BCC Minutes 04/17/2001 W (Environmental Issues)April 17, 2001
TRANSCRIPT OF THE NATURAL RESOURCES WORKSHOP
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
Naples, Florida, April 17, 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 9:00 a.m.
in REGULAR SESSION in Building "F' of the Government
Complex, Naples, Florida, with the following members present:
CHAIRMAN:
VICE-CHAIRMAN:
James D. Carter, Ph.D.
Pamela S. Mac'Kie
Jim Coletta
Pam Mac'Kie
Donna Fiala
Tom Henning
ALSO PRESENT:
Tom Olliff, County Manager
William Lorenz, Natural Resources
John Dunnuck, Assistant County Manager
Marjorie Student, Assistant County Attorney
Page I
NOTICE OF BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
INFORMATIONAL WORKSHOP
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
9:00 A.M.
Notice is hereby given that the Collier County Board of County Commissioners
will hold an informational workshop on TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2001, at 9:00 A.M. in
the Board Meeting Room, Third Floor, Harmon Turner Building (Administration) at the
Collier County Government Complex, 3301 East Tamiami Trail, Naples, Florida. The
Board's informational topic(s) will include, but may not be limited to, an overview of the
following subjects:
· Wetlands
· Listed Species and Associated Habitats
· Resource Protection Strategies
· Preliminary Findings/Recommendations for the Rural Fringe
The meeting is open to the public.
Any person who decides to appeal a decision of this Board will need a record of
the proceedings pertaining thereto, and therefore may need to ensure that a verbatim
record of the proceedings is made, which record includes the testimony, and evidence
upon which the appeal is to be based.
BOARD OF COUNTY COMIvIISSIO~
COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA
James D. Carter, Ph.D., Chaimaan
DWIGHT E. BROCK, CLERK
By:/s/Maureen Kenyon
-- Deputy Clerk
April 17, 2001
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Good morning. Hello, hello, hello. I
think we are live in TV land. If we can get everybody to sit down
this morning, please. I don't think that's live yet. Are we okay?
No. You're live over there. I think so. We are not live on
this side. I don't know what that means.
All right. Can we all stand for the pledge of allegiance.
(The pledge of allegiance was recited in unison.)
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Our million-dollar sound system is not
operating this morning, but that's okay. We'll get there.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Here comes Katie to save the
day.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think we're -- we are alive and well.
Good morning, Commissioners.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Good morning, Commissioner
Carter.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: How are you? Everybody's looking
bright eyed and bushy tailed here. Maybe that's a good line for
an environmental workshop. I don't know. It sounds good to me.
We have a room full of people this morning, and thank you all
for being here. This is a very, very important workshop for us as
we look at our total growth management pictures. At this point
I'll turn over the meeting to Mr. Olliff who then will turn it over to
staff.
MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, thank you, again, for taking the
time to actually spend and focus on a single issue. One of the
underlying issues that sort of involves most of the decisions that
you make, especially land-usewise, are environmental decisions.
I think it's just a tribute to how important it is in this particular
community that you've got a separate advisory committee and
the Environmental Advisory Committee that most of your ma]or
land-use decisions go through for a recommendation to you.
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April 17, 2001
I think the fact that you have a separate element within your
growth management plan indicates, again, how important it is
not only at this level, but at the state level, that it was one of the
required 13 elements.
Because Collier County has got such a unique environment,
especially in the State of Florida, and more so in terms of its
relationship to the rest of the country, I think, and is a very, very
unique area, I think it was important -- we thought it was
important that you understand the broad picture about what is
Collier County's environment.
You'll understand how so many of these workshops begin to
tie together. When we start talking about water issues in a
water workshop, you'll begin to see how important water plays a
part in the local environment and what makes up water thru-
ways and flow-ways and what is primarily making up the eastern
part of this county.
One of the things I wanted to point out in the beginning,
though, is that this is primarily geared to be an overview, a
general understanding of not only what is Collier County's
environment, touching a little bit on the comp plan, but what this
is not is probably just as important. This is not an opportunity
for us to get into a great deal of detail about the two study areas.
I just want to begin by indicating that. We do have an
opportunity -- I believe it's June 13th, Bill? -- MR. LORENZ: Uh-huh.
MR. OLLIFF: -- where we're going to begin talking about
specific issues, especially in regard to the fringe areas, and then
later on we'll be talking a little more about the rural areas. But --
because we don't want to avoid that either. That is part of what
is the current issue environment for us. So we do have at least a
little briefing about where are we in those processes, to give the
board an update on that.
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April 17, 2001
But the purpose of today's meeting was more to talking in
general terms and to get you to have a good fundamental
education and knowledge about the environment of this county.
I will tell you that you have some long-time experienced staff
who have been a part of not only this county government, but
part of the environmental community here for a long, long time.
And with that I'll turn it over to Bill Lorenz.
MR. LORENZ: Thank you, Tom. If I could have the lights,
please.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Do you have a mike over there, Bill, so
everybody can hear you, sir?
MR. LORENZ: Yes, I do. Can you hear me?
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Good.
MR. LORENZ: I would like to welcome everybody to the
workshop. As Tom said, this is going to be a general overview of
the natural resources in the county. For the commissioners'
packet, I've got just the logistics here.
Your first tab is basically the outline or the slide
presentation. Subsequent tabs in your packet also consist of
some supplemental information that I will be using and
highlighting through the formal slide presentation, some
supplemental maps that are part of the presentation, and you'll
have them in colorized version, and some additional data and
information that, I think, you'll find helpful to refer to. The last
part of your packet is the final order, which, of course, is the
pressing issue as Tom said that everybody will be leading up to
in the next six to nine months.
So the outline for today would be looking at the
environmental setting, and I want to walk you through why
Collier County sees the environment that it does with a
description of our natural resources, the inventory of our natural
resources, based upon information that is available in a variety of
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April 17, 2001
different databases.
Take a little bit of time to briefly go through the final order
requirements in terms of how they relate to natural resources
protection. At this point, too, Marjorie Student is available to
talk about the final order and some further detail, I believe, you
asked for at one of your previous workshops.
I want to also be able to look at general natural resource
protection strategies and some general elements that we
consider important to how you eventually will fashion a total
comprehensive plan that will embody a number of different
strategies that we can discuss at a general level.
As Tom indicated, the details will be coming to you in
subsequent meetings, but I think this will lay a little bit of a
foundation for you to understand how we can approach
environmental protection. Then we'll also look at just the
general schedule that we expect the board to see.
We also have representatives from the rural fringe and the
rural lands advisory committees, and they're prepared to give you
about a five-minute update in terms of where those committees
are, who's on the committee, some of the general issues, and
just a -- again, they've been working very hard in the past couple
-- really couple of years, I guess, now, so they can give you a
brief assessment of where they are in the process.
Then, obviously, we'll have time for public comment. So this
will be the general outline of the workshop. As I understand it,
too, it's a somewhat informal discussion, so we can work
through, and I can go back to slides. We have some boards that
are here that if you want to refer to or the public wants to refer
to, we can put them up in a little bit more detail. Most of that
information is in my PowerPoint presentation, but we can always
go back to it as well.
What is the environmental setting for Collier County? We
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April 17, 2001
know that we're down here in the southwest portion of the state
of Florida. We are in the subtropics, basically, so we're
somewhat different from the rest of Florida.
Tom mentioned a water resources workshop. Well, I think
the first point to make for Collier County is that we're just
basically a water-dominated environment. It's water, water,
water. That's the key. That's what integrates everything that
you see in Collier County, how that water has been -- you know,
is managed, the effects of the wetland systems, the upland
systems, the estuarine systems, virtually everything in the
county.
We have an average -- the average is 54 inches of rainfall a
year, but the average for South Florida is very -- is almost
meaningless. We know that it's feast and famine. We get too
much rainfall in the summertime and not enough in the
wintertime. And the years -- even the cycle of the year's
different. We have wet, wet years and we have dry, dry years.
So we are basically at the extremes in terms of our environment,
and the vegetation and every species are adapted from those
extremes.
Yes, Commissioner.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: What does the purple represent
in this slide?
MR. LORENZ: Okay. That's -- yeah, good point. Let me back
up. Sometimes I take for granted everybody is able to look at a
false-color infrared. That purple area is a particular vegetation
signature. You can see it showing up in some of our wetland
slides. I think it's a wet prairie, probably, as it will map out, but
it's a wetland system in terms of the Big Cypress.
Just let me get a pointer. If this (indicating) is the purple
area that you're referring to --
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yes.
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April 17, 2001
MR. LORENZ: -. this would be mapping out as a wet prairie
or a pine or cypress habitat. You can see -- in your presentation
packet, if you go to the second map, it will come up as a slide
later on in the presentation, but you'll see how that's mapped
out.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. I will. Thank you.
MR. LORENZ: Just to give everybody .. let me orient
everybody. That's the first thing I should have done. Of course,
right up in here (indicating) is Lake Trafford. That gives you --
you can see Lake Trafford pretty good, Immokalee and, of
course, the Naples urban area and Marco Island. Big Cypress
Preserve is in here (indicating). This (indicating) is Alligator Alley
coming across. That's (indicating) Golden Gate City just to give
you -- this (indicating) is north Golden Gate Estates, and this
(indicating) is the south estates, the south blocks.
The other key in Collier County is the flat slopes that we
have. You know, we are a very flat county. From the furtherest-
most point in the county to the coast, you're looking at a slope of
about a half foot per mile. I tried to make some calculations in
this room to try to give you some sense of -- if we oriented this
dias as to what that slope would be, we may have to increase
this one edge over here a tenth of an inch and that probably
would be too much, and you couldn't even see it.
So the flat slopes that we have in the county has
contributed to the wetland systems that we see and the way the
water runs off the land. Remember, we don't really have that
many defined rivers in Collier County for those folks who are
used to being up north. Myself, where the Shenandoah River
comes down through the Blue Ridge Mountains -- you know, we
have a terrific valley system and everything else. We see these
defined rivers. We don't see this in Collier County. We do see it
in other parts of Florida. So we are unique even to the rest of the
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April 17, 2001
State of Florida.
These flat slopes have contributed to a very slow movement
of surface water. And over the history of the county as it was
formed, the slow movement of surface water then contributes to
a number of effects that we see. The wetland systems that are
defined -- that water -- if there's a very small amount of
depressional area, that water is going to sit in those depressional
areas for a very long time. That's contributed then to the
development of the wetland.
The slow -- the flat slopes, the very Iow relief of the county
also contributes to the fact that the difference between a
wetland and an upland sometimes is very subtle in Collier
County. Some of the pine woodland systems that you have, what
we would call hydrate pine -- hydrate being water-- some of
those areas you can see that for many parts of the year they are
dry, but during a portion of the year they are wet, and they
contribute to some wetland functions. This becomes difficult to
determine sometimes in the permitting system. But you have
very small differences sometimes between the wetland and
upland systems.
The major upland systems that we have in terms of some
xeric -- what we call xeric systems, a drier system -- of course,
on the coast you have your dune system in terms of the uplands.
Pine ridge is an old formation and geologic term or an old dune
system that had been build up, and then you have another kind of
a ridge around or in Immokalee, and those are some of your
higher areas.
Sometimes it's a little known fact, but the highest point of
elevation in Collier County is not up in Trafford, but it's down on
Marco Island on an old dune relic. So we know that that relief
and the water has dominated the environment and causes those
differences in terms of the wetland and upland systems.
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April 17, 2001
That slow movement of water also contributes to our
groundwater recharge. We know that if we start to let -- ditch
and drain, which was the way it was done in the '50s and '60s --
and the problems that we're suffering now have caused a lot of
that water to move rapidly from the interior of the county into the
estuarine system.
When that water moves off very rapidly and we have lowered
the water levels, we have reduced the amount of storage that we
have in the ground for water systems. Ironically, you know, the
lower you lower those waters the more water you can force in for
groundwater recharge, and so sometimes we can take advantage
of that through some of our restoration efforts.
But the point of it is that we've got an integrated system
again. Surface groundwater and the topography of the county
has led to the ability to provide for a groundwater recharge when
that water is sitting in the system very slowly.
The estuarine system is a very important system. Probably
looking at problems of the estuarine system could be even
another workshop, but what I want to try to just point out here is
that the normal -- historically the estuarine system in Collier
County was used to that very slow movement of surface water.
You'll hear the term "sheet flow" coming into the system.
MR. OLLIFF: Bill, just give them a real simple definition of
an estuarine system if you would.
MR. LORENZ: Okay. An estuary is where salt water and
fresh water mix. It's that zone where you've got that mixing
occurring. It's important because when the mixing occurs you
have a lot of nutrients coming into the system. You don't want to
have too many nutrients now, but you do have that, and that's
where a lot of function is for nurseries for your juvenile fish and
other fish species that are important in the marine life.
But the estuarine system that has developed is used to that
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slow movement and delivery of water or sheet flow. When we
ditched and drained the county back in the '60s, we took all of
that sheet flow, that slow movement of water, and we delivered
it rapidly to the estuarine system in a series of points. The
Facaunion Canal is a discrete point. Naples Bay now receives a
discrete point from the drainage through the Gordon River and
the Golden Gate canal system. So that all changed that
estuarine system and, again, it's a factor of that rainfall through
the inland part of the county. So what we do in the inland
system, of course, affects the estuarine system.
MR. OLLIFF: So when you hear the term "point discharge" --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Uh-huh.
MR. OLLIFF: -- that's what they're talking about. When they
took what used to be sheet-flow areas --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Uh-huh.
MR. OLLIFF: -- and turned it into canal-type systems, and
where the point discharges out into what would be the saltwater
environment, that is what what's called the point discharge.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Is this what we're trying to do, like,
for instance, in the Lely canal basin where we're trying to change
that again? As well as that's where the Sabal Bay people were
going to try to do to us again and move .- how would you --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Spread out the water instead of--
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: .. having it just shoot down the
canal.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay.
MR. LORENZ: And the technique is using the term "spread."
MR. OLLIFF: Spread or swale.
MR. LORENZ: Spread or swale is what you will hear. The
point of that is to make that water come in in a broad area as
opposed to a very discrete point.
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April 17, 2001
COMMISSIONER FIALA: So by doing that, then we don't
pollute the water?
MR. LORENZ: We lessen the impact on that estuarine
system, that's correct.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Good. Thank you.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You know, the bottom line, the
pollution -- it's interesting to me that the pollution into a
seawater system or into a salt system is fresh water even if it's
clean.
COMMISSIONER FIALA..
that too. I didn't know that.
pollute the water.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE.. Think about it.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yeah.
Yeah. I was real surprised to read
It could cause fish kill. It could
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Saltwater fish can't live in fresh
water, so to the extent we put too much fresh water in there, we
blow the whole thing.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: So, again, you are talking about
estuarine nurseries that would, again, destroy them; right?
MR. LORENZ: That's correct. As Commissioner Mac'Kie
says, it drastically affects what he call the salinity resene, the
amount of salt water right at that point where that fresh water
comes in. It also -. the fresh water is less dense than salt water,
and the fresh water actually sits on top of that salt water
creating a layer such that the bottom portion can't get oxygen
into it. So that's another element that causes a problem from
these decreased points of fresh water.
OMMISSIONER FIALA: Thank you for that explanation.
MR. LORENZ: And the last element to speak of is fire.
Obviously, you know -- cross our fingers -- we were looking for a
bad fire season this year with the drought, again, and our feast
and famine of rainfall. But, historically, fire is an appropriate
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element integrated into the natural landscape that has caused
our landscape and to see what we've seen.
In the past when we did not have a lot of overdrying
conditions, overdrainage, the fires that we saw out in the natural
areas burned slower and not as hot. Of course, it knocked down
a lot of the vegetation that would be growing up that would have
changed the habitat for that area. So fire suppresses some of
that vegetation growth and forms some habitats that are
important for listed species.
We have modified the environment in the county by putting
the drainage canals in and by increasing the dryness of the
conditions during the dry season. When we do get a fire, the
fires burn hotter and faster. Then instead of just taking out some
of the newer vegetation, which is the undercover fire, now it
goes up in the canape of the trees and starts killing the trees.
Not only is that a concern from a wildlife perspective, but
obviously the major concern is from a safety perspective from
homeowners because now we are living in that environment .-
especially in north Golden Gate Estates -- and so we have to be
very, very concerned about those fires when they come through.
Because they are longer beneficial -- totally beneficial. They're
definitely harmful to the human population.
What I want to do with this slide a little bit here is discuss a
couple of issues. Obviously this is the -- this is the South Florida
Water Management District's land-cover database. The basic
information was known in 1994-1995. I make this point because
this is the most current data that we have for doing our general
planning work in the county. So it's six or seven years old by the
time we actually work our way through the growth management
plan amendments from the final order that are due in June of
2002.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Don't we have more current
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April 17, 2001
information via the study WilsonMiller was doing?
MR. LORENZ: That's a good point. The study area -- and I
know the commissioners had a map that was handed out to you.
The study area that WilsonMiller is doing is what we call the rural
lands or the eastern lands area and basically in this box here.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Show the box, again, if you
would.
MR. LORENZ: Yeah. You can see my--
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay.
MR. LORENZ: It's basically up in this (indicating} area of the
county. The recognition two or three years ago was that
because the database that was available for staff to use for the
general planning was outdated, not only is it outdated in terms of
vegetation patterns that they mapped out, but also in developing
the models to determine what is appropriate wildlife habitat.
Some of those models and information are subject to always
-- some degree of uncertainty and scrutiny. The eastern lands
property owners came to the county commission and said, "Well,
look, we will spend a lot of money to update this information, and
we'll utilize that for your planning efforts."
So, again, in this eastern land -- this information here
(indicating} is going to be modified by the WilsonMiller study
team for the rural lands assessment. So to some degree when
you're looking at the maps that staff is putting out, we haven't
factored in their analysis of that either yet. So I want to make
those points.
The other point is, obviously, we know how Collier County is
growing. This is the urban area. The red is the urbanization.
Here (indicating) is Golden Gate City. Here's where you're
coming into the north Golden Gate Estates. You can see with
this (indicating} red pattern here that we're very much getting
into a lot of urbanization.
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April 17, 2001
know.
CHAIRMAN CARTER:
MR. LORENZ: Right.
CHAIRMAN CARTER:
Obviously when the estates get built out, to a large degree
this map -- in terms of the way or the resolution of mapping -- is
going to look red as well. The cross-hatched lines are the
natural resource protection areas or NRPAs. If I slip into
acronyms, I'm sure Tom will catch me.
Those are the areas that the County Commission has
adopted as part of the final order as interim boundaries. As we
go through the process for the rural fringe and the rural lands, we
have the opportunity to evaluate those natural-resource-area
boundaries. Those will be points that will be brought to you in
detail beginning in your June 13th special meeting.
But you can see how those are mapped out. This
(indicating) is the south Golden Gate Estates. This is the South
KARL -- or altogether it comprises the Picayune Strand state
forest. But, again, this (indicating) area here is the Big Cypress
natural preserve. Obviously there's a large portion of Collier
County that's in a conservation status. Of course, the pink area
in here (indicating} is the agricultural areas within the county
which, of course, is the predominant -. one of the predominant
land uses within the eastern-lands area.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: When there's pink land in the NRPA
area, what is -- are they still growing in that area even though it's
a NRPA?
MR. LORENZ: They could be. It may not whether it's
necessarily -- it may not necessarily be active. The answer is
maybe yes or maybe no.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But it's probably cleared. You
know, it probably either is a current field or was a field, you
It could be a fallow field.
We don't know. I mean --
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April 17, 2001
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But even .- and I'm just going to
say my personal opinion is, even if it is currently a field, that
doesn't automatically take it out of consideration as an
important environmental element. It may be necessary to
restore it to its old function so that the flow-way can work all the
way through.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: That looks like it's right in the
middle of the flow-way.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Exactly. That's why it's in the
NRPA even if it is ag land because it's critical.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Bill, somewhere in here do you have
any mapping that shows -- this (indicating) all ends at Collier.
But if we look to the north and we pick up CREW and we get Big
Cypress basin, I think it would be helpful for the commissioners
to see the integration of all of this because what's north of us
affects us in the south. And if we don't understand that picture,
then sometimes we're operating on the basis that this is all we
have to consider, and that's not the case.
MR. LORENZ: I have a couple slides later on in the
presentation.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you.
MR. LORENZ: We can show some broader views, and then
we can -- I'll try to make those points at that time.
