MINUTES OF MEETING GRANDE PINES COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DISTRICT The regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors of the Grande Pines Community Development District was held Monday, August 19, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. at the Offices of GMS- CF, LLC at 219 East Livingston Street, Orlando, Florida. Present and constituting a quorum: Achal Aggarwal Chairman Linda Kepfer Vice Chairperson Randy Jones Assistant Secretary Carol Kay Cole Appointed as Assistant Secretary Jana Basubas Appointed as Assistant Secretary Also present were: Jason Showe District Manager, GMS Jay Lazarovich by phone District Counsel Mohammad Eisa by phone District Engineer Jarett Wright Field Manager, GMS FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS Roll Call Mr. Showe called the meeting to order and called the roll. Three Board members were present constituting a quorum. SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS Public Comment Period Mr. Showe: There are only members of staff and the Board present. THIRD ORDER OF BUSINESS Organizational Matters A. Acceptance of Resignation of Suhiel Rojas, Seat #3 Mr. Showe: In the agenda package is the resignation of Mr. Rojas and we just received this morning the resignation of Ms. Whitney. We can take a motion to accept both of those at this point. On MOTION by Mr. Aggarwal, seconded by Ms. Kepfer, with all in favor, Accepting the Resignation of Suhiel Rojas and Amanda Whitney, was approved. B. Appointment of Individual to Fulfill Board Vacancy in Seat #3 with a Term Ending November 2024 Mr. Showe: At this point that does give us two vacancies on the Board. We can take a motion to fill those vacancies at this time. Mr. Aggarwal: I would like to move to Kay Cole and Janet Basubas to fill both of those seats. Mr. Lazarovich: Has Randy taken the Oath of Office? Mr. Showe: Yes, we have it confirmed in 2022. Seat #4 has a term expiring in 2026 and seat #3 has a term exiring in 2024. Mr. Aggarwal: If Janet could be on the 2024 seat and Kay could be on the 2026 seat that would be great. On MOTION by Mr. Aggarwal, seconded by Ms. Kepfer, with all in favor, Appointing Ms. Cole to Seat #4 and Ms. Basubas to Seat #3, was approved. C. Administration of Oath of Office to Newly Appointed Board Member Mr. Showe administered the oath of office to Ms. Cole and Ms. Basubas. Mr. Showe: You are now public officials under the State of Florida so you will have to complete Form 1 which has to be done within 30 days of today. The process is all electronic now. We will put the email address that you just gave us into the system to generate an email to you to fill that out. Behind that is 2024 Form 1F. This is essentially the same form but, in the event, you ever leave the Board, you are required to fill out a Form 1F. We just provide these instructions for your information now just in case so there is nothing you need to do with that now. The main thing is that Form 1. Also, as a Board member, you are eligible to receive up to $200 compensation for each Board meeting. You can choose to accept that or waive it and that is something you can do either on your own or in public however you choose to do that. If you choose to accept that compensation, we would need you to complete the I9 and W4 which are the two forms behind that. Just for tax purposes, we have to complete those. You are also now a public official so we have provided you the Guide of Florida Commission on Ethics. The general scope of this is as a public official you are no longer permitted to speak with other Board members about things that might reasonably come up before a vote of the CDD Board. Those things all have to be done in public at a publicly advertised meeting. This also applies to all forms of communication such as phone, text, Facebook. We always recommend folks especially on Boards to try to avoid social media just because it is open to the public and somebody else could see it which could be a violation of the Sunshine depending on the nature of the conversation. You are not required to keep any records from any of these Board meetings as that is my job as District Manager. If you do keep items, we recommend you keep them in a separate file just for the CDD. We are subject to public records requests so somebody could request those files and if your personal files are intermingled that you might have some personal things in there so it’s just easier to keep CDD stuff separate. The same kind of process applies to your email, you should keep all of your CDD emails. We recommend folks get a separate email for CDD business or create a folder that is for all of the CDD emails to drop everything in to. If you are copied on something internally and you don’t see District Manager on it, we recommend you forward that to us that way we can keep it for our records too just as a backup. Also, it probably won’t come up very often but you are required to disclose any potential