MINUTES OF MEETING

CORAL SPRINGS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT

The regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors of the Coral Springs Improvement District was held Monday, October 23, 2000 at 4:00 P.M. in the District Office, 10300 N. W. 11 Manor, Coral Springs, Florida.

Present and constituting a quorum were:

Robert Fennell President

Clint Churchill Secretary

Karl Miller Vice President

Also present were:

Gary L. Moyer Manager

Rhonda K. Archer Finance Director

Dennis Lyles Attorney

Donna Holiday Recording Secretary

John McKune Gee & Jenson

Roger Moore Engineer

FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS Roll Call

Mr. Fennell called the meeting to order at 4:10 p.m. and Mr. Moyer called the roll.

SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS Approval of the Minutes of the September 18, and September 27, 2000 Meetings

Mr. Fennell stated that each Board member had received a copy of the minutes of the September 18, and September 27, 2000 meetings and requested any additions, corrections or deletions.

There not being any,

On MOTION by Mr. Miller seconded by Mr. Churchill with all in favor the minutes of the September 18, and September 27, 2000 meetings were approved as submitted.

THIRD ORDER OF BUSINESS Consideration of Award of Contract for the Purchase of Chemicals and Herbicides

Mr. Moyer stated it is that time of year again when we go through the process of competitively bidding herbicides for use in the treatment of aquatics within the District's waterways. There are a variety of chemicals that are listed on the bid tabulation along with the costs. Attached to the bid tabulation is a memorandum from Nick Schooley indicating that some of these products that were protected by patent are no longer protected and that there are other products on the market that are basically the same and provide the same level of effectiveness and it is his recommendation that we obtain those chemicals rather than paying for the proprietary chemical that we had purchased heretofore because of patent protection. I recommend to the Board that we accept staff's recommendation.

Mr. Fennell asked what exactly is staff's recommendation?

Mr. Moyer responded I will go through the list.

Hydrothol Granules - Helena Chemical

Cutrine Plus - Helena Chemical

Sonar SRP - Pro Source One

Induce - Helena Chemical

Polymer - Helena Chemical

Hydrothol 191 - Helena Chemical

Aquathol K - Helena Chemical

2, 4-D L.V.4 - Pro Source One

Pro Source One and Helena bid the same for Sonar AS and it is my recommendation that we do as we did last year and award it to both and when we need the chemical it will be purchased from the one who has availability.

Rodeo is the product that is no longer protected by the patent and if we were to purchase Rodeo then Pro Source is the low bid. However, Helena Chemical bid a lesser amount for Aqua Neat which is a comparable product.

Lesco is the low bid on Reward at $96.45 but there is a letter from Seneca, the manufacturer of Reward indicating that they will no longer allow their agents to bid Reward and to call one of their agents for a price. A call to both venders resulted in a price today of $85.00.

Mr. Fennell stated there may be issues connected with a manufacturer not allowing a chemical to be bid. I think this has to be a bid situation. There cannot be price fixing.

Mr. Moyer stated with the quantities we are talking about, it has to be bid.

Mr. Fennell stated as I understand fair trade practices, you can't to an end user fix the prices. It can only be a suggested retail price, it can never be a fixed price. I don't know if it is just us or others but it could be a legal issue.

Mr. Lyles stated it is not the kind of law I am routinely involved in, it is securities law.

Mr. Fennell stated we are a small group but it appears that they are not able to bid their prices.

Mr. Churchill stated we did go out for bids on this and we received a higher price on the bid and a lesser price by calling the agents.

Mr. Fennell stated it is $24,000 and it may not be worth a large legal bill to look into it.

Mr. Lyles stated you can do certain things such as notify the Attorney General's office and that is not a legal expense to you or you can file a proceeding in Washington and do it at the federal agency level and that is when you get into horribly expensive legal and expert fees. I am not sure exactly what the letter from Seneca means. It can also mean they are selling the product directly, they are not distributing it to wholesalers who are then going to submit bids. They are selling it directly and if you talk to anybody about this particular product, it is one of their representatives and they are all going to get it for the same price so it is always going to be the same price to you. It is not going to be bid and we buy it for whatever price it is. That is how I interpret this letter.

Price fixing is when various suppliers get together and agree that they won't submit a price any less than X. This company is just saying they are the only ones who sell this product and they are selling it directly to field representatives so there is no point in doing the bid procedure on it. The price is the price.

