District Meeting - January 12, 2017

The meeting began with public comment by residents from Gran Paradiso with questions as whether or not their community was hard gated or soft gated? As this question had been submitted by email in advance of the meeting, District counsel had the answer. Gran Paradisio is a soft gated community since public bond funds were used to construct the main entry feature and the primary road network within the community. Residents also asked about consideration of a pedestrian overpass to connect their subdivision to the new Village D retail/commercial space being planned on the south side of US41 from Gran Paradiso. Answer was, no real answer was given. WVID is not the deciding entity for this feature. It is the master developers decision to make. I would disagree with Mr. Black on this point. WVID exists to provide the necessary infrastructure that interconnects the many villages that will exist in our district. That interconnection is not just limited to roadways. It should include walkways and in this case, perhaps, a pedestrian overpass, as essential elements of a successful "village" development that has a major highway running through the middle of it.

Mr. Black stated that negotiations between the Atlanta Braves and WVID/City/County representatives were still ongoing and that no decision had been made by the Braves as to where they would located their new Spring Training facility. There may have been a wink and a nod that went with that announcement; but officially, there is no decision.

The district engineer reported that the preliminary design of the wastewater treatment plant was 50 percent complete and that they were on schedule for submitting the design to the City and State for review. The engineer also recommended that the board approve a $4.5 million contract for the construction of new infrastructure for the Village B, Oasis subdivision. This would be paid from bond money specifically obtained for Village B development and repayment of that bond money would be the responsibility of future residents owning homes within Village B.

The district engineer began a discussion with the board about the status of irrigation water for the district. Historically, there have been supply issues with amounts of reclaimed water from the Englewood Water District. In some recent years a shortage of irrigation water has reached critical levels that threatened the survival of expensive landscaping in our communities. A number of topics related to irrigation water were discussed, including:

• Status of grant request to State of Florida to fund the 1 mile extension of an existing reclaimed water main that now terminates near the entrance to the Plantation and Taylor Ranch School. Application has been made. Chances of approval are good. Grant would be awarded in October 2017 and could provide 250,000 gallons per day (gpd). Engineer asked that the board consider spending money now to complete the design and permitting necessary to extend that water main to West Villages' storage pond in anticipation of receiving the grant money to do so. Otherwise, it could take 6 to 9 month after the award to complete such work and construct the extension. Estimated cost was $75,000. Board to consider doing this at the next meeting.
• An existing agricultural well on Gran Paradiso was approved for residential irrigation use in October of last year.at a rate of 200,000 gpd; but this water has a high salt content and must be mixed with reclaimed water to make the salinity of the water used for irrigation tolerable to plants and grass.
• District engineer continues to negotiate with Englewood Water District to ensure that WVID is receiving the 600,000 gpd that was promised. Historically this supply has been highly variable and no where near that amount.

Of course, once our wastewater treatment plant is built and operating, WVID will have its own source of reclaimed water to use for irrigation. Unfortunately, irrigation water supply will be a real issue for the district for another 4 or 5 years until that plant is built.