If IT is good with me moving on to the water and wastewater impact fees public workshop number two, I will do so.

Yes, ma'am.

All right.

Good afternoon.

Um, welcome back.

And um, there will be no action or vote taken by the board today.

And with that, I'm going to turn it over to you, Mr.

Cassidy.

Uh thank you, Madam Chair.

Good afternoon, commissioners.

This is the second of two workshops, the proposed increases to the water and wastewater impact fees.

Uh, the workshop today is dedicated to the extraordinary circumstances necessitating the need to exceed the phase in limitations for the South Central Service Area.

Uh, today giving our presentation is going to be Lisa Ray, our water resources department director, along with our impact fee consultant, uh Justin Grant with Stantec.

They will make a brief presentation and then we will follow up with the board discussion.

Lisa.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Uh Lisa Ray, Director of Water Resources.

Uh, we appreciate you taking the time to be with us today.

So, HTV is going to be doing our presentation for us.

So, I'll be asking them to move on to the next slide, please.

So, we are here to talk about impact fees, but just as a high level, what are they?

And they're a one-time fee paid to connect new customers or construction to help cover the costs of expanding the water and the wastewater service to those new customers.

In a sense, it's so that growth pays for itself.

Next slide, please.

A quick overview of the system that we currently manage.

Hillsborough County Water Resources has two very separate utility systems.

Up in the Northwest area, we have a water and wastewater system that is pretty well developed.

Uh, does not have a tremendous amount of growth, and the plants have sufficient capacity to handle the projected growth.

However, in the South Central area, we're dealing with a very different circumstance.

The amount of growth that we have seen in the South Central area has been extraordinary.

And we are having to add significant number of projects and capacity in order to accommodate the needed services for the new residents.

Next slide, please.

And can you please hit forward twice?

So up in the Northwest, we're able to use the incremental phase-in approach as required under the Florida Impact Fee Law.

Since the water is less than 25%, and the wastewater increase is between 25 and 50.

However, in the South Central area, with the large projects and the tremendous amount of growth, we're needing to look at an increase that is greater than 50%.

Because of that, we are required to demonstrate a need for this additional increase.

That requires a study, along with two publicly noticed workshops.

And this is the second of those two workshops.

In the end, we will be taking the resolution to the board.

Um, however, at this time we're going to focus on what the needs are that are justifying the extraordinary circumstance.

And to help us with that, I am going to ask Justin to talk about the study that Stantech conducted.

So next slide, please.

Justin, if you would like to start as a part of this impact study, I was in that worst finding demonstrated need study was also completed that identified multiple extraordinary circumstances.

Can you guys hear me?

Um initially it was a little low, but it got better.

So you might want to hear me okay right now.

Yes.

All right, perfect.

All right, I'll restart that.

Thanks for the introduction, Lisa.

Appreciate that.

And yes, as you mentioned, this is the second of two hearings.

So uh commissioners, thank you very much for listening to the same presentation again today.

And for all of you others that are listening over the first time, we'll try and be brief and go through this.

So, as a part of the impact fees study that was conducted, a corresponding demonstrated needs study was also completed that identified multiple extraordinary circumstances that merit the condition of adjusting current fees beyond phase in limitations.

The fundamental revolve around three issues.

The county's nearing capacity of two wastewater treatment plants, and effectively is it at capacity of one of its water plants in the South Central service area during dry weather conditions.

Driven by historical growth rates that are expected to continue in the near term that are driving the need for additional facilities that provide capacity.

And finally, the cost and magnitude of these expenses, the nature of these facilities that are required is substantial.