The damage estimate they use will be hypothetical total replacement cost, including multiple employees time, truck use, permits etc. its very trivial for any sort of repair to have a nominal cost in the thousands.
IANAL, but for example the article says they're charging him with real (not attempted) criminal mischief over $1,000. Looking it up [0] that reads as requiring a threshold of actual damage in dollars.
It's as if someone was charged with real (not attempted) first-degree murder despite the "murdered" person walking around totally unharmed. That'd be nonsense, right? We'd at least be asking what kind of brain-damage caused the prosecutor to do that instead of lowering it to "attempted murder".
There's different section [1] about attempts in a very general sense, but even then it's not clear how the math works when it was a setup and real assets were never in danger.
[0] https://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Disp...
[1] https://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Disp...