DSAC Minutes 03/07/2001 RMarch 7, 2001
TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE
DEVELOPMENT SERVICES ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Naples, Florida, March 7, 2001
LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Development Services
Advisory Committee, in and for the County of Collier, as the
governing board of such special district as has been created in
accordance to law and having conducted business herein, met
on this date at 3:36 p.m., in REGULAR SESSION, at Conference
Room "F', Horseshoe Drive, Naples, Florida, with the following
members present:
CHAIRMAN:
COUNTY STAFF PRESENT:
Thomas Masters, P.E.
Charles M. Abbott
Dalas D. Disney, AIA
Marco A. Espinar
Blair A. Foley, P.E.
Brian E. Jones
Dino J. Longo
Bryan P. Milk
C. Perry Peeples, Esq.
Michelle Arnold
John Dunnuck
Tom Kuck
Robert Mulhere
Susan Murray
Ron Nino
Ed Perico
Phil Tindall
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March 7, 2001
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Call the meeting to order.
Anybody have anything that we need to add to the agenda?
MR. DISNEY: I have--
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Yes, Dalas?
MR. DISNEY: -- a couple of items, if I may.
I'd suggest under New Business, two items, A and B.
First item, A, Architectural Design Standards Review; and
item B, Landscape Plants for Mitigation Review.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Was that landscape for mitigation?
MR. DISNEY: Landscape Plants for Mitigation.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay.
MR. DISNEY: Thank you.
MR. MULHERE: I would like it if -- with the committee's
approval, to move Item 3C up, make it 3A. I've got two meetings
going on now. I've got to be in the fringe committee meeting,
which starts at four, but that would give me time to get through
these issues first.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. With those, any change --
MR. FOLEY: I make a motion that we approved the agenda
as revised.
MR. DISNEY: Second.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. All in favor say aye.
(Unanimous vote of ayes.)
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Opposed?
Hearing none, we'll accept the agenda.
Move on to the minutes quickly. Anybody have any
comments on the minutes --
MR. FOLEY: Yeah, I do.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: -- from the last meeting?
MR. FOLEY: They're not numbered, the pages aren't
numbered, so -- okay, we start from the front with the cover
sheet dated February 7 -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, looking at the eighth
sheet at the bottom part of it, it identifies myself, Mr. Foley, as
saying, '1 think also you encouraged buildings and the like."
That wasn't my statement; it was one of the parties involved. I
don't know if it was Mr. Van Arsdale or Mr. Tindall or what. That
needs to be corrected, so I suggest a review of the original
documents that were recorded to check to see who made that
statement.
And also later on in the document, a few more pages in the
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back, I'm identified as Mr. Blair. I don't know, it's a -- maybe --
it's the third to the last sheet. I recommended that that be
revised, as well.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Perhaps we could list "Unknown
Member" instead of "Mr. Foley"?
MR. FOLEY: Yeah, that's fine.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Is that all right?
MR. FOLEY: Yeah, 'cause I don't -- those other people aren't
here to -- Mr. Van Arsdale isn't here to verify that he made that
statement.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay.
MR. FOLEY: That's fine.
THE REPORTER: You are Mr. Foley though.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Yes.
MR. FOLEY: Yes, I'm Mr. Foley.
THE REPORTER: I didn't do that.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Yes, I know.
THE REPORTER: But I might.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Yes, Mr. Disney.
MR. DISNEY: Third page from the back, there is a -- I think
it's just a misspelling on a word. Mr. Masters talks about
"community," and I think it should say "committee," and I'm not
sure what page number that would be, third page from the back.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. Yeah, I would add that we
might want to get these numbered, make it a lot easier to find
issues on the page numbering.
THE REPORTER: We don't print them.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Oh, okay.
THE REPORTER: It's this office that prints them. We just
send them out on an ASCII disk, and they take it from there.
MR. MULHERE: I would think that you would want page
numbers and line numbers on the draft format; then you can refer
to them, once they're finally approved, you can take those out,
the line numbers.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Yes, as a minimum, at least page
numbers. I think that's how they normally come. MR. MULHERE: Right.
THE REPORTER: We'll let them know.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: 'Cause it also -- I couldn't find my
note in here either, but one of the pages looked like it might have
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been out of order or even a page missing in it, so -- MR. DISNEY: Flipped over.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. Any other comments on the
minutes?
MR. DISNEY: Move approval.
MR. FOLEY: Second.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. All in favor?
(Unanimous vote of ayes.)
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Opposed? Motion carries.
Let's move on to the Technology Update.
MR. MULHERE.' Okay. We wanted to take a little bit of time,
and actually this probably will take maybe about a half an hour.
I'll say at the outset, one of the things I wanted to show
you-all was the results or the process of converting our paper
files into an electronic format. You'll recall the electronic
conversion surcharge that you-all agreed to that we collect that
would raise about 125,000 a year. We bought some hardware,
we hired some staff, and we're in that process. Problem is, that
software is only loaded on the hard drive of about 100 individual
computers in the building. It's not on our network, so I can't
access it from here. Didn't realize that.
We can either do one of two things. We could defer that to a
later meeting, 'cause you have a pretty good agenda here, or if
you want, we could take a break and we'll walk up to the records
room and take a look at what's going on.
UNIDENTIFIED MEMBER: Mr. Chairman, I make a motion
that we defer it.
MR. MULHERE: Okay. Then what I'll do is have Don load the
software onto this machine, and we'll show it to you at a --
maybe your next meeting.
What I have up there right now is the planning services Web
page.
By the way, a lot of the credit for a lot of the technical
advancements that we've been making in trying to enhance our
efficiency and also provide greater access information to you
and to the public goes to Don Blalock, who's not here, he's
working on the house committee; otherwise, I might not have so
many technical problems. But anyway Don is really the person
that I think gets the lion's share of credit. I tell him what I would
like to be done, and he makes it happen, so it works out pretty
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good.
You know, we have this Web site set up, and you can access
an awful lot of information; I'm not sure if you're all aware of
that. For example, recently we added -- well, first of all, you've
got your fee schedule on there, and you've got all of your
applications. Every single application of the planning
department is available, and you can download it into word
format and copy it and have it in your records, and as it changes,
you can take a look at those.
There's also all the contact persons in there and there's
access to the LDC, to, to recent LDC amendments. As soon as
they're approved by the board, we'll make them available to you
on here, because you know there's a lag time with the Municipal
Code Corporation, and that's a big problem. And we're working
with Municipal Code Corporation to renew our contract and to
eliminate that problem and have that happen faster, and part of
the way we can do that is by distributing it to them electronically
rather than a paper format. But we're working on that, but in the
meanwhile, we'll put the amendments up here.
One of the other things I wanted to show you that I don't
know if you-all know, Don put together this little search tool for
site plans. You can go in, and if you fill it in, basically any piece
of that information, I believe, or, you know, some piece of that
information -- I'll try it. Let's see. I don't know what we'll get
here. We might get a list if I can spell it right. And there's a list
of the SDPs in Pelican Bay. You can see the number and you can
then go more specifically to that SDP, find some information on
it.
But the ultimate goal here will be when we've completed the
conversion process of all of our SDPs -- we're doing all the new
ones, we're working on the backlog, when we get them all done,
there will be a link from here to those actual files with the
drawings and all of the correspondence, so you'll be able to look
at all the files that way ultimately.
One of the things we're talking about internally here is,
how can we expedite that process a little bit? We always knew
it would take a long time, but we're thinking if we prioritize
certain files such as the PUD documents and site plans and like
construction, final construction plans, we may want to try to
expedite that process, 'cause those I think are pretty important
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files that are getting used a lot. Maybe we wouldn't care so
much about -- worrying about the backlog of variance petitions
and things like that, to prioritize that.
Maybe look at actually dedicating some additional revenue
to that process so we can speed it up a little bit, perhaps hire
even an outside contractor to come in and assist us in that
conversion process.
Anyway, I just wanted to, you know, encourage you to use
the site, and I think there are some other sites within the division
that also have some good information, but I'm kind of proud of
ours.
And now I wanted to show you another couple of sites that
we have just -- this particular site here has just gone public in
the last week. It's the Neighborhood America. We have a similar
sort of a sister site that I'll show you. If you go to the county's
main Web page -- let's 9o back one more -- you'll see that it says,
access our new community character plan Web site.
I put in a request a week ago and maybe I can put another
request in to have that say, access our new rural assessment
and community character Web site.
Anyway, if you click on that -- it hasn't happened yet, but it
probably will -- that will bring you to a scratch page which you
can go to the community character or the rural assessment Web
page, and they are both project sites done by Neighborhood
America, and they're interactive; they offer public comment. I
wanted to show you this one a little bit.
This page here really just has some basic information on it,
just a couple of paragraphs about, about the assessment and
how we got there. Oh, come on. I wish I had a mouse on this
thing. You go to the -- this list here, and there are some
drop-down buckets and you have -- about the assessment, and
that is really a more in-depth description of the growth
management process and how we -- if a final order came to be.
