Loading...
CAC Minutes 03/15/2002 RMarch 15, 2002 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE COASTAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE NAPLES, FLORIDA, MARCH 15, 2002 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Coastal Advisory Committee, in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at 1:30 p.m. In REGULAR SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRMAN: VICE CHAIRMAN: Gary Galleberg David Roellig James L. Snediker Robert B. Stakich William Kroeschell Anthony P. Pires Ashley D. Lupo NOT PRESENT: John P. Strapponi ALSO PRESENT: Ron Hovell, Public Utilities, Coastal Projects Manager Roy B. Anderson, Public Utilities, Director of Engineering Jon Staiger, Ph.D., City of Naples Natural Resources Dir. Page 1 NOTICE OF PUBLIC MEETING NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN OF A COLLIER COUNTY COASTAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING IN THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARDROOM, THIRD FLOOR, W. HARMON TURNER BUILDING (ADMINISTRATION), AT THE COLLIER COUNTY GOVERNMENT COMPLEX, 3301 EAST TAMIAMI TRAIL, NAPLES, FLORIDA AT 1:30 P.M. ON MARCH 15, 2002. AGENDA 1. Roll Call 2. Additions to Agenda 3. Old Business a. Approval of minutes for January 11, 2002 b. Rock Removal Plan for Naples and Vanderbilt (10507) c. Naples Beach Renourishment (10507) 4. New Business a. TDC grant applications b. 10-year plan c. Future meetings schedule 5. Audience Participation 6. Schedule next meeting 7. Adjournment ADDITIONALLY, THIS NOTICE ADVISED THAT, IF A PERSON DECIDES TO APPEAL ANY DECISION MADE BY THE COASTAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE, WITH RESPECT TO ANY MATTER CONSIDERED AT THIS MEETING, HE WILL NEED A RECORD OF THE PROCEEDINGS AND THAT FOR SUCH PURPOSE, HE MAY NEED TO ENSURE THAT A VERBATIM RECORD OF THE PROCEEDINGS IS MADE, WHICH RECORD INCLUDES THE TESTIMONY AND EVIDENCE UPON WHICH THE APPEAL IS TO BE BASED. March 15, 2002 CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Welcome to the March 15, 2002, meeting of the Coastal Advisory Committee. I will note for the record that we have in attendance Mr. Kroeschell, Ms. Lupo, Mr. Pires, Mr. Snediker, and Mr. Stakich. Mr. Strapponi's absent, and I believe we expect Mr. Roellig to be here a little bit later. Are there any additions to the agenda? MR. HOVELL: I placed a package in front of each of your seats that includes the latest and greatest ten-year plan as well as three additional grant applications, but since the agenda just says "grant applications" in general, I don't think there's any additions. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. Old business, Item 3-A, we have the minutes from January 11, 2002. Are there any changes or corrections? (No response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: If not, we will--. MR. HOVELL: Mr. Chairman, I apologize. I didn't double- check with the folks across the hall that we're being taped, etc. REPORTER: I'm not sure we're on the microphones. MR. HOVELL: And we're not on the microphones, I just noticed. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I will then summarize just in case we need to summarize. We took a roll; we have a quorum, and we're missing Mr. Strapponi and Mr. Roellig. There were no additions to the business, and we had moved on to old business, Item 3-A. We have the minutes from January 11 th, 2002, for approval, and I was at that time asking if anyone has any changes to the minutes. MR. PIRES: Move to approve. MR. KROESCHELL: Second. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: We have a motion and a second. Page 2 March 15, 2002 All in favor? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: MR. SNEDIKER: Aye. MR. STAKICH: Aye. MR. KROESCHELL: Aye. MR. PIRES: Aye. MS. LUPO: Aye. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: (No response.) Aye. Opposed? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Passes unanimously. Item 3-B, the rock removal plan for Naples and Vanderbilt Beach. MR. HOVELL: We received a letter of approval dated March 7th from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection basically giving -- they did make some changes to the last version of the plan, but we, the county, I believe, feel that they are minor enough that we'll accept those. And, in fact, we started the engineering testing on Naples Beach on Wednesday, March 13th. We're doing about -- approximately 20 to 30 trenches across the beach to have them sifted for percent shell and percent rock content. So that part's already begun, and we're also working toward bringing in the sand-sifting machines. For the Vanderbilt section, the requirement is that we just go ahead and sift from south of the Ritz to about a quarter mile north of La Playa. For Naples the requirement is that we test and determine where the rocks are and, then, based on those results, we'll sift the appropriate areas. As of this morning, I was able to talk to the contractor, and we're going to go ahead and bring in two machines so that we can do the two beaches more or less simultaneously in an effort to try and get away from working the week before Easter especially. So it looks Page 3 March 15, 2002 like we'll be starting on April 1 st with that effort. The machines -- after some more detailed discussion with them, the machines can do more than one foot at the same time, so in order to do a greater depth, they don't have to go back and make a second pass. They can just start at a greater depth. But in order to aid that what we'll probably do is starting April 1st till those sections of beach that need to be sifted so that when the machine comes along it's all broken up and loose, and they can get through it easier. And so with that we hope that by the second or third week in April, depending on how their production rates go, that we'll be done with the rock removal, or at least the initial rock removal, and move on into the maintenance phase of the rock removal plan, which will last -- I think as I've mentioned before -- indefinitely with the life of the sand on the beach. So I think that's good news that we have the plan by the state. And the other thing that completing the testing and sifting will allow us to do is place sand on Naples Beach and Vanderbilt Beach and, at least, the way things stand right now, we're going to start on Monday, March 18th with placing the sand on Naples Beach up at Doctor's Pass, and conceptually we'll start on November 1st with Vanderbilt Beach to put some sand up there. So I think that kind of gives you a general idea of what we've done over the last couple weeks while we've been having all of our workshops and not talking about this issue as much. And maybe a year from now this will be a topic that's not so hot any more. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Good. Does anyone have any questions? MR. KROESCHELL: I have an understanding you're not going to need to get into the Naples Beach from the Moorings Beach. You're going to do everything from Lowdermilk; is that right? MR. HOVELL: Lowdermilk and Third Avenue North is our current plan. Page 4 March 15, 2002 MR. KROESCHELL: So you won't need the access from Moorings Beach? MR. HOVELL: We had originally looked for multiple access points to try and make the time frame shorter. But after talking to the contractor it isn't just the number of beach access points; there's a lot of other things that go into whether or not you can get the work done more quickly--. MR. KROESCHELL: Uh-huh. MR. HOVELL: And he didn't need any more than two access points. MR. KROESCHELL: That's good, no objection. I just wanted to clarify that point. MR. HOVELL: Well, the issue -- and I don't know at this late date what, if anything, will be done, but for various reasons I think the press release just went out maybe yesterday or today. And so there are some concerns from some -- specifically from a hotel in between Lowdermilk and Moorings residents' beach about the timing of all this and couldn't we have used Moorings so as not to impact them during Easter week. MR. KROESCHELL: Oh, I see. MR. HOVELL: And I don't know if it's too late to figure all that out or not. But I guess we'll give it a shot come either after this meeting or Monday morning, whichever works out. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Well, hopefully they can be accommodated as best as we possibly can, but we have such a limited window to do this work, but sometimes problems can't be avoided. Are there other questions? MR. SNEDIKER: Which engineer have you assigned to that? Which engineering firm is handling that? MR. HOVELL: Humiston & Moore is doing the -- you know, they did the initial design template for how the sand is to be placed, Page 5 March 15, 2002 and they'll be doing the monitoring and the post-construction report. MR. SNEDIKER: They will. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: We spoke a lot in January about this, and we were concerned about the state proposal for the plan. And I take it that the state moved more in our direction, came much closer to our original proposal? MR. HOVELL: Yes. When we -- when staff and Coastal Planning and Engineering went to Tallahassee on February 5th, we took with us the videotape of Ozzie's Pipeline Patter, and they did-- with the new director up there who took over as of January 1 st, they were much more agreeable to the way we had proposed things. And his name is Mike Sole, S-O-L-E, and he had specifically said that, you know, from his point of view that it wasn't just the beach and the wildlife but also the impact to the public. He said that all aspects had to be looked at. And he agreed that doing something that was perhaps less invasive but still got the job done was the way to go. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: And we had one time been talking in terms of around $400,000 or so for the project. Do you have a handle -- I know you don't have an actual price, but do you have a handle on an estimate? MR. HOVELL: Well, again, it's kind of hard to say because Naples -- we don't know exactly where we're going to have to do it, but if things go the way they're currently headed, I would tend to say it will be somewhere between $400,000 and maybe as high as $800,000, depending on the quantity on Naples Beach. So it won't be multiple millions of dollars anyway. (Mr. Roellig joins meeting.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: And this will be out of-- not out of our area's TDC, will it? It will be out of the general fund because that's where the litigation-- MR. HOVELL: No. Actually, this project is being paid for by Page 6 March 15, 2002 TDC funds, and the settlement funds that were received as part of the litigation also went into TDC -- CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I wasn't aware that it had gone that way. MR. HOVELL: Right. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: We'll note for the record that Mr. Roellig has joined us. MR. SNEDIKER: How much was the settlement fund? MR. HOVELL: It was a total of $1.3 million. MR. SNEDIKER: I thought it was considerably more than that. MR. HOVELL: And I can't remember which firm -- one was for $500,000, and the other was for $800,000, but I don't remember which was which between the engineer and the contractor. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Any other questions? (No response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. Item 3-C is the Naples Beach Renourishment. MR. HOVELL: Yeah, I'm sorry. I just pretty much just covered that we're going to start trucking on Monday and see about changing some of the details, but unless there's any other questions on that, I guess we covered that one. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: New business, Item 4-A is the TDC grant applications. MR. HOVELL: Each of you should have received a bound package of the grant applications. In addition, I handed out in front of each of the your seats there three additional grant applications as well as the most recent draft of the ten-year plan. And with the exception of three new ones, those grant applications that are in the bound package that I gave you are the ones that we went over at our last workshop and, you know, unless there are specific questions, as we go through each one, what I Page 7 March 15, 2002 thought we can do is just refresh our memories on what each application's for. And then maybe I might suggest that on an exception basis you sort of pull any ones that you specifically want to talk about, and perhaps you could do one motion to cover all the ones that you don't have any questions on. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I think that would be a good approach, but then also as part of the discussion the new ones that we haven't had an opportunity to look at, you'll describe them more fully; right? MR. HOVELL: Right, right. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. MR. HOVELL: Okay. I'll get started. Just behind the cover page you'll notice that I put in a summary page there, and I'm just going to go down that list, and starting with Wiggins Pass monitoring -- as a matter of fact, we just finished dredging within the last couple of days, so that project, as far as maintenance dredging, is done for this year. We are required to do an annual monitoring of the pass to see what future work might be required. And so that's put in for the $27,000. We have the Pelican Bay Services Division, which has requested $10,000 for Clam Pass monitoring, and I believe, as we discussed at the workshop that is not the total cost of monitoring everything in Clam Pass. That's just the portion that's related -- or the percentage of the overall monitoring that's related to the pass itself. And so that becomes a contribution toward -- of about 25 percent towards the overall monitoring costs that the Pelican Bay Service Division picks up the rest of. And that's for $10,000. The City of Naples has turned in a grant application for Doctor's Pass monitoring. We've done that for a number of years now, and that's for $10,000. We have a countywide beach monitoring that's for Vanderbilt, Page 8 March 15, 2002 Naples, and Park Shore. And this one specifically includes taking a look at the structures on the beach as well as specifically the storm water outfalls. That's for $140,000. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: How does that relate to the draft ten-year plan that we have? on the plan. MR. HOVELL: Yeah. The first three items are easy to follow The $140,000 you'll see a split between MR. HOVELL: You might be right. booklet. Naples at $100,000, Park Shore at $20,000, and Vanderbilt at $20,000. And that's more of a general estimate than a specific cost attributed to each one. I was just trying to break out by beach segment how much we're investing in our various beaches. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Right. Okay. MR. HOVELL: The City of Naples has turned in a grant application for some debris removal for $9,000, and perhaps when Dr. Staiger gets here we can discuss that in a little more detail. I think that's something we can handle under our current budget for that type of work, and we don't necessarily need to do that as the separate grant application for next year. The city's also turned in --. MR. ROELLIG: Is that a new item for this list? MR. SNEDIKER: Yes, it is. Perhaps I didn't have that for the last workshop. Maybe it came in just in time to get into the And I would like to talk about that one when Dr. Staiger gets here, so as far as -- when we get to the -- bundling things together for recommendation, I would say that we deal with that one separately. The City of Naples turned in Gordon Drive T-groin monitoring $100,000. And that one-- I think year plan, I probably rounded that a grant application for South and maintenance just under if you were to go over to the ten- off to $100,000. Page 9 March 15, 2002 And then we have Hideaway Beach T-groin monitoring --. MR. ROELLIG: Excuse me. Can I ask a question on that one? MR. HOVELL: I'm sorry, which one? MR. ROELLIG: The project monitoring. It says that a 30- month at 36-month survey, is that just for a -- it's not for a 30-month period, I presume. MR. HOVELL: groins? MR. MR. MR. MR. I'm sorry. Are we talking about Hideaway T- ROELLIG: No-- HOVELL: South Gordon-- KROESCHELL: Naples--. HOVELL: Naples T-groin. MR. ROELLIG: Humiston and Moore's estimate, they have 30 year -- I'm sorry -- 30-month monitoring and 24-month monitoring. Is that the 30 -- I don't know how -- does that run through the whole year, or does that go on for two years? MR. HOVELL: I'm not sure I'm following your question, but perhaps we could wait till Dr. Staiger gets here. He's more familiar with --. MR. SNEDIKER: The 24-month that would be the second year, and then the 30th (inaudible) every six months. So it's the 24-month, the 30th month, and the 36th month according to the permit itself. MR. HOVELL: There is --. MR. SNEDIKER: One monitoring for each of those periods that's required by the permit. MR. HOVELL: The monitoring -- you're right. I believe the monitoring is required at 6-month intervals out till about 3 years, and then I think it becomes annual monitoring after that. And Dr. Staiger could probably confirm that the groins were installed roughly two years ago. I believe we're down to Tiger Tail Lagoon projection -- Page 10 March 15, 2002 CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Actually, we -- I know you mentioned Hideaway. We kind of skipped over it. If I'm not missing a line item, that appears to have gone from $100,000 to 150 or is more included in that than the line item on our ten-year plan? MR. HOVELL: We had -- we probably added in the -- let me take a look. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: You might add in the -- MR. SNEDIKER: A-5. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I was going to say, right. (Overlapping dialogue) Marco Pass (overlapping dialogue). REPORTER: I'm sorry. You can't talk over one another, or I won't be able to give you a record. comments were. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I don't know what your last Mr. Snediker had pointed out Item A-5. And then I believe I said, "Yes. Those two together add up to the 150,000." MR. HOVELL: Yes. And this grant application is just for monitoring activities, and there is a contingency line item for some post-storm surveys, but it does not specifically include the maintenance. That was covered under a separate section to anticipate a question from Mr. Snediker. And so you're right. A-5 for $50,000 and C-5 for $100,000; that is this $150,000 grant application. MR. ROELLIG: On the estimate it says contingency -- like you said, for post-storm surveys, 50,000, but we've never had any other estimates or any other projects. We've never had a line -- or an amount in there for post-storm surveys as a contingency item. It seems like this is the only one that I was aware of. (Inaudible) surveys could have a contingency post-storm survey item for $50,000, but this is the only one, which seems like an anomaly. MR. HOVELL: I won't say you're wrong, and it may be Page 11 March 15, 2002 something that we want to take a look at just making the recommendation that we not approve that particular line item and make this grant application, in essence, approved for $100,000. I mean, there's other ways to handling contingencies as opposed to budgeting in each project. MR. ROELLIG: We're not being consistent with the contingencies if that's the case. Okay. MR. HOVELL: The next one is for the Tiger Tail Lagoon projection, and that's the one where we're looking to get some type of professional guesstimate -- for lack of a better word -- of what we think the future of Sand Dollar Island and Tiger Tail Lagoon would be so that between parks and recs and the other effected interests we can make a plan for how best to -- you know, either put in boardwalks or try to think up other things to do in that area to make it a more beachfront friendly area, I guess would be the way to put it. MR. SNEDIKER: Can I interject one item here that's somewhat important? Because the parks and recreation are going to be looking at the boardwalk and engineering for that, if we could put this soon on the agenda after the budget year starts so that study can get completed on the Lagoon and Sand Dollar Island projection as soon as possible to give to parks and recreation so their engineers will have that information. Because with that information they may want to move that boardwalk a little bit one way or the other or shorter or longer or something. MR. HOVELL: Right. Okay. The next one is the Marco Island Beach monitoring, and actually this one -- you know, there are sort of three very related monitoring activities in that area, and they are all three listed here in a row: the beach itself, the segmented breakwater, and Caxambas Pass. And that's for 22,000 for the beach, 20,000 for the segmented breakwater, and 20,000 for Caxambas Pass. Page 12 March 15, 2002 Then the next one we move to would be what I call "annual beach renourishment." That's where we've -- at least in the last year or two put in the 50,000 cubic yards or a million dollars to renourish whatever beach hot spot develops, and that's the one that this year we supplemented due to Tropical Storm Gabrielle. Which one are you on now? That's the million-dollar annual beach MR. ROELLIG: MR. HOVELL: renourishment one. MR. ROELLIG: Oh, okay. Is there some reason that the -- I hate to keep jumping back at you (inaudible). MR. HOVELL: I'm sorry. MR. ROELLIG: Caxambas Pass monitoring is 20,000, and Doctor's Pass is 10,000. Is there any -- is it that more difficult to monitor? Do you have any backup on that? MR. HOVELL: Well, I know where I got my estimate from. I don't know where the city got theirs from. I can pretty much guarantee it's two different engineers, and without looking at the number of survey lines or what have you, it's hard to say. And, also, I'm not sure that mine is necessarily very well broken out between the beach and the breakwater and the pass. I've tried to bundle them together since they are all so closely related, and I believe -- I'd have to go back and look, but I believe the initial feedback I got was sort of a one total estimate, not necessarily broken down by those three. That was just something I was trying to do to spread the costs out per the types of things we were looking at. So I guess to answer your question, I'm not sure the 20,000 necessarily reflects just monitoring Caxambas Pass as opposed to an attempt to divvy up the costs. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Any other questions? MR. HOVELL: Are we ready to move past the million-dollar project? Page 13 March 15, 2002 CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: No. I have one question on that if no one else does. We have discussed on trying to get renewable permits or rolling permits -- whatever that phrase is -- for all areas of the beach in the future, and we don't have that now. MR. HOVELL: You mean beyond the project limits? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: We have in the -- and the terminology escapes me, but we have permits, the same permit we use for Park Shore which said you can put 50,000 cubic yards here. And we cover various parts of the beaches with permits like that. And one of the issues we discussed is to have permits like that in place for the entire beach so that when renourishment is needed we can renourish, and we don't have to spend the whole season getting a permit only to find out it's turtle season. MR. HOVELL: The current permits that we have cover Vanderbilt, Marco, Naples, Marco Island, but only within the confines of the areas that have been previously renourished. So as far as extending those to cover -- you know, for instance on Park Shore, the project limits stop not too far south of Vadato Way, don't go all the way to Doctor's Pass. To include that over area is something that we plan to take on in the future should that become a hot spot so that we're not at the last minute going in for that. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: That would be a small part of this million-dollar allocation, wouldn't it? MR. HOVELL: Well, no. Actually, I would do that under the countywide monitoring. It's part of the overall view of the beaches on the engineering side. This particular grant application is really just to cover the costs of trucking in sand and the associated engineering to truck in the sand but not to take on those other aspects. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: And the ultimate issue, of course, Page 14 March 15, 2002 is just to make sure that that's going to be addressed this coming year. MR. HOVELL: Right. MR. ROELLIG: It's not mentioned specifically on one of these items, this expanded permit or permit for areas that are not currently permitted. MR. HOVELL: No. I didn't specifically list it in the grant application, you're right. MR. PIRES: Mr. Chairman, ifI may, I have one question that's sort of a continuing question I would have and maybe just for other people also, the questions for all the grant applications, they are all standard questions and getting standard responses, yes, no for all of those. And one where -- some of these I'm having difficulty with -- and it's not really articulated. The answer is always "yes," but there's no backup for it. But I think the question is there for a reason. We didn't decide what the questions are, but the one that's throughout all these applications is (as read): "Does the proposed expenditure promote environmental awareness and understanding, and does the proposed project address environmental considerations?" I think every one of them is answered "yes," and it's not in the distinctive (sic); it's in the conjunctive sense to do both. And I'm not sure how a lot of these are being articulated as promoting environmental awareness and understanding. I'm not sure what the component is on each one of these. And, once again, it may not be a critical component of the consideration to fund a particular grant application, but with just a pat "yes" to all of these without any further detail as to any of these, once again, maybe I'm going a bit beyond what our role or task is, but I think that's an important issue. At least the -- the question is asked. There must be a reason for the question, and there's an answer but no real backup. MR. HOVELL: I hear you --. Page 15 March 15, 2002 MR. PIRES: I'm wondering how these promote environmental awareness. I mean, it says right in here (as read): "Promote environmental awareness and understanding." I'm not sure if any of these really do, quite honestly. MR. HOVELL: And I had it on my list of things to do for next season to ask why we have this particular grant application form with all those questions because my view is, you know, that isn't the deciding factor in -- when these things get approved. But perhaps I'm wrong. And I thought I would go through one process before I can finalize that conclusion. MR. PIRES: I can appreciate that, once again, because I know we're just relying upon the staff for the recommendation on these, and I'll call them the "standard answers" to a lot of these questions. And, quite frankly, I don't see the "yes" on a lot of these. MR. ROELLIG: I concur (inaudible) a number of these where you can quibble one way or the other what an answer might be. And I don't know if you want to go through them one by one. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Those are good points, but they are probably more with the form than with the actual substance of the project because we're agreeing to the substance of the project as being within the proper realm of activities and something that's useful to the community. MR. PIRES: I agree with that and, once again, I don't have any quarrel or quibble with that. It's just that the questions is there for a reason or if not, let's get rid of the question. If there's a criteria that's being applied but not being applied. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: We'll work on that for next season, I'm sure, because a lot of it does seem to be an automatic answer. We all can agree to that. MR. HOVELL: Yes. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: But then just to finish, if I may, Page 16 March 15, 2002 the thought on getting permits in place countywide, I had had that question reserved for the million-dollar request. If it belongs more properly in the grant request for the monitoring of 140,000, I think on the committee we all understand that's what we want to do, and staff is going to do that. But in the -- more or less the first section -- the goals and objectives -- if we could just add a phrase to that, or we'll do that in our motion at the end to note that we intend to expand the permits that are in place. Because I think -- in the operation of our beaches, I think that's one of the real critical components is having permits in place when we need them and not having to go through the rigmarole after we need them. MR. HOVELL: And I think it will be a good exercise to find out just how receptive DEP is to that kind of thinking. In my conversations with them, the answer has been not very receptive. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Oh, okay. MR. HOVELL: But at least this way we can formally submit something and get a formal response from them as opposed to me talking to them on the phone about it. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Maybe that's not a reasonable hope. I was under the impression that we could hope to achieve that. But let's at least spend the next several months or whatever the appropriate time is to try to get that done, and if we can't let's know that we can't. MR. HOVELL: If we're ready the next one is the annual sand dune and structure maintenance for $300,000. And we did increase this one from the last time you saw it. This is the one that we added the T-groins down on Hideaway Beach into the equation. And I also included some additional money for parks and rec. They have a number of walkovers and beachfront parks that they've previously not felt they had a way to -- you know, to tap into TDC Page 17 March 15, 2002 MR. ROELLIG: MR. HOVELL: for $300,000. funds to get those things repaired after not just major storms, but even just minor high-wind events that happens to take off the bottom step or whatever of their walkover. And they had originally added that into the beach-raking application, and I told them it was more appropriate to move it over into this one. Which one are you on now? That was the dune and structure maintenance MR. KROESCHELL: Again, this does not state where the work is being done. This is just overall on all the beaches; is that right ? MR. HOVELL: No. I guess I can't say it's necessarily right. I would tend to say it's work on structures that public funds have put in place and that we have permits to do something with. I don't know if there are any other structures out there, but if there are we're not -- at least, at this point -- contemplating spending money on them. For instance, if there was a structure of some type or a dune, for that matter, at Barefoot Beach, the way things are currently structured, we would not go up and spend money at Barefoot Beach, nor would we go spend money at Pelican Bay Beach. MR. KROESCHELL: Park, for example. MR. HOVELL: Yes. MR. KROESCHELL: and south of the pier and all that. done before. MR. HOVELL: Yes. MR. KROESCHELL: MR. HOVELL: Yes. MR. KROESCHELL: MR. HOVELL: Okay. But it does -- it's at Lowdermilk And it's down at the -- down by the pier But it's all of those areas that were And Vanderbilt Beach. Okay. That's what I need to know. It's the majority of the beaches and it's certainly Page 18 March 15, 2002 the main public beaches. MR. ROELLIG: Well, see this is why I have a little quibble with you. You have one here that says (inaudible) understanding of alternative technologies which may contribute to (inaudible), and you say no. I would say "yes," but you know, I'm not going to fall on a sword over it. But I think as Mr. Pires indicated, you want to watch these questions a little bit because some of the things, I think, could be answered yes. It's not a big deal because you are looking at so many difficult technologies as I understand. REPORTER: Mr. Roellig, could you pull your microphone a little closer to you? MR. ROELLIG: Sure. MR. HOVELL: The next grant application is for beach cleaning applications, and this one, I believe, has gone down since the last time you saw it, and as I just mentioned, that's because we pulled out the additional funds that they -- parks and rec had included for beach walkover maintenance, and so all the costs are strictly associated with raking the beaches, the personnel, the fuel and lubricants, the equipment cartage is moving the beach rakes on a flatbed from one beach to another. The trash disposal is the dumpsters that are at each of the beaches that we rake. MR. SNEDIKER: Regarding that subject, the City of Marco Island had their beach advisory committee meeting last Tuesday, and this was just discussed a great deal, and we've just been discussing how much -- how frequently should we clean the beaches. City of Marco Island, I guess, needs to go on record as saying that they want exactly the way it has been. And that's a little variance because sometimes it's been once a week; sometimes it's been twice a week depending on machines and so on. But they do -- the City of Marco Island does not want a Page 19 March 15, 2002 reduction in that. Now, our budget includes the same things we did last year, so this does not affect our budget, but just so we're on record with that. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Was that a formal action because we discussed this a lot last time, and I had the impression -- certainly we had a consensus on this committee in terms as what to recommend, although that is a consensus that can change. And perhaps you weren't speaking for Marco Island, Mr. Snediker, but I thought yoUwere part of the consensus that said we're overdoing all of this. MR. SNEDIKER: You are correct. In my personal opinion, I think we are overdoing this. But the City of Marco committee, which I am only -- I'm chairman, but I'm only a member of that-- I was overruled by that voting. I feel the same way I did last week. I like the shells on the beach. But the other people on Marco Island apparently would prefer the more groomed beach. So now I'm speaking for the City of Marco Island. The last time I spoke for myself. My personal opinion has not changed. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Even with that taken into consideration, I think this item needs some work because we had discussed and, I think, reached a consensus, though, again, not a final decision, that we don't intend it to be the same situation going forward. And for the moment we can hold Marco out of this or whatever. But just to have the broader discussion -- and we had agreed not to necessarily change the amount of money allocated to this line item but to change the activities. But that's not the way the proposal looks to me. It looks just like the same thing going forward, and I really don't want to recommend that to the commission. MR. SNEDIKER: Let me -- maybe I misspoke a little bit there. City of Marco Island is still discussing this. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. Page 20 March 15, 2002 MR. SNEDIKER: I hate to say that's a final decision because there are still some other items under consideration. But it certainly looks as if that's the way they want to go. So let me rephrase the statement I made a few moments ago. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I had heard -- and I might be wrong on this because I didn't hear the tape or even if there is a tape, but on Marco Island I thought there still was something of a feeling that many areas are raked too much, and they make the beach too denuded; however, some of the resorts and hotels have an interest in having their beach cleaned because for the tourists it's sort of part of a dream or something like that. And that can be accommodated pretty simply. We don't need a big county budget line item, raking. It can be the hotel. We discussed that two weeks ago. The hotel can get out there with a little screen behind it. And I would like if a hotel wants that and it's permissible, which it is, that's the right way to go. But not to rake the whole beach just because some people want a clean beach because we'll never have 100 percent. MR. SNEDIKER: Right. MR. GALLEBERG: Somebody's always going to want the golf course look, and somebody's always going to want shells and something more natural and pristine. MR. SNEDIKER: Well, the hotels do do their own, which, you know, is a typical situation. I don't care where it is. But, again, it's the county, you know, called our beach-raking equipment, and I guess that's our decision to make. City of Marco Island may have their opinion, City of Naples may have their opinion, and other people may have theirs. But still I think it's our county -- our committee here with Ron, etc., on the staff who make the decisions to how (inaudible). Other people may or may not agree with that decision. Page 21 March 15, 2002 MR. GALLEBERG: And, also, naturally it's the commissioners' decision, and if this is something that, you know, in the community they get too many calls that say this is not the way to go, they'll decide that accordingly. But we're supposed to make a recommendation with an eye to reality, of course, with an eye to the budget, and an eye to public opinion. But, really, what's the best way to handle the beach in our opinion? And I thought we had reached a consensus that the best way was to cut down on some of the raking because it takes away all the good stuff, and there isn't that much bad stuff to be taken away. And, I mean, everyone join in the discussion if they want, but I think in terms of our technical representation to the commission we should be focusing on that angle and other bodies such as the commission have to focus on a different range of items, but our focus should be what's best for the beach. MR. HOVELL: Mr. Chairman, I did not change this grant application other than the costs from the last time you saw it, and I just flipped back through it. You know, without knowing specifically what might be different, I'm not sure what else I would have changed other than the price. I did have it on my list of things to do that beach raking will continue to be discussed and ultimately perhaps things will or won't change, but as far as the grant application, if there's any suggestions about what you'd like to see different, maybe you can include that as, you know, part of your -- you know, your motion. But I wasn't really sure what else to change really in here. MR. ROELLIG: Well, I think we should look at this alternative of perhaps once a month or once every six weeks or something of that sort if we feel that beach cleaning is necessary. There are many areas -- as we discussed last time, there are many areas that there are virtually no beach cleaning and no complaints as far as I'm Page 22 March 15, 2002 concerned. I mean, you'll find little pieces of coral or other stone, but I've never heard of any really adverse comments. So in that sense if we decide to go with a much less frequent cleaning, we could recommend a lower dollar amount, I would think. MR. PIRES: And, I guess, Mr. Chairman and David along that line, I think when you look at paragraph 10, I mean, what are the benefits? It seems the primary benefits is the aesthetics, which seems to be in a sense possible that this committee says that that's not as important as the other aspect about getting rid of dead fish and other debris. So maybe a recommendation could be that if we disagree with that concept or that aspect of the grant application as to what is the benefit that should be the focus of this, if that's the sense. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: We had also discussed that when we're talking about the raking -- we've recently had an incidence of red tide and the dead fish washing up -- that we're not talking about that kind of call -- that's a recurring event, of course, but let's call it an irregular event. We are really talking about the habitual raking where what really comes up, in theory, litter and seaweed and that type of stuff is being picked up. But if you look at what's picked up, it's not litter and seaweed. It's shells; it's coral; it's sand; you know, the occasional Pepsi bottle, that type of thing. So we aren't talking about dead fish because that presents both potentially a health hazard, I suppose, and certainly an aesthetic detriment, all would agree that raking's required in that circumstance. But just raking it every day like it's a golf course is what we're trying to discuss. And I think it developed a consensus, at least in terms of this committee, that we felt there was overraking occurring and that we should cut back on that. And we heard different public comment, and I think maybe we'll hear more now that, indeed, the excess raking, if you characterize it that way, is detrimental to the environment, to the whole ecosystem that occurs on the beach. Page 23 March 15, 2002 MS. HORTON: Lori Horton from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. We personally would like to see no beach raking unless there's a major event such as red tide, hurricanes, storm event, you know, the Fourth of July firework because it really does -- you know, even if you're not an environmentalist, it removes the seed sources; it reduces the integrity of the sand root; it inhibits dune formation, which is so important when a storm comes through, a hurricane comes through, the T-groins, the nets. I mean, we spend millions of dollars and lots of time -- and this committee should know -- trying to preserve the beach to accumulate sand when we have a natural way of doing it right there. And it doesn't cost money not to rake the beach. We recommend that the trash be manually picked up. That way -- even the beach-raker employees can actually pick up cigarette butts, for example, because the rakes do not get the cigarette butts. Again, I want to emphasize it does remove seed sources and scrapes the roots. And as you know several people have noticed that the beach rakes are going into the dune vegetation and into the water, and it compacts the sand which complicates things during sea turtle nesting, and it's just -- it's kind of a common sense thing to me even if you don't care about it removing organic material for the birds to feed on or -- you know, it just stabilizes the beach, and we just want you to be aware of that. And it doesn't make sense to keep continuously raking the beach and digging up the roots and digging up the plants and inhibiting the dune formations. Also, too, I noticed just in walking, people generally around here seem -- I mean, our beaches are beautiful -- seem to be pretty willing to throw away their trash and maybe the placement of more trash receptacles in more visible places. I think Maura mentioned the "Adopt a Shore Program," public education, things like that, in addition to not raking as much would Page 24 March 15, 2002 definitely improve the problems that the public might have such as, you know, trash on beach, which is what the beach raking is essentially doing with the exception of red tide. But we would like to see it not be done at all with the exception of those events. Thank you. MR. KROESCHELL: Mr. Chairman, I recall the discussion last time that there was some disagreement between some of our advisors as to how frequently the beach was being raked. And I suspect the best thing to do would be to get this back into committee -- or get it back to staff and find out exactly how much raking is being done and with an eye of going in your direction, as I believe we should. You mentioned that we should do less frequent raking. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I think so too. The discussion last time evolved in terms of how frequent -- the answer, I think, was basically it depends where you are on the beach because of the equipment and it being not reasonably transportable from Marco, say, to Naples or North Naples. Some areas are more or less Frequent because the equipment has to cover larger areas in some cases. MR. STAKICH: I have a question. For budget purposes why don't we just leave it the way it is because we're going to go on with this subject to other meetings? I disagree with some of the thoughts here that we shouldn't -- place like Marco Island, talk about the birds feeding. There's plenty of islands around with a lot of this stuff for the birds to feed on. That small stretch that we're talking about on Marco Island, which really is the money that we take in for tourism, is for people to come here, the tourists. I think -- just personal opinion -- that the tourists really like to see the beaches clean that you call the "golf course look," rather than the rustic look. There's plenty of beaches around here if you want the rustic look. You can go down -- I happen to think that the discussion on this should be taken up further, get more opinions here. I feel that the Page 25 March 15, 2002 golf course look is fine for a place like Marco Island. I don't see it's good for everybody else. That's why I think maybe we just leave the item in the budget the way it is for now and bring up the discussion at a future date. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: As far as leaving it in the budget, I think we -- as part of the consensus we had developed -- I think indicated we would, in essence, leave it in the budget. What I'm trying to focus I think, at this point is if that money is in the budget -- and I understand from Mr. Hovell and staff that the breaking it down is a necessary part of the budgetary request, but I just don't think it should necessarily take on a life of its own. And we do need more discussion on this panel perhaps, and, of course, whatever we reach consensus on, it's simply going to be a recommendation up to the commission. I guess you know how budgetary matters work. If it just sails through without any comment or any notation, I don't want it just to carry on with a life of its own. I want it to have a very serious examination, and there are two legitimate sides of the coin here; there's no question about that. And I would agree, too, if not raking made the beaches sort of not compatible with recreational enjoyment, then, you know, it isn't all about the wildlife or the seeding or whatever. But we can see areas that have never been raked, indeed have never been renourished, and they're terrific beaches for people. Now, there hard for people to get there, but if you get there, they're terrific. And I just think, you know, this has been an item-- kind of what happens so often in government-type stuff-- even though, I think, in Collier we try to be careful -- it just gets started, and then it just is perpetual and takes on a life of its own. And the equipment builds up, and you keep doing it and keep doing it, and you kind of forget why you're even doing it at some point. I think we need a careful examination of that. Page 26 March 15, 2002 MR. ANDERSON: Mr. Chairman, if I may, Roy Anderson, engineering director. One of the things that we'll have to keep in mind, too, in this in terms of investigation is that if these three individuals who have been employed full time in this activity, if their work is cut back, then we would have to do the necessary coordination with other departments to see what other kinds of things they could do in that time, so there would be that administrative aspect. Perhaps there could be other cleaning-related functions associated with the beach, or if there's nothing for them to do during the downtime, then they'd have to be absorbed by some other department. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Well, that's something staff has to do, but three people with jobs -- I hope they get protected, but that's not a reason to rake the beach. MR. ANDERSON: Oh, no. It's just one of the things we can do as part of this investigation. MR. SNEDIKER: Can we find out more about what is picked up? Mr. Chairman, you brought in some pictures which were, you know, pretty enlightening to us, a couple of Pepsi bottles in a whole dumpster. That's sort of excessive. As far as other things that we were picking up, can we find out more about what we're actually picking up? What are actually in the dumpsters by the time we get through? And then also maybe get some thought about a mule or whatever you want to call it, a pickup truck driving up and down the beach -- maybe with the same gentleman driving it -- stopping, picking up, throwing the Pepsi bottle in the back of it. MR. ANDERSON: I think we could come up with some kind of a solid-waste analysis, if you will, of the material that's picked up. We can talk with Al, our inspector, about doing an analysis of, and Page 27 March 15, 2002 we'll give a report back to you. MR. SNEDIKER: If we're picking up 90 percent shells and sand, then it's a pretty quick decision. MS. LUPO: I have a quick question, if I may. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Yes, Ms. Lupo. MS. LUPO: The seaweed aspect, I'm sorry. I know that at one point there was a beach rake that was broken, I think, in Marco, certain portions hadn't been raked. And I don't believe it was an excessive period of time. I think it was maybe a month, and people had called to complain to both the county and Marco Island about the seaweed accumulation. So I think maybe different beaches have different variables, and perhaps if we could get some type of report as to which ones have complaints if it hasn't been raked within three weeks ago or so or which ones have more accumulation on them. That would help me, at least make a decision. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: So this will -- I think we're deciding this will go to the commission with the recommendation of a line item, but as we go on with our meeting today or before we do a motion, I think it needs to include some aspect in the motion -- maybe this one will stand apart -- to say we're recommending it for budgetary funding. But we have work to do. We should look at it more, and there are two sides to the coin. It's indisputable. But we had talked about it at the last workshop, and there were five or six different localities, both in the Gulf Coast and on the East Coast of Florida, and they have different variables in their communities, as you point out. When you take those variables into account, I think it's fair to say that Collier County is extremely aggressive in its raking compared to other communities. MR. ROELLIG: I have another comment. I'm concerned that this was -- I know it's part of the county manager's responsibility that Page 28 March 15, 2002 this was put into parks and recreation. I would guess that most of the shoreline in Collier County, which this would be covering, is not part of parks and recreation's responsibility. Is there a responsibility basically limited to parks rather than the whole shoreline? MR. HOVELL: If you're asking why does the cover page on the grant application say it's submitted by the parks and recreation department; is that your question? MR. ROELLIG: Right. MR. HOVELL: I've been asking since I arrived sort of from the other aspect of why is public utilities engineering the one that administers beach raking? From my point of view, I wanted to view this as a contract, and the contractor happens to be parks and recs department. They are the ones that have the people on their payroll, and it wouldn't take much for them to own the equipment rather than public utilities engineering owning the three beach rakes. And they could accumulate all the costs associated with this program. But my office would still be involved from the aspect of understanding where they are doing it, that they have the permits to do it, and would still field the calls from the public as far as why things are happening the way they are happening. And we would turn to our contractor, if you will, parks and recs, to address those things. But administratively these people have always worked for parks and rec, and it seems kind of a misnomer to say that public utilities is in the beach-raking business because we're not. We don't have the people to do it. MR. ROELLIG: My thing is that if you put it in parks and rec I presume this goes before the parks and recreation advisory committee. And, we have two different philosophies I would be surprised. I mean, this is an activity on the beach, which affects the beach, and I think it -- I personally would feel that it would be more Page 29 March 15, 2002 appropriate in the utilities division. MS. HORTON: Mr. Chairman? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Yes. MS. HORTON: We would also like to see -- like you said, I guess what you're in the process of doing is setting up specific definitive criteria and/or triggers for when beach raking would occur. We would also suggest -- like again, you have these three employees, why not let them manually pick up the trash by hand? Eliminate some of the vehicles and traffic of vehicles on the beach, which result in more compaction. Like I said, you can't regulate -- they are not supposed to go into the water and up in dune vegetation, but as we all know, it just happens sometimes. Another point I'd like to make is as you are formulating these policies, the people who maintain and/or monitor the beach for raking, their job shouldn't depend on how often the beach gets raked. So we'd like to see kind of an impartial or a secure way to make sure that they are not going to get over raked because somebody may or may not lose their job so... CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Thank you. Maybe we'll come back to this one, but shall we, at least for the moment, go on to some of the other items? Ms. Lupo is leaving us at the moment. MS. LUPO: Yes. And I apologize, and I did speak to Mr. Hovell beforehand. And I understand that there's a future meetings discussion later on in this meeting. And just for the record, Friday afternoons are really not possible for me. If we could somehow adjust that back to where it was or the morning or another day. (Ms. Lupo leaves the meeting.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. Thank you. MR. HOVELL: The next grant application is for the sea turtle monitoring and beach studies and, in essence, that is Maura Kraus Page 30 March 15, 2002 and her staff work on providing that, and that's for $142,000. MR. PIRES: Mr. Chairman, a couple of thoughts. Number 1, I like the format because this wasn't just-- was more of a narrative and not just a rote answer, so I think that helps, you know, address the purpose of the questionnaire to go into greater detail as to the nature of the activity. My other question, I guess, is there are no capital costs, I guess, associated with this. This is all personnel services and is there not some capital equipment that's utilized as part of this program, either ATVs or some other capital equipment? MR. HOVELL: Well, Maura Kraus is here. If you'd like to ask her to step to the microphone, she could address that, I'm sure. MS. KRAUS: I'm Maura Kraus, Collier County Natural Resource Department. We currently have all our capital equipment, and maintenance costs are absorbed in the operating part of the budget. MR. PIRES: Okay. Thank you. And does staff feel this is a sufficient level of funding in order to keep all the agencies happy with all the various construction and renourishment and other beach activities in the next year? I know it's tough to... MS. KRAUS: Yeah. That's always hard to predict, but we have, you know, our current staff and we -- you can see we do a lot more than sea turtle monitoring in there. And we work very closely with the state. For instance, this year just in case we might have to go into turtle season with some of our projects, we're going to start our monitoring early, and that's just taken care of internally, so we absorb that within the department, and we're real careful with our money. MR. HOVELL: The next grant application covers project management and miscellaneous fees. And I just captured some of the things that we previously don't tend to see in the form of a grant Page 31 March 15, 2002 application just to try and give people a feel that there is other monies going out the door that, you know, aren't otherwise covered. And those tend to relate to the -- I believe it's the finance folks that get to collect some money based on administering the tourist tax fund. The county attorney's office had gotten approved, I think, maybe a half-a- man a year or some such thing. They are things that just, I guess, through the budget process appeared, and I just tried to collect all those things and added into what public utilities tends to spend in the form of salaries for the three positions and the support cost. I believe last year this was around $290,000 -- or I believe the current year. We're still showing the $280,000 for the three positions, the $24,000 for support, and then the other $300,000 is for the tax collector and those other miscellaneous things I just mentioned that, I think regardless of any of our particular thoughts, they just kind of get built into the budget. So I was just trying to show that it is something that we can expect to foot the bill for. MR. ROELLIG: And that's spread across all the items, though, typically, isn't it? MR. HOVELL: It's probably considered an overhead cost, but it's -- as it's -- as a matter of fact, on the monthly spreadsheet that I give you, this does not get a separate project number. It's just sort of the overhead account, if you will; much as my time and Al's time is spread across the various activities. We don't try and charge the individual project that we're working