conflicts you might have on things that would come up before a vote of the Board. Counsel will go into a lot of this kind of stuff at their annual review. If you are related to one of the landscapers that come up for a bid or there is some other issue that you might see that you would have a conflict in voting, we would encourage you to speak to either District Counsel or myself. There are specific things in the Florida Statutes that define conflicts and if you fall into one of those, we provide you with a conflict form and that excuses you from voting. Anything else Jay? Mr. Lazarovich: Yes, Jason pretty much covered it but our office will follow up with an email with several memos and information for your review, essentially public records conflict. If you have any questions, reach out to myself or Jason to cover it for you. Mr. Showe: With that, you are all on the Board and ready to vote. D. Consideration of Resolution 2024-10 Electing Officers Mr. Showe: We will do election of officers since we changed a lot of folks around. We have a projected slate of officers and if the Board is amenable, I can just read that off and if you are okay with it, you can approve it as read. We have Chair as Mr. Aggarwal, Vice Chair is Ms. Kepfer, George Flint as Secretary, Mr. Jones, Ms. Cole, and Ms. Basubas as Assistant Secretaries, Jill Burns as Treasurer, Katie Costa as Assistant Treasurer as well as Darrin Mossing, Sr. as Assistant Treasurer. On MOTION by Mr. Aggarwal, seconded by Ms. Kepfer, with all in favor, Resolution 2024-10 Electing Officers as presented, was approved. FOURTH ORDER OF BUSINESS Approval of Minutes of the May 29, 2024 Meeting Mr. Showe: We have the minutes in your agenda from the May 29, 2024 meeting. They are there for your approval. We can take any questions or changes or a motion to approve. Mr. Aggarwal: I will move to approve the minutes. On MOTION by Mr. Aggarwal, seconded by Ms. Kepfer, with all in favor, the Minutes of the May 29, 2024, Meeting, were approved. SEVENTH ORDER OF BUSINESS Staff Reports D. Field Manager’s Report i. Consideration of Security Vendor Proposals – ADDED 1. Ramco Protective 2. DSI Security Services 3. Securitas Security Services *This item was moved up and taken out of order. Mr. Showe: At this point we would typically go into your public hearing for your budget but we do have some security proposals. Procedurally, we probably want to have that discussion on security before we go into the budget. Your budget only has $240k in security and we did mailed notices so we can’t go over the assessment threshold. Depending on what you do with security, we might have to add in a developer contribution to offset that amount because we can’t raise assessments any longer so there would be a contribution required from the developer should we exceed that $240k in the budget. If the Board is amenable, we would like to look at security first and then we can change the budget accordingly. Is that okay with the Board? Mr. Aggarwal: Yes. Mr. Wright: There are a couple of pricing sheet proposals on the agenda but I can give you a quick summary that breaks things down. We built the scope as two options. The first one is to use the current service method that we are working with already which is just 24/7 security for the entire year with no roving. Right now, the HOA is paying for roving and have their own separate contract. Per discussion, I believe it was the Boards intent for us to cover the roving for the property. Your option is to either continue with what we have right now or go with a roving patrol 12 hours per night from Thursday to Sunday for a total of 48 hours per week from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. which is typically anytime we would be expecting any sort of issues or anything like that. The first company we have is DSI. Their pricing is fairly reasonable. For the standard cost of what we are paying now in comparison, we are paying about $186k for Darren Freeman right now for the 24/7 coverage and for DSI that would come out to about $220k so a $30k to $40k increase just for the base services. If we wanted to add the patrol option in for a golf cart, we are looking at $286,343 and if we wanted a standard marked vehicle that would be $295,950. Our other option would be from Ramco Protective under the same scope basically but they don’t offer a golf cart option so with a patrol vehicle and roving patrols it would be $333,162 and then for the standard service package which we are using now would be $243,558. In comparison, that is about $50k increase from what we are currently paying. I do not think that we need to change vendors right this second. There have been issues with Darren that we have been working directly with the owners to fix and come up with a couple of different methodologies for addressing them. For instance, at night as soon as 6:00 comes up, they shut the right resident lane down completely so all vehicles after 6:00 p.m. have to check in with