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BCC Minutes 03/07/2001 W (Tourist Development Tax) March 7, 2001 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS WORKSHOP ON THE TOURIST DEVELOPMENT TAX MARCH 7, 2001 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Board of County Commissioners in and for the County of Collier, and also acting as the Board of Zoning Appeals and as the governing board(s) of such special districts as have been created according to law and having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9:10a.m. in a WORKSHOP SESSION in Building F of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRPERSON: James Carter, PhD. Pamela S. Mac'Kie Tom Henning Jim Coletta Donna Fiala ALSO PRESENT: Tom Olliff, County Administrator Greg Mihalic, Administrator John Dunnuck, III, Community Development Administrator Leo Ochs, Jr. Public Services Administrator James V. Mudd, Public Utilities Administrator Page 1 Agenda 1. Florida State Statutes 125.0104 2. Tourist Development Tax Ordinance (this is the Plan) 3. Tourist Development Council Ordinance (#92-18 & 2000-44) 4. Statistical TDC Information 5. Proforma 6. Break down on each category 1. Category "A" Beach & Park & "D" Fishing Piers ~ Public Utilities - Jim Mudd, Administrator ~ Tom Wides, Public Utilities Operations Director 2. Category "B" Advertising & Special Events/Disaster Fund ~ Advertisinglpromotion - Marketing Plan ~ Special Events ~ Advertising Disaster Fund ~ Future Funding Needs ~ Special Events Application - Staff Presentation 3. Category "C"-Museums ~ Public Services - Leo Ochs, Administrator ~ Ron Jamro - Museum Director ~ Current Projects ~ Future Funding Needs 7. Break down of other County's Tourist Tax. 8. Staff Recommendation ~ Comments/ Questions from Commissioners March 7, 2001 CHAIRMAN CARTER: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the TDC workshop. That's Tourist Development Council for our watching viewers out there this morning. Would you please join me and stand for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag? (Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.) CHAIRMAN CARTER: You will note, per Tom's directions, we are in a more informal mode, and I have to kind of laugh, that means the guys took their jackets off. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You guys are just too slouchy. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, it's because .- I know Commissioner Henning and I, coming up this morning, he says, it's dress down, and I said, I understand, but I have several meetings after this where dress down will not be appropriate, so not having two or three wardrobes available to me and a changing area at the commission, I said I've got to dress for the day. So, thank you, Tom. You've got us down on the floor, and if we do this when we don't have such crowded agendas on the other side, you will see us in jeans and in casuals, because there's nothing more that this group would like to do is work on that basis. But this morning, with the workshop, Mr. Dunnuck, I will turn it over to you and let you take us forward. MR. DUNNUCK: Thank you, Commissioner. Good morning. We're here today to talk about the tourism -- the tourism tax and all the benefits that have been provided to the community and where we need to go, where we are and a little bit of the history. You know, beaches, parks, tourism advertising, we cover it all in this section, and I think this is a very good benefit to the community to have such a fund revenue source, and we're here today to talk a little bit about how we go about allocating that and what's best for the future of Collier County. With that .- I don't want to spend a lot of time, but I'll turn it over to Greg Mihalic, our housing and urban improvement director, to go into the presentation. MR. MIHALIC: Good morning, commissioners. We really appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning to talk to you about the tourist tax program and the direction you'd like to go in. I'd really like to encourage questions or Page 2 March 7, 2001 comments at any time and let us respond to that. This is really a continuation of the report that we presented to you in 1998, and there's a couple of commissioners on the agenda from 1998. I think Commissioner Carter had just come on at that time, and Commissioner Mac'Kie was on the board at that time, but we recommended several changes to restructure the program at that time. We went to a once a year funding cycle so that when you approved TDC projects, they were incorporated into the yearly budget so you, as commissioners, would know what was in your budget for the next fiscal year when you were approving these projects during the budget cycle. We also recommended the continuation of the third penny, and that has happened, so that's a very positive thing. We also recommended the consolidation of what, at that time, were the Categories B-1 and B-2, which were special events and advertising and promotion into one overall Category B. We also recommended the formation of an overall tourism alliance, tourism umbrella organization that would have all the chambers of commerce, all the organizations that represented tourism organizations in the county sitting at that table, and that's been done. So, I would say 90 percent of the recommendations that we made in 1998 have been accomplished, and today, we're looking to move ahead and continue to refine the process that we have to manage and distribute our tourist tax funds, and really, tourist taxes are a great source of funding in the State of Florida. We have about nine million dollars in revenue every year, and this is paid for by the tourists that come and stay in short-term lodging in the county. About 47 of the 67 counties in the state do levy tourist taxes, so it's a popular, stable and continuing source of revenue that we expect to increase year by year, and the State of Florida saw the same thing, and that's really why they implemented the tourist tax, Florida Statute 125.0104, and really, we have sort of a funneling effect. We can use the money for anything authorized under the state statutes that's not been further restricted by our local ordinance, and our ordinance is the plan. So -- I know that you've talked before. You've seen the words the plan. Our ordinance is the plan, and that's what we will continue Page 3 March 7, 2001 to talk about. What I'd like to talk about, what we can do with the revenue. We can use this revenue to acquire, construct, extend, enlarge, remodel, repair, improve, maintain, operate or promote one or more publicly owned and operated convention centers, ports, stadiums, sports arenas, coliseums, auditoriums or museums that are publicly owned and operated and owned and operated by not-for-profit organizations and opened to the public. We can also promote and advertise tourism in the State of Florida nationally and internationally. We can also fund convention bureaus, tourist bureaus, visitor information centers, news bureaus as county agencies or contract with chambers of commerce or other business organizations to do that. We can finance beach park facilities or beach improvement, maintenance, renourishment, restoration, erosion control, including shoreline protection, enhancement or the restoration of inland lakes and rivers to which there's public access. It is possible for us to levy additional pennies. I know you've asked, are we at our maximum, and yes, we are at our maximum for general uses right now. However, there are ways to levy an additional two cents. We can levy an additional penny for convention centers, in the support of convention centers, and there's a second additional penny which we are eligible for for professional sports facilities. This typically has been baseball facilities around the state, although it also can be auto racing facilities. The Homestead Raceway in Dade County used 60 million dollars of tourist tax revenue to fund the Homestead auto racing facility. Yes, ma'am. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Fundamentally, though, assuming we don't -- setting aside for a moment the question of a convention center or a sports stadium, we are max'd out on the amount under the current statute that we can assess? MR. MIHALIC: Under the general uses, yes, ma'am. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So, again, just something for the board's consideration is whether we want to put that on our legislative agenda to ask for a change in that, because, obviously, we are under-taxing, it seems to me, tourism in this community. MR. MIHALIC: Well, the legislature does make changes Page 4 March 7, 2001 every session to this statute, or normally every session, and some commissioners have mentioned that they would like to try to fund tourism impacted roads or green space that would be available for tourism, and, again, that would require a change to the state statute. So, certainly, you want to talk to your legislatures and see what other counties in the Florida association of counties are looking at that and see if there's enough support to make changes to the statutes to allow either an additional increase for general uses or to add to the special uses that are available that can be broadened, and, again, they have been broadened over the years. So, the statute has broadened as to what we can use the money for. We basically have made changes to the ordinance over the years, and we've layered on and added on our ordinance. We really need to get back and streamline it. We've been asked by the clerk of court to change some of the uses, bring them in line with the state statute, make it so it's easier for them to understand what the money is going for and how it is supposed to be used, and we'll be looking at that in the near future. The ordinance was created because we were really looking for additional funds to fund our beach facilities, our advertising and promotion and our museums and the other uses back in the early '90s, and Collier County struggled for a few years in levying a 2 percent tax, and, you know, that went to court because some people didn't like the way it was levied, and that was settled, and so -- but in 1996, we added the third penny on, which was allowed just by super majority vote of the board, and I should mention that our ordinance allows us to make that change anytime. It is not necessary to go to referendum on any of this. All you need is a four vote on the board, a super majority vote to make any changes you wish. I should mention that there is a wide diversity of how the money is used throughout the state. Some places fund only convention centers. Some places fund only sports facilities. Some communities use all their money for cultural special events. You, the board, have the flexibility to do that with the guidance of the TDC. The state statutes require that all these requests go to the TDC for their recommendation, then to come to you for final approval, and it is necessary to maintain that requirement in the state statutes. Page 5 March 7, 2001 As I mentioned, we have made changes over the years to the ordinance, but in your packet is a codified version of the ordinance, and we think that for easier explanation, the ordinance itself should be codified. And the purpose of the tax is really to help fund these allowable activities and have it paid for by short-term visitors to the county, and as I mentioned, this is about a nine million dollar a year fund right now. It is going up. We project about a 5 percent increase per year. It's generally beating that. I've mentioned before, we are the number one tourist destination in the State of Florida by the way these things are measured, and there's normally used two criteria. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Wait, wait, wait. We are the what? MR. MIHALIC: Number one overall tourist destination when you use two measures, the average cost of our rooms and the occupancy rate we have throughout the year. Our average occupancy rates are second only to the Orlando area, and our average cost per room is only second to the Key West area. So, by those two measures, we are the overall number one destination area in the State of Florida. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I assume we have the second highest cost. MR. MIHALIC: We have the second highest costs, the second highest room rates, average room rates in the State of Florida, behind Key West, and the second highest overall occupancy rates behind Orlando. We are very strong. We are much stronger than, for instance, Lee County. Lee County collects only a slight amount more than we do and they're twice as big. Our occupancy rates and our room rates are substantially higher than Lee County. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And that, it seems to me, is our ticket to get the legislature to change our ability to assess general purpose additional taxes. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, what is -- what is the tax rate in Key West, and what is the tax rate in Orlando compared to ours? MR. MIHALIC: It isn't in your packet, but we have a list of the tax rate in every county, but I'm only supposing, because I Page 6 March 7, 2001 didn't look, that they levy the maximum of 3 percent, too, but I -- we can certainly get you that list. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But they're a high tourism county. They can do more than 3 percent. Orlando is what; 9, 11, 12, something higher? MR. MIHALIC: As a high tourism -- as a high tourism county, they are allowed to levy additional taxes on top of that. We don't qualify for that designation. Primarily, the large cities and the large areas do. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Are you -- is that part of your presentation somewhere to tell the board what the distinction is? MR. MIHALIC: No. I'll do that right now. It's nowhere else in the presentation. If more than 20 percent, I believe it's 20 percent of your overall sales taxes come from these tourism related uses, you can apply for additional funding as a high tax area, a special tourism area. Secondly, if you have over 600 million dollars in funding from tourism revenue overall, I believe, you also can qualify. We only have about two hundred million dollars in revenue, so we are not nearly at that threshold point. So, your very large areas, Dade County, Orlando area would qualify under that high tax designation, high tourism area, impact area I believe it's called. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And they can assess a lot higher tourist tax than we can. I didn't know the one about the percentage of sales tax. MR. MIHALIC: Yes. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Where are we relative to -- are we getting close to that? MR. MIHALIC: We've looked at it, and we're a much more diversified sales tax area than that. I don't remember what the percentage was, but we weren't even close to meeting that threshold. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So, to get an additional penny or so for general uses, we're going to have to get a legislative change, because it's going to be a long time before we qualify for a high tourism county. MR. MIHALIC: Yes, it would. Page 7 March 7, 2001 CHAIRMAN CARTER: And that would be contrary to all your sentiment about growth issues in Collier County. So, it would be working on opposites, and the other thing, to remind everybody, Orlando is an inland -- Orange County is inland, so they don't have a whole beach area to be concerned, and Greg will get into that, how much money we put into beach renourishment and inlet protection, et cetera. MR. MIHALIC: Thank you. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So, let me just be sure I understand, Commissioner, that, to me, it seems like taxing higher .- maybe we're coming at this from a different perspective, but it seems like a higher tax on tourism does not encourage more growth. It makes it more expensive to come here and -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, I'm not sure .- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- I think the -. CHAIRMAN CARTER: .- I don't think whatever you put on a hotel room, whether it was six or seven or eight or nine or ten cents would ever stop anybody from coming to Collier County and do any of that, because other places that I visit have substantially more tax on a room per night anywhere that I've ever been, literally and -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But I'll tell you -. CHAIRMAN CARTER: .- it never stopped me from going. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- when we first adopted this -- I'm sorry. I'm sorry. When we first adopted this tourist tax, the hotels fought it tooth and nail because they didn't want to have that additional burden on their market. Now, it turned out not to be an additional burden on their market. I just think it doesn't necessarily draw more people here to increase the tourist tax. CHAIRMAN CARTER: You may be right, I don't know, but it still seems to me working on an economy here, but I don't want to interrupt -. MR. MIHALIC: The purpose of the first tax is to even out our collections. We still are a very cyclical market, but since we've implemented the tourist tax, our off.season market has increased more than our in-season market. So, I think that's a suggestion that we are narrowing the cycle that exists out there through advertising, promotion and Page 8 March 7, 2001 being an attractive area, the tourists will come year-round and not just during season. That is really one of the functions of the tourist tax. MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, I'm going to ask, just in order to keep this meeting moving a little bit -. we do have another meeting in this room at one o'clock, so we don't have the luxury of being able to run over a lot. So, if we could, if you could just write down your questions as Greg goes along and let him go through his presentation, and then maybe when each section of this gets concluded, if you have questions of that presenter, we can go ahead and cover those then, and it might help this meeting move along a little quicker. MR. MIHALIC: We've gone over the authorized uses, what we can use the money for. We are a little bit more restrictive within our ordinances, as I mentioned. We limit our uses to beach and beach related projects, Category A, and 80.11 percent of all the money goes into that category. We then have advertising, marketing and special events, Category B. Eight point six two percent of our total revenues go into that category. The third category we fund is our museums. Nine point nine five percent of our total revenue go into museums, and we mentioned earlier about our Tourist Development Council, that is a required -. a requirement of receiving and collecting TDC funds is having a Tourist Development Council. The function of the council is to advise the Board of County Commissioners as to how to expend those funds. It's an advisory council only. They bring you ideas. They look at the revenues and expenditures that are coming in. They look at the projects that are being proposed, and they make a recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners for your final decision. The council is made up really of three different classes of members. We have three elected officials, the chairman of the Board of County Commissioners or other designee from the board. Two of the additional members will be elected municipal officials, at least one of whom will be from the most populous municipality, the City of Naples. The second municipal official under our Ordinance 99.66 will essentially interchange, swap between Everglades City and Marco Island on an every other term basis, but there is then a second elected official from Page 9 March 7, 2001 another municipality within Collier County, and, again, under our Ordinance 99.66, we swap those