Mr. Fennell stated it is not worth us fighting it but there are many other Districts throughout Broward County and the State of Florida probably doing this very same bid process and getting the same letter. It is not worth us fighting it but it may be worth seeing if we are getting abused as a group. We are buying by brand names instead of generic maybe we should see if there are other products available. Maybe we should be bidding these products as brand names or equivalent. If our bid is for Rodeo, then they have to bid Rodeo.

Mr. Moyer stated your point is well taken. This is the first year that some of these products have come off patent protection. I agree we can do that.

Mr. Fennell stated this time we can let it go but next year maybe we should do the brand name or equivalent. That way we can see what is possible and what is environmentally sound and at the same time do something for us.

Mr. Lyles stated if you put "or equivalent" in the bid then it becomes a question of what has the same composition as Rodeo. You may have to be a little more specific.

Mr. Moyer stated we have done that and manufacturers will come in and either prove it is a product as good as or not. Curtrine Plus is an example of that because it is a copper based product and all of the competitors on an "or equal" basis have less copper than Cutrine Plus. That determination is made by staff quickly because the other products do not meet the specifications. We can do that and I don't think that will be a problem.

Mr. Miller stated previously we put a 100 gallon limit on Reward and if we need more we can get more.

On MOTION by Mr. Miller seconded by Mr. Churchill with all in favor the contract for the purchase of chemicals was awarded to the low bidder as outlined above by Mr. Moyer with the Rodeo being replaced by Aqua Neat and with a 100 gallon limit put on Reward rather than the 250 gallons bid and if more is needed than more can be purchased but only on an as needed basis.

FOURTH ORDER OF BUSINESS Consideration of Change Order with Farmers Manufacturing for Pump Station No. 2 in the Amount of $170,014

Mr. McKune stated Mr. Moore and Ms. Archer have discussed taking money that is allocated in the new budget and putting through a change order to the current contract. We have a change order to add one engine and one pump at Pump Station No. 2 which will give us new pumps in all bays in both stations and one new engine for one that we would like to replace.

Mr. Moore stated we put five new pumps and two new engines in the pump stations. All the pumps have been replaced at Pump Station 1 and 2 with the exception of pump 1 in pump station 2 which has a Waukesha engine installed in 1989 and it needs a new pump. We had a change order for concrete repair and we found three other locations that needed the same thing and this is one of the three. The other two have been repaired and the pumps are in place. We budgeted $60,000 for a new pump and our budget for engine replacement is about $220,000 as of the end of last year. I want to take the money for the engine and the money for the budgeted pump and have you authorize one whole new unit to replace pump no. 1 in pump station no. 2. If you approve this change order you will have all new pumps in both pump stations. We need to work with Ms. Archer to budget replacements of the five Cummings engines over the next two to five years. The Waukesha engine is the oldest engine. The parts are hard to get and Waukesha and Cummings are no longer making gas engines and that is way we are going to Caterpillar.

Mr. Fennell stated it looks like the engines are only lasting about 10 or 15 years if I am reading this chart correctly.

Mr. Moore responded that is the Cummings and Waukesha. They seem to not last as long as the original engines. Caterpillar says their engines will last longer. We are designing them to run at 1600 rpm as opposed to 1800 rpm which keeps the noise down and increases longevity. Also the permitting requirements for Diesel are very difficult, the LP gas is still lightly regulated.

Mr. Moyer stated you have to have double walled tanks and monitoring wells when you have Diesel tanks.

Mr. McKune stated it is considered a hazardous material.

Mr. Moyer stated unfortunately the regulations change every 36 months and then we deal with it all over again. You never really have a system you are comfortable with that doesn't have to be changed every time.

Mr. Fennell stated this is $170,000 can we do this with a change order?

Mr. Moyer responded this was competitively bid but that was under the replacement program that the Board awarded six months ago. We are aware that the Board is concerned about doing change orders unless we can justify the reason for the change order. We can go through the process of re-bidding this but we are not sure that we would get bids that are any better because now we have a contractor who is familiar with what he has to do to install the new pump and motor.

On MOTION by Mr. Miller seconded by Mr. Churchill with all in favor the change order with Farmers Manufacturing for Pump Station No. 2 in the amount of $170,014 was approved.

Mr. Churchill stated we still have original equipment such as drive shafts. Is there a potential for failure? Do we need to replace the clutches and drive shaft?

Mr. Moore responded the clutches have probably been replaced or fixed over the years. The drive shaft, engine and transmission clutche is one assembly. I would like to put together a two to five year plan and see which engines are running better. On pump no. 1 in Pump Station No. 2 we had a $6,000 repair in 1998. I believe you will have to replace these five engines, transmissions and drive shafts within the next two to five years.