the gate attendant. I have been following up and making sure that you need to be stopping every single vehicle that comes in whether they want to give you their ID or not, that is irrelevant but you need to be making that effort. The problem has been the security access system is not in place yet so a lot of issues will be resolved when we get that. Resident can just go up to the resident lane, scan their phone on the phone scanner or if they have a sticker and just go in. We don’t need to interact with them and all of the vehicles that interact with the gate card. My recommendation would be to hold off on replacement for the moment especially due to the increased cost and we don’t know how the other companies are going to perform. You can very well have the exact same issues and now your paying 20-30% more. Mr. Aggarwal: Remined me again, how much do we have budgeted for security? Mr. Wright: At the moment on the proposed budget, it is $240k. Because we have posted that increase and sent notice to residents, anything else above that would be developer contribution. Mr. Aggarwal: We have room in the budget to bring on DSI just as a point of clarification, right? Mr. Wright: Correct, under option B. Mr. Aggarwal: Roving right now is paid by the HOA anyway, right? Mr. Wright: At the moment yes. Mr. Aggarwal: I am okay with tabling this until the next meeting. I went through recently and they did check my license and did take my license plate and all of that so it seems like there is improvement but I don’t want to end up in a situation where we are expecting the developer to contribute if they are not on board yet. Let’s table that for next meeting and we can revisit that. Mr. Jones: When is the next meeting? Mr. Aggarwal: Typically, every month. Mr. Showe: The next one I think is September. Mr. Jones: I don’t know what the rules are but if I may speak? Mr. Showe: Absolutely. Mr. Jones: I have concerns about keeping the same company. Our ownership has been out there multiple times when they were just waved through and multiple times where the security company is sitting at the front not roving. We have recently had people breaking in transient and spending the night, making themselves at home, and flushing small pieces of carpeting down the toilets. If they are not roving, they are not going to see that. If they are waving anyone and everyone through the gate, which has happened on multiple accounts, I can tell ownership is not okay with that and we are really looking to make a change. Mr. Lazarovich: If they are not performing up to their contract, we can always send them a demand letter if that is something the Board would want. Mr. Wright: Basically, just putting them on official notice. We have already explained to them but we can do that as well. Ms. Kepfer: How about the probation period? Mr. Wright: Correct. Mr. Jones: What would that be, 30 days? Mr. Lazarovich: It is kind of really up to the discretion of the Board. Your typical contracts have either 30- or 60-day termination notice so all of your contracts can be terminated in those provisions. We don’t really like to terminate folks unless we have a backup vendor. We don’t want you to be left with no one. Mr. Wright: Let’s say a 60-day period, so 30 days they have to change and then we send them a letter with 30 days to make the change and if they don’t at that point, we can execute a termination of contract. We had a third vendor, Securitas that was coming to review the site and provide a proposal but had a family emergency at the last minute so had to cancel which is why we didn’t have the third proposal. That will give me that time to get their numbers as well just because in my opinion for the same scope there is too much of a difference in price between these two vendors and our current. I would like to see what the other vendor would say. I would recommend assuming that 60-day period, 30 days put them on notice and if they can’t fix the problems in 30 days, they can go. Mr. Lazarovich: Just to confirm. I checked the agreement and we have a 10-day prior written notice not 30. Mr. Aggarwal: We will send a demand letter for 30 days and then at the next meeting if we are still not happy, we can get somebody to step in. Mr. Jones: In that demand letter, can we specify what we are not happy about in writing? Mr. Showe: Correct. Mr. Aggarwal: Jay, if you want to send the letter for review, we will let you know what we want to add and stuff like that. Mr. Lazarovich: Perfect. Mr. Showe: Your next meeting is September 16th so we can flag that on the agenda for further discussion. Mr. Aggarwal: Out of curiosity, have we gone back and said look you guys are like $50k over the competition, do you want to revisit your numbers? Mr. Wright: Correct and they said they are good with where they are at. Mr. Showe: I can tell you we use DSI on a couple of properties and that is probably a fair price for what we have seen based on their other scopes and what we are paying at