Floodplain Management Committee Minutes 06/03/2013 R Floodplain Management Planning Committee
Chairman-Jerry Kurtz Vice Chair- Craig Pajer
Kenneth Bills Phillip Brougham Joseph Gagnier Mike Sheffield
Dan Summers Clarence Tears Duke Vasey
Christa Carrera (Naples) Bob Mahar(Marco I.) Raquel Pines (Everglades City)
Meeting Minutes for 6-3-13 Regular Meeting
Start: 9:01 a.m. End: 10:24 a.m. Location: 2800 N Horseshoe Dr, Room 609-610
Meeting Attendance:Jerry Kurtz,Rick Zyvoloski (for Dan Summers), Kenneth Bills, Phil
Brougham,Joseph Gagnier,Duke Vasey,Clarence Tears, Mike Sheffield, Craig Pajer,Christa Carrera
and Robert Wiley
Note: Clarence Tears informed staff that he was also representing Everglades City at their request.
Absent: Bob Mahar.
There were nine (9) additional staff members in attendance and two (2) members of the public.
The meeting was called to order by Chairman,Jerry Kurtz at 9:01am.
OLD BUSINESS:
1. Approval of minutes for the 3-4-13 Regular Meeting-Jerry Kurtz asked if there were any needed
changes to the minutes. Nobody had any comments or changes. Joe Gagnier motioned for
approval of the minutes,it was seconded and it passed unanimously.
2. Introduction of newly appointed Committee member,Lisa Koehler(Jerry Kurtz) -Robert Wiley
explained on her behalf that she had a prior commitment and wasn't able to attend and that she
had been appointed so recently that it wouldn't be fair to count her as absent for this meeting.
Phil asked for the consideration to add an additional item to Old Business for an update from Nick
Casalanguida on priorities,projects and resources and that it is added as Item 4. Item 4 was
added without opposition.
4. Update on priorities,projects and resources (Nick Casalanguida) -Nick updated the committee
on where they are with the White Paper. The question is who should pay for the rating being
lowered. He asked Robert when he expected to have the White Paper completed. Robert said
very possibly in July because the ordinance has to be done by then. Nick told the committee for
the floodplain update there's money in the budget. Nick asked Robert to draft an RFP for the
committee's review for resources to be on board Oct/Nov. That would get us started to meet the
2014 deadline. We'll need to budget 2 more job bankers for the extra workload. The budget
doesn't cover what will come out of the White Paper. It will lead to Board discussion and he
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thinks it should become policy. The question will come up as to whether or not it should be a
general fund burden or some sort of assessment for dropping our rating down.
3. Status of FDPO (LOMC&PMR)Amendment(Robert Wiley) - Robert gave a status update:
The Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance(FDPO) document amendment that was brought to you
was approved by the Board of County Commissioners (BCC). We sent it to the Secretary of State,
it's been recorded. Now we're working with the County Attorney's Office (CAO)to put together a
compilation document to send this ordinance and the compilation document to the State
Floodplain Management office for approval and then up to FEMA for their approval. Separately
from this we're working on the new"model" ordinance but the recently adopted FDPO
amendment is just keeping us current with automatic adoptions at this point.
Jerry recapped for clarification. He asked Robert if the ordinance was amended to allow for
automatic updates.
Robert said that it was for automatic updates through the Letter of Map Revisions based on Fill
(LOMR-F), Letter of Map Revisions (LOMR) and also Physical Map Revisions(PMR),but it was
not updated to automatically adopt a totally new map should FEMA issue one. The BCC did not
want the automatic adoption of an entirely new map,for fear it would impact our potential to
appeal. Although the adoption and appeal process are two separate things we pulled out auto
adopt. The current FDPO was approved on Consent Agenda.
Jerry asked if it had been Board approved but still had to go to the State. Robert said that's correct,
it had. Jerry asked if anyone had questions. No one had questions or comments.