I thought I did pretty well getting this far without showing
any numbers -- you know me -- but then I just felt compelled to
show some numbers. We typically use 1.3 million acres in the
county. When you start looking at the reports, there's a variety
of different numbers, and we try to use the computer systems or
database, and you're constantly coming up with different
numbers, but for this purpose, 1.3 million acres.
I think the biggest point is understanding in Collier County
it's a water-dominated environment. Right now we're 69 percent
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April 17, 2001
wetlands. There has been reports -- and I'm not sure, you know,
how accurate this is, but the county, let's say, prior to having any
farming, agriculture, or any other urban impacts, was up to 90
percent wetlands.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: In its natural state?
MR. LORENZ: In its natural state. The point being, again,
we're so dominated by water in the wetland systems. That's
where we live, you know, in South Florida. The other point just
to make is the forest area that says 10 percent -- sometimes this
(indicating) forest area, that may be some transition zones or
hydrate pine forest. They may not necessarily be an upland
system, but that's some points to make, again, that we have that
transitional type of zone.
You can see, then, from a standpoint of what the land use is,
agriculture for Collier County is 10 percent of the land cover in
Collier County. Most of that, of course, is in the eastern lands
area. Hence, when you begin looking at the differences from the
rural fringe and the rural lands area, agriculture is less important
in the rural fringe and, of course, most important or very
important in the eastern part of the county. That's where you
have the opportunity from the WilsonMiller study and that
advisory committee to look at a lot of those issues as that work
unfolds. And 5 percent of the county is urbanized.
These are the pressing issues that I've kind of pulled out
that I wanted to work through in the workshop here today. There
may be other issues. Obviously the commissioners are raising
more issues. We can discuss them. We have the opportunity, of
course, to -- I guess I've got my to-do list pad here -- to come
back to you if you have questions we can't answer. So we can
always add to this list or at least look at it as a starting point,
and then the public, of course, can also bring issues to the table,
too, in this workshop format. We can try to address them or
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April 17, 2001
address them later.
Because wetlands are so important in the county -- because
-- in terms of the final order, you know, we've been judged to not
do the proper job to direct our land uses away from wetlands, I
want to spend a little bit of time here just in some basics of what
is a wetland, and we can talk about that.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Can I just chime in and say --
MR. LORENZ: Sure.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- just for -- and I apologize, new
board members, because sometimes I say stuff for you, but I
really want to just make the point for the public. You know, what
Bill just said is important. We have already been judged as not
doing an adequate job. I mean, that's what the point is of the
final order.
The final order is the Governor and the cabinet saying, "In
the past you adopted an award-winning conservation and
coastal-lands element. It was the best one in the state of
Florida. It had great goals." It said -- if we had done what it said
we were going to do, we would have done a wonderful job of
protecting the wetlands system.
But what the Governor and his cabinet finally did was say,
"We are tired of you not doing what you said you were going to
do in your conservation coastal element, and since you haven't
we're going to put you under an order to do that." So we need to
understand that as the mindset as we go into -- I know that's not
today's agenda, but as we go into the review of the urban fringe
and the rural lands, we've got to know that we are under an order
to do a better job. We have not complied with the law of
protecting wetlands.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: That's why Commissioner Mac'Kie and
I pushed very hard to get a two-year study, so that we would do it
right and we would do it well and we would get all the principals
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April 17, 2001
interested in this involved, so that when it came down to the
final decision that this board will make that we will have a
maximum amount of information to do -- and deal with those
orders in those two areas. So --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Is that two-year study underway
now?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yes.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Yes. That's been going on for some
time, and that's why we pushed so hard for that. Because there
was an element that wanted to hurry this up, and we did not feel
it could be a hurry-up exercise. It was too important. There was
too much at stake for the future of Collier County.
So we are glad that you are here. We're glad that the public
is here. We're glad that all those people in the audience are here
this morning because it's a reinforcement of our commitment of
"Let's get it right."
MR. LORENZ: The wetlands -- everybody can see in this
slide what would identify that as a wetland very easily. The
problem is, sometimes it's maybe not that obvious as to what a
wetland is. But the definition starts out that it's an area that's
inundated or saturated with ground or surface water. That's not
a hundred percent of the time, but it's at a frequency or occurs in
sufficient periods of time or long enough such that you then
support vegetation that is adapted to living in wet conditions.
So when your biologists go out and your wetland scientists
go out and they try to identify a wetland system for purposes of
creating or defining what we call the jurisdictional boundary,
they're using vegetation indicators or they're using soil indicators
to determine is this area set up in the past such that it's
saturated or inundated sufficiently to support this vegetation
that's adapted to growing under these wet conditions.
What that means is, many times -- as the slide on the right
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April 17, 2001
that you see -- it may very well look like a hydrate pine flat wood
that may have some of these characteristics. There's little
difference here in terms of the Army Corps or the federal
definition and then the state definition. Fortunately, there's one
state definition, and Collier County in future amendments to the
growth management plan or even in its existing state is defining
it using the state definition. But the point I want to make
here is that there are many times when somebody looks at a
wetland -- and we know by example, you know, let's face it --
when did some of these groups in the past bring or fly down
residents from up north to look at Collier County? They flew
them down in the wintertime. And why did they do that?
Because this looks like a forest. This doesn't look like a
wetland. But it does function as a wetland. So we have to
understand that sometimes just the perception is, "Well, why is
this a wetland?" But there is good reasons that it is a wetland.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Bill, I have to understand what
is wetland and what is not because where I live half the year it's
wet. So do I live in a wetland?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yes.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: I mean, this is an urban area or
within the urban area.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But there's a lot of wetlands
within the urban area.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay.
MR. LORENZ: Yes.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: What is our goal here? What are
we trying to protect, and who do we have to relocate because of
this?
MR. LORENZ: Well, we're getting into definitions of
wetlands. We're getting into the permitting requirements. We're
looking at -- these questions were asked. And we're also looking
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April 17, 2001
at, let's say, established neighborhoods that are already in
existence that have been platted in the past.
Let's take as example north Golden Gate Estates. Because
when we start plotting on our maps of hydrate soils -- those are
soils that have been inundated by water, and they're water soils.
They develop under those conditions indicating a historical
wetland system and the vegetation patterns -- many areas of
north Golden Gate Estates will map out as wetlands.
Those wetlands have been altered, of course. They may not
be functioning as wetlands because of the drainage canals that
we see in the estates. From a historical perspective, they were
wetland. Now they've been altered. They're in a transitional
state. The question is, how much effort do we put in place to try
to protect what exists or restore them back to some other
condition. Like when you --
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Let's go to a little bit of an
extreme then. Pelican Bay was a wetland at one time. Was
Lakewood?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, parts of it.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Lakewood was. We couldn't get out
of Lakewood.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE.. Yeah. Pelican Bay was up a
ridge. It was on an upland ridge. And the part that's Iow is the
part that's preserved --
CHAIRMAN CARTER: -- as the NRPA. That's why we have
the NRPA in there, because all of that is preserved as an estuary.
If you move north along Water Turkey Bay and all of that estuary
in there, there's a certain amount of wetlands in there that we
protected recently through the efforts of this board to
accomplish that too. So, yeah, there's wetlands all over the
place.
Then the other thing that compounds it is if there's damage
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April 17, 2001
done to the north of us and water flows down into areas that
used to be uplands, then are they considered wetlands? Or have
we flooded an upland area and destroyed what was an upland?
So it gets pretty complicated at times this whole thing.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: The only point that I'm trying to
make is how far do we need to go -- how far do we want to go to
restore the wetlands?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, we'd have to rip out Port
Royal if we were going to make it back to pristine.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Exactly.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So I don't think anybody is
talking about -- for me the line on restoring wetlands will be how
essential is it to the functioning of the overall system. I don't
think that every cypress head that's ever existed in the world --
I'd rather give up some of those isolated cypress heads and
exchange it for a piece of land out there that's part of a
functioning system that works.
You know, you're right. We don't need to restore everything,
and we don't even have to protect everything if we are making
trades that give us a net gain in the overall system.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Another thing is, my daughter just
had somebody knocking on her door. She lives in north Golden
Gate Estates on 22nd Street Southeast. And her neighbor said
that he heard that we were going to try and buy up all of their
land and return it to natural state. I said, '1 don't think we're
going into north Golden Gate Estates." But, you know, is that
something that is happening that I don't know about?
MR. LORENZ: There is some proposals that have been
floated by some environmental groups to look at that. There is
some opportunity for some restoration within north Golden Gate
Estates. I've been working with those groups to look at what the
opportunities are, but I think the opportunities are going to be
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April 17, 2001
limited because of the altered condition of the wetland system in
north Golden Gate Estates and because of that urbanization
pattern that we just looked at to try to get to some point in north
Golden Gate Estates where we're developing a very large
restored wetland system. It's going to be very, very difficult
unless you really go out in the far eastern portions of the area.
So whereas -- I always want to say "Nothing ventured,
nothing gained." We always want to look at opportunities and be
as creative as possible, but we have to also recognize that the
probability of success is going to be a lot less in north Golden
Gate Estates for restoration than in other areas.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: If I may, I just want to make it
clear that it's not the Collier County Commission that's the
driving force behind a lot of this. We have state agencies and
federal agencies that are setting the parameters for us to work
within. We have to make sure that at all times we represent the
people out there for their property rights and at the same time try
to preserve what we can in the way of the environment. At some
point in this discussion, we're going to get into more details of
whose responsibility is what and where the forces are coming
from, I hope, or if not, can we cover it, please?
MR. LORENZ: Yeah. We can -- in terms of wetland permits?
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: How the state figures into it,
how the federal Army Corp of Engineers figure into it. Because
the assumption out there is the Collier County Commission is
going to come out there, one, flood their land or take their land,
and that's not true at all.
MR. LORENZ: Okay. In terms of-- in terms of the current
efforts that are going on, we have part of the Everglades
restoration, the rehydration of south Golden Gate Estates. A
partnership between the federal government and the South
Florida Water Management District has developed a plan for the
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April 17, 2001
restoration of the south estates. In that restoration, in terms of
new management or water management structures, they're going
to flood some of that area, and they have determined how much
of the area that's to the west of the south estates into the Belle
Meade area may be subject to flooding.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Southern Belle Meade you're
talking about?
MR. LORENZ: Southern Belle Meade, correct, south of 75.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: We have to be very specific. I
mean, some of the misconceptions people are picking up out
there is that we're talking about Golden Gate Estates in general,
and we're not. We're talking about very specific areas.
You're talking about south Golden Gate Estates now, and it's
tied in with the Everglades restoration program, which people out
there are pretty well up to -- the people that are very concerned
right now are those that are in northern Belle Meade to some
point and also in northern Golden Gate Estates.
If you could address the issues that are right there at this
point in time, I think you're going to put these people a little bit
more at ease and understand what the situation is.
MR. LORENZ: In north Golden Gate Estates staff has
developed a map of some wetland -- previous wetland sloughs in
north Golden Gate Estates that if there was any place that would
be -- have the desirability from a wildlife and wetland perspective
to try to rehydrate, we have mapped those areas, and those
areas have been mapped also by some of the environmental
groups in looking at what the potential would be for restoring
those areas.
But the county commission, of course, has not developed
any set of plans to flood those areas in the north estates or to
purchase any lands in the north estates. But these would be the
areas that have been mapped out as having some degree of
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April 17, 2001
potential. As I said earlier, the degree of success, however, of
trying to develop something along those lines is going to be very,
very limited.
There has been some discussion of looking at some of those
areas for purposes of what's called a regional on-site -- off-site
mitigation area to help with the rest of the north Golden Gate
Estates residents who are subject to wetland permits. And when
they have to get a wetland permit, they may have the ability -- if
they have to do some off-site mitigation, it's very difficult for
them to have an area --
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Excuse me for interrupting you.
If we want to be specific about that, it's the DEP we're talking
about?
MR. LORENZ: Correct. The state and federal agencies are
issuing the wetland permit, and they're requiring -- in some cases
they may require some degree of mitigation, which is they'll let
you, the homeowner, fill or impact a wetland on their property if
you're able to mitigate it or compensate for it someplace else.
Some of these areas in north Golden Gate Estates may be right
for an off-site mitigation area.
Now, if we were to do that, it would not be in the situation
where we would be forcing people out of their homes or forcing
them out of their properties or condemning their properties. But
these would be areas that the county could have some -- could
acquire and establish as an on-site mitigation area.
There is some discussion that's been brought up with staff,
some other agencies, and some consultants as a possibility.
That possibility can be further developed as we go through, not
only the final order requirement, but also be evaluated in the
Golden Gate master plan.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Very good. Now, we might
mention also, if I may, this Wednesday the Golden Gate Estates
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April 17, 2001
Civic Association will be meeting at the Golden Gate Community
Center to discuss this very situation we're talking about. We're
going to have Gary Beardsly as our speaker to give us some
details from his point of view on how he sees it. There will be
other people there, too, to answer questions.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Where will that be again, Jim?
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: They'll be at the Golden Gate
Community Center. It's the Golden Gate Estates Civic
Association. They'll be meeting at seven o'clock in the evening
on Wednesday.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Thank you.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: They invite all people that have
an interest in this to show up and listen and offer their
comments.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: That will be a dollar for the
advertisement.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Consider yourself paid.
MR. LORENZ: Again, I would like to point out as we're going
through the effort for the final order on the master plan, we
certainly can identify these areas. We've already identified some
of these areas that have that potential.
Now, that's a benefit for the residents of Golden Gate
Estates because right now they're subject to these federal and
state mitigation requirements, and they're somewhat boxed in.
So it's not an easy proposition to work towards, but it has some
possibility for success and benefit for the estates.
It's somewhat maybe going out on a little limb, a little bit of
some risk-taking, but it's some venture that as a staff member
I'm having some discussion with some of the state agency folks
on,
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: There's going to be two options
open. One would be for mitigation right on the site itself where
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April 17, 2001
think, of that.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA:
would be affected --
MR. LORENZ: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA:
they locate the house and the septic tank and all the facilities,
the driveway and everything, on a small footprint. This would be
in certain cases, not all. In other cases they'll have to mitigate
by purchasing land outside of that through another trust. The
scale would be anything from 1:1 to 1:20, and not all lands are
affected. I believe it's only, like, about 15 or 20 percent. Is that
about right, or is it higher?
MR. LORENZ: Maybe 20 or -- yeah, on the higher side, I
So 20 or 25 percent of them
-- that would require this type of
mitigation to be able to make it work.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Before we leave this subject, could
you send each one of us that map? I guess Jim especially
needed it at the Wednesday meeting. This way if any of our
constituents call us and ask us about something, we'll have
something to refer to. Thank you.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Ready?
MR. LORENZ: Yes.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: There's something I wanted to
bring up to the board, and I talked to Mr. Lorenz about it. Last
month we had a preview of Livingston Road from Golden Gate
Parkway to Pine Ridge of what it costs to mitigate off-site for the
impact of wetlands and uplands. It was over a million dollars.
That money went into the Panther Island mitigation bank which
is actually out of Collier County.
Mr. Carter brought up a good point, and that is the big
picture of regional bases. I was wondering if the board is willing
to direct staff into looking at having a one on one and a
replacement of our -- as we build the roads or transportation,
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April 17, 2001
we're going to continue impacting wetlands and productive
uplands, and whether the board was wanting to do a one-on-one
trade to have our own land-created wetlands here in Collier
County that we can purchase for those impacts.
What I see as the positive side is restoring existing wetlands
out there and also uplands that can be used in a passive way for
our park system. There are a lot of people that like the eco-
tourism or eco-nature out there. I know a lot of people that go
down Janson Drive for that walk along there and mother nature
out there.
Anyways, I'm just throwing that out there if anybody-- if
there's a majority here that want to give it staff direction to take
a look at the economic benefits and the social benefits of that.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm just -- I don't understand.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Tom, you might want to comment on
that first.
MR. OLLIFF: I think where he's heading, and I think it's a
great idea, is a Collier County specific type of mitigation banking
program where -- just so you know we've already given some
direction to both Jim and Norma to go out and start looking at
the potential opportunities that we have for having some sort of
a mitigation bank system that would be within Collier County's
own borders where not only could we take advantage of it for
road construction projects, but also for utility projects -- a lot of
times when you're doing utility projects where you're laying lines,
you're also facing mitigation-related issues -- as well as for parks,
when we're constructing new parks, to be able to have a
mitigation bank plan in place.
I think it does a couple of things. One, I think as a priority
we would all agree that any time you're saving systems as
opposed to isolated wetlands, it's a better system for mitigation.
And, secondly, we often find ourselves in utilities and things
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April 17, 2001
doing mitigation that are for transportation that aren't in Collier
County and don't benefit us, and that's a little frustrating from my
perspective.
I think it is something that's sort of a win-win, if you will, in
terms of public facilities projects and natural resource
protection. So I think you will see, hopefully, within the fairly
short-term future a mitigation bank plan primarily being driven by
public utilities and transportation, but one that the rest of these
county departments can take advantage of as well.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You know, I wonder if that's -- I
mean, that sounds like an absolutely great idea. I wonder if we
could even extend it to include school sites. When the school
board -- you know, because they have significant impacts when
they site a new school. If we had a bank available, I can't
imagine that they wouldn't want to participate in it. Their
impacts are tremendous.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think maybe the state or the growth
management plan is going to give us a boost there. As they deal
with the school situation, that will help.
I th~nk it's absolutely right on target, Commissioner Henning.
I couldn t agree with you more, and that's why I fought so hard up
in the Vanderbilt area, because we were confronted with exactly
what you're talking about. Either the developer did what he
could have done and had done off-site mitigation, but instead we
protected the wetlands and estuary along the bays up there
versus that.
I know it's very hard for a community to understand
sometimes the trade-offs that you make, but I'm with you.
Anytime we can save it here, expand CREW, any of those things,
even if that's close to us, as a total integrated wetland system.
Yesterday CREW met -- just to inject this, Florida Gulf Coast
University is now looking at establishing out there a summer
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April 17, 2001
program and internship program, an experience where people
can come camp and do all of this where students will get a real
opportunity to understand the ecology and to work with it.
So there's a lot going on here and in Lee working with the
entities to try to really protect our whole estuary. So anything
we can do to keep it here, amen. Let's do it.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: We still have some land in the
urban area that are wetlands closer to -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Yes.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: .- the population that people can
enjoy and benefit from it.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Close in, and it could be not only
acquired, but then we have to find a way -- where you're going is
to get passive use on those so people can have that walking
experience and sit down and enjoy and have that quiet moment
in the estuary, if you please, and not be going through all of the
other stuff. I couldn't agree more. This is a great opportunity to
do that. The more you can protect within those areas and do it,
then let's do it.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: That's important. Just for
clarification for me, these places that are identified, these lands
that are identified, will they also be the areas that we need yet to
fill out the components or get that sheet flow back into line
where it should be and where we've destroyed, really, which
would then revitalize our aquifers?
MR. LORENZ: Those could all be -- yes. Those would all be
desirable components of an area or areas that if we wanted to
target for some type of restoration effort that we could also
utilize for purposes of mitigating county projects.
What I think we can do is, as we're developing .- and we've
already identified the areas in the county that are important from
their existing resources or have potentially the opportunity for
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April 17, 2001
restoration. Those areas could be identified by staff of both
natural resources, the planning department, and by working with
some other environmental staff and other divisions such that we
can identify these areas as potential areas that have those types
of objectives that would be worthwhile to do.
The next step in that process, then, would be to determine
what type of -- or work with the agencies to determine what type
of restoration would you do in those areas that they would then
give the county credits for in terms of mitigation. You have to
also realize that that may be not one area in the county. They
may be different areas.
Because when you have a project within the county for a
certain project, they may want you to mitigate in certain portions
of the county as opposed to -- let's say in the watershed or the
northern part of the county as opposed to the southern part of
the county. So for this process to go forward, we then have to
work with the agencies to know up front that this particular
mitigation site that we can identify would be able to be used for
a certain set of projects and locations in the county. So all of
that would have to be worked through.
I guess what Tom is saying is that that process is to some
degree started, and we can get a benefit out of that process as
well when we look at our total comprehensive pla.nning effort. If
those areas can be designated, and we have a pol,cy that wants
to direct our mitigation efforts into these areas that we've
identified are important for restoration, then, see, that's how to
me it works together for individual capital projects, final order
requirements, and even to the point when we start looking at the
north Golden Gate Estates master plan.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: I don't know whether it would be
appropriate -- and Tom or you please tell me. I don't want to get
out of order here. But I heard part of a conversation yesterday
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April 17, 2001
that really rang my bell up there in CREW. It's that the rock-
mining industry for the first time is saying, "You know, we know
where the best rock is. What we want to do is work with the
environmentalists, and we want to work with everybody" -- listen
to this -- "and keep development out and work on preserving
areas. Because there's crummy rock areas, and there's good
rock areas, and we want to work and integrate with you." And
these guys don't share. They don't even share with each other.