other properties. I think that is the cost of their service. Mr. Aggarwal: Are those other Districts happy with DSI? Mr. Showe: Primarily, I don’t think anyone I mean security is one of those thankless jobs and it also depends on how close they are going to supervise the staff onsite. You can have the best manager in the world but if they are not there watching the guys do the work and making sure they are doing the work, it really doesn’t matter. Again, it is hit or miss. I think it is the same thing we have seen with landscaping. It is all about management and structure. Certain guards are great and the communities want to keep them forever and certain guards they want to get rid of within a week. It is about just communication and oversite. Mr. Jones: Have we taken the step of putting up a laminated poster at the guard house that says here are the steps, if you are a new guy or girl, you must do this. Mr. Wright: Yes, they have laminated post orders inside the guard house and they have all been refreshed on what their expectations are. I have them working directly with the owners themselves who have been pressuring their guards to make sure everyone is doing the right thing. I have been stopped going in recently when they normally wouldn’t. The problem mainly was towards the end of the day. You would have that person that’s like, “Hey it’s one random vehicle, I am not going to get out of my car.” That is obviously unacceptable for what we are paying. We are trying to make sure those issues are addressed. It will be a lot easier when we have access to cameras to verify that these steps are being taken and at the moment we don’t. I can’t check if someone is doing their job at two in the morning but if I had access to the cameras, we would be able to. I think giving them the proper notice, they have already been told by me but this is an official statement from the Board saying look you will be removed if this does not get fixed. I think putting that pressure on and if they can’t perform then yes, they need to go. We have found these letters to be rather effective with other companies in the past. I think especially with the cost difference between the two vendors that would be the preferred way to go. Mr. Jones: I appreciate your perspective. My concern is simply twofold: number one the problem is later in the day when crime happens after dark, a lot of times and also when Amanda was here, she spoke with them directly multiple times yet all the company developers say yes, they just wave me on through or wave everyone else on through. The roving patrol is parked right there at the entrance and not roving. I would love to believe that past performance is not a predictor of future behavior. I don’t think statistics will validate that but I am all for giving them a 30-day notice. FIFTH ORDER OF BUSINESS Public Hearing Mr. Showe: Can we take a motion to open the public hearing? On MOTION by Ms. Aggarwal, seconded by Ms. Kepfer, with all in favor, Opening the Public Hearing, was approved. A. Consideration of Resolution 2024-11 Adopting the Fiscal Year 2025 Budget and Relating to the Annual Appropriations Mr. Showe: The first item we have is Resolution 2024-11 and your public hearing. This is adopting the fiscal year 2025 budget relating to the annual appropriations. We did make that initial change to security based on your comments at your proposed budget. This includes that and the mailed notices were sent out with that. There is about a 24% assessment increase provided as part of your budget. Other than that, it is very similar to what you saw at your proposed budget. Starting on page 3, we do list out all of the line-item descriptions for folks so it is pretty clear how we get to the budget numbers and then that follows up with all of your debt service amounts. It is important to know that the debt service is really issued as part of those bonds and so the Board doesn’t have a whole lot of flexibility in there but we are required to adopt budgets with those in there. We provide on page 13 an overall assessment chart so your residents can see what portion of those assessments tie up to which of those lines. Again, we will point out there are no members of the public here to provide comment and we haven’t received any emails or phone calls so with that is there any discussion by the Board or consideration for approval of Resolution 2024-11? On MOTION by Mr. Aggarwal, seconded by Ms. Kepfer, with all in favor, Resolution 2024-11 Adopting the Fiscal Year 2025 Budget and Relating to the Annual Appropriations, was approved. B. Consideration of Resolution 2024-12 Imposing Special Assessments and Certifying an Assessment Roll Mr. Showe: The second part of that is Resolution 2024-12. This is the resolution that levies those assessments on the tax bill. Attached to this resolution will be the adopted budget that you just approved as well as the spreadsheet attached to that will be exhibit B. That again levies each of those assessments