Then it specifically goes to the rural fringe area, the eastern
lands area, and there are links in both of these. For example, the
other maps, you can go back to the final order, and then there's
also links to maps depicting the area down a little bit lower here,
right here, for example. You can click on the link, and it will
bring up a map.
Further on this, this bucket here -- whoops, what did I do?
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MR. DISNEY: Escape.
MR. MULHERE: I don't understand. There we go. There we
go.
You've got access to project contacts. Ours, you can e-mail
the staff directly if you click on any one of those four staff
members, but we also have the fringe committee, the eastern
lands committee, and the EAC committee, and also there's a
technical advisory group that was created to assist during this
process. And most of those folks also have a direct e-mail list
there, not all of them, but you can see John Folks is with the
department of Ag, and Ken Jardin, Johnny Limbaugh from DOT,
Dave Burke from the region, and so on and so forth. So people
can contact that technical advisory committee too if they wish
to, you know, make comments to them regarding some of this
process or ask them questions.
Here I am again. Let's see. The last thing on that
drop-down bucket is related to links. I'm not going to spend a lot
of time on that, but I just did want to show you that, for example,
you can access, oh, the Governor's Growth Management Study.
There's literally -- there's probably like 50 or 60 links on here for
various -- but there's the growth management study commission
link there. If you wanted to look at their final recommendations,
Florida Stewardship has some good stuff on there about
preserving rural lands, so there's a bunch of -- it's pretty easy
access to a lot of information.
Next bucket here is public notice. If we click on that -- you
can subscribe to the Web site; anybody can subscribe to the Web
site, and you can click on if you want to be notified when the
calendar is updated or any time the Web site is updated; and if
you do that, you will automatically receive an e-mail indicating
that this Web site has been updated, either strictly because of a
calendar change or we added a new document to it, and then it
gives you a link to the Web site so you don't have to think about
coming back to it. And people, I think, who are interested in this
process will, will appreciate that.
There's a multimedia gallery that contains all of the power
point presentations. You can put almost anything on here,
including video, but, for example, we have done a power point
presentation on urban sprawl to both committees and -- takes a
little while for some of these things to load, especially with this
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notebook, but it's pretty quick on my laptop. But anyway, the
whole slide presentation will come up, and there are several of
those on there, and, as you know, someone can just click on the
slide and enlarge it and bring it up, but I'm having a little trouble
with the old computer. There we go. That was the famous
smashing the urban boundary slide that Bruce Anderson is so
familiar with.
This -- the reason I'm showing this to you is, this is
something that, that we really want to utilize a little bit more of,
this type of facility. We're getting to some of the other stuff.
There's a calendar here that will provide for all of the meetings,
and if you click on -- this is the EAC meeting, for example, and it
provides a -- it connects you with map plats, provides you with
the map of the location, tells you where it is, and so we've got all
of those meetings listed on there.
The last thing that I wanted to show you was the public
comment portion, which I think is very significant. You can
participate in several ways.
One is, we can place surveys on this Web site, any-- really
any amount of surveys, and we've got one on there now that we
did that deals with -- it asks some general questions about the
Web site, and then it asks some more specific questions
regarding natural resource protection areas, preservation of
wetlands and habitat and listed species. And it asks quite a few
questions.
It's not a scientific survey, because there's really no way
you could verify duplicative responses or where someone's
responding from over the Internet, but it will be a good guide if
we get a sufficient amount of responses, and we'll use it only as
a guide; we certainly won't use it as, you know, the final say-so
on any issue, but we can put a lot of different issues out there.
What I wanted to show you is, once someone has responded
to this -- and this thing just went public last week, so we don't
have much action. We need to get this posted on a lot of
people's Web sites, which is -- the next thing I'm going to do is
write a letter to a whole bunch of organizations asking them to
post the link on their Web site.
But when you submit your choices, and we didn't go through
it in the interest of time, but you can then look and see how
people have responded to the survey, and it calculates the
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responses for you. And as you can see, we only have two people
that responded so far, but it's, I think, kind of interesting that it
calculates the responses for you.
And this is also a database, so you can -- there, there were
comment boxes under each question, and individuals can provide
comments, specific comments rather than just a yes or no,
where you can go in and group those comments by key words
and things like that.
So you remember the Army Corps ElS, they did a similar
process, and they had a whole list of all the commenters and
what their issues were and grouped them by issue.
Remember that this final assessment is supposed to -- the
hallmark of this is supposed to be public participation, and we
just felt that this was another easier way for the public to
participate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We recognize
that not everyone will do it this way, but I think a lot of people
will.
The last things is public comment. You can comment
specifically by e-mail on any of these matters.
What we -- and there's a couple of different ways you can do
that, but one of the things we said here was, look, if you're going
to comment by e-mail, well, we'll use that in our determination;
but if you really want your comment to be a specific part of the
record, you still have to send it in writing and -- or e-mail, but you
have to provide us with your name, your address, and all of those
kinds of things. Just an e-mail from Mickey Mouse, you know,
sure, we'll take a look at it, but it may not be an official part of
the record. And I did want to go to the public comment section
to show you how that works if I can see where that is.
Okay. Click here to simply browse. We're just going to
browse.
Here you can, you can post questions that the public can
create a discourse on. They can -- this is a Web board; it's
available, you know, 24 hours a day, and people can read this
question -- if I can get down to it -- and then respond by clicking
Reply, and then you can respond to those replies and you can
create sort of an ongoing discourse.
In the case of this one, should the county have a green
space acquisition program to protect and preserve
environmentally sensitive lands? Should there be an urban area
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component to acquire green space that can easily be used by the
majority of citizens? Just general questions just intended to
start to get some response, see where we go, we can do other
things to that. So that's this Web site.
The community character Web site is very similar, and I
should let you know we're thinking about a third Web site that
would utilize much of this, but not all of it. We're thinking about
a Web site that would house all site plans and development
petition applications for access by the public; say, within two
weeks of it being received, we would post that. Then we would
post everything else along the process. So if it was an EAC
report, a CCBC report, an executive summary to the board, all of
those would be posted almost immediately once they receive a
final signature of approval.
The point is, we hear from the public a lot that, you know,
they don't find out about these things or they don't have easy
access to the information early enough in the process, so this
will provide them with, you know, full-time access as early as we
can possibly make it available to them, and it's consistent with
the recommendations of the Governor's Growth Management
Study Commission related to enhancing public access to
information and involvement in the process.
So that's the next step, and, you know, look, frankly, people
that are in a development review process that, that are good at
what they do are notifying people of what's going on anyway, so
we're really not putting an additional burden on them in that
process, the ones that are good at what they do.
Okay. I wanted Susan to come up and show you guys just
real briefly -- I don't know if everybody knows Susan Murray.
Does everybody know Susan Murray? She's the chief planner in
current planning. She's going to show you the Perconti
development review module that we are, what, about three
months into now, maybe less?
MS. MURRAY: Less.
MR. MULHERE: Less?
MS. MURRAY: Yeah.
MR. MULHERE: So it's going to be a little painful for a few
more months, but we, we trust that in the final outcome -- it took
about a year in code enforcement and about the same in building
before every -- before all the bugs were worked out. I'm not sure
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they all are.
MS. MURRAY: Two years.
MR. MULHERE: Two years? Okay.
But ultimately we will recognize significantly enhanced
efficiency. As you can see from some of those tabs up there,
addressings, code enforcement, permitting, development review,
and cash management, everything is linked -- everything will be
linked once this is populated with data, and we will -- the next
step, we'll make this available to you and the public to be able to
access it, so you'll be able to monitor your project through, you'll
be able to look at a project and see whether the code
enforcement case is pending on it, and we'll be able to do that.
Right now it takes, it takes several days just to respond to a
simple zoning letter to find out what's happening on it, because
you have to go to a lot of locations physically to collect that
information and then respond to the bank or the lawyer or the
developer or the property owner who's asking the question.
This will probably, we think, reduce that time down to
maybe an hour once the data has been populated. It will take
some time to get the data populated. Go ahead, Susan.
MS. MURRAY: Well, you just told them everything I was
going to say. What am I going to do now? (Laughter)
MR. MULHERE: You're going to show them how it works.
MS. MURRAY: For those of you that are involved in
submitting the land use applications, site development plans,
plats, anything for review, this is the electronic version of what
once was the big paper trail that we have had for many years in
Collier County Government; so this is basically an electronic
review process for those types of petitions, and we've identified,
in case you didn't know, 74 different types of processes that we
have in-house that are mandated by our code, anywhere from
SDPs to PUD rezoning the plats, so all of that is now set up in an
electronic format so that we can record everything in the
computer.
And as Bob said, eventually, the idea is to get this on-line so
that the public can actually access this too and find out where
we are in the review process, what the reviewer's comments are,
what -- if anybody has put something on hold and why, that sort
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of thing.