You know, it's a very closed industry, this rock-mining industry,
and it's critical to the state.
They're beginning to make overtures of working at the table.
I want to take it a step further in an area that's been very dear to
your heart, Commissioner Coletta, and that's earth mining. Is
there some way in this process -- people know where the best
stuff is to take off the land. There's no question about it. These
earth miners know where it is; right?
Can we integrate and begin -- if we start looking at
mitigation and start looking at interconnectivity and stuff, how
do we get those folks to begin to work with us? Is there fees or
any kind of thing that begins to develop -- how do we do -- that's
where Commissioner Fiala is going. It's the interconnectivity of
your system and getting more funds available. Because there's
all possibilities for interconnectivity in some of our estuaries,
whether it's on the west part of our county, the western part or
eastern part. There are opportunities, and they all cost money to
get it done, and we don't have the money today to do that. So
maybe working cooperatively with all these resources we'll find
that we can end up with a better plan.
I know that's where you've been trying to go with that,
Commissioner Coletta, and I think it's a great effort. So maybe at
some point out of this -- you tell me where we need to put that on
your hit list and say, "How do we begin to integrate some of
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April 17, 2001
those things?" and get those people to talk with us and, say,
"Look, there are some areas that just don't -- that we don't want
developed. But there are resources in there that may have to be
utilized. But then how do we turn them into parks or passive
areas or make them good environmental protection areas in the
future? How do we do that instead of us all working with a
hidden agenda?"
MR. LORENZ: Maybe I can get a set of contacts for you or I
can make some phone calls.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: I really think Jim probably knows that
far better than I ever would because that's the kind of thing --
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: We need to have something that
will outlive this commission and also this staff that we have on
hand now that will carry on for the future. I mean, this plan that
takes place day by day, moment by moment, will never work. We
need something that's going to go long range and be a definite
set of plans and stay here forever -- well, reasonably forever.
MR. LORENZ: Let me get into -- we actually covered some of
why wetlands are important. We covered some of the points in
the discussion. Remember, when we talk about wetlands and
the flat part of the county and these depressed area, if you think
of a tabletop with a bunch of dimples on it, that's some of our
depressional wetlands. If we put a little bit of water on that
tabletop and, of course, none of the water is going to run off
because there is a dimple. As soon as you start filling those
dimples in, the water runs off of that table top, and that's one of
the functions of the wetland supplies is that they're able to take
the storm water, and they're able to retain it. They're able to
hold it in those depressions.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And then they sink down and
recharge the aquifer.
MR. LORENZ: Exactly.
Page 32
April 17, 2001
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: If it's running off the table, it's
not getting to the aquifer.
MR. LORENZ: So we have a stormwater retention function,
and we have a flooding attenuation function of the wetlands.
This is important, too, when you start thinking about mitigation.
That's why one of the mitigation requirements is to mitigate
within a watershed. You've probably heard that term.
The reason is you want to hold that storage within that
watershed. When you start creating .- when you start mitigating
wetland systems outside of the watershed, you're losing that
flooding attenuation in the one watershed and getting it in the
other watershed better, but you're stuck in that other -- the first
watershed you've lost it from.
That's very important from the standpoint of us being able to
live within a system where we have so many wetlands and with
such a water-dominated environment that that's the function
they supply.
The other thing is when that water is held within those
systems, it sits in there slower, and you get a water-quality
treatment. You're reducing the pollutants of the water going into
that wetland system as it goes out. So your receiving body
downstream -- our estuarine system is basically our
surfacewater-receiving body. When it receives the water that's
filtered through those wetland systems, that water is a better
quality than if it just runs off quickly without any treatment.
Groundwater recharge, as Commissioner Mac'Kie just
mentioned, as it sits in those depressional areas, it's available
then for groundwater recharge. If it just runs off, we don't have
the recharge. All of those functions are very important for us to
be able to live in Collier County, which is a water-dominated
environment, and the wetlands are providing these functions for
LIS,
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April 17, 2001
Fire attenuation, we talked earlier about the fire regimes.
As we lose that water in the system, it's going to dry out sooner
during the dry season and cause fire problems. To the degree
that we can rehydrate certain areas and keep water in those
areas longer, build up a vegetation that's more fire resistant, you
know, those restoration efforts can then help us from some of
the fire problems in parts of the county.
The other function, of course, the wetlands provide is
wildlife habitats for a variety of our wildlife species. A technical
term here -- primary productivity. Think of food. This is our food
source. These wetland systems generate their food source for
other additional animals in the food chain. They're the primary
place to help our wildlife systems.
Then on the coastline with mangroves, shoreline protection
is a very important function for our wetland systems. So not only
do they have functions for our wildlife species, but obviously they
provide a lot of functions for man. Any time that we, you know,
in terms of our efforts encroach upon a wetland system, to
compensate for these functions, we then have to tinker
someplace else and try to re-establish them, and many times our
structural methods may not be as good as the natural system.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, do you mean, like, God made
it better than we can redo it? What a concept.
MR. LORENZ: Very quickly, there's different types of
wetlands. I'm sure you've seen that. You know, we have the
freshwater system. We have a variety of different wetlands
within our freshwater systems that provide a variety of different
functions. You know, a wetland is not a wetland is not a
wetland. They are -- they do provide some different functions.
The marine systems -- even to the point of where we have
seagrass meadows, which are important. They're, obviously,
continuously submerged, but important systems for our estuarine
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April 17, 2001
system.
Here's (indicating} the distribution of the wetlands map,
again, based upon the South Florida Water Management District
data. Commissioner Henning, you can see there (indicating}
where that little blue area maps out that wet prairie -- remember,
these maps and this database is set up at a broad county level,
and there's uncertainties in that database, there's accuracies in
that database, but we as staff are using this information to come
up with our general categories of wetlands, a general
understanding of where those systems are. They map out fairly
well, and that information is very useful.
I'm going to start talking about the landscape scale. When
you want to actually find out on your property -- you mentioned
earlier, "What do I have on my property?" You've got to go out
and actually map it. The resolution of these databases aren't
good enough to be able to dictate what must be done on a
particular property, so we have to understand the limitations of
some of this information. Again, you've got a copy of the
wetlands map in your packet. I notice --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Can I just say, that's important
for the public, too, Commission Coletta, because, you know, if
you see your house there on a map that says it's in the middle of
a wetland, you might panic, but the reality is we have to ground
truth these maps. These are probably based on satellite photos
or something that's not specific.
The good news is, in our WilsonMiller study what they're
doing with the eastern Collier land is they are giving us real on-
the-ground data so we'll have it updated or concrete -- that's a
bad analogy -- for that area. But just because you see it as a
wetland based on a satellite map, it doesn't necessarily mean,
panic, you're in an acquisition area because you've got to ground
truth it.
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April 17, 2001
MR. DUNNUCK: And from a customer-service standpoint, it's
probably a good time to put in the plug that, you know, we now
have the DEP representative in our building to go out and do that
ground truthing for individual properties in the Golden Gate
Estates. You know, I think that's going to be a tremendous
benefit to people who are going to be potentially building homes
in the future.
MR. LORENZ: What I want to show with this (indicating)
slide is, fortunately, in Collier County it has been recognized that
it's been very sensitive. What I want to show here is that within
our conservation designation, 76 percent of our wetland systems
are in a conserve state in the acquisition areas. If you want to
add south Golden Gate Estates, which is 6 percent, you know,
that takes it above 80 percent.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And we're getting there. You
know, that is to be acquired, so you could almost put that in.
MR. LORENZ: Right. When we started looking forward as to
what we're dealing with in terms of the planning contacts, the
agricultural rural area is 13 percent. So even though it's 13
percent or the percent is down there, that's over a hundred
thousand acres of wetlands that we still need to ensure that
we're protecting. That's a hundred thousand acres providing that
stormwater retention function, that flooding attenuation function,
that groundwater recharge function. So that's still an awful lot of
acreage that we need to deal with.
So I show this (indicating} slide on the one hand saying,
"Hey, we've got an awful lot of wetlands in Collier County to be
protected," and I think that has to be understood and publicized.
On the other hand, we are also talking about more wetland
systems that we need to protect. And, of course, that's where
the final order is leading us to come up with those particular
mechanisms.
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April 17, 2001
Upland habitats, sometimes -- and my slide does it -- it
makes a short drift when we compare it with wetlands. Maybe
some folks may think that we have too much of a focus on
wetlands and not enough on uplands. It's very tough making a
balance when you start saying, "I'm going to protect all the
wetlands and then I'm going to protect all the uplands as well,"
so we have to come up with a balance.
We do know that there are certain upland systems that, if
you will, on a spectrum may provide a higher function or more
important, especially from a listed-species concern. Working up
from the bottom, there's the dune-and-strand systems on our
coastal habitats. You-all saw that in our Lely Barefoot Beach.
That kind of a system right in the back part of the dune is highly
functioning and very important for wildlife species and very
important for erosion control. Those dunes are our first line of
defense for storms.
Hammocks and xeric oak scrub, again, provide habitat for a
variety of different listed species. A lot of our pine woodlands --
this is an example of a pine woodland -- is a habitat for a red-
cockaded woodpecker. Back there (indicating) is the cavity tree
for that one.
There's a very specific type of habitat in Collier County for
RCWs. I guess I can say RCWs now since I said or gave the term
already for RCWs. Of course, that's an upland system. That's a
perfect place to build lots when we start running into some of the
conflicts with development of trying to protect wetland and
upland systems.
The wetland -- the upland systems and the wetland systems
all provide this habitat for the other thing the final order talks
about which is listed species. This (indicating) cartoon here is
not a commentary on hunting, but simply a -- because you don't
have to deal with that in the final order.
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April 17, 2001
There are two categories that the federal government
recognizes, endangered and threatened species. It's a matter of
degree: Endangered, imminent danger of extinction, threatened,
being high risk. There's definitions from the state and federal
agencies. It's fairly close. The state talks about, also, special-
concern species facing moderate risk of extinction.
So when we talk about listed species, many times --
certainly from staff -- we're talking about endangered and
threatened and those species that are listed by the state as
special concern. In your packet I think I provided a list -- a
complete list of the species that have been identified in Collier
County as being threatened, endangered, or of special concern.
Just as an educational slide here, we'll look at what the
endangered and threatened species are. Again, some of-- like
the red-cockaded woodpecker is threatened on the state list. It's
endangered on the federal list. So we have a few little bit of
differences on there. But these are the species that are very
important for Collier County and are listed on the list. Of course,
the final order talks about us protecting the habitats for listed
species.
Why worry about wildlife protection?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Because the Governor told us we
have to, but there are other reasons.
MR. LORENZ: That's definitely the one -- it's listed several
times in the final order. People want a natural environment near
their homes. I mean, I'm sure you see the real estate ads. And
the selling point of living down here in South Florida is that we
see a number of these species.
I live in Golden Gate City. I might -- you know, once or twice
a month I'll see an eagle flying down that Golden Gate canal. I
mean, that's great. I can talk to my friends up north and say,
"Gee, every now and then I see an eagle just flying down the
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April 17, 2001
canal." In my own personal experience, that's good. I think that
other people share that experience as well.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Bill, that's a very good point. I
also live in Golden Gate City. One of the former commissioners
used to call them pecker-head birds, but now I understand that
RCW is the real term. But I had one of those around my house,
and I live in Golden Gate City also.
MR. LORENZ: To the degree that the wildlife contributes to
our recreational opportunities, the economic health of the
community, the eco-tourism, you know, I mean, it's much more
than just trying to protect species because they're threatened
and endangered wildlife. We have -. the community has a stake
in it. I didn't use the term "quality of life" on this slide, but I
guess it contributes to that kind of phrase.
Real quickly, there's the distribution of wildlife species, very
similar types of things that we see, and why we see them
distributed the way they do. And maybe I'll use this term or this
slide also to define vegetative communities and habitats
because many times that comes up as somewhat confusing.
Vegetative communities are simply an area that has a
distinct vegetation type like cypress or like xeric scrubs. Those
communities -- those vegetative communities can be habitats for
particular species. And especially we're concerned with listed
species based upon their general character, their location in the
county. So not every vegetative community is going to be an
appropriate habitat for listed species. Sometimes we also -- we
have to understand that concept when we start trying to develop
standards and protection strategies as well.
So there is some value -- sometimes there's value in
protecting a small wetland because maybe it's a very important
essential wetland for a specific species. On other types maybe
it's not as important to protect that particular small wetland, that
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April 17, 2001
postage stamp wetland. Maybe it's better to mitigate it in a
larger system. So there's some flexibility that we have to
understand. Sometimes it's hard to fashion hard-and-fast rules.
The other point is that habitat types are indicators of the
presence of these species. I think this is important when we
start looking at some of the maps that I'm going to show you.
Just because there's orange on the map, it doesn't mean that
there's 100 percent certainty that we have these species there.
The habitat is available for that species, and they may well
be there. When we start talking about listed species protection,
what we're really talking about is habitat protection. Because if
we don't have the habitat or if the habitat continues to shrink in
the county, especially for your most endangered species, you're
having a direct affect on the viability and sustainability of the
species. That's why it's important when we begin talking about
species protection -- what we're really talking about is habitat
protection. We can craft some more specific standards, but
we're really talking about trying to protect habitat.
Commissioner Carter, there's a slide that's trying to show a
little bit of a regional setting. The question you asked earlier --
on the left-hand slide is panther-quality habitat. Again, the
habitat is such that it could be good for panthers. It doesn't
necessarily mean that panthers are in -- function in all of those
areas. But that's the kind of habitat that we have in South
Florida.
You can see that -- especially in the Big Cypress Preserve
right in this (indicating) area, yellow is the highest quality of
those good-quality habitats in there, and also in south -- this is
why the south estates and south of 75 and the Picayune Strand is
important as well.
Now, you can see up here -- this (indicating) is Collier
County's line. Here (indicating) is -- north of Collier County and
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April 17, 2001
Lee County and the CREW is the higher quality habitat as well, so
that gives you that little bit of a regional setting.
The regional setting here (indicating) for potential foraging
areas for wading birds -- again, the green and red and the yellow -
- you don't see too much yellow in that slide. It's the highest.
South Florida, again, is very high for those wading birds.
I could show some more slides, but as you start looking at
the map of Florida, South Florida, it definitely gets concentrated
where a lot of our listed species are, and there's maybe two
major reasons for that. One, the habitat is certainly present, but
also we're one of the later county areas to develop, so there's
much more habitat there. We've just kind of come into it. It
hasn't gotten developed sooner, so we still have a lot of habitat
left for the species.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: To help put this in perspective,
over the years we've lost 90 percent of our bird population to the
habitat being degraded. Is that being changed by what's taking
place now? Is the bird population starting to recover, or do we
have a long ways to go?
MR. LORENZ: Good question. I don't have an answer for
that species. I know, let's say, for bald eagles -- the bald eagles,
they have --
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I was referring to wading birds.
MR. LORENZ: Wading birds. Is Ed Carlson here from
Corkscrew? I haven't seen the current data for woodstorks.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Possibly one of our speakers
can address that.
MR. LORENZ: That would be good, and maybe I'll try to get
some more specific data and get back with you.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That would be an indi.c, ator. I
think what we re looking at is wildlife is a measuring st,ck that
we can use to see how safe our environment is for ourselves.
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April 17, 2001
The higher that the wildlife population is, the safer our
environment is for ourselves and our children.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Jim, sometime --just as a side note,
if you get a chance, ride out to Marco Island. All along 951 out
there to Marco Island there's this flock of woodstorks that's
always eating out there. It's so much fun to see. I'm out there
about three days a week and love looking at them.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: They're probably there, Donna,
because that's where the food source is left. A lot of places
they've been squeezed out.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Almost imagine --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Where there's -- over there by
Rookery Bay, I mean, you have all of that good land for them to
fly to and nest in and so forth.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: They require areas that are --
the area of the water is shrunken in size so that the fish are
concentrated to be able to feed. Probably what you're seeing
along those canals is offering an ideal situation at that point in
time for them.
MR. OLLIFF: Bill, we need to start looking for a break point
if you can find one here soon.
MR. LORENZ: Right. Perhaps we can get through these
three map slides, and then that would be a good place. Again,
you have a color copy of this (indicating) slide in your packet,
and we have some boards here, too, for the public to come up
and look at during the break.
This is the game commission's -- what they call a
biodiversity hot-spots map. Yellow is being the hottest, the
areas that have the greatest amount of species that they're
looking at. Now, again, remember my comment before. This is
based upon potential habitat. Nobody's gone out and walked
every square inch of Collier County and counted up the species.
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April 17, 2001
So the habitat then becomes the indicator of the potential
presence of these listed species. You can see in this map, again,
where a large portion of the county is -- a large portion of the
county in the Big Cypress is within the yellow and the orange.
We've also mapped on this (indicating) the current natural
resource protection areas. There's not that bad of a job of lining
up on this particular map in terms of some of those boundaries.
Some places we have to do some further studies. The eastern
lands, WilsonMiller is looking at that. You'll see some general
recommendations come from the rural fringe.
But this (indicating) is the type of data and information that
we were using to develop our conceptual plans, again, with the
caveat that some of this data is older data. We've modified some
of this information from the database. This is from the same
database. This is priority wetlands for wetland species.
You're seeing similar patterns here (indicating). I think that's the
key. We're looking at general regional patterns of where these
habitats become concentrated for the listed species concerned.
This (indicating) is somewhat of a -- the database here
(indicating) is strategic habitat conservation areas that have
been proposed by the Game and Freshwater Fish Commission.
This (indicating) is a controversial slide. The controversial
slide is -- again, these areas that the game commission put out
are based upon 1986 satellite imagery data for vegetative
communities, and we know that that information has changed. I
know in the rural fringe -- and I want to thank Mac Hatcher, my
staff member, who put together all of these maps and did all of
the GIS analysis that you see.
But Mac has tried to modify the game commission's
database in the rural fringe land such that when we find a
denuded area or disturbed area that was mapped as habitat with
the game commission, we took that off of the strategic habitat
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April 17, 2001
maps, certainly in the fringe. I'm not sure whether we've gotten
that in the rural lands, but we're really relying upon WilsonMiller
to get their database because they're doing a more
comprehensive job of updating it.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Because this is supposed to be
existing conditions. Not necessarily what's necessary for a
habitat, but this is supposed to be a map telling us what habitat
currently exists. So, you know, we may find that there are some
places where a habitat no longer exists that did in the '80s that
we have to restore in order to have adequate habitat for a certain
species in my opinion.
MR. LORENZ: The other thing I want to point out, too, is
when the game commission proposes the strategic habitat, that
proposal is based upon that vegetative data and signatures. We
know that's somewhat out of date. Actually, when it was
originally mapped, it was -- in some places it was mapped
incorrectly. But it's also based upon a model, a model being -- to
say that if you have these types of habitats and if it's located
from these distances from some water body or water source and
if you have these other characteristics, if you put all that
together, then we think it's habitat or potential habitat for a
particular species.
The assumptions that go into building those models --just
like many things in the scientific community, you know, there's a
range of certainty that you have there. So we have to take these
maps -- even though I am proposing them as the basis for our
data and analysis, we have to understand the limitations of the
data that underlies these maps as well.
MR. OLLIFF: Just sort of in closing out this section, I think
Bill and I, unfortunately, were stuck sitting in a room when the
coastland conservation element was originally drafted, and I
think Bill and I wrote the majority of what was there. We sat in a
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April 17, 2001
room with three members of the development community and
three members of the environmental community, and I can't tell
you how many hours we spent haggling back and forth. But the
underlying premise of that entire plan was that there are some
natural resource protection areas in this county that are
important primarily because of their systems function, and that's
why we keep referring to this NRPA thing. That NRPA area is
what is within your comprehensive plan.
The original intent was for the county to go back and start
looking at and defining by data and developing some facts about
what are those areas, because we knew the information we had
at that point was old. We were supposed to be bringing back to
the county commission some policies for this commission to
establish in terms of how it's going to deal with those areas,
what are the boundaries of those areas going to be, where are
the fringes, where are the transitional areas, and in essence
that's what's happening today. That's what that process is,
trying to develop data for you to be able to make those policy
decisions that are going to in turn end up being land-use
regulations, growth management plan and comprehensive plan
regulations, that deal with all of these areas that are NRPAs.
