Sand costs the same whoever pays for it. What changes is the share. St. Johns County has now published the slides it used on Oct. 7 to explain how it would like to move the share on a stretch of South Ponte Vedra Beach.

The project is the Ponte Vedra to South Ponte Vedra Coastal Storm Risk Management project, from 2589 South Ponte Vedra Boulevard north to the SPV Ocean Club, the development the deck still names by its old name, Serenata. The feasibility study began in April 2021. Construction is projected for Summer 2029, on a ten-year renourishment interval, and the first fill is written down at 2,145,000 cubic yards. The 2022 nourishment on that shoreline was 733,000.

As the county has it costed now, the local share of that project is 69 percent and the federal and state share is 31. The deck puts a callout beside that pie chart reading: “This results in a large local share, making the project very expensive.”

What the trolley is for

The Army Corps of Engineers sets the share by how much public access there is, and the deck says it in a single line on the slide that explains what a federal partnership is: “Cost sharing percentage is based on public access.”

That is the whole mechanism, and it is why a bus has turned up in a conversation about sand. So the county has been looking for access it can add. Slide 13 is the list of what it has tried. The Gas Station parking area is already maximized for state and federal cost-share. The county attempted to expand South Ponte Vedra Park. That was unsuccessful. On buying land for new parking, the deck says no financially feasible option has presented itself.

A trolley is the third option. It puts stops with wooden walkovers on ten-foot strips of right of way the county already owns between the private houses on South Ponte Vedra Boulevard, and the deck says the locations have been identified to maximize cost share.

With those stops counted, slide 16 prints the same project at local 47 percent and federal and state 53.

The money, in the county’s own figures

Slide 17 is headed at the October 2023 price level, and it gives the total project cost as about $138.3 million over the fifty-year project life. Under existing conditions it puts the local share at $94,800,000. With trolley stops it puts the local share at $65,500,000 and the local savings at $29,300,000. A callout adds that $14.4 million of that saving would land in the initial nourishment.

The second project is the existing South Ponte Vedra and Vilano Beach project to the south, which has been running since 2021 and is authorized through 2071. Slide 24 prices that one at the October 2026 price level: about $74,300,000 for the remainder of the project life, a local share of $37,600,000 as things stand and $31,500,000 with trolley stops, and local savings of $6,100,000.

Those are two different price levels three years apart, and the deck does not reconcile them anywhere. Nothing here adds them together.

The money that would pay the local share, whatever it comes to, is named on slide 6. Tourist Development Taxes, state appropriations where they can be got, and then this: “If needed and subject to Board approval, homeowner participation via Municipal Service Taxing Unit (MSTU) and/or Municipal Service Benefit Unit (MSBU).” Both of those are a charge on the properties inside a drawn boundary, and the deck sets no boundary and no rate.

Where the stops would be

Slide 18 gives six northbound stops and two southbound ones. The southbound two are the Gas Station Parking Lot and North Beach Park. The turnarounds at each end are the GTM south beach parking lot, which the deck marks ADA, and the Vilano Beach Town Center.

The six northbound stops appear as street numbers on the map and nowhere else in the deck: 2599/2601, 2641/2643, 2757/2759, 2829/2831, 2899/2901 and 2935/2937. Slide 14 gives the street, South Ponte Vedra Boulevard, and says the pick-ups would be on the east side of it going north and at the existing crosswalks coming back. The slide carries a footnote reading that all stops are subject to change.

A further four northbound stops sit on slide 23 as potential additional locations, at existing pedestrian beach access points, with a possible later run into downtown St. Augustine.

The county’s own written answers are on the last two slides. Restrooms are not currently planned at the new access points. Bicycle racks are in the design. It is not typical, the county writes, for it to place a fence along its boardwalks. And the six proposed stops are not currently planned to include ADA beach access ramps, which the county attributes to space constraints, noting that the two turnarounds have ramps already.

The clock

The deck gives no date for any of this and says the timing will be driven by funding, design, permitting, regulatory review and turtle nesting season. Then it gives the one deadline that matters: to maximize the beach restoration cost share, a trolley “would need to be implemented before initial renourishment beginning, which is estimated Summer 2029.”

What the slides do not carry anywhere across twenty-nine of them is the cost of the trolley itself, which is the thing the county would be buying with the saving. No capital cost, no annual operating cost, no number of vehicles and no fare.

What is on the page and what is not

The county’s release in September said the Oct. 7 presentation would be recorded and that a transcript of the question and answer sessions would be made available online for people who could not attend, at sjcfl.us/CoastalProjects. The Tattler carried that promise to readers on Sept. 23.

A recording is there, linked from the new Coastal Trolley Project page as a YouTube video. The slides are there. The transcript is not. Neither page carries a written summary of what was asked.

The two FAQ slides are close, and they are not the same thing. They are the county’s own list of questions with the county’s own answers, printed in a deck that went out before the meeting started. Slide 3 tells the room to hold its questions until the end, for breakout tables where county staff would answer them, which is where a transcript would have come from.

Comments go to Coastal Management at 904-209-0260 or coastalprojects@sjcfl.us. The county’s release says it may schedule further meetings, and no second date is posted.