between Marco Island and Everglades City. We also have, by state statute, three members of the TDC who must be owner, slash, operators of motels, hotels, recreational vehicle parks or other tourist accommodations within Collier County. We also have three additional people who are going to be involved in the tourism industry and have demonstrated an interest in tourism development but who are not allowed to be owner/operators, and, again, the function of the TDC is to make recommendations to the Board of County Commissioners. We've also added an ad hoc member, Mr. Budd Stanner, who basically advises us on a non.voting basis on -- he's a gentleman who's involved in the entertainment industry and the sports promotion industry, and he advises us on his recommendations on -. especially special events. The -. in your book you'll see several statistics. We have our collections, and you see the collections have gone up every year from 1996. We are anticipating nine million dollars of collections this year. We anticipate that will continue to climb as we add more hotel rooms and as we remain a quality, popular destination. If you look at your monthly revenues, and I mentioned the cycleness of those collections. This graph really shows the up and down nature of the revenues and how we collect most of our money between January and April. This is a breakdown of where the revenues come from in Collier County, and I think you know that when we start -- when we took over this and started producing statistical data, the popular perception on both Marco Island and the City of Naples is that they provided the majority of the revenue for the TDC funds. As you can see, that's not true; unincorporated Collier County does and probably will continue to provide a bigger and bigger share as more hotels room are built in the unincorporated area, rather than in the City of Naples and Marco Island into the future. This is where your TDC revenues are collected from, what type of accommodations, and you'll see the large majority of it is from hotels and motels. A smaller part from condominiums. The green line is from real estate agents, and you'll see that you have Page 10 March 7, 2001 a diminishing share of monies that are collected, so we have a large majority of our collections from hotel and motel rooms. In your packet, you'll see the pro forma that we developed. When we implemented the new program in 1998, we went from collecting the funds one quarter and then looking at distributing it the next quarter to an accrual method of accounting so we could integrate it into your budget, and in there -- in the pro forma you see the projects that are outstanding, the projects that haven't been done and the reserves that are in there, and you'll notice that really the most reserves exist in Category A, beach funding. There's over 40 projects that are encumbered but unfinished, in some type of construction or not even started at all, so almost all the reserves that exist exist in your Category A collections, the beach area, not in the museum -- not in the museum area, which is Category C, or Category B, which is advertising, promotions and special events. They utilize their money throughout the year completely. We're looking, and we'd like you to consider, percentage changes, how to take it -. how to look at this projection and what you want to do with the money and who's going to need money in the future, more money in the future, how to divvy up the pie that you have now. As I mentioned, over 80 percent of the money now goes into Category A, and there are substantial reserves and unexpended funds in that category. You may want to look at a change in the collection of the first two pennies, which is presently 70 percent beach, 30 percent other uses, to a different percentage, and we would need to amend the ordinance to do that. Jim. MR. MUDD: Yeah, that's a picture of me when I was a young kid; no, only kidding. That's kids on the beach. Next slide, please. What's going to happen is, I'm going to tag team a little bit with Tom Wides, who is my new finance and ops. manager. I'd like him to get a little time with you so you get to know him. He took Ed Finn's position when Ed left. We got a quality replacement. I've been impressed with Tom since he's been here. He's added a lot of his professional background from his previous job with the steel industry up north to help us out a little bit, but what you have on this slide .- Page 11 March 7, 2001 COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Can I ask a question? MR. MUDD: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: When would it be appropriate to ask questions about Greg's presentation? MR. MUDD: Right now. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay, I'm sorry; just before he leaves. MR. MIHALIC: No, I'm not leaving, Commissioner. I'll be here to the end. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I just need to be sure that I understand the 80 percent, basically eight and a half and 10 percent split, is that prescribed by the ordinance right now? I thought it just said two .. the 70/30 split on the 2 percent was the only prescribed ordinance. MR. MIHALIC: No, the ordinance prescribes that the 70 percent, 30 percent split would be for the first two cents, and that all of the third penny would go to, it says beach renourishment activities. We need to do some language reclassification there per the finance department, but that's what it says in the ordinance for the third penny collections. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So, that's how that .- how the 80 percent comes to be for beaches is because 70 percent of two cents and all of the third cent to go .- MR. MIHALIC: Yes, ma'am, and that's 80.11 percent. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And the only way then that funds are available for increasing museum projects, for example, under the current ordinance is as the revenue stream goes up based on tourism increasing. MR. MIHALIC: That's correct, or, obviously, changing the ordinance to change those percentages for future collections. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So currently .- oh, yeah, and we can't change it as -- MR. MIHALIC: We can't take Category A money and shift it into Category C. It has to be prospective collections. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And is there going to be a place in this presentation where we learn what we've been asking for a long time, and that is, what are the .- what's the long term-fix cost for beach maintenance and renourishment? That ought to be budgetable. I mean, we ought to be able to do real protections on what -- because as far as I'm concerned, that Page 12 March 7, 2001 money is sacrosanct, you know. The beach money can't-- shouldn't be touched from my point of view, and the projection of what we're going to need for 20 years ought to be able to be measured, because we know what maintenance is going to be. We can reasonably project what we're going to need to do for additional projects. I'd like to know that number and then I can talk about shifting around the percentages, but without that long-term number, there's not going to be any way. So, if that's a part of today's presentation, that would be great. If it's not, I think it's something we're really going to need to know, because my first priority is protect the beaches with this money, and then, frankly, my second priority is the museum and similar projects and -- MR. OLLIFF: I think a lot of your decision is going to boil down to how this board, from a policy standpoint, wants to look at reserves and how it would handle a catastrophic event, and I think, you know, there has been a fundamental shift in terms of how that was originally done and how it's currently being planned for in the future, which is why you see, I think, the major reserve amount growing each year, and then that's the issue, I think, for this board to decide. I mean, we have been moving along on a track where we're trying to develop a substantial reserve, a cash reserve for that, and that's -- that's really the only question for you, because I think the amount of money set aside and planned and known for annual beach renourishment is a fixed amount, and we agree with you. That's what the voters put in place in the first place. That's the sacrosanct portion of this whole program. Beyond that then are where your decisions will come. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I guess what I would ask on the reserve for disaster, what do we need and if you could factor that on the basis, if we had a disaster, how much could you raise on bonding or whatever to .- or some debt financing to restore it, because you would have a revenue stream to service that debt. However, recognizing if we had a disaster on the beaches, how many people want to come here, so it's probably .- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But, Commissioner, you know, at the same time .- I'm trying to be really attendant to this issue of just how many reserves, layers of reserves are we going to have. You know, we've got general reserves. We've got special Page 13 March 7, 2001 reserves. We've got tourist tax reserves. You know, I want to be conservative, and I appreciate that that's the advice we get from staff, but at some point.- you know, we are so protected with reserves. You know, we've got 14 layers, and maybe we don't need 14. Maybe 12 would -. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think the question is, what's balanced? What is balanced here, and how much do you need, and what are your other debt mechanisms that you could use if you had to, and then would you have the revenue to service those? That seems to be what goes through my mind. I need to know what my options are. MR. OLLIFF: And unless there's some other questions, I think that's a pretty good segue into Mr. Mudd's beach portion of the presentation. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I have two things I'd like to -. one is a question, one is a recognition. Do we have a mechanism to make sure we're collecting revenue from such places as the guest houses and the bed-and-breakfasts? Is there really a mechanism in place or is this something that we have no way of being able to check on? MR. MIHALIC: Well, the tax collector's office is here, and I'd like Mr. Haynes to respond to that with the mechanisms that are in place. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Because I'm seeing almost a zero line on that. MR. HAYNES: First of all -. THE COURT REPORTER: You need to come to the microphone or it's not on the record, please. MR. HAYNES: First of all, I'd like to .. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Please wait, Claude, if you would, until you get there. MR. OLLIFF: I have to get you on the record before you say anything. MR. HAYNES: First of all, I'd like to point out to you the statistical.. THE COURT REPORTER: Wait, sorry, your name first. MR. HAYNES: Claude Haynes, deputy tax collector. The statistics you saw on the screen up there a few minutes ago concerning where the funds come from, the various sources was a report that we developed in.house. It is not one that's Page 14 March 7, 2001 inaccurate by any means. The reason being, because the funds you saw that come from realtors, we don't know whether it comes from a guest house or whether it comes from a condominium or a single family dwelling, whether it's in the city or within the county, because the realtors have rental units that they handle all over the county and in the city and outside of the city. I -- the guest house thing that you just pointed out, we put that in there at the very beginning, but very few people who rent guest houses label them guest houses, and there's a fundamental reason for that which I think was pointed out sometime, because of one of the ordinances in the county, however, they do rent them. The .- also, when we sign people up and assign tax numbers to collect the tax from the individual, very few of those are labeled as guest house. They call them apartments or house or residence. The -- how .- whether we collect all the data; certainly the individuals who rent out there, there are a lot of individuals who do not register with us. We.- mechanisms we use, we work through the condominium association, through the property managers' groups and through the various property management companies. We use advertising, because, for instance, in the Naples paper in front of the seasonal rental, we place an ad running November through April, which is very expensive, but it does create a lot of accounts for us, because people who are going to place an ad are going to look at their ad they place in there, or people who want to rent, that's the first thing they read when they go to seasonal rental in the local newspaper. We also do check other newspapers. At one time, we put in a computer program. We designed it ourselves and put it in for the ads, rental ads in the paper, and we found ourselves spending hours and hours and hours and hours following up on all these ads that were in the paper. A lot of those not only had accounts with us -. so we had to check that first, and we did it by telephone numbers, that was the key to the whole program, and then a lot of people ran ads themselves, plus had their listing with their realtor, and if they had a listing with a realtor, that's the key where the tax was collected and sent in, because by law, that's who is supposed to do that if they've got Page 15 March 7, 2001 an agent, and that agent handles it. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Just a thought, Mr. Haynes -. over here, Pam. Claude, it's me. MR. HAYNES: I'm sorry. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's okay. Just a thought, would a possibility of something helpful be if the County had an ordinance change or somehow required listing of your tourist tax number, your account number in an ad, for example, or in some way so that .- I mean, do you have some suggestions on how -. is there some piece of this puzzle we should play? MR. HAYNES: That would certainly help. That is one way it could be done -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Just a thought. MR. HAYNES: -. that before an individual could rent a property, they must register with the tax collector who collects the tax and must advertise their account number. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: You understand where we're going. MR. HAYNES: I understand where you're going, certainly. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: We want to make sure that we do the responsible thing and collect every revenue stream that's out there and also give a level playing field. Why should these people be able to compete with the hotels and motels if they're playing it on a square basis when they're not paying the tax. It's just a real concern. I think you're approaching it right. I think Pam's idea is very good. MR. HAYNES: I agree with you. Believe me, Commissioner Coletta, I agree with you a hundred percent, and I hear that, and I've heard that ever since we've had the tax and we've implemented it and put it in. However, the ordinance or state law, at this time, does not have the teeth in it to do that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That was my next question. What's the penalty for failure to comply with this? MR. HAYNES: Beg your pardon? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What's the penalty for failure to comply? MR. HAYNES: If we can prove, solid proof in court that someone has rented and not collected the tax, we can file a lien against the property for what we estimate the tax would be, and Page 16 March 7, 2001 that's done by the warrant procedure, but you've got to prove it first. Getting the proof is something else. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And there's no penalty then. You just basically get .- you have to go to court, and you get the money you were entitled to? MR. HAYNES: No, we can file -. but that warrant, which becomes a lien on the property, but includes a penalty and interest, and penalty is 10 percent per month for the first five months, and interest is based on the prime rate. It used to be 1 percent a month, and the state has changed that, but you've got to have the proof first before you ever go to the court proceeding. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And who's the enforcer? Is that a county attorney's job or is that the tax collector's job? MR. HAYNES: Tax collector's job. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And do you guys have in-house or independent counsel who does that for you? MR. HAYNES: We have one officer in-house, and then we also use outside auditors, CPA firms for audits. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Have we ever taken anybody to court? MR. HAYNES: No, we have not. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: There's a red flag right there. MR. HAYNES: Well, you've got to get your proof. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Why, I think Pam has one excellent idea with having that tax number in the paper. The Daily News will love it, because every extra line in there is extra income for them. MR. HAYNES: That increases the ad cost just a little bit for them, they'd love it, yes. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Sorry, but .- MR. HAYNES: I think it would be great, if it be an enforcement -- if it's in the ordinance that we could actually use and enforce. MR. OLLIFF: As a result of these workshops, I've been keeping a little action list of things that I think are follow.up for the staff, and in this particular case, I'll just make a note that we'll work with the tax collector, see what, if anything, we can do by either way of ordinance amendments or something else that might improve our collections ability and bring a report back Page 17 March 7, 2001 to you. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And to give just credit to our tax collector, we're giving them a 2 percent administration fee, but I want to remind this gathering that he has always turned money back in to us every year way in access to that, and it goes back into the general fund. You're doing an excellent job, and we appreciate all his efforts. Guy Carlton is a tremendous .- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: He's our hero. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: .- administrator for the tax collecting office. ME. HAYNES: May I take just one other minute of your time? We do have other enforcement measures that we use. We have a series of correspondence that we send out. We do also have people out there that's telling us constantly so-and-so is renting, which we contact either by mail or by phone and follow up on. I will tell you that the majority of the complaints that we get are from people in condominiums or residential, whatever else, that so.and.so is renting and not collecting tax. When we follow it up and run it through our system, they are collecting. We either have an account with them or they're using a realtor and the next door neighbor doesn't know it. The -- so, we do have a very complex series of procedures we do go through. Also, the ordinance says the tax collector can have 3 percent. We collect two. We made .- when they put the additional 1 percent beach in, we said we'll lower ours to two because it can become pretty level, so -. and which is sufficient. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Which is good and generous and the right thing to do, as Guy always does. MR. OLLIFF: And just to point out, so the board understands exactly what he's saying, that statutorily, the tax collector could collect up to 3 percent of the collection in terms of an administrative fee, and, frankly, you have no control over that at all. He can keep that and do whatever he wants to do in terms of his operational budget, but not only did he decide to keep that at 2 percent, but he generally returns some of that money at the end of the year in addition to that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: He's our hero. MR. OLLIFF: Thank you, Claude. Mr. Mudd. Page 18 March 7, 2001 MR. MUDD: I'm Jim Mudd, public utilities administrator for Collier County. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We saw your baby. MR. MUDD: My baby picture was up there, okay. The -- I was .- when we started to lay this slide out, I was going to put it down as a food trough, and I was going to put all kinds of animals feeding off of that trough. This is -- this is a -. the present process for tourist development tax dollars, and to get projects and other things fixed in this county is an expenditure based system. We're just lucky that the revenues matched what our appetite is presently, and I'm not too sure we haven't started to exceed our revenues. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm hungrier. MR. MUDD: Yeah, you're hungrier, I can see. Commissioner Mac'Kie said she was hungrier earlier on, but -. so, here's all the different people that interact in order to get to the TDC, to get to the Board of County Commissioners, and I've gone to Tourist Development Council meetings, and I've gone to beach renourishment council meetings at city hall in the City of Naples, and I've listened, and I've watched people, and I've said, well .- and there's folks that say, well, no matter what we recommend, the BCC will turn it down. Well, if we do this and the TDC is saying, well, what do the people want, and we'll get it approved and get it recommended, and I've watched that whole process go on, and everybody's well-intentioned, but we have an ordinance that's out there that doesn't really put any discipline into this system to say here's where your good ideas are supposed to go to before .. you list those priorities and they go to the TDC to run the budget before it goes to the Board of County Commissioners, and you have a very organized process, and everybody knows where they have to go and what their job is in that process. You get .- beach renourishment folks will talk about how they want to do the money and how that process goes, and then you get the parks and recs. advisory commission that says, well, they might want to do that, but they haven't.. I haven't seen them as an active member, and, Leo, you can help me on that process, and we'd like them, in the future, to be a more active process. So, with that kind of cloud, I'd like to bring Tom up to that podium that Greg is standing at and to talk to you a little bit Page 19 March 7, 2001 about how the present state is and how it lays out and then give you a recommendation of what might be a better way to do business. Now, we have started to align the staff into that better way of doing business. We've talked to the tax collector. The poor tax collector doesn't know how to cut the money out. He gets a project. As he scratches his head, he says, how does this work in the percentages. I look at the ordinance and it doesn't tell me, and so there's a lot of subjective judgment on their part as they do the process, and they would like to make -- to have their job a little bit easier, to make sure that they stay within the laws and statutes of this county. Tom. MR. WIDES: Jim, thank you. Good morning, commissioners. For the record, Tom Wides from public utilities. First off, thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk to you a few minutes this morning about this, and as you look at this chart, as Jim's somewhat related, the idea here is you should just roll your eyes and go, this is confusing, okay, and that's where we really want to start. Today -- and just to take a few moments for this chart, looking at it, just to orient you, if you start at the bottom, you see the coastal advisory committee, you see the parks and rec. advisory committee in particular, and you see those arrows, they're going after the categories we talked about earlier, the Category A projects and also the restricted use, the one cent that we talked about, the additional one cent. In fact, they're competing for the same dollars. The projects are competing for the same dollar and the same fund, and that, in and of itself, creates an administrative issue, okay, and I'll talk about that a little bit further. In general though, as you .- as I believe you're aware, as of February 14th, the beach renourishment administrative responsibilities move to the public utilities division. We've-- we've reallocated the staffing for that, and at the same time, we've been looking hard at this ordinance trying to find out how do we best administer it from a funding and a revenue point of view. There's one -- in my mind, one remaining barrier. It is a rather large one, but we can definitely overcome it. We would Page 20 March 7, 2001 like to take these four categories that you see, the A, B, C and D categories and look at that one cent and talk about and discuss and decide how to re-administer this ordinance, which means to, in fact, simplify the ordinance. As it stands right now, in my discussions with the finance organization, the administrative and control issues related to the revenues are difficult, at best, okay. The finance group is very interested in simplifying this ordinance so that we can administer those funds properly, as Jim talked about. We have other organizations, public services and public utilities that are very interested in doing this also. So without belaboring that, there's one more point I'd like to make that I think you folks are probably much more aware of than I am, but I believe there's an issue over a period of time for the Vanderbilt Beach parking facility, and I believe that example is basically that we wanted to build this parking garage, there was an issue as to where did it get funded and who was the organization -. which was the advisory committee that it should go in front of. As I understand it, we spent a lot of time in front of the beach advisory committee at that point in time who are much more interested in beach monies and those funds -- or that organization or that funding should have probably and should have rightfully gone to the parks and rec. advisory committee. My only point here is another point of confusion as to where we should be going for funding. We want to try to alleviate those issues. If I can take you to the next chart, what we're proposing -. and hopefully you'll enjoy those colors. They are probably the worst set of colors I could find this morning to match up to, but the idea, the idea here is to align them vertically so you can see where the flow would come from. What we would expect to do is simplify this ordinance to the point that the administration of the revenues would be within the administration of either public services or public utilities, and, frankly, here, I'm focused on the two left.hand pieces here, the parks and rec. and the coastal advisory pieces, but what we would be doing is breaking up the funds, the funding for these revenues appropriately so they can administer these requests that are either coming through the parks and rec. advisory committee or the beach renourishment committee, vertically working into separate funds, okay. So, going up the yellow line there, you'd basically be seeing Page 21 March 7, 2001 public services working with a parks and rec. fund, Category A as we determined it today. Parks and recreation advisory committee would be working out of that fund. In the middle, the fund administered by public utilities would basically be beach renourishment, which would be defined today as the A and D categories; A being beach renourishment, D being related to the pier restoration activities and, it being, again, watched over or funded by the coastal advisory committee reporting up to the TDC, and, of course, finally, not to minimize it by any means, the funds administered by public services for the museum and advertising, which, today, would be the Band C categories. The idea that you're seeing in here is you're seeing the disappearance of the additional one cent. It tends to be .. it tends to be worked in with the remaining two cents. That is our intent, which would require simplification and a change in the ordinance to do this, but, again, it should simplify the administration of those funds. Finally, I think this would accommodate the needs of the finance committee -- excuse me, the finance organization to, in fact, fund these accounts directly, and bottom line, hopefully .- and we would expect to do away with some of the -. and much of the feeding at one trough as Jim might have described it. Bottom line, you know what your funds are and your various committees, and that's basically -. that's basically the key. Commissioner Mac'Kie, you had asked about funding, longer term. I don't have readily available longer term information at this point in time. We'll take that as something we need to work on. However, as you look at the 2000, year 2000, I think you saw some information on the prior sheets that basically showed that we were in the seven million dollar range for expenditures, and also, as you look at 2001, we're about seven million, and as you look into 2002, you'll see about four and a half million there, but that excludes two major items which would be -. one of them would be the Lake Trafford restoration activities, which is two million dollars, and the other one would be the catastrophic topic. So, what do we do with the beach if we, in fact, need more monies or we have an issue? So, that could be anywhere from a million dollars or more, but those are topics .- those are things Page 22 March 7, 2001 we know right now, but we know there's more work to be done there. Questions? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I.. I guess a question and a comment. I -. this theory certainly looks really good, but until I know those numbers and know for sure that the beach money is protected forever, then, you know, I don't want to talk about anything until we know that beach money is protected, and real numbers with real long-term projections just like we budget everything else, it seems like we ought to be able to do for this just like we do roads. The other piece that I question or just I'm a little concerned about, maybe it's a legal question, I don't know, but as you said, we've been challenged .- I just saw the City of Naples has asked for an attorney general's opinion and asked everybody and their sister what they think about funding the Vanderbilt parking garage out of this money. Are we so comfortable in our position that we're sort of creating a parks and rec. revenue stream here? I mean, what -. on the left.hand side there, funds administered by .- I understand on the right.hand side we're talking about museums. I don't really understand why they would be administering the advertising money, but I don't particularly care about that, but on the left.hand side, what projects are in that little yellow stream there? MR. WIDES: There -. there are, I believe, a series of approved parks and rec. projects, but I'll ask Leo to maybe comment on those a little more specifically. MR. OCHS: Sure. For the record, Leo Ochs, public services administrator. That category, Commissioner, funds capital improvements to your beach park facilities. The Clam Pass boardwalk renovation, for example, is a recent example. Obviously, the Vanderbilt Beach parking structure, series of dune cross.overs, for example, that would need replacement, parking lots that would need repair or replacement. In addition to that, there's also funds used for beach maintenance operations. We have some beach raking equipment and a small staff that is funded from this Category A TDC fund. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It just seems to me that most of Page 23 March 7, 2001 that, I mean, except for maybe parking lots, is a coastal beach renourishment issue. I mean, how do you separate .- how do you separate beach maintenance from the center category there? It seems that's what the coastal advisory committee ought to be telling me, how we're doing on the dune stuff, I mean, it seems to me that would fit in the center category. Tell me I'm wrong and .. you know I want to learn, so -. but why not? MR. OLLIFF: Most of the things that you will see on that left-hand column are generally public access, public beach park issues as opposed to engineering construction projects, and that's where we're trying to draw the line. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. MR. OLLIFF: We have four major beach parks, and in almost every instance, what you see is maintenance of your county beach parks, which has nothing to do with an actual beach renourishment project, or you'll see public dune cross.overs to protect the dunes that already exist, but primarily to get the public from the parking lots and from the concrete to the beach without trampling down your dunes, and so if you just make that mental distinction for yourself that it's primarily a parks and recreation beach park issue and it all falls under that statutory heading of beach park facilities, that's where we're drawing the line. MR.OCHS: It doesn't have anything to do with erosion control or additional sand on the beach or addition T -groins, those kinds of things are all the purview of the coastal advisory committee. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And what about things like past maintenance and that _. MR. OCHS: Coastal advisory committee. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: All right. I get it now. MR. OLLIFF: And one of the things that you're seeing here, one of the primary things that you're seeing is more internal and housekeeping as opposed to really statutory or ordinance changes, because what we're looking at is trying to have separate funds that are administered by separate divisions within your organizations that are then .. it's that responsibility, accountability chain that we've being trying to create consistently, and in this case, we were trying to make sure that we -. for finance's sake, that we're creating separate funds. Page 24 March 7, 2001 Well, right now, you have some single funds where everybody is dipping into a single fund, and for Jim's sake, and even for our sake to try and manage and keep up with that and keep it straight is nearly impossible, and so this is more, almost an internal housekeeping recommendation than it is anything else. CHAIRMAN CARTER: You streamline it. You control it. You can audit it. You know where you are. MR. WIDES: Other questions? MR. MUDD: In the last piece -. not as a question, but the arrow down at the bottom between public services division and public utility, and the reason that's there, and Greg brought this up in earlier discussion as the staff got together, you know, there has to be some mechanism so if the Board of County Commissioners or whatever saw that reserves needed to be .. if somebody became out of balance in their reserves -. because the reserves will get broken out by those vertical control structures. If there's some switching of reserves that needs to transpire because there is a critical project that needs to be done, that gives you the latitude to do it in that ordinance so that thing can move, and that's why that's there, so it doesn't take away from your latitude to move monies if you have to. MR. OCHS: The example may be, if I might, the recent discussion the board had regarding the outparcel at Barefoot Beach, there was an inquiry about whether TDC funds could be a potential revenue source for that acquisition. If, in fact, it was legal to do that and the board decided at some point they wanted to do that, that might be a situation where Jim and I would need to got together and do a budget amendment if reserves in the parks and rec. fund weren't sufficient and he had sufficient reserves to make that transfer. So, that continues to give the board that kind of discretion. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And would it work on the third column too, for example, if there's a museum project that the county commission wants to prioritize higher than a parking lot restoration? MR. OLLIFF: No, that would require an ordinance amendment. MR. OCHS: And that .- that gets back to this reallocation, potentially, of dollars. Page 25 March 7, 2001 MR. OLLIFF: Because you're going to have certain dedicated funds that -. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No, no, my question is, as you are proposing that we realign these funds and we change the ordinance, I assume there's going to be a proposal for that because it looks like it, that I think it's important that the board not give up the flexibility to choose a museum project over a parking lot, and so I'm asking if in your ordinance changes that you're proposing, will we continue to have that flexibility? MR. OLLIFF: No. MR. WIDES: Commissioner, at this point we actually hadn't ._ at this point, we hadn't considered that. I think the other thing we need to do is look back to the statute to make sure that we don't cross over on the statute on the -. because we're trying to stay within beach renourishment to this point, and we just have to ensure that we can make that move to other funds when you move out of beach renourishment into the other category. So, that is something we can .- I think that's something we can look at. CHAIRMAN CARTER: However, Commissioner Mac'Kie's point is well taken though, but it does discipline the board to look at the priorities within each category and make a decision, does this come before this, and you can reshuffle that deck, but you can't reshuffle between the decks, because in your ordinance restrictions, it says, and for planning purposes, you really need to know where you're going and how much funding you're going to have there. So, I think it does give us a great opportunity to set our priorities better per area and the opportunity to change when necessary. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You're right, and maybe what I need to be thinking about is -- I want us to be able to grow our museum system. I mean, it's just fabulous, the way it is, but I think we've been treating them like a stepchild, giving them just tourist development money as opposed to parks and libraries and other similar projects .. why a library gets property tax and a museum doesn't, I don't understand. So, maybe the opportunity to grow our museum system is going to be via property taxes instead of via tourist taxes, but I'm looking for a way to be more supportive of that system, and I like Page 26 March 7, 2001 using tourist tax. I like not to be handcuffed to a -. limited on the amount of tourist tax money we can choose to spend on museums, because there's a lot of good ideas coming up. MR. MIHALIC: Commissioner, your present ordinance does not allow you to take Category A money and spend it for Category C. However, the state statutes really don't address that, so you could, theoretically, have the same kind of arrow mechanism you have between the left column and the middle column, between the middle column and the right column, but you would have to have that type of language in the ordinance amendment to allow those shifts. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And you probably wouldn't be surprised to know that I had looked at the statute before we got here and knew that. MR. MIHALIC: I wouldn't be surprised at all. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Because that's a, I think -. I understand the discipline issue, but I also want to be able to be flexible when great museum projects come up. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, he has answered your question. If we can do it legally, then that gives you the flexibility. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I just like to have the option, and I don't see it on that chart, so the point .- CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think Greg gave you the option. MR. MUDD: And to address it, commissioner, I would say in the current system that you have -- you made the comment earlier that we should have a long-range plan, okay. Well, you can't have a long.range plan if everybody's feeding from the same trough and everybody's trying to work that process. So, you have to put some discipline in the issue. The next thing I would say to you is, even in today's system that we have, we don't address the savings and slippage issue. I don't want everybody's eyes to glaze over, okay. In project manage.ease, if you .-if your estimate for a project is a certain amount of money and the contractor comes in lower than your estimate, then you have a savings, okay. If a project happens that you can't get the permit through ..you know, Marla used to have a lot more hair. It used to be a lot longer before she started yanking it out with permits, but when you go out for permits and if you can't get them and you had a project that was laid on, you have a slippage, okay, and that money slips to someplace else. Page 27 March 7, 2001 Well, do you want that .- do you want to encumber, obligate those dollars to the next year and never use them or is there a project this year; museum or another beach project or whatever that needs to take its place because you have a permit ready, and you're ready to go, and yes, it was an out year project and you moved it forward, you've got to have that kind of flexibility and you've got to kind of lay that system in in order to get that long-range plan that you want. I think the system .- this will give you that opportunity. MR. WIDES: Thank you. MR. MIHALIC: Commissioners, before we move on, I'd like to just move back for a moment to this disaster fund issue as far as the beaches. We really don't have it as part of our presentation today, but we have done that analysis, what if we had a catastrophic hit on the beaches? Typically, FEMA will pick up, in past practices, 75 percent of that cost. The State of Florida will pick up twelve and a half percent of that cost. We would have to fund the difference of twelve and a half percent, plus carry it until we got reimbursement from FEMA and the State, and we figure that with a twenty million dollar catastrophe, beach catastrophe, if we had a four million dollar reserve fund, we then could bond that twenty million dollars for two and a half years until we received the money back from those agencies to replenish that, as well as to pay our own twelve and a half percent off. So, if we kept a four million dollar reserve fund, we would then be able to deal with that catastrophe, and that twenty million is higher than any number I've ever seen, plus you really know that if you had that kind of catastrophe, there will be other issues that you'd be dealing with first. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And the total .- the total amount of money we've spent so far on beach projects is what, ballpark? MR. MIHALIC: I can't give you that total number. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's ten, twelve .. I mean, it's not twenty million dollars, is it? MR. MIHALIC: I know that right now you have about twenty million in the queue somewhere or another between projects that are either ongoing or unstarted or in permitting somewhere, so you're looking at about twenty million dollars in total there, but that's just the present. This goes back, obviously, to 1992, and I Page 28 March 7, 2001 don't have the number cumulatively of what you've spent. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So.. but the .- okay, because the question -. I'm just trying to get some idea of where the twenty million dollars, how valid that is as a number. MR. MIHALIC: Oh, we just picked that number. We know that you had a fifty million dollar beach renourishment project, plus a five million dollar Marco project, that's twenty million right there, but to be honest, the number, it wasn't scientifically arrived at. It was just pulling a number out. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But that .- that's some basis, fifteen million plus the five million. MR. MIHALIC: Yes. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I think we need to keep in mind, we have this thing called the pier sticking out there, too. MR. MIHALIC: Yes, and that is another eligible expense from that same category. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What have we -- does anybody know yet, the .- well, never mind. It's not important. MR. MIHALIC: If you'd like to move on, commissioners, I'd like to introduce the Tourism Alliance, George percel, the chairman of the Tourism Alliance, Kathy Prutos, who's the president, and Eric Reiter, who's the account executive from their advertising agency, Kelley Swofford Roy. MR. PERCEL: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is George percel, and I'm the chairman this year of the Tourism Alliance of Collier County, and it's really a pleasure to have this opportunity to talk with you. In my recollection, since the Tourism Alliance and definitely in the time that we've been involved in promoting tourism in Collier County, this is the first opportunity that we've had to speak to you directly and to seek your input and advice. The purpose of the Tourism Alliance that Greg briefly mentioned was to really bring expertise from a very broad group to the promotion and marketing of the destination, and that is what we have done, and that is what we are formed to do. We are all volunteers who happily serve in this because we understand the benefit that tourism brings to the general economy of Collier County, and with that, I would like to introduce to you Kathy Prutos, who was recently hired January the 1 st to become our second president, and Kathy and Eric will Page 29 March 7, 2001 guide you through our presentation, and then we will be available to answer any questions after that. Thank you very much. MS. PRUTOS: Kathy Prutos, P.R.U- T .O.S. Good morning, commissioners. I certainly want to thank you, the TDC members and the county staff for giving the Tourism Alliance of Collier County this opportunity to talk to you about our favorite topic, tourism. Tourism, as you well know, is big business here in the State of Florida. In 1999, over 59 million visitors came to the State of Florida with 12.7 million Floridians making pleasure trips within our state. Taxable spending in the tourism and recreation category totaled more than 46 billion dollars. The sales tax as generated by tourism statewide amounted to more than 2.8 billion dollars. In addition to sales tax collections from tourism, 306 million dollars in local option tourist development taxes were also collected. In fact, tourism is not just big business, but it's the main industry here in Florida, but tourism also fuels the economy here in Collier County. Last year, we hosted approximately 1.4 million visitors here in Collier County and collected more than 8.7 million dollars in bed tax with an estimate of more than 9 million dollars next year. This represents nearly 3 percent of the total tourist development taxes collected throughout the state; not bad considering our resident population is only 1.4 percent of the state's total population. A few more statistics to point out the vital role that tourism plays in our Collier economy. Our data is based upon the economic models developed by Dr. Walter Clajis (phonetic) of Research Data Services. Dr. Clajis is a Fulbright scholar and economist who not only does these estimates for Collier County, but he also provides these services for many other tourism based counties throughout Florida. Last year, direct expenditures from tourism in Collier County were 578.4 million dollars. These expenditures, in turn, have a multiplier effect on other non.related tourism related businesses throughout the county. That adds another 240 million dollars in direct and indirect benefit to our economy. So, we're looking at tourism playing a role of more than 862 million dollars. Overall then, tourism is nearly a one billion dollar impact here in Collier Page 30 March 7, 2001 County, and you'd be hard.pressed to find any other industry that so affects our bottom line. Permit me to share some of the comments from our leading business people here in our community. One of the leading retailers in the county, Mark Gianquitti of the Coastland Center points out, the retail variety and the selection Collier residents enjoy from banking to dry cleaning to restaurants and shopping is primarily attributed to tourism. He goes on to say that tourism touches our neighbors, our friends and us directly and indirectly numerous times every day. As a matter of fact, if we explore the origins of why we are all here or why we take for granted certain products or services, we can trace it back to tourism. Mary Brown of Cuisine Management, owner of Terra, Bayside and Gordon's restaurants, employs over 200 residents in her establishments, and she remarks, tourism adds to the quality of life for our residents in Collier County. Tourism drives our economy. Joyce Ford, who is here today with us, is the marketing director for Prime Outlets, and she attributes much of the success of her shopping center to the tourism industry. Over 41 percent of the mall is directly related to the tourist, she notes, and her stores employ more than 250 of our residents. And finally, Joy Lelonek, who is also here with us today, executive director of the United Arts Council says, Naples is a cultural mecca due to the impact of tourism. Local residents benefit from the ambiance of the arts throughout the county. Much of the culture, including the art galleries and theater, is a direct result of tourism, and our residents benefit all year long. But if I'm preaching the virtues of tourism, I suspect I am preaching to the already converted, because it was in 1998 that the Collier County commission created the Tourism Alliance of Collier County to bring the promotion of tourism in Collier County under one organization with the goals and plans to market the entire county as a premier vacation destination, both domestically and internationally. Under the leadership of our first chairman, Joe Dinunzio, and our new chair, George Percel, the Tourism Alliance is fully committed to promoting the uniqueness, the diversity and the synergy that our geographically large county offers visitors from Florida, from other states and around the world. Page 31 March 7, 2001 The Tourism Alliance is made up of a 25 member volunteer board of directors that represent hotels, restaurants, shopping, attractions and many other businesses throughout Naples, Marco Island, Everglades City, Golden Gate and Immokalee. Your commission has charged this broad based board of citizens from across Collier County with promoting all the facets of Collier tourism to fellow Floridians, Americans, Canadians, Europeans, Central and South Americans. On January 1st of this year, I was recruited to replace the Alliance's first president, Tammy Matthews, who had the opportunity to join the international operators council of Choice Hotels International as their executive director. Fortunately, Tammy will continue to be involved in tourism here in Collier County as the executive director of the Naples area hotel/motel association. Following the Tourism Alliance organization in mid 2000, we distributed requests for proposals for marketing support in the areas of marketing strategy, advertising, public relations, vital research, web site support and fulfillment. We had an excellent response to our request with more than 20 firms sending in proposals, and it became quite clear that several of these firms offered this synergy of providing us with multiple marketing services under one roof. Following presentations and interviews with the leading firms on October 1 st last year, we finalized agreements with two firms, Kelley Swofford Roy for the marketing strategy, advertising, public relations and web site and phase five for fulfillment. As part of Kelley Swofford Roy's agreement, they have opened an office here in Collier County with a full.time staff to service our needs. Our Tourism Alliance board recognizes how important it is to have a broad base of community support in our activities. As a result, we have established a number of advisory committees to assist the board in carrying out our efforts. In addition to our executive committee, there are two marketing committees, one for Marco Island and the Everglades, and another for Naples, Golden Gate and Immokalee. Reporting to the marketing committees are two subcommittees, one on public relations, and the other focused on upgrading our Internet web site. The Board of County Commissioners has funded the Tourism Page 32 March 7, 2001 Alliance on a grant basis with monies from bed tax collections and the TDC reserves for Category B. In early 2000, the commissioners gave the Tourism Alliance a renewable grant enabling us to create a marketing program and engage marketing vendors for year to year continuity. This year, the Tourism Alliance's operating budget is $1,418,000. This is the lowest budget for any major tourism destination in the State of Florida. The budget covers Tourism Alliance advertising, public relations, web site development and maintenance, research and administration and a toll free visitor information service, as well as brochure fulfillment. Of this 1.4 million dollars, just over $750,000 comes out directly from the bed tax revenues, while an additional $670,000 comes from the TDC reserves for Category B. The $750,000 coming directly from the bed tax represents about 8.62 percent of the nearly 8.7 million dollars collected. Commissioners, I do need to point out that while the Tourism Alliance is most grateful for your ongoing financial support, our budget to promote Collier tourism is considerably less than that of our neighbor. Lee County has a tourism budget of 6.6 million dollars which represents 54 percent of the bed taxes collected in Lee County. Sarasota County, their tourism receives a budget of 1.6 million dollars representing 26.6 percent of the bed taxes collected, and over on Florida's East Coast, Palm Beach tourism receives a budget of 9.7 million dollars, which represents 53.6 percent of the bed taxes collected. However, given our current resources, we have gone through several prior organization exercises, and we're totally committed to spending our monies wisely and efficiently. This means focusing our media expenditures into activities that generate visitors in the off.peak season, or as we like to call it, our vacation season. Our goal is to level out Collier's visitor seasonality so that our hotels, our restaurants, our shopping areas and other businesses and their employees enjoy year.round activity and prosperity. At the same time, year.round marketing through our web site and year.round public relations efforts will continue to tell our story in those months when we don't have the resources for a paid media campaign. In my remaining time, I would like to share with you how the Tourism Alliance and its market support organizations are Page 33 March 7, 2001 gearing up to achieve these goals. In the fall of last year we began with two marketing workshops to update opinions on how Collier tourism should be marketed. The Tourism Alliance invited representatives from the hospitality and attractions industries and many other business groups and community leaders to participate. Based upon their comments, Kelley Swofford Roy produced a white paper, a copy of it here. This white paper is on Collier County tourism, image and positioning analysis and recommendations. This document, which was reviewed and approved by the Tourist Alliance board, contained 23 tourism and marketing recommendations, and I will quickly cover some of the most important ones that are already being implemented. First of all, most of all, move toward the adoption of a single tourism signature. Collier County is not a particularly graphic descriptor for tourism. Most people outside of Florida have no idea where it is. In fact, many Floridians really don't associate Naples, Marco Island, the Everglades, Golden Gate and Immokalee with Collier County. For tourism marketing purposes, Lee County renamed itself the Lee island coast. Miami.Dade markets itself as the Greater Miami and the beaches. As a result, our Tourism Alliance board has approved a newly designed logo to incorporate the best known elements of our Collier County; Naples, Marco Island, the Everglades, Golden Gate and Immokalee. Our new logo, Greater Naples, Marco Island and the Everglades. We have also adopted a new graphic descriptor for the area, Classic Florida. Our new tag line, Classic Florida embodies what visitors will find here from sunset on the Naples pier to dinner, dining and dancing on Fifth Avenue South to golf, airboat rides in the Everglades, relaxing on the beach or parasailing on Marco Island. Our area is, indeed, Classic Florida. Secondly, construct a leading edge Internet marketing power house for Collier tourism. There is little doubt that Internet marketing is no longer the wave of the future. It is here, and it is now, especially in the tourism business. To be adequately positioned for the future, our alliance has begun the development of a state of the art site that will take Collier County well into the future. Our newly designed web site, www.ClassicFlorida.com will also focus on the uniqueness, the diversity and this synergy that we offer visitors for this Page 34 March 7, 2001 geographically vast county. Number three, paid media will be used to generate vacation seasoned visitors. The majority of our paid advertising will be targeted to stimulate off.peak visitors. Starting in April, it will include a summer newspaper advertising campaign that targets the Florida in-state drive market, and a very important part of this campaign will be the hospitality industry support it receives for our newspaper co.op campaign. This strategy makes it affordable for smaller properties to participate. As the Tourism Alliance representatives have told this commission before, our goal is to stretch our county support funds through industry support, shrewd media buying and heavy participation in the state FLAUSA matching media programs that target our key visitor audiences. Number four, tell the Classic Florida story year-round through public relations. Public relations is one of the most efficient ways to stretch our promotional budget and build visibility at a modest cost. Now that we have combined our P.R. and our advertising efforts within one agency, we can get considerable synergy for the combined effort. While it's important to project the stretched value of an aggressive P.R. campaign, we feel we have great public relation hooks in our new name, in our Classic Florida signature and with our cohesive Tourism Alliance thrust. I would expect using the Public Relations Society of America guidelines for auditing press material, that we will add between a half a million and a million dollars in public relations values to our efforts this year. Beginning with an all new Tourism Alliance Classic Florida media press kit, we will relaunch press stories and features on the cultural and economic tourism and leisure activities, as well as shopping and the superlative dining opportunities throughout Florida. The Tourism Alliance will continue to sponsor press familiarization trips to build national and international visibility featuring specific themes like spas, ecotourism, our world class shopping and our arts. Number five, educate the community on the importance of tourism. A critical element in any successful marketing campaign is your grassroots support. This means educating all our constituents on the importance, as