So at some point later this year you're going to be faced with a
series of decisions to make that are going to deal with all of
these areas that were originally outlined years ago in the original
growth management plan that's going to dictate how we as a
community are going to deal with those areas. That's what this
whole thing sort of is heading towards at some point in the
future.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: So my question is, if you had these
plans drawn up for the comprehensive plan, No. 1, have they
been over-ridden over time, and is there a way to bring them
back to where you felt they should be in the first place?
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April 17, 2001
MR. OLLIFF: Well, I think what you heard Bill say is, in
almost every one of these maps, you'll see consistently the NRPA
areas haven't change a whole lot and the NRPA areas match up
with most of what you saw being either federal or state mapping
efforts primarily done by satellite photography and in some cases
just soil surveys and some other type of information that we had.
I don't think any of that has changed significantly, but I think --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: We have abided by it or have we
not?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We've ignored it.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: That's what I'm trying to say. Okay.
MR. OLLIFF: Well, in a lot of these cases there's not been a
lot of activity in these areas yet, so you still have the opportunity
to be able to define what your policies are going to be. But the
most important thing is, you need to base these based on the
best information and fact that you can. I think 10- to 20-year-old
satellite information everyone would agree is probably not where
we want to start making specific land-use policy decisions.
So while we're late in the process, I think the efforts that
are going on are probably long overdue, but very, very important
and hopefully will be able to allow us to make good decisions. I
would hate for us to be in a position where we're trying to make
decisions based on this level of information.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Tom, I appreciate the fact that
you brought together the major players in this, the landowners
and the environmental community. For the record, could you
identify who these six people were?
MR. OLLIFF: Oh, gosh. I can remember--
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: In '88 sometime?
MR. OLLIFF: I can remember sitting between Gary Beardsly
and George Varnadoe. That was a treat, I'll tell you.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But that would have been in 1988
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April 17, 2001
or '86 -- '887
MR. OLLIFF: I'll get you the list. But I will tell you that as
divergent as that group was, the result of that effort was, as Bill
pointed out in the beginning and as Pam pointed out in the
beginning, the best coastal and conservation element ever
developed in the State of Florida by a county.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Then we ignored it and now
we're going to fix that.
MR. OLLIFF: Now we're trying to get back to what that plan
originally asked for us to do. I think we're poised to make some
good decisions here and in the near term.
MR. LORENZ: Can I make one point for this (indicating}
map? In your packet you have what's called Table II, and it has
the acreages and percentages of how much land, based upon
this analysis, is in -- currently managed conservation areas,
which is about 65 percent. When you add some proposed
acquisition areas, you're looking at about -- 73 percent of the
total county would be in the acquisition. When you start adding
all of the strategic habitats, that's another 14 percent. So if you
want to just look at the total area within the county that could be
proposed, we're looking at 88 percent which, again, is a huge
amount of the county.
I'm not proposing that we do that for 88 percent of the
county, but I know that many times there's questions as to how
much is currently acquired and what's being proposed, and this
(indicating} is the results of our GIS analysis, and you've got the
details as backup.
MR. OLLIFF: With that, Mr. Chairman, I propose we take a
very short break because we've still got a lot of information to try
and cover before noon.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: I would agree. And I will say to this
commission, I am proud of every commissioner sitting here and
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April 17, 2001
the job we have ahead of us. Every time we make a tough
decision, you will upset a part of this community. And the more
tough decisions you make, the more people out there who will
probably take shots at you and not like what you're doing.
I believe that's our job, to do it with the best of our abilities,
and if it upsets some folks along the way, that's a good reason
for them to be upset with us versus not doing anything. So I'm
proud of every commissioner that's here. I'm proud to have the
privilege of serving as your chairperson this year. And I have
taken a lot of hits for this, that I am autocratic, that I am not
allowing you to participate, that we're making -- what kind of
decisions are we making here, and I will tell everyone I am proud
to be where we are and what we're doing --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And we're making decisions, Jim.
What a concept.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: And working together.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Right. So I want that to the public this
morning to let them know loud and clear we're not changing the
course. And let me say "we." That means collectively as I read
this commission. We are not changing course. We're going to
move ahead. And we are going to do the tough ]ob asked of us.
And sometimes, folks, you're not going to like us very much, but
that's our job to get it done. We are not going to fall into that
trap of a "feel good" exercise, not this group.
So thank you. Let's take a break. We'll be back in ten.
(A short break was held.)
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, we need
to resume the workshop if you would please take your seats.
Commissioners and staff back to the table, please.
All right. Mr. Lorenz, let's roll it out. Let's go to work here
one more time. Thank you.
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April 17, 2001
MR. LORENZ: If I could get somebody to get the lights for
me, please.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Yeah. Cut the lights. That may get
them to sit down or put them back to sleep. I'm not sure which.
Also, you've been very good this morning, but please make sure
your cell phones are off during the meeting. Thank you.
MR. LORENZ: Let me shift gears here a little bit because I
think there's two issues I just want to bring up as a result of just
timing, and one is manatee protection. We all know that there's
a number of federal and state initiatives looking at adopting new
regulations for manatee protection.
At the federal level, we have a rule that has been promised
to come out for several months and has not yet been proposed.
The staff -- we haven't seen any advance releases of it. Our
suspicions are that it's not going to come down very hard on
Collier County specifically, but we have to wait until we see the
rule.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But they'll be --
CHAIRMAN CARTER: I believe there's a meeting in Orlando
today. As I understood it, the feds are waiting to see what the
state does.
MR. LORENZ: The state has a settlement agreement on the
table. They're not going to adopt that agreement until after
Brevard County's speed zones are adopted, which would be in
May. That settlement agreement addresses Collier County in
that in the year 2004, they, the state -- I'm not sure exactly who --
is going to initiate a study on the Ten Thousand Islands as to
what may be needed in there, but that's not going to happen in
2004. So that's the settlement agreement with the state.
So, again, until we see some more specific information it's
tough to try to take any positions because we don't know what's
going to be there. But what I would like to be able to do is -- we
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April 17, 2001
do have a growth management plan standard addressing
manatee mortality in Collier County that you need to be aware of.
That standard is 3.2 deaths per 10,000 registered boats. You
see, I really had to get the numbers here on this slide. The --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: What is "moving average"?
MR. LORENZ: That's basically the standard. This chart here
(indicating) shows the amount of deaths per 10,000 registered
boats for manatees, each bar for each year. This is a moving
average. Basically, this point reflects an average of the
previous seven years.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Now, is this all manatee deaths
or is it boat related --
MR. LORENZ: This is boat-related deaths.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay.
MR. LORENZ: This is boat-related deaths. And we're
covering pretty much around our standard. Our manatee
protection plan was adopted in '95-'96. Some speed zone signs
weren't put into place really until about '98. Staff is pretty much
of the opinion that we still need to wait a couple more years for
proper enforcement and boater awareness for the speed signs.
In the past 20 years --just this (indicating) little graphic up
the right-hand side -- when we were looking at the amount of
deaths of manatees, there was 232 deaths in that 20-year period.
Boat-related deaths were identified as being 22 percent of
those deaths. So 78 percent are nonboat. Now, the caution here
of using these statistics is many times there's a lot of
indeterminate deaths, and they just can't put a number on it.
But what I want to be able to say is that don't think that
we're in that bad of shape in Collier County. There's always room
for improvement. I think the manatee protection plan that we
have in place needs to be evaluated further, have a little bit more
time for it to be implemented with proper enforcement. We can
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April 17, 2001
always do a better job in terms of boater awareness.
Staff actually is going to come to you with an initiative to
create a boater's guide that would also help for manatee
protection in addition to other habitat protection, so you will be
seeing that in the next couple of weeks.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, that's -- I'm sorry. Go
ahead.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: You said that in 1998 the safe
speed zones were enacted. How come the lines went up after
that?
MR. LORENZ: Good question. Let's face it. In terms of just
randomness, I mean, it's tough to be able to -- we're only talking
two or three boat deaths. You know, one or two or three can
really skew the numbers quite a bit. So we would -- obviously,
we would like to see that line trending down consistently, but I
certainly expect to see some variations. That's why we're
looking at a moving average, so we can average out some of
those variations. We'll have to take a look at how our trend line
is doing.
MR. OLLIFF: Bill, I need to do a little housekeeping here. I
just -- we've got an hour left in what was the scheduled time for
this workshop. I need to -- either we're going to stay within the
time frame, which means we're going to have to wrap up our
staff presentation probably within the next 30 minutes in order to
allow for some time for public speakers and presentations by
your committee people, or we're going to go over the time. And
I'm just going to need some assessment from you-all about where
you would rather be.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: I would like to stay pretty much
on schedule if we can.
MR. OLLIFF: Okay.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes.
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April 17, 2001
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I could stay until two. I mean,
I've got a two o'clock appointment.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'm here all day, but I have
appointments that I would have to reschedule. They start about
1:40.
MR. OLLIFF: Okay. We'll try and stay as close to that as we
can so, Bill, I'm going to ask you if you'll try and wrap it up within
about a half hour, and then we'll have our committee
presentations. There are some speaker forms, speaker slips, on
the table in front here. If someone is interested in speaking, if
they would fill that out and hand it to John. If you'll raise your
hand. That's (indicating) John Dunnuck, the man here in the blue
shirt. We'll call those out at the end of the workshop. Okay, Bill.
MR. LORENZ: The next issue, in the matter of timeliness, is
sea turtle protection. Collier County beaches roughly a thousand
nests on the beach. The loggerhead turtle, a threatened species,
is the turtle that nests on Collier County beaches. Turtle season
is from May 1st to October 30th. We're working now with a
number of the property owners and beachfront owners to make
sure that they're aware of the rules and the requirements to
ensure that we have a successful nesting season.
One of the biggest problems we have is furniture on the
beach and activities on the beach, and you'll see some
information come to you through the next Land Development
Code cycle that tries to address getting the furniture off the
beach and how to facilitate that and still protect the nesting
areas,
A second problem is lighting compliance.
turned off on the beach during nesting season.
to the light instead of to the water, so we've got a county code
with that. A little bit, I think, of a success story here -- we began
a pretty aggressive lighting awareness campaign back in '96
Lights need to be
The hatchlings go
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April 17, 2001
where we had 7 percent of our nests being disoriented in the '96,
and now it's down to about 2.7 percent.
I think a lot of credit goes to the propertyowners. The
condominiums, the hotels, they worked very good with beach
lighting with us, and I think that's pretty good success for and
probably is a model for other things that we can work with in
terms of proactive approaches and trying to get voluntary
compliance.
Let me go through these slides a little bit quicker than
usual. It always comes up as an issue, and that's invasive exotic
plants. I throw the term invasive in there. We typically call it
exotic plants. "lnvasive" means that they're not native to
South Florida. They invade our natural areas. They crowd out
our native species. There are a number of concerns for the
plants. You can think about invasive exotic plants as weeds
within our natural landscape. Just like weeds in your garden
start crowding out what you consider is beneficial, the exotic
plants crowd out our beneficial vegetation and wildlife. So
there's ecological problems that are associated with them.
Along those lines they reduce the diversity, kill the native
vegetation, reduce habitats for the listed species.
Two of our species of most concern are melaleuca and
Brazilian pepper. They actually have some health effects
associated with them. There's a lot of efforts that are ongoing to
remove them, especially those species. There's safety concerns
as well. The melaleuca is a fire hazard. We talked about fire
being part of our landscape in areas where it's infested by
melaleuca. Because of the volatile sap or compounds in the sap,
they burn a lot hotter and faster and cause problems.
Australian pine, the slide on the right-hand side, has a very
shallow root structure. It's amazing when you look at that slide.
They're subject to tipping over during high winds. A credit to our
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April 17, 2001
parks and recreation department for doing a lot of work in
removing the exotics in the parks. Also credit to our stormwater
department, John Veit and his crew for removing Brazilian
pepper and Australian from county rights-of-ways. So I think,
again, we're trying to work towards getting the invasive exotic
plants out of our natural garden here in Collier County.
Final order requirements, I know Marjorie may want to
address you a little bit in terms of some specifics in the final
order.
MS. STUDENT: I'll just say, Bill, that in the interest of time,
you-all have the final order in your packets. If you have any
questions about it, just feel free to call my office.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Do you have that for the record? That
was Marjorie Student, legal. Thank you.
MR. LORENZ: The final order issued by the governor and
cabinet in June of 1999 -- gee -- gave us three years to complete
our assessments and come up with amendments that will be
effective. Growth management plans, that will be in effect in
June of 2002, a little bit more than a year from now, but the
deadline is very rapidly approaching.
In your packet you have the total final order. You also have
an excerpt from the final order that I think is the point of my
slides here. Let me just cover this very quickly since you have
the material:
First off, we want to identify proposed measures to protect
prime agriculture areas. Let me just state it this way: In the
rural fringe area, agricultural issues are not very pressing at all.
The recognition by staff is that the agricultural issues are in the
eastern lands area. Certainly Ron Hammel as the chair of that
committee is here, and to the degree he wants to touch on that,
he'll be free to touch on that, but that's where the agricultural
issues are really going to occur in those eastern lands.
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April 17, 2001
The final order has been set up to ensure that we direct
incompatible land uses away from our wetlands, our upland
habitats, and the listed species in order to protect the wetlands
and listed species, but also in order to protect water quantity
and quantity. That's the way the final order has been structured.
So this is, if you will, my mantra: "Direct incompatible land
uses away from wetlands and upland habitats." So when I start
developing some of these strategies that we're looking at, you
know, that's the mantra. That's the underlying reason for doing
that. The final order, though, does also want us to assess the
growth potential of the area and look at the conversion of these
rural lands into other uses. We need to discourage urban sprawl,
again direct incompatible land uses away from critical habitats.
It also talks about encouraging development that utilizes
creative land-use planning techniques. We have some strategies
that we've been working with the committee, the rural fringe
committee, to try to develop these creative land-use planning
techniques.
It's not a complete prohibition, but we need to -- as we put
those techniques into place, again the mantra is we still have to
direct -- we will have to protect the natural resources. But there
are some ways of doing it, I think, and the final order does list
some techniques such as urban villages, new towns. We'll talk
about cjustering and open-space provisions, mixed-use
development.
So these are the techniques that the final order envisions us
to take a look at as we go through the find assessment. That's
just a little bit more of the same for this (indicating) slide. Again,
you've got the specific language in your packet.
That takes us to the -- we've talked about the inventory of
our natural resources. We've talked about the final order
directing the general direction. What I want to be able to give
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April 17, 2001
you some feel for is what I call the landscape scale and the
project or site scale. A lot of the maps that you've seen are
geared at the bigger overview in Collier County.
Even as -- Commissioner Carter indicated that it even
extends beyond the county border, and that is that the landscape
scale -- when we try to fashion strategies, we want to look at
how do we prevent that fragmentation of these large systems.
We have to map the systems. We have to understand where
those systems are, what their functions are, and then what are
the appropriate strategies to direct land uses away from those
larger systems.
To some degree we're saying that those larger systems
inherently have a higher value than the smaller systems, but we
have to deal with the smaller systems as well. So how do we
deal with the smaller systems? That's where when a
development comes to you in terms of review, we want to
identify specific standards that that development is going to
apply based upon what kind of natural resources or what are
there for the development.
Each area is different. We want to specify some general
standards, measurable standards, but we know that we can't
handle everything at the landscape scale. So when we create or
fashion these protection strategies, we want to work at the
landscape scale and the project scale.
Rather than read all of this -- again, you have this in your
packet. But the landscape scale again is large patches of
vegetation, prohibit fragmentation. We understand the priorities
for species and habitat protection. We've got our list of
endangered and listed species.
We want to protect rare landscape elements such as our
coastal dune and strand. Although they're not in the final order
assessment, these are important habitats to look at. Maintain
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April 17, 2001
connections for wildlife corridors, maintain significant ecological
processes such as fire management.
You know, we can't do fire management, you know, in a
subdivision of a subdivision of a subdivision. So when we really
want to look at these larger systems and realize that fire is
important for these systems, success -- we can be successful at
the large landscape scale, not at the micro scale in all cases.
So we have some of these ideas that we're going to be
working towards when we're looking at the tools that we try to
put in place at that landscape scale. Large ecosystems --
identification of those systems is obviously a critical tool to be
able to know what to do where. Purchase and acquisitions can
become a tool.
Currently the state has acquisition programs. Collier
County, of course, does not have a purchase program in place. I
know through making some connections here from a community
character study of recommendations for an environmental lands
acquisition program that's what we would be talking about in
terms of purchase and acquisition. Transfer of development
rights, looking at these large-scale overlay districts, if you will,
subdistricts on our future land-use plan, and looking at
appropriate buffer zones to conservation areas, they're all the
tools of landscape that I just want to walk you through a little bit.
Identification of the large systems to some degree -- well, to
a large degree that's what our natural resource protection areas
are all about. The NRPAs that you see on this (indicating) slide
were adopted by the commission as interim boundaries pursuant
to the final order. These were finalized in May of nineteen -- in
May of 2000. We initially took them to the board in September of
1999.
But the NRPA areas and the study areas we've identified as -
- these are our large systems that we are very interested in trying
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April 17, 2001
to manage at the landscape scale. Again, getting back to kind of
our aerial photograph, you can see the position of the NRPA
boundaries on this (indicating) area, and they match up, you
know, fairly well. Again, the details -- the devil's in the details.
How much are we going to modify the boundaries? Those are the
details that we will be bringing to the commission in the next six
to nine months.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: One point. Bill, if I remember
correctly, we did successfully support staff's position on this and
were able to get that.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: On the NRPAs?
CHAIRMAN CARTER: On the NRPAs.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No. The way I recall it is that the
staff recommended a lot larger NRPAs and we, the former board,
compromised and said, "Okay, we'll include these study areas in
addition to NRPAs while we" --
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Rather than compromise -- rather than
lose them, we got them the study areas.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, but --
CHAIRMAN CARTER: But I think as this evolves, that will be
very important in the outcome of that. MR. LORENZ: Right.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: But at least -- I feel on that point we
got the firewall up.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We got a little bit done; better
than nothing. But when you look at some of these areas, and if
you could superimpose -- I don't know if you could -- those maps,
that NRPA map over, for example this (indicating) one, then you
would see that -- well, we'll know better when we get the eastern
Collier information or the study.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Right.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Am I right, Bill, that we did not
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April 17, 2001
adopt what staff recommended for NRPA boundaries?
MR. LORENZ: The initial -- right.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, we tried.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You and I tried.
MR. LORENZ: This is the county's current adoption of the
NRPAs and the study areas. And, again, in six to nine months we
really need to refine those boundaries or accept the boundaries
or see what the changes are, and that's going to come to you in
the details.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Right.
MR. LORENZ: One important tool, although, is going to take
a little bit longer time to flush out is the transfer of development
rights. What we want to do here is -- we want to be able to -- the
concept is from environmental sensitive lands, and think of the
NRPAs as being environmentally sensitive lands or think of some
of the other lands that don't raise to the level of a NRPA but may
well have some environmental sensitivity as well. These are
what we call sending lands. What we want to do is we want to
put them into some status to allow on a voluntary basis the
propertyowner to not develop his property but be compensated
for it. The way he can be compensated for it is -- he's got
development rights. Maybe he has a hundred dwelling units that
he's got rights to develop. What we want to be able to do is
create a mechanism such that he can transfer those rights to
another area in the county that is not environmentally sensitive
and add those rights to that developable area and, if you will,
double the density on that developable area. Now, implicit in
that structure is we're making a value judgment. The value
judgment is it's more valuable to double the density in a less
environmentally sensitive area than it is to allow environmentally
sensitive area to be built up. So we can either outright purchase
the environmentally sensitive area, or we can try to create some
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April 17, 2001
type of voluntary incentive program and recognize that it's going
to be subject to market conditions the way we set it up. You
should be able to transfer those development rights over.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: And the ingredients of the Dover Kohl
study when you begin to do those kind of things.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Exactly.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Commissioner Henning.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: What I'm hearing is you're
transferring in the rural areas from one part of the rural to
another part of the rural.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Maybe or maybe urban.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Not necessarily.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: I think where we can get closer
to the Dover Kohl and transfer that into the urban area.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, that was the intent,
Commissioner, I believe, to do that. You're right. We take the
Dover Kohl, we look at those, or there may be pockets within all
the areas that are more
applicable to development than others. But it gives us flexibility,
A, through the incentive of PDRs or outright purchase, and then it
will be, how do we juggle that?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And isn't the concept that if I
own a piece of environmentally sensitive land, instead of the
state or the county through an acquisition program buying that
land, then I sell my development rights to Tom and Tom takes
them and applies them to his land that's in an area where we
want to encourage development because the infrastructure is
there, and the land isn't sensitive, and then the market pays for
the preservation of that piece of land? The question will have to
do with -- I mean, the hard part in my mind is how to create a
market for those transferred rights in the receiving lands when
our current situation is, for example, that you can build six units
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April 17, 2001
an acre under our future land-use map in most areas, and the
market only calls for 2.4 units an acre. So why would a
developer go buy development rights from an environmentally
sensitive piece of land when we already give them the right to
develop at, you know, double or more the density that the market
calls for?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: You're talking about a variance
instead of building four units per acre.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: In a lot of places six, but four --
even if it is four, two point four is what the average is that
actually gets built so --
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Right.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: That has been a failed incentive. As
we have found out, the market has not called for that. Now,
unless you get back to what we've always said here, "design is
king" and you find an area where it's attractive for market
conditions to increase the density and also be able to
accommodate that density in your infrastructure -- because none
of these will separate -- we're always going to be walking down
that line and folding in all of the pieces, and that's the challenges
that we will have.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And, you know, the piece that
worries me, too, is that we could fool ourselves into thinking that
we've done something meaningful by creating a TDR program
that says you could transfer from sending lands to receiving
lands, but if there's no market for them, then we will have done
nothing. We will be patting ourselves on the back and not have
accomplished anything. So that's the tough call if we really want
to accomplish something, and I know we do.
