MINUTES OF MEETING BELLA COLLINA
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DISTRICT

The regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors of the Bella Collina Community Development District was held Thursday, August 14, 2025 at 10:00 a.m. at the Siena at Bella Collina, 16300 County Road 455, Montverde, Florida.

Present and constituting a quorum were:

Randall Greene David Burman
Duane “Rocky” Owen Andy Gorrill
Rick Scharich by phone
Also present were: George Flint
Jay Lazarovich
Xabier Guerricagoitia by phone
Robert Szozda Teresa Viscarra

Chairman
Vice Chairman Assistant Secretary Assistant Secretary Assistant Secretary

District Manager District Counsel District Engineer Field Manager GMS

Sydney Brackett	GMS

FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS	Roll Call
Mr. Flint called the meeting to order. Four Supervisors were present in person constituting a quorum.

SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS	Public Comment Period
Mr. Flint: For the record, there are no members of the public present, just Board and staff.

THIRD ORDER OF BUSINESS	Approval of Minutes of the July 10, 2025
Meeting
Mr. Flint: You have approval of the minutes from your July 10, 2025 meeting. Are there any comments, corrections, or changes to those minutes? If not we would ask for a motion to approve those.

On MOTION by Mr. Greene, seconded by Mr. Owen, with all in favor, the Minutes of the July 10, 2025 Meeting, were approved, as presented.

FOURTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Consideration of Series 2024 Requisitions
#37 – #40
Mr. Flint: The Series 2024 requisitions #37 through #40 are in your agenda package for review. We are asking the Board to approve these.

On MOTION by Mr. Greene, seconded by Mr. Burman, with all in favor, Series 2024 Requisitions #37 – #40, were approved.

FIFTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Discussion and Review of Revised Policy
Manual for Water and Wastewater
Mr. Flint: Item 5 is discussion and review of the revised policy manual for the water and wastewater utilities. As you recall at your last meeting you set a rule and rate hearing for next month. As part of that rule and rate hearing, we will also be presenting a revised policy manual that dovetails with your rate schedule. We wanted to go ahead and make sure we presented the proposed changes to this policy to you today. Rob is going to go ahead and hit the highlights on that for you.
Mr. Szozda: The biggest driver is the change in rates that are coming. They were going to be effective 10/1 but we met with the developer this week, and they want to push that off to 11/1. So we have a decent amount of time between now and then before the implementation goes in. There is a rate schedule that is in the back that provides the current rates and the rates that are going to go in effect on 11/1, and then also anticipated the rates that are going to go into effect when the irrigation system is complete. When it comes online the cost dynamics change enough that we went ahead and did the second rate study. We should be good for several years as far as setting the rate for irrigation, sewage, and potable water. The other things that came into play, we added criteria for grinder station pump outs. We've had some repeat offenders. It seems like we're showing up once every six months, nine months, pumping out their station because they're full of oil. So now there's criteria. If that happens in less than two years we have the right to charge them the pump out fee.
Mr. Owen: Is this just people just dumping grease?
Mr. Szozda: I don't know. But it is largely the harder oils that are probably coming off of beef fats and pork fats and things like that.

Mr. Flint: But you can find grease, you can find wipes, you can find female products, a bunch of items.
Mr. Szozda: Yeah, and we've put out the message, we're going to continue to put out more messages on what can go down the drainage, it is basically nothing. Your water, your washing machine, your toilets, and toilet paper, that should be it. Other items, we've upped the cost of the 3/4-inch potable meter. We have to put a check valve on it in order to be compliant so that cost went up. Our after-hours rate has increased to $295 per occurrence. We're losing money every time somebody gets their water shut off and then they call at 6:00 p.m. and say they want it tonight. The fee we charge doesn't cover the cost of us going out there. So that went up to $295 per occurrence. Hopefully that encourages people to pay their bills on time and not have to call us out after hours. The previous manual, it really didn't break down the cup into both potable and irrigation. So that is now clearly broken down into what your allowable rates are. There will be communication going out to residents with this rate study that says here's where you are, here's your 12-month billing average, here's your bill today, here's going to be your bill in the future. Because having a super rig that comes in on that fourth or third block for irrigation and on the fourth block for water. That is now clear that there's two different limits. So you don't combine them.
Mr. Greene: So is that something we were doing incorrectly by lumping them together? Mr. Flint: No, they weren't lumped together. They were separate for irrigation and potable. Mr. Szozda: But the manual didn't address it.
Mr. Greene: Okay, got it.
Mr. Szozda: And then some of the backflow prevention criteria wasn't correct. We also moved the certification that has the one inch above ground rpz, the previous manual said one year. Regulation says two years, so I consulted with our Engineer and we are in agreement that it can be every two years. That's going to be one of our next enforcement activities is go run all those to ground. In general, the implementation period that we're going to invoke for taking action against people who are noncompliant to the water usage is going to be a six-month period. There will be a series of notifications going out to them. If you're not coming down after six months, we're going to have to shut off your water.
Mr. Greene: Don't we have an agreement with the POA now for enforcement?
Mr. Szozda: Yeah, this seems like an adjunct of that process to me. It talks on the bottom of page 11 about the enforcement for overuse.

