Tentative apportionment passed by CEPD board
The Captiva Erosion Prevention District last week voted in favor of an apportionment for beach nourishment that began on Sept. 1.
The motion to adopt the tentative apportionment passed with Commissioner Mike Mullins opposing.
CEPD Technical Policy Director Daniel Munt said the beach nourishment project began at the beginning of September and is for placement of approximately 750,000 cubic yards of beach fill spread nearly 5 miles along shoreline and rehabilitation of existing dunes along the entire Gulf of Mexico shoreline of Captiva Island between Redfish Pass and Blind Pass.
“As a 750,000 cubic yard project, the project is to cost approximately $18 million in total. From that FDEP is going to contribute up to 21.07 percent ($3,797,068) of the total cost of the project and Lee County is expected to contribute up to 29.45 percent ($5,307,995) of the remainder of the project. No other funding sources have been taken into account for the purposes of this demonstration,” Munt said. “This leaves approximately $8.9 million estimated to be the local cost of the project for the purposes of this tentative apportionment model.”
Payments by islanders can be made within 60 days interest free, or in installments over the lifetime of the project with 2 percent interest above the interest rate of the bank loan.
The board also voted in favor of borrowing $18 million with a fixed interest rate of 2.12 percent from Synovus Bank to finance the cost of the erosion control projects. The interest would be paid on May 1 and Nov. 1 of next year. CEPD will also complete their special assessment next year, which will be placed on the tax role in November 2022, with the collection from that tax paying the debt services for the loan in 2023, with the final maturity on May 1, 2029.
All the properties on Captiva benefit from the beach nourishment project, as property values will rise accordingly. He said the Gulf-facing properties will receive the benefit of enhanced protection from erosion, as well as storm damage.
In addition, all properties receive the benefits of a more desirable beach. Munt said Captiva properties were grouped into three different categories, residential, residential with homestead exemption and commercial.
The benefits based apportionment model concept is to fairly distribute the local cost of the beach nourishment cost to the property owners and proportion to the benefits that they actually receive from the project, he explained. There were separate studies done to determine the per year value that is added to each of the benefit categories with those being storm protection and recreation.
Munt said only properties that are considered “front line” to the Gulf of Mexico are considered to receive storm protection benefits.
“This benefit is measured with the difference between the value of expected property loses if the project was not constructed verses the reduced expected property loses if the project were to be constructed,” he said.
The CEPD has received one complaint from Richard Levinson concerning the location in development to relation to the Gulf of Mexico.
His letter to the board explained that his home is “sited on the channel, approximately 600 feet east of Captiva Drive and another home stands between my house and Captiva Drive. I have what is often called a flag lot. There is a 25 foot wide driveway from Captiva Drive that runs along the other border of 16205 Captiva Drive to my lot.”
Munt said CEPD’s response to Levinson is that the storm protection benefits are more than just the loss of the house, it is land loss armor, development backfill. He said those are the differences with the benefits received for his property.
Levinson said his problem is it is an extraordinary detailed model on properties on Captiva. He said there are only two types of residential properties, those on the beach and off the beach, which ignores a handful of properties on the Tween Water stretch located on the channel, but happen to own a very small parcel to gain access to the beach.
This is Levinson’s situation. He said he has a gate on that property and his tentative assessment is about 28 times the replacement cost of that gate.
“It just seems to me to be completely irrational to say that a small piece of beach access gets the same storm protection benefits as a multi-million dollar house that sits on the beach,” Levinson said. “My recommendation was that beach front properties be deemed those that have a buildable lot. Staff rejected that. I think there needs to be some recognition of the small number of properties that are located on the channel and happen to own a small bit of land to access the beach as opposed to have a deeded easement over someone else’s property.”
Chairman Rene Miville said Levinson has his word that they will look at it, as there are some factors to talk about.
To determine the monetary storm protection value of the project to the property owners, Aptim Engineering conducted a 22-year simulation for both with the project and without.
“The simulation revealed that the project construction reduces the expected annual damages by nearly $3 million,” Munt said. “Private property owners received a reduction of expected property losses of nearly $2.5 million.”
The presentation also touched upon the recreation benefits, which for total private recreation benefits equates to $5.3 million per year. Of that 77.1 percent falls under residential properties.