Mr. Moyer stated remember in each of these stations, we now have a spare pump and motor. I hope we have addressed the worst case scenario where we lose a pump or motor because we still have the spare. We are not supposed to run all four at the same time under our permit.

Mr. Churchill stated the cost of completing this is relatively small. If there is any danger of failure I think it would be a mistake not to do that. I am being assured that is not the case and I am satisfied with that.

Mr. Moore stated it is my understanding that they will last two to five years. We want to plan now to replace these and we estimate it will cost about $90,000 for each drive train.

FIFTH ORDER OF BUSINESS Consideration of Permit Request from FP&L for Underground Crossing at University Drive and the L-106 Canal

Mr. Moyer stated the L-106 Canal is just north of Riverside Drive and this is a typical FP&L request for underground crossing. It has been reviewed by staff and there is nothing out of the ordinary in this request.

On MOTION by Mr. Miller seconded by Mr. Churchill with all in favor the permit request by FP&L for an underground crossing at University Drive and the L-106 Canal was approved subject to the conditions listed in the engineer's review letter.

SIXTH ORDER OF BUSINESS Staff Reports

A. Attorney

Mr. Fennell stated I did go before The Broward Committee on Charter Review last Thursday and talked about what we are doing and how we are working. The points I put forward were that we are focused, we don't have any issues as far as conflicts of where the money has to go. We only have a couple of jobs to do and we want to make sure the money goes for that. If it doesn't we want to make sure it goes back to the people. We are not building a civic center or anything like that. We are well represented. there are three of us on the Board for an area of approximately 20,000 people. That is higher representation than we have in the City of Coral Springs. More than that it is an interested representative in that each of us on the Board is aware that there is something at stake here that hits us personally since we have to live in this District. Our houses could flood, so there is a high degree of interest and we don't have to be interested in any other area because we own this area. We own the canals and the utility. The third item is that it is relatively efficient. One can make lots of cases for bigger government and bigger organizations being efficient but we don't need to be more efficient than we are for the pumps that we have because we are only draining a certain area. Where we need business services we are using professional management which spreads our cost across everything. I pointed out that essentially we have efficient services because we are spreading costs where appropriate and we have local representation. The question was asked if we could combine services and I think you could but only if you can also combine the representation. I didn't say that at the meeting but if we were to combine with North Springs we could enlarge the Board to five. Still, there is an issue of who owns what.

Mr. Lyles asked are you going to participate in future meetings because they are going to have a series of Charter Revision Commission public hearings around the County over the coming months.

Mr. Fennell stated I saw that they were having these meetings, but it didn't look like they were looking for much input from anyone. They are aware of what we are doing.

Mr. Churchill stated in terms of observing what went on it appears that in regards to the Improvement District, either they have made up their minds or they consider it of minimal interest because anybody who dealt with that issue, which was Mr. Fennell and one other gentleman, they stopped them at 3 minutes. People speaking about EMS or fire and police services, had unlimited time to speak.

Mr. Fennell stated we will continue to monitor that.

B. Engineer

1. Monthly Water and Sewer Charts

2. Update on Construction

Mr. McKune stated the monthly water and sewer charts are in the agenda package.

Mr. Fennell asked what are we doing with the chlorine?

Mr. McKune responded hopefully, at the next meeting I will give you a formal proposal to do something. It will cost about $100,000 per year to go to the liquid chlorine system which will result in a great degree of safety in our operations.

Mr. Miller stated I seem to remember when Mr. Adair was on the Board that there always seemed to be an excess of chlorine in the lines. Is there anything we can do?

Mr. McKune responded you can reduce the amount fed into the lines. The problem is not the amount fed here but it is the amount remaining in the system at the extremities. We need to feed enough here so that at the extremities we still have the minimum indicated amount. It degrades over time through travel in the system. Even though chlorine is a hazardous material, when mixed properly in the water, it is safe.

Mr. Churchill stated the measurement was taken here at the plant.

Mr. McKune responded that is correct. There are other materials besides chlorine that can be used but only chlorine maintains that residual disinfectant property in the system.

As you aware we have awarded the contract for the water plant improvements and anticipate next week issuing a notice to proceed and having a preconstruction meeting with the contractor. We received a copy of the draft report from Mr. Stephenson who is our peer review engineer and we will probably cover those items at the next meeting.

