MINUTES OF MEETING COPPER OAKS
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DISTRICT
The regular meeting of the Board of Supervisors of the Copper Oaks Community Development District was held on Wednesday, March 18, 2026, at 5:00 p.m. at 20699 Three Oaks Parkway, Estero, Florida.

Present and constituting a quorum were:

Robert Hillard	Chairman
Jeff Ocean	Vice Chairman
Gary Longardo	Assistant Secretary

Also present were:

Paul Winkeljohn	District Manager
Michael Pawelczyk	District Counsel (by phone)
Josh Evans	District Engineer (by phone)

FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS	Roll Call
Mr. Winkeljohn called the meeting to order and called the roll.

SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS	Organizational Matters
Mr. Winkeljohn: Let’s go through the basics for your meeting today, you do still have an open seat, is there any person to appoint, or we can table this?
Mr. Ocean: Not yet.
Mr. Winkeljohn: Alright, understood. Mr. Ocean: Let’s table it.

THIRD ORDER OF BUSINESS	Approval of the Minutes of the
April 23, 2025 Meeting
Mr. Winkeljohn: The minutes from the April 23rd meeting have been circulated, if those are in order a motion to approve would be great.

On MOTION by Mr. Ocean seconded by Mr. Longardo with all in favor, the Minutes of the April 23, 2025, Meeting were approved.

FOURTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Consideration	of	Resolution
#2026-01 Approving the Proposed Fiscal Year 2027 Budget and Setting the Public Hearing
Mr. Winkeljohn: As you know we always have this meeting at this of the year to start the budget process and resolution #2026-01 is your current proposed budget, no changes from the current is the better way to say it. What we want to do is take any input obviously if you have something, and I don’t know of anything, that would change the budget. Right now I think it’s been the same for quite a while and we have our project fund so staff recommends no change. If that’s the case, the next part is to discuss when to hold the adoption hearing, and we could put it in on May 20th, this time and location if that’s acceptable, or after that.
Mr. Ocean: I’m looking at my calendar right now and I think it’s fine, May 20th is

fine.

Mr. Winkeljohn: Ok, alright.
Mr. Ocean: Everybody here said that’s fine.
Mr. Winkeljohn:  Ok, great, thank you.  Is there a motion to approve resolution

#2026-01 setting the date as discussed, May 20th.

On MOTION by Mr. Longardo seconded by Mr. Ocean with all in favor, Resolution #2026-01 approving the Proposed Fiscal Year Budget and setting the Public Hearing on May 20, 2026 at 5:00
p.m. at 20699 Three Oaks Parkway, Estero, Florida was approved.

FIFTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Consideration	of	Engagement
Letter with Grau & Associates to perform the Audit for Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2025
Mr. Winkeljohn: Item No. 5 is your engagement letter with your auditor, as you know we picked the auditor for a bunch of years through the audit selection committee

process, each year you approved the engagement letter with the auditor by motion, is there such a motion.

On MOTION by Mr. Ocean seconded by Mr. Longardo with all in favor, accepting the engagement letter with Grau & Associates to perform the audit for Fiscal Year ending September 30, 2025 was approved.

SIXTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Acceptance of Audit for Fiscal
Year Ending September 30, 2025
Mr. Winkeljohn: And the good news is we went ahead on your behalf and had the audit started and it’s already finished and that ended fiscal year 2025. The audit is a clean audit, you guys have absolutely no indications of any financial issues that were reported in the audit, so congratulations there. Your job as a Board is to accept it as a record by motion.

On MOTION by Mr. Longardo seconded by Mr. Ocean with all in favor, accepting the audit for Fiscal Year ending September 30, 2025 was approved.

SEVENTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Discussion	of	Procedures	for
the General Election
Mr. Winkeljohn: The next thing, and give me just a second, the Supervisor of Election process has started, and let me go over the seats that are proposed to go on the ballot. Alright, so as you know you have two seats that are up for election, and you probably know this, so Rob’s seat and Tim Murphy’s seat, seats #1 and #3 are up for election. The qualification period as you may remember is an odd week in June, so that would be June 8th through June 12th, and this is also in your agenda PDF that was emailed to you. It has the phone number, you can call them, and prearrange your candidacy but, the real trick is to make sure you’re in the right seat, so Rob, you’re seat #1, that’s easy to remember but, you don’t want to qualify or sign up for the wrong seat.
Mr. Hillard: Thank you.

