MINUTES OF MEETING
MIDDLE VILLAGE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DISTRICT

The regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors of the Middle Village Community Development District was held on Monday, May 9, 2022 at 2:00 p.m. at the Plantation Oaks Amenity Center, 845 Oakleaf Plantation Parkway, Orange Park, Florida 32065.

Present and constituting a quorum were:

Michael Steiner	Chairman
Tim Hartigan	Vice Chairman
Jeremy Spellman	Supervisor
Jonel Hicks	Supervisor

Also present were:

Marilee Giles	District Manager
Mike Eckert	District Counsel (by phone)
Jay Soriano	Operations Manager
Chalon Suchsland	VerdeGo Landscape
Crys LaFata	S3 Security
Marla Dietrich	S3 Security

FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS	Call to Order
Ms. Giles called the meeting to order and called the roll at approximately 2:12 p.m.

SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS	Audience Comments
There being no members of the audience present, the next item followed.

THIRD ORDER OF BUSINESS	Approval of Consent Agenda
Approval of the Minutes of the April 11, 2022 Meeting
Financial Statements
Assessment Receipt Schedule
Check Register
Ms. Giles stated included in your package are the minutes of the Board of Supervisors and Audit Committee meetings, the financial statements as of March 31st, your assessment receipts schedule showing you are 98% collected, and the check register totaling $149,089.79.

FOURTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Acceptance	of	the	Audit	Committee’s
Recommendation
Ms. Giles stated the Audit Committee met prior to this meeting and they recommend to the Board the selection of Grau & Associates to conduct the Fiscal Year 2022 through 2026 audits.

FIFTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Discussion of Options for Use of Savings
from Bond Refinancing
Chairman Steiner asked does anyone have any concerns with what we discussed before, which was to utilize the savings towards the O&M assessments?
Vice Chairman Hartigan responded I’m still in favor of Option 1, and from what I understand we were just waiting on final numbers.
Chairman Steiner stated Jay doesn’t have a final number yet, but based on what we’ve seen with increases in costs, and the fact that he has not received any major concerns with the capital reserve study, I would like to propose we direct staff to proceed with a budget, which anticipates that going into the O&M. We still have the approval of the budget, so at that time if we decide Option 1 is not the direction we should go, we can address it at that point. We’re only giving direction to staff to begin creating a budget, which reflects the input of that statement.
Mr. Spellman stated that sounds good.

SIXTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Other Business
There being no other business, the next item followed.

SEVENTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Staff Reports
District Counsel
There being nothing to report, the next item followed.

District Engineer
Ms. Giles stated we are within 60 days of the due date for the stormwater needs analysis. I will follow up with Peter Ma on that. He’s reached out a couple of times to get some numbers for the report.

District Manager – Report on the Number of Registered Voters (4,873)
Ms. Giles stated Florida Statute 190 requires us to provide the number of registered voters in the community. As of April 15, 2022, there are 4,873 registered voters in Middle Village CDD.
Between now and the June 13th meeting we will be looking for Board guidance in preparing the FY23 proposed budget.