MR. OLLIFF: To me the key to this is, one, understanding
that we have to do things drastically different in terms of project
design, Land Development Code type issues in order to be able to
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deal with increased densities. Because if you continue to have
the type of public infrastructure systems you have today and
start talking about increased densities, I'm telling you that you're
making a mistake.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, yeah.
MR. OLLIFF: It doesn't take much history to go back and
look at planning concepts gone awry. I mean, if you look at the
original concept for activity centers, for example, the original
concept for that, I think, was a good planning principled idea, but
it was partially implemented, and the result was horribly different
than what was originally proposed.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And that's where it really gets
tough for us. Because if I had been on the board when they were
creating those activity centers, I would have wanted to leave
flexibility in there, too, because you'd want to say "let the market
control whether it needs some residential mixed use in with the
commercial." But when you do that, look at what happens.
Because commercial's got the value, and it piled in there at the
intersection of Airport and Pine Ridge, and the flexibility seemed
like a good idea at the time, but it turned out to obviate the
whole goal.
MR. OLLIFF: The other thing that I think you're going to
have to recognize is that for incentives to work in a lot of cases
we're going to have to think differently in terms of providing
some of these things as a matter of development right as well so
that they don't have to come through a variance-type process
and go through all of that long difficult public hearing scenario
that a lot of our land-use decisions do. You're going to have to
give these incentive to where they are easy, frankly, so that you
can transfer those rights. Assuming that they develop within the
policies that you've got established, they can go and they can do
what they are going to do.
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April 17, 2001
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Don't make them beg to do what
we'd like to encourage them to do? MR. OLLIFF: Exactly.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: And if we, in the activity centers that
have, put in the ingredient of smart parks or business parks
which would attract people to work there in that type of
environment, you would have had living and meaningful, meaning
the people would say, "Yes, I want to live in this center of
activity so I can walk over here to this business park and go to
work." .
It's no different than being in Hancock Building in Chicago
and living on the 30th floor and taking the elevator down to your
office. But we never created that type of incentive. It was a
great concept, but it didn't work. So we have to learn from that
and say, "what were the missing ingredients?" and "how do we
do it in the future?" so that at the end of the day, it says, "yeah, it
makes a lot of sense to get there." We will need everybody at
the table to do that. We can't sit here and create this. In our
minds we have to have all of the community working with us to
accomplish that.
MR. LORENZ: I think staff recognizes that this is going to be
-- flushing this program out is going to be a lot more detail
oriented, that it's going to have to come out to some degree even
after the growth management amendments are effective. We
may provide policies or provide some degree of constraints,
obviously with the county commission endorsement, and then
develop a study to do the detailed market analysis to ensure, as
Commissioner Mac'Kie said, that you have a marketable program
that works. Because if it doesn't work, then we really can't
consider it as being an element in our protection strategy.
Another point is you'll be seeing different kinds of land-use
designations on the future land-use map, and I think in thinking
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about the rural fringe area, if you will, already as -- it's
somewhere between urban and the rural lands. What we've
structured in working with the advisory committee is a
recognition that even in some of those different areas within the
rural fringe, they're going to have different land-use designations
and standards that are going to be appropriate to the
environmental resources and the sensitivities that are within
those subdistricts. So this is -- again, the larger areas have
different standards and land uses allowed that you'll see for the
rural fringe. Not going into details, because the details will be
presented to you on June 13th -- we're still working with the
advisory committee with everything, but that's definitely an
element that you'll see as a key strategy. Buffer zones, I think
these are fairly . self-explanatory. Around some of our natural
resource protection areas or around some of the conservation
areas as a larger scale, we want to be able to specify an
appropriate set of land uses that are going to buffer that
conservation area from the more intensive uses within the
development that would be proposed. I think there's some
common sense types of rules and guidelines to follow for that,
and that's another element to try to help protect those lands that
we've already set aside. At the project site scale, in terms of
development guidelines, you're looking at a more narrow type of
concern. Again, you have some similar protection strategies in
the landscape scale, but it's really applicable to the particular
development. There will be standards that we'll be proposing
that will address these types of -- many times these are wildlife
issues where you want to try to separate the more intensive land
uses away -- more intensive land uses away from the wildlife and
the species. Think about that bear slide. We don't want to get
into that particular situation, but we recognize, too, that there
are techniques to help to separate those areas and provide or
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April 17, 2001
have a very common sense approach to an individual
development. So the tools that you'll be seeing for the site scale
will be cjustering. You'll be seeing site performance standards,
natural area of preservation standards, and wildlife management
standards. A cjustered development simply is a technique that
allows us to concentrate building specific areas recognizing that
on a particular site there may be some more of the land that we
want to set aside for environmental reasons and purposes. It's
still an opportunity to utilize that land that's set aside as open
space, as common recreational areas, but also recognizing that
some of that land, too, needs to be set aside for habitat reasons.
And because we're talking about planning in the rural area
outside the current urban area, you're going to see some
standards that are a little bit more restrictive than what would
currently apply in the urban area. Again, the details need to be
worked out with you as we develop that through the advisory
committee. One thing I would like to say about cjustered
development, and that's with recognition, too, is that as you
cjuster your development and you push your units closer and
closer together, the closer together that you get to provide water
and sewer means now you're no longer into an on-site septic
tank or a well situation. So one of the balancing acts that we're
going to have to look at in cjustered development is the
recognition that the more we want to force cjustering to preserve
more and more land, the more and more need there may be for
some type of centralized water and sewer surface, and that
becomes a little bit of a conflict and an issue. So without getting
into the details of that, just recognize that that is -- that's going
to be a balancing act that we're going to have to -- a fine line that
we're going to have to walk when we propose these types of
strategies. On-site natural preservation, again, the easiest way
of looking at it is that the preserve or percentage of undisturbed
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April 17, 2001
natural areas on site -- we want to make sure that we're setting
aside the rare and unique vegetative communities, if they exist
on site, in consideration for the best available habitat. These
(indicating) would be the types of criteria that would work with
the percentage and set aside. There would also, possibly, be
opportunities for restoration on site. I think when we start
looking at project development, being creative, we're also
working with some density incentives or some other bonus
incentive program such that if a developer were to restore some
areas on the site or preserve vegetation beyond the minimum
standards, there is some density bonus for that. Because, again,
that provides an incentive for the developer. We get a benefit
because we're setting aside more and more vegetation area or
doing some more restoration work.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: If there's a market for the bonus -
MR. LORENZ: That's correct.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- because we tried that with
interconnect and got nothing, so be careful.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Could we encourage those bonuses
or incentives to be or to work in con]unction with, like, the sheet
flow and the preservation areas which are so important to our
future?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Of course. We have to.
MR. LORENZ: Yes, yes. We've crafted some ways of doing
that to apply some additional bonuses or some schedule that
recognizes that if they do it for those types of systems, like
adding to an NRPA or adding to these large systems that they'll
get more of a bonus than if they just simply did it on site.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm just willing to bet that there
is something -- and we need to ask the development community
this in my judgment. There's something that's more valuable to
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April 17, 2001
them than a density bonus. Maybe it's a streamlined permitting
process, maybe it's something, but it ain't a density bonus
because they aren't building to the current density of four.
They're building to 2.4. So if we want to do something
meaningful, we're going to have to offer them something other
than units of density that they don't want. We already know that,
because we tried to get that -- that was how we were going to
accomplish interconnection, and it was a dismal failure. There
must be something that they want that we are willing to trade for
the preservation of these environmental areas. That's what
we've got to find out, what that is.
MR. LORENZ: Remember, too, though, we're talking about
some orders of magnitude difference. In the rural fringe area, the
base density is one unit for five acres.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Understood.
MR. LORENZ: So when you cjuster that and you start
adding, you know, two, three, four -- the margin is -- you're
working on better margins.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: But, Bill, when you start cjustering
in these rural areas, one for five, and then you put in a golf
course, haven't you really destroyed everything that you were
going to preserve? I mean, to me a golf course isn't any part of
preservation or restoring. I don't ever consider that open land.
It's not even open to you and me --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's not natural.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- unless we want to pay a golf
course fee or buy a partnership into a country club.
MR. LORENZ: Well, as we develop the standards -- again,
the details you'll see later on -- there will be certain preservation
standards that -- a golf course would not qualify for those
preservation numbers. A golf course would qualify for open
space. So when we start talking about a preservation for habitat
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preservation, then the golf course -- most of the golf course -- I
don't want to say all of it -- most of the golf course would not
qualify for that particular preservation. That's the way we've
structured it in the details, again, in working through the
committee.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: If we're trying to make space for
panthers, there are very few panthers on golf courses.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Right. To me -- so, I think I would
like to choose another word other than "open space."
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We need to.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I'd like to choose a word like "golf
course," because golf course means golf course.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What a concept.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Golf courses have been the
downfall of previous commissions. They won't be of this one,
that's for sure.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: In more ways than one.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: We'll let that go by.
MR. LORENZ: Well, it's a little bit of a summary slide, but I
guess my big point here is that when we finalize the packet and
we go to the DCA with it, we have a number of elements.
Sometimes it's very easy to get caught up in arguing the details
of one particular element, but it's a total package. Sometimes I
have to recognize that myself and not get too hung up on one
particular percentage point in one particular element when we
have the rest of the package here. So I think if we develop the
total package, that's what we'll be presenting to the DCA in
terms of the total amendments that will address the final order.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: He likes these Far Sides.
MR. LORENZ: I know, it's another Far Side. You know, we
talk about being assigned space. We talk about the data. I
crunch a bunch of numbers. I like to play with spreadsheets. We
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April 17, 2001
do a bunch of GIS analyses, but we have to get back to
understanding that the data many times that we have to work
with is very uncertain, and we've talked about that in terms of
the maps that we've used.
We also understand that many times there are principles
that we think that we understand at the moment, but it may not
necessarily be completely true five years or ten years from now.
We've got a number of different things that we need to look at
and understand that when we start making recommendations,
we're really talking about a range of values.
I'm one not to say it has to be black and white, absolutely
this percentage, 55 percent, because I calculated 54.35 percent,
you know, in my spreadsheet. So we have to recognize that
there's a range of values, that the total integrated program is
what's important. We do a lot of work with regard to models, and
I'll just tell you --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's right.
MR. LORENZ: -- that when we do modeling at desk top, the
models are wrong. You know, the numbers are trying to
represent a reality by mathematics. We can get some general
concepts. We can get pretty close. It's all valid. But then to say
that it's absolutely 83.2578, you just can't say that. So we
have some percentages, some degrees of accuracy that we need
to work with as we're developing the --
MR. OLLIFF: Better than perhaps wrong, "exact" is probably
the word.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Inexact -- all models are inexact.
MR. OLLIFF: No model is exact.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA:
minus" come in.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE:
MR. LORENZ: That's right.
That's where the term "plus and
That's correct.
The last point here is seize
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opportunities and enhance wildlife habitat by intelligent design
of development, and I think we can accomplish that. The other
thing, too, is we have to watch out that we don't get too rigorous
in our standards and that we provide some degree of flexibility.
The balancing act that we have as staff, which is difficult,
though, is that the test many times from DCA is that we have
policies that are specific and measurable. So we have to walk a
little bit of a fine line to get that policy approved by the DCA to
ensure that they're specific and measurable, but they still
provide some degree of flexibility such that when they're applied,
from a common sense standpoint, they'll do what we want them
to do.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You know, Steve Seibert is better
than his predecessor, frankly, in understanding the realities of--
having been a county commissioner, he's open-minded to
knowing how it works. I think he's going to be tough, but he's
also going to be flexible.
MR. LORENZ: Carrot and the stick, again, we talk about
incentives, density bonus. We have to make sure that -- is it a
marketable incentive? It's something we can structure, but we
have to test it to that -- have that as a litmus test. Cjustering,
TDRs, those are all incentives that we want to build into your
strategy. Of course, we still have regulations, minimum
standards, you know, that we have to adopt, and to some degree
they work together. We have to find the right mix and, again,
that's what's going to be coming to you in the next six to nine
months.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Can I just say one little comment
about that too? As we get closer to having a hearing examiner,
we better get good at the regulation side. Because we're not
going to get to have these meetings where we get up there and
sort of say, "Well, let's cut the deal. If you'll do this, we'll go with
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that." The rules are going to be the rules are going to the rules.
That's the good news for everybody. But it better be rules that
we like, because the hearing officer is not going to have this
deal-cutting ability. It's going to be does it meet the criteria or
not, check, check, check, and if it does it's approved.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, I think the rules should be
something that can be applied, not what we like.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right, I agree.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: One example might be the
Beachcomber in Vanderbilt. Is it a good idea for a hearing
officer? Should we have more public participation through the
planning commission, so that's some of the things that I'm
struggling with.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I agree. It's tough to balance.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think the key of what you're saying,
Commissioner Mac'Kie and Commissioner Henning, is that the
growth management plan -- if the changes we make there, the
changes in the Land Development Code, are well done, well
articulated, it makes the job of the hearing officer much more
clear and everybody understands the rules. If they had to do
them the way they are today, there's a lot of things -- we would
not have any opportunity to try to go back and try to find a
different solution. And there's numerous situations out there or
around the county where we have that opportunity today to
interact and try to get some collective agreement even though
the code says this or the plan says this. We get people to, quote,
work together on a volunteer basis. That will not "go away," as
Commissioner Mac'Kie is saying, if you have a hearing officer.
That hearing officer is going to go by the book, which is what the
hearing officer needs to do. So it's our job to change what we
don't like so you give the book to the hearing officer and that can
be used. If we don't do that, we're going to have all kinds of
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problems.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: When are we going to begin doing
that?
CHAIRMAN CARTER: We are. As I understand it, it's
evolving now through this process.
MR. OLLIFF: It requires a special act of the legislature,
which has already been submitted and is in Tallahassee this
session, and then after that we'll adopt a local ordinance.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Okay. I'm sorry. I didn't understand
the question. About the hearing officer, yes. About the others,
we are evolving to that now. That's why it will be very important
what we do in each LDC cycle and each -- as opposed to the
growth management process as Bob Mulhere outlined to us in
the last workshop. He was telling us, you know, this is your
challenge.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: How much time have we
allocated for public comment?
MR. OLLIFF: How many public comments have we had?
MR. DUNNUCK: One.
MR. OLLIFF: One so far. We assumed that we were going to
have about a half an hour's worth, so we're running about 20
minutes behind at this point.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think they're coming here now. I see
them just rolling out of the audience, so I would say we'll
probably have about 40 minutes.
MR. OLLIFF: Bill, if you can close us off real quick.
MR. LORENZ: Yeah. The final order deadline is June 2002.
That was three years from when we entered into it in 1999. This
schedule here (indicating) is basically the schedule for the rural
fringe work, a conceptual plan to be brought to you with staff and
the committee on your special meeting that has been established
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on June 13th. We looked to develop the actual language of the
amendments through the summer and bring to you a transmittal
hearing in October, November, of this year. It goes to the DCA.
The DCA then gives us their objections, recommendations, and
comments or an ORC report. Then we have to respond to that.
Then in looking for scheduling an adoption hearing in January or
February of 2002 to try to give us a little bit of a cushion for that
final deadline of when amendments have to be effective by. We
don't have much cushion left, maybe a couple of months, but I'd
like to try to stay on this schedule for sure.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's (indicating) pretty.
MR. OLLIFF: With that, I think the next thing on your
agenda, Bill, was to hear some brief updates from your -- MR. LORENZ: Yes. We have two members from the
committees. I know Tom Comrecode and Ron Hammel are here.
MR. OLLIFF: Can we bring the house lights up? That's fine.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: If we bring the house lights up, we'll
get the comments, and move that forward. While that's
happening, Bill, do you have a light schedule for the rural
committee in terms of the process dates, opt dates, as we have
for the rural fringe or is that --
MR. LORENZ: No, I don't. I think Ron may talk about that a
little more.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Okay. This (indicating) particular
slide, I'm going to blow it up. I want it in my office. I'm going to
hang it where I see that every day. I need to remind myself
where I am.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Tom, sit here(indicating).
MR. COMRECODE: Good morning, and thank you for the
opportunity to speak. I'm Tom Comrecode, chairman of the rural
fringe committee. Our fringe committee has been working pretty
hard. We meet two or three times a month and have been for
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almost two years now.
I can tell you at this point it's frustratingly slow in trying to
get done the work that we need to get done and get it to you so
that you can be compliant with the final order. That frustration is
just probably driven in large part because of my impatience with
some members of the committee, but I think the end result will
still be a good one.
You heard Bill say that we've been hampered by how little
data is available out there and the quality of the data, the age of
the data, that's further hampered us. We're trying to make
decisions and help the county commission develop policy based
on the data that you just can't rely on.
Identifying areas as wetlands, Commissioner Henning
mentioned that, geez, he has an area in his backyard that might
qualify as a wetland. Absolutely. In fact, if you were to look at
some of the water management district maps that date back to
1989, some of the soil conservation maps that we've looked at
that date back to the 1960s, almost all of Collier County or huge
amounts of Collier County that are currently urbanized would be
classified as wetlands using either of those two sets of data.
So that's been a little bit difficult, but I think the committee
has come around to lend balance to that and realize exactly what
it means when they're defining a wetland and not necessarily
talking about critical habitat in the CREW. We've been able to
differentiate that pretty clearly.
One of the things, I think, that the committee also has been
working hard on is to strike a balance. The final order didn't just
talk about natural resource protection. It's a very, very important
part of all of the work that we're attempting to do. What I think
the final order does instead is it asks us to develop a good plan
for land use in the fringe area as well as the rural lands area.
It included such things as school siting, community
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infrastructure, property rights above and beyond or in
con]unction with things such as wetlands, species protection,
habitat protection. And, you know, if you look at upland habitat
and wetland habitat, it is all that land. So there needs to be a
balance. We can't just simply say, "Lock the door; nobody goes
there."
I think that's what the committee's real challenge has been.
I think when we've butted heads internally and with some of the
people who have come to the committee to make presentations,
those are the areas where we've butted -- to try to find that
balance.
As our work concludes and it comes to the commission, one
of the biggest challenges you'll face is that same balance and
flexibility in terms of developing policies and comprehensive plan
amendments that are going to be approved by DCA that, in fact,
protect property rights, provide for habitat protection, and we
honestly think that the work we're doing is going to get us there.
We're going to provide critical habitat corridors. We're going to
provide buffering. We're going to provide open space with or
without golf courses -- we don't know yet -- that we think will
strike a balance. That's probably the most important thing I can
say about the work we've done. At this point I just -- subject to
your questions, that's all I have to say.
MR. OLLIFF: Are we going to make June 13th?
MR. COMRECODE: If Bill and I can do it, we'll do it.
MR. LORENZ: All right.
MR. COMRECODE: Thank you very much.
MR. OLLIFF: Thank you, Tom.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Ron.
MR. HAMMEL: Mr. Chairman, members of the commission,
my name is Ron Hammel. I'm chairing the rural lands
assessment oversight committee and primarily looking at the
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lands in and around the Immokalee area and the issues related to
agriculture, the agricultural lands surrounding sensitive and rural
properties. That area includes about 195,000 acres of rural lands
in northeastern Collier County. I believe we have a map --
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Right behind you.