Jerry proceeded to New Business Item 1
NEW BUSINESS:
1. Review 2010 FBC Compliant"Model" FDPO document comments (Robert Wiley) -Robert
showed a listing of 4 options for discussion today:
Option 1-adopt the State's 2012 model FDPO with the appropriate county information inserted,
which is the document given to everyone on the Committee about three to four months ago. It's
the blank document that everyone provided comments on with the County's information filled
in.
Phil Brougham asked Robert to define county information. Robert said looking at the model
ordinance itself it would be jurisdiction name,etc.
Option 2 - Robert says its Option 1 plus adding in the current local criteria from the existing
FDPO that would put us whole of where we are today.
Phil,looking for confirmation,said those additional local criteria would not conflict or cause
agitation at the State level.That's been one of the issues.
Robert stated this is the direction staff has been pursuing for Option 2. We then go to the State
and work out the language with them. Some of the local criteria that we have would not go in
our ordinance but it would be an amendment to the Florida Building Code,and there's
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procedure for doing that. You can make local amendments by following the procedures and
just publish them with the building code officials. Others could be because they are CRS
related,and we could actually have them within our ordinance. That's their proper place. But
working with the state,they would give us that dividing line on it.
Phil,making sure he understands what Robert has said,asked if you have the model ordinance
and you have some additional local criteria that you wish to be in effect,there's an avenue to
take to file an amendment with Florida Building Codes and not necessarily add those into the
model ordinance and start to muddy up the model ordinance?
Robert said that if its building code related you do use the avenue for amending the Florida
Building Code,your local amendment.
Phil commented that there may be some that you'd want to work the language to go into the
model ordinance with their blessing.
Robert stated that Phil was correct. The State wants communities to determine what they want
their ordinance to contain,what they want the local building code to contain and submit the
drafts to them. The State will begin working with the County to develop the language and get
it inserted in the correct format for the ordinance as well as help prepare the building code
amendment. This would be done before the BCC reviews and adopts it so as to eliminate the
back and forth.
Option 3 - Robert explained that Option 3 is to take what we described in Option 2,the model
ordinance plus local criteria and then go beyond by adding additional criteria by either in the
building code amendment or in our ordinance if we want to begin to pick up other issues and
there were several of those included in the comments we received that's why this is up here
because we need to know how you want to address information from the comments.
Option 4- Robert said that it's adopting the states model ordinance and then whatever else you
want to put in it whether it's in our current ordinance or not.
Robert asked for the Committee to start off with a motion for the option the committee wants to
go with,Options 1, 2, 3 or 4 so the rest of the meeting can be used to discuss ways to address
the motion we're asking for.
Phil motioned to direct staff to pursue Option 2,and the motion was seconded.
Phil commented to make sure that anything the committee views as critical to the County be
added either through an amendment to the building code or an amendment to their model
ordinance. These critical items can be handled once we are solid on the FDPO.
Jerry asked if anyone had comments.
Craig Pajer questioned that by Option 2 does that mean Option 1 plus the added local criteria
from our current FDPO? Phil answered Craig's question with a yes.
Jerry opened up Public Comment for the item under consideration and asked Mike Ramsey to
come up to the podium and let his comments be known.
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Mike Ramsey-GGE Area Civic Assoc. -He likes Option 2 but he's attended some of the DSAC
meetings and just wanted to remind the committee that there are some issues DSAC has been
talking about that probably need to be brought up here,specifically in the estates like the
coordination of impervious surfaces. In the estates there are limitations when there is
impervious area that exceeds more than 51,000 sq ft on a single-family lot. They make you
build a single family water detention system and some are opting to go the cheaper route and
build 1 ft wide, 2 ft tall berm around the property with the discharge going into the front
swale. This is going to result in all these little isolated single family water detention systems.
This isn't being brought up in any part of this discussion and causes a whole different issue of
flood prevention and damage. You may want to consider coordination with these other
issues.