You can see a due date, when the applicable was actually
submitted and accepted, and then from all that information, we'll
be able to run monthly reports to see exactly what departments
are meeting our goals for our review times. All the review times
are set up in a maintenance table, so we have very specific
goals.
If you look at this screen, one of the nice things is, at the
bottom you'll see a pop-up menu, and when the user logs on
every morning, the pop-up screen tells them what reviews are
due that day and any other reviews that might be late, as well.
So every day there's a reminder for what reviews are due
that day, so -- let me see if I can use this thing here.
And what I want to show you now is basically how this
system works from -- there we go -- from an internal perspective,
and this probably isn't going to be real exiting, because it's
mostly an internal organization, but I'll give you an idea of what
you might be looking at sometime in the future with respect to
staff reviews.
And what we're looking at here is basically, this is our site
development plan, and it's currently in the review stage, which
means that basically the application was submitted. It was
deemed sufficient, the correct fees were paid, and so it was
entered into the computer, and that's when the time clock starts
ticking.
Once that's happened, it then advances to the review stage
where we are now; and as you can see, all these are all the
departments that are required to review this and the current
status of their review.
For example, environment health here has completed their
review which was due on the 12th of March, and it was
completed on the 28th of February.
You can see on the next line, water management has yet to
complete their review, and none of the information is filled in.
If you look down here at fire, they've conducted their review,
and the current status of that is reject, and that basically means
there are some issues or problems that will necessitate revisions
in site plans. Surprise, surprise.
MR. MULHERE.' Surprise, surprise. By the way, that
happened today. Who's was that SDP?
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MS. MURRAY: Let me see if I can open up -. well, fire
probably isn't the best one to look at.
MR. DISNEY: Oh, no, look at fire.
MS. MURRAY: Well, what I want to show you is kind of a
mechanism we're using, because I've gotten a lot of interest on
this from a lot of engineering and planning firms.
This is the -- a checklist, and basically we've set up over 350
checklists in the system, and these are basically what I would
call a reiteration of the -- or a summary of the code requirements
when you're reviewing this type of petition, and so this is what
the staff is required to look at, every item on there, and they are
required to check it off whether or not it meets that section of
the code or whether or not a certain process was followed.
And a checkmark basically means yes. If it's lined out, it
means it's not applicable, et cetera, et cetera. And then we have
the ability to type in some detailed comments in a remarks
screen right there, so the interest -- the checklists I've generated
are basically from these firms that are interested in receiving
copies of our checklists so that when they're submitting plans,
they can insure that they are -- they meet the code requirements
from this checklist standpoint.
So we've had a lot of requests for copies of our checklist.
Once these checklists are complete, the system has the
ability to automatically generate a letter, and that -- the system
will pull all the negative comments into a letter, and the letter
will be faxed to the applicant and the system will store a copy of
the letter so we'll have a record of the reviews and all the
remarks.
MR. MULHERE: I think you can see that the challenge right
now is, it's a new process, and it's a little bit painful for all of us,
'cause we're all used to doing things in a little bit of a different
way. Frankly, we're all used to sort of finding the person that
can make something happen for us and asking him to do it.
This is a system that's going to work a little bit differently.
Everyone's going to follow this system, and once we all get used
to following this system, it will be a little less painful for all of us.
It will be much more efficient in the long run.
MS. MURRAY: I think the nice thing about this is --
MR. MULHERE.. And I'll follow it too in six weeks.
MS. MURRAY: -- is you're going to be able to -- we're going
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March 7, 2001
to be able to track exactly -- for example, if certain departments
are chronically late in their reviews, we're going to be able to
track that relatively easily by running a monthly report, and then
we start asking ourselves, well, why is that the case? You know,
is it due to staffing level's workload? Does the person just need
some more training? I mean, there's, you know, there's a lot of
questions that could come about out of that.
So another thing I want to show you is, on here I went to
what's called the project screen. And over the next couple of
years, we're going to actually be building this information into
the project, and eventually what we'll have the ability to do is,
this module will be able to tie into the permitting module, as
well.
So, for example, on PUDs where you have a set number of
dwelling units, a PUD allowed the maximum of 500 dwelling
units, the system will actually be able to debit from the -- every
time a building permit is pulled, will actually debit from the
development review module; and we'll be able to track, so when
you reach that 499th of 500 dwelling units, that's it.
So from a records maintenance perspective' as well, it's
going to be a lot more efficient and a lot more accurate, I think,
reducing the margin for error and providing you-all with
information about -- and we'll have up-to-date information on the
status of certain projects, as well, so that's another benefit.
MR. MULHERE: I just wanted to add, also on the
development commitments that, that .- MS. MURRAY: Correct.
MR. MULHERE: .- you know, maybe we didn't have the direct
responsibility for, for insuring that they happened -- it could be a
transportation stipulation or a storm water management. The
way we did it in the past is for -- generally for PUD monitoring, if
you made a commitment to do some storm water management
work when John Boldt contacted you and said he wanted that to
happen and you went out and did it, we might not be aware of
that. When we found out was on the anniversary of the PUD
when you submitted a PUD monitor report, or I can say, better
yet, you're waiting for a final report to do that.
And this system will generate an automatic report that will
say, your PUD monitor report is due; here is the deficiency. And
we'll send it out and we can generate an automatic letter for
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that.
So we think we'll do a better job of tracking development
commitments, which is probably better for both of us, because
it's something that -- you know, you can easily -- someone can
easily lose site of or track of, and we certainly don't want to do
that, so I think that's another benefit of the system.
MS. MURRAY: The module also has a concurrency function
built in, as well, with respect to level of service for roads and
utilities, and I would bet that eventually that will be built and we
will be using the checkbook mechanism sometime in the future,
as well.
MR. MULHERE: You know, there have been discussions at
the transportation workshop of doing something like that.
There's been no policy decision, but, but, you know, the idea of --
at the transportation workshop I think Don Wolfe indicated that
they wanted and got a blessing from the board to require a, a
better traffic impact review, one that really does take in
consideration of all approvals and pending approvals and things
like that.
So, yeah, I think we're moving towards .- even though we
might continue to use an annual review on a project-by-project
basis, we're going to be looking at this stuff, so if, you know, if
we can build a good database, then it will be helpful for both of
us to use that date -- use that database.
MS. MURRAY: So basically where we are now is, we've just
started going live with this on January 16. As you can see, a lot
of fields for the information is empty. We're going to set a plan in
place to build the database over the next couple of years. We
are having, I would call it, a lot of bugs in the system; and if
you've received any of our sufficiency letters to date, you'll see
that there's just a lot of, a lot of tweaking and a lot of building of
the system that still has yet to come, so we ask you to be
patient, but it is, for the most part, functional.
And you'll probably also note the addressing checklist
requirement, those of you that submit site plans and whatnot,
and basically, all of the information in here is tied to what's
called an address record. It's not necessarily a physical address,
but it -- which -- but the address record is tied to a legal
description. And if anybody has any questions about that, that --
that seems to be running fairly well. I think people have gotten
Page 15
March 7, 2001
the hang of faxing the information in to Peggy up in addressing
prior to their submittal or prior to their having a pre-ap on the
project.
And I haven't run any -- across any problems in that. That's
really critical to getting your project into the system, is, having
that address, addressing record checklist filled out and your
application being sufficient, as well.
MR. MULHERE: I just have one thing.
Susan really was the team leader for this project, must have
been working -- well, I started working on this thing about seven
or eight years ago. We never -- then we finally got to -- we went
to code enforcement, development -- permitting, and some
contractors' licensing, and finally the development review
module. But on the development review module, what, about a
year and a half?
MS. MURRAY: Just about a year and three months, a little
less than a year and a half.
MR. MULHERE: So it's been a major project, and Susan has
really dedicated a lot of time, and others, too. She's just sort of
the team leader, but there's five or six other staff members in on
it too, and they really just grabbed the ball and ran with it.
And obviously we still have a lot more work to do, but I
think, you know, we're getting towards a better automated
system here.
MS. MURRAY: Any questions or anything that I can --
MR. DUNNUCK: Secondly, I wanted to offer, I asked Bob to
put this on the agenda to show you all a little bit about what your
money pays for, you know, as far as this system goes and, and to
show you that we're moving into more of a technology age and
looking to be a little bit more efficient.
Bob mentioned or Susan mentioned that we have some 74
processors that we deal with in the planning section, and,
frankly, that has been an area -- since I've been over here, there's
been a little bit of concern as far as the ability to keep track of
all that going on, and this is one of those mechanisms that's
going to allow us to track that much better, and from an auditing
standpoint and from a business efficiency standpoint, I'm looking
forward to.
The other side of it, too, is, we can build in the level of
service standards that you want. You know, we're going to be
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March 7, 200t
bringing back in next month or the month after the level of
service standards of where you-all want to be.