MR. HAMMEL: -- back over here (indicating) which is pretty
much that big yellow, orangy zone that you see behind me.
We have 14 volunteer members on that committee. The
citizens have met -- we've met 13 times over the past 18 months.
We've had excellent participation and interest from the
committee members, interest also from the public, and we've had
commissioners -- I know Commissioner Coletta and
Commissioner Henning have attended some of our meetings.
I just want to thank you for appointing a pretty broad group
to serve on this committee. There's a lot of different -- we have a
couple of members here today. We have Floyd Cruz and Joe
Boggs with us that serve on that committee. But as I indicated,
we have a pretty good diverse group that are taking this mission
very seriously.
The committee has been providing input -- well, the goal of
the committee is to provide input, oversight, and direction to the
study process as outlined in the final order. The study is being
primarily funded by the agricultural landowners of eastern Collier
County who have enlisted the services of WilsonMiller with the
endorsement of this board of county commissioners to provide
the technical assistance and prepare the substantive work for
the study.
This is truly a unique process and very challenging
opportunity for us here in Collier County to kind of provide this
kind of format to do something creative and unique in this very
challenging area. So to kind of echo Tom's comments, the
process is definitely slow, but I think it's deliberative in where
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we're going.
As you're aware, the WilsonMiller team is working with the
landowners and the committee, including planners, ecologists,
biologists, GIS experts, economists, ag experts, water resource
specialists, transportation planners and, of course, the county
staff is serving to help coordinate and facilitate this entire
process.
In addition, there is a technical advisory committee
consisting of nine state and federal agencies that are
coordinated by DCA as part of the process. So whatever is done
and moved through the committee in the different stages then
goes to these technical advisory folks to then come back and
make comments and follow through on that procedure. Again,
we understand our mission is taken directly from the final order
and, you know, I think Bill put on the screen before the key
components of that. There's really three of them, and I don't
need to get into detail, but we're taking that very seriously,
particularly the one on trying to protect the prime ag lands and
the premature development of those lands.
Let's see. I think the big message that I got in listening to
the presentations before was the fact of data, data, data. You
know, if we're going to get in and study these areas and do these
creative and innovative things, in the long run it's important to
have the necessary data and updated data of what's really going
on with all of this property. And in that regard, we've been very
impressed, the committee has, with the level of detail that's
gone on and, as I heard mentioned here today, the level of detail
that's being put forth by the WilsonMiller team.
At this point I wanted to see if Al Reynolds with WilsonMiller
had any specific comments he might want to make to you. I
know that we have a handout that gives a lot more detail about
the procedure that we're going through and kind of lays out a
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little more of the timeline.
I know that we're working with kind of a three-year timeline.
We began in January of 2000. We're, I guess, a year and, what, a
quarter into the process. We've completed a couple of stages,
particularly the data and development stages and analysis,
which is really the basis for whatever -- some of the
recommendations and ideas that will be generated.
So, Al, based on that, do you have any other key points that
you might want to outline?
MR. REYNOLDS: I've got a copy of a PowerPoint
presentation. I think what it does is give a good overview of the
whole study process and identifies the various goals and the
stages, so I'll share that with you. I will tell you that we have, in
addition to doing this work, been going around the state
explaining this process because this is seen as quite an
innovative approach that's being taking because it is a public-
private collaboration, and it's something that has generated a lot
of keen interest and a lot of positive support. As Ron
mentioned, we are a little over a year and a couple months into
the process. It took about six months to get the scope of work
defined. So even though the final order kicked off in June, the
real substantive work in this process didn't occur or didn't really
start until January of the year 2000.
We're in the middle of Stage II. The Stage I report, which is
really the data collection and analysis, which I think you each
have received a copy of as well as the CD-ROM, that creates the
foundation for the whole study. That was a ma]or part of the
effort. It took a year to put together. It has been reviewed by a
number of the technical advisory groups. I think everybody has
acknowledged that's looked at it that it represents the best
available information that has ever been assembled for this area,
and it provides a very strong foundation for us to go forward with
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the planning part of this.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's really useful information, Al.
I'll tell you, that CD is very easy to navigate and also just big
picture items that I've wanted to know, percentage of ag land,
percentage of, you know, just big picture real hard data instead
of just satellite photos. It's really nice to have, and it's been very
useful to me already in the week or so I've had it.
MR. REYNOLDS: Just in closing, we are right now in the
second half, essentially, of Stage II. It's a four-step process if
you recall the scope of work. We're now putting together the
information that can be used for looking at alternative land-use
scenarios. We brought together a panel of agricultural experts at
the last meeting of the oversight committee. We videotaped that
presentation, so for those of you that were not able to attend it,
we do have a videotape that we can make available.
I think it's very important to view that if you can because --
recognize that three out of every four acres in the study area has
an agricultural purpose on it today and an agricultural use.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Is that something that's been
made available for Channel 54?
CHAIRMAN CARTER: I had the same thought.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We ought to replay it there.
MR. REYNOLDS: I believe it has.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I was told it was going to be.
MR. REYNOLDS: We would also suggest that perhaps -- we
certainly can't get into any of the substance today because of
the time, but would suggest if the commission would be
interested that we would be happy to do a study-specific
workshop with the commission to bring you up to date in more
detail with both Stage I and Stage II, and I think it would be
timely probably in the early summer to do that. We also have
some agricultural people that we can bring into the workshop
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that have a statewide expertise in both the future of agriculture
and some of the issues surrounding agricultural land values.
Recognize that this study is a 25-year horizon, so this is really
taking a long-range view, and it's very much focused on
sustaining the viability of agricultural uses in the area. So if you
would be receptive to that, we can put that kind of a workshop
together for you.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm certainly receptive.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think the board would be, Al. I would
suggest September. If I look at the number of workshops and
budget hearings and everything that we're going to be going
through, it's -- the timeliness I think would be better then so that
we've got a chance to do that. If that works for your group, I
think that would be a great late-summer workshop. MR. REYNOLDS: That would be fine.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: I think it would be great to have
the rural fringe committee come in at the same time.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We've got one scheduled for
them, don't we?
MR. OLLIFF: June 13th.
MR. REYNOLDS: Yeah. The fringe is coming in -- the fringe
is -- recognize that the fringe process, because it relied on
existing available data rather than going through the process we
did, it was able to move more quickly in getting into some of the
policy issues. It's also a substantially smaller area.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And less accurate.
MR. REYNOLDS: So they are a little bit ahead in terms of the
land-use policy, so I think it's appropriate to do them first.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You know, the bad news on the
fringe is the development pressures are so high that we have to
act on the data that we have, and it's not going to be as good as
the data that we have in the rural properties or rural lands. But
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we've got to do what we've got to do.
I don't really understand Stage II, Allen. What's happening in
Stage I17 I understand Stage I, data collection. And like I said,
that report is really useful. Then I understand Stage III will be to
analyze the options or the impacts on the land. Then IV would be
to develop the amendments necessary to implement whatever.
But what is Stage II exactly?
MR. REYNOLDS: Well, there's really two -- actually there's
probably three ma]or headings within Stage II. The first was to
put together a good understanding of the agricultural use of the
property, you know, to quantify it, to understand some of the
trends and drivers of agricultural use so that the committee and
the public can get a really good handle on what is driving and
what will continue to be the issues and opportunities for
agriculture.
The second was to -- if Stage I was focused on natural
resource and land cover, Stage II is focused on land-use
information looking forward. In other words, what is the 25-year
projections for population? What is the 25-year view for
transportation? What are some of the influences that are going
to occur over the next 25 years? And then putting together
different scenarios, and scenarios are really alternative futures.
So each of the scenarios will describe a set of conditions
that could occur on the planning horizon, and those are the
scenarios then that will be analyzed for impacts as part of Stage
III. So, if you will, it's--
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We'll have menus.
MR. REYNOLDS: -- a future land-use planning process.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: In Stage II you'll develop sort of a
menu of alternatives that will be analyzed in Stage III, or in Stage
II will you say "this is what we recommend"?
MR. REYNOLDS: Stage II is merely putting together the
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alternatives, putting together the analytical models, the basis for
the analysis. Stage III is the actual analysis of the benefits and
impacts associated with each alternative future.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But Stage II will include
alternatives?
MR. REYNOLDS: Yes. Stage II is the alternative. And the
alternatives are going to be prepared in a workshop setting. It's
a facilitated public process, and we want to make sure that the
public, again, understands that they are encouraged, invited, and
welcome to each of these meetings. But I think it will be
particularly important as we get into this stage of work that we
have good participation. They have been well attended, but I
think that's really important that we get good input and that
people come to the meeting with as good an understanding of
the factual basis -- I mean, really what we spent the last year and
a half with is developing for ourselves and the community the
good understanding and factual basis to make intelligent
decisions. So it really helps to get informed so that we can start
looking at the future with a solid foundation.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You know, this is so important. I
think we need to really pause and evaluate how we are -- I know
you guys have been doing this, but I think as a board we need to
pause and evaluate how we are soliciting public input. Because,
really, this is -- what the community character study was to the
urban area, this is to the rural area. I mean, this is the visioning
process for the rural lands. What do you want to be in 25 years?
And we need to share-it the thing to death.
You know, I mean, we need to just take the show on the
road and really ask the people in both the urban and the rural
parts of the county, "what do you want to see happen?" Because
if Stage II is where we develop the alternative scenarios, this is
the most important place for public participation.
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Stage I was you gave us data. Stage III is going to be you
quantified the planning data and what the impacts would be of
the alternatives, but Stage II is when people are going to say
what they want to see happen out there.
I really think we need to develop a comprehensive plan for
seeking that input so it's not the same people talking to
themselves, but that it's more like the focus group. You know,
the future of Collier created by us where we had all those
meetings and you went around and wrote on the walls what it is
you wanted to see happen. I think that's what -- that needs to be
a part of the Stage II process. I really, really do, especially
considering that the governor said this shall be the hallmark, and
the hallmark is going to be public participation.
MR. REYNOLDS: I will tell you that the process is going to
be designed as a share-it. It is a facilitated process. It's a public
process, and it's encouraging as much public input as we can
get. The time constraints that we're under right now is such that
we don't have the year or more that was spent putting together
that. So we're working under a clock.
As such we are trying to get everybody fully up to speed,
and that's what we've been spending this process up until now
doing so that when we come to the table, we're not like a lot of
share-its have been and looking for the right information and
trying to figure out what we've got. You know, it's all there, and
it's to be used.
I think, you know, again, I'll advertise for the committee.
Next Monday is the next meeting. We are going to start laying
out some of the basic information that is going to drive decision
making for the 25 year horizon, so we would encourage people to
come and participate.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You know, as crowded as our
schedule is, I really think that it might be something that we
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need to do in the next month or so, have the workshop to sort of
kick off this visioning process for the rural lands and put in from
the county commissioners on what we hope happens, and let
that be a real significant public hearing where people really get
to show up and say what they hope happens out there.
I really -- I hope we'll get very serious about that -- not that
we aren't -- but that the commission will get very serious about it
and not just sort of leave it to the committee and wait for the
report.
MR. HAMMEL: You know, one important part of that -- and,
Commissioner Mac'Kie, I totally agree with you. You know, one
of the most important parts of maintaining the rural lands and
agricultural land is finding the -- I guess the magic word is
"sustainability," but the economic value where you can basically
maintain and keep your agriculture viable. Because if the farmer
can't make a profit, the farmer isn't going to be there. If the
farmer isn't there, then who is going to be there?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's right.
MR. HAMMEL: So whatever we do in workshopping and in
going in this direction, we certainly want to make sure that
there's that element involved, and that's the economic part of
keeping the farmers there. You know, it's very critical. Again, I
think that Al is right. Most of the past year or so has been spent
on looking at building the database and looking at what's out
there. I think we're starting to get into the nitty-gritty of, what is
going to sustain ag out there? What are these operations? What
are these factors? What is going to be necessary in order to
keep farming productive and profitable in this region as well as
to protect the wetlands and the uplands and our natural
resources in the area?
So, you know, it's well taken. If we can come up with some
conceptual ways of maybe fostering a little more on the public
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April 17, 2001
outreach -- I know that the staff has been doing a good ]ob
circulating information, putting it on the websites and that, but
maybe formalizing a little more on some visioning on that under
the caveat that, you know, the economic viability has to be there
or else we're not going to have agricultural in the county.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I think, you know, one of the
things that would result from this visioning is you would hear -- I
hope what you would hear -- I know what you'll hear from me is
that I want to know that I've gotten into the country when I've
left the urban boundaries. And the only way I can do that is if
there is a reason for you to continue to have ag land there.
But I desperately want to live in a county where I can drive
past 951 and know that here I am in the countryside, and that
means cattle and groves and rural -- real rural community. You
know, that's important. I think you'll hear from the coast that
that's what they want to see. Then we will ask you or I'll ask
you, you know, help me know how to encourage that. What can I
do to help ag remain viable in Collier County?
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'll tell you how you can help,
Commissioner Mac'Kie, is if you attend the meetings that they
hold out there at Orangetree. They're very informative. I
appreciate very much that Commissioner Henning makes it out
there. I would invite you to become more of the process.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You know, I'm ready to do that. I
wasn't, to be honest with you, very interested in helping in the
data collection process. I trusted that the experts would do that.
But now that we're divisioning, I'm ready. You know, this is the
part that --
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Before we go too far in here, ladies
and gentlemen, not that I'm not in agreement, but I've made a
note to Tom Olliff and I see David Weigel nodding here about
back to the final --
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April 17, 2001
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Sunshine.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: No, no. Well, Sunshine, final order
guidelines. We need to be very careful here that we don't start
getting into an influencing role in this process and get ourselves
in trouble. That's the only thing I'm asking, and we've got
Sunshine considerations. So, gentlemen, help us make sure we
stay within a framework so that we don't get ourselves
jeopardized at the end of the day.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Let me ask a question there.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: There's too much great work that's
going on.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: How could we possibly -- I mean,
is there something in the final order that says county
commissioners should not seek to influence the outcome? I
didn't see anything in there.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: No. I think what the thought
process here is that if we go to the meetings all together that we
might become involved in the process, and we shouldn't be. We
go to the meetings now, and neither Commissioner Henning or
myself do nothing more than observe. We stay completely
separate from that. It should be a citizen initiative even separate
of the Sunshine law--
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I see.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: -- so that the results come out of
it. But by being there and seeing how the process is unfolding,
you become that much more in tune to it.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But isn't it time for these to be on
Channel 54? Why not live on Channel 54?
COMMISSIONER COLETTA:
question.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE:
COMMISSIONER COLETTA:
Why not? That's a good
Live on --
I've seen them being filmed at
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April 17, 200t
one point.
MR. REYNOLDS: Well, we actually -- the property owners
paid to have the last session videotaped just because we knew
that the agricultural -- bringing in the experts was very important
for everybody to hear, so we videotaped that.
I just want to remind everybody, too, that there are four
steps in this proces. The fourth step in the process is the
comprehensive plan amendment process. The comprehensive
plan amendment process is intact just as though you would deal
with any comprehensive plan amendment. So the final decisions,
the final public input process is yours, if you will, in Stage IV.
That's not to say that staying involved early on isn't great.
We like that. But don't forget that either. The committees' work
product will come to you in the form of recommended
amendments, but you still, then, have that last stage, which is
really where the final decisions get made.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Commissioners and representatives,
one of the things that I made a note to myself is this would make
a great Channel 54 production. This could probably be done in 30
minutes. It's a great overview. The community understands the
stages. You're invited. Give us the schedules. We do a better
job through PSI, public service information. "We are now at
Stage II, ladies and gentlemen, and these are the following
meetings, Stage II1."
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's time.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: But this keeps getting run over and
over again, big picture, big picture, big picture. You guys have
given us the documents. It's time for us now to produce it and
get it out in the air.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And I hope somebody's noted this
issue of televising the committee meetings now because --
MR. OLLIFF: Well--
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April 17, 2001
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE'. I think that's a more appropriate
way for us to stay informed because of the various issues you
were discussing. We need to be of service.
MR. OLLIFF: But for the same reason you didn't want to be
involved, perhaps, when they were generating and developing
information is probably another good reason why you don't want
to broadcast it. I mean, there's a certain part of baking bread
that's not too exciting to watch. I think the initial part of this
committee was probably, you know, the rising process that no
one wants to sit around and look at minute after minute.
We're probably now at the process where there's some
public information that's good to generate. I am concerned a
little bit about having workshops on the same issues that we're
going to have eventual public design share-its where the board
then makes some public positions, statements, prior to us going
out and trying to generate public input. Because I think the
whole process is much better in terms of getting and generating
public input if the board hasn't made decisions already.
So I think this whole process was designed through the
committee for the board to be observers, plugged in to get
information, but then to make decisions probably in Phase IV as
opposed to I, II, and III.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You know, I agree. It's not
important for us to be involved yet, but it is vitally important for
the community to be involved in Stage II. And the question is, do
we do that via televising bread-making on Channel 54? Maybe.
But whatever it is, we need a strategy, and maybe that's what
needs to come out of this. Could staff, please, present the board
with a strategy for public participation at the Stage II level?
MR. OLLIFF: And I think that's perfect. That's the note that
I've made.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: That's great.
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April 17, 2001
MR. HAMMEL: Well, from the committee standpoint, I don't
know that any committee meeting that we've held that anybody
that wanted to make a public statement from the public has been
denied. So, I mean, we pretty much open the floor and have kept
those meetings. The question is, who is attending and at what
level, et cetera, and we're certainly open to anything that would
enhance public participation in the process.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I don't doubt that for a second.
MR. OLLIFF: Allen, is there anything else that you wanted to
add?
MR. REYNOLDS: No, sir.
MR. OLLIFF: Okay. I really appreciate you bringing us the
overview. I will tell you that this is going to be one of the more
critical things that this board deals with over the course of the
next year. The more you can understand about what got us here
-- some of the information that's been developed already and the
process that we're going to be facing, the better off we'll all be.
But this is going to become front and center over the course of
the next 12 months.
With that, Mr. Dunnuck, why don't you start calling some
public speakers for us.
MR. DUNNUCK: Sure. If we could have Michael Bauer
followed by Brad Cornell on deck.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: How many do we have in total now?
MR. DUNNUCK: Six.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: In the interest of having us all at
the table, anybody who's comfortable at the table could speak to
us from there.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Sure.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You know, you're more than
welcome.
MR. OLLIFF: Whichever you're more comfortable with. I
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April 17, 2001
believe that (indicating) podium is live and this (indicating)
microphone here should be live as well.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: If you're an on-deck person, we have
two microphones, so the other person might want to slide up
here and be ready to go.
MR. BAUER: Thank you. I'm Mike Bauer, Southwest Florida
policy director for Audubon of Florida. I'm really pleased that you
recognize the importance of the natural environment to the
public, and I also think it's very important that you made the
statements that some of our current problems are due to bad
decisions in the past. And then extrapolating from that, you
recognize that the future of our quality of life is due to the
decisions you're making right now. Bill presented some
data. He indicated that 69 percent of the county is wetlands, 10
percent is agriculture, 10 percent forest, 5 percent urban, and
that 76 percent of our current wetlands are conserved. I think it
might be useful to look at those numbers in terms of if you took
out the federal lands that the county has little or no control over
and perhaps set up another category of single-family residences
in north Golden Gate Estates and then what those numbers were.
I think the wetlands would drop drastically. You might get a
better idea of what we can do and what we can't do. I realize the
magnitude of what's happened. Also, Commissioner Coletta, you
talked about the 90 percent of wading birds. I wanted to tell you
where that came from.
That is the Greater Everglades ecosystem itself, the entire
thing, that we've lost 90 percent of the wading birds on, and that
stems from the initial Central and South Florida project in the
1940s when they began the ditching and dredging which caused
a lot of loss of habitat and wetlands.
So we're looking at the current numbers that have gone
down 90 percent since the 1940s. And that's important because
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April 17, 2001
the only way they're ever going to come back is if we do
restoration and if we start thinking about these concepts of
smart growth and do things that protect wetlands. Otherwise,
they're not magically going to come back. We have to actively
do something to restore wading bird habitats. And they are an
excellent indicator of how good we've worked on wetlands.
Thanks.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, sir.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Who's our next speaker after --
MR. DUNNUCK: Bob Mulhere.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Who?
MR. MULHERE: Sorry.