Operations Manager – Memorandum
Mr. Soriano stated we have our dive-in movies starting this month going into summer. If you’ve been to our pools the last couple weekends, you’ll see it looks like summer out here already, especially with the weather. We are still on the limited schedule with the pools where they alternate back and forth. The Middle Village pools are closed today, and your sister district is open until Friday, Saturday, and Sunday when they will all open. This goes on until Memorial Day and then we will open full blast. We will have a School’s Out party in a couple weeks and then we start getting into our summer programs. I just received the swim meet schedule this last week, so we will make sure that’s posted at the pools and on the website so residents can see when we have those swim meets, so when it gets a little hectic down there, they can stay away or go to your sister district for the day. We also have a couple of USTA tournaments planned this summer for the tennis program. Those are very large. Over the years they’ve tripled in size, and they are constantly doing more down here, so we have a rather busy summer schedule.
We are slowly adding on to our rental schedule. We have started filling up most weekends, but I’d like to get back to where almost every night there are events or meetings in this room and then weddings on weekends.
On the operations and maintenance side, if you notice, we have a big fence up. It’s not complete, that’s just the main part of the fence. We still have a lot of gates to go. At the moment though, we set up for me to have $175,000 for this fencing job. Right now, we are at $142,750. We’ve also purchased the gates, but the gates haven’t been put up and we have some decorative items that I’m doing with the gates. We’re also setting them up beforehand to allow for our access system. There will be a separate charge for the access system, because that’s a separate company. Right now, I’m left with about $32,000 to work with under that not to exceed amount. I don’t believe I’m going to go over that, but that doesn’t include things like our signage and changing things around to make sure people know where they’re walking. Once we put those doors on there’s going to be a big difference. People are already noticing it and we’ve gotten a lot of questions. I’ve even gotten emails from people that really like the fact that we’re closing this in. It’s already starting to do its job and I think it looks good. In a minute, we will go over one of the proposals for landscaping. As you can see, there are ways to dress up the areas that are just open fencing.
A big part of this last month has been preparing for the budget. I’ve already started collecting letters from all our vendors. So far, I can’t find a single one that isn’t planning on increasing for their contracts for this next year. We have had years where people have had small increases, such as three or four percent or sometimes our smaller vendors will forgo an increase altogether. That is not the case this year. In fact, we’ve already talked about our largest increase, which is the Clay County Sheriff’s Office at 26%. When you start to hit all of those lines with increases, whether it’s 5% or 26%, the operations and maintenance side is going to go up drastically. Here, we are doing well, and you guys have a little bit of padding. If we do what you guys directed before, I have no worries, but if I look at your district and your sister district, that’s when I started to worry about increases just for our everyday operations. It’s been years since we’ve had an assessment increase. This is the first year I’m starting to worry that we may have to. When we come back next month, you’ll be able to see some of those individual increases and how that works out and how it adds up to that budget.
I don’t have the capital reserve study yet. There were a lot of items on there that we’ve completed over the years that he has come back out here to review. He did do that update of all the things I’ve done such as when I’ve installed them, how much we paid for them, etc. and he takes all of that, puts it into his system, and then he came out here and toured with me so he
could actually see what everything looks like to give me an idea of whether we’re doing a good job, or things we need to put more money into. Regardless, I think we are going to need money just to continue to operate the way we like to. The last few years, when we’ve needed something, you guys give me the money and we go to work. I’d be concerned if we had to watch that and cut corners to make sure we made it to the next year. Everything I’m seeing is more money, not just here for district operations. There is one item I want to point out to you guys. I don’t have a quote for it yet, they’re working on it. It’s the top item on your maintenance report, the motor at the lap pool. This is our largest motor. Years ago, the Board approved for me to start stockpiling motors. We have a lot of 5-horsepower, 7.5-horsepower, and some ten and fifteen horsepower motors between the two districts. That way, when we had a slide go down, instead of being out of commission for a couple weeks, my guys can go to work changing everything over. Not a lot of districts have the ability to stockpile equipment because it can cost money and it takes up a lot of space, but it’s allowed us to operate to where we really haven’t had a pool or piece of equipment down more than a day. This motor, we do not have. It’s a 25-horsepower motor and weighs about 600 pounds. It has lived a long life. I believe we are on the eleventh summer. The impeller is starting to go. I can see that with the flow of the pool when we clean it out, so we’re going to have to replace that. The biggest problem I have is it’s starting to leak water out of the side. I have to pull that whole big thing, pull it apart, put a seal back on and stick that motor in there. That is a lot of work and its very costly. We’re probably going to have to bring in a long reach forklift to reach over top of your heaters to pick this big thing up. I’ve gotten verbal quotes upwards of $11,000 to replace this motor. I know the motor to purchase is about $500. Doing the work is the biggest thing, so I’ve asked them to give me a quote on giving me the whole unit ready to go, that way when we swap it out it’s quicker. I’ll take that unit there and take everything off so it’s ready to go and then we will have one motor sitting on the shelf. It’s not something we have to worry about this weekend, but when that water comes out, eventually it gets worse and worse to where it leaks so much the motor will go out, so I do want to get moving on it.
Vice Chairman Hartigan asked we’ve set aside for that, right?
Mr. Soriano responded yes, we have a small amount in there for motor repairs and then I have my repair and replacement amount that I can put towards it. We can count capital, so depending on how much we spend this year, I can push that to the end of the year so we can have
a good look at how much we spent in capital. At this point, that is not a concern. It’s just something I can’t spend without your approval, but I would consider this an emergency issue.
Chairman Steiner stated just to give a historical background, we were suffering with impellers going bad or bearings going bad on various motors and at the time, the process was pull the motor and get it repaired. It never happened at a good time. It was always coming up on a weekend, so the Board directed Jay that when a motor had a problem and needed to be repaired, purchase another one, put the new one in, get it repaired, and put it on the shelf. We’re also doing that with the heaters out there. By having the spares that don’t have a shelf life to be concerned with, it does give us a quicker turnaround and reduces the amount of time the pools have to be down. Keep that in mind that we didn’t just go out and buy every motor that we needed. We basically did it as they went. Some of these motors are exchangeable with Double Branch, so they share the cost on motors that are utilized over there as well. This one isn’t, if I’m correct. To my knowledge it’s worked out quite well.
Mr. Soriano stated it’s been years since we’ve had an extended shut down, so it works out
well.
Mr. Soriano continued his report. There are some renderings in your agenda package for
landscaping. There are no prices attached, it was to give you an idea of how we could dress up those areas. There are those areas that are long stretches of fencing, just to make our fencing look better. I like the way it looks, but I think as you add on landscaping, it will look even better. I don’t think the fence stands out and looks bad at all, this is just to give you an idea. I would say, let me finish with all of the main installs first to gauge the access system and probably a couple of cameras to keep a good eye on those fences, because I know somebody is going to jump here and there, and if they’re damaging them, I’d like to catch anybody that damages the fence. Once we’re done with that, then we can look at adding on these landscaped areas.
There are two quotes in there I want you guys to think about. One is the promenade. I’ve moved forward with taking out all the dead trees, so it looks good down there. There are a lot of stumps we’ve taken out and a lot of trees that maybe had one green leaf on the whole tree. We took all of those out. If we want to replace those trees in that area, there is a proposal we came up with. This is without doing any kind of trade off on our contractual amount. That is what Chalon was talking about before is we can get it cheap, or even free if we gave up some contractual amounts that we are given every year. This is without that and it’s not a bad price.
We could do this rather easy, it’s just whether you guys want to spend more money on the promenade right now. I don’t think it’s something that is a dire need, but it will help out. I think over the last couple of years people have enjoyed the landscaping, this year especially, and I think VerdeGo is doing a really good job, so adding on these small amounts like this I don’t think is a big problem. The other proposal is the clock tower. It’s just mulch. It didn’t make it into your agenda packet. That is just for the roadside area. We do own a good amount of the area there, such as the slip lane. I’d argue the parking spaces aren’t, but they actually are. We built them. The developer doesn’t want them, and the County does not like parking spots. They won’t approve parking spaces within so many feet of their right of way. When you look on the County map right now, it almost looks like it’s theirs. I’d also argue the island. I think the island serves the businesses there, not us, but since it is in our area, the islands belong to us. My main concern is the roadside. Years ago, we did pull a lot of the dead bushes, so you’ll some spots where the hedge line breaks up. We have a couple more skeleton bushes that Chalon’s crew is going to pull for me, but we haven’t updated mulch in a while and it’s starting to look old out there. Now that we’ve redone the road, we are going to limb up some of the trees to make that area look a little bit better. I think that is needed and mostly, because that is one of the expectations in the landscape contract that it is a high visibility area. There’s not a requirement that says we have to do mulch every year like we do at the amenity center, but I do think we need to update that area to make it look better. The developer has come to me almost demanding that we update the islands. I’m not happy with that and I let him know that. We will eventually have to do some of those islands. I think he’s trying to sell some of those areas. We have a brand-new neighborhood and that is their entry too, so they are going to want to update some of those front islands. I’m coming up with a plan with Chalon now. I would like that to be more perennial. I’m not sticking annuals in there that we have to rotate out all of the time. There’s not a requirement that says how we have to landscape, but we will have to improve it a little bit. My main concern was the roadside, and that’s what this is, just the mulch on the roadside. Those are not amounts I can approve so it would have to be approved by you guys.
Chairman Steiner asked wasn’t there something with the lighting down there?
Mr. Soriano responded we’re going to work on that. I mentioned that to the developer also. We do a cost share agreement. The original set up in this was there would be some common ground out there that would come back to the District and that parking lot would serve as entry
to that common ground and a place for our own residents to use too. Because of that, we pay the lighting. It’s our account right now and we send them the bill at the end of the year to pay half of it back. Since that is not the plan anymore, I’ve talked to them about revisiting that. I don’t believe it’s ours to light anymore. There’s nothing in there that the District is truly using. I believe that falls more under the new townhome community that is over there, that’s their entrance, and then also the developer for the businesses. Even if they wanted to come back and ask to split it three ways, that’s better, but I don’t believe the District should be paying for everything out there. I talked to them about that, but they haven’t come back to me yet. I think it is something we will need to clean up, or at least give a better explanation for why we’re paying for the lighting in that parking lot.
Vice Chairman Hartigan asked are we able to disconnect it?
Mr. Soriano responded there is a contract that I sent to Mike to look at. We can, but I think we would have to pay for any re-metering. That meter is set up well to where it’s separate from the streetlights. We do take care of the streetlights. The ones running on the outside where the mulch is that I’m talking about on the edge of the road is separated out from the ones on the parking lot, so it would be easy to give them that meter.
Vice Chairman Hartigan asked do we need to give them notice? Mr. Soriano responded yes, and we would work with them.
Chairman Steiner stated if you look at the contract, it spells it out to where you have to give notice and what Jay was talking about with re-metering, it’s stated that the cost would fall on us to re-meter.
Mr. Soriano stated I don’t think there would be much cost because it’s already set up that way. I am working with them, and we would give them notice. It’s a long-term thing. We’ve been doing it for years because of that plan, so really, it’s because of the new developers and the way that everything worked out that the plan is no longer in place. It’s really the look of the area and the landscaping that they’re concerned with. They weren’t concerned with the lights, so we will address that.
Chairman Steiner asked is there any problem with having the funds to take care of the mulching up there?
Mr. Soriano responded no. It sounds like a lot, it’s $4,000, but that is a big space. This is all the way around that we’re doing the roadside, not just the front.
Chairman Steiner asked and you need a motion to proceed?
Mr. Soriano responded that one is more important to me if you guys want to approve that one and then you can discuss the other one because that is a high-visibility area.