Robert said this is local criteria that are not in our flood ordinance. It's in another ordinance
document. This is an interesting point Mike brings up about how we address things and
what's in the building codes and what isn't. There are other local criteria that we have out
there in other programs,and they can remain in other programs. That's perfectly fine. FEMA
has no problem with that.
Robert told the committee that Bill Lorenz had stepped out of the meeting to get Jack McKenna
and that he feels this concept of impervious area should be discussed with Jack. Robert said
these issues can be used in the CRS documents,but they're separate from the flood ordinance,
referring to the points being brought up by Mike Ramsey.
Ken Bills questioned the permitting requirements for impervious surface on a lot. Robert said
they would go through the permitting process. Robert and Ken went back and forth
discussing this. Robert said that jack would go over this when he came into the meeting.
Duke had an observation-we need to keep in mind that the main thing we're talking about is
watershed and its sustainability. We should be looking at environmental impairments. We
really never get to that and whoever is doing this at the County needs to bring it to this
Committee.
Robert told Duke this isn't really part of what we are trying to do here with this Committee. The
State's new"model" ordinance is set up to address those issues that are development issues
not covered by the Florida Building Code.
Nick agreed with Duke-at some point the committee will want/need to hear about it but not at
this time. It effects the floodplain but not as part of the FDPO.
Phil with a follow up-stated that he supported Duke's comment and the he felt it was essential
to understand how they work together.
Jerry introduced Jack McKenna,the County's Engineer to the committee.
Jack began by telling the committee that we,the County,are modifying lot coverage to be more
equitable to larger lots like the estates,looking at requirements for detention areas over the
impervious area. Set coverage for the estates regardless of lot size. Commissioner Nance was
in favor of a concept of eliminating small acre lots and combining them with the bigger lots
and felt the code,as it exists,is not favorable to allow this to happen.
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Clarence asked Jack how do you address the cumulative impact of all these 3%? Jack said He
does not. Can we reverse engineer this? If we were to do that,the conveyance system is
where we're throttled. Clarence replied,the 3 %impacts need to be addressed along with the
cost benefits,opportunity of some sort of taxing could push that forward but left unaddressed
they will continue to impact the estates. Nick agreed but not sure what he can say to that.
Jack -mostly inaudible-made a comment about compensation for excavating in flood zones
and seasonal high water.
Nick said the floodplain storage is what you're referring to. We're working on a program to
come up with some equitable way to compensate for the floodplain storage relative to FEMA
and what is happening to the floodplain. This pervious/impervious area is really the source
of the additional runoff Jack was speaking about. The percentages are still very low but it's
not delaying the flow.
Clarence-due to people being allowed to fill their lots it's impacting the canals and there's
nothing addressing this. With more rain the systems can't handle this. SFWMD thru Big
Cypress Basin isn't able to improve the system.
Jack said that basically the idea is limiting the cubic yards per acre to be placed,or provide
compensation,and that is digging a hole. On a wet lot that's not really much compensation.
Clarence-an equalizing system built using berms could help the situation,and he explained this.
Nick said he's not an advocate of berms.
Jack had to leave the meeting due to a pressing issue that had come up.
Nick went on talking about the lot coverage ordinance and not to mix it with this FDPO. Berms
aren't as good of compensation as are depressions for keeping the flow going.
Mike Ramsey commented that because of the size of the estates the initial intent was to prevent
water coming off impervious areas onto the neighbors lots. Where that's a big issue is in
smaller subdivision lots,but the one and one-quarter acre lots in the estates aren't an issue
because we have ground absorption. The single family retention systems prevent the natural
land form function. It causes water to flow faster. He agrees that Option 2 is the best but
there are other things going on in the estates that need to be brought in to this meeting to
have function and coordination.
Jerry asked if there were any more questions or comments....There were none. He called for a
vote and asked if all were in favor of the motion and second to elect to go with Option 2 as
shown in Robert's presentation?The motion was approved unanimously.