You know, a couple of months ago we came and asked for
additional positions, but the proof is in the pudding, is, we have
to come back and say, okay, you're going to get this level of
service for getting those positions, and this will allow us to make
sure that from an internal standpoint we are delivering to you-all.
MR. FOLEY: I have a question.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Yes.
MR. FOLEY: On the new process that you have, Susan, with
your -- on your checklists that come in from addressing, you
know, when you're faxing information to addressing and they get,
they get that, they approve it, and we include that in our package
-- MS. MURRAY: Yes.
MR. FOLEY: -- what necessitates an incomplete package
where, where it won't be locked into the system and distributed
to the different staff members? MS. MURRAY: Well--
MR. MULHERE: I can answer that.
MS. MURRAY: What's that?
MR. MULHERE: I can answer that.
MS. MURRAY: Go ahead.
MR. MULHERE: Well, first of all, you've got to get the
addressing, because that's a key piece of informational data.
This is an informational database, and what it allows us to, to go
out electronically and pull out information is that key piece of
information which is the address record.
It's not a folio number necessarily, because ultimately it will
connect to the folio number, but folio numbers change as the
properties split, so that -- that's one thing. You've got to have
that in order for it to be processed, so that's the first point.
You've got to have that address form filled out and completed.
Second, there is an actual review -- we have right now one
dedicated person, Cheryl Long, and we probably will have two
dedicated people with some reassignments, 'cause we're going
to have somebody in Tom's shop. As you all know, Sherry is, at
the very least, overworked. She's very good at what she does, so
we're looking at supplementing her with another person.
Those two dedicated people, meaning Cheryl or someone
taking Cheryl's -- she's doing it now, that's one position, and one
Page 17
March 7, 2001
in Tom's shop -- their ]ob will be to review the package generally
for sufficiency using a checklist. They will not be reviewing it for
quality, so -- is there an ElS in there? Is one required? Yes? Is
there any ElS? Yes. Okay.
It won't be reviewed for the quality of the information until it
gets to the reviewer; it will be distributed. So there is a physical
process using checklists to go through that -- whatever that
package is, you're going to be followed by two people.
Before we waste the time of putting that data into the
system, we want to make sure it's a complete package; then
once it's complete, the data will be put into the system and the
case distributed.
MR. FOLEY: What kind of time frame are you talking about?
Seems like it's a little bit of a different level, because you're
checking it to make sure you've got the right amount of money,
the right number of copies, that kind of thing; but there's no
mechanism obviously built into the system to spit out a letter
like a review letter like you're going towards with this document,
so it's going to be actually a physical review by different people
in-house.
Does that add any time frame to the review process?
MS. MURRAY: No, not really.
MR. MULHERE: I don't think so.
MS. MURRAY: We didn't design it that way.
Actually, the process -- or the system does have the ability
to draft an insufficiency letter based on your submittal. MR. FOLEY: Oh, okay. Okay, yeah.
MR. MULHERE.' I don't, you know, I don't think it's any
longer. What -- we always had about a three-day time frame --
MR. FOLEY: Sure. Right.
MR. MULHERE: -- anyway, that it could sit on Sherry's desk.
MR. FOLEY: Sure.
MR. MULHERE: So I think it's three to five now, but we've
bought time elsewhere in the process, so in the long run,
actually, I think once we get this thing really running well -- and
it will take some time; we feel probably at least another six
months.
MS. MURRAY: Oh, at least, yeah.
MR. MULHERE: We can give you --
MR. FOLEY: Sure. I was just curious to see what we could
Page 18
March 7, 2001
do to try to make sure that I get past that first step and get into
the reviews, 'cause obviously there will be some comments from
the staff.
MR. MULHERE: Yeah, of course. Well, one thing we know
we have to do, we do have to supplement Cheryl. We, we know
we need another person assisting with that process -- MR. FOLEY: Okay.
MR. MULHERE: -- procedure.
MS. MURRAY: I think what we'd like to do too, Blair, is have
two designated people who strictly review for sufficiency. MR. FOLEY: Right.
MS. MURRAY: The problem you get is, when you get ten
different people reviewing for sufficiency, you get ten different
interpretations of sufficiency, even though you may have an
application with a checklist that spells out your requirements.
I think if we get two people working on sufficiency review, I
think you're going to get a lot more consistency. They're going
to have a lot in their responses; they're going to have a very-- a
set time frame, as we've already discussed, you know, the
three-to-five-day window, and that is really going to be the focus
of their responsibility.
MR. MULHERE: That, and the data entry, the initial data
entry, once they've deemed it to be sufficient, you know, the
data entry part of it, making it an official project by putting it into
the system and distributing it.
The second part of it, as you know right now, we've talked
about this before in here, but Sherry is really like the key contact
for the whole world out there as to what's going on. MR. FOLEY: Yeah, I know.
MR. MULHERE: There's always a line of people. Well, we
need to, we need to make that process easier, and we can do
that with a few dedicated -- shift that burden a little bit, so who
you-all can contact, in other words -- ultimately we don't want
you to have to contact anybody; we want you to be able to go
into the system and look for yourself.
MS. MURRAY: One of the nice things about this is, anybody
can pull up these reviews on the system, anybody, not just
Sherry Long anymore, and they can see what the status is. They
can go to the checklist; they can read the remarks; they can tell
you over the phone.
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March 7, 200t
Eventually, when it's on-line, you could do that yourself. You
can get kind of a heads-up as to what some of the problems
might be.
For example, with utilities, I hear that there's always a long
list of problems with utilities and their review, and that often
they try to fax those comments to you ahead of time before
they're even officially faxed by Sherry so that you can get a
heads-up on what you need to change, and you'll actually be able
to do that yourself.
MR. FOLEY: Yeah, I, I just wanted to make a statement.
The addressings checklist is really moving along well. I've had
to do it on a few occasions, and they're real good about getting
back to you within three days maximum.
MR. MULHERE: In the beginning it was tough, but it's
getting a lot better now, I think.
MR. FOLEY: And I know this whole process will get better
as time goes on, but I just wanted some ideas about how you can
handle that initial -- 'cause I'm, I'm just concerned about
something coming in and not getting distributed. Whatever I can
do as a consultant to identify what are you looking for, we can
get it at least out to the different reviewers, and the time clock
can start, information will be put in there.
MR. MULHERE: I think we answered your question from our
perspective.
From your -- from the perspective of you-all, just I mean
doing a good job to make sure that that application is complete,
and so there's two ways: One is the addressing; the other thing
is those pre-ap notes, and what's identified and what's not. MR. FOLEY: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
MR. MULHERE: There was no traffic impact statement
required. Well, those pre-ap notes, you have to really .- the
pre-ap meeting takes a more critical role now, as it should.
We, we all were a little bit lax, and what happened is, we all
got used to the system here. We'd go in there and shoot the
breeze on a five-minute pre-ap meeting and maybe not really
address some of the issues that needed to be addressed, and
then they came out in the review process.
Well, we'd rather identify them up front, and it means a little
more responsibility on all of our parts to look at the issues in the
pre-ap meeting, and I think we all agree, for your clients, in the
Page 20
March 7, 2001
long run, that's going to be better. MR. FOLEY: Thank you.
MS. MURRAY: Anything else? We're done. Thanks.
MR. MULHERE: Thank you. We've got to leave.
MR. DISNEY: Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Thank you.
MR. MULHERE: Sorry to take so much time, but we thought
you'd find it kind of interesting anyway.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. Our next item is the Summary
of Ordinance Amendments.
Do you have any comments on that, John?
MR. DUNNUCK.' Okay. I don't know if there's any questions.
One of the things as far as summary goes, if you have any
questions on any one of these issues, I don't think there's really
much to report, but I did want to talk a little bit about -- I know
one of our key issues today is, we have Phil Tindall here to talk
about the impact of the ordinance, and maybe if I could slide it
into this part of the agenda, we're planning on presenting that at
the March meeting, March 13, and this will probably be a good
opportunity to finalize the ordinance, and Phil can go over some
of the highlights of where we need to go or where we're planning
on heading and get some recommendations from the Department
of Services Advisory Committee.
I know Mr. Anderson had some recommendations.
Unfortunately, he had to leave to go to the rural fringe meeting,
and I will relay a little bit of his comments on it, but~ Phil --
MR. TINDALL.' As you may remember from the last meeting,
we gave a slide presentation on the main issues surrounding our
consolidated impact fees ordinance, and we got a pretty positive
response from this group.
One thing, as John was saying, we would like to solicit a
recommendation to the board, and we're scheduled to go to the
board with a public hearing for adoption of this consolidated
ordinance on next Tuesday, March 13.
And what I've put in front of you today we worked on last
week just making all of the final editorial changes and such on
the ordinance, so this is your final document subject to maybe a
few minor typographical-type things and also the executive
summary that the board will have in front of them.