MR. CORNELL: Hi. I'm Brad Cornell. I'm here speaking as a
member of the board for the Collier County Audubon Society. A
couple of big points, in preparing for today and thinking about
what you-all would be discussing, I had some thoughts, and one
is that Collier County is very exceptional in terms of natural
resources. So the context for this entire discussion is
exceptional. By that I mean we should throw out all the usual
standards by which we measure appropriate land-use decisions.
We are considerably better endowed than most areas of the
nation with regard to natural resources. Therefore, what is usual
for anywhere else should not go here in Collier County. So that
may be something to think about in recognizing that there are a
lot of preserved resources already held by the state and federal
government, but that does not in any way come to the point
where we do not have anything to do, ourselves, as a local
government.
Also, it occurs to me that -- and other people have noted this
too. Dover Kohl's community character study recommendations
serve a lot of our find order requirements. Not all of them, but
many of them -- we can find a lot of guidance for this process in
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April 17, 2001
the final order. I do applaud your discussion of trying to see
mitigation happen here in the places where the destruction
occurs. Mitigation should be considered in the watersheds that
the destruction happened.
Some specific things, we do -- as you-all have been
discussing, we do need to identify and protect intact wetland and
wildlife systems in keeping those connections. I would argue
that we have enough information to do this now using the data
from panther telemetry, the GAP study, and updates that they've
done to that, and the assessment information that's already been
collected.
We're never going to have a perfect map. It just doesn't
exist. It's never going to happen. At some point we have to
make our decisions. We already know --just looking, for
instance, at the panther telemetry data, we have very consistent
data over many years of collection, and we know where the
panthers or where their habitat is here in Collier County. That's
important to recognize in delineating natural resource protection
areas and other areas that require and warrant our scrutiny.
On the cjustering question, I think it's useful. Cjustering is a
useful planning tool if you are protecting natural resources, if
you're protecting something valuable. And I think it was already
mentioned by Commissioner Fiala that golf courses, while they
are very popular, that's not a resource that we, as the public
government, need to be protecting. So cjustering does not work
when you're connecting it to a golf course community in the rural
area.
Also, cjustering does not work when you spread it all over
the map. So Dover Kohl talked about cjustering. There is a very,
very valuable use for it, but it is not all over the map, and that
needs to be very carefully evaluated.
The problem of market for transferring units away from
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areas is we do want to protect in the estates and rural areas, and
I think that we will see a change in the market if we implement
many of the recommendations from the Dover Kohl study. What
will happen is we will find increasing densities in the urban area,
and they will be more marketable. They will be more popular.
Developers, hopefully, will find us more attractive than the
lower densities that we're getting now because the design
standards are wrong for higher densities. Change the design
standards, and you've got your better, denser, urban community.
This will take the pressure off the rural areas and the resources
that we want to protect. That's a good scenario, I think, for
providing incentive for transfer of development rights.
Also, if we have a well enforced and very, very clear urban
boundary, you will not see this question of, "Well, I think I can
put a golf course community out there beyond the urban
boundary, and we'll just sort of rearrange everything." You know,
if we are very clear about what is and what is not urban and rural
and agricultural, then we will be in a lot better position, and I
think our developers and the community at large will benefit.
Real quickly, ag -- oh, I guess that's as quick as I can be.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Go ahead.
MR. CORNELL: There are lots of details, and we have
submitted a letter through our representative, Tom Reese, to
staff. Staff has been working with us. We've had discussions
with staff. We feel that those have been very fruitful. We would
like to continue those, and we'll be happy to share those with
you commissioners --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I wish you would.
MR. CORNELL: -- as time permits. I would like to, perhaps,
talk to you individually too. But thank you very much for this
opportunity. We look forward to more opportunities to discuss
this.
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April 17, 2001
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, Brad.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: I'd like to, for the record,
recognize that Brad Cornell is not a golfer. MR. DUNNUCK: Bob Krasowski.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, he and I play tennis together.
It's a joke, folks.
MR. MULHERE: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity as
a citizen at this point in time to make some comments. I think
the discussion has been excellent. A couple of issues -- for the
record, Bob Mulhere.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: With whom?
MR. MULHERE: RWA, Incorporated.
The issue related to the issue of creating a market-driven
transfer of development rights is an excellent discussion and one
that the committees and the staff have been having, and I think
Bill alluded to and hit the nail right on the head when he
suggested that there will need to be greater detail.
I have said all along in this process over the past two years
that relative to the transfer of development rights, we will be
asking the board to -- or the staff will be asking the board -- I
slipped there -- to provide the funding for the appropriate experts
that will help us develop a transfer of development right that is
truly marketable, and I think one of those experts certainly needs
to be an economist of some form or another.
I do also think that Brad Cornell's comments, though, were
very legitimate as it relates to the issue of the market back into
the urban area. Collier County has changed a lot, as we all know,
over the last 15 or 20 years. There are much fewer opportunities
for large master plan golf course type of communities which have
a much lower density, and that's where you get your one, two,
two and a half dwelling units per acre.
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April 17, 2001
The opportunities for future development are going to be
more increasing in-fill type developments which will need a
significantly higher density to be marketable and be successful
from an economic perspective. So those do provide us with
some opportunities.
The second thing that wasn't discussed too much here but I
want to keep throwing back on the table is the opportunity to
enhance workforce housing opportunities and affordable-housing
opportunities. Obviously, we'll be looking at whether or not
there's an opportunity to create some unit banking, some
dwelling unit banking, that perhaps could be purchased by this
county and then offered to qualifying, affordable, or workforce
housing.
Those units could be purchased in rural areas and held in a
bank and then offered at whatever rate is appropriate -- those
details need to be worked out -- for those projects that qualify,
and it will provide qualified workforce and affordable housing.
So there's lots of details that have to be worked out as it
relates to that. Also, I would like to encourage the board to keep
an open mind with respect to the really difficult task that the
staff and the committee have in trying to achieve balance in this
process. We really do have to protect the vital natural resources,
and we really do have to protect private property rights. That
requires balance. So there may be some areas within the
fringe or the eastern lands that we do identify as being
appropriate for development. Not everyone may agree with that,
but if on balance we are protecting the vast majority of the vital
natural resources -- for example, if we have, you know, a
thousand acres of impacted or cleared land that we determined
might be appropriate for development, I would propose to please
keep an open mind with respect to that.
The alternative is there are alternatives. The alternatives to
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April 17, 2001
using the tools that are available to protect private property
rights are alternatives that will cost money. So I would
encourage, you know, you to keep an open mind. I think there
are some opportunities, particularly within the rural fringe, to
provide some balance in the eastern lands. That's what's being
developed now through Stage II.
My final comments, I think, relate to the hallmark of this
process being public participation and community involvement.
The staff had developed early on a public participation strategy,
and we followed that pretty closely. We've developed a
brochure. That was one of the steps. We created a notification,
property owner notification list. We also created a very, I think,
comprehensive website containing all the information.
The next step now as we move towards the development of
these alternatives is really to step up that public information
campaign, to make people aware or more aware of the website,
to ask for links into all those agencies and organizations out
there that would provide us with a link on their site to this.
The fringe area is a lot different than the eastern area. I
mean, there are a fewer owners, and there's much more land in
the eastern area, and in the rural fringe there's less land and a
lot more owners and a lot smaller parcels. So the opportunity to
aggregate some of those parcels into natural resource protection
strategies is very significant, but we do have to involve all of
those owners. We will be notifying -- the staff will be notifying all
of those owners of, for example, the workshop.
So we do need to step that up, and I was glad to hear that
the board recognized that and tried to make this -- and the other
aspect was that we do -- the staff did intend to have during the
summer some other public meetings leading up to your fall
transmittal hearings.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: You've never heard that noise
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April 17, 2001
before, have you?
MR. MULHERE: I have now, but it's pretty much on time.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, Bob.
The next speaker after Bob, please.
MR. DUNNUCK: Bob Krasowski followed by Nancy Payton.
MR. KRASOWSKI: Good afternoon, Commissioners, and
everyone else. My name is Bob Krasowski. I come here today as
a private citizen, as I usually do, and I just represent myself and
anybody else who agrees with me. I'd just like to --
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Ever get lonely, Bob?
MR. KRASOWSKI: Maybe we could --
CHAIRMAN CARTER: That was great. We do this to each
other all the time.
MR. KRASOWSKI: Maybe I could take a hand count here if
there's ever been anybody that's ever agreed with me. But I
appreciate your show of affection by teasing me to death.
I really enjoy these workshops. As a private citizen, I learn
a lot from them. Even when I'm not here, I do have occasion to
watch them on TV. I've noticed in recent meetings,
Commissioner Carter and Commissioner Mac'Kie, you've asked
the cameras if anybody was out there. I tried to call in to let you
know that I was watching, but the message never seems to get
through.
But I do watch these things. I'm sure other people do watch
these things. I know under -- some of these meetings are
required by the process and by law; others aren't. Some are your
own efforts to gain a greater understanding. Mr. Olliff, you're
shaking your head no. Does that mean the meetings are not
required by--
MR. OLLIFF: None of these have been required. These have
all been at their vote, their choosing.
MR. KRASOWSKI: Have they? Oh, okay. I thought this one
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was part of the required part. So good for you then that we have
these workshops.
You know, we're now in a period of springtime, you know,
and a great many of us have celebrated a big holiday in the
resurrection, and others have other ways they celebrate spring
and the renewal. On
the 21st we're going to have Earth Day. I bring these things up
just to draw attention to the fact that it's very appropriate that
we have a natural resources workshop here and now in the
county.
We have our little piece of the world here, and I think we
should do right by it. We serve as a small example to the rest of
the global community on how to handle what is given to us, how
to steward over our natural resources.
Along with that I'd like to say the transfer of density scares
the heck out of me. I can see it as an opportunity for a continued
hyper program of potential overdevelopment. I think things have
to be managed, as you know, to coincide with infrastructure
development. And when we get ahead of ourselves, we have big
problems, and it makes it less fun to live here when you can't
drive around or the sewer's overflowing and the landfill is a
mess. We're in a big hurry about that.
But I do appreciate how Commissioner Mac'Kie and some of
the rest of you seem to be aware of the complexities of this
issue. Bob Mulhere suggested an economist be involved in
attributing values and exchange rates for various projects that
you're thinking of doing. I was wondering as a question, is the
DCA here? Is there a representative from the Department of
Community Affairs?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I don't think so.
MR. KRASOWSKI: No. That's unfortunate. I'm a little
disappointed. Because at the last growth management
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workshop when the developers sat at the table, they were asked
to attend. You know, but this workshop seems like a very
effective tool, so I'm not too disappointed. Then -- I guess that's
it. Thanks -- well, no, I don't want to thank anybody for this. It's
America.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's our job.
MR. KRASOWSKI: Yeah, it's your job.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Good job.
MR. KRASOWSKI: Yeah. But at least you're making an
effort to do it well. Nice seeing you again. We'll see you in the
future --
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thanks, Bob.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thanks, Bob.
MR. KRASOWSKI: -- at future workshops, I hope.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You bet.
MR. KRASOWSKI: Okay. See you later.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Thanks.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Tom, you may want to comment on the
other, the DCA, if you'd like.
MR. OLLIFF: I'm not sure, but I know that they had
tentatively scheduled to try and come back down. Frankly, I
think from our perspective, because of the nature of this
particular workshop, it was more of an educational opportunity
to have the new commissioners understand, primarily, the
underlying environment and the environmental issues here in
Collier County. It was not focused on what should be those DCA
future issues, which are the rural and rural fringe areas. And I
think we will make sure that when we have those two future
workshops both in June and perhaps in September that we will
try and encourage participation by DCA at those two workshops.
MR. DUNNUCK: They're actually committed for June 13th.
MR. OLLIFF: Okay.
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CHAIRMAN CARTER: That's great.
MR. DUNNUCK: Bruce Anderson's on deck. Nancy Payton,
you're up.
MS. PAYTON: Nancy Payton representing the Florida
Wildlife Federation.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Good afternoon, Nancy.
MS. PAYTON: Good afternoon, and thank you very much. I
finally made it to the table.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yee-haw.
MS. PAYTON: I like this format. Everybody gets to make it
to the table if they want to sit at the table.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: We promised you a seat at the table,
Nancy.
MS. PAYTON: Well, everybody gets a seat. They get their
five minutes at the table.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Right.
MS. PAYTON: I want to compliment Bill on a very, very fine
presentation. It was fair. It was balanced. It was extremely
well done, and you deserve cudos and compliments for it.
(Applause.)
MR. OLLIFF: And his staff and related staff sitting there.
MS. PAYTON: I have a few comments that I wrote down
during the discussion first about northern Golden Gate Estates,
and to remind everyone that the final order requires countywide
wetland and wildlife protection measures, and that includes
northern Golden Gate Estates. That's one of the reasons why
we've had meetings with Bill and his staff and others to talk
about how can we protect what's left in northern Golden Gate
Estates and what creative ways we can use. It's our obligation
under the final order to look at northern Golden Gate Estates just
as we're looking at all other areas of the county. I would like
to commend Commissioner Henning. He's not here to get this
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April 17, 2001
compliment, but hopefully he'll hear it about his pursuit of a
creative way to meet the county's mitigation obligations. A
countywide or county habitat park for infrastructure mitigation I
think is a wonderful idea. It's a similar idea that Florida Wildlife
presented during a discussion about the green space initiative,
and it's a way to compliment that effort.
I would ask that there be consideration to expand the team
to include Bill Lorenz, natural resources; Maria Ramsey from
parks, because this could serve several purposes, and one of
them is a passive habitat park; and possibly a planner as to how
it fits into the bigger picture of the park plan and the final order
and other efforts to protect natural lands. It's just a thought to
put out there for consideration.
There was a slide up there that said, "Why worry about
wildlife?" and Commissioner Mac'Kie said, 'It's because the
governor and the cabinet says we have to." But I remind you that
in 1989 the county made a legally binding promise that they
would protect wildlife and habitat. So the governor is only
holding you to your promise.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's true. It's absolutely true.
MS. PAYTON: That's right. Commissioner Coletta, the
question about woodstorks, I have seen the documentation from
Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, and there are ups and downs, but
it's a steady decline. Some years are better than others, but it's
going down. There's also a document that was issued by the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in May of 1999 called the multi-
species recovery plan that goes through all the federally listed
species and has a lot of information that you would find useful. I
have the CD. I will provide it to you.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you.
MS. PAYTON: If that meets the requirements of a gift from a
lobbyist, I'm not sure, but some way we'll legally --
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April 17, 2001
COMMISSIONER COLETTA:
to you.
MS. PAYTON:
MR. LORENZ:
MS. PAYTON:
It will be a loan. I'll give it back
-- find you a way to get that.
I've got it.
Staff may -- Bill may have it.
But it would help
you understand some of the problems that various listed species
are facing in Southwest Florida.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: There's also an excellent article
in the Smithsonian magazine back about four months ago about
our Corkscrew Sanctuary and the woodstork. I recommend that
for reading to anyone who would take an interest in it.
MS. PAYTON: Right. But the fate of the woodstorks
depends upon you. Their roosting area is protected, but their
feeding areas and how those are protected are up to you. I do
want to comment about wetlands. You are the fire wall to
protect wetlands throughout the county, and that includes public
lands, because our comprehensive plan does tell what can and
can't be done on public lands.
For instance, there may be pressure at some point to look at
public lands, southern Golden Gate Estates, or CREW or some
other land for infrastructure because it's the cheapest most
available land. If our comprehensive plan allows that, then
that's a possibility. So, again, I stress that you do have a great
power over what happens or potentially could happen on
conservation lands because that's part of the final order
discussion of what we're going to allow and not allow on those
lands.
And, lastly, I will venture into -- well, I have two areas to
venture. One is about WilsonMiller. To remind everyone sitting
at this table that they are not the county's consultant. They are
the landowners consultant. Therefore, we shouldn't be relying --
meaning the public, the county -- relying on them for a
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collaborative community-based planning effort.
It's the county's obligation to make sure that it's a public
planning effort and everybody gets involved in a positive way.
And the county needs to develop its own strategy and clarify its
relationship with WilsonMiller because I heard Mr. Hammel's
presentation that the study is being done for the county by
WilsonMiller. Well, WilsonMiller isn't doing the county study;
they're doing the landowners' study, and we need to clarify that
for the public as to what the relationship is between the county.
I comment back on the end of the board meeting last Tuesday
where there was discussion where Bob came forward and
wanted -- and asked for a consultant to come and talk about
waste management and was cautioned that "You have to
remember he's not the county's consultant. He's somebody
else's or potentially somebody else's consultant." And I see an
analogy-- maybe I misinterpreted Mr. Weigel's discussion last
Tuesday, but I saw an analogy between that small issue that Bob
was working on and our bigger relationship, meaning the
county's relationship with WilsonMiller. If they're the county's
consultant, then there are obligations under the Sunshine law
and public records law.
Lastly, I sent an e-mail off to DCA to ask for clarification
about the final order and the community character plan; is the
county accepting the objectives of the community character plan
and potentially does the entire plan interfere with the final order.
I'm going to read this into the record, and I also have copies for
everybody. This is the response that came back from Shaw
Stiller, who is the DCA's attorney and also the attorney that
drafted the final order and was involved in the final order as it
was approved by the governor and the cabinet.
This is his response: "The final order does not mandate the
creation of assessment committees, nor does it limit the county's
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consideration of alternatives to only those brought forward by
the committees. The final order requires a 'community-based
approach to bring the EAR-based amendments into compliance
by a community-created plan for the future' and 'a collaborative
community-based effort with full and broad-based public
participation.' The board's acceptance of recommendations
about community character seems entirely consistent with the
order."
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Can I just comment on that
because the board members will remember at the meeting I was
-- I want to be very clear that we are getting advice from the
committees we've appointed and we're going to get advice from
other sources. And community character is one set of advice
that we paid a lot of money for that, hopefully, we'll listen to.
But I'm very grateful for this, that we're not limited to -- I'm
very grateful to Nancy for getting us this e-mail to confirm from
the state's attorney that we are not limited to a particular set of
information from a particular source. Of course, we're not. We're
supposed to get as much information from as many places as we
possibly can, and then we get stuck with making the tough
decisions.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Any other points, Ms. Payton?
MS. PAYTON: I've had my five minutes at the table, and I
thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you. You're more than
welcome. I think, also, for the public record we should introduce
Nance Lenanne our land-use attorney in Tallahasee's response to
this. That should be part of the record also. I'm not going to say
that it in any way is conflict to, but it does establish the
guidelines under which we are operating.
Number 2, in terms of WilsonMiller, when we originally -- the
board gave direction in terms of what we were going to do, we
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fully understood that they would be representing the landowners
but turning all of that information over to the Board of County
Commissioners as public input or public information.
So it does not mean it's a sole source, but it's a piece of the
puzzle. And do we have other inputs and resources; the answer
to that is yes. We are not accepting any one input as the sole
criteria.
MR. ANDERSON: Good afternoon, Commissioners.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Mr. Anderson.
MR. ANDERSON: In follow-up to the discussion that you-all
just had about the letter from the attorney for the Department of
Community Affairs, I notice that he mentions in quotes that "the
department was looking for a collaborative community-based
effort with full and broad-based public participation." To my
mind, that did not happen with the community character report. I
certainly wasn't made aware of any public workshops that were
conducted on the community character plan before you-all.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You must be kidding. You're not
kidding?
MR. ANDERSON: By this commission?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You weren't aware that the
community character study was ongoing?
MR. ANDERSON: It was ongoing, but they certainly didn't
seek any input from any of the property owners that they made
recommendations about in the rural areas. I just wanted to note
that for the record.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I see.
MR. ANDERSON: I want to comment on three items; one is
the urban boundary, the other is the discussion you had about
TDRs and density bonuses, and then last about conservation
acquisition efforts. With regard to the urban boundary, it
needs to be understood that the urban boundary was not
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intended to be fixed in place forever. It was intended only to
limit the area where the public was obligated to fund public
infrastructure at a given point in time, nor was the urban
boundary intended to be a line beyond which no development can
occur. Your 1989 comprehensive plan, which established the
current urban boundary, allows homes and golf courses to be
built outside the urban boundary. And guess what? That
happened.
The third point I want to make about the urban boundary is
that the big secret that is buried in the recommendations of the
consultant on community character is that they recommend no
urban or suburban development outside the current urban
boundary so that in the future the urban boundary could be
enlarged. That was the underlying basis for their
recommendation, and that needs to be recognized. Nobody
really reveals that big secret.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE.. Is that in the report somewhere?
MR. ANDERSON: It's in Technical Memorandum No. 3.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay.
