at the entrance of their neighborhood, it makes it very difficult to see down that road when you look to the right.
Mr. Soriano stated you have to go through traffic control first. There was never a four- way stop planned there. Billy does signs for the county, but unless he gets the say-so, he’s not going to provide us with signs out there. I can talk to him, and of course, reaching out to Wayne Bolla always helps. He can help push the people at the county that need to say yes, if we need to do a study to make sure the intersection is covered with the correct traffic flow signage. You can email too so it’s on record. It’s not something that is going to happen quickly, but they will eventually come out and I think we’re going to end up having something there. Once that place is full it’s going to be an extremely full intersection. I deal with mostly public works guys, and they’re limited on their ability.
Chairperson Nelsen stated the community sign looks terrible.
Mr. Soriano stated I’ve thought about trying to rebuild that one. We’ve gotten to the point when we’re doing our events and we have things going on, I may have three lines there. I’d rather have the ability to put a few more lines of those letters on there. It is getting old. If you recall, when we put it in, that was a hassle. The county is very tough on signage in the roadway and right of way. It’s a little easier to deal with them now when it comes to that so I can change it around, but that would be under your direction.
Mr. Thomas stated I’d like to have something more aesthetically pleasing.
Mr. Soriano stated trying to come up with the perfect position, it doesn’t really serve all the neighborhoods, so even just removing it and trying to do some other way. I didn’t like these, but the HOA on this side put small signs at the main roads coming in. We did give them an agreement when we allowed them to use the District’s property to put the sign up. They’re supposed to maintain it. I was thinking more of something like at our playgrounds or parks where you expect something there that could inform people of events and things like that.
Mr. Thomas asked can we do a small thing with a QR code that takes them to the website that shows everything that is going on?
Mr. Soriano responded I can get small metal signs attached to the playgrounds and swing sets and things like that. The next smallest thing I have is the bulletin board we have back here at the tennis courts and it’s still kind of big. I’ll see if I can come up with something

nice that can be attached to the things that are out there so people have the ability to get the information.
Chairperson Nelsen stated we don’t have to come up with a solution now, I just wanted everybody to think about it and brainstorm to see what we can come up with over the next couple of meetings.
Mr. Horton asked why can’t you move the sign out by the waterfall?
Mr. Soriano responded I could. I think you’d need larger. The problem we have over here at Eagle Landing is people slow down to read the sign. You can’t do that by that waterfall. That would cause an accident. So, it would have to be bigger so they could read it easily without having to slow down and it would have to be lit. Right now, it’s not lit, but it is in an area that has streetlights by it.
Chairperson Nelsen stated I think we went round and round with this when we put the sign in, so I don’t know that we’re going to come up with a better location.
Mr. Soriano stated we have bulletins in every single building too. They’re at the fitness center, the front of the pool building, the amenity center, downstairs, and on all of the field houses. I don’t know if they’re paid attention to the same way as when they first went up.
Mr. Lanier asked is there a shelf life for that sign or a plan for how long it was going to be there before it needed to be replaced?
Mr. Soriano responded I have replacement amounts in capital for all signage, but we didn’t have a particular plan for that one.
Chairperson Nelsen stated we can think about it.

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

EIGHTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Adjournment

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

 	

Secretary/Assistant Secretary	Chairman/Vice Chairman