What we've summarized in the executive summary is the
Page 2t
March 7, 2001
main issues, which pretty much mirrors what we presented in
the slide presentation at your last meeting.
So that's kind of it in a nutshell. We were just wondering if
you had any remaining questions or issues or anything like that
that you'd like to bring up and see if the committee would be
willing to make a recommendation.
MR. LONGO.' Were there any increases in impact fees at all?
MR. DUNNUCK: None. None of the rates are being affected.
This is all administrative.
I do want to point a couple things to you-all that will affect
the development community that was part of this consolidation,
and one of them was brought to light at the last time when we
had Don Wolfe here, that what's being proposed by the
transportation division is that there's a $2 million cap on
developer contributions, and what they're saying is, he's creating
a five-year plan, Norman Feder is creating a five-year plan, and
he's saying, when you get those contributions that get outside of
that five-year plan, he doesn't want to have to deal with them.
He doesn't want to be giving out money, you know, through
contribution agreements that are going to affect his ability to pay
for that five-year plan.
And so he said, I want to do a $2 million cap so that in
essence I can determine if -- maybe, yes, if there is that gem
project that comes in that I want to be able to fund within that
five years or we may want to accelerate through contributions or
we feel that it's definitely going to be a cost benefit to the
county, I'll give $2 million annually maximum to that type of
thing; otherwise, he wants to get out of this developer
contribution agreement business for the, for the most part of --
It's, it's money that we can't count on. We don't know when
the developer is going to come in and want to collect on it, and it
makes it very difficult from an accounting perspective,
understanding that we have about a $300 million shortfall in
transportation road projects currently over the next, you know,
five years, that we need to come up with the funding sources.
And this is one way that he wanted to mitigate how we're doing
business at the time that will affect development coming in.
Another point to make is that negotiating, you know,
negotiating deals within that five-year plan that what we'll do is,
we'll act similar to how the state acts when a developer wants
Page 22
March 7, 2001
to come in and, and move forward with the development and
there's a road project out there that would benefit them directly
within that five-year plan if they accelerated the project, what
we're proposing is that, as part of the agreements that are set
up, that they can go ahead, and they would have to pay for the
road improvement.
We would reimburse the developer at the time that it falls
within our five-year plan so that it's similar to how we're doing
our traffic signal study here with the county where the state
said, we don't plan on doing this till 2004. The county says, well,
we want to do it in 2001.
So they said, okay, you go ahead and pay for it in 2001; we'll
pay you back those funds in 2004 when actually it falls within our
plan.
It's getting out of this mode of kind of, you know, as
development comes in, you know, we're building roads, and,
frankly, over the last couple years, admittedly, we haven't done
as good a ]ob as we could, and -- in getting us into more of this
long-term planning and understanding that we have to commit to
the long-term plan in order to get the roads that ultimately will
benefit the development community.
MR. JONES: Mr. Chairman?
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Yes.
MR. JONES: John, again, I still have a question on the fire
impact fees schedule.
MR. DUNNUCK: Uh-huh.
MR. JONES: Page A-7, under the commercial category, you
stated to Mr. Longo that there's been no increases or changes.
MR. TINDALL.. Right. I want to -. let me explain what you're
looking at in front of you.
MR. JONES: Please do.
MR. TINDALL.. The fire impact fees that are affected by this
ordinance are only the Ochopee and Isle of Capri fire districts.
Those are the dependent fire districts under the county's
jurisdiction. This ordinance has no impact on the various
independent fire districts that, that assess impact fees in the
county.
Now, we collect those moneys and we forward them to the
various -- to those districts such as North Naples Fire District,
Golden Gate Fire District, et cetera.
Page 23
March 7, 2001
Now, they charge impact fees at different rates than our two
dependent fire districts.
MR. JONES: Double.
MR. TINDALL: Right. It's quite a bit more, so what I'm
saying here is, what you see in front of you, if billed an Ochopee
or Isle of Capri fire district, those are the impact fee rates that
you would pay.
If you billed outside of those districts, those are separate
government entities that Collier County has no jurisdiction over,
and we don't have any say-so regarding their rates. We only have
in our local agreements with them for which, for which our
participation is to collect the fees and forward them and collect
a small administrative cost. Yes, sir?.
MR. LONGO: Then we should identify those fees as to those
districts.
MR. TINDALL: Well, they're identified in our fee schedules
that we hand out in the main lobby, and if anyone, you know, has
a question about their impact fees on any building permit --
MR. LONGO: This is part of your, your new consolidated
impact fee ordinance, and it doesn't identify Ochopee and the
other --
MR.
MR.
MR.
MR.
MR.
MR.
TINDALL: It does actually.
LONGO: It does?
TINDALL: Yes.
LONGO: Within the ordinance itself?
TINDALL: It's in the ordinance, yes.
LONGO: Okay.
MR. TINDALL: If you look on page 2, for example, where it's,
it's in a number of different places where -- in section 74-100
where it talks about repeal of ordinances, basically the
ordinance is being replaced by this one.
At the bottom of that paragraph, you'll see Collier County
Ordinance 98-30, which is Isle of Capri and Ochopee Fire Impact
Fee Ordinance.
MR. LONGO: Okay.
MR. TINDALL: And you'll see it in a number of other different
places. Let me find some -- let's see. Fire. On section 74-309,
you'll see in there where it explains that these are the provisions
that apply to the -- especially under paragraph B2 where these
Page 24
March 7, 2001
are provisions that apply to the Isle of Capri and Ochopee Fire
Districts.
MR. LONGO.' All right. Thank you.
MR. TINDALL: And it also even has the district boundaries
starting on page 68, so -- all right?
MR. LONGO: Thank you.
MR. TINDALL.' Sure.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Phil, did you get a copy of this note
from Bruce Anderson?
MR. TINDALL: Yes, I have it here, and it --
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: And have any of those been
addressed already or --
MR. TINDALL.' We have started working on a written
response. I could -- I have basically a draft, but we're not quite
finished. I can probably address some of these again, the
specific ones that you would like that --
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Yeah, just for the rest of the
members, 'cause Bruce wasn't available; he's in a rural fringe
meeting.
MR. TINDALL.' Okay.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: He just dropped this off on me now.
I'm not familiar with it at all, so, Phil, will you address some of
the issues that --
MR. TINDALL: Sure.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: -- that Bruce has brought up, just so
that --
MR. TINDALL: Do you want me to just start with the first
one and go through? Like, for example, on -. talks about page 4,
subsection F there on page 4, the comment is, the imposition of
the impact fee is to provide a source of revenue to fund the
construction or improvement of public facilities necessitated by
growth.
His comment is, should growth be listed in defined terms?
We honestly don't feel that it needs to be. It's kind of a
generally understood term that it has to do with new
construction in the community, whether it be either commercial
or residential. You know, we don't feel like that's something
that's going to cause any confusion, so, so that's basically our
answer for that one. We don't see a compelling reason to add
one, the definition for the term "growth."
Page 25
March 7, 2001
Just going on, section 74-105, starting on -- which is on page
5, I believe it is. I'm kind of following the ordinance as I go here.
Okay. I'm sorry. I've got page 4 actually, 74-105, purpose,
comment. Says here, see sentence number 3. He's
recommending a recommendation where we add on after the --
let's see -- the term, Florida statutes, which is right about -- see
item 3 in about one third of the way down, to implement and be
consistent with? Adding some language, and at the option of the
county, enter into a development agreement as provided in the
Florida Local Government Development Agreement Act.
County attorney's response to that is that we don't wish to
do that because we feel that that statute sets forth provisions
that vast restrict and frees land use rules, regulations, and
policies and other developmental rights and could be detrimental
to the county's ability to adequately control the development
process.
So we feel we don't really necessarily want to adopt that
particular statute as being incorporated within our ordinance.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: I just realized he's got 28 similar
such items, and do we want to go through these item by item, or
-- MR. DUNNUCK: Why don't you just do the highlights --
MR. TINDALL: Sure.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: -- or suffice it to say that Bruce's
comment was --
MR. TINDALL: Have any of you had a chance to review --
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Bruce's basic comment was that he
didn't think it was quite ready and that he was prepared to vote
against it.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Are you going to change anything
as a result of the comments?
MR. TINDALL: Well, at some -- let's see. There are a number
of typographical errors that we're certainly planning on changing.
Let's see.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: And these are things that could be
picked up at the board level?
MR. DUNNUCK-- Probably what's going to happen from my
perspective is, conceptually, we're going to be moving ahead
with all these ideas here. I think most of Bruce's things had to
do with more technical level and definitions.
We will probably, if there's a concern that the board feel
Page 26
March 7, 2001
comfortable, as I said, we're preparing our response to Bruce on
this. You know, every ordinance is imperfect at some stage, but
we will bring it to the board, and that's probably where some of
those technical items will be addressed and then adopted by the
board as amended.
