BCC Minutes 01/29/2002 W (Strategic Plan)January 29, 2002
TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
NAPLES, FLORIDA, JANUARY 29, 2002
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 9:15 a.m. In
WORKSHOP SESSION in Building "F" of the Government
Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present:
CHAIRMAN:
JIM COLETTA
VICE-CHAIRMAN:
TOM HENNING
JAMES D. CARTER, Ph.D.
FRED COYLE
DONNA FIALA
ALSO PRESENT:
Tom Olliff, County Manager
David Weigel, County Attorney
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COLLIER COUNTY
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
AGENDA
Supervisor of Elections-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Building
January 29, 2002
9:00 A.M.
1. Pledge of Allegiance
2. THIS ITEM CONTINUED FROM THE JANUARY 2~ 2002 BCC MEETING.
Approval of a contract for professional lobbyist services with Arnold and
Blair, L.C.
3. Vital Signs Report
4. Strategic Planning
1. Review of FY 01 Strategic Plan
B. Review of issues by
· Staff
· Citizen's Survey
· Focus
· BCC
C. Stratification of Issues
5. Review and Development of Questions for the 2002 Citizen's Survey
January 29, 2002
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Now we'll go on to the workshop
and vital statistics.
MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, thank you. We'll take that vote
also as approval of the agreement that was actually part of the agenda
package that was submitted to you.
If I could get you to -- well, first, let me begin with getting you
to look around -- for my staff I'm going to ask you to take your
jackets off. This is an opportunity to roll our sleeves up, if you will,
and do a little informal work. I'll leave it up to the Commission to
dress as they choose, but we're going to try and at least spend a little
time, and, hopefully, in terms of atmosphere, we wanted to leave the
commission chambers. Our purpose here this morning was to
actually have some conversation with you, and at the end of this walk
out of the room with some agreement between, not only the board
members, but from the staff perspective as well in terms of what's
important to us as an organization.
If you open your blue folders that are in front of you, and if
you'll go to about the fourth document back, you'll see a document
that looks like this (indicating). It says, "Collier County Strategic
Planning for 2002 and 2003." If you'll pull that out for me.
I'd like to begin by just giving you a little overview from my
perspective --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I'm so sorry. Did you say it says,
"Collier County Strategic Planning"?
MR. OLLIFF: Yes, ma'am. It looks just like this.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Thank you. I'm sorry.
MR. OLLIFF: If you'll flip that document to the third page, it
begins an outline, and I want to just start our strategic planning
process by at least giving you some perspective from your staff's
level about the year that we've just came through. And I took the
opportunity to go back and look at 2001. I would characterize it --
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January 29, 2002
and these are my own words -- as a year of response. And I will tell
you that most of the things that we did through the majority of 2001
calendar year as well as the latter part of the year 2000 was, frankly,
nothing but response.
And we were responding to problems and crisis-type issues that
arose in front of us, and we did very little, from my perspective, that
was proactive, and we were dealing with the issues that were placed
on our plate for us.
The three issues that were paramount over the course of that
period, under 1.1, you'll see, obviously, the golf course impact fees.
And in retrospect I think I wanted to at least list what has been done
in terms of those issues.
The first item there was to get the uncollected fees collected.
And I will tell you all of those fees have been collected as of about
seven months ago.
The second item from a staff perspective was to determine how
those fees did not get collected and then to fix that system. In that
regard the board has authorized a consolidation of over 24 different
ordinances into a single impact fee ordinance. The board also
authorized the creation of an impact fee coordinator and a business
manager for that division. And for a division that collects and
manages as much money as the Community Development and
Environmental Services division does over the course of a year,
historically, they had no one who had any financial experience who
was responsible for overseeing, not only the money that was taken in,
but the systems involved that were involved in collecting and
managing that money.
In addition, the board has authorized the update of four
additional of our impact fee ordinances, which are all underway
today. And the board has also authorized the creation of a new
impact fee for law enforcement to help provide for the growing
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capital needs of the sheriff's agency.
The items that are listed in blue throughout this outline are items
that are still ongoing. So you'll see that the update of all the impact
fees is still an ongoing effort.
And then, finally, the investigation of opportunities for
additional fees is something that I think the board has always
indicated to us that we need to do. In addition to the law enforcement
impact fee, there is an opportunity for one or two others that are
available throughout the state of Florida which this county has never
considered.
The second item -- and was almost in the same time frame --
was transportation -- Mr. Coyle.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Before you leave golf courses, can
I ask a question?
MR. OLLIFF: Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: There's one golf course that was
approved as a private golf course that has become a public golf
course, and there was some question about impact fees with that golf
course. Can you give me an update on where we are with that?
MR. OLLIFF: I can't this morning, but I will provide you an
update. And if the status of the golf changed from private to public,
then, obviously, there would be a change to the traffic calculation that
would be done in response to that. So we'll get you and the full board
a written response --
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. Thank you.
MR. OLLIFF: -- to that particular project.
On transportation, obviously, the most important thing from the
board's perspective was to get some road improvements off the
drawing board and actually under construction. For a period of about
three years prior to 2000, late 2000, 2001, this county had not made a
major road improvement or built a new road anywhere throughout the
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county.
The good news, from my perspective, was that we were able to
get five major road improvement projects off the drawing board
permitted and under construction over the course of the last year.
And I'll give you just a quick update of those, although I think you'll
get a little more detail as we go through the morning.
Livingston Road, first leg of that has already been completed,
and some of you were at the ribbon cutting for that. The second
phase of Livingston Road which takes it to Pine Ridge Road, and I
think will be a major improvement for the transportation network in
our community, will be completed in the spring of this year. Pine
Ridge Road will be completed in March of this year. Airport from
Pine Ridge to Vanderbilt will be completed this summer, as well as
Golden Gate Boulevard this summer. And, finally, Immokalee Road
from 75 to 951 will be completed in the spring of this year. So all
five of those road construction projects not only got off the board, but
they are moving ahead and should be completed by this summer, all
five of them.
We, also, in terms of transportation ended up having to
restructure to provide a team of people that were actually in a
position and able to address the problem. I think we continue to look
back at the day that we brought Norm Feder on as one of the better
things that we've done here in county government, certainly, a boost
to the transportation program. But we restructured that entire
organization. We had to create some transportation planning. We
had to bolster the transportation engineering and design team. When
we first started trying to tackle this problem, I believe we had nine
total people trying to address the transportation needs of this entire
county system, and that simply wasn't enough asset to be able to
address the issue.
We ended up realizing that there was not actually a hard-and-
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fast road construction plan that had been reviewed and approved by
the board. Norman and his staff have done that, put that plan
together. We ended up then developing funding options, and these
are the things that are ongoing. 1.24 through 1.27, the funding
options for the ongoing transportation needs will be a plan that gets
reviewed by this board in February.
We needed to establish systems for ensuring progress and
completion of our transportation construction program, and I think
we've done that through our centralized -- what we call CAPS Track
project, which is a centralized spreadsheet where we are now tracking
each and every capital construction project that the county has.
Reviewing and amending land codes and comprehensive plans
especially in regards to transportation, I think you have already seen
some major amendments in the last cycle. And in the next two
upcoming cycles, the next one is almost primarily associated with
transportation-related amendments, and over the next three months,
you ought to see all of those in front of you through Land
Development Code hearings that we will hold in the evenings.
The last thing is a little longer term, but I think the board has
agreed and the transportation staff has been directed to continue to
look for some additional local and collector road opportunities that
are out there to try and enhance the transportation system that we
have.
The last issue that we dealt with in 2001 was wastewater, and
getting the north plant expansion completed was, obviously, the
highest priority. In December of this past year, we got that expansion
completed, what they call the wetline portion of that plan was
finished and is operational. But beyond that in terms of process, we
needed to look at the planning process and the schedule for how we
do plant expansions. We revised that significantly adding peak
season populations, crushing some time frames, and I think the board
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reviewed and approved a master plan update just recently.
In order to support that revised now capital construction plan,
we needed to revise the revenue streams. And I think the board
remembers clearly doubling utility impact fees and creating a whole
new type of water use, rate system, that penalizes heavy users and
tries to put an emphasis on conservation of our water resources. The
continuing ongoing issues of the establishment, again, in the utility
side of a system to look over, manage the capital construction
program, and, again, that's part of the CAPS Track program.
The next milestone is getting the south plant under construction.
That is in permitting now, and we have an obligation to get that plant
up and running by 2004. And then beginning the work on the long-
term locations for the future plants -- and I think you'll recall as part
of the master plan project you saw some expansions of utility system
boundary areas and some possible locations for future plant locations,
which is what the staff needs to start getting serious about today for
the growth opportunities that are out there in the future.
Internally, I think the improvements that we were trying to focus
on were staffing. We needed to get some key staff in place, and I
think we've done a pretty good job of that. And I think -- for the
most part, I think the administrators and the department directors that
you have right now are as good a team as you've probably ever had
here in this county.
We needed to develop a mission and a vision statement, which
was done and are up here on the board, and it is a mission and a
vision that we continue to stress throughout our organization. I think
our organization clearly understands what our mission is.
We needed to improve significantly vertical and horizontal
communications both up and down the chain and side to side. And
we've taken a number of different measures to improve that, anything
from employee roundtables with management on a regular basis to
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including information in our monthly county journal newspaper from
each of the divisions to let other divisions know what's going on
within the divisions, to regular e-mail correspondence directly from
our office and from each of the division administrators to all
subscribers in your system. We've done a number of things to
improve the communications.
And, finally, to try and get away from what is traditional
government silo-type organizations, we needed to create as much
matrix-type organizations when the problem warranted it as possible
by creating some cross-functional teams. And we created not only
cross-functional teams within your agency, but we've looking at and
started creating cross-functional teams across constitutional-officer
agencies and yours, so that we currently have a number of teams that
are functioning today that probably would not have functioned at any
time that I can recall in the past where we have constitutional-officer
employees and Board of County Commissioners employees working
on the same project toward shared goals.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Mr. Olliff, may I interrupt one
second?
MR. OLLIFF: Absolutely.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: I'd like to take this time just to
compliment Tom Olliff for what he did. Now, you hear the words.
But as the oldest sitting member of this board, I can tell you when I
came here any of these terms that you heard about vertical and
horizontal communications, cross-functional teams, was not part of
the vocabulary of operating management. It didn't exist. It was a
nightmare. It was an organizational nightmare. There was zero
communication between constitutional officers. In fact, we were at
each other's throats most of the time.
So what has been accomplished is what we all wanted,
government working toward the vision and mission statement. Now,
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it's a beginning, and it hasn't -- it's not perfect, and Mr. Olliffs not
going to tell you this morning it's perfect. But what a start, and with
this board we are what I call on the launching pad -- platform. We
have ignited the system. We're moving, and I think it's great, Tom,
and I appreciate it.
One other thing under water management, a great thing is going
to happen this spring at the water festival, which will tie into
everything it has stated as far as what this county has done. And this
will be at least a regional participation, both from the scientific
community and all of the organizations in this community from
education through your building through your developers to your
chamber through every -organization I can think of is working on this
to make it a success. And we have invited Governor Bush to come
and address that banquet that night. It's a great situation for him to
reinforce what he has been encouraging all of us to do, and that is to
protect the environment, conserve water, and move forward with very
positive efforts. So thank you.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: And, Dr. Carter, I just want to
compliment you on all the work you've put forward in making that
possible. I know it took a lot of thought and a lot of energy and a lot
of effort. And I've seen the planning of it going on for about six
months. Good work for you, very good.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Henning.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: I'll recognize that night the
person whose idea it was. I'm not going to take credit for that, but
once the idea was brought to me from the public, we made it work,
and Jim Mudd was a very, very important player in that in helping us
get this thing launched. So it's going to be great. It's going to get
unfolded here in the next 90 days, so stayed tuned.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Good work. Commissioner
Henning.
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COMMISSIONER HENNING: Some of the other things that I
don't see on here that we accomplished last year in the responses was
solid waste. I think that we have really championed on where we're
going with that nature that we had capacity for the future. I'm really
excited about that. I'm also excited about some of the resources that
we're going to use for potable water, irrigation, and so on and so
forth. And that is really due to the innovative ideas that Jim Mudd
has brought to the Board of Commissioners.
MR. OLLIFF: Agreed. I will tell you that having started in the
solid-waste department 18 years ago is the first time that I thought we
really took a serious look at trying to come to conclusions about the
long-term solid-waste disposal issues here in the county. And I
thought the board, along with Jim's help and guidance, really made
some major progress in that area, and it probably should have been
something on the list.
If I can get you to turn the page to 2002 -- and, again, these are
all just titles that I'm coining, but I'm telling you that from our
perspective, the year of 2002, the year that we are currently in, is
probably a year of what I would call "The year of assessment, and a
year of change."
If you looked for a theme in terms of what priorities we had last
year, I would offer to you that the theme that I see, the consistent
theme from last year, was the priorities were established for us, not
by us. And that is something that we do not want to be in that same
position in 2002. I will tell you that I believe that we have all of
those crisis issues out of the way and under control, but this year is
the year that we need to figure out -- and in most cases, I'll tell you
the assessment part of it is pretty much complete as to how those
problems occurred in the first place. But fixing the systems that got
us in those positions is going to require some time. And in a lot of
cases we have to go back from the ground level up and start
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recreating what should be some very basic systems in an organization
that we, frankly, don't have.
So in terms of my look at the big picture in 2002, I would see
this being a year of change. And if you'll look internally, the division
annual work plans and budgets, we intend -- this is the first time we
have had strategic planning where I think it needs to be in terms of
the annual cycle. Strategic planning should be in front of the budget
process so that when we do strategic planning, then our division and
departments are going back and developing their annual work plan
based on what you have told us is important to you, and then we'll
develop a budget that supports the strategic goals that you told us are
important to you. Then our annual work plans right down to the
employee annual work plans should reflect what it is that board has
told us is important so that from top to bottom the organization is
moving in one single direction.
OPS Track is the second issue we're going to be working on
internally. I will tell you that it's called "performance based
budgeting" in some organizations. It is an opportunity for us from an
operational standpoint to develop two, three, or four key
measurements, metrics, if you will for each different department that
will allow us to, in a simple way, look at those metrics and determine
is that department doing well, is it not doing well, and not just
measuring things for measurement sake. And I will tell you that
that's probably what we have done in the past, but we need to start
measuring outputs, outcomes, and things that the board can pick up
and see, yes or no, that department is doing well, or it's not, and the
public can pick that up and get that same level of information.
FMS and GIS system implementations are going to be critical
projects for us this year. I cannot begin to tell you the magnitude of
those. FMS is not just a financial management system, but it is your
human resources system; it is your budget system; it is your
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purchasing system; it is the internal spine of everything you do. We
have tried to make a commitment to try and go live on October of
2002, and there is a tremendous amount of work to get from here to
there, and it's going to take a lot of cooperation from not only all the
departments that work for you, but we're also working in conjunction
with the Clerk of Courts who manages your finance system in order
to get to our October 1 deadline.
And, lastly, cross-functional management teams internally are
things that once we develop what your strategic objectives and goals
are here, I intend to create some teams specifically devoted to
managing those strategic goals, and they will probably be cross-
functional teams that will be responsible for our tracking. What are
our deliverables for your strategic goals; how are we doing; and then
providing you and the public with reports on how we're doing in
terms of achieving each of those.
And the last thing, which is not really sort of a county-wide
internal thing, but, obviously, one of the other priorities internally
that we have is the entire development review process. And I think
we have committed to you to break that entire system down and
rebuild it and do two things. One, we want to return, if you will, the
idea in that division that the public is the first and foremost customer
there, and that is who the codes -- that is who the rules of the game
are written to protect. And that's going to be our primary function.