2. Develop Schedule of Public Information Meetings for FMP (Robert Wiley) -Robert informed the
committee that these meetings are held to get the public's input on flooding they've observed.
Meetings are typically held during the summer,mostly July. The schools are good meeting
places. They can accommodate the large numbers of attendees,however;these meetings usually
have had low attendance in the past. He asked the Committee if they want to participate in these
meetings, noting that the meetings held in the estates typically have a higher attendance rate.
The information the public gives as to where they find flooding in their neighborhoods is then
given to the Road Maintenance Department so they can go out and try to alleviate some of the
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flooding where possible. Robert requested the Committee members let him know if and when
they would be available. At these meetings we tell the public what we're doing and take
questions from them and use their input. We also work with the City of Naples and City of Marco
to coordinate these meetings.
Phil suggested that we look at past attendance at these meetings and see if there are other ways
we can communicate to the public. A suggestion was made to consider making a video for
broadcasting on the government channel and posting on the County's web site.
Phil said that perhaps the County's communications specialists could advise on how best to
communicate. More people will watch TV or use the internet than will attend a meeting.
Phil asked,so what you're looking for is our availability? Robert agreed and requested
Committee members send him an e-mail in the next couple of weeks. That would give time to
plan to have the meetings in the latter half of July.
Phil asks about the Presidents Council meetings and wasn't sure how often they meet. Nick
stated they meet one time per year. Robert said that they've already met this year.
Mike Sheffield asked Robert if he will generate the public notices. Robert replied to Mike's
question,yes,that he will work through Mike's office and try to get with Troy about doing a
video. We've let it slide over the past couple of years. Mike Sheffield said that if we did a
video we could put it on YouTube and place a link on the home page about the meetings in
July and be descriptive.
Ken was curious if there is a feedback process from the CCSO,police, EMS or employees working
in the field? Robert stated that they don't feed it to his office. They feed it into the Road
Maintenance Dept. We set up a central point of contact for our flooding issues through our
Road Maintenance Dept.and it appears to be working well.
Robert moved on to the flow chart on the screen to show the committee where we're going with
the FDPO. He called it a rough illustration of some procedures that we can expect as we go
forward based on the directions we got from our previous item. As we work on preparing the
draft Nick will determine if we submit for the State review before the Collier County Planning
Commission (CCPC) or vise a versa.We're going to be getting comments from DSAC pulling
together the ordinance document and any accompanying building code amendments. That's
when we decide when we go to our planning commission. Following the CCPC review the
ordinance will be presented to the BCC. We need to get State review of the ordinance
document,but do we want to go through two State reviews before we go to the Board.
Hopefully in three months at our next meeting we'll have a lot of progress to report. Once the
BCC approves it we go back to the State for their approval,and they forward it to FEMA for
approval.
Phil suggested that we not fall into the previous traps where we go back and forth between the
DSAC comments and this Committee's comments. Robert told the Committee that we're going
to take everybody's comments and let Nick decide where we go from that point.
Phil recommended that once we have everybody's comments staff makes a decision as to what to
present to the State. Staff would then present a State-reviewed ordinance document to the
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CCPC.The CCPC will have a clean evaluation to forward with amendments and changes to the
BCC.
Nick told the committee that they have made it easy,based on Option 2. It's going to be
concurrent in a sense. We'll make the CCPC last,but based on the fact that all we're doing is
what is required by the State and FEMA plus what we already had in there then he can go to
DSAC and say nothing's changed. So right now,currently his direction would be to go to State,
DSAC and Floodplain Committee at the same time,just noting any comments procedurally
how we do things getting all those comments back then go the CCPC.
3. Discussion on 2013 CRS Coordinator's Manual and development of a CRS participation level
white paper(Robert Wiley)-Robert told the Committee that he's still working on some of the
number scoring for the White Paper. This would show the Committee what it would take to stay
where we are (class 6),advance into another class (class 5) or retreat into a lower class (class 7).