MR. TINDALL: I will tell you that generally, I've spoken with
the county attorney's staff, and they don't feel like any of these
are of sufficient level of deficiency, you know, to -- that we would
recommend delaying implementation of the ordinance, adoption
of the ordinance, that these are things that we could perhaps
deal with at a later date, but they're certainly not in any way
detrimental to the county's interest.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Does anybody else have any
questions or comments about the state of the --
MR. FOLEY: Did everybody get a copy of this?
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Just when we walked in.
MR. TINDALL: We have provided the committee with drafts,
previous drafts. In fact, a couple months ago we had your land
use subcommittee review, the current draft at the time, and got
inputs back from the subcommittee and incorporated those.
MR. FOLEY: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Go ahead.
MR. DISNEY: I guess just as a comment, not having
reviewed this, I, I couldn't put myself in a position to make a
recommendation upon it without having read it. And I see in the
executive summary that it's .- I think that that has been
anticipated, that the -- I'm trying to find it here; bear with me. As
of the date of preparation of this executive summary, DSAC has
not made a formal recommendation, but staff will solicit it at the
March 7 meeting.
Well, that's this meeting. If we, if we ask -- if you ask for a
recommendation on the committee, I'm going to have to vote no,
that I can't recommend it, because I haven't read it.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Any other comments?
Does anybody have the feeling that we're ready to
recommend forwarding it, or are we in a position -- would you like
to put that in the form of a motion, Dalas?
MR. PEEPLES: This ordinance has been before our land
development code subcommittee, and I know we have people
here who were on that subcommittee. What was the result of
Page 27
March 7, 2001
the review? Do you recall?
MR. TINDALL: We had very few comments, I would say just
a handful, and we incorporated those.
For example, if you look at the executive summary, item 3B
on page 2, one the recommendations, we initially were going to
make that more restrictive where the time period after which we
would not consider the impact fees for, for vacant property to be
vested would be just a year, and then, and then also we had
changed it to two years, and it was brought up at the last
meeting during the presentation and it was still felt by the
members providing comments that that was too restrictive, so
we've changed it to seven years based upon, you know, input
from the committee, and that seven years is tied to the fact that
when the county collects impact fees, we're required to spend
those funds by the end of the fiscal year following the sixth
anniversary of receipt. We have to actually spend those funds on
new construction or refund the money, so, so were tying it to
that requirement.
MR. PEEPLES: Just so I understand though, the comments
that came out of subcommittee were very minimal. MR. TINDALL.. They were.
MR. PEEPLES: And most of the comments that have been
made by this committee are contained in Bruce Anderson's
memo made by Bruce; is that correct?
MR. TINDALL: I would say those are more extensive than
the others that we received previously, yes. MR. PEEPLES: Okay.
MR. DUNNUCK: My assessment is that Bruce's are of a
technical nature, one that you may see, you know, from an
attorney point of view looking at definitions and things along
those lines.
Conceptually, from what issues we had talked about at the
last meeting, we have not changed a thing, and -- you know, from
that consideration.
I understand that you haven't had a chance to read through
the entire ordinance, but conceptually we have not changed
anything from what we were preparing previously to what we
have before you today.
MR. DISNEY: Tom, let me expand upon my comment.
It well may be that everything in here is just fine. I don't
Page 28
March 7, 2001
know that, not having received it before today. I'd just like to
have an opportunity myself to read through this and assure
myself that it is the way that we all understand it was supposed
to be.
MR. ABBOTT: As a long-term member of this committee --
and Dalas can remember this -- we would work like hell for days
drafting something. It would come back, you know, changed
very differently from what we sent to the secretary, so Dalas's
point is well made. I'd like to read it thoroughly too.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Just for clarification, we need -- it's
going to the board for approval .- MR. TINDALL: Yes.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: -- at this next meeting?
MR. TINDALL: Yes.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: So, I mean, we're going to have to
put something on the record as not having reviewed it or not
being able to make a recommendation or -- opposed or in favor of
it.
MR. DISNEY: Put it on the table and let it vote up or down.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: So we need to come -- have
something come out of this.
MR. ABBOTT: Except the subcommittee addressed several
things at different times that we felt we were poorly served, as
well, and we got all spanked for it, and so a no recommendation
is better than voting on something we haven't read.
MR. TINDALL: I would request that if you're going to make a
decision today and if you're not going to request or recommend
that the board adopt the ordinance, that you at least make a --
just a no -- nonrecommendation then.
MR. PEEPLES: Yeah, I agree. I don't think -. you know,
again, if we're talking about people who aren't more familiar, I
don't think you can decide that you're going to recommend
approval or recommend disapproval. I think it's more a matter
of you don't have a recommendation on approval or disapproval
as of today.
MR. DISNEY: That's right.
MR. PEEPLES: And I'll make a motion that we send this to
the board without making a recommendation for either approval
or for disapproval based on the fact that we just haven't had the
opportunity to review it in enough detail, or the changes.
Page 29
March 7, 2001
MR. DISNEY: Right. I second that motion.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: And as a comment, I'm inclined to
agree. We read through it the first time, and as long as
something else didn't slip in or out or just get misrepresented, I
think that seems like a reasonable approach. Any other comments?
Call it to the vote. All in favor.
(Unanimous vote of ayes.)
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: All opposed?
The motion is unanimous.
MR. TINDALL: I'm going to leave some additional copies
here in case anyone else needs some.
MR. PEEPLES.' John, this is going before the Board of
County Commissioners Tuesday -- MR. DUNNUCK: Next week.
MR. PEEPLES: Tuesday of next week?
MR. DUNNUCK: Uh-huh.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: So if we read through it, if we have
some comments, should we -- I mean, maybe they can forward
comments to me.
MR. DUNNUCK: I will pass it on as individually -. you know, I
will, I will communicate to the board. I'm meeting with them
next week, but I will communicate to the board, you know, what
the committee's findings were, and do it in a, you know, in a
memo format and copy you-all on it. But if you have comments,
feedback, we'd appreciate it.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: And you're planning on getting a
response to Bruce Anderson's comments prior to that meeting?
MR. TINDALL: Yes. We have something in draft, but it's not
complete, and we can forward that to all the members here as
soon as it's completed.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. Thank you.
Go ahead, Dino.
MR. LONGO.' Can we not in the future, when it comes to
large ordinances and recommendations, get this stuff to us in a
more timely manner or not put us under the gun that next
Tuesday this is going to go before the board, and we really have
not had a chance as a committee to put our comment on it
between us all back and forth that we could get these on a more
timely basis?
Page 30
March 7, 2001
MR. DUNNUCK: Yeah, I agree. There have been a lot of
factors involved in this one.
Typically, from an ordinance standpoint, we have seven
different departments that were involved in this ordinance. We
had a consultant who we had to drag through to get this thing
done. We publicized the date on which it was going to be
advertised, and we moved forward. I take responsibility for it. I
will make a note to make sure we don't do this next time.
MR. PEEPLES: And just a very important note on the
ordinance obviously, and that is, I think generally speaking staff
does a great job in getting things in time. Part of this, even
though John's not saying it, this trip about the Board of County
Commissioners, I mean, they're ready for this, and they're going
to be demanding that it come forth quickly.
I know. Nonetheless, we still have to do it.
MR. DUNNUCK: We just completed it Friday.
MR. LONGO: Mm-hmm, but our charge, our charge as this
committee is to review this. MR. PEEPLES: I know.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: I think staff understands our
position. It's not that we'd like to see it, and I think us not being
able to support it definitely makes that pretty clear.
MR. PEEPLES: And I don't disagree with you at all.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: We have no items under Old
Business.
Moving on to subcommittee reports, did anybody meet last
month?
MR. NINO: Mr. Chairman, no, we didn't meet last month. I'm
pleased to tell you however that cycle 1, 2001 will begin very
shortly, and we would like the Land Use Committee to meet on
March the 15th and the 29th of -- well, that would be next week,
and we'll send out a package by Thursday of this week.
However, I need to remind you that I don't think you have
defined who the membership is on the Land Development
Committee for some time, and my list still has Mary Lamb on it
and Brian Nelson.
MR. ABBOTT: It was Sally Lamb.
MR. NINO: Sally Lamb.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: That brings up a good point from the
last meeting. We had asked that we get a slight summary of
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March 7, 2001
each committee listed by name and address so that we can
enlighten our couple new members as to what those committees
do, and perhaps we can solicit some more participation in those.
MR. NINO.' The Land Development Regulation Subcommittee
-- the land use subcommittee deals with all amendments to the
Land Development Code and the growth management plan prior
to it coming before the board in its entirety, and, and someone
else could describe what is involved in the construction code
and utility code.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: And I don't think anybody's resigned
off that committee, so all the existing members that are on your
list are still involved.
MR. NINO.' Yeah, but I think there are only four members on
the, on the current board that are on that committee.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Oh, okay.
MR. NINO: I don't how many, how many members you
normally have on it.