on. The next set of applications are all slightly different in the sense that either staff does not recommend that they be done or like the last three are for parks and recs that will actually -- the primary recommendation will come from the parks and recs advisory board. You're not required to comment on them. The first one being for the Goodland Civic Association. They have submitted their grant application. And, in essence, what they Page 32 March 15, 2002 are asking for is the engineering associated with determining, you know, a budget estimate for dredging the canals, taking a survey, getting the permits, and getting the design ready to dredge the canals and adjacent waterways there in Goodland. Staff does not recommend that this is appropriately funded with TDC funds. MR. PIRES: I was going to ask you that question, Ron, because when I saw it in the package, I'm thinking -- I wasn't -- I had a sense that because it was included with all this that the staff had a positive position on it, so your position is you're not recommending -- MR. HOVELL: That's correct. MR. PIRES: -- any of the following, the last five, I guess, or four. MR. HOVELL: I'll go to the next one. The next three are all parks and recs submissions that would come out of TDC funds but, again, the primary recommendation for the Bayview pedestrian access for 125,500, the Tiger Tail walkway design for 200,000, and the Tiger Tail beach entrance for 150,000, those three I have captured in a single line item on the ten-year plan, and those will go through the parks and recs advisory board to the Tourist Development Council. But, again, I was just trying to show the total Category A projects for next year. I'm sorry I skipped one. I also put in here the Lake Trafford restoration for a million dollars. That grant application was approved for $2 million a number of years ago, but ultimately when the specific agreement between Collier County and the South Florida Water Management District was negotiated and executed, it calls for a three-year phased approach: $500,000 in our current year, a million dollars next year, and $500,000 the following year. So I didn't even write up a grant application because it's certainly nothing that needs to be approved. It already is approved. Page 33 March 15, 2002 But it will be a next-fiscal-year budget item that will come out of the TDC Category A funds. MR. SNEDIKER: I have a couple comments on the Goodland project. Just for clarification information, Goodland is on Marco Island but is not within the City of Marco Island. Goodland is part of the unincorporated area of the county. As I read the state statutes -- and I'm not trying to be an attorney here, but state statutes and our county ordinance, that dredging those canals would not be allowed with TDC funds. Am I interpreting that correctly? MR. HOVELL: I believe you are, and I specifically asked for a legal opinion from the county attorney's office, and I didn't get anything prior to today's meeting. But I have a meeting set up next week to answer some more of their questions and go over what their current thinking is. But I don't envision how there's a way to interpret those statutes to include dredging those particular canals and waterways. MR. SNEDIKER: If that's the case, then we sort of can't approve. MR. ROELLIG: My question on this -- and we don't have the information -- are there fishing guides using that? Do tour boats use those canals? I mean, I don't know of personally, but is there actually some activity relating to tourism occurring in those canals? I think that would be main -- as far as I'm concerned, that's part of the main question. (Mr. Pires leaves the meeting.) MR. ROELLIG: If there were other fishing guides, if there were tour boats, that sort of thing, using those canals, then it may be appropriate because it is a tourist activity in that sense. MR. HOVELL: I think you'll find that perhaps not the canal themselves, but certainly the adjacent waterways. Goodland has Page 34 March 15, 2002 interior canals as well as either bays or passes or whatever happens to be around them. I know certainly on the outskirts of that there are marinas, and I believe there's a restaurant that has some docks you can get up to, that type of thing. So from a pure tourism point of view, I think an argument could be made for at least some of the areas. But my first step was to take a look at what the Florida statute and county ordinance allow TDS funds to be spent on, and I don't feel that this meets that criteria. Once you get past that initial hurdle, then the second question to be asked is, you know, the value to tourism, and the value-- you know, that type of things. So I don't really think you can get into the tourism discussion until you answer if it is eligible for TDC funds. And, as I say, I don't think it is, and I believe that will be the opinion that the county attorney gives back to me. MR. ROELLIG: Well, my personal view is that you'd want to switch those two questions, but that's just my view. I mean, if there's a legitimate tourist activity going up there, then we ought to look to see if there's some way to accommodate it. But if there is no tourist activity, it's really a moot point in my opinion. MR. HOVELL: With all due respect to this committee, my understanding is that that's what the Tourist Development Council does is take a look at the tourism value, and this committee's charter is more on the technical aspect of whether or not it's, you know, the appropriate thing to do, and I know we've had this discussion before but related to the coast. (Mr. Pires returns to meeting.) MR. HOVELL: And if it's strictly the TDC coast then, no, I don't think this is something that you can really weigh it on, but if it's the more broad sense that it is coastline related, isn't there something else you can do? I think, yes, there are some other things you can do. The only other current option I have is to set up a special taxing Page 35 March 15, 2002 district for the area. I think it's something that our office will pursue, but I just don't think we'll be pursuing it using TDC funds. MR. ROELLIG: I guess more of my problem is -- I don't have a rationale for voting one way or the other on this with the information that I have. I can't vote no and I can't yes. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Dr. Staiger, you were going to say something? DR. STAIGER: Yeah. The Board of County Commissioners quite a few years ago more or less set a precedent on this when we were asking for the funds to dredge Doctor's Pass under the beach and inlet management umbrella of the Category A applications. And the board was very concerned because part of the Doctor's Pass project is the inner approaches to the inlet, which run up into Moorings Bay a certain distance and down to the south as smaller distance or lesser distance. And the concern was that we weren't trying to dredge those waterways. What we were dredging -- and we explained it basically the approach to the inlet and what would be the flood tide shoal area that's part of the inlet system. And they made it very clear at that time -- and this is probably 1992 or '3 -- that waterway dredging, canal dredging, was something that had to be funded separately the way the city's been, the Moorings Bay dredging and the East Naples Bay and the like. And we're looking at -- an assessment district for the Aqualane Shores area for a similar project. And at that time, at least, the board said, you know, we don't want those funds going to, you know, just every other canal system maintenance dredging. That's something that basically benefits those waterfront property owners, and it should be their responsibility. Goodland is a little bit different situation because there's a lot of commercial fishing activity out of there. There's a bunch of guides. Page 36 March 15, 2002 There's marinas. And this is not the same Board of County Commissioners, but I know in the past they were very leery of extending the thing too far into the interior of the waterways. So we've held off with the Doctor's Pass project and just kept it with the pass itself and the obvious approaches to it and not tried to, you know, move further into the interior. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Mr. Stakich. MR. STAKICH: Yes. Just recently the county commissioners bought a piece of land down in Goodland for $4,500,000 for a park and for boat docks. They are discussing the boat docks, and at this time nothing has been decided on it yet. Secondly, tourism -- of which the tourist dollars we are talking about are to be spent for tourism and Goodland, is a superb place for tourists of this county to use. If you go down there on Sunday, you will note that that place is absolutely a madhouse. I don't go there for that reason, but it is. I think that, frankly, if legally -- and that depends on the opinion you get from the legal department-- if legally we can look into this thing, I would be fully in favor of looking into what part of Goodland -- because there are parts there that I can see where it could be used for dredging to bring the boats into the restaurants for tourist activities without worrying about the canals themselves. I think it's something we should look at. I think it depends on legal opinion, and once we have that, I think we should bring back this discussion and do it again. MR. SNEDIKER: What might be very helpful is that if the legal opinion is affirmative that we can do it with our funds it to find out from the people who are making the applications exactly where they want to have dredged. You're talking about the bay where the commercial fishermen is.9 That's one thing, or if they want to talk about where the restaurants are or the interior canals, maybe a map of Page 37 March 15, 2002 the area saying where they would like to have this funding for. MR. STAKICH: Absolutely. MR. SNEDIKER: Then we know more what we're talking about. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I agree with all that that we have the staff recommendation presently, which is important, and then the attorney's recommendation. If the attorney says you can't do it, I think that's the end of the story. And better clarity on -- as Mr. Snediker says -- which canals are intended to be dredged because I had the impression -- maybe I gathered the wrong impression -- when you discussed this at a prior meeting, Mr. Hovell, I had the impression that these were interior canals, basically canals in the back of people's homes. MR. HOVELL: Most of it is. MR. ANDERSON: Although part of the application does indicate that it's desired for easier access to restaurants and RV park patrons and residents of Goodland. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I think at a minimum we need more facts before us before we can say yes. And the county attorney's opinion might well end the discussion here and now once we get it. But I don't think we can say yes based on what we know now. MR. STAKICH: Agreed. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: That finishes then except for we may want to go back to the raking again, of course, but we had had a discussion at our prior workshop on how to classify reserves against contingencies and what the two line items mean and that type of thing. So I'll note it's a good thing-- I suppose it's a good thing in the sense that you don't often see it out of governmental agencies, but we are budgeting less than what the projected revenues available are for Page 3 8 March 15, 2002 the current year. And I know we have to save up for future years, but I think we can have better clarity between our true reserves, which I see as an ongoing matter that roll from year to year guarding against the big event. And contingencies, which would go more to -- okay, we've said a certain project would be $50,000; it turns out that it's 55. To me that's a contingency. And anyone else who'd like to talk about that, I think we can have better clarity on what we're doing there because it seems to me that if these funds are available, we need to be recommending what to do. And to the extent we have needed projects this year that don't come up to the total of the funding that we think will be available, it should be going either into a reserve or a contingency, and that's just almost like an accounting matter. It needs to go somewhere. MR. SNEDIKER: Mr. Chairman, we have these three additional items, though, don't, we to discuss? MR. HOVELL: Well, my suggestion would be that out of this list from Wiggins Pass down to Goodland-- because those bottom four we really don't need to do anything with -- we pull out those that have questions or we might want to modify or whatnot, and then take the bulk of them and do one motion for-- my suggestion would be approval. The ones that I know of that we would want to pull out for discussion would be the City of Naples for the $9,000 on the structures because I think we can do something this year rather than make a separate grant application, and the beach raking, and the Goodland canals would be the three that I would know of that I think you would want to pull out. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: And also we had a discussion on the Hideaway Beach and T-groin monitoring. Mr. Roellig had raised the issue that it appears that has a contingency built in, and none of Page 39 March 15, 2002 the others do, that we would search for consistency. And that would relate back to what I was just saying about reserves and contingencies. And then Mr. Snediker just noted-- and I temporarily forgot that we do have three more that we need to discuss that weren't in our packet. MR. HOVELL: I know, but we're going to need to go over those in more detail, plus Dr. Staiger brought one with him as well that he'll want to hand out. So I was thinking maybe if we could get to the book first, and then we'll move on to the other ones. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Before we do a formal motion then -- and Mr. Hovell's probably correct -- if we can take the ones that there's probably unanimous consensus on and move those is -- before we actually do that, is everyone agreed that we would -- according to Mr. Hovell's recommendations and our discussions -- take out the $9,000 item from the City of Naples from any group approval. It would be Hideaway Beach and T-groin monitoring because of that contingency issue, beach cleaning operations because of the philosophical debate we're having, and the Goodland canals because we don't deem-- we don't feel we have information on to say yes, and it may well be a firm no. That's not to say those other things won't be approved. It's just they need to be discussed separately. MR. KROESCHELL: Mr. Chairman, I have a problem. I'm going to go with this thing this time, and I probably should have done this last year, but it bothers me to see a proposal, $140,000 engineering. Some of the city's proposals have details: how many hours of engineering time at such and such a time. I would like to see, for example, beach renourishment, so many cubic yards at so much a yard. Just an overall grant of a million dollars or $140,000, it bothers me. I'd like to see greater detail in all of these proposals, and I don't Page 40 March 15, 2002 think we can do it this time, perhaps, but I would definitely want to see it next year. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: That's a point well taken. You have -- Mr. Hovell, you and staff have, I assume, some background data that you use to work up to these numbers, do you not? MR. HOVELL: The bulk of these set of grant applications is for engineering fees, and the bulk of them are provided by the engineer as a single line item budget estimate with no other details. Now, in the city's case, they has specifically gone to the engineer and asked for the specific cost proposal, and they have typically attached that. And that's why they have the level of detail that they do. MR. KROESCHELL: And why can't we do that in the county? Why can't the county do the same thing the city does? MR. HOVELL: Next year perhaps we can, but this year we're lucky that we're executing this year's program much less focusing on next year's program, so I don't --. MR. PIRES: Ron, you're saying that from the city's perspective, they have an existing contract with Humiston and Moore. What they are proposing -- it might be a continuing contract. I'm not sure how it fits under CCNA, that they're proposing just to do a supplemental modification to that existing contract, add a particular scope of services. Whereas, the budgetary issues for the other projects, for engineering services, haven't even been solicited yet. Is that correct? MR. HOVELL: That's right. MR. PIRES: We haven't done RFQs or RFPs for those? MR. HOVELL: That's correct. MR. PIRES: So that's why you have a generalized number based upon historical dollars. Is that the difference then? MR. HOVELL: Yes. Page 41 March 15, 2002 CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: But next year that should be different because we now have a relationship with three firms --. MR. HOVELL: Right. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: -- although that didn't start soon enough to impact this year's work, but next year the county should be more on the same footing as the city is presently. We've got three that we work with. We get, you know, some detailed estimates from them next year, and it's broken down better. MR. HOVELL: Yes. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Good point, Mr. Kroeschell, very good point. MR. KROESCHELL: I think that kind of survey, too, would then begin to show up some of these contingencies and other items that are in there that we don't see because it's all in one number. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Exactly. And it's easy to criticize people no longer here, of course, but a lot of effort and other committees' efforts have been to put -- and the staff in particular-- have been to put some structure in the process that everyone could acknowledge lacks structure. So we'll continue those efforts. I had mentioned the four items to pull for further discussion and separate votes. Excepting those four, do we have a motion on the other applications before us? MR. ROELLIG: I move that we approve the applications with the exception of the -- this is not part of the motion. I thought previously there was, like, a serial number on these things so you could identify them. Is that correct? At least I thought so. It would be a good idea -- the project number 2345 or 567. It would be a lot easier to discuss them, I think -- back to the motion. So it would be 9,000 for the City of Naples, 245,000 for the beach clearing operations -- cleaning operations --. MR. KROESCHELL: $150,000 for beach (inaudible). Page 42 March 15, 2002 MR. ROELLIG: 150,000 for beach (inaudible). MR. SNEDIKER: You're talking about reducing that to a hundred, taking out the contingency of that. MR. ROELLIG: Well, I think what we might want to do is -- MR. KROESCHELL: Do it separately. MR. ROELLIG: Right. And I think the fourth one was the Goodland Civic Association, if I recall correctly. MR. KROESCHELL: Yep. MR. ROELLIG: So with the exception of those, I would move that the grant applications be approved as submitted. MR. PIRES: Recommended for approval, I guess is the technical -- MR. ROELLIG: Recommended for approval. MR. STAKICH: Second that. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Mr. Stakich got in first on his second. We have Mr. Roellig's motion, Mr. Stakich's second. I'll just restate briefly. We have a motion recommending approval of the grant applications before us other than the $9,000 application by the City of Naples, the 150,000 application dealing with Hideaway Beach and T- groin monitoring, the 245,000 beach cleaning operations application, and the 150,000 Goodland canals dredging application. We have the motion and second -- MR. SNEDIKER: And the last four items. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Well, those aren't even on our agenda. They're just there for information. MR. SNEDIKER: Okay. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: All in favor say aye. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: MR. ROELLIG: Aye. We have the motion and second. Aye. Page 43 March 15, 2002 MR. SNEDIKER: Aye. MR. STAKICH: Aye. MR. KROESCHELL: Aye. MR. PIRES: Aye. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Passes 6 to 0. Now, Mr. Hovell, if you deem it advisable, why don't we get into the three applications that were not included in our main packet. MR. HOVELL: Okay. I handed out three, and if I could ask Dr. Staiger to add his fourth one we'll go through those one by one. The first one --. Excuse me. I guess I didn't get a copy of MR. ROELLIG: yours. MR. HOVELL: MR. ROELLIG: MR. HOVELL: It's underneath the ten-year plan in a paper clip. Okay, I see. Under the ten-year plan. The first one is a grant application entitled "Beach Emergency Response Plan." The amount of the application is for $25,000, and this is basically to develop a storm recovery plan for our beaches so that the next time we have something like Tropical Storm Gabrielle we have the appropriate permits and sand sources lined up such that not only is our current method of trucking in sand, but if it's a large enough storm and we wanted to do a major dredge project, that we would have all those appropriate permits in hand, and we could go out and within -- certainly within a year anyway we'd be in a position to go and do a major renourishment project to recover from a storm. This is something that was suggested, I believe, by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection under their beaches and coastal systems office. And when we did our project agreement with them, they had included this as a line item, which they've also agreed to cost share and is already in our approved project agreement, but we had never taken action to include it in the county's budget. Page 44 March 15, 2002 Should this grant application be ultimately approved by the Board of County Commissioners, I will be asking for a budget amendment to include it as part of this year's budget so that we can get on with developing this -- the $25,000 is based on an initial budget estimate from Coastal Planning and Engineering. They've done these types of plans for other counties. The state considers them a very valuable tool, and as I said, they've agreed to cost share on a 50 percent -- 50/50 basis. MR. KROESCHELL: The state has agreed. MR. HOVELL: The state has agreed to cost share. MR. PIRES: Ron, part of this, I know -- think when the other grant applications addressed issue about annual monitoring or surveying, and I noticed that in those applications it didn't address that one of the beneficial aspects would be the ability to utilize that for post-disaster funding. We had an issue with Mark Wyland (phonetic). We did not have the 2000 monitoring, which was one of the hiccups down there. The scope of this $25,000 number, are those surveys included in that also, or is that under the other grant applications, the annual surveys for annual monitoring? MR. HOVELL: That's correct. No, the $25,000 is more just to come up the -- you know, to put together the specific permits and, actually, there's going to be another grant application here in a minute for a countywide sand search. It would be to take the sand search results, the monitoring results, and those types of things, and to take a look at our specific beaches and, you know, put together a package that, in essence, provides something that's pretty much on the shelf so that when we need to recover from something larger than a trucking evolution might be able to fix for us, that we have a way to go. MR. PIRES: Good thinking. Thank you. MR. ROELLIG: I want to make it clear. This is for the entire Page 45 March 15, 2002 shoreline, not just the current and permitted shorelines; is that correct? MR. HOVELL: I would like to think we'll work in that direction but, again, it's hard to say. No, I don't think it's under an existing permit, and so, yes, I think the idea is to have a generic permit to do a major renourishment for 100 percent of those areas that we feel are appropriate to spend TDC dollars on. Now, there are some other beaches in the county that we aren't currently spending any money on and, therefore, I think it would still be a question that we would have to address as far as would we want -- to recover from a major storm, would we want to go ahead and get into that business or not. REPORTER: Mr. Chairman, I need to change my paper. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: We're usually supposed to go about two hours for that. REPORTER: No, not me. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Why don't we take -- while we do that, it's a good time to take a five-minute break. Even though we're kind of in the middle of things, it's still a good time. (A break was held.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: We're back from our brief break. We were somewhat in the middle of discussing an item, the countywide sand search. It was a good time to take a break. Why don't we pick up with that discussion. MR. HOVELL: I'm sorry. I believe Mr. Pires was asking about the beach emergency response plan grant application and what it did or didn't include. And I had mentioned that there is another one coming up. He isn't here to see if we answered his question right this second. But I guess my question would be as we go through these additional grant applications that you didn't get in advance of today's Page 46 March 15, 2002 meeting, do you want to vote on them one at a time, or do you want me to go through all of them first? MR. KROESCHELL: Let's go through all of them and see if there are any we want to pull out. MR. HOVELL: Okay. Anyway, just to recap one more time, the beach emergency response plan would include developing all the permits and preliminary plans and specifications and the funding options to recover from a storm. So if there are currently beaches where we don't spend any TDC dollars, you know, I believe the plan would address that type of thing, and it would also speak to which beaches would be potentially be reimbursed by FEMA because they are engineered and maintained versus which beaches we currently don't maintain but what the funding options would be to restore them after a storm anyway. That's what the plan's intended to address. MR. ROELLIG: So this includes all the beaches, not just the TDC beaches. MR. HOVELL: MR. ROELLIG: DR. STAIGER: That's correct. Oh, okay. This issue came before the Florida Shore and Beach Preservation Association as a technical paper a year or two ago, presentation on the development of this plan for one of the east coast counties. And the whole concept was very positively received by everybody, especially DEP, because it gives them the ability to deal with emergencies without having to just kind of give a blanket approval for emergency storm recovery, and sometimes things are done under that umbrella that really aren't appropriate. So this essentially gives you a recovery plan that's written out in advance with whatever permits are needed to do it. And the state is willing to pay 50 percent of it, which obviously means that they like the idea. So it's something we need rather than just wait for a disaster and then you start calling Tallahassee and saying, "Hey, we got a Page 47 March 15, 2002 problem down here. We need to solve it." And they may or may not say "yes." And I think this just gives us a better chance on dealing with emergencies on a rational and probably cost-effective basis. MR. SNEDIKER: 25,000's our portion. It's a $50,000 project; is that correct? MR. HOVELL: I'd have to go back and pull the budget estimate I got from Coastal Planning and Engineering. I want to say that I had to put in grant applications for 100 percent because the state reimburses. They don't pay the bill up front. So I'm pretty sure this is the total cost, and they would pay half. So we would get 12 1/2 back, if I'm correct. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Any other questions on that item? MR. HOVELL: The next one is the countywide sand search. This also is a project that had been included in the project agreement with the state. At the time the figure of $300,000 was thrown around, and so the state contract says that they will cost share on a 50 percent basis based on the budget assumption of the $300,000. I got the feedback from Coastal Planning and Engineering, and they have looked at, at least, some of the information provided previously by Coastal Engineering Consultants. They've provided a budget figure of somewhere from $5 to $600,000. So I turned this in for the $600,000 figure. But, much like anything else we're doing, I think we would have them do it in phases and make sure that as we go along we're satisfied that they are doing the appropriate level of detail and at a reasonable cost. MR. PIRES: When you say 40 miles -- within 40 miles of Collier County, is that sand source? Is that offshore because it seems to indicate searching for offshore sand sources within 40 miles? You're talking out in the Gulf 40 miles? MR. HOVELL: That is correct, offshore, out into the Gulf. MR. PIRES: What's the furthest out that we've ever gone for a Page 48 March 15, 2002 sand source in the past? MR. HOVELL: Historically, we've stayed very close to shore, and that's one of the reasons we had a challenge five or so years ago with pumping rocks on the beach. I don't know if you were at the workshop when we discussed this, so I'll -- excuse me if I'm repeating it for anybody else. MR. PIRES: I apologize. MR. HOVELL: But when you do major renourishment projects by pumping sand onto the beach, there's a couple different options for the type of equipment you use. What we did about five or so years ago was in essence, pump sand from the bottom of the Gulf directly onto the beach. And whatever happened to be down there is what went on the beach. The further offshore you go, the more likely it is that you would move to a different type of equipment where you would use a hopper dredge to pull the sand up from the bottom. Once it's full you'd get underway, move offshore of Collier County, and then pump it up onto our beaches. To me the advantage of that system is you get to see what you're going to be putting on the beach before you put it on the beach. And because you're to some extent double handling it, you also get the option to screen it before you put it on the beach. So the likelihood of having a repeat of the major rock issue that we've had for the last five or six years would be greatly reduced if we went further offshore and specifically required the hopper dredge type of evolution. So previous sand searches have tended to stay close to shore with a view toward keeping the costs lower, pumping, you know, from immediately adjacent offshore -- I'm not sure I should say a lot - - but less expensive, anyway, than the further off you go. My guidance to Coastal Planning and Engineering was that if they found something that was only a mile offshore, I still wanted a Page 49 March 15, 2002 hopper dredge to come get it because that way we get a chance to screen it. And so I thought it was appropriate to make sure that we expanded and found the best quality sand for the county and also with a view toward using some equipment that would eliminate the risk of putting something incompatible on the beach. MR. PIRES: Are there any other coastal counties on the Gulf coast that have gone this far out for a sand source? MR. HOVELL: I believe Lee County is -- either Lee County or another entity within Lee County just did something with Coastal Planning and Engineering. As a matter of fact, when we first met the president and his senior engineer when they came over to meet us after having been awarded the contract, they brought with them some of that work they had done. And I know it was at least out to 25 miles, and maybe that's just where the sand had been identified that they would specifically use. Maybe the search had gone out to the same 40-mile distance. MR. SNEDIKER: Wasn't there some talk about sand being near the county line, between Lee County and Collier County? MR. HOVELL: Yeah. That's the one I'm--. MR. SNEDIKER: And maybe sharing that? MR. HOVELL: Right. And as I recall, that was about -- I think that was the 25 mile. MR. SNEDIKER: That's far out. MR. PIRES: If you do go out further than 9 miles, though, we're not even in the counties any longer because we're outside the territory of the United States and the states (sic). Florida extends three leagues; that is 9 miles in the Gulf coast (sic). MR. HOVELL: You're right. We would no longer deal with the state on submerged land issues, but we would still deal with the Army Corps. I believe -- well, I don't know what the distance is, but I'm pretty sure that 40 miles is within it, although I don't believe they Page 50 March 15, 2002 charge for, you know, in essence, using that federal resource. But they still require us to have a permit. DR. STAIGER: Yeah. Mineral Management Service has custody over that material, and they -- some years ago had the realization that people were mining sand from the continental shelf, and so they decided they were going to charge a severance fee for every cubic yard of sand. And there was such uproar in Congress about it that they backed off from that. They now -- they still own the material, but they don't -- I don't believe charge a fee for use of it. But the beach restoration in '95, '96, the site of the sand source was about 7 1/2 to 8 miles out. So it was within the state's jurisdiction. I think the longest distance that anybody that I'm aware of has hauled was Reddington Beach, and they hauled about 13 miles. But it was a north/south haul rather than offshore. They mined the sand from the shoal out by the mouth of Tampa Bay, and they took it north and put it on the beach in Pinellas County. When we were looking at this preliminary offshore sand search a couple of years ago, they looked offshore probably 10 or 12 miles and then south -- down south of Marco and off of Cape Romano, and that was where, actually, I think the most appropriate material was found, which is some miles west and south of Cape Romano. Out in that area there's an awful lot of sand. Most everything that comes off the beaches of Collier County north of there has ended up down there in the Cape Romano shoals. So that's a logical source. It may be in our jurisdiction; it may not. But the Mineral Management Service is not unhappy with use of that material for restoration of public beaches. MR. PIRES: Thank you. MR. SNEDIKER: Ron, assuming this goes through, when could we expect to see the report? Any estimate on that? Page 51 March 15, 2002 MR. HOVELL: Uh--. MR. SNEDIKFJR: Do they give you a time frame as to how long it would take? MR. HOVELL: If they did I don't remember what it was, and I didn't bring that with me. But both of these, the emergency response plan and the county-wide sand search, should it be approved all the way through the Board of County Commissioners, again, I would propose that both of them be budget amendments to this year so that we can get on with it. I think in general I've heard that sand searches seem to take in the neighborhood of a year or maybe even two when you include the permitting. MR. SNEDIKER: Yeah. This one took several years before it finally got done. MR. ROELLIG: My only point is (inaudible), but basically, once you start transporting sand by water, it's the -- distance is not a big cost factor either. Once you got it on the barges is whether you take it 40 miles or 100 miles. By cubic yard, it doesn't make much difference. So I don't know where the 40 came from, but I wouldn't be necessarily limited to that as far as transportation goes. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I think it's very hard to understand, at least for a layman, the $600,000 number because it seems like studies such as this should be able to build on prior work, or maybe they do. But then that makes me ask why so much money? If you just said the old Coastal -- former Coastal was $300,000, and they had done, if I recall, somewhere around $200,000 for the work and found for our purposes nearly an infinite sand source, I don't understand doing this again -- or I would understand maybe having to update it or enhance it. I don't understand the huge dollar amount, particularly when the same firm has done work in Lee, and we have Page 52 March 15, 2002 the existing work from the other Coastal. I know there's got to be a reason for it. You don't come by the 600 casually. I'd like to have that explained. I don't, certainly, understand it on the surface. MR. HOVELL: No, and I don't disagree. I mean, it's a question that I've tried broaching with them as far as are they sure that they've really looked at whatever data might be available from Coastal Engineering Consultants, how much will this overlap -- I mean, 40 miles, that could go a fair way into Lee County, which they've already done. But there's also -- on the flip side, there's also a lot of requirements that are somewhat imposed by the state when they are cost-sharing this with us. They require a lot of GIS-related data that we might otherwise have asked for or gotten. So I'm not sure other than perhaps getting status -- actually inviting them during the progress of this thing and getting status reports from them and making sure that ultimately whatever amount of money we spend is explained to us. I certainly see that as a good thing. But for purposes of putting in a grant application, given that we are where we are, I accepted their budget number and just put it into the grant application. It doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to turn around and sign a contract with them for the whole 600,000 by any means. You know, the other thing to keep in mind is that these are the folks that we've kept very busy over the last six weeks on the rock-removal plan. So they've not really had time to focus on longer-range issues. MR. GALLEBERG: But still, then there may well be an answer. But, again, if you look at it from a lay perspective, we have the report that says there's appropriate sand and, again for our purposes, basically infinite quantities off of Cape Romano. I could understand if that needed to be confirmed or updated or present engineers needed to give their opinions since we're not working with Coastal -- the old Coastal anymore. I could understand all that. I just Page 53 March 15, 2002 don't understand that this thing has to be sui generis, that it's starting from the -- you don't have to say that word because that's a Latin phrase -- but that we have to start from the beginning. Retrain my old legal training here. DR. STAIGER: Some of this cost is probably the sampling. It depends. I'm not familiar with the proposal, but if you're going to define a borrowed source to the point where you can actually use it in a contract document, then you've got to do an awful lot of coring. And it's vibra coring, and that is done with a specialized rig, and there are not that many people around who do it. And that gets to be pretty pricey. I mean, a-half-a-million dollars worth may be a lot more, but I know that that was the one thing that Coastal Engineering Consultants had not done, which was to go out and do a great deal of definition of borrow area, and that was one of the concerns was after the restoration in '95, '96 was that they hadn't defined the borrow areas with a sufficient number of cores to find the rock that the ended up on the beach, so that I think Coastal Engineering is looking at more frequent coring intervals to make sure that they define the material better. And that gets pretty expensive. But I haven't looked at the proposal. I have a feeling that's probably part of why the cost is up there. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: So where we sit today then, the work that Coastal Engineering Did -- the old Coastal -- other than giving us a lead that there well may be sand in that Cape Romano area, doesn't have any value to us today? DR. STAIGER: Oh, I think it's very valuable because it defines the area where you can then go in and get much better definition. I think it's the issue of how deep does the sands go is how much contamination is in it in the form of unsuitable material, rock or clay something like that. And I think they did some jet probing perhaps, but I don't remember the detail they went to, but I know that they Page 54 March 15, 2002 recommended that the next phase would be a lot more detailed sampling with a lot more coring. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: So part of the 600 includes different phases then that -- and I'm just saying the 300,000 figure because I think that's we said earlier. The 600 we're looking at includes more in different phases. DR. STAIGER: That would be, I think, the followup -- more like the second phase of what's already been started, I think. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Mr. Snediker, I think you had a couple comments. MR. SNEDIKER: They did vibra core logs. They are right in the report. DR. STAIGER: Okay. MR. SNEDIKER: And they went out, but this being the coastline (indicating) they are out here 17 miles out in various test areas. Down here, this being Cape Romano shoals, is where they found the sand, I think. So they did -- and I'm not trying to defend them, but they did a pretty exhaustive survey on that and did a lot of testing. Now, they did not do, I think, the hopper-- David, I think -- MR. ROELLIG: Clam shell. MR. SNEDIKER: Clamshell so we can take it out and spread it all over. When they do their samples up to now, they're done with a screen, in effect, at the bottom, which has a tendency albeit to eliminate the rocks. So I think a lot of work is done, and I sure hope that if we pay someone $600,000 that they don't reinvent the world here, reinvent the wheel. MR. ROELLIG: My thoughts on this is if we would only recommend a contract to pull this information together and get kind of a reconnaissance or sort of a minor feasibility report out of them for, let's say, $25 or maybe $50,000, and then we'd be at a decision Page 55 March 15, 2002 point rather than do the whole 600,000, or if we do want to recommend the whole 600,000 that we still put in as a decision point, that they come back after, you know, some modest amount of money $25 or $50,000, let them review the prior work and come up with what their plan of action would be for the rest of it. Because as Dr. Staiger said, when you get into vibra coring and all the sampling and geophysical analysis, that can be very expensive. And we don't want to get to the end and find out that we should have stopped after 35,000 or something of that sort. So that would be -- if I was making a motion, that's the way I would phrase it. Now, I don't know how the rest of-- MR. HOVELL: The engineer-- Coastal Planning and Engineering provided a draft scope of services back, I think-- actually, this one they provided back in December, and because it was only listed to be cost shared with the state, I sent it to the state for their comment. Well, I just got the state's comments back, I believe it was last week, and they did make a number of changes, some of which cost more money. And then based on what I thought was at least a scope that had various phases in it, then I went back to Coastal and said -- and as you'll note, this didn't make it into the book. We're so close to the budget year, can you at least give me a budget figure that I can put a grant application together for. But, no, I certainly didn't mean to imply that was going to be one single contracting effort, and we would just sign and wait till they expend the whole amount of money before we get any results. I think from the contracting point of view, you're right. They'll be Phase 1 preliminary reports. My point of view, too, some proof that they've incorporated all available data before they start creating new data, and that we would go from there. MR. ROELLIG: Is that a problem with the state as far as their Page 56 March 15, 2002 cost sharing? MR. HOVELL: No, I don't think so. MR. ROELLIG: I don't want to -- to me, I don't want to go out and just to get cost sharing have the county spend $600,000 when we could have done it for 50 without cost sharing. MR. HOVELL: No, I agree. I agree. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I was going to say essentially what Mr. Roellig just said about the $600,000 number. I think we can probably all agree that this activity is worthwhile and something that we would wholeheartedly recommend, but just as Mr. Kroeschell was saying earlier, that a $30 or $50,000 line item that says engineering services doesn't provide enough detail that's true for those dollar amounts, and it's more true for this even. And we understand why we don't have that detail. But I think, you know -- and I know that Mr. Vell (phonetic) and Dr. Staiger know their field very well, but for us trying to make a recommendation to just say this stuff can be expensive, and then you arrive at 600 -- and I know they told you 600 -- I wouldn't want to recommend that. If we can do it feasibly, I'd like to go along Mr. Roellig's route. I don't know what the numbers should be. That, I would like to get some advice on. If it's 25,000, 50,000, what can be suitably done in this round, and maybe you put a little bit on top of that for flexibility. But to do the whole thing right now without really having anything before us, I think is going too far. Because, then again, things can change in the future, but that becomes its own organism kind of. All of a sudden there's 600,000 in the budget, and it becomes almost self-fulfilling, or it could. It may not, but it very easily could. I think that's going too far right now to do that. And also even the mere fact of dredging, we understand the need to look, and it may be the only way to do a large-scale renourishment, Page 57 March 15, 2002 but the former dredging is still raw in people's minds. And a $600,000 line item for dredging, they are going to say, "What's going on?" It needs a little bit better explanation. That's my thoughts anyway. MR. HOVELL: Do you want me to move on to Barefoot Beach dune restoration? The Barefoot Beach Club has recently submitted an application. They -- since Tropical Storm Gabrielle, they have been working either independently or with Coastal Engineering Consultants to come up with a plan to restore their dunes. They applied for the emergency permits. They have the plans in place. They even have the contracts in place and, I believe -- I don't know exactly when the work's going to start, but the grant application indicates that by April 30th of this year they will have done this project. It includes not only trucking sand in but replanting dune vegetation, irrigating them, and repairing some dune walkovers, as well as reimbursement for removing some debris. And it comes to just over $100,000. Having just gotten this in, I haven't had a chance to ask the county attorney for a specific legal opinion, but my previous discussions with the county attorney about picking up debris off of Barefoot Beach are such that I feel fairly confident in saying that currently we are not in a position to provide TDC funds for what, in essence, is private property. Until there comes a day when we establish an erosion control line or property line between where their property ends and the state property begins and we get easements from them that allow for public maintenance and public access to those areas, I don't feel it would be appropriate to agree to spend the tourist tax dollars. I think longer term it's something that we should probably look at doing. The question would be-- there's a number of political decisions in there, but in the short term I guess I would not Page 58 March 15, 2002 recommend that we pursue this application. MR. PIRES: And, Mr. Chairman, on that note also, I guess a couple of concerns or questions and comments on this application. Number. 1, it's called Barefoot Beach Condominiums, and there are a number of them, and there's a master association. There's some issues going on between the master association, and I understand, some other individual property owners' association. There's extensive protracted litigation between the county and the Lely Barefoot Beach organizations over beach access to gatehouse and all that. And one of the points of contention is what control or access is there over the roadways going to the state lands and the county lands at the end of Lely Barefoot Beach Boulevard. And I know that the application states that it's a "highly publicly accessed beach area," but this is about a half-a-mile north I guess, of the county's Barefoot Beach. And, again, coupled with all the other issues that are currently pending, I tend to agree with the staff that this is not an appropriate grant request that should be recommended favorably. In fact, I think it should be recommended not to be approved consistent with the staff recommendation. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Thank you. Any other comments on this? (No response.) MR. HOVELL' And then if we're ready to move to the last one, I would ask Dr. Staiger, since he just brought it in, to go over the last grant application. DR. STAIGER: Yeah. This the one that stemmed from a project that we had the bid opening Monday of this week for this Gordon Pass jetty sand tightening project. And the -- what I'm looking at here is -- I'm sorry. On the second page of it, the total amount requested is erroneous. I didn't fill the blank in right if you Page 59 March 15, 2002 look at the last page where I've explained this thing. We have a grant from DEP for 50 percent of the cost of this project. We also have a grant from the TDC for $325,000. The low bid for the project was $729,729 or 721, and the engineering cost we have a contract now for that for 80,445. The difference between the 50 percent that we have to provide for the total cost and what we've got granted is 80,083. We have an existing project, which is referred to as Gordon Pass Inlet Management for $129,000. And what we'd like to do is simply apply 80,000 of that $129,000 grant to the sand tightening project so we can award this contract. It's going to go to City Council for contract award next Wednesday. We're going to request that council consider it as an added agenda item because we just opened the bids the last couple days ago. We couldn't get it on the agenda regular term. But the reason we're pushing this is that we need to get the first couple of hundred feet of this project started because it's working on the beach. Once that initial 150 to 200 feet is under construction, the rest of the project can be done from a barge. So if we can get the contractor started by the week after next or so, then he should be able to do the inshore part of it before the end of April, and we won't be working in turtle season on the beach. If we can't get it started that fast, then we end up with the inshore portion not be able to do it until next November. The total estimated time period to do this whole thing is 120 days, so if we get it started on the beach in late March, we should be able to have it finished by next fall. And part of the reason we like to do that, as well, is the Corps of Engineers is supposed to start dredging Gordon Pass in September, and we'd like to have this jetty sand tightened before they start, so when they put the sand to the south on the Key Island Beach it doesn't start washing back through the jetty into the pass. So it's kind of a -- we're trying to coordinate this project with Page 60 March 15, 2002 the Corps' dredging project. But these monies are already granted. We have a tourism agreement for this $325,000. We have this other grant for the $129,000 that we've not used. So what we're asking is for your permission to take 80,000 of the 129 and stick it over into the jetty sand tightening project. It's not new money; it's rearranging money that's already granted several years ago. But in order to do this appropriately, we need to to come through the Coastal Advisory Committee and then go to TDC, and then the Board of County Commissioners. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Are there any questions on that? MR. ROELLIG: I was going to make a motion to approve that request because it is -- I agree with Dr. Staiger; it would be very unwise to do the dredging and then do the sand tightening after that. MR. KROESCHELL: I'll second that one. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. We have a motion by Mr. Roellig, and Mr. Kroeschell seconded it. I just wanted to ask for edification. The reference to the existing grant of 325,000 is that-- I don't see it on our ten-year list. If it's not there, is that because the grant was made prior to fiscal '02? DR. STAIGER: Yes. MR. HOVELL: Yes, that's correct. And if I could interject, this -- it is an approved grant application. It's on your status sheet that I passed out on, I think, page 4 of the City of Naples pages. I'm sure you can find it on there. As far as procedurally, in essence, the city is asking for more money under that same project. And from that aspect I would recommend that we pick a nice round number because, you know, there might be other minor changes that occur to the process. So 85,000, 90,000, 100,000, whatever, pick a number to cover the $80,000 that they need to get the contract awarded. Procedurally, Page 61 March 15, 2002 though, the county will decide how best to do the budget amendments to make this happen. We won't necessarily need to take it from one city project and move it to another. If there's a city project with excess funds, at some appropriate point we'll recapture those into reserves. If there's a city project with -- such as this one -- with a need that gets approved for more funds, we'll pull those probably out of reserves and/or do it in conjunction with the budget amendment taking away from another project. So I wouldn't necessarily look for you to, you know, agree with all the funding mechanisms, just do you agree with, you know, the price increase, and how much money do we want to budget for it. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I think that's our role, but it's a valuable point to note that the net effect of all this -- because either we have or will withdrawal that request that the Army Corps is going to cover. The net effect is that there's a lowering of the amount of committed funds once it all washes through. MR. HOVELL: If I could make one other point before you get onto voting. We did get an e-mail from Mr. Boggus concerning an article that at least appeared in the electronic version of the Naples Daily News; I didn't find it in the paper version. The title is "Army Corps Halts Beach Renourishment to Fund War Effort," and the implication being that if they've diverted that kind of money towards the, quote-unquote, war effort, then I'm not sure if anybody's gone back and double-checked that the Corps still has the funds to do the Gordon Pass dredging this summer. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: What's the date of that article? MR. HOVELL: Thursday, March 14th. MR. ROELLIG: I didn't see that. DR. STAIGER: That was in reference to Martin County Beach renovation project, which the Corps was funding, but the Gordon Pass thing is a congressional add-on directly from Porter Goss into Page 62 March 15, 2002 the budget, and those tend to be, I think, something that are a little bit less capable of being -- MR. ROELLIG: I haven't seen the wording, but if Congress has directed it, the administration signed the bill, then I've never seen a case where they could take the money back without Congress's okay, which seems very cumbersome for this particular size of project. So I wouldn't be overly concerned about that, but it certainly should be checked out. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Any other questions at this time? (No response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: We've had these four other items, and there have been questions and/or doubts about a couple of them at least. So why don't we vote on them individually and in order. The first one we discussed as an added item is --. MR. KROESCHELL: What are we going to do with the motion on the floor? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Do we have a motion? I didn't catch it if there is. What is the motion? MR. PIRES: I think that was up to the last for the City of Naples. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: if someone wants to second it then. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Well, we can take the fourth first I didn't realize we had a motion. We have a motion by Mr. Roellig, seconded by Mr. Kroeschell on the City of Naples proposal for Gordon Pass. All those in favor say aye. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Aye. MR. ROELLIG: Aye. MR. SNEDIKER: Aye. MR. STAKICH: Aye. MR. KROESCHELL: Aye. MR. PIRES: Aye. Page 63 March 15, 2002 CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Passes 6 to 0. MR. HOVELL: If I could be clear then, we're to write into the budget for the exact amount requested, $80,083? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Actually, we didn't cover that adequately, and maybe we should make that clear. I think it's just advisable and common sense to round it. MR. SNEDIKER: I think Ron requested up to 90,000 just in case there's additional funds -- additional funds needed. MR. HOVELL: Well, had I had the opportunity to comment to Jon on this prior to the meeting, I would have asked him to round it up to some other number. So if I could ask somebody to pick a number and then have you recommend that, I'll be happy to recommend that on up the TDC and BCC line. MR. SNEDIKER: Want to use the $90,000 number then? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. MR. SNEDIKER: Gives you some flexibility if necessary. MR. ROELLIG: If we have to amend the motion, I'm willing to do that. DR. STAIGER: Thank you. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I think it will be clear from the record. MR. ROELLIG: All right. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Now we have the beach emergency response plan for $25,000. MR. KROESCHELL: I move acceptance of that. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Motion by Mr. Kroeschell. MR. ROELLIG: I'll second that. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Second by Mr. Roellig. All in favor say aye. Page 64 March 15, 2002 CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: MR. ROELLIG: Aye. MR. SNEDIKER: Aye. MR. STAKICH: Aye. MR. KROESCHELL: Aye. MR. PIRES: Aye. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: (No response.) Opposed? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Passes 6 to 0. Next, we had -- am I doing it in the correct order? -- county- wide sand search or am I out of order now? I guess we're all in -- well, that one we had discussion, and I guess perhaps if there's a consensus that we don't want to -- I don't know if we have a consensus. We've had at least two comments that 600,000 is too much to recommend right off the bat without knowing more. We talked about a smaller amount that might be wisely spent in a budget year. MR. SNEDIKER: On the couple of these where we still have questions, are we going to have another meeting before the TDC meeting? Correct? In early April? I guess it's not confirmed yet, but if we do have another meeting, maybe we can get more information on a couple of these projects by then. MR. KROESCHELL: I think that would make sense. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Mr. Stakich, you were going to say something? MR. STAKICH: I was going to say, 600,000 you know, if we approve it, it's only a budget item. We're not allocating -- we're not spending the money. That gives us time -- if we approve it now time for a tem -- gives us time for the engineers and our staff to come back to us to say -- don't forget, we still have to approve any contract that they issue. So we still have control over it. All we're doing here is Page 65 March 15, 2002 allocating or budgeting the 600,000. We're not spending the line. So I personally would say go ahead and budget the money, pass it as a budget item knowing that we have control later on when the details come out for how the money is to be spent and what the bids are going to be. MR. PIRES: I guess there's a question, will we see anything subsequent in time? In other words, if the county were to go out and do request for proposals for the scope of work, would they come back before this board for recommendation to the County Commission as to whether to award that contract to that entity? MR. HOVELL: First, let me answer a different question. I'm almost positive the TDC meets on Monday, April 1st. So, no, we will not have another meeting between now and then. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I believe it's April 15th. MR. HOVELL: Has it been set as the 15th then? Okay. To more directly answer your question, though, we can make the process whatever you want. I understand your level of discomfort with it. I hope you can also appreciate, though, how cumbersome it is as staff to try and do things in the budget outside of a normal process. And so I appreciate Mr. Stakich's comments as far as approving a budget and let's see if we can't control it through some other process other than the budget process. What I could offer is, you know, whether it was the 600,000 or some smaller amount that got us started. In either case, if you wanted to specifically have the engineer at a future meeting, you know, and you can ask them directly the questions and/or look at a report first that they have or what have you, or for that matter review the scope even before we sign a work order. I'd be happy to do any of those things. We don't want to turn this into something that, you know, you approve now and then never see again. The second thing to be aware of is any individual work order Page 66 March 15, 2002 under the professional engineering contracts, any work order that exceeds $90,000 has to go in front of the board as a specific approval item. So if we were to attempt to do one $600,000 work order, it would clearly go before the board. MR. PIRES: Would it come before this board, though, for recommendation review to the County Commission? MR. HOVELL: Not typically, though. MR. PIRES: And I think that's where some of the discomfort -- the level of comfort decreases with this committee if we have that ability to do that, and I'm not sure that's the scope. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: And all those comments are correct, and as Mr. Stakich pointed out, budgeting a certain amount is a lot different than spending. And there would be all the approvals and checks and balances, but implicit in throwing 600,000 or whatever number into this plan is a policy recommendation -- at least this is how I feel -- it's a policy recommendation by us that we should be doing this very intensive wide ranging sand source search. And the answer may well be that's what we should be doing, but I don't think we can just get it this afternoon and say that's what we should be doing. We're kind of recommending a policy decision. We have to go a little to the side on our meeting schedules when we're talking about future meeting schedules, I think, in a more general sense later on in this meeting. But when we had our last workshop on March 1st, we weren't aware of the Friday afternoon issue being a problem, but we did discuss the fact that if we felt we needed one more meeting before the TDC without -- we could always call some sort of special meeting -- there was time that we could meet in another two weeks or so. And the TDC meeting is April 15th; that I know. So we could have another meeting, and I think it wouldn't necessarily have to be a long meeting. Clearly, we're getting a lot done today, but a couple of Page 67 March 15, 2002 these stickier items -- including a presentation on this 600,000. My gut instinct is you know what you're doing, and we can understand when you need a sand source search it's probably the right thing to recommend and the right amount even, but we can't understand that today -- or at least I can't. MR. PIRES: I think you summed it up nicely as far as my approach also there. I think the committee as a whole agrees it's a wise approach to do the far ranging sand source, but the scope of it after that is beyond us right now. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: So we can get into meeting specifically a little bit later, but two Fridays from now, even if we can't get all nine, I would hope that we have a -- MR. PIRES: I think that's Good Friday. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. We'll work it out. Let's just in principle agree that some of these stickier ones we may revisit in two weeks. MR. PIRES: So this won't be continued until the next meeting, the one on the sand source? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: To me that would be the best course if that's consensus. MR. SNEDIKER: I think Ron suggested that maybe we have the engineer come to the meeting --. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Yes. MR. SNEDIKER: -- and get a presentation from him as to what exactly he plans to do with five, six -hundred thousand dollars. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Right. Because, again, Mr. Stakich is correct, but then these things -- once they are in the budget, you tend not to prune things back. The third on our list was Hideaway Beach in keeping things straight. Pardon me, Barefoot Beach. MR. HOVELL: Barefoot Beach. Page 68 March 15, 2002 CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: And we had had some discussion on that and I believe a recommendation from staff that it was not appropriate at this time. If we don't have any further questions or comments, we can take a motion on that. MR. PIRES: I would recommend that we forward that request for Barefoot Beach dune restoration to the Board of County Commissioners or TDC for recommendation of denial on that application. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Do we have a second on that? MR. KROESCHELL: I'll second that one. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Motion by Mr. Pires, second by Mr. Kroeschell. All those in favor say aye. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Aye. MR. ROELLIG: Aye. MR. SNEDIKER: Aye. MR. STAKICH: Aye. MR. KROESCHELL: Aye. MR. PIRES: Aye. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Passes 6 to 0. Now, we are down to the Hideaway Beach issue that Mr. Roellig--. MR. KROESCHELL: One thing, Mr. Chairman. We pulled four items off the earlier -- are we going to take these four items that we didn't do anything with? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Well, that's what I was just referring to, the Hideaway Beach item, which I think is something of-- more than substance. It's important for treatment and consistency. The suggestion was -- the value of that project I don't think is in Page 69 March 15, 2002 question. The suggestion was going back to the 100,000; it's supposed to be treated the same as other projects of that nature; is that right? MR. ROELLIG: Right. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Do we have any questions or comments on that issue? MR. KROESCHELL: It makes sense. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Can we have a motion? MR. KROESCHELL: I move we adopt that for $100,000. MR. ROELLIG: I'll second that. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Motion by Mr. Kroeschell, second by Mr. Roellig--. MR. SNEDIKER: Can we add in there that 50,000 is a contingency item, which is detailed on the last page, is what we are pulling out? MR. ROELLIG: Oh, good. MR. KROESCHELL: That's right. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. The motion should be clarified that way. Questions or comments? (No response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: MR. ROELLIG: Aye. MR. SNEDIKFJR: Aye. MR. STAKICH: Aye. MR. KROESCHELL: Aye. MR. PIRES: Aye. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: (No response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passes 6 to 0. Page 70 March 15, 2002 I had forgotten the $9,000 City of Naples. I think this is before you came in, Dr. Staiger. We didn't have any objections to the substance of that proposal, but I think Mr. Hovell was saying that it could be handled now without a funding request. DR. STAIGER: Yeah, that's fine. I just thought this one up when I was putting the other ones together because the beach cleaning equipment doesn't really deal with these derelict structures, and I thought unless we had another way to do it, that in some cases we end up with -- after storms some of the -- especially in the wood structures that are south of the Naples Pier shed timber with big spikes sticking out of it and things like that. And it would be nice to be able to get down there and pull that stuff off the beach. Sometimes it ends up just drifting up and washing up into the dune system, and we may or may not even know about it. That's what it's all about is sort of removal of that kind of material on it on an as-needed basis. If we can cover that some other way, it's no problem. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: And, Mr. Hovell, you're saying we have a contingency or something in this year's TDC money that can be directed to that purpose? MR. HOVELL: Yes. I feel that project 10509, which was approved for $195,000, includes items such as this, which were written in as contingencies for getting out there and doing various debris removal and whatnot on the beach. And we have a standing contract with Lightener Contracting that includes both laborers and things like backhoes and dump trucks and whatnot that we pay on an hourly basis. So I think we have the budget and the contracts in place to accommodate this as long as it's, you know, within an area that we typically go and maintain and have a permit to maintain. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: So then and how we handle this - - I assume perhaps that Dr. Staiger simply on behalf of the city Page 71 March 15, 2002 withdraw the request; is that correct? MR. HOVELL: I think that would be appropriate. DR. STAIGER: That's fine. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. That disposes of that. We are Down to the last two, one being beach cleaning operations. If we have determined as a group that whenever we hold a meeting we should have a meeting before the TDC meeting on April 15th, does the committee feel that we should make a determination on this today or ponder it a little bit further and make that determination at our next meeting? MR. SNEDIKER: When do we think we could have this -- what do you call it -- solid waste disposal report or something? MR. ANDERSON: Probably in a couple of weeks. MR. SNEDIKER: Our next meeting will probably be in three weeks. MR. ANDERSON: Three weeks. MR. SNEDIKER: Is that feasible? I'm assuming. MS. KRAUS: As long as it's not the first week of April. MR. SNEDIKER: That would be the first week of April. MS. KRAUS: We have the International Sea Turtle Symposium the first week of April, so we wouldn't be able to do anything till after that or before that. MR. SNEDIKER: I'm guessing that'd be April 5. You will not be here; is that what you're saying? MS. KRAUS: No. There won't be any sea turtle people here. MR. SNEDIKER: Do we need -- do we need the sea turtle people? All we really want to see is what percentage of it is stone, which is rocks, which is Pepsi bottles. MR. KROESCHELL: I think the guy we need is A1 Marsten. MS. KRAUS: Yeah. I don't know if you could get a good Page 72 March 15, 2002 enough sample by that time. We were hoping to work with the Conservancy and getting a, you know, couple months study out of this with their beach survey that we're currently conducting and also with the sampling. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: One other possible route --. MR. SNEDIKER: Just hold off on it. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: One other possible route, I think we've agreed as a group that it's wisest to leave this line item in and then determine in the future how and if it might be spent. We might do that, and if the committee would authorize, for example, that I would write a letter on behalf of the committee just pointing out -- not trying to make a decision, because that's premature, but pointing out that we have these questions. We understand there's a philosophical issue and there are environmental questions, etc., and just pointing to the TDC amendment commissioners that while we're leaving this in the budget, we feel we have significant further work to do on how wise it is to approach this. MR. SNEDIKER: Sounds like a good suggestion. MR. STAKICH: I like that. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Dr. Staiger. DR. STAIGER: It might be appropriate for a -- some discussion at City Council workshop to get a feel from council as to what they think would be an appropriate intensity of cleaning on the Naples beach that could be then brought back to the advisory committee and the TDC, because I know that Marco Island has an existing beach management plan which has been in place since they did the beach restoration in 1990. And that calls for cleaning, but we don't have anything like that in the city, and we've kind of gone with the flow of the program, and it may be something that council would want to talk about, see if they can get some consensus. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I think probably City Council's Page 73 March 15, 2002 role in that would be important. That could come in in that discussion phase that I think we'll be doing even while this line item's in the budget. If that approach is agreeable to everyone, then maybe we can have a motion on that. MR. SNEDIKER: I'll make a motion to have you write the letter just described. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: To approve this grant request. MR. SNEDIKER: Yes, along with that letter-- an addendum to that grant request. MR. ROELLIG: I'll second that. MR. GALLEBERG: Motion by Mr. Snediker, second by Mr. Roellig. All those in favor say aye. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Aye. MR. ROELLIG: Aye. MR. SNEDIKER: Aye. MR. STAKICH: Aye. MR. KROESCHELL: Aye. MR. PIRES: Aye. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: That passes 6 to 0. We are down now to the last item in terms of our grants to the Goodland canals dredging design and permitting proposal. MR. PIRES: I know in this one I understand Mr. Stakich was -- correct me if I'm wrong, Bob -- you're thinking that possibly staff would come back or the proponents could come back with greater detail so we could have a better factual basis to make a recommendation. I'm not necessarily right now in favor of this application because I think it is more privately oriented and away from the scope of what we're inclined to do and based upon what Ron Page 74 March 15, 2002 and Jon, Dr. Staiger, were saying. But I think that's what --. Bob, you were indicating at least give it another shot if they come back with greater detail? MR. STAKICH: Well, first of all, we have to find out if it's legal. MR. PIRES: And if we're going to find out if it's legal, we're going to have another meeting anyways to discuss -- I think that may be the approach to have this considered when we have our next meeting to consider the other application, the sand source. MR. SNEDIKER: We might want to have the people from Goodland who made the application here, too, to answer any questions. But I'd like to see a detailed map of exactly, you know, which waterways, which canals are they talking about. MR. KROESCHELL: If there's aspect of being legal. If it's illegal then we don't need --. MR. SNEDIKER: Then forget it. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: If someone wants to make the motion, then why don't we -- just so we have clarity on the record, we have this item and the $600,000 beach item that's we'll address the next meeting and I don't THINK we continued the other one. If we did then I, perhaps, forgot that. We can just have a motion to continue those two items to the next meeting. MR. KROESCHELL: So moved. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: motion. MR. ROELLIG: Second. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: those in favor say aye. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: MR. ROELLIG: Aye. MR. SNEDIKER: Aye. Mr. Kroeschell's made the Mr. Roellig has the second. All Aye. Page 75 March 15, 2002 MR. STAKICH: Aye. MR. KROESCHELL: Aye. MR. PIRES: Aye. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Passes 6 to 0. Okay. That is a lot of good work, I think. We have next on our agenda the ten-year plan. MR. HOVELL: Okay. Let me see if-- let me see if I can put this on the overhead screen if it's going to make any sense. I also have it on the computer, but I'd just get a sense of whether or not -- yeah, I think even if I did that up on the screen on the computer I don't think you'd be able to make anymore heads or tails of it than you can up there so ... (Mr. Pires leaves the meeting.) MR. HOVELL: I guess we'll just refer to the paper copies we have in front of us. I did bring a computer version if anybody wanted me to do some "what-if' scenarios to see how things might be affected. But I'll start by saying that the changes to this version as compared to the version that we had at the last workshop -- you know, I took the comments and tried to take most of the comments that were made at the last workshop and incorporate them into the one that I mailed to you, such as changing the timing on -- let's see, where did it go-- the Doctor's Pass dredging, those every-four-year events were both moved out to the right one year as previously suggested because of the late finish of the last go around. I have also tried to add in some things that I had submitted as grant applications, both -- you'll notice in the fiscal year 2002 column under Item C, that top line there has 625,000. That's the countywide sand search and the $25,000 emergency response plan. And then the Page 76 March 15, 2002 other big changes are I did get some input from the office of budget on how to do the annual increase amounts for the revenue. Seemed like there was another major -- oh, and under Category G, the reserves, the catastrophe fund. In essence, per our discussion, if we're going to view that as an accumulating pot, that would be above and beyond the general reserves, which are more on this spreadsheet reflected in the carry forward line. The most recent month tourist tax revenues that we have received into the Category A fund was approximately 88 percent of the same time period from last year. The current budget office guidance to be conservative recommended that we take the year-to- date percentage, which is just under 82 percent, and apply that to the total of last year's collections and make that the projection for this year. And when you do that math, it comes out to about $5.2 million, so that's why I've shown the $5.2 million in revenue in fiscal year 2002. (Mr. Pires returns to meeting.) All future years that -- at this point all they've been able to offer since they don't set policy anymore than the current year and the future budget year, when they get to that point, which they've not yet, all they could offer is to look at the historical trends of the increase and to take the conservative number and just apply that. So the historical trend has been roughly 6 percent or slightly under. And so starting in 2003 and all future years I escalated it by 5 percent. I also got the input from them on what the current projections are for the interest income, and so I put that down as the 4.9 percent. And so when you take all the things that we've previously talked about as far as the recurring nature of the dredging or the annual beach maintenance or whatnot, put them all on this sheet, the biggest expenditure year comes in 2006 when we do both the major Page 77 March 15, 2002 renourishment project and parks and recs has in their longer term plan to put in for a major project. And that causes the fiscal year 2002 carryforward number to dip down to $1.3 million. So that's kind of the number I kept looking at when I would run any different scenarios to see if that number drops into a negative number. Then you start to wonder if we need to change the plan or not. MR. KROESCHELL: And what is the 3 million-reimbursement office? Do all three. MR. HOVELL: Well, we have a project agreement with the state for $1.4 million, but as far as timing of that, my expectation is that that will take about two or three or even four years to both spend the money and seek reimbursement from the state. We also expect to get about $2.4 million from FEMA. And I anticipate that between the money we're spending this year or the money that we would spend early next fiscal year starting on November 1 st when we truck sand to Park Shore and Vanderbilt again, that we will recover the beaches and apply for all of our FEMA money next year. And I'm, at least in this spreadsheet, showing that we would receive it all next year. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: I don't think we can approve this today because we have the two items that we're going to make a determination next year, and they would be reflected on the '03 column. But given where we are today, does anyone have any questions or comments on this? (No response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: This, too, I think will make final determination once we know where we are on those two remaining items which total 750,000, so they could affect this significantly. Or are you saying that -- oh, you did say the 625 in '02 includes the 600,000 that we're going to -- there's still no particular reason to approve this now. But we should approve it after we've done all the Page 78 March 15, 2002 grants. MR. HOVELL: And, actually, depending on what our meeting schedule is, you know, I know it's in the committee's charter to have a ten-year plan, and I know at some point the state asks for a long- range plan so that they can take a look at what they might cost share with us. But at this point I have no specific due dates for anything related to a ten-year plan. I thought it would just be something good to include as we go forward to the TDC and the Board of County Commissioners to say that we have something that is either pretty close or an approved plan so that we can see that we're not just looking at what kind of money we're going to spend next year, but that we have things lined up, and it looks like, you know, everything will work out. I think for purposes of when we do get a specific request from the state on what their timeline is in asking for a long-range plan, you know, I would want to use the most current information available. And if the budget office, you know -- even after you approve, if the budget office sets a policy that might change something in here or we get some other formal action that might change something in here, I would like to think the appropriate thing to do is update it and submit it to the state when it's called for. So perhaps for purposes of your discussions, since you intend to have another meeting before the TDC meeting on April 15th, then perhaps the thing to do is approve it, at least at that point in time, for presentation to the TDC. And then when it goes -- when all these grant applications and the ten-year plan go before the Board of County Commissioners, if there's no other policy changes, it would be the same ten-year plan. If there are some changes, then I would update it and submit it, and it would be somewhat of a living document, and I would continually come back to you and show you how the different things we're doing affect the ten-year plan. Page 79 March 15, 2002 I recall when I was relatively new here Mr. Strapponi asking that very question as we were doing some grant applications out of cycle. Well, how does this affect the ten-year plan, and at the time I didn't have a clue how to answer him because we didn't have -- because we didn't have a ten-year plan, you know, on the computer that I could just plug it in and tell him the answer to that question. So in the future I'll be able to do that. So, no, I don't have a problem continuing it to the next meeting, and whatever the sum of the grant applications that are approved, that would tend to affect either the '02 or the '03 column. I guess I would like to at least have a general consensus that the '04 and out columns seem to be appropriate at this point other than changes in things like the budget guidance I might get or interest rates or things that we don't make the decisions on. MR. PIRES: Wouldn't the carryforward, though, be revised depending on what happens with '02 and '03, the carry forward to '04 and '05 would be different. MR. HOVELL: Absolutely the carry forward numbers would change, but I guess -- I mean, in terms of the Categories A through G, the various projects, we don't vote on the parks and recs one, that the various projects are appropriately displayed and timed and, you know, whatever other words you can think of seem to be the right thing to have in there. For instance, if for some reason -- and I hate to say this at this point, but, you know, the longer I'm here and the more trucking evolutions I try and do, and the question in my mind because the -- just planning on spending a million dollars every year. I think it's a good thing to have in your hip pocket for something more out of the ordinary than just we happen to have lost 50,000 cubic yards across all of our beaches. If there's not a particular hot spot, I don't necessarily think we should just run out and do the renourishment. I Page 80 March 15, 2002 think longer term I'd like to come up with something that shows the economics of doing the major renourishments that might be every eight to ten years or whatever the frequency turns out to be and only doing the trucking evolutions when there's a real specific need in a specific location because I -- not only is it difficult work for me to coordinate, but I find the reaction to trucking, you know, is not overly positive. And it's also relatively expensive compared to a lot of other options, so -- I mean, for now that's in there, but longer term, you know, once we have that analysis and something to be able to show you, you know, that might be a major change we'd want to make to the plan is to have that be viewed as more of a contingency fund, if you will, and then you can get into the philosophical discussion of should we budget for it then, or should we deal with it when and if the situation arises. We certainly have the contracts in place to execute it, but do we need to have the budget in place or not, I think, becomes a good discussion point. So if there are any other items sort of along those lines that you would prefer to change now as opposed to wait for other information --. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Well, if we have specific change. I think as we go to the out years, for example, where you're talking about with the sand trucking for purposes of right now in the next couple weeks, we ought to be recommending in those out years the status quo, and then after we do the submission we'll be having the policy discussions. MR. HOVELL: Right. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: We had also brought up at previous meetings putting a public benefit component into some of these requests and saying that's 100 percent, that's 50 percent, etc. We may or may not do that, but that's a policy discussion we can have that may well affect the out years as time passes, but they don't Page 81 March 15, 2002 need to affect the out years today, I don't think. Are we all set with that? Dr. Staiger. DR. STAIGER: I'd just like to reinforce what Ron just said. The trucking right now is being done to deal with hot spots and also deal with the fact that when we did the restoration six years ago, it was not done to the full extent that it had been anticipated or designed. The project itself was -- in Vanderbilt Beach went the whole length of the design for the project. On Park Shore and the Naples Beach, the project was shortened in order to get it done -- get something done completely within the time we had. And also the actual width of the beach fill was reduced to compensate for the fact that we had this inappropriate material offshore that we didn't want to pump any more of on the beach, and also to get enough sand on the beach to have a reasonable length of beach restored. It was supposed to go to about 21 st Avenue South. It ended at about 18th Avenue South going south from here, and the actual width of the beach was cut back way do get all of it done. If we go back in the future (sic), assuming we find an offshore source that's appropriate, and restore the beach again with that kind of dredge and fill operation and do it to a design template that gets as far out as we can without environmental impacts and as far down as we can get within the permit constraints, we might have a beach that would last, before we start developing hot spots, significantly longer. So instead of looking at putting sand on the beach on an annual basis, we may be able to do it far less frequently, which reduces impact the impact of the trucking. And as Ron said, we get a lot of calls from people who don't like it. At Park Shore the fact that there is only one access at Horizon Way for all the trucks, and on the Naples Beach there's only a couple, and if we're doing -- if we do it far enough and well planned enough in advance, and we can get these guys to start the dredging process in the beginning of November and Page 82 March 15, 2002 have the permits in place. We didn't get the permits in place for this last one until toward the end of November. The contractor didn't start really, I don't think, until late November to do the restoration. We would have a long enough period of time to get it done right, and, hopefully, if the weather doesn't get really bad, we have an adequate window to get a project done. And it probably would be best to plan for that, and then in the future after that we wouldn't have to go deal with this trucking thing on such a frequent basis. That's a lot of assumptions, but if we plan far enough for it, we've already got the permit for the project, and I don't think getting a permit to renourish restored beach is going to be that difficult. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: We would all hope so, and we've done a year-- staff and all of us have done a year of this planning. And it should start to bear fruit, certainly in years two and three. You can't see that much now necessarily, but I think we are putting the pieces in place. Future meeting schedule, Maura Kraus, Ashley Lupo, a couple others have raised the issue that Friday afternoons don't work very well. The constraint we have is that this meeting room isn't available that often. I had Mr. Hovell to look into times that are available. Have you had an opportunity to do that? Maybe what would be best, if it's not cumbersome, to summarize the blocks of time that are regularly available and to e- mail or send us that, and we can get back to you about what times don't work, and we'll develop a consensus time that's available and then go forward with that and perhaps address that at the next meeting or the meeting after so we don't collectively say, "I can't do Tuesdays," and "I'm not good on Fridays." We can come in here with a little bit more coherent plan. Page 83 March 15, 2002 MR. KROESCHELL: Yeah, if he gives us the dates that are available... CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: And if you have our e-mails or addresses if anyone doesn't have it, and then we should all be sure to get back to Mr. Hovell so we can talk about it fruitfully next time. Next would be audience participation. We don't have anyone in the audience who has not spoken, so I think we'll probably be okay. MR. SNEDIKER: Just one more. We took $50,000 out of the Hideaway Beach budget, if you will, for contingency. Ron, do you need that put in some other budget and approved? MR. HOVELL: No. I would just take that out and it would, in essence, go into general reserves. Okay. MR. SNEDIKER: Just so we don't get caught. MR. HOVELL: Mr. Chairman, if I could, though, I will get a more specific schedule from the county manager's office. They schedule this room, but it's not very hard to give you a summary in the near term. Number 1, regularly scheduled meetings, the further out you go, the easier it is to just -- only be dealing with those things that are regularly scheduled, but for the month of April, unfortunately, our penciled in date isn't on their schedule for some reason, so we have no date at this point for April. And the only dates they offered were the afternoon of April 19th or the morning of the 22nd or the 24th. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: That clearly doesn't work in terms of this room. We may have to do our April meeting over in that Supervisor of Elections. MR. HOVELL: And then starting in May the only dates that they had that were available then and following months was the mornings of the second Monday, the afternoons of the third Friday, and the mornings of the fourth Wednesday. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Could you say those again? Page 84 March 15, 2002 MR. HOVELL: The mornings of the second Monday, the afternoons of the third Friday, and the mornings of the fourth Wednesday, if we're trying to start a new schedule in May. Now, if we just pick -- I'll go get the detailed schedule and mail it to you-all, and maybe what we need to do is just -- I hate to call them random -- but pick dates in April and May and maybe even June. But then try to use July -- let's put our mark in the sand for our regularly attended meetings so that something else doesn't get scheduled there. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. We'll all consider that-- it's good to have at least those three for now. For the next meeting, I guess we won't be here, but it's more important to have the meeting, of course. Does April 5th work at 1:30 just to do it one more time at our normal time? MR. KROESCHELL: What day of the week is that? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Friday. MR. PIRES: The only difficulty, I think, is from Maura's perspective. Isn't that the week you're all at the symposium, the sea turtle -- CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Well, we only have -- all we're discussing are the sand search and the Goodland canals, neither of which impact you, do they? MR. PIRES: Okay. April 5th then? CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Does that work for everyone present? MR. KROESCHELL: At 1:307 CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: At 1:30. And Mr. Hovell can inform us where we'll be. Presumably it will be that room at the Supervisor of Elections. Does anyone else have any other comments or points they'd like to bring out? MR. ROELLIG: I have a short one. You know, you talk about Page 85 March 15, 2002 trucking, and are you going to have the consultant here at the next meeting? MR. HOVELL: MR. ROELLIG: For the 5 April meeting? Let me see what I'm looking at. If the trucking is a problem, we should have somebody make an analysis of other methods of getting sand to the beach, whether it's by barge -- I presume we could -- I mean, I don't know. (Mr. Stakich leaves meeting.) MR. ROELLIG: You could barge sand down the Caloosahatchee River and pump it out on the beach. And some engineering firm should look at the other methods, so we're not just stuck with trucking because -- and as I said, if you can barge it from somewhere, it tends not to be outlandishly expensive, but we need to have a study of that. MR. HOVELL: Absolutely. CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Thank you. Anyone else? (No response.) CHAIRMAN GALLEBERG: Okay. We will see you again, April 5, 1:30 p.m., and we are adjourned. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 4:30 p.m. Page 86 March 15, 2002 COASTAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE GARY GALLEBERG, CHAIRMAN TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF DONOVAN COURT REPORTING, INC., BY PAMELA HOLDEN, REPORTER Page 87