But on the other hand, from a development community
perspective, we owe them some service just like we do anyone else.
And when they submit applications for permits, we need to do a
timely job of reviewing those permits and getting the permits and our
comments, yes or no, back out to them in a timely way. And we need
to work on both of those sides of the house.
If I can get you turn to the front of the page now, the front of the
handout, there's a quote there that says, "The future does not get
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better with hope; it gets better by plan." And to plan for the future,
we need goals, and that's why we're here today. We're going to try to
get you to tell us in some very simple strategic ways what are the
most important things from the Board of County Commissioners'
perspective.
I'll tell you, it's been a tough 18 months. It's been a tough 18
months on your staff, and there were many days driving to work that
I was reminded of a Calvin and Hobbs cartoon. It's one of my
favorites. I don't know if you know Calvin and Hobbs, but it's the
little boy, and he's got a little stuffed tiger that he carries around, and
the stuffed tiger plays with him and comes to life and things. But
there was one cartoon where Calvin looked at Hobbs and he said,
"You know, Hobbs, there are some days when even my lucky
rocketship underpants don't help." And there were a lot of days, I can
guarantee you, that I and the rest of your staff driving to work felt the
same way.
But what's most important to me is that when you come through
a period like that where you have dealt with what in all instances can
be considered crisis-type problems, if we don't take time to stop and
go back and evaluate how we got into that position and learn the
lessons that were there for us, then we've missed a very, very
valuable opportunity. I am told there's a Chinese symbol for the
word "crisis," and it takes two brush strokes. One brush stroke means
"danger," and the other brush stroke means "opportunity." And from
our perspective the past year has provided us a lot of crisis, but from
that crisis we need to recognize the opportunities that are there.
I think what we want to do over the next several years and what
our recommendation to you is that we use the last year to build a
better organization; that we take advantage of the opportunity to learn
the lessons that were made available to us; and that we start to rebuild
this organization from the ground level up.
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From a system standpoint, if you look at the starred things in the
middle of the page, these are our assessment in terms of just -- from a
policy level how we got in the position that we were in. Clearly,
there was a lack of attention to planning, and I will tell you that the
AUIR process should be one of the fundamental key things that we
spend a significant amount of time with the Board of County
Commissioners and your staff on. And historically we have not done
that. I don't believe at the conclusion of most of the AUIR processes
that I sat through over the years that the board walked out of that
room with a good, firm grasp of where were we with our capital
projects; what were our plans for the future; and what were we even
planning on building over the course of the next 12 months. And that
is something that we have got to do a better job of. And a lot of that I
will rest on our own shoulders. We need to learn how to speak
English. We need to learn how to be able to take the stuff that's in
the Growth Management Plan and concurrency management law and
boil it down to something that everyone can understand that doesn't
do it for a living.
We had poor planning processes. I will tell you that the whole
planning process in terms of sequence and timing has historically not
made a lot of sense. There was obviously a disjoint, if you will,
between the land development process and the capital construction
process. What was happening in terms of development approvals on
Horseshoe Drive and what was happening in terms of utility planned
construction and road lane-mile construction, those two segments of
our organization were not coordinated, and they have to be in order
for us to maintain a concurrency system that the public can have any
trust in.
We had poor reporting systems. The reporting systems not only
up through management were in all but a few cases nonexistent, but
the reporting systems that made it all the way up to the Board of
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County Commissioners were worse than that. And I think we've got
to recognize that that is a major hole that we need to fill, and there
was a lack of accountability. There were often times when I first
started here that I could pick a project, and I couldn't tell you who
was responsible for that project. Part of the CAPS Track program is
to not only have a centralized place where we know where the
information is for every capital project, but for every capital project
to know what is the budget, what is the schedule, and who in our
organization is ultimately responsible for pulling that project
together.
And, so you recognize, there is no single project that is ever
going to be one person's responsibility. So we're trying to also create
teams for every project so that every project has an associated group
of people all the way down to the purchasing level, to the county
attorney level, all the way up the chain so that those people know that
it is part of their job to get that capital project done on time and on
budget as much as it is the project manager's job.
Organizations from our perspective can be categorized to be in
any different number of states. Organizations can be new, growing,
dynamic organizations. They can be organizations that are older and
maintaining-type organizations. They can be consolidating. They
can be declining organizations. From my perspective I will tell you
that Collier County can most likely be categorized in my vocabulary
as a "rebuilding organization." And we need to look at that as the
opportunity that it is, but if you'll turn the page, I think you can see
what we need and what we are focusing on as a rebuilding
organization.
And these are the basics. There's nothing flashy. There's really
nothing sexy about what it is that I'm proposing to you this morning,
but I think it is a return to the basics and making sure that our
systems are intact, in place, are repetitive, and are routine in our
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organization.
The first thing is that we need to develop systems for listening
and understanding what it is the community actually wants from us.
They are, in a private business vernacular, our customer. And we
need to know what it is they want from us.
The second thing we need to be able to do better is to assimilate
that information through the board. We've got to be able to get the
information about what the public wants through the board's planning
process so that the board can be a true reflection of the community,
and tell us what is it that you want us to focus our resources, time,
and attention on.
The third thing is to generate some reliable and factual
information that we can make decisions on, because I will tell you
today it is very, very difficult to manage this organization because of
the lack of factual information that we have. I cannot pick up a
phone and get what should be rudimentary information from points of
this organization, and it's not the employees' fault. It's system
problems. We simply do not have the ability to track and manage the
information and the facts that we need to be able to make decisions
from. And that's part of your GIS; that's part of your FMS plan
process.
But I will tell you that most of the things that I pick up the
phone and I say, "I need this or I need that," you've got staff
scrambling around manually going through paper files and trying to
total up and divide and then do those things by hand. And that's no
way to run an operation of this size when we need to make decisions
as large as we need to make and as quickly as we need to make them.
We need those key indicators, not only for our capital
construction projects, but for our operations and for our budgets. We
need to be able to know what the pulse of this organization is. We
need to know what the blood pressure of this organization is. We
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need to know what those key vital signs are so that when we have a
document that we pick up, we can look at those and know we're
doing well in this area, we're not doing well in that area, we need to
cut back on our fat and our salt and exercise more. We just need to
have those easy ways of knowing where we stand.
And, lastly, we need to be able to report that information. We
need to be able to report it to the managers who need to make
decisions, and we need to be able to report it to you. And we need to
be able to report it to the public. We need the public to know exactly
what's going on in this organization just as much as we do. We don't
want to hide anything. We want that stuff to be all out in the open
and up front so that everybody knows when we're doing well and
when we're not doing so well. We don't want surprises. We don't
want surprises internally; we don't want them externally. So one of
my major goals here this morning is to try and get you to agree -- and
if you disagree with me, that's fine. But I think we need to agree in
terms of where we are as an organization.
And, then, if you look at the "B" there under the next paragraph,
the priorities for an organization depending on what state it's in are
different. Obviously, if we're a growing, expanding organization,
then we're going to have different priorities than an organization
that's in a rebuilding state. I would offer to you from our staff
perspective we need, as a rebuilding organization, to spend time
implementing internal changes.
In the middle of that paragraph, it says, "We need to rebuild how
we do our work," and that needs to be our focus. We need to be able
to develop repetitive, routine systems that are part of how we do our
day-to-day business, and we need to ingrain them in this organization
so that -- as Jim says, truly great organizations make the routine truly
routine. There's very little that happens around here that is routine,
and we need to have some routine.
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As I told you, I don't think the work ahead is really exciting,
especially from a commissioner's perspective. There's not a lot of
flash; there's not a lot of juice in it. But what I will tell you is from
your staff's perspective it is very, very important. We are not doing
the basics well, and we need to go back, and we need to fix the
systems that will put those basics in place.
In order to do that, though -- and if you agree with that
philosophy, we're going to need some help, because we as an
organization need to collectively recognize what our mission is. And
if our mission is going to rebuild this system from the ground level
up, then we all need to be on that page. And that means we've got to
learn as an organization to say "no." When certain things come
forward in front of us, we have got to learn to say "no." We can't do
it all. We can't be everything to everyone. We can, but I promise
you we will do everything badly. And if we're going to do anything
well, then we're going to have to focus on a few things and getting
those things under our belt and doing them well.
In addition to just saying "no," I think we're going to have to
recognize as we go through the budget process that we need to put
the resources and the assets in the places that we are committing in
terms of our strategy. So if we're going to be rebuilding this thing
from the ground up, then that's where our focus needs to be, and
somebody ought to be able to pick up our budget for next year and
just by looking at where we put our resources know that's what's
important to this county organization; that's where their focus is.
So in terms of introduction, for today what we're looking for you
to do is to review what we call the "Vital Signs Report." And for
those of you who have been here for a year or so, you've been
through a Vital Signs Report or two. It gives you the basic
information that I think is the pulse information about revenues,
expenses, key business indicators. We're going to ask you to review
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January 29, 2002
the information from Focus and the annual county citizen survey.
These are the two tools that we currently have to try and pull
information in from the community that tells us what the community
thinks is important from its county government.
Then, lastly, we're going to get into the discussion phase. And I
would like for us to discuss what state you think this organization's
in, get some agreement to that, and agree to a philosophical focus in
terms of what we ought to be focused in on, what ought to be
important work of the organization based on what kind of an
organization we are. And, lastly, I want to be able to pull off of these
walls and off of the discussion that we have 12, 15, 20 whatever you
think are the most important things that are out there today in the
environment. And then I want us to multi-vote them down to a list of
about three or four items that you think are our most important issues
for the fiscal year coming up or for the calendar year 2002.
And then back on that page where 2002 was and the blanks are
we'll fill those in. We will take the document, and we will build a
budget for you. We will build annual work plans at the division level
for you. And we will build individual employee performance action
plans that will all be based on what you tell us today.
So that's our agenda for the morning. Any questions or
comments from the board? Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Members of the board, as we go
through this process, I think it's key that we have what I call an
overriding blanket on what you do this goal or objective (sic). And if
everything that I'm hearing follows this statement, then we distill it
from there. And that is that we want to manage growth versus
growth managing us. And if that's where we're going, everything
flows to that. What you're going to do, commitments to it, and
staying the course even when you get lots of pressures to make a turn
somewhere which are not justifiable against what we go through this
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January 29, 2002
morning.
So for me it would be helpful if that's where we're going in
terms of processing what's on the walls.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes. I truly agree, and speaking of
that, this concurrency issue that's so important to all of us, I think as
we address that issue, I think we have to address it from the basic
steps. In other words, instead of anything grandfathered in, allowing
that to be, we have to pull that back to nobody's grandfathered in. Go
back to where a PUD has been approved and readdress that.
I mean, if they haven't begun that PUD, we have to take a look
at that thing and bring it back. That's why we're in the trouble we're
in right now is because all of these things have been permitted
because we had planned a road or had planned a water treatment
plant. We need to readdress that, so I agree with you, Commissioner
Carter.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We need to get an assessment of
where we are going. I know that we've made some tremendous
strides, and some items have not fallen into place yet or been tested,
but we're heading in this direction. I know we've been asking for it
for a long time.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Uh-huh.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: And while we're on the subject
of growth and controlling growth, I think that we're trying to play
catchup for the infrastructure of what we have. Where we need to be
is make sure that infrastructure is on the ground before we approve it.
And that's where I would like to be.
As far as grandfathering, my concern on that is the lawsuits that
might come forward and is going to cost us more to say to somebody,
"No, we've changed our mind. We need to do this." Are we going to
spend more money on lawsuits than actually putting the infrastructure
in.
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January 29, 2002
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Let me go one step further and say
that now that we as commissioners have spoken about -- thank you --
readdressing the PUDs that maybe have expired and bringing that
down to a three-year window, that's where I'm going with that.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. And I wholeheartedly
support that idea. I think that we can make a better community --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Right.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- by doing that.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Right -- thank you, because I think
you helped me to clarify that.
MR. OLLIFF: Commissioner Coyle.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Tom, I need your guidance here.
Do you want us to give you recommendations now, or would you
prefer --
MR. OLLIFF: No. But what we're going to try to do is go
through the Vital Signs Report and give you sort of a base of
information to let you know where we are today.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay.
MR. OLLIFF: Then we're going to go through that focus, and
we're going to take a break after that. And then we'll go through the
Focus information and the citizen survey information just to let you
know what we heard from the community. And then I know you are
all out in the community as well, so there may be some other things.
But that's sort of the full body of knowledge, if you will, that we
have.
So let's go through it, and at the end of all of that then I'll go to
the board, and you-all tell me what you want me to put up there,
what's important to you, and then I just need to try and take that list
and pare it down to something that we as an organization can
manage.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: I think that's a wonderful plan
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January 29, 2002
sequence. I'm only a little uncomfortable about that fact that I'm
being asked to give you some very important guidance over a period
of an hour's briefing and maybe an hour's worth of analysis and
discussion. And I would suggest that perhaps what we do is go
through the sequence you're talking about, but then give the board a
little additional time to assimilate all the information, ask questions
of staff, dig through some additional documents.
I'll tell you, my mind doesn't work fast enough to give you
absolute final guidance on a long-range plan in the span of an hour
meeting. And if we could maybe have another opportunity to come
back and refine that, it might be more productive for you. How do
you feel about that?
MR. OLLIFF: I believe that this is probably more important if
not the most important thing we do. And I'm willing to spend as
much time -- and I know the staff is -- if we can get clear direction
out of the board, we'll spend as many hours as you want to spend and
as many days as you want to spend. We want to do it the right way.
Beth, can we get started with the Vital Signs Report.
MR. SCHMITT: For the record, Joe Schmitt, Community
Development and Environmental Services Administrator.
What I'm going to talk about is give you a snapshot -- at least
from my perspective -- on the list shown up there of where we've
been since '97, and I'm going to take the liberty of doing a little
projection for this fiscal year. So next slide, Beth.
Here we talk about building permits, and you can see the
significant growth over the years from '96, '97, and all the way
projected up to fiscal year -- the end of fiscal year '02. You may not
be able to see it, but the last two bars indicate the data on where we
were the first three months of last fiscal year and the first three
months of this fiscal year. Now, granted, we had an increased sixty-
three hundred or so permits submitted at the beginning of this fiscal
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January 29, 2002
year, but that was principally due to the change in the impact fees.
But really given that we project -- we're going to be about the same
pace as last year on building permits, almost 25,000 permits. Next
slide.
On the commercial permits issued, you can see where we are on
the commercial permits. And what this is is our review time, and it
shows for the various disciplines our review time, but the graph on
the end is really the significant one, and it shows what our average is
for the year -- average total days. So we're looking at about twenty-
and-a-half days for the year for our review of commercial permits.
Next slide.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Joe, I don't understand that
slide and the bars on there, the different ones.
MR. SCHMITT: What we're showing there is the last fiscal
year, so the blue is 2000 and the red is 2001. And what you're
looking at is average review time in days for each of the disciplines
all the way across the bottom: electrical, planning, structure,
plumbing. And then a total average days for fiscal year 2000 and
2001.
Does that answer your question?
COMMISSIONER HENNING:
one of those bars --
had.
Yeah. It's review time. Each
MR. SCHMITT: It's review time, yes.
Beth, I'm out of sequence here. These are a little different than I
But the housing, this is the annual totals for building
inspections --
MR. DUNNUCK: Going back to the last slide -- if I may
editorialize a little bit. One of things that we didn't have from a
tracking perspective last year at this time was to be able to develop
and look at each individual discipline and exactly what the review
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January 29, 2002
time is. Now we've built that into our program so we're going to have
the ability -- when we see one certain area, if their review time starts
going up and up and we've caused a delay in the development
community, we can identify where resources need to go and where
we need to pay attention.