MR. DUNNUCK: I'll bring back a full list. I apologize. I'll
bring back a full list so we can go through it at the next one.
That's taken a little bit more digging than I thought it would
when I went back to the office, and we didn't have that readily
available, so --
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. And .-
MR. NINO: For the next meeting, for the next meeting
though, John, who would we send the -. who would we invite to
the land use subcommittee? There's only about four of the
current members on here.
MR. FOLEY: I don't know if you have my name, Blair Foley,
for the record.
UNIDENTIFIED MEMBER: And I thought Bob Duane was the
chairman; wasn't he?
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Yeah, Bob Duane's on that
committee; I'm on that committee, as well.
MR. PEEPLES: Bruce and Tom aren't here, but aren't they
both on it?
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Bruce is on it and Tom Peek is on it.
MR. PEEPLES: And I'm on it also.
(Inaudible. Several members speaking at one time.)
THE REPORTER: Excuse me --
Everybody's on it!
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March 7, 2001
one.
(Laughter)
MR. DISNEY: Yeah, virtually everyone's on it.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Yeah, we do have quite a list on that
MR. NINO: Well, why don't I just send it to everybody, and
those that show up --
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: And primarily our two new members
are Peter van Arsdale and Bryan Milk now, so, I mean, it's --
THE REPORTER: Excuse me--
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: It usually meets monthly on the --
is that the third --
MR. PEEPLES: I know I was being asked to participate with
the Land Development Committee .-
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Right. Right now with the new cycle
coming through, there are two meetings this month. We went for
a couple months without a meeting, so it's basically a monthly
meeting.
Okay. And so we have two meetings coming up, and we'll
plan on attending those and getting a package.
Next one is construction code. Dino, do you know if
anything's happening there?
MR. LONGO: Mr. Chairman, we did not meet last month. I
think we need to take it back up this coming month or at least
maybe this week. We're meeting with Bob Mulhere and his group
and discussing the Perconti system and the time frames, along
with Ed Perico, who's been attending, as to looking at how the
Perconti system is working on tracking.
And there's a couple of other issues we're discussing as to
the new building and shortfall on the fees, so I'd like to
reschedule it, but without Bob here, I'm not sure what his
availability is.
MR. ABBOTT: Well, let's set it for next Wednesday like we
always do and see what comes of that.
MR. LONGO: All right. If someone will notify Bob Mulhere
that we would like to continue on with our meetings for next
Wednesday at three o'clock, I'd like to go ahead and do that, if
that's okay with Dalas and Perry and --
MR. PEEPLES: That's fine.
MR. LONGO: -- anybody else.
MR. DISNEY: And, and committee members for that
Page 33
March 7, 2001
MR. PERICO:
thing.
MR.
MR.
MR.
committee?
MR. LONGO: Yeah, we have Dalas Disney, we have Charlie
Abbott, we have Perry Peeples, we have myself. I don't even
know if David Correa is still here participating, but he was --
initially was on the board, on that subcommittee.
MR. ABBOTT: Anybody's welcome though.
MR. LONGO.. Yeah, anybody is welcome.
I did receive a packet from Bob on the breakdown of what
we're starting to do on the review activity schedules and the
time frames and stuff like that, so I would assume that he sent it
to us with the anticipation that we'd start looking at it. This is
from --
MR. PERICO.' Building division.
MR. LONGO: -- Ed's division, building, so this is the next
item for us to discuss, the building division, as well.
MR. PERICO: This is the ad hoc committee really.
MR. LONGO: Right. It's the ad hoc committee kind of
melded into the construction code subcommittee.
We've got two committees doing the same
LONGO.' It is the subcommittee --
ABBOTT: Same people.
LONGO.' All right.
MR. ABBOTT: Change the title.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. Thank you for the update, and
we'll have that on record.
John, can you let Bob know that we do have a meeting?
MR. DUNNUCK.. Yes.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. And-.
MR. ESPINAR: Excuse me, Mr. Chairman?
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Yes.
MR. ESPINAR: I never caught a time for the Land
Development Code meetings for the 15th and 29th, the time for
that?
CHAIRMAN MASTER: Those are three o'clock, as well.
MR. NINO: Three o'clock.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. And the utility code
subcommittee is Tom Peek, who's not with us today.
MR. TUCK: I'll just go over it a little briefly. For distribution,
there is a copy of the minutes from the February meeting, and
Page 34
March 7, 200t
we're getting real good attendance, usually 12 to 15 people in
attendance, but we're lacking getting any representation from
this committee.
As I say, this past meeting, I don't think anybody was
represented from the advisory committee. I think it would be
nice to have somebody there, and I guess I'm pleading that -- to
get some volunteers or -- and I think Tom Peek was chairing that
for them. And Tom has indicated, and I think he's going to drop
by the wayside, I guess, on the -- chairing the utility committee,
but again, we're scheduled to meet the fourth Thursday of this
month, as always the fourth Thursday of the month, at three
o'clock. I'm encouraging some representation from the advisory
committee.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: All right. And I also volunteered to
show up at those, and I've missed the last two unfortunately, but
we definitely need more participation from our committee. Mr. Foley or someone?
MR. JONES: Is it possible to have reminder calls?
MR. TUCK: I'm on that committee, and what I try to do is
send out the agenda ten days prior to the meeting, the agenda
and the minutes of the previous meeting, with a note on there
saying if they can't attend it, please contact me, but -- MR. JONES: Okay.
MR. TUCK: So the only other thing we could do is probably
have a call reminder to everybody three or four days prior to the
meeting.
MR. DUNNUCK: Or a day prior.
MR. TUCK: Or the day prior, and just, you know -- I'm not
going to be here for the next meeting, but I'll instruct the
secretary to give a phone call to the members. CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Go ahead, Dino.
MR. LONGO.' John, I'd like to change my address, my
mailing address.
MR. ABBOTT: Are you telling your wife?
MR. LONGO: Yeah. It's 6895 Lone Oak Boulevard 34109. I
believe the packages have been going to my old address, so --
appreciate it.
MR. MILK: On that note, can I make a correction, too?
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Sure.
MR. MILK: Actually, the, the address is City of Marco Island,
Page 35
March 7, 2001
that's at 950 North Collier Boulevard, that's Suite 302, and that
phone number is 389-5017.
MR. DUNNUCK: That's in the revised version.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. And have we addressed the ad
hoc committee on fees then? Is that rolled into the utility now?
MR. PERICO: They're on the construction code.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. All right.
Under New Business, we have two items, the agricultural
design standards --
MR. DISNEY: Architectural.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: The architectural standards. I can't
even read my own handwriting. Thank you.
MR. DISNEY: I asked that this be placed on the agenda here
really at the urging of some staff members here with
development services.
When section 2.8 of the Land Development Code was
initially established, it was after a lengthy review period and
some specific input by a few of the design professionals in town.
Knowing that this was going to take some time to work with it
and have some adjustments in a short period of time, the
particular standards were established.
There's been enough time now that I think some of the
workings of that and the difficulties, positives and negatives,
have been identified, and it's probably time that that come back
for another review, and I'd like to make in the way of a
recommendation to this committee that the architectural design
standards as well as its related site standards in division 2.8 of
the current LDC be reviewed on the Cycle I 2001.
MR. NINO: I doubt if we could do it for that date within that
short a period of time. I assume you're talking about
establishing an ad hoc committee of the architectural community
-- MR. DISNEY: Certainly.
MR. NINO: -- and that will certainly take more than the next
two months to achieve that, 'cause we would have to have it
before you by the first part of April to get to the board in June.
So that's a little tight, but we can certainly do it for the Cycle 2
amendment, which concludes in December of this year.
MR. DISNEY: I think it's just important that we get going on
it and move something forward for everybody to look it.
There are some, there are some difficulties within that
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March 7, 2001
standard that have developed themselves over the last couple of
years that simply need to be tightened up, take a little bit of the
gray area out so that it's not quite so subjective. MR. NINO: Uh-huh.
MR. DISNEY: Certainly anything to do with design of a
building can be viewed as the eye-of-the-beholder-type thing, and
some of that has been a little difficult in, in review through this
building, and it just seems that we could, we could do a better
job with review at this point, so just bringing it back before
everybody and getting some additional public involvement would,
would be a great help.
MR. MILK: What has the -- what's the latest review on that
architectural design guideline? Is that since -- brand new in '92
or '3, or has that been looked at?
MR. NINO.' It hasn't been looked at by anyone other than
staff in terms of amendments to those provisions, and I think
what Dalas is getting at is going back to the philosophy of seeing
if we were correct the first time and to what degree our
experience and the experience of the architectural design
community that suggest that there are problems with the current
regulations that could be improved and by taking out some of the
ambiguity and some of the subjectiveness out of it and, and
perhaps more importantly dealing with standards that really do
not have anything to do with producing a quality architectural
statement.