He showed the committee a document on the screen that explained this under the new CRS
Manual in regards to scoring. Some of the areas where we currently are scoring points have
been reduced. He said that at the annual Floodplain Association Conference in St. Petersburg, FL
he met with our ISO Representative, Lori Lehr. She took a look at the scoring system and in her
opinion/estimation,with the activities we are currently doing; we may score enough points to
stay where we are as a class 6 community. Our 5-year cycle visit will be in November. That's
when we show her our plan and everything we're doing and she does the scoring. Robert also
told the committee that the Open Space Preservation CRS activity is an area where Lori Lehr
thought we could pick up enough points to maintain our class 6 rating. He hasn't gone through it
enough to see how we're going to pick up enough points but he will be doing that while
completing the white paper.
Phil asked Open Space Preservation was new criteria. Robert briefly explained the concept is the
same,but the scoring is different. Duke Vasey made a brief comment regarding some of the
areas where we do not score points.
Nick discussed developing a cost/benefit analysis of advancing to a Class 5 with a possible
percentage reduction of the price of flood insurance policies which could result in millions of
dollars in FEMA/NFIP fee reductions. It's going to come down to a debate of who pays. He
told the committee he thought that going to the BCC with the cost to benefit analysis that the
committee has vetted and understood would help out a lot.There's merit to get down to a
Class 5,but the question is still who pays for it. He thinks that with education the people
would support it. Robert talked about the quickest way to advance to a Class 5 rating. He told
the Committee that we're just above the 2,000 point total right now and that we could
possibly pick up another 500 points with the Flood Data Management. He explained what
that was and how we could do it.
Phil asked Robert what the timeframe was for this. Robert responded that Nick wants him to
have the White Paper done in July so it would be available for the committee to go forward in
September. He went on to tell the committee that the Program for Public Information (PPI)
was a new concept for the community to put together a program for outreach. I has the
potential to provide additional credit points. We may be able to use the Committee as the
basis for the PPI. The basic concept that CRS is trying to go to is getting a definite,well
organized outreach program to make sure that people effectively know what are their flood
risks,that they know what are the requirements and advantages and disadvantages of a flood
insurance program,having a staff that's able to relay this to them and putting a lot of effort
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out with notices,mailings,public distributions of government alerts etc. He stated that these
are big factors that we aren't doing right now.
Phil asked Robert about putting together a sub-committee of this committee for this. He doesn't
want to see a staff member be further burdened with this. A sub-committee may be good way
to handle the extra workload this would create.
Christa Carrera informed the Committee that the City of Naples has been looking at it and where
they are currently with their points. She touched on some of the public relations they had
discussed and wants to do for setting up the PPI. Phil re-iterated that he didn't want to
burden County staff with this. Christa stated there are people for this.
Nick had to leave the meeting.
Robert said that he would be working on getting the White Paper finished and in enough time for
the Committee to review it. He reminded the Committee of the Sunshine Laws,and to be
careful not to"reply to all"when responding to him with their comments/suggestions on the
White Paper reviews.
Jerry announced that there was one public speaker on this item-CRS utilization of BCB Real
Time Flood Monitoring and Modeling,Ananta Nath with The Big Cypress Basin.
Ananta introduced himself to the Committee. Ananta works for the Big Cypress Basin and he
told the Committee that he's been working for nearly 3 plus years developing the Real Time
Flood Monitoring and Modeling System. It's now active on the web and that would be a good
tool for obtaining more points. Robert agreed,and said it's called an early warning system.
We could have a link on our site to their real time monitoring. We would be able to pick up
additional points under Flood Warning and Response because of what the Big Cypress Basin
has available.
4. Public Comments
Duke Vasey stated for the record that he's speaking on behalf of the Collier Soil and Water
Conservation District. The Board of Supervisors has concerns over the DFIRM and base flood
elevation specifically with regard to watershed. They wanted to know where and when the
compensatory storage would be discussed for areas not located in the X or X500 flood zones.