Mr. Winkeljohn: Ok, and if you have any questions about that you can just reach to me, I’ll help you with whatever you need, but you guys are pros, you’ve done a few times now.

EIGHTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Staff Reports
Mr. Winkeljohn: Item No. 8 is staff reports, and our attorney, Mr. Pawelczyk is online with us as well, so Mike how are you?

Attorney – Consideration of Request for Adjustment to District Counsel Fee Structure
Mr. Pawelczyk: I’m good. Just a couple of items for you, so number one would be your Form 1s, I know we’ll meet in May and we’ll remind you then but, that Form 1 will be due July 1st, and we do it online if you have any questions just let us know, either Paul’s office can help you get into your account, and all of you have done this before so it should be relatively easy to file that this year. Part of that requirement, since we haven’t met since April of last year is you need to also do your ethics training, just like you did last year and that can be completed sometime within this calendar of 2026, and assuming you did the one for 2025 you’ll report that you did complete it as part of your Form 1 filing for 2025. The last item I have is we are going through as an office and a firm to update our fee schedules and for this District, last time we updated our fee structure it was in 2023, we try to look at this every 3 years and I think our current rate is $275 per hour for partners, and $225 an hour for associates, we’re proposing to increase that to $300 per hour for partners and $250 an hour for associates. That increase would not go into effect until the next fiscal year which starts October 1, 2026, so there will be no impact to this year’s budget, in fact there’s not as much activity on a District like Copper Oaks as there are on some others, so we don’t expect this to be any impact on your next year’s budget as well. I think Paul can attest that these rates are still significantly lower than any other CDD counsel in the state and we’re better than everybody else, at least in my opinion. So, if anyone has any questions we can discuss this at the May meeting if you don’t want to approve it today, that’s fine, but I would like you to consider it today if you want to, or we can always

move it to the May meeting if you want to, so however you all want to proceed is fine with me. Are there any questions?
Mr. Ocean: No, and I just took a straw vote here and everybody here is fine with accepting it right now.
Mr. Pawelczyk: So, the motion would be to accept the fee adjustment would be in order.

On MOTION by Mr. Ocean seconded by Mr. Longardo with all in favor, accepting the request for adjustment to District Counsel fee structure effective October 1, 2026 was approved.

Engineer
Mr. Winkeljohn: We have Josh here, he was able to join us today for the engineer’s report and I am very excited about his update, so go ahead Josh.
Mr. Evans: Ok, and I’ve been your CDD engineer for I don’t know at least 10 years and one of the things we’ve always struggled with is the ditch for the outfall location that runs east/west on the south side of the property, and it always had limited conveyance and erosion issues, then in addition to that when the water gets out to Three Oaks, the Three Oaks swale was smaller than the swale that conveyed it, and higher, so it never really had good discharge features. Parallel to that, are firm is the stormwater management engineer from the Village of Estero, we did a stormwater master plan in 2017 and identified the area in and around Copper Oaks to need more regional flood storage because if you were around during Irma we all saw what that can do and how long the water stays up. So, the Village of Estero is very proactive, they went out and one thing I know we didn’t like was the school property but, the Village of Estero went out and bought the property with the intention of making it a regional stormwater lake. So, they let us on that land, and my firm is working on a permit to collect the conveyance for Copper Oaks, Villagio, and a couple of other things and let that water go into the regional lake, and then not only that, we’re doing an improvement to the swale on Three Oaks that will actually enclose it, an underground box culvert and send that south to Corkscrew Road. So, not only are you going to have to the south of you a big lake that’s going to look really nice, we’re no longer going to use the