And also one of the things that you'll appreciate, too, is there's a
lot of overlap. We send out those plans to all those different
disciplines at the same time, so that's why you have a different -- you
know, you may have a 20-day average, but some of those 9 days and
other days of disciplines are overlapping each other.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: What do you think the cause of
review time being -- taking so long is in some of the areas?
MR. DUNNUCK: A lot of time it's staffing. We got into
environmental health, and we had some septic issues. They only had
a few people who are out there handling those cases out in the estates.
And they identified that. We worked with the Contractors Building
Industry Association, and we brought forward fee increases to the
development community that allows them to hire additional staff to
address those issues. So we work closely with Development Services
Advisory Committee and CBIA to identify those area.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I think the one that took
the longest was structure?
MR. DUNNUCK: Structural is typically the longest. That's the
main focus of all building permit reviews is structural, and that takes
time, and the building department won't sacrifice -- you know, you
could add a couple more people, but it's still going to take that
amount of time in a lot of cases to make that review, because Ed
Perico won't sacrifice the quality to do a good review in those
instances.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Good.
MR. SCHMITT: Now, what we've also done this past year is
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January 29, 2002
we separated the commercial reviews from the family housing or
those type of reviews so that those coming in for single-family homes
were not in the queue behind the large influx -- the time it takes to do
a review for a commercial building. So that's kind of been separated
as well to help alleviate some of that backlog. Because at one time
things were stacked, and whoever came in -- whether it was a single-
family home or that type of structure versus a commercial land.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: And minor remodeling activities --
MR. SCHMITT: Right. And minor remodeling activities, yes.
Next slide.
What we're showing here is the annual trend of inspections.
Again, you can vividly see the increase in inspections. Next slide.
What this shows is our comparison of Collier County with other
counties as far as inspections, and we do quite well. We do with our
25 inspectors, as you can see over the last three years the 24, and then
the last two years, 25 for the last year and this year number of
inspectors and the average number of inspections per day. So what
we've got right now is our inspectors are on the street every day
doing about 25 different inspections.
And the next slide you will see the -- actually, the total cost of
construction is down, and coupled with that think about how many
inspections we're doing. So really what this tells us, we're probably
not doing as many large projects, but we still have a lot of work out
there, so we're not doing the big projects, but we're doing a lot of
projects throughout the county, and I think we're doing quite well in
this regard.
Just projected out through '02, when we looked at the first three
months of the last fiscal year, we were at about $2.5 million in
construction. This year we're already $3.3 million the first three
months of this year. So we're projecting we're going to go all the way
out to $1.2 billion as shown. Next slide.
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January 29, 2002
This is permit revenues, and you can see where we are with the
money we're taking in as far as our permit revenues. The first three
months of last year we were 1.5 million. This year we're already 2.2
million, so we're projecting we're going to be around 8 million by the
end of the year. Next slide.
And this is our permit revenues, of course, by month. Nothing
really significant there other than the fact that it is cyclical, but the
industry is cyclical.
Housing assistance, what's shown here is our program for
housing assistance, and down payments -- I think the significance
here is -- really what's caused the down trend in housing down
payment assistance is the cost of land. That's been the really
significant impact as far as the best we can do with the monies we
have and the program that we have. We're doing quite well when we
look at -- between last year, the first part of the fiscal year, and this
year we're already at 68, but we project we're not going to get much
higher at what's shown at 204. Next slide.
Housing impact fees, and what's shown here is basically what
we're doing as far as our impact fees, and the significant piece there
is that the change was primarily due in '99. Prior to '99 we couldn't
do both impact waivers and down payment assistance. That changed
and now we're doing both, and that caused a significant jump in both
our assistance and our capability to provide assistance and impact
fees. And you can see where we project for this year we're going to
be well above what we did last year; we'll be up in the 170 range or
better.
New and affordable housing units projected per year. Again, the
trend is down because of the increasing land acquisition cost. There
is a -- when we compared the first two months of the fiscal years
from last year and this year, there is a significant jump. But that was
principally due to a multi-family dwelling project that was
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January 29, 2002
constructed. But our projected is going to be below last year for
affordable housing and, again, significantly due to the increase in the
cost of land.
Code enforcement, I think the key here is what we're indicating
is we're proactive instead of reactive. And the two bar graphs shown
there, the blue -- the darker blue are the proactive cases, and the
lighter blue are the reactive ones, meaning citizen initiated. I want to
point out that for those cases shown where we have an actual case,
it's about three visits per case, so you can see the kind of workload
that we're working with within the division. But I want to again
indicate it's a proactive measure, and we're trying to do better at this.
We'll get with our other divisions and work some sweeps and some
other things so we can, again, provide the assistance that's needed for
the county. Next slide.
And this is a comparison of code violations versus the
unfounded investigations. And what we're showing here, the
unfounded investigations is the orange line, the number of violations.
And the purple -- but, again, just to indicate, these are three visits per
-- basically three visits per case. And this is one individual case, so
you multiply that by three, and that's pretty much what we're doing as
far as our code enforcement. Next slide.
This slide really is a comparison of the impact fees, and you can
see that Collier County now, we are the lead county within the state
of Florida as far as our impact fees. What the value shown, $11,447,
and that was principally due to you-all as far as the increase in water
and sewer went from 5500 up to 2800 -- went from 2800 to 5500. So
that's what really brought us up. We were third last year, and this
year we're number one. And this graph shows that we have moved
where Collier County is in comparison to other counties, and where
we moved from, we were just behind Sarasota. And now we have
jumped to Lee County within the state.
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January 29, 2002
And that concludes my portion subject to your questions.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Questions.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Not yet.
MR. SCHMITT: I did take the liberty to do a little projecting. I
asked the staff to give me a feel for where we're going, and really
what I want to try to do is provide a little more leading indicators
versus lagging indicators to assess what is it that I need to ensure that
we have the staff, the appropriate staff, to support the demand within
the county -- and my little time within your organization. But we're
going to get there, and we're going to try to figure out what is it we
do need to provide that customer service in both the inspections --
now with our inspectors, we worked that on a 24-hour turnaround.
We get a call, and 24 hours later we're out on the ground doing the
inspection. And you-all know that the last board meeting we came to
you with the proposal, and you had approved for the hand-held
systems that we're going to go to. John and his team -- when John
was at the helm there kind of initiated this, so we're going to try and
improve that service as far as that piece of the process where we
really need -- I think where we catch the preponderance of the heat is
our review time, the commercial review. That seems to be the 19 and
20 days.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Question, Mr. Schmitt, the
review time, does that include the fire chief-- the fire inspector's time
in there?
MR. SCHMITT: Yes. And as you know that's not under my
control --
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Yes.
MR. SCHMITT: -- that's coordinated through the fire chiefs.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: We have-- somewhere we
need -- and I'm not asking for it at this moment, but I would like to
know what percentage of time they take, what delays are incurred,
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January 29, 2002
and how this slows the process. MR. SCHMITT: Okay.
MR. MUDD: Jim Mudd, for the record, Deputy County
Manager. One of the bar charts Joe showed you previously had the
fire review on it, and it was around 4.5 days.
MR. SCHMITT: Yeah, it does. That's the one --
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Sorry I missed that.
MR. SCHMITT: That shows all the disciplines, and it does
have the fire on there.
MR. MUDD: And we just talked last week. We had a meeting
with all the fire chiefs. Joe Schmitt and myself talked to them about
the review times and consistencies and upholding the standards of the
fire code. One of the things that really came across at that meeting
with the new Florida building code, a lot of problems as far as the
individual site inspections will be solved, and the fact that there's a
requirement that if they yellow tag or red tag, that they have to give
chapter and verse of the code that caused them to do that, and that
will help the developer on one end, and also make sure that we're
staying consistent with the fire code.
And the other thing that comes across is the builders must
submit all of their plans together. It can't be a series of sequential --
where they give you the structural piece, and then they come back
with the fire later, and they've already got three stories of their
building already built before the fire plan is done. And then they
complain about the requirements that have been added; it causes them
to move some of the structural things in order to accommodate the
fire issue, sprinkler systems and things like that. So having all the
plans submitted at one time with this new requirement that Florida is
basically putting across the entire state should solve a lot of the
problems from consistency from the plan-review side of the house, so
they get to see all of the plans at one time instead of having to go
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January 29, 2002
back and look at it again.
So that should speed up the review and plus the inspectors on
the ground. So from the fire standpoint, I think they've got a good
handle on it. CBIA was also at that meeting.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Okay. Thank you. You
disregard my request. I've had my question answered. Thank you.
MR. SCHMITT: One last thing I'd like to point out. I think the
most significant problem that we've had in community development
and environmental services is the lack of planners. I'm three short on
the staff right now, and I'm also missing a chief in one of my
departments. We're working diligently trying to hire a chief of my
planning department, and we're trying to bring planners on board.
It's an issue of trying to convince folks to come down here and
become part of the staff. We're advertising nationally, and we're
trying to recruit folks to come on down. But it's been a struggle from
the current planning perspective because -- pretty much Susan
Murray's been shouldering that burden, and she's been three short,
and it's been tough. And that is really from a perspective of the initial
review of PUDs. And that's some of the bottleneck of the process
SO...
MR. SMYKOWSKI: For the record, Michael Smykowski.
We'll now shift our discussion to look at key budget indicators,
the first slide of which is our FY '01 budgeted revenues compared to
actuals. You will note the budget and actual figures are actually very
close. Tom mentioned quickly about being on the pulse of the
organization, understanding what those key indicators are. The
second group of bars in are the half-cent sales tax. And your general
fund this year is approximately $200 million rounding for ease of
discussion, of which $129 million is ad valorem taxes. That's not
going to vary, the collections. We typically collect 96-1/2 percent.
That's not going to vary widely.
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January 29, 2002
The key indicator, actually, for general fund are the second and
third, the half-cent sales tax and the state revenue sharing, which
make up a little over $30 million of your general fund on an annual
basis in FY '02. Those are things, A, that are not under our control
other than in terms of what it is we're actually budgeting, but in terms
of a variable revenue that is subject to marketplace conditions,
economic conditions, both locally and in the entire state of Florida,
that will ultimately impact on how much revenue is received.
Note the actual was slightly less than the budget, and you see
that in the fourth quarter. In terms of being on the pulse of the
general fund, the half-cent sales tax is actually -- probably your
biggest variable revenue source that is subject to marketplace
conditions and the one that we pay the most attention to. We
recognize some softening in that fourth quarter, and as a result of that
we brought the recommended changes during the public hearing
process to reduce our budgeted sales tax revenue in FY '02 as a result
of those changing conditions post-9/11 as well. Obviously, that's
served us well in terms of our financial position and budget posture
as we headed into this fiscal year. Next slide, please.
This compares budget impact fees to actual collections in FY
'01. You will note some variability here, primarily at the far left is
road impact fees, but there's a key caveat to that. The road impact
fees do not reflect impact fee credits issued of approximately $1.4
million. This was new money that came across the counter, so to
speak, in FY '01. Norman has in the various discussions about the
road plan and magnitude of dollars and available revenues has
cautioned the board about the impact fee credits. So while there is
some variation between budget and actual there, that's probably the
area in terms of impact fees that had the greatest variability. You
need to take into account that there was almost $1.4 million of credit
issued, and as a resUlt of that the net revenue is actually very close to
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January 29, 2002
budgeted.
In the area of roads, EMS impact fees is another category that
has some variability, as does correctional facilities. Those are fairly
volatile in that the rate structure is very dependent upon the type of
construction that is permitted. So large commercial projects will
generate large impact fees in all three of those areas, whereas some
of-- like, library is solely on single family and residential
construction where there is no impact fee on commercial in the
library area. Next slide, please.
This shows general fund revenues by source. We're not really
any different from a funding standpoint than most local government.
In terms of general fund, property taxes represent about two-thirds of
the total revenue. The other key revenues in terms of
intergovernmental revenues that I mentioned previously were sales
tax and revenue sharing.
Revenue sharing is now tied hand-in-hand with our sales tax
collections. Previously, going back a few years, revenue from the
state was a function of cigarette taxes and intangible tax. As the state
has moved toward phasing out the intangible tax, the revenue sharing
money that we receive is now actually a sales tax allocation. And
that's why we were actually fairly conservative in budgeting for
revenue sharing in the current budget year, because you have all the
eggs, so to speak, are now in the sales tax basket, both the regular
half-cent sales tax program as well as the state revenue sharing
program. Next slide, please.
This identifies general fund expenditure type by function.
Blue -- the area in blue on the bars represent public safety, which is
the largest component of the expenditure base in the general fund,
and that would include primarily sheriffs expenses as well as costs of
the Emergency Services Division Administration, helicopter, medical
examiner expenses.
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January 29, 2002
The second area in read is general government activities, kind of
your core government functions such as the Board of County
Commissioners, county attorney, county manager, the budget office,
public affairs, the bulk of these administrative services division,
internal support functions, purchasing, human resources, facilities
management, etc. Next slide, please.
This shows the expenditure by type, and they are not stacked, so
you can see an individual trend line relative to each type of
expenditure grouping. Obviously, public safety is the largest
component, and it reflects the increase you see in FY '99 to FY '00.
Reflecting the change where the board shifted the sheriffs budget
into the general fund, and in the last couple years in the sheriffs you
had a number of formally grant funded positions being assimilated as
well as the impact of the pay plan, which was geared toward sheriffs
recruitment and had an immediate impact in terms of their ability to
get people on board.
Eighty percent of the sheriffs budget is tied to people.
Obviously, the cost of a 24-hour operation including law enforcement
and correctional facilities, which run around the clock, so 80 percent
of their budget is tied to people itself.
Parks reflects -- is a darker line, kind of brown, reflecting a
downward trend as we went into fiscal year '00, and that again was
the balancing act so to speak of that shift of the sheriffs budget into
the general fund. To mitigate the fiscal impact of that decision, the
board made the policy decision to shift parks to the unincorporated
area of the general fund at the same time. So while you see a large
upward spike in the sheriffs budget, you see a corresponding
decrease in the park expenditures in fiscal year '00 as a result. Next
slide.
This just charts general fund operating revenues and
expenditures. As the lines converge, obviously, this does not include
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January 29, 2002
fund balance, so you see true revenues in, expenses out. Where lines
overlap, obviously, that's an impact where you're eating into fund
balance. You'll see it on next slide as well.
Over the last few years, obviously, you want to be in a position
where your fixed operating revenues are covering the annual fixed
operating costs of your programs and services. Next slide, please.
And here you see with fund balance included as the lines
converge closer together, you're eating into fund balance; as they
diverge, you're actually growing fund balance. Next slide.
Transportation operations, this actually shows in one slide a
whole host of information, and the policy decisions the board has
made in regard to funding transportation operations. In the early
1990s, you see in the bar charts that gas taxes were the primary
funding source for the road and bridge operation for roadway
maintenance. The board made a policy decision to fund its capital
program to transition the gas taxes over time to the road construction
effort. And you see that in FY '96, '97 you see ad valorem suddenly
increasing as the gas taxes transition from operations or maintenance
to road construction.
In FY '98, there was predominantly all property tax funded in
the road and bridge area. We feel there's some healthy balance there.
The board over time due to ad valorem pressures as well, made the
policy decision to sift $1 million per year up to $3 million in FY '01
to support roadway maintenance. Now, obviously, that's going to
change again in FY '03. Obviously, as a result of your AUIR process
in terms of transportation funding, gas taxes are going to be bonded
to fund road construction effort. Therefore, there will be no
operational support of the road and bridge maintenance function from
gas taxes in FY '03.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Can you tell me what you mean by
ad valorem pressures?
