County administrator explains process common statewide to serve other new communities after initial development completed
Indicating that he had received numerous emails on the topic, Sarasota County Commissioner Mark Smith raised a utility issue regarding Lakewood Ranch Southeast as he and his colleagues were conducting a Feb. 25 public hearing on the latest rezoning application for the master-planned community in the northeastern part of the county.
Is the developer not responsible for paying for all the infrastructure necessary for Lakewood Ranch Southeast, including sewer and reclaimed water lines, Smith asked.
The emails, Smith indicated, were in reference to a vote that The Sarasota News Leader addressed in a Feb. 21 article: The county will partially reimburse the Lakewood Ranch Southeast Stewardship District for construction of sewer and reclaimed water pipelines that will serve the District’s residents; the expense is not to exceed $2,938,000, the agreement pointed out.
The commissioners approved the reimbursement during their Feb. 11 regular meeting; it was on their Consent Agenda of routine business matters. No board member mentioned the staff proposal for the funding prior to the vote that day.
On Feb. 25, attorney Caleb Grimes, of the Bradenton firm Grimes Galvano — who was part of the Taylor Morrison of Florida project team that day that was seeking rezoning approval for Project Area 2 in Lakewood Ranch Southeast — stepped to the podium in the Commission Chambers in downtown Sarasota to respond to Smith.
Grimes had talked with representatives of the Stewardship District and the master developer (Schroeder-Manatee Ranch) about the utility issue, he said. “The master developer is paying for all costs of all force main and reclaimed water lines that are necessary for [Lakewood Ranch Southeast],” Grimes stressed.
However, he continued, he believed, “as is very, very common here and everywhere else, the county asked [the Stewardship District] to oversize the lines,” so capacity would be available for other, future developments in the same vicinity. That oversizing, Grimes added, “saves the county tremendous money,” instead of its facing the potential of having to pay for extra pipelines when another development needs the sewer and reclaimed water service.
In the case of Lakewood Ranch Southeast, a county staff memo in the Feb. 11 agenda packet explained that an interlocal agreement between the county and the Stewardship District provides for the county’s partial reimbursement to the District for “approximately 19,000 linear feet of 20-inch force main oversized from an 18-inch force main and approximately 19,000 linear feet of 18-inch reclaimed water main oversized from a 16-inch reclaimed water main necessary to serve District property.”
During the Feb. 25 discussion, Chair Joe Neunder asked County Administrator Jonathan Lewis, “Who has the authority and purview to [ask for the oversizing]? I’m not aware of that. … When is that appropriate?”
Lewis replied, “Every local government in the state of Florida” seeks oversizing of utility lines when working with a developer of a new community to which that local government will be providing service.
For example, Lewis continued, if a local government’s utilities staff says an extra 4 inches of diameter would be appropriate for future needs, beyond the size of pipeline the developer has planned, the local government will pay the difference for the larger size. “It happens all the time,” he pointed out.”
“OK,” Neunder said. Yet, Neunder added, “At some point, that gets to be tens of millions of dollars, maybe,” for such initiatives.
Lewis started to respond, but Neunder cut him off, saying, “Wait for it. That’s taxpayer money, right?”
The commissioners are the fiduciary stewards of the taxpayers, Neunder emphasized. “What’s the threshold on that, and when does the government get to go ahead and ask a developer to upsize without the knowledge of this board? I’d never heard about that before.”
County staff can proceed with a project with an expense up to $150,000 without a commission vote, County Attorney Joshua Moye explained, as laid out in a county policy. “Anything over $150,000 would come back to the board.”
Grimes agreed with Lewis about the frequency of the oversizing. “I see it all over the state … It is very common.”
Then Grimes explained, “When you’re putting in the line, a big part of the cost … is digging that hole, if you will — that trench.”
When a developer already is planning to pay for the construction of new utility lines, Grimes continued, asking for the upsizing saves the county from undertaking a similar project at a later time. Thus, he said, the governmental entity gets the larger pipelines “at a much, much lower price than if they had to come back in and put their own 4-inch line later.”
Commissioner Smith told Grimes that he was familiar with the upsizing of a county pipeline on Myrtle Street in Sarasota that was to serve a school. However, in that case, Smith noted, future development was anticipated in the area. In the case of Lakewood Ranch Southeast, he asked, “There must be additional capacity needed for something, right? … Who is going to benefit from that enlarged pipe? Which development?”
“I can tell you it is not [Lakewood Ranch Southeast],” Grimes replied. “I was not involved in the specifics of this [situation],” he added.
Smith acknowledged that the question likely would be better answered by a member of the county’s Public Utilities staff. Still, he continued, “It looks to me that the only property owner around there is Lakewood Ranch.”
County Administrator Lewis told Smith that he could check with the Public Utilities staff. Nonetheless, he continued, “Typically, [this type of oversizing is] done for things like fire flow … that we may need,” referring to the county Fire Department’s need for sufficient capacity to handle incidents in Lakewood Ranch Southeast.
‘The best information I have’
Following the remarks of the six speakers who addressed the board during the hearing, but before the applicant’s rebuttal, County Administrator Lewis brought up the utilities issue again.
“This is the best information I have,” he began.
Usually, Lewis explained, requests for upsizing take place when pipelines will be passing other properties that staff of a local government expects to be developed in the future. The developer of communities already approved handles the expense of the engineering for the upsizing, Lewis continued. Then, when yet another developer connects lines from its communities to the new, larger county pipelines, that second developer pays 100% of that expense, he said.
Lewis also noted that, during their Feb. 11 regular meeting, the commissioners approved the reimbursement to the Lakewood Ranch Southeast Stewardship District. “As that infill [development] occurs,” he added, “the county would get reimbursed for the costs.”
He was referring again to staff’s expectation that other development will take place in the same vicinity as Lakewood Ranch Southeast and that that development will need to use the oversized pipelines.
“The county saves significant money,” Lewis pointed out.
If the commissioners wished, he said, staff could prepare for them a report on how reimbursement agreements work.
None of the board members asked for such a report.
Although the commissioners routinely do not discuss the items on their Consent Agendas, a county staff memo and other documentation related to each request for action is included in their packets for the meetings. Occasionally, a board member will pull an item for discussion ahead of the Consent Agenda vote, if that board member has a concern about the action sought or wishes to offer some observation on it.
From time to time, commissioners will allude to the fact that their agenda packets run to thousands of pages. The documents in the packet for the Feb. 11 meeting, when the board approved the upsizing of the utilities that will be constructed for Lakewood Ranch Southeast, the pages numbered 552, the News Leader found.