well as the benefits, of Page 35 March 7, 2001 tourism, such as beach renourishment, in addition, special events, which are now under the Tourism Alliance umbrella. We have established a criteria to assure accountability to the county ordinance and to the state statute, and we are currently awaiting guidelines from county staff to finalize that application. As I mentioned earlier, the tourism's goal is to build up the vacation season, especially in the softest periods when our seasonal residents have left and local businesses have a difficult time remaining profitable while serving our year-round resident base. The Tourism Alliance wants everyone living here in Collier County to feel good about tourism and what it means to sustaining our quality of life. And the last point I'd like to address is maintain an aggressive disaster recovery marketing program. This is a topic that none of us really want to think about, but the reality is, and it only makes good sense, we need to protect Collier's biggest business with an aggressive disaster recovery marketing capability that parallels the County's outstanding disaster recovery program. Disaster comes in many shapes. We all think immediately of a hurricane and a fire, but red tide, a serious storm, a drought or even a man-made disaster could really impact Collier's tourism. That's why the County has wisely reserved a disaster marketing fund, now in excess of one million dollars to reinforce or rebuild tourism in the face of a potential or actual disaster. Our planning not only covers to whom, how and what we tell potential tourists in the face of a Collier disaster, but it is also geared to offer Collier shelter options to other Florida areas facing serious threat. Everything is in place and ready to go at a moment's notice. Let's hope we never have to implement it. The Tourism Alliance has been both a good custodian and a wise and efficient investor of your marketing dollars that the commission has given us. The beneficiary is not just countywide tourism, but the entire economy and the quality of life for all of us who live and work here year-round, but there's a lot of work to be done. We have a big story to tell the world about Collier tourism, and unfortunately, we don't live in a vacuum. Tourism is big business, not just here in Collier and not just here in the State of Florida, but in California, Cancun, the Caribbean. In meetings just like this all over the world, our Page 36 March 7, 2001 competition is looking for strategies to increase their tourism market share, and marketing costs money. Since many of our competitors have discovered the successful budget stretching techniques that we are using, Collier tourism still ends up with less financial resources than our primary competitors. Therefore, in good conscience, the Tourism Alliance will be coming back to the TDC and to this commission asking you to reconsider and to substantially increase the percent share of financial support Collier tourism receives from the bed tax. We are in the process of preparing our grant application to cover these increased needs. Commissioners, the Tourism Alliance is committed to keeping Collier tourism ahead of the competition. All of us who are part of the Tourism Alliance of Collier County, as well as your constituents who benefit from the good things that tourism brings to our quality of life, thank you for your continued support. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I might make one comment, and you mentioned disasters, and you said if we had a drought, we have a drought, and Jim Mudd can probably tell you whether it's a twenty year, four year or a hundred year. What we need to do in all of this is to get everybody to conserve water. Now, I've been into areas that were tourism meccas when they were going through the same thing, and it never stopped people from coming, but they had aggressive campaigns for people to really be.- conserve water and be stingy of that water. So, I think we need to incorporate that into part of what we're doing, because I can't tell you when we're going to get out of this thing. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The City of Naples actually, at their workshop on the 5th, brought up something about asking .- or actually, I think what they were considering is an ordinance to require hotels to post those little notes about, you know, water is short and please, you know, don't leave your towels on the floor, and we'll reuse them and that kind of thing, and my thought, frankly, was that we just need to bring it to the attention of the industry that it would be really, really good if they would do that. I think they will if they just have the idea brought into their minds. CHAIRMAN CARTER: You're right, and restaurants don't have to automatically bring you water. If you ask for it, you'll Page 37 March 7, 2001 receive it. I mean, there's a lot of things you can do, and it shouldn't be a negative for us, but it should be a reality that we're dealing with. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I just have one other comment too that I shared with you privately already, was, as we met .. let me just say how glad I am you're here, what a wonderful job I think you're doing and just how important it is that the Tourism Alliance that is so carefully knit together, stays together, and it was a hard fight, frankly, to get the group together, and it's so important that you stay there, and good luck to you in doing that, and I'm sure you will be successful, but at the same time, I want to tell you that for my.. for my money, the level of tourism that we currently have in this county is just right. It's plenty. It's enough, and if you want to .. I'm happy to see increases in the off-season, but I'm not, frankly, anxious to see our tourism industry grow much -- it seems to be doing that just fine on its own, and my thought is if the tourism industry needs more marketing, I don't guess there's anything, is there, in the Tourism Alliance bylaws or otherwise that would prevent their making contributions, to pool their money to do advertising as a market if they find that that's the best way to do it. It seems to me the most important job of the Tourism Alliance as far as the money that comes from Collier County tourist tax is to promote emerging markets, the ecotourism and the historical tourism and those issues, but otherwise, I don't see our beach hotels, God bless them, as needing a great deal of help. I think they do a fine job on their own, and I think their success may be part of the reason -. part of their problem, but I don't find myself interested, frankly, in increasing the funding. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I respectfully disagree, Commissioner Mac'Kie. I -. you know, we have peaks and valleys and all different things here in Collier County and one is tourism, and I would like to see what can we do better in the summertime to promote what we have here in Collier County. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And let me .- apparently I wasn't clear, because I agree with you, Tom. I don't mind promoting off.season, but I don't really see the need for us to be doing a great deal of promotion of this community during the season. How about this; at least let's don't until we get the roads caught up. Page 38 March 7, 2001 MS. PRUTOS: If I may share with you some research information, because in any good marketing plan, research must guide your planning, and, frankly, in any good business plan. Our research is telling us that in the summer months, our primary target audience is the in-state drive market, which is one of the reasons why we are instituting the newspaper ad campaign which will make it affordable for properties in Golden Gate, in Naples, in Marco Island that necessarily may not be on the beach or may not have the marketing revenues, or marketing budgets, pardon me, to share in advertising in such places as Sunset or Palm Beach County or Sarasota or Tampa Bay, St. Petersburg. So, that is one area that we are really looking to build up during the summer months. The second largest market of visitors based upon the research provided to us visiting Collier County in the off-season or the vacation season are people from the United Kingdom and people from Germany, and that is the area where we really see that we need increased funding. We don't have an office in the U.K. like Sarasota County, like Bradenton, like Lee County, that staffs and actively recruits those visitors here. We don't have an office in Germany. With the little dollars we have, we are stretching wisely with targeted advertising, but all our efforts are geared to work on the shelter season or what we call our vacation season. We are not looking to bring more people here during the high season. CHAIRMAN CARTER: And, Kathy, I really appreciate the fact that you're here. I never would discount that for a minute. I think it's great what you're doing. I might also just share, we're going to have four million more people in Florida by 2025. That is the growth population predictions by the modeling, and you can't stop people coming to places like Florida. They love it. They're going to be here, and we need to then look at who's coming for the in-state promotion because they're here, and we might as well have a piece of that pie it seems to me very much in that thinking, and remember, one in seven people now in the United States live in coastal counties. It's a national phenomenon that they're coming to the coastal counties, and in Florida, I'm sure it's higher. So, I'm just saying everybody needs to look at reality and ask ourselves, what can we do with what's coming, and no Page 39 March 7, 2001 matter what we're planning, to be able to deal with that, and as Commissioners Henning and Mac'Kie I think agree, let's go for the people that are already here and promote off-season. MS. PRUTOS: Thank you. MR. PERCEL: Commissioners, I would just like to make an additional comment regarding the issue of tourism, and we perfectly understand Commissioner Mac'Kie's concern about adding additional traffic during the peak season, so to say. Our effort is a hundred percent concentrated on the off-season tourists. That is the time that we can bring additional benefit by being able to promote this designation to the local businesses, which the multiplier effect, Greg can address that much more eloquently than I can, but please understand, if you want to take it in this context, tourism is a golden goose of which the eggs that we're feeding and providing for a lot of other activities which benefit all the residents of Collier County, and we are, let's see, the feeding trough for that golden goose, and by bringing more tourists during the off-season, we maintain a lot of businesses in this community much more viable for all year-round. Thank you very much. MR. MIHALIC: Hello again, commissioners. As I mentioned before, the peaks and valleys are narrowing. I think that that's an example that our outreach for our off-season market is there, and we are becoming a more year-round market in the last five or six years. So, I think that's certainly a positive sign. There is one aspect of the Category B funding though that we really should talk about a little bit, and that's the special events. Prior to our report in 1998 and your actions, we collected a separate fund for special events, and 25 percent of the Category B money went in for special events. In 1998, per the board's direction, we consolidated the collections together to be sure that advertising and marketing and special events were coordinated together. We felt that there was synergism there, and that really they should be handled by the same organization to get the full impact, but since 1998, we really haven't had many special events; the Marco Island Film Festival, the North Naples Little League, but we haven't gotten off the mark for promoting special events for a number of reasons, but -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No golf tournaments? Page 40 March 7, 2001 MR. MIHALIC: No golf tournaments. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Somebody had to say it. MR. MIHALIC: All special events should happen in the off-season, never in season, and as you mentioned, we don't need more people here during season. We need them here during the off-peak season. However, in your package is a special events application, and staff has come back, taking the one from the Tourism Alliance and trying to add to it to give more flexibility. What really happened is the Tourism Alliance came up with a very narrow application that said we should only fund the advertising and promotion of special events, and they should only be originally for nonprofit agencies, and the TDC didn't like the nonprofit agencies only, and you, board of commissioners, found things like your July 4th promotion that really had other types of expenses other than advertising and promotion to it, and the Marco Island Film Festival is an example where there's a lot of other expenses that didn't meet those narrow definitions. So, we've come back with an application that's a little bit more broad. It says that the project must take place within Collier County between May and November. The project must be accessible to the public and to disabled people. The applicant must submit a list to the board of directors. They must submit their most preliminary financial reports, that you have received a grant in the past from Collier County, and you must match the amount requested dollar for dollar, showing revenue that you specifically contributed to the program. Fifty percent of this match may be in contributions accompanied by a list of fair and reasonable market value. We don't know what the appropriate amount of special events is versus advertising and promotion. We know that we were at 25 percent before, but I believe at least initially, if we have a goal and direct the Tourism Alliance that 20 percent of their total budget, $280,000 a year should be focused toward promoting special events, we can certainly see the impact of that. They want to know where the board is on this issue, whether the board want to see special events integrated with the advertising and marketing, and it will be part of their budget. I mean, it's included in their budget, because we're dipping into reserves right now. So, included in their 1.2 -- 1.4 million dollars Page 41 March 7, 2001 will be any special events expenditures. My personal opinion is I think promotion and special events go together, and I think special events enhance the rest of your advertising and promotion program, but we are really throwing it out to you, commissioners, to see what you think. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I have a real strong opinion about this, and that is if there is an event that presents itself that is such a good part of advertising and promotion that the Tourism Alliance wants to use a portion of their small little budget, then God bless them and let them do it, but I have no interest in being in the special events business as a county. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, I see a benefit for off-season special events to our seasons and the people who work here, and one thing I really enjoy is something they do in the City of Naples, well, the Beach Club, is the jazz festivals, and why can't we do something like that here in Collier County? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Because they don't need tax money to do it. Private industry will do that when there's a reason for it, and if -- oh, well. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I also have a little disagreement with that. A good example is the Florida sports Park which does a tremendous draw in May, the time we are in off-season, and they haven't been tapping the special events money for advertising in quite a few years. I think that would be a tremendous opportunity to bring people into the area from other parts of the state especially. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I don't know. I think it's situational. I would not say yeah or nay. I think it goes where you use it and how you use it, and I would certainly not want to throw the baby out with the bath water here. I want to be able to -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'd like to see a much broader spectrum than just all cultural events along the coast. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Absolutely, because there's a lot of things that we could do that would really be attractors and be good for not only the residents, but you're going to draw people from other places or tourists -- or the people who are visiting here will say, gee, this is great. You know, in July you're going to have this, or in August you're going to have this, or Mayor October. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Look for Immokalee, coming to Page 42 March 7, 2001 you pretty soon, a special event. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'll tell you, that's exactly the case where I think it would be appropriate. If it's an emerging market like an ecotourism or a historical tourism like the Roberts Ranch or some functions like that out there, then that to me is appropriate, but I would just -- my question is this. We currently have 20 percent of their budget of this million and something -- you said it's $280,000. Twenty percent of their budget is earmarked for special events. MR. MIHALIC: It is not earmarked at this time. They were to incorporate special events to whatever levels they thought were appropriate in that 1.4 million dollar budget. We just have never had a good outreach program, and I think the question is, do we go out for applications like they do for other things, and we do go out and let them sift through it and let them decide the level of funding that they want to have, or does the board say, well, we should look at this amount or we should look at emerging markets and neighborhood events. I think they really want some sense of what the board thinks they should be doing. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: If I may comment on that. MR. MIHALIC: Yes. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I think the board needs to have some feedback, because if you look at some of the areas that I represent, which would be Immokalee and Everglades City and Golden Gate Estates, they are not the coastal areas, and they may have some things coming up that might not get the same amount of consideration that a coastal event would. So I would like to see it in the hands of the commissioner to be able to maybe recommend it to the Tourist Alliance, and maybe they send it back to us for their recommendation or non-recommendation, but I'd like to see an accountability on everything that happens beforehand and after-the-fact so that if we find we're not getting the return as far as the rooms go, the number of rooms are filling, the restaurants, if there isn't -- if it isn't generating that level of return, then that shouldn't be considered for the future. It's got to have a return. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So, commissioner, are you saying a margin markets then? I mean -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'm saying that we keep the mix open, that we don't shut our minds off to what it is. I think the Page 43 March 7, 2001 Collier commission itself needs to have a play in it, but I think they need to come back to the Tourist Alliance. In other words, like we did with the 4th of July, we had it before us. We sent it to the Tourist Alliance for their feedback, and then it went through the system. CHAIRMAN CARTER: And that makes -- excuse me. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, how does the Tourism Alliance even feel about this 20 percent? Have they given you input on that? MR. MIHALIC: They -- they are willing to accommodate within their budget. They feel their budget is very limited, but they're willing to accommodate whatever the wishes are of the board. What I'm hearing is the board thinks 20 percent is too much. Maybe we should just leave it open -- leave it open and see what comes in. I mean, if we have an application process, see what that process brings into the Tourism Alliance, then let them consider and rank them and see what amount is necessary to do CHAIRMAN CARTER: Greg, what I think you're hearing here is that the board is saying, we're not going to tie their hands, but they've got a budget. Let them make an assessment of what is there and how they would treat, quote, special events under their plan, and it eventually all comes to us for a final decision, and that's fine. What we need to provide -- and I think I heard the guidelines that Greg outlined, emerging markets, et cetera, et cetera, and if that is the framework of which the board gives the guidance, then I think they say, well, okay, we now know what the board is thinking in general about this, and we're not going to tie their hands and say you can have one or two or three. It's up to them, and really look at who needs it, whether it is an ongoing or whether we're seeding the thing and it grows and we wean it from the process. Otherwise, if it's like a three year event, and in the fourth year they can do it themselves, you know, great, that's the objective. Let it be self-sustaining. MR. PERCEL: If I may make a comment, ladies and gentlemen. We have -- special events is very near and dear to our heart. We believe very strongly that special events help promote and goes hand in hand with the promotion of the community. If we can create events, such as the Film Festival, Page 44 March 7, 2001 to -- which will bring additional tourism to the community and extend our brand, we've won. I think collectively, we've won. We have been trying for the past two years to come to an agreement, what is an equitable means of screening special events, this in light of the fiascoes that we've had in the past, which we definitely want to avoid and we want accountability built into it. The most important thing in this is that we are looking for guidance. Recently, we've had a tremendous relationship with staff, and we have recently received their opinion of what special events application process should be. It is in somewhat conflict with the one that we have proposed to the TDC, and which the TDC acted on last November. There is need to modify them, and I think that as soon as you give us your input and your guidance, we will be able to come to an equitable conclusion that will benefit the community and all those who are willing to promote special events. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So, tell us what the question is you need the board to answer. MR. PERCEL: You have before you, as Mr. Mihalic said, a recommendation which is staff's. We have presented one -- our recommendation to TDC in November, and TDC had approved that, and we received this document that you see before you only yesterday. We are looking at it now. We have a committee, a subcommittee that reviewed applications in the past. I agree with you that it may have been too stringent and it needs modification. I don't doubt that, in one way or another. The question is that we need to bring this together, and we need your guidance and your input if this is the way that you want us to manage special events. We will be more than happy at that point to promote it and to actively participate in bringing additional events to the community. CHAIRMAN CARTER: But I think based on what you just told me, it would be staff and your group sitting down and looking at this and working it out and then bringing it back to the Board of County Commissioners with a recommendation, being unanimous, if possible, this is what you believe we ought to do, and then for the board, then we know how to react or how to deal with it. We don't want to be reactionaries, but we want to know, if we have two divided houses here, how are we supposed Page 45 March 7, 2001 to make an intelligent decision for the community when you're at odds with each other. See, that doesn't work. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner Carter, can I make a suggestion? Just send them both through the tourist council and have recommendations -- MR. OLLIFF: Let me help you here. I think you've already got a recommendation from your TDC, and I think you're going to end up having a slightly different version being recommended by your staff. I think it's something that needs to come back to the board on a regular meeting and let you just decide, and whichever way you decide is fine, but we just need to go ahead and establish what the process is going to be, but because you've only seen this information today and you're obviously unfamiliar with what are the issues out there, I think it's only fair for you that we bring it back on a regular board meeting, but we'll have to do that fairly quickly. MR. PERCEL: And Commissioner Carter, I wanted to dispel any concern that you have that we are at odds with staff. I think we've had better cooperation with staff in the past few months than we've ever had at any point since I've been involved in tourism promotion in Collier County. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, and I'm pleased that staff and you are on the same page. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And fundamentally what you're looking for, I guess, are some basic guidelines, like do we agree that special events would only be in the off-season. I think you've heard that we absolutely agree to that. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That's for sure. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Do we agree that special events should be -- should be -- should emphasize emerging markets? I think that. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I agree with you, but also, too, keep the option open, because there are some established markets that need continuous support. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And the other piece that I would suggest is, do we agree as a board that special events promotion should be -- well, frankly, that a lot of your work should be to promote industry -- elements of the industry that don't have advertising budgets sufficient to do their own, some sort of collective -- you know, that the smaller hotels are served Page 46 March 7, 2001 primarily by this special events. I mean, that -- it seems to me that's what we ought to be doing. MS. PRUTOS: The Tourism Alliance is dedicated to promoting the destination of Collier County, and if a special event meets that criteria, that it's going to promote the destination, not one particular property, not one particular industry, not one particular individual, it's something that will benefit the destination of the county. I walked back up here because I wanted to address Commissioner Fiala's question, is what do we think about that 20 percent, and I have to tell you that, Commissioner Carter, I agree with you that special events need to be handled on a case by case basis, because every event is different. When we talk about percentages and earmarking dollars based on just a number, if you are looking to do that, then I suggest that we look at what does Sarasota County earmark for special events? What does Lee County earmark for special events? What do some of our other coastal counties earmark for special events? So, I am not in favor, and I think I speak for my board, that 20 percent is a hard and fast figure, but I do speak for my board when I say that special events is a critical part of branding our image throughout the State of Florida, throughout the United States, and ideally, internationally as well. So, I hope that answers your question, Commissioner. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes, thank you. MS. PRUTOS: Thank you. MR. DUNNUCK: And before we move on, I just want to bridge the gap a little bit about, you know, some of what we're talking about here. This is one piece of the puzzle of the 3 percent that we're talking about, and what they've shown you in their slide presentation was that right now, according to their marketing plan, they're dipping into reserves to meet their marketing plan. So, for future revenues, they're going to need more money. That's aside from special events. So, that's just something to consider when we're talking about how the whole piece of the pie is broken out. MR. PERCEL: Just one more thing to clarify one thing. We are not the managers of special events. Our expertise is marketing. What we want to bring to the special event promoter is the ability to market and make available to them the agencies Page 47 March 7, 2001 and resources that we have for the general promotion of Collier County. I don't believe that we are here to fund special events, but to promote, help in the promotion of the special events. That's how we understand our position. CHAIRMAN CARTER: If they can't cut your criteria though, then we would have serious questions, the Board of County Commissioners, as to whether or not we should be involved in it. I mean, you have a criteria that says, did it pass the test, and I think that is -- that's important to us. MR. MIHALIC: Let me give you an example of some of the-- major difference here is that their outline and their guidelines said that we should only do advertising and promotion with the TDC money for special events. For example, the July 4th promotion wanted to use that money for hotel rooms for the people coming in in the bands that needed to participate. That would not be allowed, and that was really the only source of difference that we had, what the money should be used for. Should it be more open and use it wherever it's necessary to assist the special event or is that money for them alone and it should only be used for advertising and promotion? That was really the crucial difference. MS. PRUTOS: One more, I think. The guidelines that the Tourism Alliance developed for special events were based upon incredible research of what other counties have successfully implemented. It wasn't that we just decided to do something. We researched more than a dozen counties that have been successful promoting special events to develop those guidelines. Thank you. MR. PERCEL: I think the importance in the special events, the criteria, you set the criteria. Last year there was a major departure in that, as Greg mentioned. Yes, we said it was promotion and advertising. Last year you allowed the film festival to go beyond that. That is your privilege and prerogative. We're more than happy to comply with that, and we're more than happy to incorporate that, and I think Greg makes an excellent point of one of the minor differences that we do have. Other than that, I think we can bring it into synch and make a presentation to you about that. MR. MIHALIC: Well, not to beat a dead horse, but I think Page 48 March 7, 2001 we've talked about special events enough, commissioners. We'd like to move on to the Category C, museum funding. Leo. MR. OCHS: Thanks, Greg. Good morning, commissioners. Again, for the record, Leo Ochs, public services administrator. For the past few years, as most of you know, the County's museum operations have been funded exclusively with tourist development taxes, and while that TOC funding has generally been sufficient to maintain our existing operations, I'm growing increasingly concerned about our ability to meet our future obligations in our growing museum system under the current allocation formula that exists today in Category C. Moreover, this concern is becoming exacerbated to a certain degree by the, what seems to be a growing demand from non-county museums for a portion of this funding, limited funding in Category C. So, I've asked Ron Jamro, our museum director, to join us this morning just to give you a brief review of existing operations and what we see on the horizon over the next three fiscal years. Ron. MR. JAMRO: Thank you. Good morning. Ron Jamro, your museum director. Good morning, commissioners. The museum was officially transferred out of the general fund to tourist tax revenues in fiscal year 1997. So, we had some history in the fund. What that has allowed to us do really is to grow from a fairly small county relic room to a three site museum system now that I think everyone in the county can be proud of and to certainly become active partners in the tourist industry here and to be part of that Classic Florida -- that's certainly our story, is Classic Florida. I mean, that is our only story, as a matter of fact. Since that time, since 1997, we have added the two additional facilities, 13 buildings, 16 acres of property. So, although our collections have increased in Mr. Mudd's trough, if you will, a very small trough, we have increased the size of the museum approximately 300 percent by my calculations. So, we're rapidly approaching burnout there. I have one piece of data of my own that you may find Page 49 March 7, 2001 interesting from the Florida Trend. The historical attraction has now rivaled beaches as a tourist draw 40 percent to 41 percent, and that from Florida USA data, fifty-seven and a half percent of all Florida vacationers now include a historic site visit in their vacation plans. So, you can feel good about spending your dollars, I think, in your museum system. Leo and Greg had asked me to peer into the future and tell you what's ahead in the museum, and I attempted to do that. You have these printouts, the three years' worth of budgets in front of you, and as you can see, our operating -- I'm trying to keep this as conservative as possible, bearing in mind that we do get donations of services throughout the year, and so added into the factor there that architectural, engineering services will hopefully be donated on these various projects, as they have in the past, through the Friends of the Museum, our fund raising auxiliary, and also our two clone organizations, Friends' organizations, both Everglades City and Immokalee now. So, again, in fiscal year '02, our hope is to get Roberts Ranch on line, at least in some initial form anyway, and then moving on to fiscal year '03, we return to the project, which may or may not still be of interest to the board, that's the Army Air Corps reconstruction as a World War II memorial here at the museum, and finally in '04, the long anticipated addition to the museum here on the government center, which is the final exhibit hall. It's build-out for that museum at that point, some collection storage area and also some more exhibit areas as well, and along the way, adding the staff, I think, that will be necessary to do that, and it totals one and a half people, and to keep us -- providing the level of service that the committee has come to expect from us and to continue to meet their expectations and exceed their expectations. All of this, though, is only valid if certain things hold true, and I just want to point those out to you, that organizations, such as the Friends of the Museum, contribute substantial dollars to our public programs and activities, our events, although Florida festivals don't receive support, they receive sponsorships from the business and professional community here, and so that's what funds a lot of our school activities, a lot of our cultural programming is not part of this budget. So, that is not part of this budget. Page 50 March 7, 2001 Special exhibitions such as the Key Marco Cat a few years back, the Spanish Treasure, World War II exhibit, that is not part of this budget. Those would be additional concerns. Also, that the maintenance of the county museum facilities at all three sites would continue to be handled through the facilities maintenance department here. That would be a county in-house function. We don't budget separately for those items. And thirdly, that this is it, that no further properties are attached or structure sites are attached to the museum. That would, obviously, upset the whole equilibrium here, and you need to know that we have talked about Fort Foster as a potential of a Seminole war site, a very exciting site if that pans out. We've talked about locations of historic buildings in Old Naples itself, some discussions along those lines, and my colleague, Mr. Tisner (phonetic), we were talking about one day a museum on Marco Island. Why not? That's where the archaeology of this county was really -- gained international attention. They should have a museum on Marco Island, or maybe that could be part of our museum family. So, those are my comments, and once again, I've heard the museum talked about a lot this morning. That's very gratifying. I appreciate hearing that. I know my staff and all of our supporters appreciate the good things you do for the museum and hopefully will continue to do. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Could I just ask one simple question? MR. JAMRO: Certainly. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Is the museum open on Sunday? MR. JAMRO: It is now. We never close; Saturday and Sunday now as well. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: A couple of -- a couple of thoughts to put out there, because I think we need to be really careful about limiting the museum budget amount as we look at reallocating the percentages, because I think the one place that this projection is flawed, not by you but by my hopes anyway, is that I hope that we do have a lot of future projects. I mean, I think the projects you just described are some that should absolutely be in our long-range plan. I think that we ought to be working with the historical society with regard to Palm Cottage and the Depot and the City of Naples to see if that isn't -- those Page 51 March 7, 2001 aren't things that should be brought into the museum system. I think the botanical garden that's going in off of Bayshore Drive is even -- you know, willing on a discussion basis to talk about donating a portion of property for a science museum or somehow a related museum. We need to -- in my opinion, we need to get museums to the status of libraries and parks where they have a level of service that our community expects, you know, that we provide and that we fund them appropriately, and I just -- I think that we're going to be very short-sighted if we say that we're comfortable with this amount of money with this giant caveat that that assumes there's nothing new happening in the museum system. COMMISSIONER FIALA: You know, I have to agree with you, Pam, especially coming from the industry, I know that we were always looking for side trips for spouses, for children and so forth, and in Collier County, we didn't have much of anything to send them to. So, the museums, especially as we expand them, are going to be a great source, I think, for the tourism industry, to entertain their guests. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I don't disagree with any of the discussion. I would suggest, though, we have to look at multiple revenue streams to do this type of -- or have this type of consideration, and I would look for public, private partnership wherever we could to enhance and build. I know the Botanical Gardens is very much into that mode, and that's what I would like to see as a model as we project and do other things, because I do not believe government by itself can do everything that we want on the wish list unless you have a taxation revenue stream that would probably shock the eyeballs out of everybody in the community, and I just want to bring that into the mix. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Good point, Jim. I also want to mention the fact that because of Charlie Abbott (phonetic) and Jim Unser (phonetic), I've been dragged into this mix as far as the museums go, and I probably know a lot more than I ever wanted to know. I know what they need as far as repairs go. I know they're understaffed. I even find myself on some maintenance committees that I can't quite understand how that happened. So, if you see me out there with a pressure washer, you'll know that I'm about as close to the situation as Page 52 March 7, 2001 you can get, and the reason you'll probably see me out there with a pressure washer is because they don't have enough funds to maintain what they've got now. I think what we need to do is remember where we're coming from here. We're a county organization. We're responsible for county entities, and that's our museums. Place them first. These other entities we're looking at out there, they don't fit into this mix. We're going to try to take and divide this pie up again, and we're still going to go out and ask people to do something about the landfill, do something about the roads, we're talking about unbelievable amounts of revenue. We've got to get our priorities straight, and our priorities are this museum and the museums we have under our wing, and from there, maybe we can expand backwards, but let's take care of what we've got now. We've got a roof that's leaking over here on the cottage. We might start to lose that entity. We have parts from the icehouse, the airport that are laying over there on the property with absolutely no idea what we're going to do with it. It's a never-ending thing. Concentrate on where we are at this point in time. Let's get the repairs done. Let's make sure we have an adequate amount of money to take care of what we've got and have an adequate staff. CHAIRMAN CARTER: We may even have a tank that doesn't run, so I don't know. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Is there -- because I just couldn't agree with you more with what you just said, and I think part of how we have boxed the museum into this problem is by saying we'll give you this little sliver of money out of the tourist tax, but don't talk to us about any other money, and I guess I'll take the risk here of saying, is this board interested in hearing budget proposals for the museum that include dollars other than tourist tax dollars? In this budget cycle, are you willing to see maintenance money and capital and -- you know, like the same source of funds that we use for libraries, for example, available to the museum? I am. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I want to keep all options open, but I think we need to be fair to the consumer out there and meet our current needs with the funding that we have already set aside and possibly go a little bit deeper into it. When we cut this Page 53 March 7, 2001 apart, this pie, maybe we might be able to find a little bit more in the tourist tax to go towards the museums. I think the money is there. I'm very concerned about going to ad valorem taxes for this and then adding a whole bunch of new entities to it. I think we can find it there. If we can't, yes, by all means. Keep all options open, but let's be careful who else we bring into the mix. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I agree with that, and the only thing I would consider property taxes for would be Collier County museums, and I'm talking about things like maintenance of the physical plant -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Exactly. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- and I think, you know, if we can do that -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And staff. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- and staff, operating budget, and if we can do that with the tourist tax, then so be it, but I'm just saying for my one vote that if it can't be done well with just tourist tax money, I think it's a legitimate expenditure of property tax money, just like a library. MR. OLLIFF: Two points that we wanted to make as part of this presentation was, one, the board is quick to say yes when somebody comes in front of them with a property that needs to be saved or something, but I needed Ron to be able to show you in black and white numbers what the ongoing commitments are that are necessary in order to just meet your current obligations, what you've already told the community we're going to preserve, we're going to bring up to speed, we're going to open to the public and we're going to have them as part of your museum family. This is a budget that has significantly increased over what you currently have, and that's simply trying to meet the obligations of issues like Roberts Ranch, which I know you've all been getting pressure about having the County actually do something with that project. This is the kind of budget you need to have in order to be able to do something with it. Secondly, I need you to keep in mind, as you're talking about competition within your own general fund, recognize why it was moved to the tourist tax fund in the first place was because the incredible competition for general fund tax dollars was so great that we were pressured by boards for years and years and years Page 54 March 7, 2001 to find ways to move things out of the general fund into other funding sources whenever and wherever possible, which is why we ended up in the tourist tax in the first place with the museum, but I think, you know, this all goes back to Jim's, we're sort of hungry and expense driven here, and I'm beginning to hear that there's a little more hunger and expense in this category than there are in, perhaps, some of the others. So, when you get down to your final allocation decisions, that's where you need to keep this in mind and this category. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: If that doesn't work, Tom, I'm putting the rest of the commissioners on the work crew for Roberts Ranch. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And the other thing -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: I'm really good at that. I've got my boots, and all you have to do is give me a horse and a saddle, I'm ready to go to work, okay. MR. OLLIFF: I've seen you five work, and it's going to take a lot more than just what we've got in the room. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And the other thing that -- I'm just going to say one more time, is in my opinion what we ought to do is bring the museums into the level of service measurement that we do for libraries. We don't have a level of service for museums. Museums are just sort of, if we can afford it with the tourist tax money, we will do it, and I think we've grown beyond that, and that we ought to pull the museum into the level of service and maybe even it becomes eligible for some impact fee money, like a library does, like a park does. I don't know why museums aren't treated the same way, and the only way to get them in there is to adopt level of service for museums. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Do we have any grant money coming in for the museums? MR. JAMRO: Continuously. I was going to make that final point, that we are alive because of those other sources. That's our bread and butter. In fact, the facility you see there was not really built with county dollars. That was donated by Friends of the Museum, who spent many years raising those funds, and we've been successful in matching a lot of those contributions and county contributions as well with state grants. So, we do -- we're anticipating about $140,000 in June from the State for the Roberts Ranch Page 55 March 7, 2001 restoration. We have a $20,000 grant already in hand. We probably don't do a very good job of letting you know when we get those, and we need to start doing that so you know we are out there using every available source that's there for us, and the Friends in the Museum in all those three communities, both here in Naples, Everglades City and then Immokalee are raising small but substantial amounts of money for the projects. We're really proud of those folks. They're doing a great job, so we are doing that. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Time for a commercial announcement about Roberts Ranch this weekend, go ahead. MR. JAMRO: Thank you. Yes, we'll hope to see you there this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, cattle drive on Saturday morning. Don't miss it. It's really a peek back into the past, ten o'clock, Main Street, Immokalee. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Literally a cattle drive, you guys. I mean -- MR. JAMRO: The Seminole Indians rounding them up, yeah. Thank you. CHAIRMAN CARTER: One thing that I would appreciate, Ron, when these things come forward, if the board concurs, that old Kentucky expression that everybody thinks their show is the blackest, and it's true, when somebody brings us a project, it's A-number 1, it's the most critical thing that ever faced Collier County, and I understand that, but what we need from staff is -- and take them to staff and say, okay, this is what they need, this is what we expended, here's our -- here's our whole process. Now, you, commissioners, looking at all this, make a determination on how you want to treat it, and I think in the past, we probably haven't had enough of that and have only focused on that one thing coming to us, and we need to have the spreadsheet put in front of us on a continuous basis to say, remember, this is what you had done. So, that would be helpful from my standpoint. Thank you. MR. JAMRO: Thank you. MR. MIHALIC: Hello, again, commissioners. We're almost finished here. We'd like to move ahead with -- as I mentioned before, the distribution of our tourist taxes is a local decision. You make Page 56 March 7, 2001 that decision, but we just think you should know, and the Tourism Alliance sort of alluded to it -- well, what our neighbors do, and we've looked at both Lee and Sarasota Counties, and you'll see that while we allocate 80 percent of our money to beach, Lee County allocates 33 percent of their money. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Are they three pennies or more? MR. MIHALIC: They are three pennies, and again, they allocate 13 percent of their money to museums, sports arenas and stadiums and 54 percent to advertising and promotion. CHAIRMAN CARTER: How many miles of beach -- you know, I'd like a comparison of miles of beach in both Sarasota and Collier (sic) Counties to ours. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Me too, because otherwise we don't know if we're doing apples and apples, and we're not. On the percentage of money we're spending on beaches versus Lee County, do we have more beaches than Lee County? MR. MIHALIC: I can't speak to that, but I'm sure staff can put together that information for you. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you. MR. MIHALIC: And Sarasota County spends a much higher percentage of their amounts for beaches. They spend 56 percent of their money for beaches, 27 percent for advertising and marketing and 17 percent for special events, and you know our comparison, which is 80 percent for beaches, 8.65 percent for advertising and promotion and 9.95 percent for museums. So, again, even those -- these are local decisions. You can see what some of your neighbors are spending the money on. We now come to our conclusion which is basically what does staff think and what comments and questions, additional comments and questions do we have from you. Let's go to the next slide. We think it's important to streamline our ordinance. The finance department has raised issues about they're not sure whether it's being spent for the appropriate Category A funding. We want to bring back to you language that makes the expenditure of category money the same, taking out the extraneous language that's been in there from the past that's no longer necessary and streamlining the ordinance. We also believe it's necessary to codify the ordinance, and we see, in other areas too, we layer amendment on amendment Page 57 March 7, 2001 on amendment without a recodification of the total ordinance. We think it's important that you be able to grab an ordinance and we be able to grab an ordinance or give them to people who say, what is your tourist tax plan, because your ordinance is really your plan. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I have a question I'm sort of afraid to ask. Do we -- we don't codify all of our ordinances, Tom? We don't codify our ordinances generally? MR. OLLIFF: We do annually through the municipal code book, but during the ensuing twelve month period, any amendments then, you have to -- because the way we do amendments, you've got an amendment and the ordinance, you have to look at both side by side to figure out exactly what the law is. MR. MIHALIC: And the finance department uses the ordinance itself as their direction, and I think in this case, at least, we should put that codification into the ordinance. And then we come to the point of re-allocating percentages between categories. Obviously, you've heard more needs for museums. They get about 840,000 now. They are looking at needs of a million two. You've heard from the Category B, advertising and promotion people, that they are dipping into reserves now, and in two more years, those reserves will be gone, and they will have a revenue stream of probably about $900,000 at the present percentages. We think that you might consider re-allocating some of those percentages. If, for instance, you went from 70/30 to SO/50, you would free up an additional 1.2 million dollars that could then be shifted from the Category A beach side to the marketing, promotion and museum side. Obviously, if you split that SO/50, that would be $600,000 apiece. In the museum category, that would allow the County museums to be fully funded according to their budget and still allow about $300,000 to be used to capitalize other outside museum requests, and that's just an example. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: How, though, do we know how much money you need for beaches? MR. OLLIFF: We'll bring that back to you. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We've got to know that. I mean, I don't want to change anything until we know that the beach Page 58 March 7, 2001 money is protected. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Can I just throw something else out there, for promotions, if the Tourist Alliance is successful, which I'm sure they will be, in their promotion, then the taxes, revenue comes in more. MR. MIHALIC: It is going up, and new hotel rooms are coming on line all the time, and, you know, your costs are going up, so you will have an appreciation of at least 5 percent in the tax from what we've seen so far. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Is there a possibility that the figures that we looked at back here on beaches and the amount of money we're spending, does that reflect the larger cost we had with removing the rocks from the beach? If it does, then we might be falling back into the category for some of these other ones, and if that's not going to be a recurring cost, we might be able to get the money out. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I hope not. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It'd better not be. That is the question though, is we don't know how much money you need for beaches, and we want to know. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, that's what I heard, we're going to, so that's good. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think at this point, we need to take public comment if whoever -- MR. MIHALIC: One more issue. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Oh, I'm sorry. MR. MIHALIC: Let me just say on the special events application, I don't want it to sound like the differences between the Tourism Alliance and staff are great, because they aren't. There's a couple of issues. I think we will unify an application, bring it to you -- put it on your consent agenda when we have it unified and move ahead. I don't think there's any problem in doing that at all, commissioners. MR. MUDD: When you asked a question, if I may interrupt, when you talked about the long-term plan for beaches, hopefully, that's what your coastal advisory committee is going to do, and when they lay that process out -- right now, we're going from event to event, year to year under your present scheme, and there is no ten year plan for the beach. CHAIRMAN CARTER: How soon do you -- Page 59 March 7, 2001 MR. MUDD: Well, I don't want to say -- I get -- yeah, there probably is -- maybe I misspoke a little bit. I just don't see the plan being implemented in laying that process out and everybody going back to the plan and saying, okay, here it is and here is the event that's going to happen. Hopefully, the CAC will -- the coastal advisory committee will bring that into light and be more of a forum for identification, the long-term plan, and keep that ball moving. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Jim, you just really triggered something that exploded my head. Every one of those committees need to have a long-range plan and bring that forward, and anything that we, the County, can do to help them facilitate that planning process -- it needs to be a part of their charter. That really says, how can we take your advice if you don't know where you're going except year by year. So, I would like to ask you with that committee to tell me when they will have a long-range plan put together so that we can make a more intelligent decision as the board. MR. MIHALIC: And Commissioner, lastly, we want our tourist development program to be like the other programs in the county and really deliver, to our residents and visitors, local government services that exceed their expectations. MR. OLLIFF: And just -- and in closing, I think one of the frustrations, after working here for 16 years and being part of this county government from the time that the tourist taxes were initially adopted, this program should be a very, very positive program for this community, and for the life of me, I cannot stand here and figure out why it is that we can't make this program something that is successful for not only the hotel/motel association and the industries that are related to tourist businesses, but for this local community as well, and we are going to do everything we can to try and get this thing to where not only from a business perspective, but from a museum perspective and from a county perspective, this thing is seen in the public's eye as being as positive as it should be, and we hope to be able to bring you a much more streamlined process and a plan that I think will do just that. CHAIRMAN CARTER: It shouldn't be a negative, Tom. You're absolutely right. It's like it's some attempt that says, if you never had a tourist development council, there wouldn't be Page 60 March 7, 2001 any growth in the county, like somehow all these people would go away, and it seems -- it seems -- it defies all logic, and what we really need is to make this a positive part of our community, because it is, and you can look at all the modeling and all the statistics and everything else, and it tells you people won't go away, and people go to great places. They've done it as long as there's been people on the earth, you know. So, I'm just -- I couldn't agree with you more, Tom. We've got to turn this into having a more positive community in what we're trying to do with all the considerations mixed in, and I can understand where the frustration comes if you can't get from point A to point B, they're always going to look for something that is wrong, and there are things that are wrong, but we're not only fixing what needs to be fixed, but we're doing strategic long-range planning for the future, and that is the biggest story we have to get out to the community, and we're going to take some hits in that process, and we just try to get everybody behind us, and I'll get off my soapbox, and Tom, you do have public comment. MR. OLLIFF: Just one last item, that we did want to provide an opportunity for anybody from the public who wanted to address the board, and we had some speaker slips over on the table if anybody wanted -- MR. MIHALIC: Does anybody want to speak? Commissioners, I certainly want to thank you for the opportunity to be able to put on this workshop, and I want to thank Jane Eichhorn, who is a TDC coordinator, who, as you know, really does all the heavy lifting in this program, and without her, it would not be successful. CHAI RMAN CARTER: Well, I want to compliment, again, Tom Olliff and our county team, because the last workshops I've sat through from water to transportation to this one were absolutely first class, and I've been here a short period of time, but going through this a couple of times on certain issues, this gave me a picture. This told me not only where we are, but where we need to go, and I hope everybody watching this will tune in to the other workshops. We have, I don't know, is it seven more, Tom, that are scheduled? In fact, I counted up the number of meetings that Page 61 March 7, 2001 this Board of County Commissioners will be in between now and June 30th, and it's 27 meetings dealing -- and this is -- this includes our regularly scheduled BCC meetings, but that's -- that is actually a smaller percentage because we're focusing on specific issues before we bring it to the board, and I just hope the community can understand, we are not shirking our duties by meeting twice a month. In fact, Sarasota does the same thing. We are trying to get better when we come to the board meetings so that we can be more efficient and effective, and it's not a perfect system, and we're working on our meeting agendas, as Tom -- because we are in session now, I think we need to address that, is that we're working on improving that agenda, and we're going to discipline ourselves more as commissioners before putting things on agendas. So, we will get better, and just to say meet every week is like saying, if you have more meetings, you'll be more efficient, and I think that's like saying, here's only one little piece to consider. We have to look at the big picture of everything that we're doing. We're considering a -- having to deal with all the land uses, an examiner that does that, that would change entirely the make-up of how we approach business in this county. So, I know it's hard to be patient with us, but remember this, we're not sitting here on a leisurely schedule, where commissioners are on a compressed work period between, I would say October to the end of June, where I would average to say that most of you are putting in 50 to 60 hours a week, and please keep that in mind, the work is getting done in many cases before we come to the dais so that we can spend our time more efficiently. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Jim, if I can add to that. I think too when we're planning these meetings, if we see some issue that's going to have a lot of public input -- to be honest with you, I'm a little disappointed in the lack of public input at these meetings, especially the water workshop that we had when there's so much interest in the subject -- that possibly we might want to consider holding some of these meetings later in the day, like starting them at three and going past six o'clock so that we pick up the people that are at work for public comments. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I have no problem with that. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Also, one more item, I'd like to Page 62 March 7, 2001 see us research the possibility of getting this on the Internet live through the real radio. They're doing some other counties. It would be a great thing, and the people could even E-mail back comments. If we had the time, we might be able to refer to them. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's a very good -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: It would be live like Fox News. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Basically. It's not something that's new. They're doing it in Sarasota County. I believe that's where it is presently, and it's a very simple process, and it would take our meetings over the Internet, and it would be played in real time right to the people, and they could listen to it while they're working on their computers, if they're so inclined. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Sure. Well, and another thing, Jim and I need to do this because we are part of the regional planning council, we've -- I know I have to do a better job of communicating my impressions and direction we're going on water management and road transportation. All these committees are meeting and doing something as a part of that council. Tom will now be a part of that, working with the managers from the cities and counties again, because that's been re-initiated or instituted. We're going to get better, ladies and gentlemen. We're really going to get better, and we're going to try to have a more positive outlook on everything that we do. Let's stop the negativity in Collier County and let's get positive, because if this is paradise, and it is paradise, how can so many people be unhappy in paradise, and I have not had that question answered for me. So, I just really believe passionately that we have a great board. We have a great staff, and we're going to do everything in cooperation with the city governments to take us forward. MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, let me try and wrap up just by my at least going through my list of action items to make sure that I get five nodding heads as I go through here and to know what it is that I'm taking from this meeting. The first item that I had was that your staff is going to work with the tax collector, Guy Carlton, on seeing if and what collection improvements there might be out there in the way of ordinance amendments or anything else that we might be able to Page 63 March 7, 2001 assist with to improve the collections. Secondly, we're talking about developing and providing some long-term beach funding plans, and I would suspect that we would come back to you at a regular meeting with that item and any proposed ordinance amendments then that would correspond in terms of your tourist tax ordinance at the same time. Third, that we want to bring to the BCC and probably again, as Greg alluded to, on your consent agenda, a BCC special events decision, but again, like Greg said, I'm not sure that we're far enough part that that couldn't be a consent agenda item. We're going to get the board some beach linear mile comparisons between some of our neighboring coastal counties up the state, and then finally, I've got a note here that we want to look at -- and I made this note not only just in tourist tax related committees, but in some of our other committees too, in trying to have them spend a little more time in terms of long-range planning, to try and develop a little better outlook for the board about five and ten years, what it is they're trying to accomplish in their specific areas. That's the list that I've got. If anybody's got anything else in addition to that, please let me know now. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Just a question, if the board is interested in developing a level of service standard for the museums? COMMISSIONER FIALA: I think it's a great idea. I never even had considered that before. I didn't realize other communities would do that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, it's not something that the state statute requires. COMMISSIONER FIALA: But I think it's a great idea, because they're coming into prominence in our community, we're all seeing the value of them. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I would like a -- I wouldn't disagree with that, Commissioner Mac'Kie. I will always say I'd like a pro forma on that, the level of service and what is anticipated expenditures to meet that level of service. I want the whole picture. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner Mac'Kie, are we going to where we use an impact fee? I mean, you said -- Page 64 March 7, 2001 COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm interested in that. I'm interested in knowing if we adopted a level of service for museums, why there couldn't be an impact fee. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I think maybe what we should do is ask that question of staff. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's my request of the board, is to add that as another -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Item for discussion? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- item for staff's research. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I would like a mixture of what are the possible revenue streams in this. I'm not going to eliminate any one at this time from my thinking, but I really would like to know whether it's impact fees, if we know what it is out of the TDC route, you know, and if you use ad valorem or you use some other mechanism to do this, you know, tell me what my options are against the pro forma. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Also, Tom, if you could, take a good look at the problem we had with the rocks on the beach and see how much that affected the total outlay that we had to make up for beaches, because that's not going to be a reoccurring figure, and that might readjust the whole budget so we'll have some more money to play with. MR. OLLIFF: I can tell you, it's not a large enough number that it's going to materially change the numbers that you saw today. We can show you exactly what's been spent today and what we expect to spend in the future still, but it's not a materially large number compared to the numbers you've been looking at. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'd still like to see it. I know we were involved with it for what; a couple of years? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I mean, it's a million bucks, isn't -t? I . MR. OLLIFF: Yeah. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So, a million dollars -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: What would the million dollars do for the museum? Anybody got any idea? Would it make a little difference, a million dollars? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And when we win this lawsuit that we're involved in, we're going to have a million dollars plus coming back in, and I assume it will come back in to this fund, Page 65 March 7, 2001 and we can decide how we're going to spend it. MR. OLLIFF: So, I want to make sure I understand this level of service discussion that we just had, and I need to give the board a little history on that, because for new board members, you need to recognize where I think Commissioner Mac'Kie is suggesting that we spend some time looking at is a growth management plan optional element, is what it is called. You have 13 required elements under the statute that every county is required to have as part of your growth management or your comprehensive plan. Beyond that, you can adopt whatever elements you want to. This county has historically only done what is minimally required by the state statute simply to avoid having themselves have their hands tied and have fiscal commitments that they have no choice but to keep, and it's basically a contract with the state once you establish a level of service standard that says we are, based on population increase, going to provide this level of service, correspondingly, whatever that may be. I will tell you there have been requests historically to have optional elements in this county, including the most recent was public health, and that is an optional element that many communities have, but it's one that this board chose not to do as well, but what I am taking from this is that, one, we're supposed to go back and talk to the county attorney's office about what opportunities there may be to investigate impact fees as a funding source for our museums and to bring back a discussion item at a minimum for the board to consider whether to adopt an optional element and establish a level of service standard based on our response from the -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Yeah, I'm not sure I want to see it in the growth management plan just for the very reasons that Tom stated, and once it's there, you try and take it out. You're hung no matter what happens. So, if you can find another opportunity to get what you want without putting it in that plan, you're far better off, because now the state controls it. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And I'm open. I'm certainly open to whether it is an amendment to the growth management plan or it is some other ordinance resolution policy adoption, but I think we need to have a long-range plan, and that's -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: I couldn't agree more, Commissioner Page 66 March 7, 2001 Mac'Kie, absolutely, and let's find, in my judgment, an option outside of the growth management plan that accomplishes our same goals where no matter what happens in the future, if you have to adjust something, you don't have to go back through Mount Tallahassee, because that gets to be painful. MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, with that, I can't tell you how much we appreciate you spending the time to get educated and talk about specific issues. We got you in and out of here on time. We're going to try and carry this over to Tuesday's, and other than that, unless you have any other questions, I think we're ready to conclude. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Just to make a clarification in regards to the meeting on Sunday that has been noticed to everyone, it only pertains to Pelican Bay. That is from 2:30 to 5:00. You have gotten mixed signals on would we or wouldn't we, and it's been a moving situation daily or hourly, for me, and it will be there. Each side has equal time to discuss their points, and Sal Gardino, the coordinator of mediation services for the court system, will be the moderator of this meeting. I will only introduce we're having it, and I'm going to sit down, and I'm going to listen, but that's how it's going to evolve on Sunday, and at the end, they will take a straw vote, which I'm going to ask to be collected and turned over to the supervisor of elections' account so everyone can reduce their paranoia that, you know, one side or the other stuffed the box and -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You get a straw vote of the people present at the meeting? CHAIRMAN CARTER: Straw vote of the people present. That's in terms of when it comes back for our discussion on Tuesday. I'm trying to get you every piece of information of where that stands so that when -- and the discussion Tuesday, remember, is among the Board of County Commissioners, and only the Board of County Commissioners can make a decision whether we want to consider repealing that ordinance. It is not one where everyone can come into the room and have all kinds of input. It is our decision on whether we want to do that or not, and then depending on the outcome of the board meeting on Tuesday, it could appear on the 27th, depending on your decision, for final discussion. That will end whatever takes place, because that will assure the people who are employees Page 67 March 7, 2001 working in the Pelican Bay services division, they will know exactly where they stand and all -- we're hoping to quell all the rumors that, oh, I'm going to lose my insurance and all this is going to happen to me, because there's more misinformation floating around there and more rumors that -- and you know what happens, it scares people. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And, Jim, I just want to tell you, I really appreciate you acting the part of a diplomat in this. I know this has probably been one of your most biggest challenges that you have faced since you've come on this commission. I won't be there. I have to be down at Roberts Ranch, but I'll be listening to the outcome. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I know. You're in a cattle -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That's true. My only suggestion is, make sure the coffee is decaf. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Amen. CHAIRMAN CARTER: It will be. By the way, it will be televised live on 44 for Pelican Bay. Copies will be made of that meeting, so -- a videotape. Everyone is going to -- and copies of the ordinance are there. I mean, we are trying to do everything to try to get everyone to understand what it is and what it isn't, and let's see what happens from there. I would agree, it would have been a better process if it had been done up front, but, you know, processes can be flawed to a degree. We have learned a lot in Pelican Bay about this. I hope every community learns from this, is that there is a great deal of apathy until something is finally put into place and then everybody wants to come back and look at it. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Does that sound like anything that's happening with redevelopment in East Naples? Oh, yeah, it does. CHAIRMAN CARTER: See, it's not unique, and what we're trying -- one of the positive things out of this, people say, I've got to get more involved and understand what our taxing authority does, because most people don't know they have a taxing authority or they confuse that with the Foundation in Pelican Bay, to which everybody belongs when you live there and you get fees assessed accordingly, and that's a different group, and they don't understand the differences, and then there's a property Page 68 March 7, 2001 owners' association, a master association, and then there's individual community associations, and it's very interesting. And so all of you will get to learn from my pain in this issue, and at this point, jokingly, people say I'm a pariah in my own community. What I want to really exercise, Jim, as you said, what is the will of the people, and I've always been an advocate that those who tax you should be elected, and that has always been my underlying philosophy. I'd rather have somebody be elected to a position that taxes me than somebody appointed. It.s a higher degree of accountability in my judgment. That said, and putting that aside, I think it's the will of the people. It.s up to them. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Be careful, Jeff Lytel didn't care for that quote the last time around. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, I understand. I have a meeting with him tomorrow morning to try to clarify, and I.m going to give him all the information that I have. Whatever they decide to print is always their choice. I'm doing my best to try to objectively present here's where it is and what's happening, and we'll take it from there, but, again, it has to be the will of the people, and we.re trying to accomplish that. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That's what I say too. COMMISSIONER HENNING: With that, a motion to adjourn. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Oh, yes. With that, motion to adjourn. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Second. ***** There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 11 :50 a.m. RECEIVED MAR 2 2 2001 BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICT UNDER ITS CONTROL 9<cir~ _ JAMES CARTER, Ph.D, CHAIRPERSON &oara of County CommIsSioners Page 69 March 7, 2001 ATTE,ST: DWIGHTE. BROCK, CLERK .J5n: ~)~~ ;4'/r ~ ~ x:P. <Z Attak as'>tq . eha j n1an . s S illll"""'Oftl J . These minutes approved by the Board on as presented V or as corrected ..3~7 )0/ . TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING BY: Dawn Breehne Page 70