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January 29, 2002
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Operational budget concerns, obviously
millage concerns, so the question was, should we have all of our gas
tax revenue in the construction basket. A legitimate and viable use of
gas tax revenue is for roadway maintenance, and the thought was
there has to be come healthy balance between funding operations
with gas taxes as well as funding construction. And as a result, we
were transitioning back from having no gas taxes to support road
maintenance to having a portion thereof supported with gas taxes.
MR. OLLIFF: In essence, what he's saying is pressure to keep
the millage rate low.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. Thank you. That's what I
wanted to -- bring it down to basics.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Political.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Right.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Next slide, please.
Here's transportation operating expenditures by appropriation
unit, by personal service operating capital. Here the bulk of the
expense is in salaries and benefits, again, roadway maintenance is an
intensive process that is people oriented.
Transfers, you notice in the very far right, there is green piece of
the bar. That was one-time transfers of residual cash. We phased out
the roadway MSTDs and shifted those costs to the unincorporated
general fund. So those transfers was that residual cash shifting to the
unincorporated area of General Fund 111.
Next slide shows unincorporated area general fund. Again, this
would exclude the incorporated cities, so county -- Collier County's
in a unique position of being the principal service provider for the
bulk of the population as opposed to an area like Hillsborough
County with cookie-cutter cities one after another. In the case of
Collier County with the bulk of the population being in the
unincorporated area, the county steps in as the principal service
Page 35
January 29, 2002
provider because of the lack of municipal entities to provide those
services.
This again is primarily ad valorem tax supported. You notice
the blue or purple there, that's the predominant revenue source in this
fund. The only revenue source of any note is cable franchise
revenue, now the communications services tax revenue that change
over time.
On the far right in FY '00 and '01 in the yellow area, charges for
services suddenly increased. That, again, is a result of that park shift.
When the park's budgets were shifted into the unincorporated area
from the general fund, obviously, the revenues for those program
offerings are now reflected in the budget as an offset to the cost of
those programs.
Unincorporated general fund expenditures by function. Here,
again, you look over history -- showing as a light green color -- the
principal expense was a transfer to the sheriff. You note again in FY
'00 and FY '01, that is noted as culture and recreation is the header for
that area. And that, again, with that park shift to the unincorporated
area, no segment of the sheriff's budget is funded in the
unincorporated area, and you see the influx of the cost of the parks
programming. Next slide.
This shows the unincorporated general fund expenditures by
appropriation unit, again, personal services, operating capital, and
transfers. Again, kind of the same picture you've seen in a different
format, transfers to the sheriff were the predominant expense through
FY '99. You now see personnel expenses increasing FY '00 and FY
'01 and operating as well because the park facility is now being paid
for out of the unincorporated area.
Joe previously talked obviously the community development
fund, and we do have a few slides here. Obviously, the Community
Development Fund 113 is funded by building permits and planning
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January 29, 2002
fees. Over time, obviously, you see the continued growth in that
area. Joe's slide showed the value of construction continuing to grow
reflecting the continued strength of the local building industry over
time.
And I know the big question there is, obviously, how long can
that be sustained. I know for many years we've said, last year was
record permitting. It has to go down from here, and each year has
been a higher level in terms of total permits and permit dollars
constructed.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Mike, can we have, like, a five-
year projection on that basis? It would be very helpful to me as we
begin to make some longer range decisions about what's going to
happen in that area. I know it's a projection, but you certainly have
the statistical base that might tell us is it flat, has it begun to drop, so
we know where we are.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That is something we need to look at
because, obviously, primarily as you get into the large commercial
project as the county draws closer to build-out, obviously, you can't
count on that continued-- when you get a Wal-Mart or a Sam's Club
permitted one year, that doesn't mean immediately in the subsequent
year there's going to be another.
And that has a direct bearing as well on road impact fee
collections as well. Again, road impact fees being variable based on
the type of construction permitted with obviously large commercial
projects generating large sums of dollars. Next slide.
Community development fund expenditures are broken down
really into a couple of key areas, public safety, general government.
The public safety component here is essentially building review,
permitting, and the inspection component. The mauve or purple
color is planning, engineering, and technical support. And over time
transfers have grown and that's related to the rational nexus.
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January 29, 2002
Obviously, a portion of programs outside of community development
are funded with permit fees as they have some relationship in the
development process, some of your housing, long-range planning,
etc. That's a current year study re-evaluating where those have been.
With Joe here, we're taking a fresh look at what we are funding.
In addition, transfers -- also, obviously, you have a building
expansion that was funded with bonds proceeds, so there's a transfer
to a debt-service fund as well. Next slide.
Shows expenditures by appropriation unit. Again, the
community development activity with permitting and inspections is
labor intensive. It's not unusual to see that the predominant expense
is salary and benefit oriented of the people working in that functional
area. Next slide, Beth.
Tourist tax revenues, over time those have continued to grow
and also reflect the changes in the tourist tax revenue base as the
board has added additional pennies. Blue represents tourist taxes.
The other predominant revenue source is interest. There's kind of
one anomaly there worth pointing in '96 was a loan to renourish
beaches, and that was the principal anomaly there. Next slide.
Reflects tourist development expenditures by functional area,
and the largest, typically, in this area is physical environment
representing beach renourishment projects. Just as you saw on the
revenue side, the loan in '96, obviously, you had a large expenditure
in FY '96 for the beach renourishment project. And you also have
culture and recreation represented, obviously, representing the
tourism promotion and special event activities.
County water sewer revenues by revenue type here. Obviously,
as an enterprise fund, they are predominantly user-fee oriented with
the predominant user fees being water and sewer user fees
themselves. Over time with the rate changes, water's become less
relative to sewer activities. Obviously, you expect that to continue
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January 29, 2002
now with the new inverted rate base that was adopted this year
hopefully forcing consumption reductions by the lay user and
resulting ultimately in a decrease in terms of timing of plant
expansions being required to the extent to which you can force
conservation through your rate structure. Next slide.
Capital project funds, this is exclusive of roads. The principal
revenue sources, primarily the impact fees in the light blue and ad
valorem tax supported. Obviously, in your general fund you have a
number of projects that are replacement structure building oriented
that are not impact fee eligible. Next slide.
Capital project fund expenditures -- one more, Beth. Exclusive
of roads, in the blue areas is county-wide capital, again, facility
oriented. Parks is in the maroon. One anomaly FY '01, obviously, in
the library area, you began the construction process for the North
Naples Regional Library on Orange Blossom Drive, which is slated
to open shortly.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: March 1.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Nice facility. I was there
yesterday. I think we're all going to be proud of that.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Quite a long time for that. It's
beautiful including the $100,000 grant -- donation made by the
Sudgens for the theater.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: This shows road construction revenues by
type. Obviously, over time impact fees are the predominant source,
yellow being gas taxes as well. Superimposed over this is a line
graph reflecting actual road construction expenditures by fiscal year.
Next slide, and actually my final slide.
Bond and loan obligations, as noted during the budget and
finance workshop that was held earlier this year, the bulk of
outstanding debt is in the area of water and sewer service debt, which
is paid off with water and sewer user fees. General government debt
Page 39
January 29, 2002
is very limited. Over time that has grown.
A piece of good news as well. The sales tax bond issue that was
approximately $50 million closed last week, and good news to report.
Initially we had anticipated pricing that bond on December 18th.
Due to market conditions at that point in time, there was a flurry of
activity. There were a lot of bonds in the market. In conjunction
with our financial advisor and the underwriter, the financing team
made the joint decision to delay pricing that bond issue until early
January. We actually priced January 8th, and obviously, we're
hoping for better market conditions. Typically right around
Christmastime is not the optimal time to be in the market. People are
closing out the fiscal year between the end of calendar year,
obviously, and New Year's there's not much activity.
As a result of that decision to delay that pricing approximately
three weeks, the interest cost savings amount to approximately $1.2
million over the life of those bonds, so that was a fortuitous decision.
Obviously, the market conditions were right. It's nice when the
market works in your favor, but that benefitted the taxpayers of this
community to the tune of $1.2 million. So we're really pleased with
the outcome of that bond issue.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: With a 2 percent interest rate, I
believe, Mike.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes. Some of the bonds in the current
year, the interest rate was below 2 percent. All in, I think, ended up
being somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 3/4 percent, so, obviously,
it was good to be in the market overall, and as a result of the
conditions and the decisions made, again, we saved $1.2 million as a
result of that decision, and I'm happy to report that.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: One thing that I didn't see is
reserves, historically where we're at with our reserves. So if I can get
some information on that, I'd appreciate it.
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January 29, 2002
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Okay. And as a general rule by policy
you budget a 5 percent contingency reserve within each operating
fund. In addition, in the general fund and the unincorporated area
general fund, you have to meet cash flow needs at the beginning of
the fiscal year, as collections typically don't begin until late
November. Obviously, you funded virtually two months of
operations prior to receiving the first cent of your principal source.
So we do have cash flow reserves there as well. But I'd be happy to
provide that to you.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I guess my concern is in
case of an emergency, a hurricane or some kind of disaster, you
know, do we have enough funds to keep government going? MR. OLLIFF: Next slide, Beth.
MR. FEDER: Folks, I appreciate being here. I'm going to go
very quickly through transportation. Tom mentioned a number of
these areas already.
First, and I'll call your attention here on the computerized traffic
signal system. First phase with 45 intersections, basically Airport
Road and then west underway right now. August of 2003,
modification to your second item here is the second phase, which we
advanced the design to advance reimbursement with the state
basically slated to start in July of 2003 with completion 18 months
later or the first, January February, of 2005. So please note that on
your item there. That's incorrect. That January of 2003 should say
"5" relative to completion. And that will cover basically Airport to
the east within the urbanized areas, another 54, as well the video
cameras. No, they are not for enforcement. We can't use them for
that, but they will assist us in monitoring and being able to update
and adjust throughout the day to traffic demands. This is going to be
an important feature here.
Next thing I'll point out to you, as Tom noted already, you have
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January 29, 2002
one completion in Livingston Road, Phase 1. You've got five under
construction right now or nearing completion. First area, Airport
Road, spring of this year. Right now you have some real backups,
unfortunately, with traffic with some of the preliminary resurfacing
work. They're going through this week. After that they should be in
a position to maintain two lanes open as they do the additional lifts of
asphalt. But this first shot has been hard to work with and hopefully
will be over soon. Again, April, May this year we're looking for
completion.
The next, Golden Gate Boulevard four-laning, we shot these,
and I have to commend highly, obviously, BIO and our EMS for the
helicopter. They shot it in the afternoon, and as you look through
these pictures, even the first one, what I'm going to note to you we've
obviously solved the problem. But nonetheless on Golden Gate
Boulevard -- since I couldn't find a single vehicle out there -- I will
note to you that obviously we completed the first mile and a half,
opened it up -- didn't complete -- but opened it up to four-lane traffic
as well as a signal in time for start of school last fall. We're
continuing to progress out there. We're looking for the completion
later this summer this year.
Next project, Pine Ridge Road, pretty much open to traffic right
now. Everybody think it's done, but we're finishing off the computer-
signal work. That's very important. Staffs done some tweaking, but
it's still under construction. They're getting that finished, and we look
forward to that being, as I say, done done as opposed to just done.
Livingston Road, Phase 2, that work is underway. Again, this is
an important facility, six-laning, as you well know. We have this
fiscal year Phases 3, from Pine Ridge up to Immokalee and, 4, going
from that two lane to six and four north of Immokalee up to Bonita
Beach Road and connecting up the Imperial. Three Oaks in Lee
County, both slated for later this fiscal year. The next, Immokalee
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January 29, 2002
Road four-lane divided project, I'm pleased to tell you we are very
close to completion in that segment in the next couple weeks, and we
hope to have completion there by the end of February as they try to
pursue a bonus there, so we have to pay the bonus if they can get out
and be gone, as Commissioner Carter would say.
And so that's basically the five projects we have underway right
now. I mentioned the two Livingston projects, Phases 3 and 4 as
well. Goodlette-Frank Road from Pine Ridge to Vanderbilt and
Immokalee Road from 43rd over to Wilson, all slated to be let this
calendar year. The six that we've completed with those four will be
about a third of the way to that five-year schedule of 29 projects that
we needed to complete to basically catch up and meet the demands
within the five-year program.
What I'll do just very quickly is to note to you besides funding
and delivery of the five-year plan, staff and transportation's working
on further refinement and operational enhancements to your transit
system. We've had very, very good success in ridership there. We
want to keep that and expand and get your direction in the future as to
how we proceed in providing that alternative here in Collier County.
Land Development Code, (inaudible) management revisions,
you've heard a lot on that. I won't belabor it, access management,
interconnection, real-time, checkbook concurrency, level of service,
service volumes, lane rental, PUD reviews, updates and amendments,
something that we discussed before, impact fee update, all underway
and coming to you in the next few months.
Management information systems for the road and bridge, we've
brought some staff on board as well as some of the changes we've
made out on road and bridge. I'm very pleased to tell you we're
getting to the point where we can have some information on our
roadways' conditions, ability to make some decision on pavement
management and other issues of the sort.
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January 29, 2002
Recapture capacity on some of our roadways, you'll be having
things come to you. Identification mapping, a collector-roadway-
system study underway, and that was mentioned previously. We're
getting ready with the census data for update of the MPOs 2025,
long-range and cost-reasonable plan, stormwater improvements, and
we hope to bring forward Lely and request your funding of that. The
list goes on, but I appreciate your time, and I'll move on from there.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I don't mean to stop you. I know
that we're going quickly, but one question that is asked of me
constantly is what are we doing right now about the signalization
timing until the ITS is in place. That seems to be a problem that we
are incurring around the entire county.
MR. FEDER: Okay. Two parts to that. The first part that I
presented to you is basically from Airport -- sections of Airport about
45 signals as well to the west will be under a computerized signal
system in a period of time. That's underway right now. Also, in
January 2003 will start up -- we'll complete the first starmp. The
second phase, another 54 signals, so the key is getting a computerized
signal system up and running, but beyond that a number of issues
have been raised -- I know on Immokalee Road there's a lot of
concern. On 951 we had a dual left on a westbound, and with a dual
situation you couldn't allow it to go when opposing traffic was
structured. That caused us some delay. We got an offer out there,
but that's open now and functioning, I'm pleased to tell you, so you
can't have a (inaudible) at the opposite, but at least now with the dual
you've got the clearing, and we're doing much better.
Pine Ridge, everyone assumed the minute we allowed it opened
to six lanes that it was done, but in reality a number of the signal
heads weren't up. We haven't gotten the time, and that's being done
right now. So we get it from both ends. Some of it is being
improved as we go along on the construction projects, but the bigger
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January 29, 2002
improvement is that computerized signal system, which is the first
slide noted to you as coming forward, Phase 1 completion January
2003, the other starting --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I keep sending you right now until
the signalization is in place or the ITS is in place, these things -- are
we manually taking control of them?
MR. FEDER: We have some automation, obviously, as we exist
today. And, yes, we are doing that. What I will tell you is that,
number 1, we do not have a grid system. What you do is optimize
your capabilities.
Number 2, there is no way that everybody is going to make it
green in a progression here, especially without a grid system. So we
have an awful lot of folks that have identified, for instance to me,
how I can improve the system, and I've ridden the road with a
number of these people. And if I do the signal system the way they
want, all opposing traffic will be calling me and asking me to ride.
So we've got to balance those issues, and we're in the process of
trying to do that. You've got a good traffic-operation staff that are
out there daily working in those cabinets trying to optimize the
system. Right now they're working a little bit with a hamster in a
cage, but we're getting them some better tools.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Mr. Feder, I noticed in this morning's
paper that the school system is going to be moving aggressively with
the new high schools. The one out there on OrangeTree, I think we're
going to be covered as far as the road goes -- when that goes in place.
But my concern is is the one that they are planning to put between
Everglades Boulevard and DeSoto. Is there some way that we can
get the school system to get aboard as far as the four-laning of that
road, because it will never handle it in the morning. The kids would
never be able to get to school.