Ms. Archer stated we will present the final report at the next meeting.

Mr. Moyer stated the vast majority of what was in the report dealt with minor modifications to various plan sheets which is what we wanted him to do. In my cursory review of that report I didn't see anything alarming.

Mr. Moore stated they started out complimenting the design.

Mr. McKune stated with your approval, I will issue the notice to proceed to the contractor with specific instructions not to order any materials that may be covered or impacted by the results of the report which he can easily work around.

Mr. Fennell stated we still have another phase of the wastewater treatment facility to do.

Mr. McKune responded we are in a position to present alternatives to District staff and Mr. Stephenson. That is our next step.

Mr. Moyer stated Mr. Fennell is asking in terms of our time line when it will be out to bid.

Mr. McKune responded that is the difficult part. We are finalizing the drawings and we will review them with Mr. Stephenson and hopefully, he will agree with the approach so that the drawings as prepared can be bid and we don't have to re-invent the wheel.

Mr. Fennell asked have you shown him the preliminary drawings yet?

Mr. McKune responded he wanted to concentrate on the water plant first.

Mr. Fennell stated let him catch up with you. Don't wait for him to catch up. I want to make sure we get that built.

Mr. McKune stated there are two major items in front of us on the wastewater treatment plant. Will we need a fifth treatment unit and the other aspect is solids handling system. What we have envisioned over the past few years has been impacted by changes made by the State as it relates to the final disposition of sludge solids. The District has a contract with H & H Haulers to take the sludge and dispose of it on their farms. They were told not too long ago that they would have ninety days to cease and desist on those particular properties. They came up with alternative disposal areas. Our concern is that within one year or five years, the State is going to change the rules such that if we build something today, we will have to rebuild it in five years. We want to make sure that whatever we build today is going to be appropriate five years from now. There are certain things we need to be determined for us by the State. We are going to meet with not only staff but with H & H who has the contract and their own permit for disposal. We will meet with the appropriate State regulators to see what they foresee.

Mr. Fennell asked what are our alternatives?

Mr. McKune responded right now we are producing a Class B sludge. You can produce a Class A sludge which means you can put it in a plastic bag and sell it at Publix. The problem is, no one buys it. You can spend a lot of money making environmentally safe sludge and end up with truckloads of nice safe sludge that you have to haul off and dump. Why go with Class A when you can stay with Class B as long as you have a disposal method.

Mr. Moyer stated the trick of what we are trying to accomplish so that we don't spend a lot of money, although this is an expensive process to do Class B but build it in a way that it can be converted to Class A if they ever tell us we have to convert.

Mr. McKune stated it may be as simple as going to Class A if the County will agree to let us take the Class A and put it in their landfill.

Mr. Fennell asked is anybody else in the County doing that?

Mr. McKune responded no. We will all face the same problem eventually.

C. Superintendent

There not being any, the next item followed.

D. Complaints

There not being any, the next item followed.

SEVENTH ORDER OF BUSINESS Supervisor's Requests and Audience Comments

Mr. Fennell stated we seem to have come through the summer without any complains about odor.

Mr. Moyer stated I think the surge tank has helped a lot and the rehab of Plants A and B. If these plants are working and you don't exceed the design parameters, they can produce fairly well without producing a lot of odor.

Mr. Miller stated there were a couple of things that were not clear to me in the material sent out by the Charter Review Commission in regards to the recommendations for special districts. Are all of the waterways in the District tested?

Mr. Moyer responded yes and they have been since 1972.

Mr. Miller asked are the results of those tests sent to D.E.P.?

Mr. Moyer responded our results, under permit are sent to the South Florida Water Management District. The frustrating part when you read these reports is that the information is there and has been for decades. We file it with the people who tell us where to file it and then we have a new group come along and they raise the issue that they are not getting the reports, you must not be doing something correctly. The reality is there is a vast amount of information on water quality within South Florida Water Management District and there has been for years. The results of that water quality data indicate that urban run-off does pollute but at our discharge points because there is enough retention time within these systems, we are not putting polluted water into the C-14 Canal. We did extensive research when we obtained a permit for North Springs to backpump into the Conservation Area. There is a lot of water quality data that was done eight or nine years ago when we obtained those permits.

EIGHTH ORDER OF BUSINESS Approval of Invoices

On MOTION by Mr. Churchill seconded by Mr. Miller with all in favor the invoices were approved.

Meeting adjourned at 5:05 p.m.

Clint Churchill Robert Fennell

Secretary President