Vice Chairman Hartigan stated I’d like to go ahead with the promenade one. I think it would be most advantageous if we go ahead and get this work done sooner rather than later with the rise in cost of materials. We’ve seen them escalate the last twelve months. If there’s something we can do, I’d like to just have it done and have the residents happy with the progress. We’re also looking at option one on the other study, so with that I’d like to make a motion to accept this proposal for the promenade with the Crape Myrtles.
Mr. Hicks asked is that the illustration?
Chairman Steiner responded no. This is along the promenade. We had several of the River Birch trees that had died off and this was getting those out. They’ve got several of the areas where they did the stump grinding and it’s been mulched and there are plants that used to be around the trees that now are around where this mulching is. A lot of that looks pretty good. My only question in this, is this a one-for-one replacement for what was taken out? There are a couple of areas that there are already Crapes nearby that we put in previously that we could if necessary, rather than all of those being Crape Myrtles, maybe spread the Crapes a little bit.
Ms. Suchsland stated they don’t have to go in the same spots. We can space them out however you feel and some of them, we won’t be able to put back in the same spots because the birch trees were planted a lot in their baskets, which is the reason why they did not do well.
Chairman Steiner stated of the ones that can be replaced, put those in and I would assume that would be less than the 10 that’s here, or are all 10 of those not falling in the areas that have the basket?
Ms. Suchsland responded we can put them down through the promenade with whatever spacing would look good. There are still many in the contractual that you have that we can add the plants, we can put sod in some of those areas where we can’t put the tree back into. There are a bunch of options.
Chairman Steiner stated I don’t have a problem with this, but we’ve got some dead bushes. I don’t know what they’re called, but they’ve been there quite a while and they just aren’t doing well.
Ms. Suchsland stated they didn’t make it through this last freeze.
Chairman Steiner stated that’s why I was wondering in some of those areas, put in some of that plant that does quite well through that area.
Mr. Soriano stated I would say the easier way to do that would be, let’s go ahead and get the trees in, and then come back. If we do it this way, we’re not affecting that contract amount. Every year we get some one-gallons, three-gallons and so forth where there is quite a few thousand bucks that we already pay into the contract that they get to work with at the end of the year. If we’re doing it this way and taking care of the trees on a separate approval, we have room for those later. We can come back and say we want to put 30 hedges out there and change them and play with them then and that would be part of the contract amount.
Chairman Steiner stated I wanted to make sure if one of the trees you removed had two Crape Myrtles next to it, and we get another right in the middle that it makes sense.
Ms. Suchsland stated we can space it out.
Mr. Soriano stated I would say let’s try to space them out with what is there now, because not only do we have a couple of Myrtles out there, we have some others that have made it pretty well, and then we have on giant Cypress tree and a couple little oaks. With the ten we’re putting in we will take into consideration what is already out there. They don’t have to go in the same spots.