MR. FEDER: We're trying to address with the school, not even
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January 29, 2002
to the point of four-laning of facilities where they are creating
demand, just the connections, the signalization and, for that matter,
the sidewalks that they want us to build so they don't have to bus.
We're talking right now to the consultants looking at the update of the
impact fees for the schools, seeing if we can get them to add some of
those issues into the methodology that don't exist today.
Right now the school impact fee is only for on-site related, and
yet they are placing significant demands, obviously, to the impacts
offsite, if you will, that are obviously site related. They are building
them in a number of areas where there is not necessarily the capacity
or the connections, even, in some cases. The one right off of, so to
speak, 951 somewhere back underneath the canal coming in doesn't
even have actual road connections today.
So we're working with the school. I think we need to look at the
school board's impact fee process, and very shortly schools are going
to start paying impact fees to the county for transportation. They
haven't been doing that previously.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: And this subject matter will come up
when we have our workshop with the school board?
MR. FEDER: I'm sure it will.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Mr. Feder --
MR. FEDER: Yes.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- Vanderbilt Beach Extension,
when are we going to let that contract?
MR. FEDER: 2003. That is not this year, but it's the next year
let 2003 for the six-laning and then four-laning. That's where it was
previously, and it's been maintained, yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. Thank you.
MR. FEDER: Thank you.
MR. MUDD: Jim Mudd, Deputy County Manager for the
record.
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January 29, 2002
Let's talk about the south county water reclamation facilities.
The first one, construction costs is $46 million, and we brought that
to the board this year based on -- our estimates were something about
half that amount. Bad estimates and we're changing our EE
contracts --
COURT REPORTER: You're going to have to slow down.
MR. MUDD: Okay.
Construction costs came in about twice what our estimate was.
We were putting a clause in our EE contracts to put a penalty in there
for our architect-engineering firms when they give us an estimate to
make sure they're more realistic as far as the construction costs are
today.
We started construction on October 2001 on the equalization
tanks. If you take a look at the far right-hand comer by that white
building, that's where the equalization tanks are going. When you go
out there, you can see that construction taking place. It's on-line in a
manual method right now. It will be fully automated later on this
summer.
Substantial completion, we're hoping for December 2003.
Hope is not a method, but you need to have the building permit in
hand in order to go into full construction, and we don't have that yet.
We meet with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection
this week to talk to them about the permit delays that we're
experiencing in their department.
It's an 8-million-gallon expansion. It will fully bring this plan
out to buildout, and it will give us a capability in the south end to
2016. Next slide.
The north regional plant, the 5-million-gallon expansion, as the
county manager mentioned earlier, came online around the 6th of
November. Our deadline for the Florida Department of
Environmental Protection was 1 December. We made that provision
Page 47
January 29, 2002
in the consent order. We'll be fully done with the sludge part
expansion of that 5 million gallons here in January, February time
period. It gave us 5 million gallons. We submitted our 1 O-million-
gallon expansion plans in two doses of five each per the board's
guidance. And we got the Florida Department of Environmental
Protection to agree with that. Those plans are at the department right
now, and we plan to start building the next 5-million-gallon
expansion there as soon as we get the permit to do so.
We've done some great good-neighbor features up there. We've
done odor control to make sure that the folks don't get overwhelmed
by the smell, and at one time that was the case. We've taken a look at
a sludge building, dewatering building. We've converted the chlorine
gas, which could have been a hazardous material handling thing for
the neighborhood and took it into a liquid bleach, which is very safe
and doesn't cause the same kind of health hazards.
And we've enclosed the septage-receiving station, the
headworks, which is -- basically has the most odor emanating from it.
Next slide.
The south water plant, good news, building permits are all in
hand, and they are moving out smartly. Everything on this slide is
happening on schedule at this particular point. We plan to have it
here online April 2003, and the project cost is $35.5 million. Next
slide.
MR. OLLIFF: I just want to stop you there and point out, again,
that's a reverse-osmosis facility. Again, you'll continue to get
questions from the public, how come you're not doing desalination, if
you will. Reverse osmosis is a form of desalination that Collier
County has been doing it for a decade at the north plant and will now
be doing it at the south plant as well.
MR. MUDD: Now let's switch to go to the landfill little bit.
We've made some significant improvements to the landfill operation,
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January 29, 2002
one of which is the flair (phonetic), which has basically doubled the
capacity to suck gas off of the hills to make sure that the bad odors
don't get offsite and that they are burned off-- we have an RFP --
request for proposal -- out there on the street to mm that energy
source into electricity. And we'll be examining that as we progress
through the spring and the summer. Next slide.
We're taking precautionary measures to make sure that our
contractor, Waste Management, covers the areas out there to make
sure that gas doesn't escape from any kind of an open face and that
they are doing due diligence to make sure that they maintain those
areas that are supposed to be covered. Next slide.
This is another opportunity to take a look so you don't have to
go walk on the hill, but they are doing great service out there, and it's
a very big difference if you took a look at the same kind of picture
from last year versus this year. Next slide.
They're doing horizontal wells out there to capture them as
they're doing open face, and that's an improvement, and it's a new
procedure so that when they are piling the trash on top of the open
face, it's got a gas collection system underneath already in place, so
when it gets to the very top they don't have to go through all the
extraordinary measures to drill their drill wells and then cap it. We're
basically sucking gas off the open face too. Next slide.
Biomass, we went out there one time, I said, "What are we
collecting this stuff for posterity?" We had about 60 acres full of
yard waste piled about 30 to 40 foot high in piles. And you could see
that off to the left. We were just churning and churning and grinding
it up, and nobody was taking it. And we've taken all the
commissioners out to the composting site out there on Oil Well Road
out in Immokalee where we have 147 acres out there where we're
doing composting, and you can see to the right-hand side, today's
picture, that we moved an awful lot of that material plus any new
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January 29, 2002
materials that we're getting into the landfill out to that site for a
compost operation. Next slide.
COURT REPORTER: Please slow down.
MR. MUDD: Yes, ma'am. And the last one is construction and
demolition. There was no rhyme or reason of what was going on out
at the landfill. And if you can see from the right side, they've started
to segregate and get it into a more orderly fashion so that segregating
the C and D material, and it's not going to the hill anymore. It is
being recycled. We've trying to get a 60 percent recycle out of our
present operation in construction and demolition material. Next
slide.
MR. DUNNUCK:
Services Administrator.
For the record, John Dunnuck, Public
We've got the north county regional park
plan in place right now. We've got the design firm hired. We've got
a 212-acre park to be completed in 2004, and we're working closely
with the transportation division to work simultaneously with the
expansion of Livingston Road so that we can have that park up and
running in a timely fashion so that while they're under construction
we can be doing the construction to the Livingston North Regional
Park. Next slide.
And as you all are aware -- I don't know if I need to say much
on this one -- the facility's been completed. It's CO'd right now.
We're loading it with books and all the supplies that we need to make
it operational. Come and join us March 1st for the ribbon cutting,
because it's probably going to be the premier library facility in the
state of Florida if not the south United States.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: I'd like to comment for one
moment. John Jones deserves a tremendous praise for that design.
He has been his own construction manager, and he's proven to you
you can build a government facility that looks terrific for the same
amount of dollars that you can build ugly. So he has done it and done
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January 29, 2002
it well. And we owe him a debt of gratitude that I don't think anyone
could ever, ever surpass.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: What was his name?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: John Jones.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: John Jones.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: And besides that,
Commissioner Carter, if I might add on to that, that's going to be a
hundred-year facility, and there are a lot of options of what we can do
and how it was designed and what can be done inside of it. And I
think it's going to be for a long time a focal point of the community, a
place to gather.
MR. DUNNUCK: The first thing -- just a little story. When I
talked to John when I first came aboard to public services, he kind of
smiled and took me on a tour of the facility and said, "See, this is
what you can do when you have no administrator in place for a
while."
MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, that's the conclusion of the Vital
Signs Report. I let John show us a picture of his dog when he did it,
so I promised Beth we'd let her put her dog into the end of the Vital
Signs. If you're ready we can take a break now and come back in
about ten minutes.
(A break was held.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Take your seats, please. Mr. Olliff,
I'll give it back to you.
MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
We're on to the strategic planning portion of the meeting this
morning, and we will try to get you out of here by 12:30 at the latest
for the commissioners who need to make plans. Beth, if you'll go
ahead and hit it.
What we are going to try to do today is, obviously, we want to
start by reviewing the previous strategic plan, which we went
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through, which was the 2001 plan. Mr. Mudd will take you through
that. We're going to review some of the information from the other
sources, and again, that's from the Focus study that was done, I
believe, in 1998. Mr. Ochs will take you through that. We'll walk
you through some of the highlights of the citizens' survey, and then,
finally, we'll need to have a discussion about how to strategize some
of our program priorities and try to develop some strategic goals. So
with that, Ms. Walsh, if you'll hit it.
MR. MUDD: For the reporter's sake, I'm Jim Mudd, and I will
try to breathe between my sentences.
The employee investment plan -- what we're going to do is
review things that the board agreed to last March and try to give an
update of where we've been over-- through 2001.
The employee investment plan, we've got it so with the DMG
and before that Arthur Andersen (sic). It's a skills-based
advancement plan. It talks about recruitment and selection,
compensation and classification, recognition, growth and
development, and benefits. And we've looked at all of those issues to
try to get that thing down. And I will say the advancement plan and
the horizontal movement of the employee from the time that they
start here in Collier County and time that they finally finish, that is a
work in progress as we try to figure out exactly what degrees,
licenses that they need in order to do their job in the most efficient
manner.
The pay-plan adjustment, we went through the second piece of
that this year, and we'll discuss more about what the board wants to
do during the budget cycle as far as what percentage they want to talk
about during that process.
That gets us to decentralized government. These are all staff-
supported issues. We talk about efforts at the Golden Gate Service
Center. It was put into service and opened in July of 2001. The
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January 29, 2002
North Naples Service Center, design started in October of 2001 and
will finish in February of 2002. Construction will move out from
March of 2002 to March of 2003, and we hope to open that facility in
March of 2003 if everything goes according to plan.
The Sheriffs Facilities Master Plan, the design started in
October and will be finished in October of 2002. And the last item as
far as decentralized government that we have on our table is the Main
Campus Master Plan, and it's been revised to accommodate some of
the things that the board talked about when we were talking about
transportation funding. The designs will start in October of 2002 and
be complete in October of 2003.
The Capital Funding Plan, you've seen the utilities impact fee
study that we did, and the board approved those increases. You will
see a host of impact fee updates this spring and summer, and the
Transportation Funding Plan we owe back to the board in February.
We promised them in December that we would get back to you the
latter part of January, the first part of February with that process.
And we are going to take a good hard look at our inventory report
and what our metrics are in order to gauge our concurrency. And
that's one of the things that Community Development's, Stan
Litsinger and crew are going to take a holistic look at this spring so
that we have a revised system for you as you get to look at in the
latter part of the summer. Next slide.
There's a workshop, I think, Tom, in the near future on this one
where the different board members are going to update each other in
the updates of that process. I don't know if I want to belabor each
one of those issues or not.
Affordable housing, its mission is to -- is to make sure that-- we
don't need to go through them?
MR. OLLIFF: No. I think the board -- this was just to review
with the board in 2001 where the board agreed to step in and actually
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provide some hands-on assistance with some of these key projects by
creating the Horizon Committees. And you -all are very well aware
of where we are in the process with those.
MR. MUDD: E-Government, you had an update briefing during
the workshop that was just completed. It was the last workshop you
had. I can't put a three-hour workshop in a couple of seconds. I think
you have that information. I think it was quite illustrative for you,
and I think you asked some good questions. But we're well on our
way to bringing that to fruition here in Collier County.
The grant acquisition plan, the board made the decision to rely
on the staff and not to go into an extended program with increased
staffing in this particular instance because of resource constraints that
we had. And the new lobbyist that you voted on today will also help
us on that process, as Chairman Coletta mentioned about some of the
previous experience he's had or heard about from Lee County. That
lobbyist did bring in lots of money to Lee County, and hopefully he'll
do the same for us. We obtained about $7.5 million in grants in FY
'01. Next slide.
We're overhauling contract management. We've gone out in a
team. It's a matrix managed horizontal team across the county got
together. We brought a lot of different organizations including the
Corps of Engineers in here to talk about what they do in contracting,
what the good items are, and what we're basically doing is ripping off
everybody's good news items in trying to make our system better.
Our team is due to have a preliminary draft to us as far as new
contracting procedures here in February, and then we'll go about
training the staff on those procedures February and March to make
sure that they institute this process. That team has been ongoing for a
year and had done some yeoman work as far as bringing it all
together for us in Collier County.
Customer outreach plan, future action is something we need to
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pursue in order to get customers' input and feedback, and I think we
worked diligently with the commission and staff to try to do that
every day. It would be one of the things we're going to try to do here
in the future is to come up with a package where we institutionalize
and lay out that process on how we get at it in a more detailed
manner and organized manner instead of helter-skelter phone calls
that we get on different topics.
And we need to spend some time on -organizational business
management processes, and Tom alluded to that earlier where we
need to take a look at those internal things that we do in order to
make sure we institutionalize routine procedures so that every phone
call isn't a new action and causes us to reinvent the wheel, so to
speak; so that we've got a series of standard operating procedures in
place for our business processes. Next slide.
MR. OLLIFF: That was the update of 2001, strategic planning
effort that the board went through, and now we'll step into looking
ahead at what we've got in front of us in the '02 annual year, Beth.
Just to refresh the board's memory, these are already the current
major projects, if you will, that are on the staffs plate for '02. We've
already talked about FMS implementation and what a massive project
that is putting together our capital construction management program,
and just for the board's sake we are having our first quarterly -- what
we call CAPS Track review meeting on the 31 st of this month where
all of the key project managers with their projects will be coming in
in front of a review panel to present where they are in the process,
especially in terms of budget and schedule.
Transportation funding options and developing the actual
funding plan is an ongoing and major issue for the year. Rural lands
and rural fringe is something that while you may believe is primarily
being driven by the committees that are out there, there's been a
significant and will be probably more so a staff intensive project as
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they begin to head toward the board. And I will tell you that those
two may end up taking front and center stage over the course of the
next year, while up to this point they've kind of been silent ongoing
projects. My impression is that those are going to be some of the
places where we're going to spend a large part of our time and effort
over the next year.
GIS you know about. LDC amendments, I continue to believe
that the board has a desire to get into the Land Development Code,
not in just the sporadic way that we have, but in a systematic way.
The chairman and I talked about even having a possible series of
workshops to take the Land Development Code section by section
and let the board review it and get more comfortable with it,
especially as we've hired a consultant to go through a major
amendment process there.
Neighborhood master plans, the board is well aware of some
North Naples, some Naples Park, some Immokalee master plans,
Golden Gate area master plan, and a lot of significant pressure from
other neighborhoods I believe to be included in that as well.
E-Government, you saw the workshop, and that will be a
continued effort on the part of staff, and we call that "Shadow Staff"
just because it requires not within the organizational chain of
command a single department. E-Government will require across the
agency a number of employees to be involved. The board has
continued to want to see public information improvements, and we
talked about that as well at your workshop.
Contract management is one of the Achilles heels, I believe, of
our organization, and we need to spend a significant amount of time
on how we actually manage contracts, ongoing projects for this year.
Security enhancement is one of the things that was kind of
handed to us but something that we certainly do not take lightly. I
think you've already been made aware through some memoranda and
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e-mails from your facilities management department about a number
of security enhancements that we've already put in place, but I think
we're going to continue and monitor and work with the sheriffs
department to beef that up even further.