conveyance swale that runs along your property line, and then the discharge features, the hydrology is going to be highly improved so when you have a storm event the stages are down anywhere from different locations to half a foot to a foot for you 100 year flood elevation, so it has regional benefits to Villagio and everyone around you but, when we were putting this in I had a special interest and excitement knowing that the improvements it would make to Copper Oaks. So, we’re in the process, we discussed our permit with South Florida Water Management and we still have about another 9 months of permitting to get it finalized but, it’s squarely underway and I don’t expect anything to stop it from happening.
Mr. Hillard: Josh, this is Rob Hillard and I think we’ve spoken numerous times about that swale and the effects it’s had on my home, just out of curiosity when you say we won’t be using that any longer, that will mean if we chose to we can just fill that in?
Mr. Evans: Yes, when we get closer to design of that specific component for the Village we’ll have to figure out how that ties in to what the Village has and yes, we would probably backfill it as part of the Village of Estero project and leave like a small depressional area that catches the yard drainage and things like that but, it won’t be your outfall.
Mr. Hillard: Ok, and that was the next thing I was going to say is, we are ok with, and I know they’re going to dig a lake over there, or two lakes, I believe it was, so they’re going to need to put some of that material and if they want to put it in that swale, we’re more than ok with that.
Mr. Evans: Well, we have a lot of excess dirt and I know a guy, and that might just happen.
Mr. Hillard: That sounds good.
Mr. Ocean: Josh, what do you think the timing is? Mr. Evans: It’s probably a year out from construction. Mr. Ocean: Ok.
Mr. Evans: So, we’ll have all of our permits and then the Village has to come up with the funds to excavate it and they have applied for a grant, and I frankly don’t know the status of that but, my understanding is they felt that was imminent to get the grant that would pay for the excavation of it.

Mr. Ocean: Excellent.
Mr. Hillard: That’s really good news, thank you.
Mr. Winkeljohn: Josh, any updates to the rendering? Mr. Evans: No, nothing yet.
Mr. Winkeljohn: Ok.
Mr. Evans: Yes, that rendering is still out there.
Mr. Winkeljohn:	Ok, so if I get anything new from Josh I’ll circulate it to the Board. Anything else from you Josh?
Mr. Evans: No sir.
Mr. Winkeljohn: Alright, I appreciate it.

Property Manager
Mr. Winkeljohn: No report from our property manager for today’s meeting.

Manager – Final Approval of the FY2024-FY2025 Report Performance Measures and Standards
Mr. Winkeljohn: Under manager’s report, just that we have the annual process of our performance measures, we performed them, and I checked the little boxes, and you would approve it as a record of the District, and we do it again next year. Is there a motion to approve the performance measure and standards document?

On MOTION by Mr. Ocean seconded by Mr. Longardo with all in favor, final approval of the FY2024-FY2025 Report Performance Measures and Standards was approved.

EIGHTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Financial Reports
Approval of Check Run Summary
Approval of Unaudited Financials
Mr. Winkeljohn: And your financial reports are included in your packets, nothing of interest or unusual to report, so Board approval is appreciated by motion.

On MOTION by Mr. Longardo seconded by Mr. Ocean with all in favor, the check run summary and unaudited financials were approved.

NINTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Supervisors	Requests	and
Audience Comments
Mr. Winkeljohn: That’s all I have for you guys today, do you have any questions for staff, or anything I can help with?
Mr. Ocean: I think we’re good.

TENTH ORDER OF BUSINESS	Adjournment
Mr. Winkeljohn: Alright, is there a motion to adjourn?

On MOTION by Mr. Longardo seconded by Mr. Ocean with all in favor, the meeting was adjourned.

Secretary /Assistant Secretary	Chairman / Vice Chairman

Certificate Of Completion

Envelope Id: 4C6ECE28-BDEE-8254-83B5-E06B58CA9120	Status: Completed Subject: Copper Oaks: Complete with Docusign: 3-18-26 Minutes.pdf, Resolution 2026-02.docx, Resolution 2026-0
Source Envelope:
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Certificate Pages: 2	Initials: 0	Ellen Acosta

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Record Tracking		
Status: Original
6/9/2026 7:29:00 AM	Holder: Ellen Acosta
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Paul Winkeljohn pwinkeljohn@gmssf.com Executive Director	
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Robert A. Hillard robhillardcdd@gmail.com Chairman
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Sent: 6/9/2026 7:32:58 AM Resent: 6/15/2026 10:26:43 AM Resent: 6/16/2026 5:31:31 AM Viewed: 6/16/2026 5:39:05 AM Signed: 6/16/2026 5:42:55 AM

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