MR. ANDERSON: Next I want to talk about TDRs and density
bonuses. TDRs and density bonuses from the rural and rural
fringe to the urban lands won't work as Commissioner Mac'Kie
pointed out, but they may work, and they should be given a
chance to work in the rural and rural fringe areas.
Talk is cheap, but the price of land in Collier County is not. I
would urge you all to include some money for conservation land
acquisition in your upcoming 2001-2002 fiscal year budget. Don't
wait for a referendum. The law doesn't require a referendum in
order to set aside money for a land acquisition program. You
need to fund the county's green infrastructure if there's going to
be more of the county set aside solely for conservation.
Lastly, I want to distribute copies -- some of you may have
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them. I have five copies for each of the commissioners. I want
to distribute copies of the final order issued by the governor and
cabinet and a copy of the final order issued last month by DCA
Secretary Seibert that finds the county is acting properly to
balance the protection of the natural resources and the
protection of private property rights. This latter order by
Secretary Seibert is being appealed by, guess who, the Florida
Wildlife Federation and the Collier County Audubon Society.
I don't need to use up my entire five minutes. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Do we have
any other speakers this morning?
MR. DUNNUCK: The last speaker is Mark Morton.
MR. MORTON: It is afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you
for a seat at the table. I appreciate that. I just want to -- I may
stay here for a little bit because this weekend I was at space
camp, and it's a very grueling process if you haven't been to it
with your family.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: At what?
MR. MORTON: Space camp.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh.
MR. MORTON: At space camp you learn all about the space
program and how good data and science and technology can do
some wonderful things for our country. I also found out that
they're working on an international space station that's 60
countries working collaboratively together. They're going to
spend $60 billion to put a space station in that will represent all
those countries.
And it occurred to me as I hear what we go through -- as I
was sitting there, and that's kind of the warped side of our
business, I guess, that I have to be at space camp with my
family, and I'm thinking about stuff back here. I'm thinking to
myself, "Boy, we can get into space and we can do all that, but
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we can't collect enough data information to make good decisions
here in the county just for simple land planning." So I really
applaud you guys on having the workshops and your earlier
comments today about using good data and science in your
decisions.
That gets to "don't recreate the wheel." I keep hearing a lot
of stuff, but it's sometimes political and sometimes rhetoric that
comes from a lot of different people that kind of diverts our
attention. I would say to you that I would like to hand out today
a principles -- Charting a Sustainable Future: Golf and the
Environment. This was put together by the EPA, the National
Wildlife Federation, the United States Golf Association, and many
other people. This is just an expert from it with some principles,
and it doesn't say that wildlife and golf courses are incompatible
and that golf courses are the evil for the environment or any of
those things. It says, "With good science, good management
techniques, good planning, and working together
collaboratively," as this group has done for three or four years at
the federal level, that you actually can accomplish sustainable
golf courses.
Also, there's a book here that I have. It's entitled Managing
Wildlife Habitat on Golf Courses. This is put out by Ronald
Dodson who's with the -- it's not really the Audubon Society. He
tends to take off from the Audubon Society, but, again, it gets
I assume Bill Lorenz -- Bill, do you have a copy
into those details.
of this book?
MR. LORENZ:
MR. MORTON:
I've got the Audubon book, not that one.
Okay. This would be a really good one for
your staff to have and also the other document I just handed out
because it really covers stuff in terms of not recreating the
wheel. Also, there's another one here called An
Environmental Approach to Golf Course Development. This again
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April 17, 2001
is put out by the golf course association and was done very
collaboratively and has some good principles. Some of them are
national. We need to tailor them. Again, that would be a good
one for staff to have and for the rural fringe committee who's
making these kind of decisions right now in talking about golf
courses and maybe understanding how they can be and cannot
be compatible would be a good way to go.
A lot of that is also .- it's a very collaborative approach, very
consensus building. Again, as I said, the EPA and Wildlife
Federation and some others, you know, came to the table to
discuss those issues, and their conclusion was you can do them.
It was "Here's how to do them in a compatible way." .
Again, I would also mention to you the ULI, the Urban Land
Institute. We've been trying to get the county to get more
involved in the local district counsel because the Urban Land
Institute is a research and think tank on the responsible use of
land with the environment.
I've attended several of their national smart growth
conferences, one in Austin, one in Atlanta. Also, when I was
following the growth management study commission, the ULI
coordinated having New Jersey, Maryland, and Austin also come
and make presentations to the growth management study
commission on smart growth issues.
So as we get into that, I think there's a lot of good resources
there also. I guess, overall I would say that there is a -- you
know, the economic prosperity and enhancing our economy
really should be one of our big goals, and I think that as Ron
Hammel said earlier, you know, the viability and economics of
agriculture are obviously important.
One thing that really kind of bothers me is having followed
what Commissioner Seibert -- I mean, what Secretary Seibert's
done and what the governor's done about local control is this
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overpowering issue that whenever we don't like what the local
government is doing, "Well, where's the DCA? Let's get the DCA
down here. Maybe they can straighten that local government
out." You know, the DCA in this process started against you-all
and then eventually, with the local stuff and supporting you on
the studies, has been proactive, and he's tried to change the
direction.
Why do we have the corp? Why do we have the federal
government in here? Well, there's some people that were
unhappy with what local government and the water management
district and the DEP and all these other state agencies were
doing, so let's bring the federal government in here.
So I just really, you know, think it's -- our local government.
We're trying. You guys are having workshops. You're trying to
do the best you can to grapple with this and get the data and
analysis, and I think that's a good course then. You're always
trying to bring in some state agency or somebody to tell you how
it's going to be done. As far as the televising of the rural
studies, the only thing I would say is, you know, we talked about
more participation. I think if you're going to go that route, you
have to go with all the advisory boards. You know, development
service advisory board, productivity advisory board, the Hispanic
advisory board, the community character, which had no
television coverage on all the things they did in their program,
the rural fringe committee meetings, and I would say similar to
what Tom said, a lot of it is going to be fairly easy to participate
in. So I think the idea of a lot of good notice on 54 and keep
telling people to go to these meetings and here's what we're
covering, you know, is a great idea. Thank you for your time.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And I --
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, Mark.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- would like to say that I hope
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that we're going to hear from staff on what is the best way to
have public participation. Maybe watching bread rise is not the
most interesting way to do it.
MR. OLLIFF: But I think there are key points where -- in the
process that we really want to push that the public really wants
to come to this one. We want to make sure we market the right
things, the right points and time in the process, and we'll bring a
plan back to you by way of memo.
Mr. Dunnuck, anybody else registered?
MR. DUNNUCK: No more speakers.
MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, we kept you an hour later than
we promised you we would on this one, but unless there are
some other questions, that's all the staff presentation we had for
you with the exception of--
CHAIRMAN CARTER: We do have one more item. Before we
go there -- Commissioner Mac'Kie.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Just a question. I liked what I
heard Bruce Anderson saying about -- that this county
commission doesn't have to wait for a referendum to decide to
acquire public lands for preservation or to acquire private lands
for preservation. I wonder if -- I don't think there was anything in
our budget policy that we adopted that would have given staff
that direction, but I wonder if that is something that the board
would want to consider, giving the staff direction to bring us
something back in their budget proposal that we're going to start
looking at.
Just like you guys read the paper today, I think we ought to
have a least a tenth of a mill in this next budget for healthcare.
Maybe likewise we ought to be talking about a millage for
acquisition. I'm not asking for anybody's decision on that today.
I'm just saying I think it's a valid point that maybe bears
discussion for this budget cycle that if we could acquire land -- if
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we can identify some land that needed to be acquired, maybe it's
our job as the leaders of the community to begin a program that
is successful that then the public wants to see continued in
perpetuity, and that's when we ask them to vote. It's just a
thought.
MR. OLLIFF: I made a note to provide for you what I would
call an alternative budget package for you to look at that would
include some dedicated percentage of ad valorem that would be
dedicated for the purchase of green space as a program whose
mission would be both urban and rural green space purchase
program, whose mission would also be passive recreation along
with pure preservation, and one that hopefully we can partner
along with our mitigation banking program that we're also in the
process of trying to work out. And if we can put all that together
in sort of an alternative budget package for you to consider, I
would be happy to let you see that.
I continue to caution you about this year's budget. It's not
going to be easy, and it's certainly not going to be pretty when
we start talking about the millage rates and the impacts of some
of the decisions we've already made, so just keep that in the
back of your mind. But I think clearly the board would like to see
something like that. We'll put it together for you to take a look at
and decide.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: And I would tag on to that, Tom, a
discussion that would require a legislative change, you might be
able to use TDC dollars in this process. So I think we need to
look at all that, and that may be a good segway for you to bring
all of that, not only for one year, but for multiple years.
We do know what Lee County did. They put a half mill on for
their "Florida Forever" or whatever they want to call it up there,
although now they're going through some real debates about how
to deal with that and how to extend it. So we need to learn from
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everybody and find out what our alternatives are.
Any other comments on natural resources before we to go to
Mr. Bleu Wallace?
Okay. I want to thank everybody in the audience for being
here and sharing with us and your tremendous interest and
participation in natural resources as it applies to our total growth
management picture, to Bill Lorenz and all of his staff for their
hard work in putting this together, and also everyone else, legal,
John Dunnuck, Tom Olliff. You've all done a great job of
assisting us.
So we're going to kind of close off this section. We do need
to go -- you're more than welcome to stay, because this is a very
hot issue and one that Commissioner Coletta and I will be
working on in Tallahassee next week. But we're going to shift
gears and go over to Bleu Wallace in regard to the situation
that's evolving in Tallahassee on a very dear subject to our
hearts. Mr. Wallace.
MR. WALLACE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the record,
Bleu Wallace, Utility and Franchise Regulations. I wanted to add
this item on to your agenda today and introduce you to Mr.
Matthew Liebowitz of Liebowitz & Associates. He is our special
counsel representing us in Tallahassee and eventually, probably,
to file a lawsuit challenging the Florida Communication Services
Tax Simplifiation Act, which we opposed.
The board has already adopted a resolution opposing that
act, and with that I'll turn it over to Mr. Liebowitz.
MR. LIEBOWITZ: I know the time is short, but I also
understand that several of the commissioners are new to the
table and new to this issue, so let me try to step back for a
moment and give you some very general thoughts to set the table
for this specific discussion. Telecommunications, that's
telephone, TV, radio, wireless, has a regulatory framework that
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starts with the Congress or the FCC. Some of those issues are
shared at the state level and some are at the local level, being
the local municipality or the local county.
In the State of Florida, Collier County is a nonchartered
county. In that regulatory framework, basically what that has
translated into is that this county has in the past -- it currently
has a cable franchise which regulates the current cable
operators in the county and deals with issues such as franchise
fees, which is what we will be talking about, customer service,
the types of services that are provided, the types of in-kind
services that the county receives such as the channel that
you've been describing. And the cable franchising authority is
critical for, among other things, managing your rights-of-way.
In Florida, the telephone industry is basically regulated
primarily through the Florida Public Service Commission. Then
you have various other industries, direct broadcast satellite,
wireless, and there's different regulatory treatment of all of
those. Having set the regulatory framework, then you have the
tax framework or the revenue framework. In the area of
telephone, telephone has been subject to seven different taxes
and, therefore, it has truly been very complicated, not only for
the consumer, but for the governments and the providers as a
whole.
In the context of Collier County, your revenue stream
primarily, if not exclusively, was cable franchising fees which,
again, is derived from your federal rights to be the cable
franchise authority. With that very quick simplification in
comes the industry led by Bellsouth a number of years ago
saying we have a very complicated tax structure that not only is
very costly, but confusing. Technology is changing, and we think
Florida should lead the way to simplify taxation of
telecommunications and make it fair. No one that I know of can
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argue against tax simplification and consumers understanding
what their bills are.
Therein started a process that expanded in scope and has
gotten incredibly complicated. Lawton Chiles when he was
governor had a commission of 19 representatives, only one of
whom was a local government representative, dominated by
industry, had proposed essentially a unitary tax that was
rejected by the legislature primarily because it was a tax
increase.
The industry brought it back last year in a different form. In
the last year's legislature, they passed the so-called
Communication Services Tax Simplication Act. Well, if this is
simple, it defies logic and it certainly has taken an enormous
amount of time for the legislature, local governments, and
everyone concerned.
At the end of the day, it's supposed to be simple, but we'll
see. But, first of all, from a revenue perspective, the theory was
that it was going to be neutral so if local government, be it
county or city, collected "X' number of dollars in 1999, they
would be protected and collect those same number of dollars
going forward plus some kind of normal growth factor. But the
type -- what came in -- the sources of those revenues were
changed.
The example in Collier County is that Collier County would
no longer receive just cable franchise fees, but -- we would
receive, in fact, no franchise fees because franchise fees are
eliminated, and we would receive portions of this new state tax.
The state tax would include telephone, your cellular operators,
your direct broadcast satellite systems, and all the new
technologies that are coming in to being with the exception of
the internet because the internet is a separate issue and in some
sense complicated.
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April 17, 2001
So the theory is while we have in Collier County a very
substantial franchise fee of revenue stream in the past, that's
gone. That's eliminated. Instead of that the number of dollars
that actually will come from the cable operators or cable
subscribers will drop dramatically, in fact, almost in half, and we
will get additional revenue sources from telephone and these
other industries which will make up the same pot of dollars, and
from there we go forward.
Part of the problem or the complication was it was not
simple enough to just deal with taxes. They also got into the
regulatory issues. So as an example, they eliminated your right
to have a cable franchise. So in the State of Florida as we sit
here today, as of October 1st, there are no cable franchises in
the State of Florida, not at the state level and not at the local
level. It created a right of access to your rights-of-way by all
telecommunication providers.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But what are they doing to us
this year?
MR. LIEBOWITZ: Well, you know, what basically happened
is, after the smoke cleared and everybody understood that there
were a lot of mistakes, they started a glitch bill. The glitch bill
was -- well, there was a two-step process.
First of all, the legislature last year set up this new
regulatory scheme and said, "We've got to study through Don the
numbers, and we will propose a rate this year. That rate was
designed to give you revenue neutrality in 1999. Then if that
does not pass, this whole bill from last year disappears at
sunset." .
Then when people finally understood the details of the bill
like the absence of cable franchising, they said, "Oh, you know,
that was an unintended consequence, and we've got to go back
and fix things." So there has been a marathon series of
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negotiations that continue even today and the so-called glitch
bill is designed to, A, implement the rates and, B, correct the
problems that were created by the legislation last year.
Collier County had initially, again, two main issues; one is
the regulatory side and one is the revenue side. The good news
is we've achieved every one of our regulatory issues. First and
foremost in the glitch bill, there is a very specific amendment
which says cable franchising will continue at the local level.
Secondly, it eliminates the risk of in-kind services that was
posed by last year's legislation. In-kind services is your cable
channel, paid access dollars, and those types of issues -- dollars.
So those no longer are at risk.
Third, in terms of your rights-of-way, there is some language,
not the greatest language, but good language that says no one
has an inherent right to go into your rights-of-way. The specific
issue there was wireless, and we got a specific amendment to
say that your local zoning and your local land-use authority is
still the predominant measure to which towers and antenna
structures will be measured in your community. All those were
wiped out by last year's bill.
So all those regulatory issues that were set forth by the
prior commission and by your staff have been met.
Unfortunately, on the revenue side, I can't respond as positively.
First of all, you have this whole concept of hold harmless. Even
the commission that was put together by Lawton Chiles
acknowledged that revenue neutrality can be achieved at a
moment in time, but going forward or on a perspective basis is an
impossible dream. I would suggest to you that that's exactly
what we have here.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: By that you mean neutrality
comparing the current franchise fee arrangement with this future
tax scheme that would reduce franchise fees but allow us to tax
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cable -- I mean, wireless, etc. So how would we ever be able to
judge --
MR. LIEBOWITZ: Correct. It--
CHAIRMAN CARTER: And it puts the burden of taxation on
the Board of County Commissioners to levy against its residents,
takes the state out of that role, and we're the ones that get
caught in the crossfire and, whoa, you know how that works.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Plus we no longer have the
ability to be able to use it as leverage to get certain services that
we need --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Out of your franchising.
COMMISSIONER COLETTA: -- especially in the rural areas.
MR. LIEBOWITZ: And let me give you some specific
examples. In your cable franchise today, you negotiated with
your cable operators to receive franchise fees based upon cable
internet service, cable advertising, cable home shopping. Those
are the fastest growing components within the cable industry.
Those are all gone. So while they may have been replaced by
long distance, telephone, and other issues, you know, other
sources, the newer technology, the ones that have a greater
growth potential, are eliminated.
It is our position and argument that those dollars will be
much more significant in the future than the replacement
revenue sources. Now, one of the problems is there's nothing in
the legislative record at all to speak to this issue. It doesn't say -
- there's nothing in the legislative record that says they're right
and we're wrong or vice versa. They just made a series of
assumptions and went forward.
I would suggest to you that that's very dangerous. And, you
know, the chairman, I believe, is correct that the one piece of the
puzzle where you have some protection is that in the first year to
the extent that you think you were losing revenue, the local
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government has emergency authority to raise the rates going
forward, but you only have that authority for the first year. But
what happens in the second, third, or fourth year when you find
out that you're short on revenue? The answer is, you've got to go
back to the legislature and ask for permission on a statewide
basis to do something.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Do you know what they'll say to us?
That's a tax increase. We don't believe in tax increases,
therefore, you can't have it. The same way as gasoline tax
indexing. I mean, it's a big trap, folks, and I don't like it.
MR. LIEBOWITZ.' And the second issue that was very
germane to Collier County is auditing. Again, Collier County had
a cable franchise and had initiated a cable audit on its own. Lo
and behold, surprise to everybody, they recovered $443,000 of
revenue as a result of that cable audit.
Well, you no longer have the right to do cable audits. You no
longer have the right to do any audits. All auditing rights will be
done by the Department of Revenue based upon statewide
imposed, you know, criteria which may or may not correspond to
your criteria. And the sole exception that's being discussed as
we speak is to the extent that there is, quote, a single county
provider. Then local jurisdictions, being the county, and the
municipalities can jointly locally audit the hotels and the motels.
That is such a small number that it's really missing the boat.
Having said that, the legislature continues to meet. It meets
today, in fact, in the house taxation committee. To be candid,
you know, we've made progress. As I said, we're not making a
lot of progress on those remaining issues. We have been
directed by the commission and by the staff to look at the
institution of a lawsuit. At the end of the legislative process,
we'll come back to you and report specifically, but we are doing
the legal research to prepare it in the event that you decide to
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April 17, 2001
initiate that lawsuit.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Do I understand that you will be
meeting -- you're going to meet with me separately and, I
assume, Commissioner Coletta because what we need to do is
know who the proper legislatures are to lobby next week -- MR. LIEBOWITZ: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: -- and to let them know our
dissatisfaction of the revenue side and with the action we expect
to be taking here, and that's going to be our challenge.
Now, I understand the senate did, what, a shadow bill that
had no name, and then just changed --
MR. LIEBOWITZ: Well, the legislative process is rather
complicated, but essentially now you have two bills that are,
generally speaking, the same. As each one takes a step, some
amendments are added to one and then catches up on the other
side. But you have basically two identical bills proceeding
through the process.
What's happening is the industry work group has been
working through these issues, proposing amendments. As the
amendments are agreed upon, the committees adopt them. So
pretty much they are the same bills slightly out of sync on the
amendments only because of the different schedules in the
house versus the senate, but they're the same bills.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Okay. And Senator Horn is the leader
of this effort in the senate then?
MR. LIEBOWITZ: Yes. Senator Horn, this is his baby, and he
is pushing hard and is very outspoken on this issue.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: And there's some very interesting
issues behind why he's pushing it so hard, and I'm not going to
say anything on public record because I don't want it to come
back and haunt me, but you wouldn't be pleased if you knew
what the real motives were.
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April 17, 2001
MR. OLLIFF: Bleu, is there anything else you want to add?
MR. WALLACE: No, sir.
MR. OLLIFF: Any other questions from the commissioners?
(No response.)
MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, I think that's all we've got for
today.
CHAIRMAN CARTER: Okay. Thank you for staying. I
appreciate it. Thanks again, everybody, and we'll see you soon.
We are adjourned.
There being no further business for the good of the County,
the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 1:25 p.m.
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
JAMES~IRMAN
presented
minutes approved by theBoard on ~- ~-O /
~ or as corrected .
~ as
TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF DONOVAN COURT
REPORTING, INC., BY MARGARET A. SMITH, RPR
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