And, finally, utility billing upgrade, we need to actually
implement a new utility billing system, and anytime you switch over
to a new system it is very staff intensive, and that one will be as well.
Commissioner?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Just listening.
MR. OLLIFF: Okay.
Some major issues that we have picked out along the way from
the board's discussions over the last six months, obviously, the
asterisked ones are already selected in ongoing work projects, work-
force housing, social services, most of those are found in the way of
your Horizon Committees.
The top are items that the board has talked about, but we really
haven't grabbed hold of them at our level as yet, including jails,
which you will have a separate workshop regarding sheriff agency
operations and jail planning and construction.
The rural fringe and rural lands will reach the board's level in
June of this year. Service quality levels, we've talked about the
distinction between urban and rural services and the long-term policy
decisions and stresses that that's going to put on our ability to provide
services.
And then, obviously, the LDC and Growth Management Plan
review and revision process as well. Those are the major policy
issues that we hear as recurring themes as we're in front of the board.
From the citizen survey information, in addition to what we do
well, what we do badly, we try and ask some questions at the end
about what are the areas that the community believes we need to
spend our attention and efforts on. These were the items in order of
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priority as they provided them to us: road and traffic-related matters,
which is and probably should be no surprise to anybody. Neither
should No. 2, controlling and managing growth; water conservation;
preservation of the natural environment; and healthcare concerns.
Those were the top five listed issues that came back to us from our
sort of open-ended portion of the Citizen Survey. And I'm not sure
that there's anything that's amazing off of that list or anything that
should take anybody by surprise.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: If we can go back to that. I
think that we can improve that process so that we get better
information so that we can make decisions. I think just about -- well,
everyone of those is tied with the tax dollar, but I think in the survey
we fail to ask the customer how should we pay for those. It might be
important to them, but are they willing to pay for it, or how should
we pay for it.
MR. OLLIFF: I couldn't agree with you more. We've never
been able to really get the board energized in years past about being a
part of the process of question development and trying to get the
board to participate in determining what is important to the board in
terms of what do we want to ask the community.
I have heard from several of you that you would like to be
involved in that question development process, and I think Chuck and
Alice are here from Fraser & Mohlke, and the latter part of this
session was actually designed to try and see from the board's
perspective what is it that you want us to ask the community, because
we are scheduled to try and accelerate that and start asking questions
in March, peak season, while we've got the largest set of population
here.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: That's key, Mr. Olliff, because
I'm always frustrated by where the information comes from. And,
after all, this is a democracy. I'd rather hear from the majority than a
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few vocal minority who may or may not be sharing the overall
picture of the community. And, unfortunately, we have been driven
by the latter in the past, and I want to hear from the people. And I
want to hear a broad cross-section from Chuck Mohlke, and his
associates can do -- where we get what I'm going to call a reasonable
database to begin to make those decisions on everything that's on the
wall.
I couldn't concur more. Everybody wants but nobody wants to
pay. And there's no free lunch, and there's no cheap way to get there.
So what does the community really want, and how much do they
want do they want to pay?
MR. OCHS: I'm going to spend a few minutes talking about the
FoCuS report.
In the winter of 1998, a distinguished panel of citizens submitted
the final report of the FoCuS group to the community. The FoCuS
report and the group was essentially a community-based long-range
planning effort that attempted to chart the course, if you will, for the
future of this community, preserving the character of the past, but
preparing for future.
As I read through the FoCuS report preparing for today's
presentation, what most struck me and perhaps will strike you as we
go through the foils is the relatively close alignment of the priorities
that the community has for the future here as embodied in the report
and how closely that aligned with what this commission has been
doing on several fronts over the last several months, and as we go
through the slides, I'll point out a few of those examples.
The first one that the committee in the FoCuS report spoke to
was green space and environmental responsibility, essentially
recommending that the community look to retain and create green
space and open space preserving natural areas in both the urban and
rural areas of our community. Of course, the commission has its own
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Horizon Committee today on green space. You also, as Tom just
mentioned, have the work that's ongoing with both your rural fringe
and rural lands committees, and there's also an initiative called
"Conservation Collier," which is really being spearheaded by a
consortium of environmental groups here locally that are looking,
again, to put together a package to promote conservation and perhaps
purchase some open space. And they'll be talking to you more in the
future about that. I know they've working through Bill Lorenz and
his staff over in environmental planning. Next slide, please, Beth.
Second area of the FoCuS group report had to do with urban
design essentially looking to create a comprehensive urban land-use
plan that would encourage the public's desire to create what's often
referred to as "small-town communities." And there's a number of
bullets here. I'm not going to read them all to you, but a couple of the
highlights -- and, again, linkages to what's going on currently through
the board's policy initiatives have to do with the amendments to the
Land Development Code, the updates to the Comprehensive Plan,
your current effort in implementing the geographic information
system, which has made tremendous strides and should be on-line by
fiscal year '03. Also with regard to -- next slide, please, Beth.
Also in regard to the small-town communities, the board has
received the Dover-Kohl preliminary report, has adopted some
architectural standards to preserve that continuity in neighborhoods.
Tom also mentioned just recently the master planning efforts and the
neighborhood planning efforts in the Immokalee, Golden Gate area,
Naples Park, for example. All of these again, I think, demonstrate the
alignment between the FoCuS report and the initiatives that are
ongoing currently in the county. Next side, please.
Again, with regard to the urban design subcommittee report and
the FoCuS report, they look for creating a citizens' academy to better
educate and communicate the citizens regarding the community
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development process. I think one of the ways that the board has
indicated they want to get to that -- and Tom alluded to it a few
minutes ago -- is perhaps going to a series of workshops where the
board could peel that onion from the Land Development Code, go
through element by element, get a good understanding. We could,
obviously, broadcast each one of those to the public so they can get a
better understanding of the total development process. Next slide,
please.
Third area was economic diversity. Again, the FoCuS group
wanted to maintain and create a balanced and expanded economic
base supporting clean industry, environmentally friendly industry,
and non-seasonal industry, if you will. The board, obviously,
continues that partnership with the Economic Development Counsil,
and also put in place some of your community redevelopment
authority areas. The Immokalee Airport has been a big initiative in
terms of economic development and diversity. Next slide.
This has to do with water resources. Again, the FoCuS report
attempted to develop a comprehensive plan that would address the
future water needs of our area, including both drainage and flood
control. There are a number of initiatives that the current
commission has undertaken in this area. Most recently you had the
utilities master plan presented to you where there were several
initiatives there recommended with regard to not only reclaimed
water but also amending your water rate structure, which would
essentially incent (sic) people to conserve and cause those that use
more than their share of water to pay a higher rate than they would
otherwise have paid. And the last slide, Beth.
This has to do transportation, and the FoCuS group there was
obviously looking to create a complete roadway network that moved
people throughout the county and was aesthetically pleasing at the
same time. I don't think I need to spend much time reminding you
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how much time you-all have spent on transportation and road
construction over the last year.
So those were the essential elements of the FoCuS group, and,
again, I think the most important point to take from that is that it
appears that there's quite a bit of linkage between what the
community saw a few years ago as priorities for the future and what
this county commission and staff is working on today. MR. OLLIFF: In closing (videotape playing).
We found that clip and just thought it was sort of apropos in
telling the board that too much power and trying to bite off too much
is not a good thing. I think what you've seen today is an entire list of
things that are all over these walls that you've heard from citizens'
surveys that we have talked about in board meetings, that we've got
on the staff plate, and I just need for us as an organization to try and
agree on what out of that entire menu of items needs to be our
priority, what's important to you as the board of directors of this
organization. And we can do it the way that we were going to, or we
can let you digest everything that you've been provided to this point
and try and work on an opportunity perhaps at the end of a lighter
board meeting two weeks from now, a month from now and try to
hone in on it then.
But I will tell you that I do need to get some decisions in
advance of the budget process so that when we actually develop
policy and then the staff starts working on budgets, that we'll know
that we are trying to build from the ground up in conjunction with
your goals. Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: During the AUIR process, I
think that you heard from the majority of the commissioners their No.
1 goal is transportation and funding that transportation. And I know
that we're short $64, $65 million. And it was my understanding is
that we want staff to go out there and find resources to fund the
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transportation projects in toto without raising the millage rate.
MR. OLLIFF: Commissioner Coyle.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Is Commissioner Henning
finished?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yes, go ahead.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: I've been saving all of my
questions, Tom, and I'm going to take a few minutes if you don't
mind.
I'd like to commend you and the staff with what you have done
and what you're trying to do. There is a lot of experience in the
private sector about how to develop indicators of performance.
There's a lot less experience in government organizations to do that,
and it's a very difficult task, and I commend you for taking it on.
So I'll start first with some observations about some of those
indicators and then get into some more specific recommendation.
Most of what we've seen today, with some notable exceptions, is
activity oriented, and I think what we need are things that measure
results more clearly than we're measuring results today, and I'll use
several examples.
One is the permit processing time. I think it does us no good to
report the permit processing time is 20 days. It does help us if,
however, we establish a standard. And if the processing time
standard is 12 or 15 days, then fluctuations above and below that
would be indicative of how well we are achieving our goal. The
activity reports that we are seeing here are important from the
standpoint of understanding workload and staffing and -
organizational structure, but they are not particularly helpful with
respect to deciding how well we are doing our job.
One of the other things that would be extremely helpful to me is
if we had an accurate inventory and backlog of dwelling units. And
we talked yesterday about this, Joe. And I believe the staff has that,
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but if we could begin to report things like the inventory and backlog
of dwelling units -- the importance of that is essentially this; there's
currently 80,000 approved but unbuilt dwelling units in Collier
County. Now, if you figure there might be two-and-a-half people per
dwelling unit, you've got 200,000 people -- or dwelling units for
200,000 people already approved and on the budget. If we add that
to what we have now, we're already at buildout. Our buildout figure
is 457,000 people. If we add what's already been approved and we
assume that two-and-a-half people per dwelling unit is an accurate
figure, then we're already at 450,000 people. So I'm concerned that
we're using a buildout figure that might not be accurate.
And, secondly, by tracking those PUDs and those unbuilt but
approved units, perhaps we can cause some reduction in those,
consequently we won't have such a big backlog. So then we manage
that backlog, and we add or subtract based upon what action we can
take.
The road checkbook report would be extremely helpful for us,
Norm. A report that shows by road segment what the balance is in
the checkbook, that would be a good reporting standard, I think.
Road construction progress reports versus funding. Percentage
of completion is never a good way of measuring a project, because a
project can be 99 percent completed, but it might take you tens of
millions of dollars to get the additional 1 percent. So what I'd like to
suggest as far as reporting is concerned is that we take a look at costs
expended and cost to complete versus overall schedule. And that will
give us, I think, some kind of an indication as to how we're doing on
those things.
Impact fees and costs of construction, we always lag -- in fact--
and I think the system is designed to make sure we always lag
behind, and I don't have a solution to that. I don't know how to
collect the impact fees in advance, but it would be helpful if we could
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have a report that shows the impact fees that are coming in and
construction fees that are going out. I'm talking primarily about road
construction right now. And that will give us some indication as to
the disparity between the number of impact fees that are collected at
the time of permitting and the construction costs that are essential to
accommodate the impact on our community. And I think we'll
always see a lag there, but if the lag gets too great, we know we need
to do something to accommodate for that. So that's another good
performance indicator.
Water demand versus fees. And so what I'm getting at here, at
least in this part of my observation, is that the way the data is
presented is extremely important, because I think it can create those
kinds of performance criteria that you think are essential to managing
things effectively.
Now, if we get into a couple of organizational or functional
things -- let me touch very briefly on the TDC. I believe we're
probably managing that in the wrong way. Apparently what happens
is that we are approving a certain number of dollars, and then the
tourism alliance goes out and spends those dollars, and then we audit
them to determine if they spent it the right way. I think it would be
better if we could find an organizational structure and a process that
would permit us to define the project we want to accomplish.
And that would be best done by people who are experienced in
advertising and tourism. They design the project, the tourism alliance
or someone else develops a line-item budget for that project, which
would include all of the things a normal department head is
responsible for; overhead, rent, salaries, travel, entertainment,
whatever, and then we would approve the budget. And there
wouldn't be this problem of us taking a look at what they've already
spent and finding out that it wasn't spent properly. That's an
organizational kind of thing, I think, we could deal with.
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And, finally, to start getting some priorities out, I fully support
Commissioner Henning's suggestion that transportation and road
building is important, but there is something that is underlying there
that creates that problem, and that is the Land Development Code.
And we first must deal with the funding and the transportation, but
we will always be in that kind of situation unless we can modify the
Land Development Code in a way which reflects the interest of our
community in controlling density and intensity, but we must do it in a
way that does not violate private-property rights. And I don't know
how to do that.
That is one of the most confusing things for me is how are we
ever going to control the growth and the demands on the roads unless
we can get a Land Development Code and a Comprehensive Plan that
will provide the legal basis for the decisions we have to make. Right
now the legal basis for the decisions we have to make results in
exactly what we've got right now. And while we have some
discretion, we can't stray far from that legal basis. And it seems to
me that if we really want to solve the problem on a long-term basis,
we need to deal with the Land Development Code and the
Comprehensive Plan. I would recommend that that be very close to
the top of priorities here.
(A break was held.)
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Tom.
MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Carter.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Mr. Olliff, I agree with
everything that Commissioner Coyle said, and I would like to address
the revenue streams and tie that to what we want to accomplish by
saying what does each revenue stream support and as it fluctuates on
projections how do we adjust what we want to get done.
The second part of that is, which we have the least amount of
control, and that is diversifying the revenue stream where you have
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more participating in accomplishing where you want to go. What I
mean is, economic diversity where you have a better business base
that helps you contribute to your ad valorem tax base. Right now
we've got two major streams that come out of tourism and
construction. And that's not only for this county; it's for the state of
Florida. So we can't lose sight of what provides the base, and at the
same time we've got to find ways to operate within that which is
highly vulnerable to economic conditions by looking at other more
stable enterprises like technological research centers that maybe for
medical or high-tech, which does have some vulnerability in itself,
but also would help us level out that base.
So when we do these things, I would like to get some
predictions against what we're doing against the revenue streams as
we go along in the reporting process.
MR. OLLIFF: Does that summarize what you're saying fairly
well, review of the revenue stream versus the level of service --
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Yes, sir.
MR. OLLIFF: -- we provide from those, and then a
diversification of the revenues themselves.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Thank you.
MR. OLLIFF: Okay. Other comments from board members?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Let me go back to some of the
things -- we gave a second pay increase or final of the study of pay
increase, and the concern out there -- what I hear is are we giving
raises in merit to employees that have been demoted, and I think that
we need to, hopefully, keep track of-- make sure that we are not
rewarding somebody that we're slapping their hands.
Another thing I wrote down here, code enforcement. I'm glad
that somebody from the outside has come in and seen code
enforcement is proactive. That's the first time I heard that. But I do
think that we can do a better job.
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Each one of our districts, we have blight, and it has to work very
closely with code enforcement. Hopefully, that we can take a
proactive of finding out what the community needs are, and they are
all different. And it might be the same thing as in Naples Park as in
Golden Gate, but it's not going to be the same as in Immokalee.
There are community leaders out there, and I think that code
enforcement can coordinate between sheriffs department, urban
housing development, and those type of agencies to address the needs
of the community.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I'd like to add as long as you're
addressing code enforcement, I think expanding their hours right
now. Many of the problems that arise such as too many people in
one dwelling as well as noise and so forth seem to occur on the
weekends and at night, and that's not when our code enforcement
people are working.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Exactly, Commissioner. I
think the diversity of the hours of operation, you know, we don't need
to have everybody working during the day. I think, you know, shift
that to like you said, the weekends and the evening.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Thank you. I would like to add
also that the work-force housing -- I don't know if we're actually
coming down -- are we just going to discuss a list here such as work-
force housing, things that we need to address? Okay. Because that
certainly is something that I'm concerned with, and how we're going
to address that problem and solve it. We not only need to address it,
but we need to solve that problem because our futures depend on us
taking care of that problem now.