Mr. Soriano stated that is it for my report. Like I said, the fence is doing well. It’s separating what we need right now, but the gates aren’t up so people are still able to come in. We will take the next couple of months to finalize everything with the walk-through gates and the check-in process downstairs. There is a check-in counter there instead of the windows at the office and that allows you to get through that front gate, so we will get to a point where it becomes pretty strict. One problem we always have this time of year is prom. We had that problem this
past weekend where our security had a big problem with it. We get people that want to come up and get pictures on the stairs. It’s a beautiful building, and people want to be here, I get it, but they can’t. There are people that rent this out and pay thousands of dollars and people are coming up and bothering them. It’s always been our rules that they cannot be there. Yes, there are times we don’t have weddings; however, we don’t coordinate with anybody, and I don’t have time to sit there and make plans for days and times they can come out for pictures. The residents think it’s theirs and they can use it how they like and then they come up here and get into arguments with our security guards. This last weekend we had that with prom where there were 100 people out here trying to take pictures and the security guard had to involved CCSO to ask people to leave. I had to work with CCSO, because for some reason, they were in that mindset again that they can’t ask them to leave or trespass people. The fenced in area is going to get protected a little better, but we’re still going to have some of those problems on the outside here and there. We will work through those things, but I did want to remind everybody that is the way it works for prom and this time of year when we have those issues.

EIGHTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Audience   Comments   /   Supervisors’
Requests
There were no audience members present.
Chairman Steiner stated I asked Jay to look into the problem of the high-speed motor scooters and motorized bikes on the promenade. These are not necessarily small bikes. They travel at high speeds, so by the time you hear them coming, they’re gone and it’s hard to catch them. Jay mentioned trying to limit flow at the promenade like we did up here. The only problem there is the maintenance vehicles have to go up and down through there, plus we have the ADA issues where if we put speed bumps or whatever along the way, it might be a problem for people. So, I don’t know how we’re doing it, but I wanted to go on the record that we are aware of the problem and hopefully we will come up with a solution. They come through at late hours of the night. They seem to travel through the nature walk and all the way up the other end. I don’t know if they’re heading up towards the high school. It just gets concerning because there are a lot of people that walk out there.
Vice Chairman Hartigan asked are they electric bikes or minibikes?
Mr. Soriano responded some are gas powered. We’ve had issues with people driving all kinds of things out there, whether it’s golf carts, go-karts, mopeds, etc. They’re driving on the outside where the boardwalk is.
Chairman Steiner stated they use it as a highway to go down to the far end. I don’t know if they live there, or if they’re going down to the high school. Years ago, we had things called Cushman scooters. You could ride two people on them, and they are full-fledged scooters, powered vehicles. I don’t think they have the lighting and whatever. By the time you hear them coming, they’re gone and it’s hard to expect CCSO to catch them unless they’re here when they go through and it’s not an everyday occurrence.
Vice Chairman Hartigan asked Jay, do you have any ideas?
Mr. Soriano responded that’s going to be the biggest thing we could do is some sort of flow control. We do that in lots of places to stop golf carts, things like bollards, gates, etc., but the big issue is it’s not going to stop some of the smaller electric things that go fast these days, and they’re loud out there. Even people that have these gas-powered bicycles you’ll see up here and they’re pretty fast.
Mr. Hicks asked you said flow control right, like turnstiles or something?
Mr. Soriano responded not really turnstiles, but there are places that just have gates that aren’t locked, that way you’re not affecting ADA, but they have to actually stop and open it up so they’re not just riding through. A bollard stops them from taking something wide through there, but we still have to have four-foot ADA clearance for wheelchairs, so you can’t use a golf cart or anything large, but you can easily get the bikes through and some of those will hit 30mph. We’ve had complaints for the last few years on the promenade, but it’s one of those things where you can’t do anything unless you catch them. We can’t catch them, and the security guards can’t do much other than report them, and then we have to wait for the Sheriff’s Office to get here.
Mr. Spellman asked is it an increasing problem?
Mr. Soriano responded I would say it’s increased over the last couple of years. It’s not an every night thing, but it’s one thing I can’t control too much. It’s always been in our policies that you can’t have them there, but stopping it is the hard part.