on all of those properties in the lines and types based by product type. Again, we will note there are no members of the public to provide comment. We can take a motion from the Board or any further discussion on that resolution. On MOTION by Mr. Aggarwal, seconded by Ms. Kepfer, with all in favor, Resolution 2024-12 Imposing Special Assessments and Certifying an Assessment Roll, was approved. Mr. Showe: Is there a motion to close the public hearing? On MOTION by Mr. Aggarwal, seconded by Ms. Kepfer, with all in favor, Closing the Public Hearing, was approved. SIXTH ORDER OF BUSINESS Review and Acceptance of Fiscal Year 2023 Audit Report Mr. Showe: The next item is the Fiscal Year 2023 audit. That audit document is there for you. We typically direct Boards to the last page which is the letter to management. That is where they go through all of the items that are statutorily required for them to review. We will note there are no current year findings and no prior year findings. They have made no recommendations and we do not meet any of the financial condition triggers which is good. It is a clean audit for our purposes so we would just like a motion from the Board to go ahead and accept that audit so we can transmit that to the state. On MOTION by Ms. Aggarwal, seconded by Ms. Kepfer, with all in favor, Accepting the Fiscal Year 2023 Audit Report , was approved. SEVENTH ORDER OF BUSINESS Staff Reports A. Attorney i. Memorandum Regarding Recently Enacted Legislation Mr. Showe: We have Jay on the phone. Mr. Lazarovich: No major updates for the Board this month. Included in the agenda is a short memo from our firm regarding a recently enacted legislative update. House Bill 7013 has several requirements for Special Districts but only one really pertains to CDDs. It basically sets forth different goals and objective that the Board must adopt and must be adopted by October 1st of this year and then going forward by December 1st every year thereafter the goals and objectives need to be adopted and also posted on the website whether the District actually achieved those goals. We will cover those goals and objectives later in the agenda. Aside from that, we were able to wrap up the Phase 5 utility conveyance. Those are the only updates from me this month. *Mr. Eisa joined the meeting by phone. B. Engineer Mr. Showe: Mohammad, we are on your report, any updates? Mr. Eisa: I have no report for the Board. C. District Manager’s Report i. Adoption of District Goals and Objectives Mr. Showe: Next as Jay indicated we have discussion on the goals and objectives for the District. We have prepared a short memo outlining some of the requirements of that legislation. Behind that we have prepared what we call kind of standard goals and objectives that we are using for all of our Districts. This came around pretty quick so we had basically from July to turn these around. We have provided some goals and objectives that we think are applicable to almost all of our Districts. I will note in the statutes there is no requirement as to what these should look like. They are not turned into anybody. They are essentially posted on your website as the goals and objectives and then in December of next year, we are required to provide a report of if we have met those goals and objectives. There are no real teeth to the legislation. There are no penalties for the Board if you don’t achieve these goals. Currently, we have set these goals as things that we are already doing anyway pursuant to Florida Statutes. Our recommendation would be if the Board were to choose to make these more specific to just your District that we would do that over the next year so that as we adopt these next year, they would be in that form. Given the timeframe and having to get these on the website, our recommendation is to have them approved in the form they are in right now and we can take these for discussion later. Ms. Kepfer: I read this, no issues. Mr. Aggarwal: It is stuff we are already doing. On MOTION by Mr. Aggarwal, seconded by Ms. Kepfer, with all in favor, the Adoption of District Goals and Objectives, was approved. ii. Check Register Mr. Showe: Behind that we have your check register. In your general fund we have checks 231 through 240 for $30,828.87. Staff can answer questions if you have any questions on those invoices or we can take a motion to approve. On MOTION by Mr. Aggarwal, seconded by Ms. Kepfer, with all in favor, the Check Register for $30,828.87, was approved. iii. Balance Sheet and Income Statement Mr. Showe: The next item that we have there is no action required by the Board but your balance sheet and income statement are provided for your information. We are performing better than budget to actuals so we are in great shape there. We have collected 100% of our assessments so everything looks good there. iv. Ratification of Series 2021 Requisitions #27-29 Mr. Showe: We need ratification of a couple of sets of requisitions. Series 2021, requisitions #27-29 and Series 2024 requisitions #6-7. Those have already been paid and sent out so we would look for a motion by the Board to ratify all of those requisitions. On MOTION by Mr. Aggarwal seconded by Ms. Kepfer, with all in favor, the Series 2021 Requisitions #27-29 & Series 2024 Requisitions #6-7, was ratified. v. Approval of Fiscal Year 2025 Meeting Dates Mr. Showe: We have your meeting scheduled for Fiscal Year 2025. We have kept the same meeting schedule which is the third Monday here at 10:00. Again, obviously as we look at those, if there is no business to be conducted or for some reason we can’t hold the meeting, we will provide you with cancellation notices on those but we are required under Florida Statute to produce an annual schedule. We can certainly take any questions or changes from the Board on that or once again a motion to approve. On MOTION by Mr. Aggarwal, seconded by Ms. Kepfer, with all in favor, the Fiscal Year 2025 Meeting Dates, was approved. D. Field Manager’s Report Mr. Showe: With that we will go to Jarrett for any other field updates. Mr. Wright: My field report this morning is going to be pretty quick. We had a couple of issues with people bumping into the gate arms and they were getting locked into a certain position so we had Guardian Access come out and repair those. It was really quick. They just needed to make some adjustments and reset the system. The damaged LED lights we already had backups ready to go. I just went out and replaced those myself, tightened and rechecked all of the bulbs. Every time I am there, I check all of the gate arms making sure that is working properly. It has just been minor repairs. We luckily have not had any issues with anyone hitting the actual gates or anything and there is where your most expensive tickets come from but we are good on that. Aquatics is performing absolutely great. AWN does an awesome job. Everyone is taken care of and we don’t really have any issues with them. With United Land, we are now on the fourth property account manager for them. I am meeting with them and the branch manager next week. Quality from them has kind of been roller coaster. Somedays it looks great, other days they are skipping areas so I am meeting with them to basically lay down “you have this scope, you have the contract, follow the parameters, these are the areas.” I feel like they focus on HOA areas because they do both accounts and kind of ignore some areas of the CDDs and I want to make sure that is not happening in the future. That is what our meeting is for next week. Every time we go there, we do a site inspection report that gives them specific issues and gives them the exact location so there should be no excuses going forward of getting these issues addressed. If there is, we would bring it the Board at a later time with my recommendation for replacement but I think working with the branch manager now, we can get these nailed down so there won’t be an issue in the future but if there is a problem I would bring it up at a later date. Based on basic things that we are looking at right now, there is a couple of dead trees along the border where the canal is and we are looking to replace those and remove any of the dead ones. The ornamental grasses we have to just keep on top of this as it encroaches on the sidewalk, we cut it back, reset and let them regrow. These ones are growing probably three to four months and are going back to full size so we will stay on this a little more than other grasses. Other than that, that is basically what is going unless you have any questions or need for me. Mr. Jones: How often do you visit the site? Mr. Wright: We are there once a week. Mr. Jones: Do you take pictures and do a report every week? Mr. Wright: Not necessarily. When I do a report, it is a full deep dive inspection and then some items are two-to-three-week turnaround time as what we expect depending on what the item is. If it is just some weeds in this area, I inspect that on the next site visit to be addressed. If it is something like replace a palm or proposals for injection something, those are a couple of week turnaround time that I am expecting. Normally every other visit, we will do a full report but not every single week unless there is a new issue that was discovered on the next week. Mr. Jones: Do we get copies of your report. Mr. Wright: You can if you would like. Mr. Jones: I appreciate that, thank you very much. Mr. Wright: Yes sir. EIGHTH ORDER OF BUSINESS Other Business Mr. Showe: Any other items? Mr. Aggarwal: Not today. Mr. Showe: Our next meeting is scheduled for September 16th. NINTH ORDER OF BUSINESS Supervisors Requests There being no comments, the next item followed. TENTH ORDER OF BUSINESS Adjournment Mr. Showe: Is there a motion to adjourn? On MOTION by Mr. Aggarwal, seconded by Ms. Kepfer, with all in favor, the meeting was adjourned. Signature - Jason Showe Signature - Achal Aggarwal Secretary/Assistant Secretary Chairman/Vice Chairman