MR. DISNEY: We also, just to explain .- expand just briefly,
there's, there's an overlap in division 2.8 between architectural
and site design, and it seems to me that the site design elements
are handled quite adequately by planners within this, within this
division, and they don't necessarily need to have a second
review or an opportunity for an interpretation by another review,
whether it's the second or third time.
Where do we have crosswalks and how we have that really
has no effect on my building design, and frankly, I don't think
that most architects in town would, would have a problem with
that being dealt with in the site portions of the, of the ordinance.
It's simply, it's simply slowed down the process of reviews
and created dual reviews, and that's just one instance. But
others are the massing and how we're doing what we're doing,
and adjacent properties.
Page 37
March 7, 2001
We have some experience now with this, and it seems as
though we could clean up some of those areas to make them
substantially more defined than they are today in the first pass at
that regulation.
So I'd certainly like to see it move forward, and I volunteer
my time for it.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Would that involve from the staff
level then, that review process, or--
MR. DUNNUCK: Yeah. What I'd like to do frankly from the
standpoint of if this committee recommends it, I think it's a good
opportunity for the committee for me to present an executive
summary to the committee kind of saying, we want to create this
committee at the DSAC's recommendation, 'cause I think it adds
a little bit of visibility.
And if you're telling me it's been since '92 since we've had
any kind of external review on architectural standards and
considering this board is very much appreciative of tightening
down the standards, I think that would be a very good mixture
and a good public relations things to get the DSAC making that
recommendation and us acting to get it before them.
And I do agree with Ron though, I think it needs to be a
Cycle 2 issue, but I just don't think we have the time frame to do
that, especially with the load of amendments that are going to be
coming through this cycle.
But I think that's a very good idea, Dalas.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Do we need to make that in the form
of a motion?
MR. FOLEY: I'll make it a motion. I think it's a good idea, as
well. I'll make a motion as stated.
MR. LONGO: And I'll second it.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: As you stated.
MR. DISNEY: As I stated.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: All in favor of forwarding that
motion?
(Unanimous vote of ayes.}
Opposed?
The motion carries unanimously.
And the next issue on your landscape plants for mitigation?
MR. DISNEY: Landscape plants for mitigation, and I put this
under -- asked for this to be placed under New Business simply
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March 7, 2001
because it didn't seem appropriate under committee member
comments.
A local landscaper came to me and brought to my attention
issues that landscape plants for mitigation, as the current
ordinance is written, and I don't know if any of you are familiar
with this, but it's LDC section 3.9.5.5.2, and I have information
here that I'll leave with whomever needs to take this, but it was
pointed out that the ordinance is, is -- or the LDC section is
written in such a manner that describes sizes of plants and
standards that really aren't common for the area.
And the, the comment here, while it is somewhat garbled in
its nature, simply goes to the fact that it needs to clean up some
of the sizes of plants so that plants, gallon sizes and grades and
heights, so that it is something that is reasonable available in
the area. Whether it's larger or smaller is not the issue; just that
the particular type of material that is available in a 3-gallon
container where the ordinance asks for it in a 5-gallon container.
So we need to get some nurserymen involved to clean up
that type of language, and as it was presented to me from the
particular landscaper, he's got probably 20 different nursery
people and landscape installers that have all lent support to
reviewing this again.
So I just bring this to your attention, and I think that what
they're trying to do is assist themselves in being able to find
something that is just reasonable to do a reasonable job and not
necessarily lessen any of the ordinances that we currently have,
so with that, I, I'd be happy to share this packet of information
with whomever can get the process started.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: As a comment, I've heard that same
thing from our in-house landscape architect, that they
consistently have a request for a one-gallon, 14-foot-tall tree,
which doesn't exist, so --
MR. DISNEY: Exactly.
MR. DUNNUCK: I'll take that as a direction.
MR. DISNEY: That you very much.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. That brings us to committee
member comments. Mr. Foley?
MR. FOLEY: Mr. Chairman, yes, I would like to make a
comment just on presentation of the new system going
Page 39
March 7, 2001
electronically. I certainly am in favor of that; however, I'm a
little concerned just about how it's going to operate and if we're
adding any additional levels of review.
And I know Bob's not here anymore, but Mr. Mulhere
indicated that perhaps the review has gotten a little lax over the
years and we're comfortable with this system.
I really haven't had any difficulty in operating through the
system the way it was, and I'm concerned, more from an
engineering standpoint, that we might be adding some additional
time frames, some additional burdens really on not only the
development community but maybe the staff people themselves,
and I just want to post my concern about that.
And I know it's a new system and we're going to have to
work our way through it, but I just -- you know, I'm hoping that
it's still going to be a user-friendly system and that we're going
to support the development community in doing, in doing an
expeditious review of the projects that come through.
And I know that years ago, in conclusion, five, six, seven,
eight years ago, when there was a different regime in this
building, that things oftentimes came to a grinding halt; and
that's a big fear of mine, and I just hope it doesn't reoccur.
MR. DUNNUCK: Well, and, and if I can just respond real
quick, I think with your ad hoc slash construction committee
talking about -- we're talking about the actual level of service
standards; you're talking about review times and things like that
-- MR. FOLEY: Uh-huh.
MR. DUNNUCK: -- the electronic portion is just the tool. It's
just the way that we track to make sure it all gets done.
What you'll be establishing through that ad hoc committee
and bring it to the Development Services Advisory Committee is
what you find is acceptable levels of review and time frames.
MR. FOLEY: Right.
MR. DUNNUCK: And that's where we come in and say, okay,
if you want to have it done in one day, we'll give you X amount of
-- we need X amount staff. If ten days is good, then here's the
amount of staff; if 20 days is good, here's the amount of staff we
need.
MR. FOLEY: Uh-huh.
MR. DUNNUCK.' And that's where -- then we'll say, from that
tool standpoint, you know, that's how we will track it. We will
Page 40
March 7, 2001
find out if it's fire code review is a little slow or structural people
are a little bit slow and they're overwhelmed with something on
the technical side, then we'll have to take a look at that and see
what we can do from an efficiency standpoint to make it a little
bit better.
MR. LONGO: And to add to John's comments, that's exactly
what we're doing. It's going to help us on both sides; I think. It's
going to -- what -- we have to determine acceptable standards for
review times on certain items, and it's going to allow the county
to track those review times and at the same time not come back
and say, we need five additional staff people because.
MR. FOLEY: Sure. Is your committee also looking at review
times for engineering submittals like SDPs and plat reviews, that
kind of thing?
MR. LONGO.' Bob, on the plan side, Bob's pretty much done
his end of things. Now starting next Wednesday, we'll be looking
at the building permitting side.
MR. PERICO: It's already been in review once already, so --
MR. LONGO: So it will, it will be going to a level of service
at some point in time, and then we'll just have to see how it
goes, and if it's taking 20 days for some sort of review coming up
that's not acceptable to the engineering community or the
development community, then we'll go back and we'll review that
as to why. They might need two more staff members or the
submittals were too ambiguous, whatever it is that helps us
track it.
The Perconti system, it seems like, is probably going to be
very, very good.
MR. FOLEY: Okay.
MR. DUNNUCK: And I think Bob's comments were taken
from a standpoint of when he actually went in and started doing
-- looking in -- in looking at that review, he found out that there
were some things that he didn't like, what his staff was doing.
MR. FOLEY: I see. Okay.
MR. DUNNUCK: And they were missing some areas and
that, that, you know, from a standpoint of what we are charging
you as a fee and saying, we're going to deliver for you, are we
doing it on the staff side of it?
MR. FOLEY: Got it. Okay. Thank you.
MR. DUNNUCK: That's part of what he's --
Page 41
March 7, 2001
MR. LONGO: It actually identified for him areas that he was
very deficient in --
MR. FOLEY: Good.
MR. LONGO: -- and thinking that he was deficient in, and it
woke him up real quick.
MR. FOLEY: Good. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Perry?
MR. PEEPLES: Thank you for coming tonight.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Bryan?
MR. MILK: Thanks for having me on your committee. I look
forward to it.
As you know, I'm the city planner for Marco Island now. I
appreciate the opportunity to be here, and I've served ten years
here at the county and have a good feel of the system here,
previously done. I worked with the LDC greatly and a lot of the
projects here and the rezones, so hopefully I can add to that land
use perspective and architectural components, landscape
components.
Down on Marco Island I am the landscaping architect and
zoner all in one, so I use all those codes intimately, so I'd like to
give you some thoughts on that matter. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Well, welcome. We're glad to have.
Mark?
MR. ESPINAR: No comments.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Dalas?
MR. DISNEY: No comment, thank you.
CHAIRMAN MASTERS: Okay. That concludes this meeting
then.
There being no further business for the good of the County, the
Meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 5:03 P.m.
DEVELOPMENT SERVICES ADVISORY
COMMITTEE
THOMAS MASTERS, CHAIRMAN
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March 7, 2001
TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT
REPORTING SERVICE, INC. BY SANDRA BROWN
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