Vice Chairman Hartigan stated I love these two renderings of the fencing. Ms. Suchsland asked is there one you like better?
Vice Chairman Hartigan responded I like them both. It has two very unique and distinctive views of it. I’d like to see two sides done one way, and the other side done the other way, but do both of them if at all possible.
Mr. Soriano stated we can look at that. Let me finish the hard part of the fence and the enclosures and control to see how much money we have left and then we can go through there.
Vice Chairman Hartigan stated it will definitely dress it up. It makes so much more improvements to not only the fencing, but the community as a whole.
Chairman Steiner stated just keep in mind, when you talk both sides, you have a sidewalk that comes up the lake and comes to the gates.
Mr. Soriano stated it would probably have to be a little bit different shaped than what is
there.

Vice Chairman Hartigan stated sure, that’s understandable.
Chairman Steiner stated you need to put on the outside of the fence a walkway for people
that aren’t in here. That’s the only reason I didn’t think of it on both sides.
Mr. Soriano stated we would be able to do it the same way. We did leave some space to that first concrete edge
Vice Chairman Hartigan stated you have three sides. I don’t mean one on each side. For example, rendering one on two sides, and rendering two on the outside.
Mr. Soriano stated oh he’s talking about all the way around the property. That’s just the biggest space that we have open. There are lots of smaller areas that are open, and we can do things there, but many places already have landscaping, so we’re kind of limited.
Chairman Steiner stated that other side comes in to where the tennis courts are. Vice Chairman Hartigan stated right, so we have the one side and the back side. Mr. Hicks stated I think the first rendering is awesome, with the Crape Myrtles.
Ms. Suchsland stated he used two different types of azaleas, and then we used Crape Myrtles on one and Hollys on the other.
Vice Chairman Hartigan stated the Holly is a sturdier tree. Ms. Suchsland stated it depends.
Chairman Steiner stated Hollys are deciduous, the leaves remain all year and the Crape Myrtles the leaves go away.
Vice Chairman Hartigan asked what about climb-ability as a kid.
Ms. Suchsland stated you don’t want to climb a Holly. The shape would be fun to put lights on for Christmas.
Mr. Spellman stated I like the one with the Holly.
Chairman Steiner stated we’re not making a decision at this time.
Mr. Soriano stated no, and there weren’t any prices, it’s just an idea of what we can do with that fence line. At the last meeting we were just starting, and we had concerns with what the fence line was going to look like. I think the whole thing right now looks great and when I walk up, I think more of a private country club when I see it, so it doesn’t bother me at all, but when you add landscaping it looks even better, so this was just to give an idea of what we could do with some of these areas.

NINTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Next Scheduled Meetings
Ms. Giles stated our next meetings is scheduled for June 13th at 2:00 p.m. here at the Plantation Oaks Amenity Center.

TENTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Adjournment

Secretary/Assistant Secretary	Chairman/Vice Chairman