I always try and think of what's going to happen in 20 years and
how we prepare for it right this minute. Also, I'm still concerned
with the CREW acquisition. We have to protect that watershed out
there, so that's something-- but I don't know if that's something we
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want to address as our five major projects. But green space is
certainly one of them, and CREW could fall under that.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Are we going in mm, or can I
jump in again?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Jump in.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Go ahead.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: No, you go next.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I'm sorry, Fred, I can't quite
understand what you're trying to say.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Water resources. There's been a
lot of talk about tying our water resources to the pace of
development. I'm not really sure how to do that, but at the very least
I think we should be able to measure the availability of our water and
take into consideration the approved permits and anticipated permits
so that if there comes a time when we have a problem with potable
water, or if we're going to have a problem, we need to anticipate that
far in advance so that we can bring more of our own processing
facilities on-line, and that takes a long time, and it's going to be more
costly.
So my proposal would be to measure the condition of the aquifer
on the regular basis so that we can determine if there is a significant
impact at our current level of activity and then track that throughout
the future to assure that if we start running into a problem, we'll know
about it pretty quickly.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: If I can help you with that, you're
right, you need to be concerned about the infrastructure, and I think
you're heading in the right direction there. They're doing an excellent
job as far as Florida Water Management and tracking that aquifer and
the level of it as we move through the different seasons and drought
and times a plenty so they can react. But without the infrastructure in
place we probably should put the same kind of conditions on water
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systems as we do on roads.
We're going to be coming up with writing the check -- writing
the check out for when the roads are in place is when you can put the
buildings in there. You can do the new growth. We probably should
also include such things as water. It should also include the schools,
which the school system seems to be on top of at the moment, better
correlated I would imagine. Also, it should include medical facilities.
It should include the fire department, the EMS, all these things
should be in place before growth goes forward. But I agree with you
about the water. The water is a primary concern to everyone. No one
wants to be without water.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: My problem takes that down to a
level lower than that. We determine water capacity requirements
based upon the number of permits we receive and the number of
permits we anticipate as our community begins to grow. And so we
can build the water-processing facilities, but if the aquifer begins to
shrink, then the water-processing facility itself will not be sufficient
action to take to compensate for that problem. We need to find other
ways of dealing with that, and they are long-term solutions, so we
must find out as early as possible so that we'll have plenty of years to
prepare for the eventuality.
So my concern is not so much the water-plant-facility capacity,
because I think the plan that staff has developed now is a very good
leap forward on our capacity to process water. I'm looking at the
availability of water to process. And we must be very sensitive to
that because I suspect -- as everybody knows this water flows
through the ground at a very, very slow pace. A lot of very heavy
development has occurred north of us. They're drawing out of the
aquifer that eventually flows this way. Now, it might take 20, 30, 50,
even 100 years for that effect to take place, but I don't know how
long it's been happening, nor does anybody else.
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MR. OLLIFF: Does that summarize that for you if we talk
about a focus on raw water resources, because it's not the treatment,
it's not the capacity, it's the raw water supply --
COMMISSIONER COYLE: How about aquifer capacity or
condition or whatever?
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aquifer, I mean, we can get
resources other than aquifers.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes, we could.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: If I could expand upon that. I
think what you're going to see is Dudley Goodlette taking charge of
writing language to make county -- part of their concurrency is water
resources. And also with the governor's commission on growth
management, you will see concurrency with the school system. So
we're going to have to work very closely with the school system to
make sure that happens, the classrooms come online before the
impact is there so we don't see what we see today is a bunch of
portables.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: And I think what we have to take
into consideration is a lot of it's out of our control because the South
Florida Water Management District, when plans are submitted to
them, they approve based -- on even if the water is not available in
that particular sector, if you can draw from another, and there's an
overall balance, they will approve a development's plans. And we
have to find a way through the things that are coming down to the
legislature to interact with that with South Florida Water
Management District so that they don't override what we want to do
locally. And that may get us into some legal situations, but I think
we need to find a way to see how much they're going to influence
everything that we want to do and what our options are.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Tom, you just wrote down
expanded concurrency management, and maybe you could add there,
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"revised," because we do -- in my opinion anyway -- we have to
revise some of our concurrency laws, if you will, or Land
Development Code.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Revise--
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Revise and expand, yeah.
MR. OLLIFF: What else? Anything else needs to be up on the
board? You've got work-force housing, green space. I tried to
summarize, Commissioner Henning, the level -- and, Commissioner
Fiala -- the level of service distribution versus different and distinct
neighborhood needs. And I was trying to get to that. Not only code
enforcement, but I think there's a number of other services that we
provide that probably fall into that same category.
So providing standardized level of service across the county
may not make sense is what I'm hearing from you; that there may be
a greater need for code enforcement in certain areas or a greater need
for animal control in certain areas then there are in others, and
standardized service levels don't make sense.
Diversification of revenues, review of the revenue streams
versus our level of service. What are we able to provide within the
revenue streams that we currently have? Growth Management, Land
Development Code amendments, sort of an underkey for a lot of
what's on the board; transportation funding; performance
benchmarks; review of zoned and unbuilt units; raw or aquifer water
resources, sort of that supply versus demand versus protection
system; and expanded or revised concurrency management system.
What else can you think of that needs to be on the board? How
about from the staff, anything that we're missing?
MR. MUDD: There's two on my list -- I'm not a voting
member, but I'm going to throw them up there.
One would be to re-establish the public trust. I think that's an
effort that -- you're not going to get their input or feedback into our
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process if they don't trust you, because they are going to feel like
they're wasting their time. And then I would say that program
management -- we hinted upon it a little bit, but there's an awful lot
of capital programs that are going to be built. We're talking between
transportation and utilities alone, and there's more to this with
libraries and parks and things like that.
But over about every 5 years between transportation and utilities
for the next 20, we're going to spend almost a billion dollars. We
need to have a good program set aside in order to do that.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I would like to see on the -- re-
establish public trust, re-establish and maintain public trust. That
would also include that ethics audit we've been talking about.
MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, there are some members of the
public here, and if there's anyone from the public, this might not be a
bad opportunity to hear if there's anything that the public might have
to say that generates some comment from the board.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Do we have any slips that have been
turned in?
MR. OLLIFF: No.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Then we'll just open it up to the
public that wish to come up to the podium and speak on the subject at
hand.
MR. OLLIFF: That would be Nancy or Bob.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I know.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, let's move forward then.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: One input that I haven't heard
from is legal. Well, I mean, is there anything here that we're missing,
anything that legal counsel feels that we need to address in this whole
process?
MR. WEIGEL: No. I can tell you in regard to questions of
concurrency or changes in our Growth Management Plan or changes
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in the comp plan, as it's often called, or in the Land Development
Code that if we take a tact to -- the strong word would be to "reign
in," which I think is perhaps a little too broad, but the fact if we take
any tact in regard to slowing development but keep it tied to the
demands, the requirements of concurrency, we will continue to stay
within the legal parameters and defensibility.
But any time in a review that we do to come forward and
constrict any area of our Land Development Code where we don't
have the firm roots in what we must meet or match with a good
policy underpinnings for concurrency, we'll be in very treacherous
legal waters. That's not to say, though, that the task cannot only be
done in terms of review and recommendation, but I think that change
can be made. And it would appear that you're talking about a
comprehensive stem-to-stern review. And it's the kind of thing that I
would work -- obviously work with Tom, or I should say he would
work with us, and we would come forward with a recommendation,
probably with the use of outside counsel, so that we would avoid
what might appear a parochial or internal type of bias
notwithstanding any that project will have, parameters set ultimately
by the staff that's directing or the board that's assisting the staff and
come to a direction.
It's not a short-term project, however. And as Tom pointed out
with the initial overview where he showed this past year of
introspection and then this year and next year each categoried with
kind of a different emphasis, we're talking about probably about a
year or two to achieve a goal and a very significant public hearing
process and community education process toward the implementation
of whatever that final product might be.
And, again, it's a difficult territory, both the cities in Collier
County as well as Collier County have under the current codes that
they are utilizing, and decisions that are made under those codes have
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very significant lawsuits. And those costs have to be recognized, not
merely the cost of defending, but the cost of potentially losing. And
when we're talking about constitutional property rights, those have
just as strong underpinnings as the constitutional right to watch one's
pocketbook. And we'll be looking at all those things as we go
forward.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: One other thing I think on the list
is the other infrastructure needs including government facilities, not
only for us, but the other constitutional officers, for example, the
Clerk of Courts. I think we're going to have some tough decisions
and discussions that this board is going to have to have in order to put
that into perspective with the amount of dollars available to
accomplish other objectives.
MR. OLLIFF: I'll categorize that as "general fund capital," and
the only reason I'll call it that way is because most of the other capital
issues that we've talked about, whether they be utilities or
transportation, have dedicated funding sources. And that's what
makes them a little easier to deal with. But the general fund
supported capital, and that includes everything from sheriff, law
enforcement facilities currently that don't have a dedicated impact fee
through to constitutional officer buildings. Those are the issues that
generally end up at the bottom of the heap, if you will, when you get
done with your budget process. And there a lot of capital needs that
go unmet because of that.
The board's pleasure at this point. Tom.
MR. WIDES: Commissioners and Tom, just maybe to test or
assess some of what I've heard here. Again, Tom Wides for the
record.
As I look at the items up on the board, they are very critical.
They are somewhat -- maybe what I'd call strong objectives to be
worked on by possibly different parts of our divisions, etc. And what
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I'd like to test with you is possibly these can roll up as maybe three or
four yet -- three or four strategic intents. Something from my old
world, but something I'd call "strategic intents."
They might fall under something that might be considered as
community needs, which would take in a number of these categories.
What is a community need? Planned development needs, okay, could
possibly be another; optimization of level of service or mandated
needs. And I guess what it really comes down to, you call them
whatever you wish, but you've got three or four intents that the
entire -- all the divisions of the county can be out there working
toward those and seeing how they slide underneath. And I think we
can find maybe a structure of three or four of those that we could fit
all of these up underneath and still accomplish what we need to do.
Just thoughts for you.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: I would suggest that a lot of these
are interrelated, and some of them would have to be taken in
sequence in order to be effectively accomplished. And what I would
like to suggest is that the staff take this list, determine the sequence in
which it would be necessary to attack this list, and categorize those. I
am concerned about categorizing them too much because the intent
might be lost. But that's why I think we need another meeting to --
after the staff can consider our recommendations here, come back to
us with recommendations, and we can respond to that at that time and
perhaps refine this guidance a little bit. I'm sure the other
commissioners and I will come up with other ideas between now --
and I'd hate for you to start out on something without getting the
final --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Coyle, you bring up a
very good point. I for one agree with you. I have no problems with
working this out to the point that we do reach a solution rather than
just come up with a partial answer to it and then walking away from
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it. How does the rest of the commissioners feel?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Fine with me.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We have five commissioners that are
in agreement with you.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well--
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Four commissioners in agreement
with you. And you're in agreement with yourself, I hope.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah.
MR. OLLIFF: Norman.
MR. FEDER: Pretty much Commissioner Coyle's item that was
just raised. What I was going to ask is beyond the obvious items that
are up there covering much of what we're looking at is instructing
staff to go back and looking at all the things that we think would fall
under that that need to be action items or efforts undertaken to
basically implement. But we go to some other things -- very, very
definitive things that go beyond maybe what's up there.
You saw in your FoCuS group and other things in a debate since
the year and a half I've been here is community character type of
concept or community look-- landscaping, out of your FoCuS group.
I've heard a very big shift. Is there truly that shift on this board from
where when I came on board the impression of what this community
wanted in the way -- and I'm getting very specific here -- in
landscaping on roadways, but that broader issue that goes beyond just
roadway landscaping. Is that a shift? Is that something we want to
pursue? Is that something that we're saying money-wise we're not
ready to do now?
I think those are the things that if we come back to you with
specifics, then we can tie those issues to the financing and to the
dollars and try to get more specific direction.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: You bring up a point that's near and
dear to my heart, obviously, and I've seen a lot of people over the
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past few months, especially at different meetings and so forth. Plus
I've received a lot of e-mails saying that they want to make sure that
we protect our bike paths and our sidewalks and median landscaping,
character of the community and so forth. And I think we have to be
very cautious as we protect tax dollars that we don't shoot ourself in
the future of our community.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, I think the community
spoke out loud and clear during that referendum vote. Work within
your means. So if we can do that with --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes. But you know we have hurt
ourselves in the past because we have protected the cash dollars to a
point where we're in a fix, and I think we have to think very smartly.
While we're working within our means, we also have to plan for the
future, and I don't think we should lose sight of that.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: No, and I think we are, but
maybe it's a different philosophy of planning for the future. You're
talking needs instead of wants, and that's what I'm looking at --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Community character versus what?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: This is a healthy discussion-- no, I'm
glad you brought it up, because the community perception, what they
want does change. Maybe it's changing again. This is one of the
reasons -- I think Norm brought up a very good question. Maybe at
the next meeting we have we might want to consider this. Maybe
we'd like to get some people in here to speak possibly from the
Taxpayer's Action Group, possibly from some of the beautification
committees. No, I'm serious. Get everybody's input.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: I am too.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: TAG has changed considerably
of the makeup. And let me just say we do have opportunities through
that beautification through MSTUs. If the people in the area want it
-- we talked about this in the community character plan, smart
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growth. We still do have mechanisms, so anyway I think that we
need to do the capital improvements, and I think the public is going
to come out on other things if it's really important to them.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: I agree with Commissioner
Coletta. I think it's important that we determine what is absolutely
essential and use our resources there. And then if we can find
sources for other things, we do that. I believe that there's an entirely
different answer if you ask somebody if you want to have bike paths
and nice landscaping on the roads, the answer is "yes," and I'll agree
with them, and I'll vote that way every single time. But if you ask me
do I want my ad valorem property taxes increased to get that, I'm
going to vote "no" every single time.
And I think most voters will do the same thing, but I think
you've got to put it in those terms. I don't have a problem if we have
to increase ad valorem property taxes to satisfy the voters' needs. But
I don't want to presume that because they've told me that, that they
want it, that I should then go for a property tax increase. I don't think
that's the right way to proceed.
So if we get to the point of finding we've got a shortfall in doing
some of these things that makes our community nicer, then what I
would suggest to you is that we identify the cost of that; we
determine a funding source; and if that funding source is ad valorem
property tax increase, we put it to the people and let them decide.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I think you're -- you're heading in the
right direction, but I do think we need to bring this back again. You
brought this up in the beginning --
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Oh, sure.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: And I'm glad you brought it up, and
I'm glad that Norm brought it up, and I hear everybody on this, but
we're running short on time to get into it to the point that's really
going to be meaningful.
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COMMISSIONER COYLE: That wasn't intended to impact
this meeting at all --
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: No, I understand. What you said is
true, and what Donna said is true; every one of you are right. Now
we have to figure out what the public really wants.
MR. OLLIFF: I think the opportunity for this discussion -- and
it's a healthy discussion, and that's the level of discussion we need to
be at, and frankly, we haven't been in a while. But when you look at
the budget that we proposed to you this summer, my hope is that it's
in a format that allows you to have this kind of discussion with the
information that you need to be able to make decisions in front of you
so that you'll know within the existing revenue streams for
transportation construction, that you can either provide the basic level
of service or what the expanded levels of service that Commissioner
Fiala's talking about will cost you. And if you want to stay within the
total revenue streams that the county has to work with, then the board
may decide that certain programs are of a higher priority to this
community than some of the existing programs within your currently
funded revenue stream.
