On September 5, 2025, at 2:45 PM, the Broward County Mobility Advancement Program (MAP) conducted a 30-minute virtual workshop for 69 registered municipal participants to explain the Third Amendment to the Surtax (SERTAX) interlocal agreement. The presentation, led by MAP Administrator Gretchen Cassini, covered expanded eligibility, a new Grant Match Program (GMP), formula-based distribution of rehabilitation/maintenance (RM) and microtransit funds, and updated processes for cycle one projects. A question-and-answer session followed.
Good afternoon and welcome to all of our municipalities that have joined today. We had 69 registrations for this afternoon's workshop. And I would just like to extend a warm welcome to all of the municipalities, but acknowledge specifically the efforts of those members of the Broward County City Managers Association, SERTAX Subcommittee, and all the work that the BCCMA SERTAX subcommittee did to get us to this point. At this time, I'd just like to take a moment to introduce the team that is here with me today. These are the folks here in MAP administration that work on contract administration for municipal project agreements. And I'm going to start with Mr. Mayorga. Good afternoon, everybody. Alexander Mayoga, Program Player Coordinator, and I am municipal liaison for municipalities in the south of the county. Good afternoon, everyone. Margaret Daly Johns, and I am the finance manager for the Mobility Advancement Program. Welcome everyone. Good afternoon, everyone. Lena Silva, Senior Contract Grant Administrator, and I get to work with the North End of the County Speaker. Hello, everyone. My name is Nikdi Gellinardo. I am a contract grant administrator and I work more on the finance side, reviewing QFRs and financial documents. And for those of you who may not know me, I'm Gretchen Cassini, and I'm the Mobility Advancement Program Administrator and also the contract administrator for all of the municipal grants. So I just wanted to give an overview of the presentation today. It should take about 30 minutes. And I wanted to mention for those of you who might be trying to ask questions in the chat. The chat feature is disabled. Questions and answers will happen at the very end. But if for some reason you get pulled away and you aren't able to participate until the very end, you can feel free to submit your question to me by email. This presentation is being recorded, and we expect to be posting the presentation materials as well as the video to our website very soon. Everyone who's participated in any of the workshops, either yesterday or today, will receive a link to the location on our website so that you can use this as a reference tool as we move forward into implementing the Third Amendment. Please note that everyone will be muted until we get to the QA portion of the workshop. The goal of the Third Amendment was to address areas of the Second Amendment that were not operating optimally for the parties. We were looking for opportunities to create more flexibility. So one of the intent of the Third Amendment is to create longevity so that we don't have to go back and amend our interlocal agreement on a regular basis. But there are some other objectives as well that I just wanted to highlight for you. We've expanded and clarified definitions of eligible uses to include on-demand transit, which we also refer to as microtransit, subject to certain criteria and limitations. We've established what has become a very popular aspect of the Third Amendment, which is the grant match program, and we're going to spend some time talking about that today. It also permits parking structures subject to certain criteria and limitations that are outlined in section 2.7. It eliminates, well, it will eliminate subject to an ordinance change the current prohibition on using SERTAX funding rehabilitation and maintenance dollars to maintain capital assets and facilities built with the SERTAX while also maintaining transparency and accountability. So let's start with some of the definitions in the Third Amendment that are a little bit different, new revised, looking at Article 1, Section 1.2. So there are terms like annual true-up, which didn't exist in the second amendment, also references to things like centerline miles, which are related to the formula distribution that we'll talk about a little bit later. As I mentioned, we also have on-demand transportation services, which is new, and an expanded definition of road. That expanded definition of road rolls into some of the updates to the terminology around eligibility that's in Article 2 of the Third Amendment. So you'll see that standalone sidewalks, bike paths, and greenways are explicitly defined as eligible. As I mentioned earlier, parking, certain types of parking projects as well as the collection of parking fees beyond required levels of operation and maintenance, on demand transportation services, and as I mentioned, the prohibitions on utilizing surtax RM funding to maintain a facility asset that was paid for with the SERTAX, as well as some definitions of safety assets, which are defined in section 2.9. While the minimum annual guarantee remains 10% of the projected revenues, it now includes the community shuttle capital and operational costs, municipal capital projects, municipal RM projects, as well as funding available for microtransit. There's a provision in the Third Amendment that details how the county will true up the funds that are allocated to the cities versus the revenues that are actually received. And that bottom bullet there relates to that annual true up process. So for those of you that have been involved in the program from the very beginning, you'll remember cycle one was in fiscal year 2020. Seems like a long time ago. The Third Amendment talks about the treatment of cycle one municipal projects in Articles 3 for Section 4.4. And cycle one projects included those projects that were MCPs, that's municipal capital projects recommended by the MPO under their SERTAX services agreement, as well as rehabilitation and maintenance projects. Remaining Cycle One projects that are not under a SERTAX funding agreement may, not must be terminated by MAP administration, that's us, within 90 days after the effective date. Once the ordinance changes go into effect, which is expected later this year, that review and decision would be by the oversight board, but in either case, that review decision is final.