Mr. Flint: I think the POA feels like their finding capability is not what we thought their finding capability was. We want the POA to assist with enforcement, but we realize that the CDD is going to have to take more of a primary role in the enforcement.
Mr. Burman: Yeah, the POA's finding capability really got diminished by some law changes a year or two ago. And unless it's stated clearly in the declaration, which this is not, they really have a hard time finding it.
Mr. Lazarovich: Aren't they going to enforce our rules? Because we drafted a Consumptive Use Enforcement Agreement with the POA previously.
Mr. Flint: They are going to enforce it but their finding abilities have been kind of weakened. Rob indicated that we're going to ramp up enforcement. The super rate is going to go into effect on November 1st. They're going to get hit financially starting November 1st. We're going to send out letters on people that are exceeding their allocation. Our ultimate recourse is to turn off the irrigation water. We don't want to do that on December 1st, we're going to educate for five or six months before we end up getting to that point.
Mr. Szozda: We're further investing in customer representation. I think everybody met Sydney coming in. Her primary mission is going to be Bella Collina administration of our programs and then also putting out work orders. We now have a work order system that we send to work out to our subcontractors and even to ourselves as far as getting work completed. Billing is going to go to another individual. We're going to have more people that can dedicate their time to what we need.
Mr. Owen: The fines that are levied, which fund will they be directed to?
Mr. Flint: Well, we don't levy fines. The CDD won't be levying the fines. But the additional revenue generated by the super rate will stay in the utility fund.
Mr. Owen: Thank you.
Mr. Flint: Our goal is that there won't be a lot of revenue generated from the super rate that will discourage usage. But we know that's likely not fully the case. We're going to realize some additional revenue as a result of this, but it's definitely not the goal. The goal is to discourage usage, but it'll stay in the utility fund.
Mr. Burman: And the super rate kicks in at a point when?
Mr. Flint: We have inclining block rates. There are four blocks for potable and for irrigation. We have a different super rate for the Hillcrest versus Pine Island and then the

commercial and then the condos, all based on allocations, have different super rates. We'll go into more detail on that at the rate hearing as well, when we present the rates for the rate hearing next month.
Mr. Szozda: On the potable side, it is a little more punitive. You don't use as much water over there. Its new block is $14 per 1000 gallons. On the irrigation side, where people could use hundreds of thousands, they move from basically $5 up to almost $8 - $7.91. We're not here to punish people. We're going to make phone calls. If it comes down to it and they don't answer anything, we'll knock on the door and see if we can have a conversation.
Mr. Scharich: I had a question. I couldn't hear a lot of what Rob said. One of the biggest complaints we have about utilities relative to the water there is that, somebody just mentioned customer service. I wondered if they could join the 21st century and allow calling credit cards or even online because new customer setups and switching the utilities has always been the number one complaint we receive from people coming into Bella Collina. The number one complaint has always been, for the water we had to drive to someplace in the middle of nowhere to set up in the house. That was years ago, but my understanding is as recently as last week, we had an occasion where a new customer couldn't set up their account either online or by phone.
Mr. Szozda: We are looking for improvements there. Our billing person happens to be sitting in here today. I did see some of that, it seemed it was rather authoritarian, like you have to have a check and it has to be sent here. I think we have the latitude to change this probably pretty quickly.
Ms. Viscarra: So we currently have for payment options the mail in of physical checks or they register their account online and they can pay by credit card online. We are currently undergoing the process to get the auto pay up and running. I think right now we're hoping in the next 60 days to have something up and running. That's kind of what we're aiming for where people would be able to set up the auto pay for automatic payments. We do have mail in and online credit cards for those that register currently and have for four years.
Mr. Flint: Yeah, that's to pay the monthly bill. I think maybe what Rick is referring to is the application process, initiating the account, probably especially paying the connection fees and those things.

Mr. Scharich: That's correct. We're on the third week trying to get this new service set up for this person. This goes back for years. I mean, virtually every utility company, you can call in and set it up or you can go online. I've been told we still can't do that here with CDD and the water.
Mr. Flint: We hear your concerns. We'll discuss that. I don't want to put Teresa or anybody on the spot at this meeting, but I do appreciate your comments, Rick. Rick is on the Board and he's also a builder. There are probably some improvements we can make in those processes to help with that and we'll work on that.
Mr. Szozda: In light of the discussions we're having before the meeting, everything seems like it's taken two weeks by mail to get anywhere here in Florida.
Mr. Flint: Yeah. The U.S. postal Service isn't what it used to be. Mr. Szozda: Okay, thank you, Rick. Appreciate that.
Mr. Flint: Between now and the next meeting if you have comments or questions on the policy manual we can make changes to it.
Mr. Szozda: On the enforcement side, there's a pretty simple statement. I didn't mess with it. This is basically, if you're not compliant, we can shut off your water. It says you shut it off until they're compliant. Well, if you're overusing water, I shut it off. So it's going to be kind of a three-to-five-day period. We're not here to kill anybody's landscaping. Hopefully they work with us and start heading in the right direction to dive under their allocations.
Mr. Flint: But there will be turn on and turn off fees. If the super rate doesn't get their attention, the turn on turnoff fee may not either.
Mr. Szozda: For conversation purposes, we took your allocation and divided by 12. We understand there will be months that they'll be over and there'll be months that they're under. We're really paying attention to the 12-month rolling average.
Mr. Flint: We're planning on a community meeting toward the end of September. We'll send a notice out to all the customers and we will have a town hall community meeting to go over all the rates before they go into effect on November 1st. People will have more than 30 days notice before the new rates go into effect. If they want to adjust their irrigation plaques and other things that they have control over, they'll have a chance to do that.
Mr. Szozda: It ends up being pretty good timing heading into November where people should be using less water anyways.

SIXTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Staff Reports
Attorney
Mr. Lazarovich: We're working to wrap up the utilities and agreements with Jim Boyd. There were four entities based on the new irrigation project. We'll try to get that wrapped up before the next meeting. That's all from me.
Engineer
Presentation of Annual Engineer’s Report
Mr. Guerricagoitia: Steve Boyd conducted a site visit to look at the District's facilities. He didn't find anything of note that it seemed like everything was being maintained and kept up. Really there was nothing to report as far as the District facilities go.
Mr. Flint: We continue, I think to have issues with the one area on drainage.
Mr. Szozda: that's on my list. Andy and I went and visited the site after last meeting and our intent is to get a truck out here and try to see what we can do to get it out of those lawns.
District Manager’s Report
Approval of Check Register
Mr. Flint: You have approval of the July check register in the amount of $1,081,882.69.
I’m happy to answer any questions.

On MOTION by Mr. Greene, seconded by Mr. Burman, with all in favor, the Check Register, was approved.

Balance Sheet and Income Statement
Mr. Flint: You have the unaudited financials through July 31st. There is no action required by the Board, just there for your review and an update as of July 31st for your accounts. On the general fund we're fully collected on our special assessments. Our actual costs slightly exceed our prorated budget. I think that has to do primarily with attorney fees. You can't really predict those. Those are based on demand. I think our legal advertising also exceeded it, with these rate hearings and public hearings that require the special advertising that has pushed us over there.

SBA Florida PRIME Monthly Summary Report
Mr. Flint: The last thing I have is the update, the monthly summary for the Florida Prime investment account.

Field Manager’s Report
Mr. Szozda: We had an irrigation main break at 1:00 a.m., a resident called in that there was water blowing out near the creek loop. A tree must have blown enough over that it pushed its roots into the main and broke it. I have to give RCM a lot of credit. They came out and dealt with it and I think they've done a pretty good job. Everything is gone now and the cleanup work is left to you. We haven't received the bill on that yet. But they were here for a while and the tree went away. The irrigation system continues to be under construction. I think Jim finally got through at least some portion of the permit process. They're going to be starting more field installation there. The generator for the lift station, as far as the vendor knows, is still scheduled for delivery next week. They are having a bit of a permit issue themselves because of confusion on the address. They wouldn't issue it because they said the address didn't match. The address is actually close to the water plant and this of course, so hopefully we have a path forward there. He's going to let me know if he has any issues with trying to get that in place to get that installed here soon. We rebuilt two of the high-capacity pumps at the Pine Island water plant. We started this week on the rebuilding of one of the high-capacity pumps at Hillcrest. Two of the three at Pine Island have been rebuilt and the one bad one that has a backflow issue with this check valve is the one going under now. Next year we'll rebuild the rest of the ones at Hillcrest. Overall, the water and sewer system continues to operate efficiently. We believe we have a solution to some of our unknown pressure issues related to the grinder pumps. We'll go over the details of the calls for last month. We're going to make a device that allows us to read the actual pressure in the grinder station. When you're burning up stators it's probably back pressure although we know the pressure of the main is lower. But some of the configuration going into the main could create air pockets and create back pressure at the same time. Another effort is underway to put in additional ARVs (air release valves) to solve. There has been a recent surge of grinder station installation where the list was almost zero and then it popped up to 14. I think a fair amount of that has been worked off. RCM is our primary contractor for installations. We've integrated another smaller company; they recently installed their first grinder station. We have additional capabilities there now. We also called them out on an after-hours call for the lift station at Siena Towers. We end up having to lock the power box there, when both pumps come on, I think it went into alarm. Somebody heard the alarm, came, shut off the power and that shut off the control power. The pumps went out, got a call and came in. But in that process we did discover one of the pumps is blowing by. It's not pumping out completely and

that's probably why it went up. Utility Repair Experts is the other company we’re bringing in, they're going to go pull the pump and see if they can figure out where the blow by is there. I think that’s all I have.
SEVENTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Other Business
There being no comments, the next item followed.

EIGHTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Supervisor’s Requests
There being no comments, the next item followed.

NINTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Adjournment
Mr. Flint: Is there a motion to adjourn?

On MOTION by Mr. Greene, seconded by Mr. Gorrill, with all in favor, the meeting was adjourned.

Secretary/Assistant Secretary	Chairman/Vice Chairman