So there may be some movements within your current budget in
order to be able to satisfy both. Or the board may decide it wants to
continue to provide every service that it provides today and it needs
to increase its revenues. And those are the kinds of discussions that I
hope that we can have when we get to the budget process this
summer.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: You're going to summarize it and
categorize it, and we're going to take a look at it again?
MR. OLLIFF: The direction I think I'm getting from the board
is that I'm going to try to clean this up a little bit. I would ask the
board members if you have something that you leave out of here and
a light bulb goes off and you think, "Boy, that should have been on
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the board," if you would let me know that within a week, if you can
let me know that by next Tuesday, then I will try to finalize a list.
Depending on what the agenda looks like, we will either
reschedule the balance of this discussion for the end of the board
meeting, the first meeting in February or the second meeting in
February. Either one of those provides us enough time to be able to
plug this into our actual budget process. Joe.
MR. SCHMITT: Joe Schmitt for the record.
I just -- for my short time here, I just wanted to bring an issue up
for the commissioners. I see there are many initiatives, at least in my
area, that are competing for the limited resources, and I'll just throw
some out for your thought, because I think it's going to be an
important part when we figure out where we're going to fund and
what we're going to fund.
But these things; the Immokalee initiative, the Vanderbilt Beach
beach study moratorium, the Naples Park study, the Golden Gate area
master plan, I think a big one coming up, the rural lands rural fringe,
and, of course, the revision of Growth Management Plan and the
Land Development Code.
These are all things that in my short time are on my plate. Each
are important and each will provide for a certain part of the
community. But I think what I would like from the board is what are
your priorities when I look at those, because any one of those may
take a year to provide a product, and what I don't want to do is get
into a position where if you want it bad you're going to get it bad.
And I've got some pretty heavy issues here that I would just
throw on your plate as a matter of where do we want to go, because
they are all important.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Fiala.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, thank you. Let me just add --
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just add one thing that I saw glaringly missing from that was the
redevelopment of the East Naples area. Not only U.S. 41 corridor--
MR. SCHMITT: Another one. That's right. I just kind of wrote
some down by memory --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- Bayshore and, man, I think that
that must be a priority as it continues to erode around us.
MR. SCHMITT: So I'm trying to bring it back up to the
strategic level, and some of this is down what I would call "tactical,"
which we handle every day, but I'm trying to get you-all to think
strategically because that sets the vision, so to speak, of what you
think this community should look like 15, 20 years from now.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Coyle.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: The strategic level really is, in my
opinion, the Land Development Code and the Comprehensive Plan.
And all of the studies you mentioned are essential to reaching that
point, and they are not all scheduled to be done at the same time,
unfortunately. So that's going to make your job even more difficult,
but, certainly, we can gather information now about where those
studies are going. We know certain things about the conclusions that
are being reached, and we can begin taking a look at our Land
Development Code and Comprehensive Plan in view of those things
we know.
I don't think we can wait until all those studies are completed
before we do something to the Land Development Code, but I do
believe that they must feed information into the staff to arrive at the
appropriate conclusions with respect to the Land Development Code.
And, remember, as those other studies go forward, we will no doubt
learn more, and we'll have to revise the Land Development Code
again in response to what our community needs. So the bad news is
it's all got to be done at once.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Henning.
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COMMISSIONER HENNING: Joe, there is a lot of-- you're
going to see a lot of initiatives to revitalize existing or older
neighborhoods.
MR. SCHMITT: Right.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: And during the process of the
Dover-Kohl plan, it was identified that Naples Park should be a good
example. Commissioner Fiala brought up one, and I can tell you that
my community is going to come hard and heavy to the Board of
Commissioners for funding on that. What we need to do is get
creative and look at community development funds and see how we
can use those as a resource for that, and I'm sure you're going to have
to work with the man over here to my left --
MR. SCHMITT: And we talked about that.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- find out about all those Land
Development Code, Growth Management Plan, and so on and so
forth.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Mr. Feder.
MR. FEDER: It may be appropriate for the first or second
meeting as Tom mentioned in February, but I guess what would be
helpful as well to staff is if I asked you the question as
commissioners. I want-- if I had the opportunity, I would change the
Land Development Code and Growth Management Plan to; and fill in
the rest of that blank.
What is it you want it to do? If you could change it, we could
work through it legally, what do you want it to do differently than it's
doing today? And I think that's something that would be very
helpful. I'm not necessarily asking for an answer to that right now.
I'm just saying that would be something that would be very, very
helpful to make sure that as we're trying to make changes, I think I'm
going after some things I think this board wants, make sure that we
know exactly what it is you're looking to accomplish from that plan.
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CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I'm gathering from the discussion
that's taking place here that the priorities that we set -- and I'll be
honest with you. Everyone of them that I've heard is an absolute
necessity, but I'm gathering that we're all competing for a limited
resource. And the limited resource has possibly already exceeded its
capacity. Is that what I'm hearing?
MR. SCHMITT: People and time. When I talk about
resources -- well, we're not even talking dollars. It's people and time,
and I'm going to get my arms around this; it's just a matter of where
are we and when will I get to you with the commitments that you've
asked us, the staff, to provide.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I'll even tell you that the particular
studies that are underway -- and we've already invested the human
resources on the public side, and we committed the money, and the
dollars are there to do it. And it's going to be up to you to find the
people to do it. I don't think we're going to back off one of these
projects, and we're probably going to come up with even more.
So we're going to have to reallot our time, energy, and resources
to make sure we fulfill these needs, and these are very basic needs.
These involve the community directly. And I don't know if the other
commissioners feel this way. It will probably come up again in
discussion at the next meeting we have. Anyone else want to weigh
in on this?
Commissioner Carter.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Two areas that I know we're
already committed to, Vanderbilt study and Naples Park. And I think
we need to move to time line to accomplish those. One, because it's
under a development -- interim development control -- nice word for
moratorium, which says we have legal implications if we don't get it
done. The other, you don't face that, but there is a sense of urgency
in the community, which I think can be worked out with them.
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The other one that I see here is right back to what you asked
earlier, how do we get the major input out of the community, and that
was to get a questionnaire and work with Chuck Mohlke &
Associates to do that.
And so at what point do you want us -- do you want us to
provide questions to you to consider that, because a lot of the things
that I'm hearing here are not just in our hands, but there are a lot of
people out there that would like to make an input. And, again, I'd
like to get to that majority to hear what they have to say.
MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, three things and I think we can go
home -- actually, Chuck, if you want to come talk just briefly about
the citizen survey process, the time line, and how you see the Board
of County Commissioners. I think we had originally, frankly,
intended to have some time today to talk about questions, but I think
given the place we're at, I don't think that's possible. And maybe we
can do this by having you provide some input to Chuck and having
him come back to the board in full.
MR. MOHLKE: For the record, Chuck Mohlke.
If it pleases this honorable board, what I would suggest that you
give consideration to is you list topics. I would caution you to try to
avoid writing questions. Everybody has their own syntax that they
use in a manner that suggests a certain outcome, usually, that is a
preferred response to a question. We want to avoid that at all
possible opportunities.
Secondarily, I have heard loud and clear the message that you
want to relate responses to available resources. And if that means
that we need to get into the business that we were very much in, as
the manager recalls, as long ago as 1989, 1990, 1991, '92, in which
we were asking revenue questions. And they were very direct and
aggressive questions. The difficulty is that if you ask a revenue-
related question in March or April, environments change over time.
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January 29, 2002
And it is very difficult to be highly predictive of an outcome unless
you are prepared to deal with the revenue issues after you have
learned what an initial response is.
And, lastly, directly related to some of Colonel Schmitt's
remarks, it is, I think, important that each commissioner and each
staff member that recommends has it in mind, generally, what's the
objective. If I knew the answer to this general topic list that I have in
mind to be included in a survey, what will I do with that information
once I have it.
So if it can be related in some manner to the very expanded
agenda that you've created for yourself in this important meeting that
will lead to a decision outcome, I would encourage that you have in
mind that approach as you suggest topics.
We are prepared, if we have direction from the manager and his
staff, to go into the field on this in late March. It will be hard to
improve on that at this particular point in time in terms of the
preparation necessary to get a study underway, but if we proceed in a
timely manner, by the time you begin your budget discussions, the
manager has asked us to have a work product available which you
can use as an agenda setter for those discussions.
Sir, have I responded in the way in which you wanted me to?
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I'm not too sure what exactly staff is
doing with Chuck here as far as the study -- the ongoing study you're
talking about? Is this the every-year study that we do? MR. OLLIFF: Yes.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay, fine. I thought this was
something --
MR. OLLIFF: This is the citizen survey, and for the first time I
think the Board of County Commissioners is very, very interested in
being involved in the development of the actual questions that we ask
the community. And a lot of what I've heard from board members is
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January 29, 2002
not only that we want to be involved, but we want to see some
revenue-directed type questions to see not only what services do you
want, but are you willing to pay certain things for certain services.
And so, Chuck, I think, is suggesting that board members need
to provide him topic areas. Chuck and Alice can craft the questions,
get back to us again, let us review those, and make sure that we're all
on the same page before we go out to actually do the survey.
But in terms of time frame, Chuck, when do you need to get the
topics back?
MR. MOHLKE: Well, I would like to be as timely as possible.
If we could look toward a time no later than a week following your
next meeting, so if we were looking at a time ! 4, ! 5 days from now
in which we can have topic listings, we'll be able to stay within the
schedule that we have in mind. But if we go much beyond that, it
will become difficult.
MR. OLLIFF: So if they can get you topics within two weeks,
we can usually stay on that same cycle that we had anticipated.
MR. MOHLKE: And I would encourage very much -- because
our experience over the last 14 years is it doesn't work unless we do it
this way. That these topics be suggested to the manager and his staff
through whomever it is that he designates, because if you have a
vendor of a service talking to five separate elected officials, that is a
daunting task indeed, one that we have done before -- MR. OLLIFF: Tell me about it.
MR. MOHLKE: -- but had not always yielded the kind of
outcome that all participants think it should.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: Chuck, I totally agree with that.
And I think we need to get it to the county manager, compile it, and
give it to you in some sort of format. And I do believe -- A great
suggestion that we don't write the questions, just cover the topics.
We have some historical questions in there that has been on the same
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January 29, 2002
level, waste management questions. I don't know if we really need to
ask that continual question. I think we need to ask different
questions -- green space is one of them, roadway beautification. And
those are the type of questions as how important to you, and then
some of the things that historically -- health care. We're getting a
mixed message there in the survey saying that they want government
to provide for it, and we do. But is it an expanded service? Is that
what they want for us to do? Or do they want to take out of the
property taxes or take it off our money tree that we've got growing in
the backyard here? Those type of questions, you know, resources.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Will we have a chance to revisit
this questionnaire issue before it goes out?
MR. MOHLKE: Oh, I hope so, indeed.
COMMISSIONER COYLE: Good.
MR. MOHLKE: That has always been the objective since the
day we began this, as the manager remembers. Very often we get
what could be referred to politely as a laissez-faire response. MR. OLLIFF: That is polite.
MR. MOHLKE: "Thank you for alerting me to this, and we
will -- and let me see the result when you're through." We hope you
commissioners will be much more proactive than that in the future.
Mr. Manager, before I leave the podium, I would be remiss if I
didn't introduce my business partner, Alice Fraser, the handsome lady
sitting in the back of the room who has a very important role to play
and has for 14 years in the development of the tabulation of the data
and its timely and efficient reporting to interested readers. So we will
look very much forward to the opportunity to be of service. MR. OLLIFF: Chuck, thank you very much.
We did have Bob and Nancy both raise their hands, so if you
want to make some comments.
MS. PAYTON: Nancy Payton representing the Florida Wildlife
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January 29, 2002
Federation. I just wanted to comment on in the list that Joe went
through in the rural lands that appeared on this, and I wanted to
emphasize that the rural land study is being done under a final order,
a mandate from the governor and the cabinet. And, therefore, I think
that should be at the top of the list because it's serious business, and if
we don't resolve this, then there are serious consequences for this
county in terms of its state funding. And, therefore, I wanted to
emphasize that that's an extremely important study.
It's going to be some interesting months coming up. You're
going to get your first presentation of the rural fringe in February,
late February for a transmittal hearing. And there are some
significant issues that are unresolved. So I'm just emphasizing that
that should go to the top of the list, and what staff is needed should be
working on that study. Thank you.
And it's that study -- you're not going to make too many changes
to the Growth Management Plan until that issue is resolved, quite
frankly. Thank you.
COMMISSIONER HENNING: I think all the board members
recognize that this is something that's on the top of the list, and it's a
mandate coming down from Tallahassee, and we're going to address
it.
MR. OLLIFF: Actually, it went without saying, but I guess that
we probably need to say it, that there are sort of, in my mind, four
different categories. There's sort of a "have to's," "want to's" or "need
to's," -and then "like to's" and "wish we could's" down at the bottom.
And I think we've not dealt at all with the have to's. You know,
we provide health, safety, and welfare-related-type services whether
it be EMS, law enforcement, things that come from the governor and
the cabinet that are dictated and have to be done by certain time
frames. Those aren't issues that we've actually discussed because
those are assumed that they are at the top of the list.
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January 29, 2002
Bob.
MR. KRASOWSKI:
opportunity. I appreciate it.
a citizen of Collier County.
citizen.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for the
My name's Bob Krasowski. I'm here as
I'll be brief, 21-year resident, blue-collar
I notice on the board here most of these issues that you're
identifying are related to growth, and I think that maybe I'd make the
suggestion that the concept of growth paying for growth be placed up
on that board. I see there --just to pick out an example -- work-force
housing. And I'm familiar with working folks. I've already done on
this issue (sic).
Well, the school board announced that they are going to build
six schools over the next three years. They will require an awful lot
of teachers. Now, if a teacher comes into the system at $30 to
$40,000 a year and tries to buy a house in Collier County, it could be
very difficult.
I think the developers or the new communities that move into
the area should accommodate, at least to some degree, for those
teachers without them being given exception to the responsibility of
paying impact fees. We shouldn't have to pay -- if new teachers are
needed, more schools are being built, the community that develops to
create that -- those schools or the need for those schools, it should all
be in the plan. So that's the one thing that I wanted to bring up as just
a regular guy here today. Thank you.
MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, with that I think from a staff
perspective we are fairly concluded. I will tell you that we appreciate
your time; we appreciate your honesty, I think, in the discussions.
I'm no Phil Donahue, so you'll have to excuse the job that I've done.
I thank you for bearing with me.
The last think I'll leave you with is one more quote that I read
last night, as a matter of fact. And it said that, "In calm waters
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January 29, 2002
everybody's a good captain." So in the times ahead, we're looking to
you to provide the kind of leadership that this organization needs,
because, frankly, the waters are a little rough. We need a little help
from the policy makers.
We'll look forward to getting back to you either the first
meeting of February or the second meeting of February and wrapping
this list up.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Mr. Weigel, do you have anything to
add?
MR. WEIGEL: No, sir.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioners, any final
comments?
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Just two real fast. Rough waters
have been here for a whole year, and, No. 2, thank you for getting us
out of here on time.
CHAIRMAN COLETTA: You're welcome. Motion to
adjourn? That's it.
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January 29, 2002
There being no further business for the good of the County, the
workshop was adjourned by order of the Chair at 12:30 p.m.
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX
OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF
SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS
CONTROL
JAMES N. COLETTA, CHAIRMAN
Atte
s l~t~I~le~ minutes approved by the Board on
presented ,~ or as corrected
TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF DONOVAN COURT
REPORTING, INC., BY PAMELA HOLDEN, COURT REPORTER
Page 92