Brevard County approves more funds for new emergency operations center
With the 2022 hurricane season now here, Brevard County Commissioners have voted to approve an additional funding stream to build a new emergency operations center in Rockledge.
The commissioners unanimously voted to authorize county staff to use a maximum of $12.2 million in funding from the second allocation of the federal American Rescue Plan Act.
Construction for the center originally had been estimated to cost $15 million, but that has increased to nearly $30 million, and the recent allocation will pay for a portion of that difference.
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“I appreciate all the hard work everybody has done on it,” County Commission Chair Kristine Zonka said. “Sadly, construction costs are going up, but we want to make sure we are getting the best deal we can.”
According to the accompanying agenda packet, County Manager Frank Abbate asked the board for authorization to direct the ARPA funds toward the price difference between the updated cost projection and the previous one.
It also states the money go toward reworking the facility requirements to include architectural engineering and design. Part of that involves $1.5 million in costs related to the currently funded design, as well as lost time.
Language in the proposal includes some flexibility with how the funding will be used, based on the will of the board.
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Brevard County has been planning to construct a new 42,000-square-foot emergency operations facility for the past few years to replace the current emergency management headquarters.
There have been calls to have the current operations center replaced for more than six years, with many claiming it is too small to fit the required personnel in case of a disaster.
"Our EOC is old, it's small, and it gets overwhelmed very quickly," then-Brevard County Emergency Management Director Kimberly Prosser said in 2017.
Its inadequacies became obvious during Hurricane Matthew in 2016, when there were about 200 staffers coordinating emergency response within the operations center. There were power and air-conditioning issues, as personnel were coordinating the response to the public emergency.
The land where the new center would be built is owned by Brevard Public Schools and leased to the county under a 99-year lease at an annual cost of $1.
When activated because of an emergency, the center will accommodate more than 200 people from different agencies across the county, from the school district to fire and rescue personnel.
The agenda packet states that Brevard County’s emergency operations center is the most frequently activated center in the state because of the rocket launches that regularly happen, flooding and storm surges that occur, as well as the hurricanes that potentially happen each year.
Officials have been pooling different funding sources to try to cobble together the amount needed to replace the aging infrastructure.
From 2017: Brevard faces Irma with outdated emergency operations center
The Commission approved about $6.75 million from federal emergency coronavirus funds to begin construction plans for the center. Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey pledged another $2 million from his portion of coronavirus assistance.
In 2021, Gov. Ron DeSantis approved a $1 million allocation from the $101.5 billion budget because of efforts by locally elected state officials, including Florida Senate Majority Leader Debbie Mayfield and Florida Rep. Tyler Sirois.
Ralph Chapoco is government and politics watchdog reporter. You can reach Chapoco at rchapoco@floridatoday.com and follow him on Twitter @rchapoco.
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This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Brevard approves up to $12.2 million for new emergency operations center