The second part was they were concerned about critical facilities where buildings are planned
by emergency service for emergency use.
Robert responded to the compensatory storage issue saying it was already discussed a bit earlier
in today's meeting. That was one of the issues that the County Engineer,Jack McKenna,
started to address and Nick said,even going back to the consideration of having people,
particularly in the estates—occurring most of the time there—have them scrape down the
back of the lot to get the fill material to use to build the fill pad in the front of the lot,the old
technique that sort of went away several years ago. That works in a lot of location but it's not
applicable for every lot. Robert told Duke that he was unable to answer that question but it is
an issue that's on the table being worked out. As for critical facilities,that's an issue we need
to address in our CRS.What do we do with our critical facilities? He explains that the concept
within the FDPO suddenly seemed to change because that term is not addressed in it.The
building code does,it's called essential facilities. Those are somewhat parallel with our
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critical facilities but not exactly the same and that's where Rick Zyvoloski identifies them in
our Local Mitigation Strategy. Then we identify the programs that insure their viability. With
regards to the new construction,it's already addressed in the building codes. It's just a matter
of identifying what we have,what of those are critical facilities and maintaining them to be
compliant with the codes. The building codes force us to address it better than it has in the
past.
Rick Zyvoloski told the Committee that his staff has had a hard time grasping the definitions of
what critical facilities are and that the Committee has better definitions of such facilities.The
State has a list of what they call Collier County's critical facilities so he has listed some of the
more obvious ones,public utilities is just one example. Rick said he felt that the storm surge
was the most difficult to define what is the category 3 elevation due to the new SLOSH
modeling and everything else. He had planned to get with Robert and see how these are being
handled,the category 3 thing. He recommended doing away with any hurricane categorizing
due to the difficulty of definition.
Robert expressed that it would be to the County's advantage if we came up with what we
consider to be our critical facilities,examples are the facilities that are critical for the function
of health,safety and welfare of all public,private and government entities communications.
Make a list of these for protection and new developments. He said it wasn't so much of an
issue for this Committee but a side issue that could be a trigger to get a review started.
Rick said he would prefer the listing of critical facilities it be kept simple,but it could also be
expanded to include many types of facilities.
Robert said that he sees the critical facilities as essential government entities, emergency service
and communication systems. It's the hardening up of the facilities so you can get to them
during and after a hurricane. You build the new facilities above the 500 year storm level.
That's what CRS is all about.
Jerry told the Committee that there was one more speaker, Mike Ramsey.
Mike Ramsey came up to the microphone and stated that he was representing the Golden Gate
Estates Area Civic Association. He said that he thought this Committee was one of the most
important committees in a long time and the it would be beneficial to bring in watershed
management,stormwater,roads&bridges and DSAC and have them report to this Committee.
He further stated that he felt that the jelling of all these groups would produce a better
product.He suggested they all focus on the objective of protection and prevention from
reoccurring flood damage. It would make this a lot easier.
Phil said that he thought the Committee had taken a step in that last year and that the Committee
now has oversight or is responsible for review of the watershed management and floodplain
management planning. Robert confirmed that what Phil stated was correct. Phil said it's his
opinion that the Committee has to get more into the nuts and bolts of how they compliment
and integrate. He made a comment about getting DSAC in on this and that it could be a
difficult task.
Jerry asked if anyone else had comments,and there were none.
Phil motioned to adjourn the meeting,and the motion was seconded and passed unanimously.
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The meeting was adjourned at 10:24 a.m.
Next Regular Meeting: Monday, September 9, 2013 starting at 9:00 a.m. in Room 610 of the GMD-
P&R building located at 2800 North Horseshoe Drive, Naples, FL 34104.
r f 1
Jerry Kurtz, Chairman
Robert Wiley,St W Coordinator
NOTE: A recording of the meeting is available for anyone desiring to hear it. Please contact Mr. Evy
Ybaceta at the Growth Management Division—Planning and Regulation building(239-252-2400)
for access to the recording.
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