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BCC Minutes 01/29/2004 S (LDC Amendments)January 29, 2004 LDC MEETING OF JANUARY 29, 2004, OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Board of County Commissioners in and for the County of Collier, and also acting as the Board of Zoning Appeals and as the governing board(s) of such special districts as have been created according to law and having conducted business herein, met on this date at 2:00 p.m. in SPECIAL SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: ABSENT: CHAIRMAN: Donna Fiala Jim Coletta Tom Henning Frank Halas Fred Coyle ALSO PRESENT: Joe Schmitt, Community Development and Environmental Services Administrator; Patrick White, Assistant County Attorney; and Susan Murray, Planning Manager. Page 1 COLLIER COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Board of County Commissioners/Land Development Code AGENDA January 29, 2004 2:00 p.m. Donna Fiala, Chairman, District 1 Fred W. Coyle, Vice-Chair, District 4 Frank Halas, Commissioner, District 2 Tom Henning, Chairman, District 3 Jim Coletta, Commissioner, District 5 NOTICE: ALL PERSONS WISHING TO SPEAK ON ANY AGENDA ITEM MUST REGISTER PRIOR TO SPEAKING. SPEAKERS MUST REGISTER WITH THE COUNTY MANAGER PRIOR TO THE PRESENTATION OF THE AGENDA ITEM TO BE ADDRESSED. COLLIER COUNTY ORDINANCE NO. 99-22 REQUIRES THAT ALL LOBBYISTS SHALL, BEFORE ENGAGING IN ANY LOBBYING ACTIVITIES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ADDRESSING THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS), REGISTER WITH THE CLERK TO THE BOARD AT THE BOARD MINUTES AND RECORDS DEPARTMENT. REQUESTS TO ADDRESS THE BOARD ON SUBJECTS WHICH ARE NOT ON THIS AGENDA MUST BE SUBMITTED IN WRITING WITH EXPLANATION TO THE COUNTY MANAGER AT LEAST 13 DAYS PRIOR TO THE DATE OF THE MEETING AND WILL BE IIEARD UNDER "PUBLIC PETITIONS". ANY PERSON WHO DECIDES TO APPEAL A DECISION OF THIS BOARD WILL NEED A RECORD OF TIlE PROCEEDINGS PERTAINING THERETO, AND THEREFORE MAY NEED TO ENSURE THAT A VERBATIM RECORD OF THE PROCEEDINGS IS MADE, WHICH RECORD INCLUDES THE TESTIMONY AND EVIDENCE UPON WHICH THE APPEAL IS TO BE BASED. ALL REGISTERED PUBLIC SPEAKERS WILL RECEIVE UP TO FIVE (5) MINUTES UNLESS THE TIME IS ADJUSTED BY THE CHAIRMAN. IF YOU ARE A PERSON WITH A DISABILITY WHO NEEDS ANY ACCOMMODATION IN ORDER TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS PROCEEDING, YOU ARE ENTITLED, AT NO COST TO YOU, TO THE PROVISION OF CERTAIN ASSISTANCE. PLEASE CONTACT THE COLLIER COUNTY 1 January 29, 2004 FACILITIES MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT LOCATED AT 3301 EAST TAMIAMI TRAIL, NAPLES, FLORIDA, 34112, (239) 774-8380; ASSISTED LISTENING DEVICES FOR THE HEARING IMPAIRED ARE AVAILABLE IN THE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS' OFFICE. 1. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE Non-Eastern Lands/Rural Fringe and Eastern Lands/Rural Fringe: THE BOARD TO CONSDER AN ORDINANCE AMENDING ORDINANCE NUMBER 91-102, AS AMENDED, THE COLLIER COUNTY LAND DEVELOPMENT CODE, WHICH INCLUDES THE COMPREHENSIVE REGULATIONS FOR THE UNINCORPORATED AREA OF COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA. 3. ADJOURN 2 January 29, 2004 January 29, 2004 CONSIDERATION OF AN ORDINANCE AMENDING ORD. NO. 91-102, AS AMENDED, THE COLLIER COUNTY LAND DEVELOPMENT CODE, WHICH INCLUDES THE COMPREHENSIVE REGULATIONS FOR THE UNINCORPORATED AREA OF COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA, REGARDING NON-EASTERN LANDS/RURAL FRINGE AND EASTERN LANDS/RURAL FRINGE- CONTINUED TO FEFIRIIARY 11,2004, AT 5:05 P.M CHAIRMAN FIALA: Meeting will come to order. And thank you for indulging us. We had some things to straighten out, and Joe Schmitt will tell you about them. I thank you all for being here and giving up this part of your day because you're interested and you care. So welcome to our Land Development Code meeting. And I will turn this meeting over to Joe Schmitt. MR. SCHMITT: Do we want to do the pledge of allegiance first, ma'am? CHAIRMAN FIALA: Oh, okay. Maybe we ought to do that. (Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.) MR. SCHMITT: We'll have a pause for a moment. CHAIRMAN FIALA: We have to have everything on the record, so we have to wait until we have the microphones working. MR. SCHMITT: I think we have something now, thank you. Okay, Madam Chair. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you, sir. MR. SCHMITT: Good afternoon. For the record, I'm Joe Schmitt, Administrator, Community Development, Environmental Services Division. This is -- I'm going to go through some procedural things so that the audience knows where we're going with this. First of all, this is the second hearing for a series of LDC Page 2 January 29, 2004 amendments which are part of our regular cycle. We're going to go through those sequentially. They are in your book. We'll be going through -- you should have with your book, and I'm looking at agenda items Page 5 through approximately Page 22, and those were stamped for the January 29th meeting. And those are your summary sheets that were in one of your books that said Land Development Code amendments, cycle three. CHAIRMAN FIALA: In Volume 2, correct? MR. SCHMITT: In Volume 2. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Yes. MR. SCHMITT: We're going to go -- I believe that was Volume 2, yes. We're going to go through those sequentially. They have to do primarily with issues regarding concurrency, height amendments, signs, and into the implementation of the interlocal agreement with the Collier County School System and then some issues dealing with elimination of preliminary subdivision plats. We should go through those, I think, rather quickly. Probably the most controversial will be the issue dealing with concurrency 3.15. Immediately following that, if you want to take a break at that time, I'm guessing that would probably take no longer than an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half at best. We would then proceed into the second phase of this, which is the first hearing of the 2003 Land Development amendments dealing with the Eastern Lands and rural fringe. And based on a request from members of the audience, they would like to deal with, and you concur, that they would like to deal with Tab M first, which has to do with endangered species. So we'll proceed in accordance with that schedule, ma'am, if that's all right with you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: That's perfect. And just by way of explanation, this first part that we're going to Page 3 January 29, 2004 be addressing now is part of the agenda where we're looking at this, and I know you said this, Mr. Schmitt, but we're looking at this for the second time, so that the audience understands that we've already gone through this. We've asked to have words changed, we've addressed this, and so this is our second attempt to do that as we go to modifying or changing or amending the Land Development Code. MR. SCHMITT: That's correct. And between Russell, who's sitting next to me and Ms. Susan Murray across sitting with Assistant County Attorney Patrick White, we will go through these, you will vote on these amendments, and then we'll proceed, the second phase of this, which will be the first hearing of the Eastern Lands and rural fringe amendments, and those will be for discussion only and for guidance. Patrick, you -- I know you have to read something into the record.'? MR. WHITE: Just one housekeeping matter, Madam Chair. Assistant County Attorney Patrick White. I reviewed the affidavit of publication for today's meeting and find that it's legally appropriate. And at this time I'm turning it over to our records keeper. Thank you. MR. SCHMITT: If I could also ask any members of the audience that wish to register to speak, if they could fill out a speaker slip and bring it up here to myself or Russell so that we can coordinate the items that you wish to speak on. So with that, Madam, Madam Chair, we will proceed. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you. MR. SCHMITT: I will turn this over to Russell. We'll proceed now with the cycle three amendments. Russell, if you would? MR. WEBB: Thank you. Madam Chair, Commissioners. Russell Webb with Community Page 4 January 29, 2004 Development and Environmental Services. The first item for considerations is on Page 1 of your LDC summary sheet, agenda item Page 5. It's the boathouse requirements, Section 2.6.21.4. And this is dealing with adding a seventh criterion to address boathouse petitions. Ross Gochenaur from Community Development is here to speak on this. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Which page is that? MR. WEBB: The amendment is on page -- actually -- yeah, I'm sorry, Page 1 of the LDC packet. CHAIRMAN FIALA: That's Page 1. For those who are looking, it's Page 1 at the middle of the bottom of the page, correct? MR. WEBB: Right, agenda item Page 23, handwritten Page 23. MS. MURRAY: Madam Chair, just for clarification, you know we have the summary sheet, which summarizes all of the amendments we've heard and are scheduled for these schedules, or for this date. And then that is Pages 1 through 18. And then after the summary sheet comes the actual meat of the amendments which begin on Page 1, handwritten Page 1, which is in the center of the page. So we will refer to both those page numbers for your reference, if that's acceptable. CHAIRMAN FIALA: That's perfect, thank you. MR. GOCHENAUR: Commissioners, for the record, Ross Gochenaur, Planning Services. When we met the last time, you discussed the ramifications of this, and we proposed a staff alternative to the language that was submitted by the Planning Commission. It's my recollection that you accepted that language, which is how we would amend the code at this stage. There was also a question as to whether or not it would be possible for boat docks to be prohibited. As a result of that question, we've set up a workshop for the 15th of March to discuss the issue. Page 5 January 29, 2004 We're currently trying to inform all concerned members of the public with regard to the issues at hand. If you have any questions about that, I'd be glad to try to answer them. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: So we're -- that's going to be a workshop that's going to be open to the public on both sides of the issue; is that correct? MR. GOCHENAUR: Yes, sir. It will discuss the proposal to eliminate boat houses as a permitted use in the county. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Good. And that's going to be March 15th; is that correct? MR. GOCHENAUR: Yes, sir, I believe. Yes, sir, the 15th. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Coletta? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yes, can you give me a little idea how you're going to handle the notification? I know that there's legal notification, that we can go past that with additional notification. I'm very concerned. I have people on the island of Chokoloskee who have boathouses or may wish to have boathouses, and because of the remoteness of the area may never know that we're in the process of doing this to them. MR. GOCHENAUR: In addition to the normal procedures, we've also sent letters of notification to the property asso -- property owner associations in Chokoloskee, Everglades City -- MS. MURRAY: Goodland. MR. GOCHENAUR: Goodland, exactly. Thank you. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: What property owners associations in Chokoloskee? MR. GOCHENAUR: We did get the name of an association from our public relations officer. Page 6 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Would you be so kind as to supply me the digital form of that notification so I can make sure the word really gets out? MR. GOCHENAUR: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And then I'll supply them what the ramifications may be plus and minus, and we'll see what happens at that meeting. MR. GOCHENAUR: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay. Thank you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: And if I may add -- MR. SCHMITT: I also-- CHAIRMAN FIALA: Oh, I'm sorry. MR. SCHMITT: I also asked Ross to contact some of the primary contractors who install these and construct these boathouses as well, so they can get the word out. MR. GOCHENAUR: Yes, sir, we've done that as well. We've notified the major dock contractors in the area. Again, we've sent them the same information we sent the property owners association. This is in addition to the required advertising. CHAIRMAN FIALA: And with Goodland, if you sent it to the little PO box there, because nobody has a mailbox at their residence, if you send it to the little post office in Goodland, they post it on the bulletin board, and everybody has to come there to pick up their mail, they'll see it. Isles of Capris, there are two people that are in charge over there and I'd like to make sure they got it as well. MR. GOCHENAUR: Okay. We'll do our very best to make sure everybody is advised. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you. If you contact me, I'll give you their addresses also. Ann Hall, Harry Rogers. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: One more question? Page 7 January 29, 2004 CHAIRMAN FIALA: Yes. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yeah, when it comes -- not about the notification, but if these boathouses, if we do ever got -- it got to the point where we banned new boathouses from going into place, what's the provisions of-- for replacement in case of a natural disaster and the boathouses that are there are destroyed? MR. GOCHENAUR: The current Land Development Code provision is for complete replacement of any boathouse that was in its current location and configuration prior to 1990. You would discuss whether or not you wanted to leave that language on the books or whether you wanted to modify that. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Now what was the logic we were using for banning boathouses? I can remember the discussion had to do with trying to enforce it or trying to permit them some places and not others? I'm trying to recall the circumstances. I'm sure our viewing audience out there would like to know why we're contemplating such a move. MR. GOCHENAUR: The initiative was in response to Commissioner Halas's question. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Commissioners Halas isn't here today, maybe we ought to kill it. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Oh, yes, I am. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Darn it, I thought maybe you were asleep, you know, we'd get away with something here. MR. SCHMITT: Commissioner Coletta, if I could just interject. It was at the direction of the Board for us to look at the feasibility of eliminating boathouses altogether within the county. It was predicated or precipitated basically by residents primarily within the Vanderbilt beach and bay area in regards to the issue with view and the other aspects of boathouses, and you asked us to explore -- you as a Board asked us to explore the feasibility of eliminating boathouses. Page 8 January 29, 2004 As you know, Marco Island has done so, and so has the City of Naples. And these were not commercial boathouses, but these were individual or private boathouses behind residences. And you asked us to look at that. And we're going to bring it back as a workshop item to discuss. And based on your guidance, we'll proceed with which direction -- whatever direction you want us to go in. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: The only other question I got, and forgive me for dragging this out, is there a possibility that if the area along the coast wishes to do this but someplace like Goodland or Chokoloskee does not wish to do it, there might be some sort of exclusion for them? Is that possible to draw it, or does it have to cover the whole unincorporated part of the county? COMMISSIONER HALAS: I think we can bring that up for discussion when we have the workshop. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, I thought it was a general question, you know, so people might have some comfort of which direction we're going, on both ends. MR. GOCHENAUR: My understanding with the Land Development Code amendment is that it would apply to the entire county, that if we wanted to address a specific area individually that an overlay would be the vehicle for that. I would like to Susan for comment on whether there's any other way to handle it. MS. MURRAY: That was my understanding. Patrick White might have a comment to that effect. It's more of a legal issue. MR. WHITE: I like the suggestion with regards to considering the issue at the March meeting. But I think generally the rule is unless there's something that's unique about a particular area in terms of its geography, that the rules that apply in the county in terms of its land development regulations should apply county-wide in terms of the unincorporated county. So there are the potential always for concerns about equal protection. Page 9 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you. MR. WHITE: But if the facts warrant it, certainly a regulation, if it's reasonable under the circumstances, it's possible to pass. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And the reason I was doing that is in case we got resistance from one small area of the county, we could still proceed with the direction and the wishes of the rest of the county. I thank you very much for that. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you. MR. GOCHENAUR: You're welcome. MR. WEBB: Madam Chair, if there are no other questions on that, we'll proceed to Division 3.15, which is the concurrency amendment. And Stan Litsinger, I believe, has a few small items he needs to read into the record and he can also address this situation. MR. LITSINGER: Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Commissioners. I have a one-page handout, if you will give me a moment. As Mr. White mentioned, this is -- for the record, Stan Litsinger, Comprehensive Planning Director. For the record, this is your second adoption hearing on your real time checkbook concurrency regulation, which you heard first on January the 7th and sent us forward with direction to bring it back for you to -- for adoption today. We have only two minor changes since the presentation to you on the 7th. I wanted to point out to you on the handout sheet that for clarification under the proportionate share provision, under 3.15.3.31, we have recommended that we exempt single-family for any charge or proportionate share, because upon calculation, it would be nominal in any case, and the cost of administration and collection would probably not justify any funds that were raised in order to make improvements within the TCMA. The only other change since the 7th of January is that we have Page 10 January 29, 2004 moved the traffic capacity reservation provision from definitions to the process for applying for development orders and certificates of adequate public facilities, which would be on Page 52 of your agenda package. Other than that, we are reporting back no changes and we would recommend that you adopt it as presented. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Coletta? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you. Let me see if I understand, Stan. We got a -- we're at two years. But that two years is predicated on -- in other words, a development can start prior to the construction of the road, if the road is finished in a certain period of time? Would you go in a little more on detail on that, please? MR. LITSINGER: The way your system is set up is that at the time that a site development plan is issued or a plat is issued or a building permit is issued, there has to be capacity to support the development that is approved on those development orders within your concurrency system today or within the two first years -- first two years of your scheduled capital improvements. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay. So give it to me in a real situation. If a person applies for a permit and they're approved because they were -- at this point in time they're going to meet the checkbook concurrency, their ability to build -- in other words, the road is maybe three years out, when could they build the road? MR. LITSINGER: Once the permit is -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: When can they build their PUD? MR. LITSINGER: If the SDP is approved or the plat is approved or a building permit, they can move forward immediately. MR. FEDER: For the record, Norman Feder, Transportation Administrator. Commissioner, to your example specifically, if I didn't have a Page 11 January 29, 2004 project programmed until the third year of my work program, and if, with existing traffic out there plus the application of one-seventh of the vested, based on anticipated build-out of vested units, and they came in with a final plat or plan for approval, we would not give them an adequate public facilities certificate, because I don't have available capacity under that example, and I don't have a construction project within the first two years of my work program. If I did have a construction project within the first year or the second year, then I would take the capacity that that construction project will provide, compare that to the existing traffic and the vested units, and if there's sufficient available capacity, then we would give them a certificate. But at that time when they get the certificate, the final plat or plan, they are paying half of their impact fees, with the other half due within three years. So we're in the process and in a position to bring forward that capacity, even beyond what we already have programmed, because they're going to consume -- the impact fees are based on consumption of available capacity. So first we have to have it available, it has to be coming on line within the two years, and that's the only way they get to consume it. And then they have to pay for their impact fees, and in this case they're paying for it right up front at final plat or plan, and they're not ready to build at that time? If it's a small one, it can go faster, if it's a big one, it's going to take over time. And then in three years we get the other half of the impact fees. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you, Mr. Feder. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Any other questions, Commissioners? (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: Do we have any speakers? MR. FEDER: Madam Chairman, if I could, again, for the record, Norman Feder, Transportation Administrator. Page 12 January 29, 2004 What I'd like to read into the record, though, while it's not part of what you have written here today or our Comp. Plan, we have to pursue how we're going to implement this. We've got a lot of that worked out. We've worked obviously with our staff, and that's what's most important. But also I related that to the industry and make sure we get their comments and issues. And there's one area that's been discussed a number of times before you. I know that they've presented quite a few times the issue of proportionate share, which I believe you'll find on Page 36, I think it is. Okay, we'll find it in a second. MR. LITSINGER: It's on the page summary that I handed out with the yellow sentence in it. MR. FEDER: Okay. And it's also on Page -- CHAIRMAN FIALA: Ten, 10, written on the bottom? MR. FEDER: Yes, 10 written on the bottom. And more detailed -- okay, more details on Page 38. And what we provided for was within a transportation concurrency management area, or TCMA, as it's referred to, within those two areas, the one in the northeast and the one in what we're calling our central, in those two transportation concurrency management areas, as you know, as long as 85 percent of the lane miles that serve the same trip purpose, whether it's north-south or east-west, are meeting the level of service, if a development comes in and has more than de minimus impact to a deficient segment within that TCMA, it can still proceed, unlike in other areas of the county that if you have more than de minimus impact to a deficient link, then you cannot proceed, and there's no project for it in the two years, as we just discussed. But in consideration of that, we have put in what is called a proportionate share, such as that development that's within that TCMA area that has impact to a deficient link that's more than de Page 13 January 29, 2004 minimus has to pay a fee above just their impact fee. And so that's described here. What we're looking at to set up in our administrative process, and I want to make you aware of it, is basically to structure that fee in one of two ways: That fee will either be a direct relationship to the volume or capacity of the deficient segment -- and I know this is rather detailed, but I appreciate your indulgence. For instance, if you have a deficient link, let's say within that northern TCMA as projected as a potential in the furore section of U.S. 41 that's already six-laned, if that were to become deficient, and let's say it became deficient by 1.05 volume to capacity. If you remember, if I'm at perfect situation -- well, not perfect, perfect is less than 1, I have more capacity than I have volume out there -- but equilibrium is the same volume as capacity, that's 1.0. Anything where you have more volume than capacity, where your numerator is bigger than your denominator, you're going to be over 1.0. So 1.05, as an example, would say that I'm over capacity on that length, so it's a deficient link. If I'm at 1.05, then either someone who is in the TCMA and impacts more than de minimus, that link, would pay 1.05 of the impact fee. So they pay five percent more than the standard impact fee. They pay the full impact fee and another five percent, or they do the detailed analysis of their impact to intersections and make the improvements required for those intersections. So it will be basically one of those two choices: Either go through the extensive detailed analysis to show exactly the impacts to intersections, provide the right-of-way and make the improvements so it's above and beyond, because we use our impact fees for multi-laning. So that would be the way to get at those operational features, especially where we have deficient links where we're already at our maximum standard of six lanes. Page 14 January 29, 2004 CHAIRMAN FIALA: You know, my question to you is -- I hope I'm not going in front of any of the other Commissioners, but I didn't see anybody's hand up. I know I've said this before, how can throwing money at a deficient road make it better? I mean, it's -- if you can't widen it any more, money doesn't mean anything. I mean, because then from there on in, forever after-- and that's who we're guarding, our future of Collier County, if the road is oversaturated, money is not going to help it. MR. FEDER: And agreed, Commissioner. Well, we're not trying to encourage the urban infill and the other issues, we're saying that if you're going to have more de minimus impact to a deficient link, you can't proceed forward. Only within the TCMA areas, where we've defined them and are looking for the further infill and development and looking to target the development there, are we saying that as long as 85 percent of the lane miles that are servicing the same trip purpose. Now, let's say in the northern one I just mentioned, U.S. 41, Goodlette-Frank Road, Airport and Livingston. 1-75 is not included in the mix at all, okay? If 85 percent of those lane miles are operating at acceptable level of service, even though, like in my example, let's say a section of 41 is not, if 85 percent of the lane miles are operating at level of service, even though you might have more than de minimus impact to a deficient link, you can still proceed. But what we are requiring is not just that you pay your impact fees and proceed. You go beyond that and you can make significant improvements, both by intersection modifications, computer signal upgrade, transit subsidies, so we get people out of the cars and reduce some of the volume. But again, you are basically capped in the sense that if you start to end up with too deficient a link or too many links are deficient, then you're not going to meet the 85 percent and you can't Page 15 January 29, 2004 proceed within even in a TCMA under the same situation. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Now -- and I'm sorry to belabor this, I'm sorry that I'm causing you extra time. MR. FEDER: No. CHAIRMAN FIALA: I'm going to think of one in particular. Little two-lane U.S. 41 that goes beyond 951. U.S. 41. All of a sudden I've found that there are a bunch of-- and by the way, we never hear about them all together. We only hear about one. We don't know that there are other PUD's going up in the same area, and all of a sudden you have 10 PUD's coming in. But still that little two-lane road, which isn't scheduled for widening at all. Now, throwing money at that isn't going to help it any at all. How do we stop the impact to that road so that it becomes so impacted nobody can use it? MR. FEDER: Commissioner, that's a very good example. First of all, U.S. 41, East Trail, let's say east of 951, I think you're talking about, where the two-lane section is? CHAIRMAN FIALA: Yes. MR. FEDER: Basically, that is not within a TCMA. We're not trying to encourage expanded development out there. That's number one. Number two, we don't give vesting rights or vested rights at the PUD. Only at final plat or plan. So you could have a number of PUD's out there, but in the case of a two-lane roadway that already has level of service issues, or soon to, the developments, when they come in for their final plat or plan, if there's not available capacity or a project very shortly that's going to provide that capacity, they cannot move forward. So you're not in a TCMA, it doesn't apply there. Additionally a PUD doesn't give them the rights to build, only sets up what the zoning as what they could build. But there has to be Page 16 January 29, 2004 adequate public facilities, and that's why we look at that at final plat or plan. CHAIRMAN FIALA: But you're only talking in a small area. So say for instance we're talking about a two-mile length where all of a sudden you have 10 PUD's coming up and each one has a numerous amounts of homes -- MR. FEDER: Again, again, the first one that comes forward. Let's take your example. Let's say I have 50 PUD's along that stretch. Let's say for sake of argument I can absorb another 4,000 vehicles and then I will be beyond my level of service. The first one that comes in, if they're going to use up all 4,000 of those spaces, exactly to the T, let's make it easy, that one gets an adequate public facility certification when they come in with their final plat or plan. Every other PUD out there will not be able to issue a final plat, subdivision plat or plan to get approval and get adequate public facilities until the roadway capacity is expanded. CHAIRMAN FIALA: But they can't pay money and then all of a sudden have -- what I'm trying to do -- MR. FEDER: No, this is only in the TCMA-- CHAIRMAN FIALA: -- is not break our road system down any further. MR. FEDER: This is only within the TCMA. And again, the monies that I've reviewed for you, the proportionate share, is only after it's determined that they can get adequate public facilities certification because 85 percent of the lane miles are operating at an acceptable level of service. This does not buy them certification. It's only an added fee acknowledging that they're within the TCMA and they're having some impact on a deficient segment. CHAIRMAN FIALA: What I want to do is I want to make sure that we have a leg to stand on when we object to too much. density, too much height, too much traffic in one area. I want to know that Page 17 January 29, 2004 we legally have some foot to stand on so that somebody can't come running back shouting Burt Harris or whatever. MR. FEDER: I'll definitely defer the legal issue to your counsel. But what I will tell you is, this Board always has a leg to stand on, we'll make sure you do. But what I will tell you is, the issue you're raising, and this is one of the things in the process that we'll continue to discuss. When you're talking about looking at the PUD level, that's a zoning level of action. That is not authorization to build if there is not sufficient capacity. Not only in roads, sewer, water and the other areas that you give capacity certification on. So the fact of the matter is that unfortunately I realize to the public when someone comes in and asks for the ability to zone their land for this type of development, everybody says okay, you approved another one, boy, the traffic's going to be here tomorrow. No, it will not. In the case of transportation -- I'll just speak to that -- they have to then come in on the final plat or plan consistent with what you may have agreed to on that PUD for their development, and then at that time it's determined whether there's adequate public facility, and if there is not, the answer's going to be no. And we're not only going to just take the traffic that's out there today. We're also taking into account-- which is a lot of the big changes you've been working towards -- all of that that we've given the okay to that may not have developed yet. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Well, that was the purpose behind the concurrency effort in the first place -- MR. FEDER: Very definitely. CHAIRMAN FIALA: -- and I understand that. But I just wanted to make sure that we have everything in place so that we all have a leg to stand on and that we're all marching in the same Page 18 January 29, 2004 direction. MR. FEDER: And that's exactly where we're trying to go. But you still are going to have issues, I realize, on the PUD and the public perception that you're agreeing to the development at that time. You're really not. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Yes. People believe that they -- as soon as we okay a PUD, they figure that they have every right to move forward. And we don't think that they do. MR. FEDER: If there's adequate public facilities and all the other issues, yes. But not if-- not unless there is. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Right. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry that I -- I took so long on this. MR. LITSINGER: Madam Chairman, that's the extent of our presentation, unless there's some other questions within this particular division that you'd like to discuss. It would be the one addition of the sentence in 3.15.3.31. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So you want our approval with the amendment? MR. LITSINGER: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HENNING: At the end of the -- MR. LITSINGER: That's correct. MR. WEBB: Actually, Madam Chair, we have one registered public speaker. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you. MR. WEBB: Reed Jarvi. MR. JARVI: Good afternoon. My name is Reed Jarvi. I'm representing the CBIA today, and I just want to tell you that we've been working with staff on this for many -- several years now, and I think we've come to pretty much a conclusion on where we are and we can all agree on it to a large extent. The biggest issue we've had recently is the proportionate share Page 19 January 29, 2004 calculations. And we've talked with staff and have come to an agreement on how that will be done. So at this time I just want to say we're supporting the changes. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you, Reed. By the way, just by way of explanation to our audience and our visual audience as well, everything on the Land Development Code today that we are going to be addressing takes a vote of four, a super majority. And as you can see, there are only four of us here. So if one objects, it will not move forward. Thank you. Just for explanation purposes. Thank you for asking that. MR. LITSINGER: You can take a straw vote on this particular ordinance. MR. WHITE: Madam Chair, I think you have the option to either vote separately on what you consider to be an appropriate grouping of amendments that are being brought to you today, or you could wait to the very end and vote on them all. There may be some advantage to doing so where there's an amendment, such as in this one, some slight change in text; might make the housekeeping a little easier at the end. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Motion to approve the concurrency Division 3.15 with the amended language in the handout that Mr. Litsinger handed out. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I second that. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Motion by Commissioner Henning and a second by Commissioner Halas. All those in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Aye. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Aye. CHAIRMAN FIALA: All opposed, like sign. Page 20 January 29, 2004 (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: We have a 4-0. MR. LITSINGER: Thank you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you. How about that first one? MR. SCHMITT: We can go back to the first one if you want, boathouses. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So moved. COMMISSIONER HALAS: That's with the language as it states today? MR. SCHMITT: As the language states today, given the guidance you gave us at the last meeting. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Right. With the idea, too, that there's going to be meetings taking place, public meetings, and that it still has to come back for final approval. MR. SCHMITT: Commissioner, no, this is not the elimination of boathouses. What this amendment is is the -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: The language. MR. SCHMITT: -- adding the criteria of-- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Oh, the language. Okay. Forgive me. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I make a motion we approve. CHAIRMAN FIALA: We have a motion on the floor from Commissioner Henning, so -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: I'll second it. CHAIRMAN FIALA: -- you can second it. Okay, very good. Any further discussion? (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: All those in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Aye. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye. Page 21 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Aye. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Opposed, like sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: Very good. And we move forward. MR. SCHMITT: And we'll move into the height issues, and we could take all those in one fell swoop then. We'll wait and go through all the -- those -- those four and then we can vote on those four after we're done. So, Russell? MR. WEBB: Yes. Madam Chair, the first amendment, numerically, is Section 2.6.3. That is on Page 34 of your LDC handout. I believe the agenda number is 56, agenda item Page 56. I think Susan, you're going to take this one, if there are any questions? MS. MURRAY: Yeah. I don't have a whole lot to say. We presented it last time in front of you. You had, I would say, some comments regarding the preamble and the description of what the amendments were proposed and we amended those. But I believe generally you were supportive of the language that we provided to you at the last hearing. I'd be happy to discuss that further, if you wish. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Any discussions? Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yeah, the only question is to make sure that we've got the proper language in here and this is on Page 43. It's under Division 6.3, definition. The building height, actual height of is referred to as the vertical distance from the average centerline elevation of the adjacent roadways to the highest structure, or apertures, without the exclusion of Section 2.6.3. MS. MURRAY: Are you asking me to confirm? Yes. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Any other questions, Commissioners? Page 22 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER HALAS: I move that we approve. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Move to approve from Commissioner Halas. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'll give it a second, but I do have a question. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Commissioner Coletta seconds. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: What is the definition of coast? CHAIRMAN FIALA: Coast? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: As far as how far from the coast is this definition? When we look at page 34, we see here -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: Oh, FEMA flood line you're talking about? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, yeah, on the coast, just a few feet for building heights measuring as much as 17 feet right on the coast or just a few feet inland. What exactly is it, just one side of the street or is it -- MR. SCHMITT: Commissioner, actually the flood insurance rate maps are defined for principally almost the entire urban area of the county. Of course, that's an ongoing debate we're having now with FEMA in regards to the amended maps. But the base flood elevation, some areas of the county there are no base flood elevations, so our criteria is 18 inches above the crown of the road for the base elevation that a building can be built. But principally we would be -- it varies in the county what the elevation is, based on the flood insurance rate maps associated with the area that the project's going to be built. But if you say coast it -- go ahead, Patrick. MR. WHITE: I just would like to interject that I think typically when you see those types of base flood elevations on a firm, you're talking about VE zones, which are very close to the coast and may be the first -- up to the dune line, perhaps. It depends, obviously, upon Page 23 January 29, 2004 the elevation and existing structures. But it is relatively close in terms of perhaps being one side of a typical barrier island, the seaward side. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Isn't the average about a quarter of a mile in? MR. WHITE: Depending upon the location on the, quote, coast. I mean, it's obviously very fact dependent, but -- CHAIRMAN FIALA: Do you have any other questions? Did that answer you? Commissioner Halas -- Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Does this conflict with the Florida Building Code? MR. WHITE: I don't believe that it conflicts with it. I think we contemplate the application of the Florida Building Code and the DEP standards that are those that are truly the most adjacent to the coast in the definition. So although we typically have talked about FEMA, per se, I think you also have to recognize, and I think the construction industry certainly does, as well as our permitting folks, that there is another standard other than FEMA that can apply within the coastal construction -- I believe it's called control line. Not the setback line but the coastal construction control line, where that DEP figure under the Florida Building Code is applicable and would probably, in a particular situation, could take precedence over the FEMA base flood elevation. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. So we're not changing the height, we're just changing what Commissioner Halas is pointing as to -- MR. WHITE: We're trying to do what I've tried to say is the A to Z of height. The A for actual building height, the physical thing that you would see, and the Z being the zoning height or the use height of a building, that portion of the actual height that is used under the type of zoning that that district may allow. Page 24 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER HALAS: What this is is just a one more dimension line that's put on a drawing to tell us what the actual height of that building is. And I believe it should be from the crown of the road, right, the adjacent road, this -- as it states in here? MR. WHITE: That's typically the zero point to start measuring from. COMMISSIONER HALAS: The crown of the road to the very top of the building. All that is is just to tell us what the real height of that building is. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Very good. And we have four different sections under this one topic. So I'd like to address all four before -- and then we can just take one vote on that. Do we have any speakers, by the way? MR. SCHMITT: We have no registered speakers. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Very good. Let's move on to the next one then. MS. MURRAY: The next one, dealing-- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Do we take a vote on that? COMMISSIONER HALAS: We're going to wait. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Oh, we're going to wait until we finish -- okay, I gotcha. MS. MURRAY: Did you want me to read the rest into the record? CHAIRMAN FIALA: Whatever you need to do to make it legal. MS. MURRAY: I'm working from Page 2 then of your summary sheet. And that would be Section 3.3.7.1.2, which is on Page 37. And I'll just let you stop me if you have questions on these. Then Division 6.3 on Page 40 for the definitions for zoned building height. And then Division 6.3 on Page 42 for the definitions for actual building height. And that should cover all four. Page 25 January 29, 2004 CHAIRMAN FIALA: Any questions from any of the Commissioners on these? COMMISSIONER HALAS: I'll make a motion we -- has there been a motion already made? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Halas did. Yeah, I think Commissioner COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. I make a motion that all of these -- all these are under that one vote. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Second. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. A vote by Commissioner Halas, a second by Commissioner Coletta. Any further discussion? (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: All those in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Aye. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Aye. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Opposed, like sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: Passes with a 4-0. Thank you. Now we'll take all the signs. MR. WEBB: Yeah. Madam Chair, the next topic for consideration is signs. We have three amendments under this particular subject area. The first is Section 2.5.5.2.3 on Page 44 of your LDC packet. And that is Page 66 of your agenda item. This particular amendment, there's really no regulatory change, it's just realigning for clarity. Moving right along to the next amendment. Section 2.5.5.2.5.1.1 on Page 45, agenda item Page 67. This is an amendment to allow businesses that have less than 150 foot of road frontage to have a sign. And we discussed the criteria last time. And I believe that, Page 26 January 29, 2004 based on what you said, you really didn't have any comments on this or any direction to staff. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Great. You can move on. MR. WEBB: All right. The next one is Section 2.6.33.10 on Page 48 of your LDC packet, agenda item Page 70. This is an amendment to allow coming soon signs. And once again, I don't believe you had any comments or direction for staff at the last meeting. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I make a motion we accept these three items. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Motion by Commissioner Halas. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Second. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Second by Commissioner Henning. Any discussion? (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: All those in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Aye. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Aye. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Opposed, like sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: Passes 4-0. Now we'll take the next one, implementation of school board interlocal agreement. I know there are quite a few under this, but we might as well take them all together. MR. WEBB: Yes, and we have Mike DeRuntz, if you have any specific questions. But absent that, I'll guess I'll go ahead and read the section numbers and you can stop me if you have any questions. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Very good. Is that okay with Board members? Very good. Page 27 January 29, 2004 MR. WEBB: First is Section 2.2.2.2.1 on Page 49 of your LDC packet. Next is Section 2.2.3.2.1 on Page 56. Next, Section 2.2.4.2.1 on Page 59. Next is Section 2.2.5.2.1 on Page 61. Followed by Section 2.2.6.2.1 on Page 64. Next is Section 2.2.7.2.1 on Page 66. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Could I just make a comment here that the reason that we're running through all this -- so everybody has an idea what we're doing -- this is involving the local agreements that we have with the school board. So when we're running through this, this is pretty much cut and dry. It's so that we have a good correlation with the school board in regards to that they adhere to our Growth Management Plans and all this other stuff that is entailed in putting schools in place. I just want to clarify that. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you. MR. WEBB: The next is Section 2.2.8.3 on Page 68. Next is Section 2.2.9.2.1 on Page 70. Then we have 2.2.10.2.1 on Page 74. The next is Section 2.2.12.2.1 on Page 76. And then we move to Page 6 on your summary sheet, the top, Section 2.2.13.2.1 on Page 81. Section 2.2.14.2.1 on Page 85. Section 2.2.15.2.1 on Page 91. Section 2.2.15 1/2.2.1 on Page 96. Section 2.2.16.2.1 on Page 100. Moving along to Page 7 of the summary sheet, Section 2.2.18.2.1 on Page 104. Next, Section 2.2.19.2.1 on Page 107. Next, Section 2.2.20.7 on Page 110. Followed by Section 2.7.3.5 on Page 112. Page 28 January 29, 2004 And finally, Section 3.3.4.1 on Page 116. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Great. And I'd -- I'd like to just say right now, all of these -- every one of these things has been thoroughly reviewed and scrutinized by our DSAC, by our EAC -- by the economic -- I'm sorry, by the Environmental Advisory Council, as well as by the Planning Commission before it ever gets to us, and this is our second hearing on it also. And I don't know what we'd do without those different advisory boards, because they really cleanse that thing before it ever even comes before us. So I just wanted to say a big thank you to them. Thank you. Any comments from any Board members? (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: Do we have any speakers? MR. WEBB: No, no public speakers, Madam Chairman. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Board-- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Motion-- CHAIRMAN FIALA: -- members? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: -- to approve. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Motion to approve by Commissioner Coletta. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Second. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Second by Commissioner Halas. All those in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Aye. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Aye. CHAIRMAN FIALA: And opposed, like sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: Passes 4-0. Very good. And now we move on to the section -- let's see, Page 29 January 29, 2004 subdivision plat, PSP. MR. WEBB: Correct. MR. SCHMITT: Madam Chair, this is dealing with the elimination of preliminary subdivision plats. It was a requirement that you had to have preliminary subdivision plats before you went to final plat. This was an agreement made many months ago. And looking at our business processes and our business improvement processes within the division, working through the development services advisory council and with the economic development council. So these -- all these amendments again simply have to do with the removal of that requirement, and it's now integrated with final subdivision plat. Ms. Murray, if you want to cover some of those. MS. MURRAY: Just for the record, Joe, it's making the process optional now, yeah, instead of eliminating it. MR. SCHMITT: Okay. Thank you. MS. MURRAY: Just -- so it is not a requirement but it is still an option, if somebody wanted to go through the preliminary subdivision plat process. And they begin -- the amendments begin on Page 8. Again, we've gone through this with you at the last hearing. And I could just go ahead and read the section numbers into the record, if you want, and if want to stop me then. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. MS. MURRAY: Section 2.4.7.2 on Page 130. Section 2.7.4.9 on Page 132. 3.2.6.2 on Page 133. 3.2.6.3.5 on Page 135. 3.2.7 on Page 136. 3.2.8.2.3 on Page 141. 3.2.8.2.14, Page 143. Page 30 January 29, 2004 3.2.8.3.8, Page 144. 3.2.8.3.19, Page 145. 3.2.8.4.7, Page 147. 3.2.9.1.2, Page 150. 3.5.5.1.3, Page 152. 3.12.5.1.2 on Page 154. 3.12.5.2 on Page 155. And that covers everything in our code that deals with the preliminary subdivision plat. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Move to approve. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Second. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Move to approve by Commissioner Henning, second by Commissioner Halas. Did we have any speakers, Russ? MR. WEBB: No, no registered public speakers. CHAIRMAN FIALA: from Board members? (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: Very good. Any questions or comments Hearing none, all those in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Aye. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Aye. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Opposed, like sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: Very good. Passes 4-0. And now we move on to miscellaneous items. Let me see how many we have here. I don't know if we can group any of these together. MS. MURRAY: We tried to group everything we could. I think these were kind of the leftovers, unfortunately. Page 31 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Group it under miscellaneous. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Let's see -- as we move forward, if the Commissioners have any questions of anyone, but we'll just move forward with this last group and see if there are any questions, and then we'll pass them all as one grouping. Is that okay? Very good. MR. WEBB: Yes, as you stated, Madam Chair, there are only probably 11 of these miscellaneous items left. And the remainder of your summary sheet, I just want to point out, is items that were pulled. And there's also inclusion of the VBRTO, just for your reference. That's already been processed as an ordinance. You approved that at the last meeting. So I guess we'll go ahead and start with the miscellaneous. Section 2.2.3.4.3 on Page 156. This is yard requirements in the Estates. We revised language to clarify setbacks for comer lots in the Estates districts. If you have no questions, the next is Section 2.3.5 on Page 160. This was simply renumbering this section, based on a prior scriveners error. Next is Section 2.3.21.4 on Page 163, off-street loading. This is another restructuring of the language for clarification purposes. Next is Section 2.4.7.5 on Page 164. This involves incorporation of a manual. The next is Section 2.6.37 on Page 166. This is a revision of the language to clarify the criterion for a secondary kitchen. Next is Section 3.2.3 on Page 167, adding language to clarify platting requirements. Next is Section 3.2.8.3.25 on Page 168. This was adding language to clarify that the pipe color coding needs to be addressed. Next is Division 6.3, Page 169, definition of the front yard, which goes along with the prior amendment for the Estates comer lots. Page 32 January 29, 2004 The next is Division 6.3 on Page 171, revising language to the definition of guest house -- guest houses or cottage and primary kitchens. And the final one is Appendix D on Page 173. This is updating the airport noise zoning maps, based on some revised FAA regulations. And all the amendments after that-- as I explained earlier, the one immediately following this is the VBRTO, which has already been processed, and the other ones are amendments that have been withdrawn, with an explanation for their withdrawal. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Move to approve. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Motion to approve from Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Second. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Second from Commissioner Coletta. Any speakers? (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: Any questions from our Commissioners? Any comments? (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: All those in favor, say aye. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Aye. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Aye. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Aye. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Aye. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Opposed, like sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: Passes 4-0. And we're finished with this section. So we move on. We don't have to break until 3:45, right? Okay. Page 33 January 29, 2004 MR. SCHMITT: Patrick-- Assistant County Attorney may want to make, for clarification, on the proceedings, since we agreed to cover these items before 5:00. So Mr. White? MR. WHITE: In my experience, this is a rather unique circumstance where we're actually going to be having a first hearing of matters that were originally scheduled way back on December 10th to be heard at 5:05 p.m. And it presents the question of whether you can actually continue to a date and time certain the hearing of items that are otherwise presumed to have started at 5:05 p.m. Our office believes that we can go ahead and have a consideration of those, so long as at this time and at 5:05 p.m. we make an announcement that is indeed what we are doing. And I would caution the Board that we not take any action on any of the provisions you'll be considering formally until such time as after 5:05 it may be appropriate then to do so. My understanding is that we have our consultants present. There are many of the stakeholders who are here as well. But as I mentioned, we're, in an abundance of caution, going to ask that we break at 5:05 and make an announcement at that time. If there are any individuals who had just then appeared for the purpose of comment, and if we had moved beyond that particular item on our agenda, because I understand we'll be going through a series of tabs, that we would then allow them to bring their issues to your attention. And I believe that will cure any potential claims of defect. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Very good. I'll call on you in a second, Commissioner Coletta. I just wanted to say also that I have requested from staff to hear Tab M, which is 3.11, listed species, first, because we have quite a few audience members here to address that issue. And this way we'll take care of that and then we'll move back to the beginning of the agenda. And I hope that's okay with Page 34 January 29, 2004 everybody here? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I just -- I do have a concern. I mean, we advertised the meeting would be taking place at 5:05? MR. WHITE: No, sir, we advertised that the meeting would take place at 2:00 p.m. and that these items were part of that agenda. CHAIRMAN FIALA: So we met all the legal sufficiencies to be able to proceed? MR. WHITE: As far as advertisement requirements go, we probably met those requirements when we published the notice for the December 10th meeting. And by indicating in a verbal fashion that we've been continuing them from the 10th to the 7th, 'til today on the 29th. CHAIRMAN FIALA: There are no tabs in under tabs. You have to really search for the tabs to find the tabs. MR. SCHMITT: We'll help you there as far as the page numbers. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Page 201, on the bottom of the page, or 207 in the agenda packet would be Tab M. MR. SCHMITT: I'm going to -- Marti, Marti Chumbler is going to introduce this subject. But I think, Marti, you're going to have to run through at least the introductory portion first and then we can proceed as you-- Madam Chair, as you requested, to cover those items that are -- where we have most of the speakers. Marti, if you could, please? MS. CHUMBLER: Yes. And Madam Chairman, members of the Commission, this is -- I'm Marti Chumbler, outside counsel to the county, the Carlton Fields law firm. With me is my partner, Nancy Linnan. Let me make sure first that you have -- before we launch into these amendments, there should be -- you should have two errata sheets, one that was sent to you about a week ago. And then there's Page 35 January 29, 2004 one that should have just been handed out today. Russell's going to hand them out right now. There isn't anything on this sheet that relates to wildlife, but just so you have all the papers in front of you before we get started. Before we actually launch into the language itself, I think it's appropriate that we give just a brief overview of sort of how we got to where we are today. As you know, this is the second group of LDR's that are before you that are intended to implement the Comp. Plan amendments mandated by the Governor and Cabinet. The first group of LDR's that dealt strictly with the rural stewardship lands was adopted by this body last summer. There are a couple of-- there's one tab in this group that again deals with rural lands stewardship areas. The rest deal with the rural fringe and then some standards that are applicable county-wide. These amendments were -- these regulations were developed through a process of drafting and revision that included multiple meetings with stakeholders. Each time we came out with a new draft, we circulated them to a very large body of people and received comments. They've been considered by the EAC, DSAC and the CCPC, and at each stage revisions have been made, so that the package that you have before you has been through several iterations. Now, I understand what we thought we would do, rather than go through this tab by tab, is identify for you those areas where there appear to be not so much some issues but at least some -- maybe some concerns or some desire that you focus your attention, and then at the end, of course, if you have issues on any -- at any point, please raise those. But what we would like to do is hit what we think are sort of the highlights. And as I've been told, you want to start with wildlife. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Yes, Tab M. MS. CHUMBLER: Tab M, and in fact, Madam Chairman -- Page 36 January 29, 2004 CHAIRMAN FIALA: Which is page 201 in the middle of the page, or 207 on the agenda packet. MS. CHUMBLER: Madam Chairman, as you all probably know, there have been multiple issues that have been raised regarding the extent to which Collier County is -- may or may not be constrained in terms of adopting land development regulations. The package that you have before it includes a number of things. I think the provision that is the most hotly debated appears on Page 205, it's Section 3.11.3.3. That language is straight out of the Comprehensive Plan.' We recognize -- and it now, now that we've started working on these regulations, that that Comp. Plan language is not clear. It needs clarification. And so even prior to today, there have been meetings with interested groups of varying positions to try to determine how we'll come back to you later, probably in about the March time frame, with some proposed Comp. Plan revisions and probably some options, depending on how you want to go, to correct the Comp. Plan and make the Comp. Plan clearer. Our recommendation to you today is that we keep this language as it is straight out of the Comp. Plan and correct the Comp. Plan. That's where the real problem is. As I say, we've already started having meetings with interest groups. We have got another meeting set tomorrow. We intend to have as many as is necessary. And in addition to that, the county has asked our law firm, the Carlton Fields firm, to prepare a formal legal opinion relating to the legal constraints that may or may not be upon the county by the Florida constitution in this area. We've not yet completed that. And until we do, our recommendation would be that this body simply go with the language that is here, at least for today's hearing, and that we not address the issue of the county's authority to do more or less today. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Let's see. Do we have any questions Page 37 January 29, 2004 from Commissioners before we hear from speakers? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: So in other words, what you're asking for us to do is not to act on the species change to the -- MS. CHUMBLER: Our recommendation is that at least for today we leave the language in 3.11.3.3 as is, which is verbatim from the Comp. Plan. MR. SCHMITT: We will bring these back on February 11 for the second hearing. By that time we will have the ruling or at least the opinion rendered by Carlton Fields in regards to the constitutionality as the debate going on whether or not the county can do certain -- get involved in certain aspects of managing listed species, and whether or not it conflicts with the state constitution. And as Marti has mentioned, we'll have that judgment shortly. The issue is we have to look at the Growth Management Plan first. We can work that through what we are calling the glitch cycle, which are where we've identified conflicts in the Growth Management Plan, this being one of them, in the language. Then we would have to come back and amend this portion of the LDC, based on the guidance or at least agreement or whatever guidance we get from you as a Board during the LDC amendment process. But I'm sure you're going to hear from many interested parties today in regards to what their feelings are. And I think from a perspective, we as staff certainly would accept your guidance today, but it may be in all of our best interests to wait until the 1 lth when the rest of the information is at least provided, and that is this issue of whether or not there's going to be a conflict of the -- or any initiatives would be in conflict with the state constitution. CHAIRMAN FIALA: And that's fine with me. Commissioner Halas, Commissioner Henning, and then I will read Commissioner Coyle's e-mail into the record. COMMISSIONER HALAS: So at this time, we don't want to Page 38 January 29, 2004 change any particular language as it is in Page 205; is that correct? MS. CHUMBLER: Commissioner, our recommendation would be to leave it as is for today, and then come back to you on the 11 th. And if at that point the Commission feels, having received our legal opinion, that there should be some changes, and in addition at that point the Commission may choose to give us some direction on how you want us to go on the Comp. Plan revisions as well. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Could I just throw -- I'd like to offer this up and put it on record. I think what we need to do is look at the other 66 counties in Florida and see what type of language they use. And I think that some of the counties, I'm sure, have already been challenged in court and have probably won. And maybe we ought to look at that language to help initiate the type of plan that we'd like to address here in Collier County. MS. CHUMBLER: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay, Commissioner Henning, then Commissioner Coyle, and then you again? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Coyle? CHAIRMAN FIALA: Yeah, I've got Coyle's stuff here. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I don't know if we have to do what other counties do. I think we need to -- we can set whatever the community standards is. And I hope at the end of this that we can -- the Board of Commissioners can appoint a committee to take a look at what kind of wildlife standards that we want to impose in Collier County. CHAIRMAN FIALA: I agree. We wouldn't want to be like the charter counties, like, for instance, the Broward and Dade where, you know, they don't really have much of any population. We, I think, have a very unique and very special area here, that's environmentally sensitive, and I think we ought to have unique rules. But anyway, I'm sorry, Commissioner -- Page 39 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: No, go ahead with Commissioner Coyle. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Very good. And then I'll get you after. Sorry about this. Commissioner Coyle left a message and he asked me to read this into the record: I regret that I will unable to join you for the meeting on January 29th to discuss the Growth Management Plan issues and, specifically, the protection of listed species. I would, however, like to provide some of my thoughts on this very important matter. In addition, I am asking Chairwoman Donna Fiala to read this letter into the record at the beginning of the meeting. I do not believe reliance upon the federal and state governments provides adequate protection for important wildlife species in Collier County. These agencies, quite logically, view the protection of pieces on a national or state level. Consequently, a species could be sacrificed in Collier County because there are sufficient numbers of that species in other locations in the state or in the nation. I believe we have a responsibility to preserve certain species in Collier County without regard for the well-being of those species in other parts of the nation. Boy, very well said. I propose that we appoint a committee to develop a Collier County wildlife protection plan which would identify the species to be protected, the number of each species existing in Collier County, the optimum number that could be reasonably sustained, and the manner in which their protection could be assured. With the implementation of such a plan, we could then manage to achieve and sustain the optimum population of these species from the standpoint of fact and science. After talking with several people on both sides of this issue during the past few months, I am convinced an acceptable solution can be achieved through the cooperative involvement of all the Page 40 January 29, 2004 stakeholders. I ask all those concerned to support the amendment of such a committee. Until a Collier County wildlife protection plan is developed, we must continue to protect threatened species to the greatest extent of our laws. How these interim measures should be employed is best left to your deliberations on Thursday. Thank you for indulging me, Commissioner Coyle. Were you next, Commissioner Coletta? And then Commissioner Halas. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yes, please. Nancy, would you give us all the possible scenario of events we can come up today with as far as action to be taken by this Commission? MS. CHUMBLER: Well, I'm not sure I can limit it to just a few. There are a wide -- I mean, numerous different positions that you could take. And of course, you know, sort of overriding all of that is what legal constraints might be on it. And as I say, our legal opinion is not finished, so I'm not going to speak on that. There is a -- you know, there's a range of things all the way from a complete deferral to state, all state and federal agencies, and that has been done in other areas, where this county would say we're simply not going to step into an area that is regulated by others, all the way to a complete set of regulations that duplicates and may even contradict state and federal. And there may be legal constraints on that. So that within that wide range of options, you can choose anything. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes, I think the committee ought to be make up -- made up of the stakeholders. I think the stakeholders can work this out together. That's where I feel that we need to guide everything. And as I said earlier, I think we need to look at how other counties in Florida address this issue. And I think Page 41 January 29, 2004 that's -- that's probably the way to go. And also, since we have some unique species, that those need to be included in our guidelines. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Does that give you some direction from us? MS. CHUMBLER: I think it does. Our intent is to come back to this body with a number of different options. I mean, if I were a real optimist, I would say we would come out of these meetings with one option that everyone is wholeheartedly in favor of, but I don't believe that's going to be the case. I think we're probably going to have a range of options that we can suggest to the Commission. And I think Mr. Schmitt intends that he will have some information for you at that time that might talk about what the financial repercussions of the various options are, in addition to perhaps something from Mr. Lorenz that tells you what kinds of staffing and what additional protections might be enjoyed from various options. That's what our intent is. CHAIRMAN FIALA: And possibly to put together the committee, as Commissioner Coyle suggested, to assist in this endeavor. COMMISSIONER HALAS: We got a stakeholder's committee now, don't we? MR. SCHMITT: I think what we're going to need is clarification whether this is a Board appointed and sanctioned committee or continue with the stakeholders group that we now have. And what I -- I think there's been some discussion back and forth, and Commissioner Henning just mentioned, of course, a more formal board appointed committee. That may be a way to go in regards to trying to capture a full representation of everyone concerned in the county, looking and asking for groups to participate. The stakeholders group, naturally what we've been getting is primarily those interested, of course those that are representing the Page 42 January 29, 2004 environmental groups and those folks that are represent the developers. But we only have had one or two representing citizens advisory groups of some sort. And somehow I've got to cast a net to capture some of those folks as well to -- because the issue really is going to be -- as Marti just mentioned, it's going to be how we implement this, at least in regards to the county establishing a staff to do this and of course how much will it cost. CHAIRMAN FIALA: I can't see establishing a redundant committee, as long as we have one in place. MS. CHUMBLER: Well, let me make sure it's clear, Madam Chairman. We don't have a committee. What we have is basically people who have expressed an interest, and I expect they probably have told -- talked to other people that they know also have an interest. So we have a sort of an open forum. We've not said, here are our members. We've just sort of thrown out the invitation to people who are interested, and obviously there are people we know, because they've already spoken to us about the issue, are interested and so we directly informed them. But it's not a set committee or working group. Yes, Commissioner. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Commissioner Halas and then Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I guess I need some guidance here from the attorney. What is the difference between a committee and what's the difference between stakeholders? If we have both opposing sides on the issue, is it better that we have a stakeholders group? Is it more of an open forum, or if we have a committee, does that mean that they fall under the sunshine laws? MR. WHITE: Well, I think under any circumstance when there's advisory board members appointed by this body, that you will have those sunshine issues. Page 43 January 29, 2004 That being said, even if you do appoint such a body of-- a board, you're still going to have a circumstance where, in a meeting such as this, you're going to have citizens who are going to seek to address you with respect to their opinions that may be well beyond those of anybody that was part of such an appointed body. I think this process has been intended to operate in as open an expanse as possible, as Mr. Schmitt stated. It's cast the net as wide as possible, because no one is precluded from participating. And so the idea here is that it's as democratic as I've seen any process be with respect to this type of amendments that are essentially legislation. This isn't anything that's quote, quasi-judicial, unquote, it's legislation being drafted, and the process, as far as I've been able to determine, has included individuals that may be characterized as stakeholders but essentially are anyone and everyone who would care to participate. I don't know how you could improve upon that with an advisory body, but certainly that's your determination. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Let me tell you how you can improve on it. Commissioners, I don't know if you have taken a look at the listed species list in awhile, but talking to Nancy Payton, I seen -- I wrote down some of the things that she thought that we ought to write language to do something better than other communities did. We're talking the gopher tortoise, the Florida scrub jay, the bald eagle, Florida black bear, the panther. And we also have, you know, standards for the cockaded woodpecker, the manatee and the loggerhead turtle. But also the wood stork, the piping plover and the Big Cypress squirrel. Now, wouldn't Commissioner Fiala -- I know that there's some piping plovers on Marco Island. Wouldn't you want to appoint somebody yourself from Marco Island there to make sure that they Page 44 January 29, 2004 made decisions for the people on Marco Island? CHAIRMAN FIALA: Oh, absolutely. Yes. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And was -- I don't think there was anybody at the stakeholders meeting from Marco Island. CHAIRMAN FIALA: I don't know that. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So the Florida back -- black bear, I know that roams in Golden Gate Estates. Commissioner Coletta, I don't think that anybody from Golden Gate Estates was at the stakeholders' meeting. And I think that we need to, as individual commissioners and collectively, reach out to people that is going to be affected by any government changes. I think they ought to be aware of it. And the more people that we can get there, the better off we are. And, you know, we should not have government in a vacuum. I think that we all want open and honest government. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Right. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I know this has turned into a developer versus environmental issue. It is not. It is a standard, a different standard on protecting species in Collier County. So let's really get the stakeholders there and get residents there. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Good. COMMISSIONER HENN1NG: You know, we talked about -- Nancy and I talked about wood storks, and we're not talking about new development. If we attract more wood storks here in Collier County, that's -- they're going to be all over, and that's great, if that's the standard we want. We have existing communities with stormwater systems that we probably can improve and encourage people to improve to attract wood storks, but we don't know that unless we invite people to the table. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: I thought that we had a pretty good cross-section of people in regards to the stakeholders. And I Page 45 January 29, 2004 think all we need to do is just get the message out there for people to get involved in this and that would be part of the stakeholders. And if we publish this, and I'm hoping that there's people out there right now that are concerned about the piping plovers on Marco Island and they hear this and say, hey, who do I talk to, how can I get involved in this because I need to get involved in the stakeholder issue? And I think that takes care of it. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner, I don't know what you're afraid of. I don't know what you're concerned about trying to -- for the Commissioners to reach out to people to get involved in government? COMMISSIONER HALAS: They are going to get involved in government. There's no doubt about it. CHAIRMAN FIALA: I think all of our meetings are open meetings, anyway, so we don't have to worry about that. I think that we want -- the more the better. We definitely want to hear from citizens, and as long as we publicize these meetings and we invite everyone, I think -- I just think we -- it take -- we should be encouraging our citizens to be there as well. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Get involved. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Yeah. So we have speakers, don't we? MR. WEBB: We have numerous -- MR. SCHMITT: We have quite a few speakers. Go ahead, Russell. CHAIRMAN FIALA: How many speakers to we have, by the way? MR. WEBB: At least 15, it looks like, possibly more. CHAIRMAN FIALA: You know -- I hope the speakers won't mind, but as long as there are so many, we're going to limit them to three minute. And at 3:45 promptly, I'm going to break for a minute Page 46 January 29, 2004 so that our court reporter can switch, yes, with the next court reporter. Okay? Thank you. You're handling the timing, Pat? MR. WHITE: We're getting there, Commissioner. I think we're ready. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Very good. MR. WEBB: We'll go ahead with the first speaker then. Brad Cornell, followed by Dr. John Murray. MR. CORNELL: Hello, Commissioners, Brad Cornell with Collier County Audubon Society. I had prepared a little more lengthy discussion and I'm not limiting it because of the limitation, but rather because you're going to have this discussion in a fuller nature later. But I do want to support the inclusion of the Growth Management Plan language verbatim into the Land Development Code at 3.11.3.3. Collier Audubon believes that this language does give the county the discretion to reject incidental take permits, among other policies that may come from the state or federal government agencies that may advise the county on development projects that impact listed species and their habitat. So we believe we already have that authority and ability through these policies. Although, as has been acknowledged, it seems to be ambiguous, so let's clear that up. And that's what we're talking about here. I want to also just raise another issue that no one's really talked about yet, and this is something to put in the back of your mind and your notes, that as we talk about ways to protect species, we need to include in that process a way to reward and incentivize the good stewardship of listed species and their habitat. This is what we've done with the rural fringe and the rural lands stewardship policies. We've done -- I think we've done a very effective job with that through transfer of development rights and stewardship credits and Page 47 January 29, 2004 the whole system that we've been looking at for a couple of years. I believe we need to do that in the remaining areas of the county: Golden Gate Estates and the coastal areas and other places where we have listed species. We need to be mindful that the public should be paying for good stewardship to the extent that we all benefit from that. So we should include those sorts of policies within Goal 7 of the Growth Management Plan. And finally, I just would say that the people of Collier County, I think, believe -- on the whole support good species protection, listed species protection, and I would recommend to you that we continue on with the work of the stewardship -- excuse me, the stakeholders' committee and expand the members on that as is necessary to get everyone's voice heard. We're very supportive of that. Thank you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: We have a question for you. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Brad, I admire your work, you've done a tremendous job out there protecting the environment and the species. And I know this is a very passionate subject for you, but I do have a question. I need-- this is a what if. Suppose we found a way to be able to pass this and put it into effect. We've had some serious disagreement over 951 and the extension of it up into Lee County. Would this in all intents and purposes be used as a tool against us because of the wood stork ranging from the Corkscrew Sanctuary? Would this be a detriment for us to ever be able to plan that needed highway? Would this be able to cancel out any of our future thoughts of doing that? And what about Immokalee Road and the expansion of that to Immokalee; what will this do to those possible future plans? Is this going to be something that's going to make it very difficult or next to impossible to take the next step? MR. CORNELL: Well, that's a good question, Commissioner Coletta. And I would hold out to you that what we want and what we Page 48 January 29, 2004 advocate is that the best science provide the guidance and the policies which will protect those species and guide where we build our projects and where we put our roads. And I would leave the process to that deliberation to determine that. I don't want to say that we're trying to spike that process or sabotage it, no, that's definitely not what this is all about. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: So in other words, this would have nothing to do with 951 or Immokalee Road as far as the building of it someday. MR. CORNELL: Well, it's certainly relative to it, to the extent that there are listed species in that area. But that's not why we're advocating. This is a county-wide policy and it has -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I know, I'm being specific, site specific, and I'm not getting an answer. It would have a bearing upon it. MR. CORNELL: Well, of course. Listed species are part of that consideration. And to the extent that science tells us we need to do something relative to that project, I would advocate we do that. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I thank you so much. MR. CORNELL: Sure thing. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Next-- MR. WEBB: Sorry. The next public speaker is Dr. John Murray, followed by Don Corace, I believe. Don Corace from Signature Communities. MR. MURRAY: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. My name is John Murray. I returned to the land of flowers in 1996, to Florida, that is, to found the computer science program at Florida Gulf Coast University. I come here with perhaps a word from a perspective of science regarding these issues, and I firmly advocate Brad's position on this situation. What I'd like to throw out is an opportunity for self education. Page 49 January 29, 2004 As it tums out, that in dealing with ecosystem and economic system interactions, which is my specialty, I simulate large-scale systems of a complex nature. One of the things that you find out is that there's an incredible amount of uncertainty when you deal with extremely complex systems. It turns out that the Journal of Science, in the months of November and December of the previous year have come out with a series of articles written for the lay person, exceptionally articulate articles that discuss all of the major scientific issues that we deal with in this context. So I'd highly recommend those as good reading, and I'll make available copies, if the Commissioners would like to have a copy of those to peruse. They're written in such a way that you can see their applications to Collier County immediately. That's all I have to say. Einstein did say one thing that does fit, though. He said sometimes we should make things as simple as possible when we're conveying science to the general public, but no simpler, and I'd like to be part of that process, if I can help. MR. WEBB: The next public speaker is Don Corace, followed by Bob Diffendorfer, I believe. MR. CORACE: It's certainly hard to follow up after Albert Einstein's comments. Good afternoon, Chairwoman Fiala, members of the Commission. My name is Don Corace, executive vice president of Signature Communities. With me today is Bob Diffendorfer, with Lewis, Longman and Walker, a law firm based in West Palm. First of all, I'd like to start off by asking a simple question. Why are we even here today? There are two reasons. Firstly, environmental groups, civil organ -- civil organizations, the Naples Daily News and certain members of your staff have gone on record saying that the state, as part of the rural fringe settlement in 1999, requires the county to now amend its policy regarding listed species. This is a false and misleading statement. Page 50 January 29, 2004 To set the record straight, the county ER -- EAR based amendments were challenged by the state and environmental groups because the county did not follow its own plan with respect to environmental and other issues. The Governor's Cabinet's final order set forth a plan to address these issues, including listed species and their habitats, which specifically excluded urban areas. As a result, the county has amended its Comprehensive Plan and the DCA approved it but did not require the county to adopt individual listed species management plans or set up its own permitting process. Therefore, despite what some continue to say, Governor Bush and the Cabinet have not issued an edict and does not require further action. The other reason we're here today, and make no mistake about this, is because of a pair of bald eagles located north of Wiggins Pass Marina whose nest is situated in a dead tree with our approved project known as Cocohatchee Bay PUD. A project, by the way, which was unanimously approved by the EAC, the Planning Commission and the Board of County Commissioners. Environmental and civic groups, with the support of certain staff members, are clearly attempting to amend the listed species policy with the specific intent to frustrate our efforts. In fact, these groups have gone on record several times saying this very thing. This was evidenced by the recent guest commentary in the Naples Daily News with a headline that read: Collier's interpretation of protection plan will doom wildlife. They go on to say, quote, the bald eagles at Wiggins Pass are in imminent danger of this new interpretation. If the county defers to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, these birds and their habitats are surely doomed. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Your three minutes are up, Mr. Corace, I'm sorry. MR. CORACE: Bob Diffendorfer will follow through with the Page 51 January 29, 2004 rest of the comments. Thank you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Very good. I'm going to make everybody stick to the same time limit, so I -- I need to hold true, okay. MR. CORACE: I understand. I'd be glad to answer any questions. Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes, knowing that you're a good citizen of the county here, I believe that when you -- when the PUD came up, that the person that represented you said that you would do everything in your power to make sure that everything was taken care of in that area, because at that point in time when that PUD was addressed, I believe that your representatives said that they would address that eagle issue; is that correct? MR. CORACE: What are you specifically referring to? I don't understand the question. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Well, to make it clear, that that particular eagle was addressed in your PUD, and I think at that time you said you'd do everything in your power not to remove that eagle from there. MR. CORACE: I don't think that's the way it was characterized. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Oh, okay. MR. CORACE: In fact, this is not a forum to discuss our already approved PUD. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. MR. CORACE: I'd be glad to discuss those issues with you at another time. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. MR. DIFFENDORFER: Madam Chair, Bob Diffendorfer. Lewis, Longman and Walker, Cocohatchee PUD. I think we agree with the process that your outside counsel has laid out here this afternoon. And that is to proceed with the Land Page 52 January 29, 2004 Development Code revision which incorporates the language of your Comprehensive Plan. I think that the current Comp. Plan recognizes a compliance with the regulatory requirements of the Fish and Wildlife Service or the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission would constitute compliance with the Plan. We are not proposing that that be changed. The changes advocated by Collier Audubon, Florida Wildlife Federation and others, and they are changes, should be developed carefully, should be developed fully, should be deliberated by all of the affected parties, and should not be done in a reactive fashion or as an impulse without adequate deliberation of them. So whether you call it a stakeholders committee or whether you call it a committee or whatever you call it, we believe a process needs to be developed to get the people who do have interests in this issue together in a formal fashion in the sunshine with transparency so that we can work out what your Comprehensive Plan ought to say. I do agree there is some ambiguity in your current Comprehensive Plan, but the best evidence of what your Plan was intended to do is what you have been doing with your Plan and what the contemporaneous construction of your Plan was as it was developed. So we recognize the county desires to add clarification to that. I'm supportive of that. We would ask that a policy come from this Board to develop a form in which that can occur, openly, transparently and in the sunshine. So whatever you call it, stakeholders group, committee, whatever, let's set up a process to do that so that everybody in the community can understand how that process is developing. So with that, we would ask that that go forward and bear fruit and that you not get through that glitch cycle amendment process until you have set up this, this procedure and ask them to provide input into a glitch cycle. That you leave the current -- or the, what Page 53 January 29, 2004 staff has proposed as a Land Development Code language, that that language be left alone now and until this study process bears fruit and we can come back with a comprehensive set of protection measures for listed species. Thank you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Next speaker? MR. WEBB: The next speaker is Donna Reed Caron, followed by B.J. Savard-Boyer. MS. CARON: Good afternoon, Commissioners. Donna Reed Caron. I guess all of what I had originally in intended to talk about is sort of out the window, if this is the route we're going. Let me just state that I do believe that the problem is in the GMP, and we need to resolve that issue. To that end, I'm involved in the stakeholders group. Bill Lorenz has been very open with that stakeholders group. Everyone in this county is welcome to that stakeholders group. And you all should be in touch with your constituents and tell them they should become involved with our stakeholders group. Let me just mention one other thing, and that is because Mr. Corace has opened up his own personal piece of property. Let's read from the executive summary when his -- the approval for his PUD happened. Regulations provided within the PUD speak to the existing presence of a bald eagle's nest, and establishes a management plan to insure that the viability of the nest is unaffected by the actions of man. The result of this measure is that a major portion of the residential development potential will not be able to go forward until such time as the eagle nest is abandoned or otherwise altered by natural conditions. And his own representative, Karen Bishop, on behalf of Vanderbilt Partners, said, if he, meaning the eagle, stays, we would not be able to build any buildings you know, within those -- anything Page 54 January 29, 2004 above two stories in the secondary zone. Nothing in his primary zone. So the threats to you are absurd. He's already made commitments on the record in his PUD. That was the only reason that he was approved. I'll feed the rest to my time to someone else in the group. MR. WEBB: Next speaker, B.J. Savard-Boyer, followed by Donna Lloyd. MS. SAVARD-BOYER: Good afternoon, Commissioners. B.J. Savard-Boyer. Collectively we've all worked very hard to build a reputation that makes us one of the most desirable places in the country to live, right here in Naples. We do not want you to let the control of our species out of this county. We want to be able to meet with stakeholders, different areas. You know, what's happened, most of our greenspace and habitat for wildlife has been bulldozed, built on, walled in, paved. We have problems with water quality, density and roads. Do we want to add the environment to the list? This might have been acceptable practice in years past, but now we're -- you know, we're growing, and you know the problems that we're having. But let's, let's keep our wildlife around us, the eagles, the bears, the manatees. You know, the things down in Marco. I don't know what they are. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Piping Plovers. MS. SAVARD-BOYER: Piping clovers, yes. Plovers-- whatever they are. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Birds. MS. SAVARD-BOYER: Yes -- the birds. COMMISSIONER HENNING: They nest on the beach. MS. SAVARD-BOYER: Oh, okay. Like the turtles that go into to the beach. Whatever. Let's just keep -- let's just keep this in our control, and, you know, I'm not against development, but I think we Page 55 January 29, 2004 -- you know, we need to look at where it's going. So thank you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Next speaker? MR. WEBB: Next speaker, Donna Lloyd, followed by Jane Cooper. MS. LLOYD: MR. WEBB: MS. LLOYD: MR. WEBB: I waive my right to speak at this time. Are you Donna Lloyd or Jane Cooper? I'm Donna Lloyd. Okay. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. With this, it's exactly 3:45. Is this the time you need to change with your-- they're not here yet? Give me a high sign and I'll make sure that, that we then break. Okay. Next speaker? MR. WEBB: Jane Cooper. MS. COOPER: Good afternoon, Commissioners. And thank you for having us here. I've been a resident of-- CHAIRMAN FIALA: Your name? MS. COOPER: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Jane Cooper. CHAIRMAN FIALA: For the record. MS. COOPER: I apologize. I've been a resident of Collier County for eight years, and for almost seven and three quarters years I have been a volunteer at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. I started out in the wildlife rehabilitation center, I organized special events, and for the last five years I've been an officer on the board of directors. I'm not an attorney. I'm an interested and involved citizen, and I have watched 2,000 wildlife sp -- pieces -- animals, birds, reptiles and mammals go through the wildlife rehabilitation clinic every year for the last eight years. Half of them survive and go back out to the wild and half of them do not. As more and more development comes along and more and more properties are filled, the numbers of mammals are going Page 56 January 29, 2004 up. And they have the least capability, it seems, to recover and go back to the wild. In the last 50 years in Collier County and in the wider Everglades, of which we consider Collier County the western Everglades, 95 percent of all the wildlife has been destroyed. They've gone. They died. They did not reproduce, and they are no longer here. Collier County has a history of local decision making. I would urge you, on the heels of last week's decision to establish an advisory group for domestic animal services, that you indeed do the same with wildlife. I'd like to speak for just a moment about the tyranny of the small decision. That eagles are at risk is established. That bears and manatees and so forth are running out of space is also pretty well documented. It seems that you're proposing to allow destruction of nests because there are lots of eagles someplace else. And I'd like to argue that there is no someplace else. The other counties around Florida may very well have made decisions about how to cope with their eagles or their manatees or whatever, but the chances are they are under the same pressures in those counties as they are here. There is no someplace else for them to go. There is no real safe haven any longer. How many eagles are enough in one county? Who's to say? But if we had 10 eagles nests and they're all viable and then they start chipping away at them, what happens when we have only one eagle's nest left? Will Collier County simply say they'll have to go someplace else? Last, I'd like to speak to you very personally, not as Commissioners so much as people, and urge you not to feel that by advocating for species, for animals, that you are somehow ridiculous or that you -- you're sentimental. And I would like to quote another Albert, his name was Page 57 January 29, 2004 Schweitzer. Schweitzer insisted that all human beings have these feelings of love for animals. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Your time is up. MS. COOPER: It's up -- and they didn't want to be accused of sentimental -- thank you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you. Next speaker? MR. WEBB: Next speaker is Edward Hanf, followed by Doug Fee. CHAIRMAN FIALA: We'll hear from Mr. Hanf, and then we'll break for a short time. As long as you're on your way up, come on up. MR. HANF: If you want to break now, that's fine with me. I have no difficulty with that. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay, very good. We'll break now then. And then we'll be listening more attentively when you come back. (A recess was taken.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: Let's bring this meeting back to order, please. Thank you. Could you take your seats. And we have a speaker on deck? MR. WEBB: That's correct, Madam Chair. Edward Hanf, followed by, let's see, Doug Fee. MR. HANF: Madam Chairperson, Commissioners, staff, guests, my name is Edward Hanf. I am the vice-president of operations for American Dream Builders. We are a developer here. We specialize in building single-family homes for first-time home buyers and people with less-than-perfect credit, which some people might construe to mean affordable housing. My concern and the reason I want to speak here today was because I was afraid that this was going to throw another roadblock into developing affordable housing. But I see by the agenda -- by the Page 58 January 29, 2004 pages in here that single-family lots are excluded. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Right. MR. HANF: That is the end of my comment. Thank you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you, Mr. Hanf. MR. WEBB: Doug Fee, followed by Cece English. MR. FEE: Good afternoon, Commissioners. Appreciate the opportunity to talk today, and I'll be very brief. I want to read a draft of a motion that was made at your Environmental Advisory Council meeting the last meeting. And it was voted on, and it will be brought back in the February meeting, and then I believe they were going to forward this to you by the 1 1 th. In this draft it says, position paper on Collier County having a listed species policy. Whereas, the State of Florida is encouraging Collier County to direct harmful activities away from environmentally valuable areas, including valuable plant and animal habitat; Whereas, depending on other agencies to review environmental issues may cause such problems as taking three to six months for review, local action may not trigger agency review. Agency decisions may be in conflict with other agencies or with Collier County wishes; Whereas, there seems to be a lack of standardization and that decisions may not be applicable to Southwest Florida nor as protective as desired. Therefore, be it known that the Collier County Environmental Advisory Council encourages the Collier County Board of Commissioners to adopt a Collier County listed species list and written policies for wildlife protection and the management of species population. With that in mind, I'm involved in a couple of the stakeholders meet-- groups. First of all, a number of months ago, you had some Page 59 January 29, 2004 language on the manatee protection. And it was decided then that you would go through a review process, and you established a stakeholders group, and there is a large group that is meeting and has been meeting for quite some time. In regards to that, when you adopt Land Development Code and Growth Management Plan policies, you have a policy or procedure that is open to the public. There are numerous meetings, probably eight meetings, 10 meetings, that are publicized. It allows the public to get ahold of the draft language and make comments as that goes through, same being with the Growth Management Plan. So although I very much support having a stakeholders group open to the public, anyone can attend -- and I might suggest even you can put it on your website. This meet -- group is -- I'm not so sure that we would want councils for all of this because you'll end up not being able to talk to each other and it will be tough to get things done; however, in the -- in the openness of when you adopt these rules, everyone should have the ability to be involved. Second-- third thing. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Mr. Fee, your time is -- MR. FEE: Oh, I'll end my speech then. CHAIRMAN FIALA: I'm sorry to cut you off. Thank you. MR. WEBB: Next public speaker is Cece English, followed by Rebecca Wilder. MS. ENGLISH: Good afternoon. My name is Cece English. I've been a full-time resident here for 13 years, and I've witnessed the growth and management/mismanagement of the '90s. I believe this Board of County Commissioners has the opportunity to rise above the past actions and inactions that have adversely affected our environment. In particular, I've been observing the eagles' nest at Wiggins Pass for nine years. Anyone who knows me knows this is an issue Page 60 January 29, 2004 very close to my heart. I fear if we allow the taking of just one nest, it won't be the last one we lose. It would be very easy for you to defer to the state and federal agencies regarding this issue and others. I ask that you take this opportunity to raise the bar. I urge you to take a stand and set in place a Growth Management Plan that will, without a doubt, protects the American bald eagles that so many of us have come to enjoy here in Collier County. Thank you very much. MR. WEBB: Next public speaker is Rebecca Wilder, followed by Cam Gleason. MS. WILDER: Madam Chairman and Commissioners, my name is Rebecca Wilder, and I'm speaking for myself. To the Collier County Commissioners, I ask you to please take responsibility for protecting our county's imperiled animals and plants. Don't give away your responsibility to state and federal entities. Many humans and developers don't care about animals and plants. We must or we'll all lose. If we don't take care of our animals and our plants, we will ultimately lose our own lives. Thank you. MR. WEBB: Next speaker is Cam Gleason, followed by Dick Macken. MR. CORNELL: She'll waive. She's left. MR. WEBB: Okay. Dick Macken, followed by Christine Porter. MR. MACKEN: My name is Dick Macken, and I live in North Naples. I would like to thank the Board of County Commissioners for allowing me to speak. Collier County is at a crossroads with regard to protecting its endangered and threatened wildlife. We can continue along our current path, and see almost all endangered and threatened wildlife Page 61 January 29, 2004 removed from our environment, or we can put in place provisions that will ensure the survival of these species for our enjoyment and edification and for that of future generations. The choice is that stark and that pressing. I strongly urge you to put in place regulations to fully protect endangered and threatened wildlife in Collier County. State and federal agencies will not do the job for us. Using their guidelines, we will be faced with the gradual loss of the animals, bald eagles, panthers, black bears, gopher tortoises, wood storks, red-cockaded woodpeckers and others that make Collier County such a special place to live. Having a healthy environment is essential for attracting tourists and for the well-being of the county's residents. People are not going to want to visit or live in a place where the natural environment has been cut down, plowed up, and paved over. For that, they can go over to the east coast. As stewards of the earth, we need to live in harmony with nature and not destroy everything in our path. The Board of County Commissioners needs to act now to protect endangered and threatened wildlife before it is too late and while there is still something to save. To help our wildlife is to help ourselves. Thank you. MR. WEBB: Next public speaker is Christine Porter, followed by Nicole Ryan. MR. CORNELL: Christine had to go. MR. WEBB: We do a -- yeah, we have a notation here that Christine wasn't able to stay, but she wanted me to state that this -- she supports the county protecting the listed species. So the next public speaker is Nicole Ryan, followed by the last speaker, Jeffrey Carter. MR. CORNELL: Jeff Carter had to go, too. Page 62 January 29, 2004 MR. WEBB: Yeah. I'm going to read his statement in, but Nicole -- Nicole Ryan. MS. RYAN: Good afternoon, Commissioners. For the record, Nicole Ryan here on behalf of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. And I'd first of all like to thank you for your acknowledgement of the importance of Collier County listed species. I was certainly glad to hear that from all of you. The Conservancy does support transferring the GMP language into the Land Development Code. We believe that this language does allow the county to take charge and protect listed species, but we do agree that it needs some clarification. It's a bit ambiguous. So we see this LDC cycle and putting the GMP language into the Land Development Code as the first step, and the next step needs to be looking at the GMP, and through that, then making the clarification so that we can better protect our listed species. It seems like the issue has become, can and should Collier County protect our listed species. It's really frustrating actually to be in the position where we're questioning this. You've heard from the attorneys on all sides. I'm not an attorney, so I will just point out the irony that while we're here discussing the county's authority to protect listed species, we're currently doing it. We have language in the Land Development Code which allows us to protect gopher tortoises. And our gopher tortoise language is stronger than the state requirements, and we're doing it right now, and this authority hasn't been called into question. So what we're asking the county to do is nothing new. It's been in the Growth Management Plan and Land Development Code for years. It's not a new program and it's not a new idea. And just as an aside, I'd like to point out that when we're Page 63 January 29, 2004 discussing protecting listed species and having these different guidelines and programs, when we say more protective, that doesn't necessarily mean more onerous. Protecting species through the individual management plans allows a plan that's tailored to our county with specificity and flexibility built into it. And since the gopher tortoise plan is the one that I've been mentioning, I'll point out, as an example -- and it was pointed out before -- that single-family homeowners are exempt from having a tortoise management plan. So you don't have that extra level of burden. It isn't more onerous. It's just more protective, more tailored to Collier County. So the bottom line is, Collier County has the authority to protect listed species. We're already doing it. It's in the GMP and the Land Development Code, so let's go ahead and clarify the issue. Let's not become paralyzed over this. We like the idea of the stakeholders group. I think the stakeholders group is probably better than having an appointed committee because everyone can be involved in the stakeholders group, but you're not confined to all of the Sunshine Law where people can't talk in between meetings. So we like the stakeholders group. Anyone and everyone that wants to participate, we'd love to help get the word out and have as many people as possible involved. Thank you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you, Nicole. MR. WEBB: Madam Chair, the last public speaker is Jeffrey Carter, however, he is unable to be here and has asked that we read this statement into the record. "Honorable Commissioners, we are writing to urge you all to vote for continued support of the county's authority to protect listed species of flora and fauna here in Collier County. The role that counties should be playing in conserving our Page 64 January 29, 2004 environment is a crucial piece of the conservation puzzle that is presently missing. The need for regulation of economic, city, and county planning and development, law enforcement, fire control, and a myriad of other issues have been dealt with by local county and city government agencies for a long time. County governments have risen to the occasion and play a vital role in all of these kinds of processes. Lawmakers and citizens alike realized many years ago the importance of local government and the role that it must play in all the issues that affect the life, liberty and pursuit of its citizens. Therefore, we must recognize that our local government's past -- that our local government's past lack of involvement with regulating the protection of its environment is a problem that we can and must make right. We have already begun and can continue to set a shining example here in Collier County, an example that proves to everyone the crucially important role that all local governments in every state should be playing in the conservation and protection of their precious environmental resources. Sincerely, Jeffrey A. Carter." Oh, and he's on behalf of-- sorry -- the Conservation Advocacy Committee Chair. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. MR. WEBB: For the Friends of the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. CHAIRMAN FIALA: comments or questions? (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: wanted to say here? Commissioners, do you have any Did you have anything, Patrick, that you Page 65 January 29, 2004 MR. WHITE: No, ma'am. Thank you though. COMMISSIONER HENNING: The -- I appreciate the fact that somebody did recognize that we do protect listed species and also the sea turtle and the manatee. The -- and I also am thankful for the few people who got up and spoke about the issue, and that's protect listed species, and not about trying to stop development. That's my concern is, the people who did speak on -- about trying to stop development, they're going to be disappointed. The concern that I have in a couple of the statements was, they like the stakeholders meeting because members of the stakeholders can talk amongst themselves, and that is very concerning. And I thought that we wanted open and honest government in the sunshine. The decisions that we make for -- all the decisions for the -- for the residents and visitors of Collier County should be open and within the sunshine instead of back-room deals. And I am very much opposed to the stakeholders group, and I would hope the board would give direction to our staff to appoint members of the public to bring back some proposed language for protecting -- further protecting of listed species, and also make sure that it is science-based, not emotional-based, and I think we would be doing -- serving the community well. And we also need to know what the -- how it will affect the tax dollars. You know, this is not about development. This is about protecting listed species, and there will be ramifications to the -- our general fund, so we need to know all that stuff. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: I'd like-- if-- I still think the stakeholders would be a great way to go. We could put it under sunshine, but I think that we need to make sure that everybody has a voice in this, and I think we need to make sure that everybody is involved in the process so that we don't end up in another situation Page 66 January 29, 2004 like we had up in my district, in Naples Park, where you only have a select group that are going to be involved in this. I think you need to make sure that you get as many people as possible involved in this whole process so that we have input. But I also would like to say that I think we need to make sure that staff looks at other aspects of this in regards to the other 66 counties. So with that, I don't know if we are giving anybody guidance, but I think that whatever way we go, we want to make sure that we've got as many people as possible involved in this. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Coletta? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: There's been a lot of great things said here. And I'll tell you the -- what we heard today was some great testimony. And we've got to give due credit to our environmental community out there. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have 85 percent or so of our land in conservation easements in Collier County. We wouldn't have had the rural fringe and the rural lands. There's many things that would not have happened, gopher tortoise protection, manatee protection. All these things have added up to where we are today; however, where we're going with this at this point in time gives me great concern, and I'll tell you why. If we ever bring this thing to fruit (sic), to the point where the county has to put this in their comprehensive plan, that certain actions have to be taken, we're talking another overlay of government on top of what already exists, and we've been successful. We have a failure maybe with one eagle nest. But we have been very successful in Collier County. We have bear population that's exceeding the range, a panther population that's exceeding the range, they can't support any more on it. And so what we're going to be trying to do is place more restrictions. Page 67 January 29, 2004 Just recently, the other day, the Sierra Club had come out against the university -- had serious reservations to Ave Maria University in spite of the years and years of work that went into the rural lands, in spite of all the work that went into place working with our local groups to come up with a reasonable way to make it work. And anything that we put out there that's going to be additional overlays that are going to be on top of what we're already dealing with, it's going to be detrimental to our way of life. And who's going to pay for it? It's going to be the taxpayers in the end that are going to be paying for it. I think we did an excellent job and we're doing an excellent job. I don't see where we really need to pursue this any longer. I have no problems with people meeting on their own as a task force or whatever outside of the government, outside of the sunshine, and coming up with any conclusions they want that they can present to the commission whenever they care to, however, if they ever want to get any credence, it would have to be a regular committee under the Sunshine Laws of this state and be recognized by everyone and due process. Because I'll tell you now for the fact, the people that will show up for these meetings are always going to be the environmentalists who have -- the true environmentalists -- and God bless it (sic), they help to keep a balance in this count-- in this community. But they're going to be the ones that show up in force. The general public will not show up until that point in time that we get down to the eleventh hour or possibly even pass something, then they're going to come back and say, well, why wasn't I consulted, why wasn't I given a chance at this? This is why, if we're going to do anything at all, it has to be through this county government where appointees are put into a regular committee to be able to study this and bring back Page 68 January 29, 2004 recommendations. MS. CHUMBLER: Madam Chairman, if I could just make one suggestion. One option that would be available to this body is to -- and I think it's consistent with what you've done in the past, if I understand correctly -- is maintain the more -- the loser group such as we have now for this first initial step of dealing with the comp. plan. And we're really dealing not just with the wildlife issue, but with a whole list -- laundry list of comp. plan glitches that need to be resolved. I do think, and what I understand this county has done in the past, when you get to the point where, if you decide you really want to adopt regulations relating to, let's say, the bald eagle, you've put together a committee to come up with recommendations for a specific set of regulations for that species -- I think that's what was done for the manatee -- and at that point you can identify who the experts are, who the interest groups are -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Amen. MS. CHUMBLER: -- and it becomes a more precise process than what we're dealing with now. Now we're dealing with very broad issues. It's harder to come up with an advisory group when you're dealing with as broad a (sic) issues as we are at this point. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: So you're recommending to -- for the stakeholders to continue to meet to do Growth Management Plan amendments, correct? MS. CHUMBLER: Well, I'm not sure I understand, do growth management plans, to provide input to the staff so that the staff can come back to make recommendations to this body, just as -- and then go through the pro -- the normal process of comprehensive plan amendments through the EAC, the DSAC, the CCPC, and ultimately Page 69 January 29, 2004 to this body. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: What about the balance, Nancy (sic)? If they're a stakeholder group that has no authority under this government to be able to operate, where's the balance to this whole thing? Who's the people that are going to be attending it, and when the recommendations are going to come, are they going to be fair and balanced? MS. CHUMBLER: Well, the comp. plan amendments, just as any other comp. plan amendments, is advertised and goes through a series of public hearings before advisory groups already. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, here's the thing with that. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Are you finished? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: No, I just -- I wanted to -- you're Magi. I apologize for calling you Nancy. MS. CHUMBLER: We're interchangeable. It's okay. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Hi, Nancy. CHAIRMAN FIALA: I thought you were finished. I'm sorry. You're finished. Commissioner Henning -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: For now. CHAIRMAN FIALA: -- and then it's my turn. COMMISSIONER HENNING: We don't know which species that we want to protect. MS. CHUMBLER: And I'm not -- I don't know -- I don't think that -- at least as I understand the process we're in now is not designed to do that identification. It's -- the process, as I understand it now, is to take the very first step to determine whether the county should be in the business -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yep. MS. CHUMBLER: -- of that kind of regulation at all, or continue to be, as has been pointed out, in that kind of business at all. Page 70 January 29, 2004 And then there would be a next step of, okay, if we are, what species do we want to protect, and then the next step, what kinds of requirements do we want to put in place. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well -- and I think when we get to the point, what species that we need to protect is -- you know, we're -- we lead down a road that we want to protect everything, and then when we start getting into the details, we decide, well, we can't afford to do this. But then you already have that language in the Growth Management Plan. MS. CHUMBLER: Well, let me just point out that you already have species identified in your Growth Management Plan. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. MS. CHUMBLER: And so I guess there may be a decision at some point whether to shorten or lengthen that list. But there's already a list of species in the Growth Management Plan. COMMISSIONER HENN1NG: But I think that needs to be -- you need to have more of a broad base of the community instead of a selected -- you know, two sides to the issue. And, again, it's not two sides to the issue. It is a standard for the community. So we're going to get in the same place that the previous board did where there was language inserted in the Growth Management Plan. For some unknown reason it wasn't adopted and, therefore, a future board is going to have to deal with the same thing. So that's -- I guess that's my concern. I would like to see the whole picture before we do anything. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Coletta, and then me. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Marti, is there -- is there any possibility -- and this is the only thing that's got me concerned. If for some reason we can't move forward in some expeditious matter, that the other ends of this that we have already put together, such as the Page 71 January 29, 2004 gopher tortoise and rules that we placed in -- for the cockatoo woodpepper (sic) -- woodpecker and all that, is that -- is there a possibility that we -- those might be underminded (sic) and we might lose those incentives? MS. CHUMBLER: Those are there, they've been adopted. They're not currently under challenge from anyone. And until they are, they're in place. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay. But nothing we're doing here would undermine that? MS. CHUMBLER: Certainly not. I mean, when we came back to you for a comp. plan, if you decided to send us a direction the other way it might, but I'm not hearing any suggestion that that's going to happen. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, you won't hear me say that name again for woodpeckers. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Then me, then it's you. Okay. First of all, you know, harmony here is a really important thing. We want to have our citizens and our wildlife living in harmony with one another. We want to protect our wildlife. We want to protect our citizens. We want to protect property rights. We want to protect our road system. And we want those all to live in harmony. I think it's a wonderful idea to have this stakeholders group moving forward. I like the idea of the way it's constituted right now. I believe that we should highly publicize it, invite everyone, put it on the -- on the -- on our county website. We ought to have Eric Stats (phonetic) coming to all of them so he can report to the public and let everybody know when the next meeting is. Everybody would be invited to have input. I think it's a wonderful idea. Personally, as I drive around the roads, I like seeing birds, I like seeing wildlife. I see -- as I drive down 951, I see these wood storks Page 72 January 29, 2004 in these little swales, and I think it's just a wonderful thing. I wouldn't want to lose that. And I wouldn't -- even though they say that there are thousands of other islands out there that are uninhabited where the birds could go, and that's tree, except I don't want them going there and I can't see them. I mean, that's part of living here. I don't want to just look at high -- skyscrapers and high rises. I want to look at the animals and birds. I want a part of it all, harmony. I want a part of everything. At the same time, I want to make sure that our road systems -- I agree with you -- that our road systems can be built. And like with 951, I think we do need to connect 951. We have to take into -- and you've said this over and over, and I'll say this in my CREW meetings as well. We want to make sure to take the environment into consideration. We don't want to be plowing through -- and then make all types of accesses so then we have development creeping in there. What we want to do is connect one community with another and protect the environment. Harmony, again, is the word, as far as I'm concerned. And so I would -- I would suggest that we do go back and prepare for a March 1 lth hearing. That's my word. And Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes. Just going through what -- the issues of preservation of the wildlife that's presently written in here, I think it covers all the avenues that -- of people that have main concerns. The only thing we want to do is make sure that we have the language in there. Instead of may, maybe, or shall, we will take care of, and that's all we need to do. It's written in here exactly -- if you look at 208, it pretty much Page 73 January 29, 2004 tells you what's been proposed here as far as the Florida scrub jay, the bald eagle, the red-cockaded woodpecker, and the Florida black bear and the panther and the West Indies manatee and the logger head, and I think that pretty much covers the gamut here. And -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: What about the wood stork. Where's that? COMMISSIONER HALAS: Well, that's not in here, but, you know, that's something, but I'd say right now that we've got a pretty good list, and that's -- I think what we need to do is just make sure that we have the language there that we -- that we, the county, have the say in regards to how we administer either the taking or whatever of the wildlife or protecting of the wildlife, whatever it is. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Coletta? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, you wouldn't. If you put the word shall in there, it means you have no option. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Will. No, no, I said will -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay, forgive me. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Shall-- shall or we will. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, shall means that you've got -- CHAIRMAN FIALA: Shall means -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That's nothing. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Right, will. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Will means that you have the ability to listen to certain circumstances and prevail -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: You've got it. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Joe Schmitt, would you inter-- excuse me for-- MR. SCHMITT: Ma'am, can I -- I need to bring this back into perspective again-- CHAIRMAN FIALA: Yes. Page 74 January 29, 2004 MR. SCHMITT: -- so you understand where we are. The words that are shown on page 203, 3.11.3.3, are exactly the same words that currently exist in the Growth Management Plan. We've noted that there is a glitch -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: Right. MR. SCHMITT: -- and the issue that's been debated here is whether or not we will go beyond deferring to the state and federal authorities. But the way it is written now it is now in compliance with the Growth Management Plan. We can't change these words because if we do, this will not be in compliance with the GMP. That's why -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: That's right. MR. SCHMITT: -- as Marti mentioned, we have to come back with the GMP amendment sometime in March. But what you have in front of you, and as the stakeholders totally agreed, the wording in this now should remain as is until such time as we change the Growth Management Plan. What you heard, the debate today, was how we would change that. If I could just offer, probably the way to go about this, through our stakeholders group or-- if we go with elected -- with a committee, but if we continue with this glitch and we need to come back and deconflict some of the guidance in the Growth Management Plan, we probably are going to have to take somewhat of a neutral position, at least to clarify the change in language in the Growth Management Plan and then go beyond that in regards to okay, we -- we solved the Growth Management Plan, we've got this LDC amend -- or the LDC amendments for the fringe and lands amendments now passed, if, in fact, the county is going to proceed or pursue or go beyond what is stated, then we can entertain input, debate the issue, and then bring it back, maybe in the fall or beyond, we can form a Page 75 January 29, 2004 formal committee, and we can bring it back in the fall with a further amendment to the Growth Management Plan, which would then certainly -- it's going to -- it's going to require us to come back at a future LDC amendment cycle to change the language here. But I want you not to lose focus. What is in here right now is consistent with the GMP. What you've heard, the debate today, was really -- had to do with, where do we go in this glitch cycle that folks have been referring to. So we can look at some, at least compromising language now to get us beyond where we are right now, and certainly into the -- because we have many other issues we've got to address in the glitch cycle that will be coming back in this cycle. And then as Commissioner Henning pointed out, if we go further in regards to some kind of program that goes beyond the tortoise and some of the other issues with listed species. But I think we owe it to you to define the cost and the impacts associated with such a program. So if I could throw that on the table, maybe that would help us get at least to the point where we need to today, and then where we can get some guidance where we go with this next GMP cycle that will be coming up in the March time frame. CHAIRMAN FIALA: And it looked to me like everybody was going in that direction anyway. I mean -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yep. CHAIRMAN FIALA: -- no matter what all -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: So we don't vote on this then today? MR. SCHMITT: No. CHAIRMAN FIALA: No, no. But -- now Commissioner Henning wanted to say something, then Commissioner Coletta, and you, Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: Sure, sure. Page 76 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Sure, he'll always say something. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Binge, binge, binge. COMMISSIONER HENN1NG: The -- why can't we address this after we look at this whole list? MR. SCHMITT: We can. We can do it either way, Commissioner. We can just defer it and -- because what you're -- what you're appro -- suggesting certainly is not going to be in time for when you address some of the other glitches. We've got to come forward with those anyway, and I don't think we would have that time to really adequately address the issue, and I'm comfortable with that. We can bring that back later in the fall or in a subsequent cycle in regards to this issue, and I'm comfortable with that if that's your direction. I just want to make it so you understand that if, in fact, we go into a -- certainly -- and I think that's some -- has a lot of merit to go into some formal program or at least, as I said, cast the net, we would -- we would -- we would have to bring this back in a lat -- in a fut -- in the fall or sometime next winter. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And at the same time you can write Growth Management Plan language and already have the LDC language to go along with it? MR. SCHMITT: Well, we already have the language that currently exists. This is what currently exists right now, and it's been working for years. It just so happens that we've had one incident where it's raised an issue. COMMISSIONER HENNING: It's raised a question. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Coletta, then Commissioner Halas. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: So we're looking for the task force to bring us back the solution to this? Is this going to be staff Page 77 January 29, 2004 driven? Is staff working with the task force? Do they go to these meetings, or -- I'm kind of confused with how this whole thing is put together. MR. SCHMITT: Commissioner, when we recognize -- Bill, probably, what, two months ago, maybe three, we regoc -- actually, when we brought this before the Planning Commission, the issue was raised to try and strengthen the wording in here, and we said we cannot do that because it would conflict with the GMP. Then we decided, just as we did with the manatee protection program, we decided to notify stakeholders, bring them together, see if we had consensus as to whether or not there was conflicting guidance, and I think we pretty much have consensus that in our current GMP there's conflicting guidance. So we've been working with the stakeholders group. In fact, the chair mention, Eric -- Naples Daily News. Eric's been to all -- I think we've been to three meetings now, and the Naples Daily News has reported on those. The issue really is, the recommendations have been on both ends of the spectrum. Aggressive, county approach to listed species versus leave it -- the language the way it is and let the federal and state rulings dictate as to whether or not there can be some kind of a take or whatever, whatever the issue is involved. So we're dealing with language from the Growth Management Plan. These amendments as written right now are to get us through this first phase of any applications in either of the eastern -- rural fringe or eastern lands. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I hear you. I hear you, Joe, and I appreciate what the task force is doing, however, we're dealing with county business, and we're trying to reach conclusions through a task force -- MR. SCHMITT: Yes. Page 78 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: -- that isn't under any kind of jurisdiction of the county, the state -- MR. SCHMITT: It's not. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: -- federal government. It's just a loose form task force. MR. SCHMITT: That's correct. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: The balance of that task force may be in question, for one. I don't know who attends those meetings and how balanced it is and how the discussions go back and forth. Do they take minutes? MR. SCHMITT: No, no. It's just -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Forgive me. I'm not going to endorse this. I don't mind the task force meeting, but I just -- I don't think that the way it's set up now, that we have something that is truly within the realms of what government's all about. MR. SCHMITT: And I would agree. I mean, frankly, this has been just -- because we recognized there's been a glitch, and we've been trying to get input from all parties. But what you're recommending would be the right way to go. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And I tell you what, I'm held by Sunshine Laws. I can't talk to my fellow commissioners when I walk outside this room about anything that has to do with what takes place on the commission; however, the task force can get behind the scenes and start making all sorts of separate deals between each other, bringing it forward-- I think Commissioner Henning brought it up -- back-room deals. It's the very nature of human beings to do these things if they don't have rules in place to prevent it. Everything should be out in the open to the public, and the public should be involved. There should be a process where we appoint the members to it. And, of Page 79 January 29, 2004 course, everyone can attend the meetings. We've got minutes being taken, then we've got justification to be able to send staff to them because that's under the -- and that's the way I feel about it. I think we could accomplish this possibly in even less time -- CHAIRMAN FIALA: Marti? MS. CHUMBLER: I just want to make sure there's not a misapprehension about what -- what these things are. Essentially what you have is Collier County staff who has said, we are going to, you know, be there on Friday morning, January the 30th at 8:30. Anybody who'd like to come and give us their input on this position is welcome to come. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I wasn't invited. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I wasn't-- MS. CHUMBLER: You certainly are invited. Everyone is invited. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Nobody sent me any kind of a message that-- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: It wasn't legally noticed. MS. CHUMBLER: No, it wasn't legally noticed. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Of course it wasn't. It's a loose group of people. And I'm sorry, but I am going to have to tell you that I will not support this unless we put it under a committee. MS. CHUMBLER: Okay. And Commissioner Coletta, the on -- another way to do the same thing is to say, we welcome all written comments. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: No. I think you need the dialogue going back and forth -- MS. CHUMBLER: Written comments as opposed to oral comments. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, that's part of the committee's meetings. I can understand that. Page 80 January 29, 2004 MS. CHUMBLER: But we don't have a committee. You have county staff who's receiving comments. That's what it is. It's county staff receiving comments. And we've just -- we've used this term, stakeholders group, but the stakeholders group doesn't have -- it's not an organized list. It's just basically anyone who's interested who wants to come. COMMISSIONER HENN1NG: Well, we're going to change the way we've been doing business for years and years. MS. CHUMBLER: So do you not want us to meet tomorrow? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, no. I'd say, let's create an ordinance, create an environmental advisory review board and take a look at all the listed species, and let's do it science-based. Let's do it right. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: In the sunshine. MS. CHUMBLER: You have an enviro -- Environmental Advisory Committee. COMMISSIONER HALAS: You've got it already. MS. CHUMBLER: You have a development services, or whatever DSAC stands for-- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Can they review -- MS. CHUMBLER: -- so you're putting another level of advisory committee. COMMISSIONER HENNING: We're-- yeah, another level of citizens' input. MS. CHUMBLER: Okay. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: For this one thing. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And you know what, that's why we're great here in Collier County. Forty -- 54 of them, I think it is, right now, that we have citizens advise the Board of Commissioners. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Yes. How long does it take us to put a sunshine committee -- how Page 81 January 29, 2004 many months? I mean, I know we have to advertise, then we have to receive applications, then it has to be -- MS. CHUMBLER: Minimum of two months, I mean-- MR. SCHMITT: Minimum-- probably minimum, 90 days. CHAIRMAN FIALA: So how much will this cripple this effort right now? MS. CHUMBLER: It could take six months to a year. MR. SCHMITT' It would only defer it. We are -- still have other glitch amendments that we have to bring back. I'm talking again about the Growth Management Plan. These were some issues with density and some other things. MS. CHUMBLER: Can I, can I -- MR. SCHMITT: We would just have to defer this, and legitimately so, if your feelings are to cast a net, a larger -- I'm sure we have group repre -- or a representation of what we would deem the entire county, we would defer this, and we would -- we would bring it back in a subsequent GMP cycle, and that's fine. I think this is something we need to ensure, that we bring you back the right answer. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Commissioner Halas? MR. SCHMITT: And, you know, your guidance is -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: I think we've got two things going here, don't we? What we need to do now is just address the language that's in here right now on 311.33, and that is just to define the glitch that we presently have, what's in the Land Development Code, and take care of that issue, and then come back with a group, or however we're going to do this, to address the species, which is already listed in here, it's written in here, basically some of the items of concern; is that correct? MR. SCHMITT: Commissioner, what's written in the LDC now Page 82 January 29, 2004 is consistent with the Growth Management Plan. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Then I think what we need to do is just address that issue, and then any other issue needs to be addressed MR. SCHMITT: The other issue -- that's exactly right. The other issue is a GMP issue, and it really is -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: That's where we need -- MR. SCHMITT: -- what you want-- COMMISSIONER HALAS: -- to get the stakeholders and get everybody together however we want to do it. MR. SCHMITT: And that's what you want us to bring back -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: Right. MR. SCHMITT: -- in regards to correcting that identified inconsistency in our Growth Management Plan language, whether or not you want to see that in March or you want us to get a committee together to address it. Because what you've heard today, or most comments had to do with not what is written -- what is written in our LDC, but our LDC is predicated and founded on the Growth Management Plan, and that's -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: So what we need to do to -- then today is just address -- right to this, and then the other issue about the Growth Management Plan, that will be taken care of either by a stakeholders group or a group that's going to be under sunshine, or however it's going to be taken; is that correct? MR. SCHMITT: That's correct. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Are we still looking at March the 24th then, or are we looking to put this off beyond March 24th? MR. SCHMITT: No, sir. The -- we haven't scheduled-- we haven't locked in the schedule yet for those Growth Management Plan amendments, because the list keeps on growing as we uncover Page 83 January 29, 2004 some of the problems -- but this is only one example. What you have today you'll see the second time on February 1 1 th. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. Why do-- MR. SCHMITT: And we were talking in late March, early April coming back to you with Growth Management Plan amendments to address several of the areas, this being one that's been identified as you heard today. The issue is whether or not you want to see it then, or do you want to see it later in the year when we form a larger committee; that's what's being argued. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. All I ask is, my fellow commissioners then, let's address what's in front of us today, get this taken care of, and agree on this particular language the way that the Growth Management Plan is at this point in time, and then go on to the next step. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Coletta? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yes. Is -- I am not comfortable with this whole process, and I'm getting less comfortable by the minute. Do we have to vote this up or down, or can we -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: No. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: --just defer it? MR. SCHMITT: Not today. You'll vote on this February 1 lth. We're just hearing -- this is the first hearing today. CHAIRMAN FIALA: We're really talking about these things. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yeah. We're just talking the first hearing. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I understand that, but I don't know if we addressed everything in here that I want to deal with, and wanted -- in other words, drag this out to the first hearing. This is just the first hearing on it. MR. SCHMITT: Yes. Page 84 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: If we removed it from this cycle, could it come back as the first cycle in February, couldn't it; in February, come back? COMMISSIONER HALAS: Remove it? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Quiet. MR. SCHMITT: These are Land Development Code amendments. And, again, as they're written is consistent with the Growth Management Plan. And most of the arguments you heard today were dealing with this language, but what we're really dealing with, the way it's written in the Growth Management Plan, not the way it's written here, other than the fact that what's written here is the Growth Management Plan language. It's very confusing, and I'm trying to say that the LDC has to be consistent with our Growth Management Plan. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And you said it is? MR. SCHMITT: It is right now. COMMISSIONER HALAS: It is right now with this language. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: This is the exact language that's in the Growth Management Plan? MR. SCHMITT: That's correct. The argument -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Right down to the letter-- MR. SCHMITT: That's right. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: -- including the shall rather than may. MR. SCHMITT: That's correct. MS. CHUMBLER: Yes. MR. SCHMITT: Marti is going to clarify. MS. CHUMBLER: And let me -- I think we're -- unfortunately, the precise problem that sort of got us here has escalated. Let me make sure we under -- everyone understands what the very precise Page 85 January 29, 2004 problem is with the language. The comp. plan, as currently written, says, the county shall, consistent with Growth Management Plan policies, consider and utilize recommendations and letters of technical advisement from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It's been-- CHAIRMAN FIALA: So shall means will, right? MS. CHUMBLER: It says shall, that means it's mandatory. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Right, okay. I just wanted to clarify that. MS. CHUMBLER: Consistent with the Growth Management Plan; however, the same policy goes on to say that, it is recognized that on a case-by-case basis, these letters of technical advisement and recommendations may be inconsistent with the Growth Management Plan, and in those cases they'll be deemed to be consistent with the Growth Management Plan. Your staff does not know what that means. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I don't know either. MS. CHUMBLER: It needs to be clarified. And if you put off making any revisions to the comp. plan to at least clarify what that means, you've left your staff not knowing how to apply it. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Exactly. MS. CHUMBLER: So, you know, there are these larger issues that are hovering over this that deal with the sort of policy issues of how you want to address the regulation of protection of wildlife. But the -- the initial issue, the initial problem that your staff is trying to tackle and trying to deal with on a daily basis is, how do we apply this comp. plan provision; we don't know what it means. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Dealing with the latter, we do, in some cases, deal with listed species. So do you need that type of Page 86 January 29, 2004 interpretation? MS. CHUMBLER: We don't need that. It's been raised though. That's part of what ballooned from this, is there's been an issue raised about whether the county's got the authority to regulate listed species. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, we do. The manatee. MS. CHUMBLER: Manatee -- there's a difference in the law between marine endangered species and non-marine endangered species. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Red-headed -- or the gopher tortoise. MS. CHUMBLER: And you have a provision that's in place that has not been challenged. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So -- I mean, that -- the latter, that's pretty much what it says, is, we choose to regulate gopher tortoise taking, so -- I mean, do you need -- if that's the interpretation, or is that -- MS. CHUMBLER: No, no, no. That's not -- that's not what's precisely at issue here. The issue -- the precise issue with the Growth Management Plan is whether the county shall at all times defer the recommendations of the state and federal agencies -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. MS. CHUMBLER: -- even when it is inconsistent with your Growth Management Plan. Because the comp. plan, the Growth Management Plan itself says, we recognize that these recommendations may, on a case-by-case basis, be inconsistent with the Growth Management Plan, and it will then be deemed to be consistent with Growth Management Plan. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Exactly. CHAIRMAN FIALA: So in other words, ours are tighter -- our protection -- or we want them to be tighter restrictions than the state Page 87 January 29, 2004 or the Feds tell us, because we feel -- we feel that our area is so much more environmentally sensitive, right? MS. CHUMBLER: Well, it-- the language as written certainly implies that there could be instances when the Growth Management Plan would be tighter-- COMMISSIONER HALAS: Exactly. MS. CHUMBLER: -- and then you may have to -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: Specifies. MS. CHUMBLER: -- defer to them anyway, although the very introduction of that section says, where consistent with the Growth Management Plan, you shall utilize. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Can we -- MS. CHUMBLER: So you've got conflicting language in the comp. plan. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Can we give direction to say, the county shall defer to the state and federal agencies unless it is written in the Land Development Code for-- COMMISSIONER HALAS: In the growth management -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- specific protection or monitoring? MS. CHUMBLER: One option available would certainly be that you could say that we shall consider their comments as long as they're consistent with our Growth Management Plan and land development regulations. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. MS. CHUMBLER: That would be an option. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And then -- and then from there, then we can develop a larger picture. I'm comfortable with that. CHAIRMAN FIALA: So what we're saying today is, we're not going to vote on this? Page 88 January 29, 2004 MS. CHUMBLER: Right now -- CHAIRMAN FIALA: We're reprimanding (sic) it back to you to -- is that the correct word? MS. CHUMBLER: The LDR -- what you have before you today is the land development regulations. They're enacted pursuant to the Growth Management Plan, so in order to cure this problem, we've got to fix the Growth Management Plan, which is what we are -- hope to do in March, unless you tell us to pull this one off. But if you do, you've left your staff hanging on this precise issue. So if we can fix the Growth Management Plan in March, then you can come back in fairly short order and correct the LDR, too, and then go from there. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: And that's -- that's where we need to be. What we need to do is just put this wording in to what -- enhances the Growth Management Plan as it's written today. Nothing else. All it does is just clarifies -- this Land Development Code just clarifies the language that's given to us in the -- in the Growth Management Plan; am I correct, what I'm saying? MR. WHITE: It restates it, exactly. MS. CHUMBLER: It restates it, yes. COMMISSIONER HALAS: It restates it; that's all we're doing? MS. CHUMBLER: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. And then what we need to do at a later date, then address the Growth Management Plan; is that correct? MS. CHUMBLER: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. I think that we -- so we don't really need to pull this off. All we need to do is just put this in and then continue on? Page 89 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER COMMISSIONER COMMISSIONER COMMISSIONER said -- MS. CHUMBLER: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. MR. WHITE: And as was mentioned earlier, there's a second reason why you're being recommended to do this as well, and that is to await outside counsel determination with respect to the constitutionality issue, so there's a second reason that supports why you would wait and just leave the text as it is for now. HALAS: Okay. COLETTA: Okay. HENNING: All right. HALAS: But one more clarification. You CHAIRMAN FIALA: Now you're -- let me just stop you here. You're talking specifically about 3.11.3.3, right? COMMISSIONER HALAS: That's -- yes, ma'am. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay, okay. Just so that we -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes. CHAIRMAN FIALA: You know, so that we're all on the same page, literally. COMMISSIONER HALAS: And when it says, the county shall, you said that the shall means they will uphold that; is that correct? CHAIRMAN FIALA: Right. Shall means must. And I wanted to clarify that, because I don't think a lot of people understand that shall means you -- you will do this, you must do this; whereas, may means you could if you wanted to. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. MR. WEBB: Yes, Madam Chairman. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, Patrick, shall is actually defined in the LDC as a mandatory term, although -- MS. CHUMBLER: It is. And every court will treat it that way. Page 90 January 29, 2004 CHAIRMAN FIALA: I don't know why we can't use simple words like, must and -- MS. CHUMBLER: Courts don't like must or will. Shall or may, that's all they like. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. MR. WHITE: I disagree with that. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Now, we're all in agreement, Commissioners -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes. CHAIRMAN FIALA: -- that we are going to give this back to our people to bring back to us in March; is that correct? MR. SCHMITT: No, ma'am. MS. CHUMBLER: Well, back-- MR. SCHMITT: Go through the steps. MS. CHUMBLER: Yeah. But there's a couple things we could do. We could come back in March with a very precise correction to this language in the comp. plan, go forward with this LDR, come back to you in March, along with the other glitches with a very precise clarification, and nothing more, of the comp. plan language. And then if this body directs, go beyond that to explore what more should be done either in the comp. plan or in the LDRs in terms of wildlife protection. MR. SCHMITT: I would recommend that's the way we go. We come back with simply -- you move with this. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Move with this. MR. SCHMITT: This is step one, because this is -- this is our current -- this is consistent right now with our Growth Management Plan; two, we come back on the glitch cycle, we clarify, in a -- neutral as possible deconflict the language as Marti mentioned; and three, we look at the bigger issue. And we will probably have to establish, as Commissioner Page 91 January 29, 2004 Henning mentioned, a committee, and as Commissioner Coletta mentioned, form a committee, a board sanctioned committee to gather input from the citizens and look at the bigger picture, how do we deal with listed species and where do we want to go beyond what is currently written or at least what we think is the intent of what was written in the Growth Management Plan as it exists today. But we would do that at -- and certainly in the fall or beyond, because it's going to be -- it would be in another GMP cycle. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. MR. SCHMITT: Does that make sense? MS. CHUMBLER: Yes. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioners, all in agreement? COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes. MR. WHITE: And just one more thing, I think, that's consistent with the discussion has been by the board members thus far, is that would afford you the time as well to, in a considered way,. create whatever types of committee or review process you would like to have for those proposed detailed regulations. MR. SCHMITT: We will come back during the board meeting with a recommendation to form a committee, board sanctioned committee, to advertise for committee members, we'll then come back, and just as you do with any other committee, and you would recognize or appoint members to that committee, and I -- if that's the direction you want to go. COMMISSIONER HALAS: At what time would we decide how many members we were going to have on that board? COMMISSIONER HENNING: At the regular BCC, I would imagine. MR. SCHMITT: Maybe at a regular BCC when we come back with, Patrick, an ordinance establishing that committee and decide -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: How many don't you want on Page 92 January 29, 2004 it? COMMISSIONER HALAS: No, no. We can put as many as we want on it, but we've got to -- you've got to make sure that, you know, is it going to be five people or is it going to be 40 people, okay, or is it going to be a thousand people? Okay. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Do we need to vote on this, Patrick? MR. WHITE: No, as a matter of fact, Madam Chair, I believe you do not. MR. SCHMITT: Okay. COMMISSIONER HENNING: We're done with it. CHAIRMAN FIALA: We're finished with this subject. And Patrick, you wanted to break about now for the five o'clock break, the 5:05; is that correct? MR. WHITE: If you want to break until 5:05, I think that would be ideal. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Very good. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Patrick, on the -- do we need a consistency (sic) or anything like that on the action that we took earlier? MR. WHITE: If you wanted to address a housekeeping matter now instead of at 5:05, either way. COMMISSIONER HENNING: We'll wait. Everybody's leaving. CHAIRMAN FIALA: I said reprimand instead of remand. (A brief recess was taken.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: Would you please take your seats. Thank you. Thank you for this brief break. Patrick, did you need to say anything now? ***MR. WHITE: Yes, if I may, Madam Chairman. CHAIRMAN FIALA: You may, sir. Page 93 January 29, 2004 MR. WHITE: First, I'd like to ask if there's anyone present for the 5:05 p.m. portion of today's hearing who has not had an opportunity to speak on the listed species issue, I believe that would be appropriate to allow them to do so. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Certainly. MR. WHITE: Secondly, just a housekeeping matter, I think we probably better do it now than at the end of the meeting when we're more in a little hurry, and that is, you'd previously voted with respect to the items that you'd heard for a second time today individually, and I'd like to have the board put off until February 1 lth a final vote in total on all of those with respect to the creation of an ordinance so that we would be able to bundle those provisions that you considered individually today along with those that you'll be considering for the first time today and the second time on February 1 lth so that then we could create the larger ordinance with both sets of regulations together. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Does that meet with everybody's approval here? COMMISSIONER HALAS: This is just first reading, and my understanding, we've come to the conclusion that we -- CHAIRMAN FIALA: Speak into the microphone. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yeah. My understanding is to make sure that we have clarified that what we discussed prior to the break, everybody's in agreement on, with 3.11.3.3 as far as the wording is at this point in time and how it correlates with the Growth Management Plan. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Right. But this isn't even coming back to us February 11 th though. MR. WHITE: Those matters will be, and I will ask you on the 1 lth to make one final vote with respect to all of the sections that you voted upon individually earlier today for their second hearing. Page 94 January 29, 2004 CHAIRMAN FIALA: Right. But the one that Commissioner Halas is mentioning, that doesn't -- MR. WHITE: That's not up for vote today. CHAIRMAN FIALA: -- come back to us until March, right? MR. WHITE: It will be back before you on February 1 lth for a second -- this. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Just the language as it's stated in CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. MR. WHITE: And I think that staff is taking as direction, is that, at this point it's the board's preference to leave it as is so that you would have text in your LDC that would be consistent with your Growth Management Plan. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. MS. CHUMBLER: But the larger body of LDRs that it's contained within will all come back to you on February 1 1 th. MR. WHITE: Yes. We will essentially ask you to take a final vote with respect to all of the matters that are in the ordinance that is being prepared for both the provisions that are the noneastern lands that you considered at two o'clock, and the eastern lands provisions that you considered thereafter and will consider for the balance of this evening. And, again, I'd just ask if there's anyone in the audience who was not present previously and would like to talk with respect to -- excuse me -- Tab M pertaining to listed species, that they would come forward now. And I'11, just for the record, state there is no one. Thank you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. ***MS. CHUMBLER: Madam Chairman, I think we're ready now to deal with other areas that have been -- that we feel have been sort of focused on as issues, some of which we -- we think we have Page 95 January 29, 2004 resolved and have recommendations for you and others we will be looking for some direction for you -- from you on where to go. There are -- there are other items that -- where there have been no issues, and unless you have questions for us, we would merely plan for those tabs to simply say, here's generally what they are, and unless there's questions, not discuss them further, if that's acceptable to you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: That's fine. MS. CHUMBLER: Okay. The first thing we'd like to focus -- focus your attention to relates to rural fringe, mixed use district. There are a couple issues, one is very minor. On page 34 -- in fact, this was just pointed out today -- under rural villages allowable uses, there's a provision that requires that rural village PUD -- PUD specifically state what uses are allowed within that district. There's been a suggestion that we add language requiring that the applicant seeking the PUD notify the owner of any subsurface rights that they're seeking a PUD, the thought being otherwise, the owner of subsurface rights might get limited in their ability to access their subsurface rights because the PUD doesn't accommodate that. So we would just -- and we're not -- my thought would be not to come up with the language specifically today, but to come back with you -- to you on the 1 lth with something that would simply require notification of the owner of any subsurface rights. COMMISSIONER HALAS: You're talking mineral rights; is that-- MS. CHUMBLER: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HALAS: -- what you're referring to? MS. CHUMBLER: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. I wouldn't think they'd be drilling oil wells in a community, would they? MS. CHUMBLER: They -- if they have Subsurface rights there, Page 96 January 29, 2004 there may be some reasons why they couldn't put it there. But certainly if someone's coming in to add a rural village on top of rights that they own, they would like to be notified of that before they lose their right to access them. I mean, that's the idea. Someone could come and-- COMMISSIONER HALAS: Right. MS. CHUMBLER: -- basically prevent them from reaching those -- that property that they own unless they're provided with notice. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I think that's fair that we need to -- if we just get a nod -- that we need to provide notification of those rights. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Yes. We have four nods. MS. CHUMBLER: Okay. All right. ***The next issue is on page 42, or at least starts on page 42. It relates to neutral lands. And as you recall, neutral lands is that sort of middle ground between. You cannot-- you cannot either generate transfer of development rights nor can you receive transfer of development rights. Basically within neutral lands, the development -- ability to develop is the same as it has been for a period of time, one unit per five acres. Currently the LDR does not allow for any clustering within the neutral lands. We've received comments that-- suggesting that we might want to allow for that. And in fact, having thought about it, staff thinks that's a good idea, and we would recommend that we come back to you on the 11 th with language that would allow clustering in neutral lands. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Everybody in agreement? Okay. We have four nods. Page 97 January 29, 2004 MS. CHUMBLER: Okay. That's -- those are all the issues that we've identified in Tab A. ***The next group of issues -- in fact, most of the remaining issues relate to Tab I, the TDR program. First appearing on page 135, and that's the issue of whether or not there should be a minimum price set by the county for TDRs. You'll see in the draft before you the language that was there is shown as stricken out, and that was at the recommendation of the Planning Commission. The CCPC was not in favor of a minimum price, but this body had directed us back in the summer to come up with a minimum price, and so we have done that. But there -- there have been a lot of comments -- comments before the CCPC and the feeling of the CCPC that the market should drive the price. And if after a year -- of course, this body is required to review the TDR program in a year. If at the end of that year it's determined there needs to be a minimum price set or some other way of ensuring that the price of TDRs is not too low, it could be examined at that time. So we ask for direction. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Coletta? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: This is something I really feel strong on, and I'm not about ready to back off. We're the ones that created the situation out there. It's the government that stepped in and said, we're taking the rights of your land away. Now we're going to tell them that now you have to deal with the free market system. I'm sorry. This is selling the public short. And I know we had the Planning Commission. It was a number of very capable lawyers and developers that presented a wonderful case, and I'm sure they're going to do so here now. I'm willing to listen to it, but right at this point in time, I reached the limits of what I can do as far as endorsing this product. Page 98 January 29, 2004 CHAIRMAN FIALA: And I have to agree. I think that so many times the people that we're -- that would be in this process of dealing financially with people who are well knowledgeable of the process, these people who own the land really aren't and so many times are taken advantage of or cheated. And I'm sorry to put it that way, but that's how it is, they're cheated out of money that they rightfully deserve. So I have to agree with Commissioner Coletta. Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: I just want to state that the process that we created in the fringe area did not take anybody's rights away. It just gave them a choice to transfer their development rights onto other property. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Yeah. I don't think that -- we were talking about dollars paid for. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah? You know, it doesn't sound like it's going to fly. That's fine. I always believe in free enterprise, and if somebody wants to sell something cheaper because they're going out of town or whatever, I think they have a right to do that. But that's fine. I understand where everybody's at. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: I think what we talked-- I think what we talked about in the workshop was determining where the baseline would be. And I think what we need to do is -- the baseline, I think, we talked roughly about 25,000. But I really think that what's going to transpire here is that we may have some people that get into the brokerage business and get involved, and I think you're going to see that the price of these TDRs are going to go up. I really think it's going to skyrocket. So it's just like buying stock. The first people in might buy at a Page 99 January 29, 2004 low rate, but then as you sell this commodity, I think it's going to drive the price up. So it's going to be basically based on free enterprise system. MS. CHUMBLER: And I would ask-- I failed to ask for direction before. I'm not sure what you want to do in terms of soliciting public comment, or do you want to get through -- for example, get through all of the TDR section and get comments on that, or how would like to go forward? I'm not sure -- CHAIRMAN FIALA: Two speakers on this particular issue? MR. SCHMITT: TDRs, and we had one speaker on the previous -- MR. WEBB: Actually two on Tab A. CHAIRMAN FIALA: You know, we really ought to hear them, because then we're going to lose whatever we're talking about and it won't feel like it's relevant anymore. MS. CHUMBLER: You may then want to break since we -- there were two speakers on Tab A, do them now, and then come back and let me finish with the Tab I issues, and then take those speakers. Is that what you'd like to do? CHAIRMAN FIALA: Very good. MR. WEBB: The two public speakers on Tab A are Pat Spencer, followed by Brad Cornell. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Brad's gone. MR. SCHMITT: Brad's gone, and I don't see Pat here, so -- MS. CHUMBLER: Brad's out in the hallway. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Oh. MS. SPENCER: Hello, Commissioners. I'm Patricia Spencer. I'm with the Pathway Advisory Committee, and I hope there wasn't an error, Tab A, Tab C. I really wanted to talk about the rural fringe amendments. Is this a good time to do it? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That's where we are. Page 100 January 29, 2004 MS. SPENCER: All right. Good evening. The Pathway Advisory Committee has worked diligently to ensure pathways for bikers and pedestrians. Loopholes were closed by the 2003 Land Development Code amendments. It was a hard fight. And when adopted last fall, it appeared to all that appropriate pathways would be assured for the health and safety of all of Collier County. Now we are here a few short months later and the board is being asked to approve Land Development Code amendments for the eastern lands that do not include bike lanes or meet with standards already set by this board. Why? Are eastern lands in rural fringe areas not part of Collier County? Are future residents there not to bike, and if they do, don't they deserve the same safeguards? Does anyone else foresee a lawsuit from the first bike path injury when they realize the county lessened previously-set safety standards? Why are the approved standards not consistent between the current county Land Development Codes and eastern Land Development Codes? Please, make the pathway standards consistent throughout Collier County. MS. CHUMBLER: And members of the Commissions, I think there's been some confusion. The comments that have just been given really relate to Tab C, the rural stewardship lands. I think, unfortunately, there's some nomenclature that gets tossed around. So I don't know whether you want to come back later. There will be more -- a presentation on the eastern land standards, and these comments certainly are relevant to those parts. Page 101 January 29, 2004 CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I wouldn't have a problem if she was -- if she was able to come back again at that point in time. We've got that for open discussion. CHAIRMAN FIALA: If you want to hang around. I think they had some dinner in there that isn't finished. MR. WEBB: I think Brad doesn't want to speak on this one, if I'm correct. MR. CORNELL: I pass. I'm sorry. After all that. MR. WEBB: Okay. All right. We'll move on to Tab I, or did you -- Marti, are you going to finish that, or-- MS. CHUMBLER: Yes, yes, I'll finish. There were some more issues on TR -- so if I understand the consensus, you want us to leave in the minimum price or return the minimum price so that when it comes back to you on the 1 lth, we'll have that strike through taken out and it will be, the $25,000 minimum price. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yes. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes. ***MS. CHUMBLER: Okay. The next issue appears on page -- actually back a page on page 134, and that relates to whether -- what role the county should play in the TDR transactions. As I understand it from our-- the workshop we had last summer, your direction was that you did not want the county to actually get into the role of purchasing TDRs themselves and setting up a bank but you do want the county to be involved. What we have proposed here is the county will serve as a registry, and that registry will serve at least three different functions. First it will serve as a body that will educate the public, both the landowners and possible developers about what the TDR program is and how it works. Secondly, it will be a listing service where a willing seller, a Page 102 January 29, 2004 landowner who has lands in sending who's interested in selling TDRs, can go to that registry and list their -- the TDRs they want to sell. It's also a place where interested buyers could go who need to find TDRs to find the TDRs that are available. And so it's there, as I've said, it's sort of a matchmaking service. The third function of the registry is more administrative, and that is, certainly, we need to have a vehicle for recording and keeping a listing of what TDRs have been severed from the land so you don't get people getting double credit for TDRs, so we know what land has -- the TDRs have been taken from, and we know ultimately where those TDRs are used. So those will be the three functions of the registry as currently proposed. There was some suggestion along the line that the county should also serve as the exclusive broker of TDRs such that every TDR transaction, the county would have to be the middleman in that transaction, and the majority of the comments that we've gotten back is that that should not happen, at least for the first year, that there should be no reason that the county is the middleman in every single transaction. CHAIRMAN FIALA: How do we protect the citizens who are, you know, getting into this very unknown field, who know nothing at all about TDRs but are interested in selling; what method do we have in place to protect them? MS. CHUMBLER: I think that the -- the thought is, the educational function -- part of the purpose of the registry will be to help educate those property owners about what their rights are, what the market is, so that the first, you know, buyer who knocks on their door doesn't come in and get them to undersell when, in fact, if they went to the registry, they'd find out that the going price was something much larger. CHAIRMAN FIALA: And, you know, we've seen through Page 103 January 29, 2004 these past couple years some people who weren't-- somebody probably I would admire a lot -- telling people things that aren't really true or expanding on the truth to a point where it's hardly recognizable, and, were outright lying, and innocent people who don't know any better get frightened and they think, oh, I better sell or I better do something because they're told something like this. MS. CHUMBLER: Right. CHAIRMAN FIALA: That we need to protect them. MS. CHUMBLER: Right. Certainly the public information distribution service will be an important part. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Yes. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And I agree with you, but a couple things that are in place right now that make me feel a little bit more comfortable with the process, is one, the $25,000 seat, so somebody's not going to come in, especially at this early date -- although, like Commissioner Halas said, the value of these things is going to far exceed $25,000 as years go by. And the person that holds out the longest is going to get the most, that's without a doubt. The other part is the educational part where I imagine there'll be a mass mailing that will go out; hopefully it will be in two languages, because we do have a number of landowners, small holders out there that speaks only Spanish, and numbers that they can contact that would be able to interpret for them, if so be it. And, of course, it will go out -- it will go out of the county, it will go out of state, and in some cases, it will even go out of the country to be able to give these people notice of exactly what they're dealing with. At some point in time, people are going to have the right to be able to purchase these things in blocks, to be able to speculate on, I would assume. If anything, that will help to drive the price up a little bit so that you can assure the people that are going to be on the Page 104 January 29, 2004 receiving end of it, that own the land at this time, and sell those rights, will be able to even get a better profit. And I'll tell you right now, that people out there that are on -- in these sending lands, ever since we came up with the original scenario and the $25,000, for the most part, they still don't like the idea that they don't have the right to be able to develop their land as they so see fit, but no one ever has that right totally. They do have a certain comfort level, and complaints don't exist now, and we're doing the right thing in how this thing is put together, and I admire your compassion for your fellow man, I really do. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: With each TDR, what is the increase in density; say if somebody buys a TDR for a development area. MS. CHUMBLER: It's one unit per TDR. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. And so we're only looking at how many TDRs roughly, 5,000, roughly? MR. SCHMITT: Eighteen hundred -- eighteen hundred, Bob? MR. MULHERE: There's somewhere less than -- excuse me. For the record, Bob Mulhere with RWA. There's somewhere less than 5,000, about 4,800 is the number that we've generally used. But there's no increase in overall density. These are units that exist today, and they're just going to another location. The only place where you see an increase in density is where there's a bonus, such as in the rural village scenario. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Right. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Question for Bob before he leaves, if I may. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Sure. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Bob, have we looked at the Page 105 January 29, 2004 possibility of readdressing -- right now at this point in time at 4,800 units, in order to be able to fill the need that will be out there in the sending areas that we have developed, how many would be required to be able to develop this to full capacity? MR. MULHERE: Into the receiving areas? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yes. MR. MULHERE: Many, many times the number that is available; many, many times. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay. Is there a possibility we might be able to give consideration of allowing these TDRs to go a little bit farther in the value for the developer out there than where it is now? MR. MULHERE: Yes. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Because what's going to happen when we reach the end of the program, there's going to be places out there where people speculated on land for development, and they're going to get to the point, there won't be the TDRs available to be able to move it forward. MR. MULHERE: Yes. Well, I mean -- I think that's a very good point, and without sort of predicting where this thing will go over the next year, but knowing that the plan requires that we evaluate it through this year and come back to you with a report, I think there are a number of options on both sides of the equation. It's supply and demand. In this -- in the supply part of the equation, which is what you're talking about, is the rate of transferable development rights or units that a landowner gets, which is currently one per five, which was the exact same number as their density that they previously enjoyed. That transfer ratio could be increased from 1.5 to 2, and it might depend on a couple of factors. Now, that will increase the density, and that will be something that would have to be looked at. Page 106 January29,2004 But the other, you know, component of that is going to be the -- the demand side, and the demand side, we're going to have to monitor that very closely, because if the 25,000, for example, is a -- is a component that causes the buyers not to be interested in buying the TDRs, then by increasing the number, you could reduce that price. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Exactly. MR. MULHERE: And still provide the seller with more money and the buyer with a more affordable unit, which is why, again, we're recommending that -- you know, one year seems like a long time. It's not really that long to monitor this program. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: But if we -- if we -- when we wait a full year, will this mean that nothing will sell in the meantime because of the speculation -- MR. MULHERE: I can't predict that. We don't know. Maybe the -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: But, of course, the value of the unit will increase in whoever's hands it's in. So if we decide at some point in time to go with like, 1.5 or 2 -- and also, too, we've been looking into the possibility of coming up with some plan where we might be able to accept conservation land in our name or somebody else's name -- the land that's left, be able to -- MR. MULHERE: Yes. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yes. Turn that into a TDR also? MR. MULHERE: Actually, that's part of the program. Once you transfer TDRs, then you have to create a conservation easement over the land. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, that's true, but you still have the right to build a house on 40 acres. MR. MULHERE: Correct. Page 107 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: There's still some rights to the lands that we have. MR. MULHERE: Correct, that's correct. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And so that land still has value. MR. MULHERE: That's correct. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay. Is there a possibility that we might be able to come up with a secondary program whereby the land would actually pass on to a conservation organization or to some arm of the county to be used in conservation? MR. MULHERE: I think that was anticipated by the program, but right now it's simply a choice of the seller. The seller has the choice to sell all of the development rights and create a conservation easement, and they can still sell the land for mitigation or for conservation -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay. I understand. MR. MULHERE: -- or donate the land for conservation. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: So you can strip the rights and you still have something to work with? MR. MULHERE: Correct. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Commissioner Henning? MR. MULHERE: But there was just one other quick item I wanted to add, if I -- another potential component to tweak this program, you know, again, over the period of the analysis during this year, is that we -- we could also look at other opportunities for bonuses for people who purchase TDRs, such as the rural village scenario. Right now, you buy one unit, and you get a bonus unit if you create a rural village. Well, you know, if that doesn't work well, maybe you buy one unit and you get two. I mean, I'm just -- I'm just suggesting to you that there are a lot of options out there that need to be explored. Page 108 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: As long as we can protect the integrity of that original TDR as far as its dollar value. MR. MULHERE: I understand. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That is the most important thing. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Without increasing the build-out in Collier County, MR. MULHERE: Well, there-- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: It's got a limit. MR. MULHERE: There would be a limit, but there would be some increase potentially in the number of units that could be built, say, within the rural fringe. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I guess there's always limits, but the question is, I'm sure this board doesn't want to increase the build-out in Collier County. MR. MULHERE: Well, I think if the concerns are related to the impacts of additional population on the infrastructure, one of the things that will have to be analyzed is how a nice compact rural village might reduce the impacts on that infrastructure as opposed to spreading fewer units out amongst a whole lot more geography. So I think we have to look at all the policy decisions on it; one, are we protecting the natural resource areas through this process and the species; two -- and also water and hydrology; and then, two, if we did increase the density somewhat, how much, is it tolerable, is that population increase acceptable, and how will the design of those receiving areas, perhaps, offset some of the impacts from the increased population. These are all considerations. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: A final thought is the discussion about once you remove the development rights off the land and to put an environmental easement -- Page 109 January 29, 2004 MR. MULHERE: Conservation easement. COMMISSIONER HENN1NG: -- conservation easement. Commissioners, we don't want to own that land, because we're going to have to maintain that land. And I can tell you, government doesn't do a good job of maintaining conservation lands right now. So the most important part is, you know, you want to give it to somebody that knows how to do that and has experience, like the environmental community. CHAIRMAN FIALA: So when you say conservation easement and -- but the person still owns the property, just not the rights to build anything else on it, are there some stipulations in place that would protect that land from -- MR. MULHERE: Yes. It is written into the plan. CHAIRMAN FIALA: -- exotics? MR. MULHERE: Actually -- yes. It's actually written into the plan. There are different levels. If you-- MS. CHUMBLER: You don't have to re -- MR. MULHERE: You don't have to remove exotics, not as a -- not as a condition of a TDR. But -- let me finish, because what happens is that if you retain some of the rights and you can still utilize the land, then you may not have a conservation ea-- conservation easement over that land. Your policy decisions were that by reducing the density and limiting the uses, which you've already done through the adoption of your Comprehensive Plan and which you will implement through the LDRs, that that achieves the policy results that you wanted, that one dwelling unit per 40 acres was still acceptable. Now, there's no reason, however, why a land owner couldn't strip all of the land uses off of the land, retain -- get whatever value they could from that process, and they have the ability then to dedicate that land to any entity that's interested in having it. Page 110 January 29, 2004 That entity would then have the management responsibility. That would be written into the conservation easement that might be placed over that property. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And all I'm saying is, don't give it to the county, please. MR. MULHERE: And I understand. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: Just going back one or two steps here when we were talking about density, and I think Commissioner Henning hit upon it, and that is, what is the overall build-out. And I think we have to make sure that we keep our eye on exactly what we think is the build-out of Collier County whereby we don't exceed the load carrying capacity in regards to water, whether it's wastewater, whether it's the water that we drink. We also want to make sure that we don't cause any problems where it's a detriment to the quality of life that we live in and that we don't overtax our roads, because we realize that our roads are only going to be six lanes. And that we also look at the big picture where we try to direct growth out in other areas instead of having all of the traffic coming into the urban area. So I think we need to keep a lot of balls in the air here and make sure that we determine what that build-out could be, what that mag -- mythical number might be, whether it's 750,000 or it's 800,000, we ought to -- we've got to keep that in the crystal ball that's out there, way out in the distant future. So I think that's what Mr. -- or Commissioner Henning was relating to, and that's how I also feel about it, that -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: No, it wasn't that at all. MR. MULHERE: But I do understand. And I would add that the plan and the LDRs within the village and in the eastern land in the receiving areas requires a couple of components to be developed, Page 111 January 29, 2004 one is an infrastructure impact statement in which the developer has to come to this board with an analysis of what those impacts are, and also a -- they have to demonstrate that that project will be fiscally neutral to the taxpayers, so that if there are costs associated with increased -- with building infrastructure to support that development, that's on their nickel. So -- now, as far as development outside of a rural village or outside of the eastern lands but within the rural fringe in the receiving areas, the county has already done an analysis to determine what infrastructure will be necessary to support those -- those areas, but that's not increased density for the most part. I mean, it may be very small -- there are some small bonuses, so there could be some very small increases. But for the most part, it's not going to be increased density, it's relocating density. But there are components in the plan to do exactly what you're talking about, except I think what you talked about was maybe one step a little bit further, and that was to analyze the build-out potential in the county. Of course, I think that would have to be, you know, direction to the staff to develop something like that. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: One last thing, Bob, before you go. Just so there's no misconceptions here of how everything's coming together. When this whole plan was put together, it's -- the sending lands were the lands that were environmentally desirable to be protected. The receiving lands were generally a land that either had been farmed or were used in such a way they were deemed to be less environmentally pleasing. So in other words, you're directing growth just to particular areas. In those particular areas, which are the sending lands, only so much development can take place before it has to cease. Now, isn't that correct? I mean, only -- and I forget what it is between each one Page 112 January 29, 2004 of these rural villages, it can only be so much distance? MR. MULHERE: That's correct, that's correct. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: So even within the receiving lands, there's all sorts of conservation efforts taking place. MR. MULHERE: That's correct. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Now, as far as the density in the size of these towns, what's the limiting factors? I think that's what the question is all about. MR. MULHERE: Well, there are a number of limiting factors in the plan right now. You're correct, there can only be a total of three. There is a distance -- oh, I can't remember. Three -- three miles, so they have to be separated by three miles. And then the -- remember, there's three rural villages -- or excuse me. There are four receiving areas, four distinct receiving areas. Three of them can have a village, a maximum -- two of them can have a village a maximum of 1,500 square feet (sic). The large receiving area down along U.S. 41, the East Trail, was larger, and that was 2,500 acres -- I'm sorry, I think I said something about feet before. We're talking acres. And then you have North Belle Meade, which has the opportunity to create its own rural village, and I think the size of that is a little bit smaller, and I'd have to check for you. But there's a limit of three. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yeah. But the limiting factor, they can't exceed that? MR. MULHERE: Correct. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. COMMISSIONER HENNING: this tab? MS. CHUMBLER: Yeah, I understand. Okay. Didn't we have a speaker on We do, but we haven't finished with this tab yet. Page 113 January 29, 2004 The next issue on the -- on this tab is on page 135, relates to the transaction fee. The staff-- the transaction fee is designed to cover the administrative costs to the county of maintaining the registry essentially. The recommendation of the CCPC is that this fee be set as low as possible and still serve the purpose of covering county costs, and that it also be set as quickly as possible so that those who are out there wanting to buy and sell TDRs will know what all their costs are going to be. And that -- the idea is that that fee would be adopted as part of the county's fee schedule. I think Mr. Schmitt is in the process of determining what that amount will be. MR. SCHMITT: I can't tell you now. That will be -- we'll be looking at that as part of the '05 budget process. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And this cost would be borne by the buyer? MS. CHUMBLER: The buyer. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That's correct. Now, let's talk again, just to clarify something. I didn't think of this question before. The seller, the buyer-- now, if the buyer's buying them for speculation and to hold to some future date and wants to resell them, will there be another fee on top of that? MR. SCHMITT: It's a transaction fee. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay. No, I just want to make sure I understood. I didn't carry it past the first transaction. MS. CHUMBLER: Any transaction that requires action by the registry would incur a fee. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay. Understand. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. MS. CHUMBLER: The next issue's on the same -- actually it's in two pages, on page 135 and on page 134 at -- let's look first at Page 114 January 29, 2004 page 134, three, it says -- 3.6.39, it actually should be 2.6.396, 393, the -- in A, it indicates that the last line, it would be -- this would be applicable to site development plans, plat approvals, PUDs, or DRIs. And in thinking about this, the staff has determined that really PUDs and DRIs should be stricken, that this should really come into play at the site development plan or plat approval stage of stating a development approved, that the DRI and PUD stage is too early. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Yeah, I agree with that. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes. MS. CHUMBLER: The same issue -- CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. MS. CHUMBLER: The same issue over on page 135, two, which is about almost half way down the -- a little more than halfway down the page. That same -- at paragraph two, the same change should be made, should be read, site development plan or subdivision plat, strike PUD or DRI. And then in paragraph three, we had some discussion throughout about at what point the developer should have to actually have ownership of the TDRs. And the feeling was that you -- you don't want to force them to own the TDRs too early before they know they're going to get approval for their development, but you certainly want to hold their feet to the fire and make sure that they don't, you know, get a plan approved or get a development approved before they have any notion of whether they're going to gather sufficient TDRs. And so what we've fashioned here is that at the time they come in for site plan approval or for plat -- subdivision plat approval, they would either have to own the TDR, sufficient TDRs for their -- for their development, or they would have to have contracts to purchase those TDRs. And if they merely have contracts to purchase, then within 125 Page 115 January29,2004 days, or it may be that a different time frame is more appropriate, but 120 days, some period after the approval, they would have to provide documentation in the form-- and you'll see there's documentation probably in the form of a TDR certificate, which is a recorded document, that they now own those TDRs. And if they don't get that done within 120 days, then the site approval goes away. It's void. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Good. MS. CHUMBLER: What we would suggest though, and this is an additional change, is that we add some language indicating that no building permits will actually issued until they own those TDRs. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Agreed. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Agreed. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I do have one comment. Item 1 (D), we need to remove that strikeout where it says, and established at the value of any such -- MS. CHUMBLER: Yes. I have -- I've made a note -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you. MS. CHUMBLER: -- that we should strike that, that we should take out the strikeouts. The next issue really -- and I don't have a page number here because it's -- would be -- we're looking for some direction -- there have been comments in this process that a developer, when they begin building, that they should first consume their TDR credits when they begin building their development. We've gotten a fair amount of adverse comments though from developers saying, now, wait a minute, we've made an investment by buying those TDRs. If we decide we're not going to build out our development, which frequently happens, we ought to be able to resell those TDRs in the open marketplace, and we think there's merit to that. Page 116 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: There is. COMMISSIONER HALAS: There is. MS. CHUMBLER: There's some options -- additional options you can choose to take though, aside form just saying you're going to exhaust those first. For example, you could say, okay, we will allow them to first exhaust only their base density, which would leave the maximum amount of TDRs unused for resale, or you could say, we're going to make you use all of-- whatever sources of density you're relying upon for your development approval, we're going to make you use them at a proportional rate; in other words, you'll use your base density, your TDRs, any bonus density you have proportionately as you go through. So we'll be looking for some direction from you on that, and you may receive some comments from the audience on that issue. COMMISSIONER HENNING: You know, flexibility's not a bad thing. And if we are short of TDRs, what we think, to potentially be short, why not use -- just allow them to use the base density that they have and, you know, if we've got some TDRs coming back, great. MS. CHUMBLER: I think the thing we need to be careful of though -- and it's going to take some going back and looking at this -- is to make sure that someone doesn't end up being able to build something that otherwise they would not have been entitled to build but for the promise they were going to use TDRs. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yep. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Good. MS. CHUMBLER: And we want to make sure that we haven't { } inadvertently let somebody do that if we say, okay, you can use your base density first and never use any of your TDRs. That may not be a problem, but we just want to make sure that we've thought that through very carefully before we say to you, we recommend Page 117 January 29, 2004 that, or at least you understand what the pros and cons are of whatever the approach is. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Why would you spend $25,000 for a TDR and then not use it? MS. CHUMBLER: If you can resell it for 45, you might. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I guess that's a chance. MS. CHUMBLER: Or if you -- if you -- if by buying that TDR it allows you to configure your development in a way that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to configure it using just the base density. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yeah. I have some concerns, but that base density is what, one house per five acres? MS. CHUMBLER: Yes. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Somehow there's got to be some way, because the idea of those rural villages is for rural villages. MS. CHUMBLER: Good example. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And if we allow people to go in there and reconfigure it so it's one house per five acres, then we've just defeated the whole plan, and nothing will work. MS. CHUMBLER: For example, in order to have a rural, you have to use TDRs. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yes. MS. CHUMBLER: So if we allow someone to build a half of-- I mean, get approval for a rural village, they build half of it and they haven't used all their TDRs, have we, you know, created something we didn't intend? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, didn't we more or less agree that people had a right to speculate on TDRs, so if they have a surplus of TDR, they can sell them off, but somehow we've got to be able to protect it so that people don't come in and try to create an Page 118 January 29, 2004 animal that avoids the whole process, and the next thing we find out, that they're building there and we have no protection at all, and the whole concept of the village idea, the whole concept of receiving and sending lands and of the TDR values will not work. MS. CHUMBLER: Right. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And I don't have all the answers to that. MS. CHUMBLER: I think we just need to think of that very carefully, and present you with, here's -- if we go this option, here's what it means or how this would play out. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Any other questions? (No response.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. MS. CHUMBLER: Okay. Just a couple more issues on TDRs. Again, back on page -- this is on pages 132 and-33, and this relates to whether or not you should round up TDRs. As you know, the current policy of Collier County is that in determining a person's density, you round up or round down their acreage to a whole number of units. And that -- that will occur in the rural fringe as well. The question then became, in determining what TDRs are credited -- are generated in a sending land, do we also use that rounding up and rounding down exercise. And the proposal is that we not do that, that in calculating the TDRs -- for example, if you have 7.5 acres in a sending land, that 7.5 acres will generate one and a half TDRs. If you have seven acres, that will generate 1.4 TDRs. So you can generate fractional TDRs; however, at receiving end, you have to cobble together whole number TDRs. You can't go and apply, get additional density in a receiving land with a fraction of a TDR. If someone has one and a half TDRs, they have to go find another half Page 119 January 29, 2004 TDR to make two before they can use it. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Right. MS. CHUMBLER: And that's what our proposal is. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: So one more time, just to make sure I understand. If we have something, instead of a value of one, maybe it's 1.7 or something. MS. CHUMBLER: Right. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Now, that 1.7, when they purchased it, they purchased it at 1.7 times 25,000, or whatever the price is above that. MS. CHUMBLER: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay. When they get ready to apply it, they can apply it as 1.77 MS. CHUMBLER: No. When they get ready to apply it, they have -- to get the 1.7, they have to go find another .3, or 1.3 to make whole numbers. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I Understand. So there's no dollar value lost by the buyer? MS. CHUMBLER: Right. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I understand. MS. CHUMBLER: Right. And those are all of the issues that we had identified in Tab 1, so this may be an appropriate time to take comments -- or Tab I. It may be an appropriate time to take comments to that tab. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Do we have speakers? MR. WEBB: Yes, Madam Chair. We have three speakers. The first is Bruce Anderson, followed by Richard Woodruff. MR. SCHMITT: Richard's going to go first. MR. WHITE: Madam Chair, would you have a preference as to the time period that you'd like to allow the speakers for this item; three or five? Page 120 January 29, 2004 CHAIRMAN FIALA: There are three speakers, right? MR. WOODRUFF: Twenty minutes each would be appreciated. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Five is good. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'll be back. MR. WHITE: Thank you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you. MR. WOODRUFF: Also, Madam Chairman, would you have any objections if I spoke first and then Bruce Anderson followed me? CHAIRMAN FIALA: No. MR. WOODRUFF: Bruce says that would be the beast, followed by the beauty, but we will let the public decide that. For the record, I am Richard Woodruff with WilsonMiller. Relative to TDRs, first of all, we would like to commend the county commission. The inclusion of TDRs has been part of your history for nearly 30 years. There have been flaws in that program during that time, and because of that, it has been utilized very sparsely. We do believe that part of the goal of the county commission, as honestly and correctly stated, is to protect property rights and to establish ways to protect environmental lands while at the same time balancing that protection with the protection of private property rights, so we commend you very strongly for having a TDR program as part of the rural fringe. Two or three issues that I'd like to try to give you some data on. According to our records, there are roughly 94,000 acres in the rural fringe. Now, as you know, not all of those actually wound up in receiving lands or sending lands. There are reasons for those, some are neutrals lands, some belong already to conservation groups, and it was decided that those lands that belong to conservation groups, even though they really would qualify as sending, would not be classified Page 121 January 29, 2004 as sending because they were already taken out of the development potential. That was a philosophical question that I opposed because, personally, I had nothing wrong with a private entity who owned, let's say, the Corkscrew Sanctuary, selling TDRs from that and taking the money they generated and buying more conservation lands. But that's not on the table today, so I just say that. Here's some data. Out of the roughly 94,000 acres, we believe there are 25,979 acres that are actually receiving lands; 25,979 acres are receiving lands. Sending lands we estimate at 23,720 acres. Now, when you first look at those numbers, if we were talking about money in my bank account, hey, I would feel very good about all of that. I would remind you though that the rural fringe is established at a base density of land of one unit per five acres. So when you actually look at 25,979 acres, you're actually only looking at one-fifth of that in base density. Now, the rural fringe regulations also state that the maximum you can get is one unit per acre. So, let's assume for a moment that we had enough petitions standing in front of you to build one unit per acre on all 25,979 acres. In order to do that, you start off with your rightful base density of one unit per five acres. But to build up to one unit an acre, you would actually need 103,916 acres of sending land. All you have designated is 23,000 and change. So the first thing I'm going to say to you is, the concept of TDRs, I honestly believe, is going to work. The fear that I have is that these TDRs are so scarce that there won't be enough work, there won't be enough TDRs to make all of the receiving land valuable to build on. As we know in life, for every action, there is a reaction. So one of the things that I would encourage you to do is to encourage the Page 122 January 29, 2004 staff over the next several months, and not even wait for a year, to try to identify other incentives. Now, let me give you other incentives that will potentially increase the number of TDRs. Let me give you another concept to think of as far as acres. If you're going to build a 640 acre or one-section development, which you see quite often in the urban area, you see either a half section or a full section -- if you start off with a full section of land in the -- in the rural fringe and it's receiving, that 640 acres actually has a base density of 128 units. In order to get up to one unit per acre on 640, you're going to actually have to buy five full sections of land. The one that's receiving, which gives you 0.2, and then four more which is going to give you the balance of .8 that gets to you one unit per gross acre. We're talking about the -- if I may use the word, the consumption of land in Collier County for development at a phenomenal scale. When you look at the -- at the effort that it takes to assemble even 300 acres today, forget TDRs and all of that, you're talking a major exercise. When you add to that the assemblage of land in sending -- CHAIRMAN FIALA: No, I'm just looking. Your time is up, so MS. CHUMBLER: I think that you see the point. May I -- may I ask you for the courtesy of 30 more seconds to make one other point? CHAIRMAN FIALA: Go ahead. MR. WOODRUFF: And that is the issue of the county setting the dollar value. First of all, I commend you for being concerned about rights. I commend you that you are concerned about people getting a fair deal. Page 123 January 29, 2004 The point I would make to you is that government has the right to establish value on property when you're involved in purchasing it for public good. Here you're not purchasing it. You have set a program that I believe protects them and gives them value. I plead with you to let the market establish the value, only because I know the market will be a fair market. Sure, there'll be somebody who will stand in front of you some day and say, you know, I didn't realize it, but I sold that for $300 and it was worth so much more. The reality is, government's role in the free market has nothing to do with establishment of land values except where you're buying it for public purposes. Thank you for your courtesy. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Did you want to change spots right now? THE COURT REPORTER: Not yet. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Not yet, okay, fine. COMMISSIONER HENNING: You know, if we have a shortage of TDRs out there, not enough sending land, maybe we ought to create more sending land. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Or else reduce the amount of TDRs that are required. MR. ANDERSON: Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Bruce Anderson. I want to associate myself in support of everything Dr. Woodruff just said, and I'll be brief, since I can do that and not have to repeat it all. I agree with -- about letting the market set the price. Let's talk about the lack of enough TDRs. He gave -- Dr. Woodruff gave you some excellent examples of what happens just on a -- one section of land trying to get it built up to the maximum density of one unit per acre. If you do a rural village, which you all said that you wanted to see happen so that people would be clustered in and they would have Page 124 January 29, 2004 shopping opportunities, they wouldn't all have to drive into Naples to shop, your comp. plan requires a minimum density of two units per acre. And the way things are set up now, you have a potential to wind up that there won't be enough TDRs left to do one or more of the rural villages that you've called for. And you're not going to have solved some of the problems you wanted to solve about having to -- people having to drive into town to do their shopping, the need to cluster people in so that utility service is in a small area, and outside the rural villages there's preservation. Commissioner Coletta, I think you may have hit the nail on the head when you said, well, maybe we need to look at lowering what the minimum density is. That's another -- that's another thought. I would respectfully suggest to you that you consider a program whereby a person would convey title to the property to a conservation group or maybe a governmental agency like the South Florida Water Management District, and they could get another TDR for actually giving up title to the property. That would allow your TDR program to go forward today on the basis of just a conservation easement. And then if this were adopted later to give an additional TDR for actually conveying title, that person would still have title to the property, and then they could get that value then. And I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I think -- I think some of your ideas are good, but the only thing is, we want to make sure that we address that we don't have a density problem out there way down the road. MR. ANDERSON: That's a good question, and I wanted to ask Bob maybe for some clarification. He talked about the fact that they had taken a look at densities called for and sized, you know, the utilities and everything according Page 125 January 29, 2004 to what was called for in the plan. And I guess my question was, did your sizing of the needed public facilities, were they based on all of the rural villages being built with a minimum density of two units per acres or the maximum density of three, and haven't we already accounted for that? MR. MULHERE: I don't know that I can answer that question definitively. I can certainly find out an answer. But I can tell you what I recall in my discussions with the Collier County utilities staff, and that was that they had calculated the maximum potential population increase as a result of the policies within the rural fringe and the eastern lands, but primarily the rural fringe because that was more proximate to the existing county's utilities. And you know, so they contemplated the extension of utilities into that -- those receiving areas as well as what would be necessary to serve the maximum population increase that could be realized. Now, I think probably if you want a more definitive answer, it needs to come from your staff and probably at your next meeting, from your utilities staff. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. COMMISSIONER HALAS: The other thing is, we still have the option open so that in five years, we still look at the whole picture here. MS. CHUMBLER: One year. COMMISSIONER HALAS: One year. MS. CHUMBLER: It's mandatory that it come back to the board for review. COMMISSIONER HALAS: One year, and we can then decide whether we -- where we need to go with this, and I think we ought to -- just at this -- at that point in time, we can figure out how the TDR issue is being addressed and what -- the level of anticipation and Page 126 January 29, 2004 where the private sector and how they're -- how the price is increasing or remaining the same. MS. CHUMBLER: Right. COMMISSIONER HALAS: then. And I think we can address it MS. CHUMBLER: And the suggestions that Mr. Anderson made in large part, if not totally, would require comp. plan amendments. MR. ANDERSON: Yes, I understand. MS. CHUMBLER: Obviously, you know, at the end of the year if the board decides there needs to be some tweaking of the comp. plan, that could be done at that point. MR. MULHERE: I just wanted to add, just a couple of additional observations, one is that-- I was talking with Mr. Mudd, and the plants are sized so that they can be incrementally increased, and then the population -- the demands are then monitored so that those plants can be incrementally increased. So they don't do it all at once because that would be in excess of what was needed, but the -- but they are paying attention to what those potential long-term needs would be. The second thing, I wanted to make just a general observation is that I don't disagree with the comments that were made by either Mr. Anderson or Mr. Woodruff related to, you know, potential and feasibility of tweaking this to make sure that it works. Those are all very viable options, as I think -- as Marti just indicated, many of them will require a comprehensive plan amendment. So again, I think the intent -- the intent, as I understand it, is not to wait a year and then begin to look at this stuff. The intent is to look at this all the way through this year so that we're prepared as quickly as possible to bring that report back to you, because there will need to be changes made after that, and that's going to take more Page 127 January 29, 2004 time. COMMISSIONER HALAS: First of all, we've got to get data. MR. MULHERE: Correct. COMMISSIONER HALAS: We've got to get data before making any changes. That's number one. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yeah. There is one thing, too, that I'd like to see when we get closer to that year date, and I do agree with a lot of the things you said, Bruce, I just wish you'd drop your objection to the base price -- is the fact that I would love to have a feedback from Dr. Nicholas before we take the next step forward to be able to critique what we've done and what we're intending to do and be able to get his opinion on this. MR. MULHERE: I think that's an excellent, excellent suggestion. MR. ANDERSON: Thank you very much. MR. MULHERE: Thank you. MR. WEBB: Madam Chairman, we have one more registered public speaker on this. It's Bruce Cornell. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Brad. MR. WEBB: Brad Cornell, excuse me. MR. CORNELL: I do like to emulate Bruce Anderson, but I think I'll leave him with his name. Brad Cornell with Collier Audubon. I just wanted to respond a little bit actually on the TDR issue, and that -- on three points, one is that I would not be supportive of lowering the minimum densities required, because there's definitely some sprawl issues involved with the design of rural villages, and you need -- there's a certain minimum critical mass you're going to have to get there. And I agree that there's going to be a shortage of TDRs if this is successful, as it appears that it's going to be. But I would point you in the direction of two other things, and Page 128 January 29, 2004 one is, there was a discussion about the rural lands credits at some point being considered for conversion to TDR units to be used elsewhere, and that is something that you may want to consider. There's a five-year review of the rural lands policies, and that -- at that point, there may be a very appropriate time to -- and mechanism to convert those and use them as needed in other places in the county, including urban areas. And the other issue is, that I mentioned earlier in -- in relation to listed species, that we would want to consider some incentives and rewards for private landowners who do perform good stewardship of the listed species habitat. One possible reward could be some sort of appropriate increment of a TDR that could be used in an appropriate place, and this might be a way to generate more. Something to consider. Thanks. MS. CHUMBLER: And let me just comment as a follow-up to Mr. Cornell, that currently the rural stewardship lands program is fashioned after a state statute which currently requires that the credits generated from that area are maintained within that area. But I understand the legislature is looking at changing that. So should that statute be changed, that would then open up as an option for this board to look at whether it's appropriate to transfer credits from eastern lands into the rural fringe. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Very good. So we're finished with 'T' then. Did you want us to vote on 'T'? MR. WEBB: I don't believe we're-- MS. CHUMBLER: I defer to Patrick. ! don't think we're voting on anything at this point. CHAIRMAN FIALA: and offering direction? Nothing? We're just kind of listening MR. WHITE: Yes, Commissioners. And if there are any specific comments that you would have to provide to the staff and Page 129 January 29, 2004 counsel, that will be appropriate at this time. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Or language changes? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah. At this point I think it's appropriate to direct staff to take a look at the whole TDR and make some recommendations when it comes back for review in another year. MS. CHUMBLER: I think the only caution -- and this is something I'm just parroting what a staff member whispered in my ear -- is we want to make sure that we don't, through staff doing reviews or reports early on in the TDR program, create speculation on the market about what this board might do a year from now. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Exactly, exactly. We could undermine the whole program if there's doubts about what we're going to do. I tell you one thing, I really think staff and everyone out there, including the environmental community and the developers, have done a tremendous job of pulling together a very difficult document. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. COMMISSIONER HALAS: That's why I said, I think we really need to get some raw data and find out where we're headed before we make any changes. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, that's a year from now. CHAIRMAN FIALA: We're finished with this tab, right? MS. CHUMBLER: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRMAN FIALA: We're going to change court reporters. If you'll wait just a couple minutes. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Get up and walk around for a second. CHAIRMAN FIALA: You can get up and walk around. (A brief recess was taken.) CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. We'll come back to order again. Page 130 January 29, 2004 MS. CHUMBLER: Madam Chairman, there's one other very small item that I'm going to draw to your attention and then we'll move to the Eastern Lands Design standards in Tab C. And then what we would propose to do, which I think you may have a couple speakers on. And then there are a number of tabs which we don't intend to comment on, but you may have one or two speakers. You may have questions and you may have speakers in the audience. So at that point, we intend to just say, you know, to any speakers on tab, be -- and go through. But I think we're getting close to the end. In the meantime, I've changed my page. This is in Tab K on Page 151, 3.8.5.8. This is the environmental impact statements for multi-slip docking facilities. We've received a comment suggesting that the applicant also be required to provide evidence to the County, that if they are in OFW, they received whatever permitting is necessary from the state. MR. WHITE: Outstanding Florida Water. MS. CHUMBLER: Outstanding Florida Water. Yes. Sorry. And with that, I'll turn it over to Bob Mulhere to discuss the design standards for Eastern Lands. MR. MULHERE: Thank you. We're talking about the RLSA design standards here primarily. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Can we go back to what we just discussed? MR. MULHERE: Sure. COMMISSIONER HENNING: We got a Manatee Protection Plan and it says for a multi-slip docking facilities with ten slips or more, they're going to show how it's consistent with the marine setting and other criteria in the Manatee Protection Plan -- in the county's Manatee Protection Plan. MS. CHUMBLER: Yes. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Oh, okay. How is that, Mr. Page 131 January 29, 2004 Lorenz, how is that going to look like? What's that going to look like. COMMISSIONER HALAS: In other words, what he's asking I think is how this affects -- when we said that they have to have -- show permitting from the state, which we probably have to do anyway, correct? MR. LORENZ: For the record Bill Lorenz, Environmental Services Director. This is the EIS. This is the Environmental Impact Statement. The information that the applicant needs to provide to the staff is to show how their proposed facility will conform to the requirements of the Manatee Protection Plan. We simply identified this as part of the EIS. COMMISSIONER HENNING: What do they need to show? I mean-- data or-- MR. LORENZ: They would need -- correct. They would need to show that if there is adequate depth concerns, that they would have adequate depth. They would need to show if they were impacting habitat, what habitat they would be impacting so we can then determine what the appropriate rating categories would be. So this would be the information, that would be the minimum requirements for us, to be able to evaluate their proposal in light of the Manatee Protection Plan. COMMISSIONER HENNING: How does that -- how far up does that go? I mean, as far as depth of a channel. How far are you going to measure that criteria. MR. LORENZ: Well, the Manatee Protection Plan requires adequate depth for a five mile on water travel distance. So they would have to provide that information along with the radius, the five-mile radius with regard to manatee depths. So everything that is required in the Manatee Protection Plan, they have to show how their facility will conform with the requirements of the plan. Page 132 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER HENNING: How would this facility work with the potential of the five acres on Goodlette? Say if we do multi-slips down on that facility? COMMISSIONER HALAS: Just for the outstanding Florida Waters. MR. LORENZ: For a specific proposal? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah. Let's say you want to put ten boat slips in there or something? MS. BURGESON: For the record, Barbara Burgeson with Environmental Services. If you have a five acre parcel, that's not going to be required to do an EIS typically, unless there's very special conditions that would require that. So this would not fall -- or that five acre parcel would not be affected by this regulation. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Not true. If we're going to put a boat slip there. MS. BURGESON: Not affected by the EIS requirements. I'm saying it would still have to abide by the Manatee Protection Plan, but not BE affected by the EIS. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So this language would not be applicable? MS. BURGESON: Not applicable to a five -- through the EIS process, that a five acre parcel is not required to do an ElS. You'd have to go through the EIS section to determine -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: How big a parcel would go through this then? MS. BURGESON: Ten acres is the size of the threshold. And actually may be -- might even be -- I'm sorry. Might be two-and-a-half acres east of Goodlette. It would be two-and-a-half acres. See where the coastal management boundary is which is U.S. 417 COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. Page 133 January 29, 2004 MS. BURGESON: Ten acres or more. But then there is the ability to have a waiver on a piece of property, so we would take into consideration that section of the EIS as well. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, who does the waiver? MS. BURGESON: Staff makes that determination. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Really? MS. BURGESON: The applicant would determine whether they felt that property qualified for a waiver. And in past years, they've asked us for a letter, a waiver of the EIS, but we've rewritten the EIS section to not have staff make that determination. So it's the applicant that makes that determination. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So the applicant can do their own waiver? MS. BURGESON: Well, it's not a waiver. There's a list in the EIS of those things that qualify for a waiver. So the applicant reviews that and makes that determination. We're no longer requiring them to request a written waiver from us. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thank you. I'm sorry. MR. MULHERE: For the record again, Bob Mulhere with RWA. This next topic area is the RLSA design standards. Those begin on page -- I think it's Page 59. And then they -- they actually go pretty much all the way through Page 90, 94, I think. What I -- we have been working with the staff over the last several days to address some issues that have come up, sort of over that period of time. And I think previously I had distributed to you a spread sheet that identified the issues that had arisen since the Planning Commission meeting. But I have a new spread sheet. There are several items on it, which I will go over with you item by item. They're relatively easy to discuss. I don't think they're terribly complicated. They have that as well? Page 134 January 29, 2004 CHAIRMAN FIALA: I have that. MR. MULHERE: So I understand you have that. On the top of the spread sheet it says Assessment of LDR revisions proposed as result of staff input, with the date 1/28/04 on it. There are copies of that on the table, I think in the back, if the public is interested. Here's some more. The first item, which is on Page 81, deals with the RLSA design standards that define a guest house, and also allow a guest house maximum -- currently they're written with a maximum square footage of 650 square feet. The way the language was originally written the -- those guest houses would not be -- they would not count towards the maximum density in the Comprehensive Plan, which is gross density of 4 dwelling units per acre. After meeting with the staff, some concerns were raised over that issue. It was agreed that the language would be revised. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Bob, let me stop you for just a moment. You said page 81. I'm not finding it on Page 81. Is that 81 -- MR. MULHERE: I'll find it for you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: It's not even 81. MR. MULHERE: We may have the wrong page number. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Under town design criteria. MR. MULHERE: Correct. I'll find it for you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. It's Page 87 on our -- or 81 on the middle of it. MS. CHUMBLER: If you look at -- you should have --. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Or 81 on the middle of it. MS. CHUMBLER: Right. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Center of the file. MR. MULHERE: Oh, I'm sorry. Agenda Page 87. Page 81. In the center of the page. But I think you may be actually correct that that language doesn't appear there. And I'll find the exact page Page 13 5 January 29, 2004 number for you. But let me just discuss the issue with you and then we'll get a page number. Because it appears actually in a couple of places. Because guest houses are permitted, as I indicated, originally the language was written so they would not count towards the maximum density allowed. But after discussion with staff, we determined that it would be appropriate to revise that language so the guest house would count. Would not -- with your guest house, the total density could not exceed the maximum density allowed by the plan. Now, I would like to also indicate to you that there's been some discussion about the maximum size of 650 square feet that we may look at a size slightly larger than that for a guest house. Perhaps as much as 900 square feet, but we haven't had the opportunity to finalize that discussion with the staff, and to perhaps come back to you. So there's a possibility of looking at that between now and your final meeting and coming back with a recommendation of a size that may be slightly larger than the 650 foot square feet. Because we don't want -- we want to maintain flexibility, as far as these guest houses go. And we certainly don't -- can't anticipate all of the types of developments that are going to come in in the SRA area. Again, these standards -- I should probably preface by saying, these standards were designed to be universally applied within the SRA area. I don't want to confuse the Ave Maria, which is totally separate. It's one of the SRA areas. These are universally applied and they would apply to all future SRAs that come through. The second item -- I'll find the page number for you and come back to you on that. That is correct. I thought it was. MS. CHUMBLER: That is correct? MR. MULHERE: I'm sorry. Its under item number three on Page 87 of your agenda, or 81 in the center of the page, which talks Page 136 January 29, 2004 about the range of housing types. And indicates that accessory dwelling units shall not count towards the maximum density. But we are revising that so that they will. The second item on that spread sheet is on Page 83, or agenda Page 89. And it's Paragraph M. And that deals with the requirement to develop architectural standards within an SRA. And the issue was, how those architectural standards should be reviewed. And the revised language really provides an option. You either would develop architectural standards and have those specific architectural standards located within your SRA document that will come to the Board for review, or as an alternative, you could develop those after the SRA document is approved in the design manual, which would be sort of a reference document. And those would then be reviewed by the architectural review board. That architectural review board would then provide the county with a letter, written evidence that they have reviewed the development proposal and that it's consistent with the architectural design standards. So, in some cases I think what you're going to have is that, in a certain SRA, people will know the exact type of architectural standards. They will be able to provide those within the document. But in other circumstances, they may evolve over time and then they would be included within that design manual. This provides for flexibility and an option for both. The next item is on Page 83. Same page. I'm sorry. Agenda Page 89. And refers to Tab N. That deals with the parking. And after meeting with staff, it was determined that there should be some additional language provided in this section that describes how the parking requirements will be determined. In general, the parking requirements, because you have a very unique type of development here, which is required to be compact in nature, pedestrian friendly, it will have on-street parking, it will have a mixture of uses that results Page 137 January29,2004 in parking requirements that are not the same as more traditional parking requirements for, you know, suburban type of development. As a result, the SRA will provide, as part of the review and the analysis up front, a parking analysis will be conducted. And that will determine the required parking based on the different types of mixture of uses and the location and numbers of on-street parking. So a couple of issues we felt needed to be clarified. One was that the methodology would be determined up front at the pre-application meeting with county transportation and planning staff so that there would be a shared -- a shared agreement in terms of what the methodology that would be used. Not uncommon to the process that is used right now for determining traffic impacts. The methodology is agreed to in the pre-application meeting. But also the analysis should consider all potential mix of uses and provide parking that will meet all potential mix of uses. And the reason for that, in talking with the staff, a concern would be that they not have to look at every time one use came in and left, you know, a building and a new use came in that there was sufficient parking. That should be determined up front. Because that would be an inordinate burden on the staff to have to look at these each time they came up. So the parking analysis should consider all of those matters and develop parking that is comprehensive in nature. And that's really the gist of that change. The next change -- we're jumping around a little bit because this is not necessarily in page order. But it refers to Page 81, which is again, your agenda Page 87. And at the top of the page it says, town design criteria. General design criteria. These apply throughout. One of the things we did notice, and staff actually pointed it out to us, was that there was no specific reference for signage with -- for residential uses, or in predominantly residential areas. I think the focus was on mixed uses, and no one really looked at that issue. But Page 138 January 29, 2004 there will be a need for, perhaps a For Sale sign, or For Rent sign. And so we've put a requirement in here that the SRA develop signage standard for residential areas or residential uses. So that will also be part of your SRA development. That language needs to occur in several places. It needs to occur within the town section, the village section, and hamlet section because all three includes residential components, and may need to have language dealing with residential signage. Again, the signage is going to be very pedestrian oriented. And we, you know, and so it's slightly different again in a compact design from the more traditional size requirements that you might see. The next change is on Page 90, or agenda Page 96, number five. And that deals with the special district language. It's a relatively minor change, but provides for some additional clarification. The sentence that you can see before you is added. It says special district would be primarily single use districts. Such as universities, business parks, medical parks, resorts, et cetera, that require unique development standards to ensure compatibility with surrounding neighborhoods, and that the location of those special districts will be illustrated on the master plan. Just provides for a little more clarity in terms of what might be a special district that you would have to show that on your plan. Next change is on Page 85. Go back a little bit. Which is agenda Page 91. And it's under the Town Center Designation. Paragraph two, about three quarters of the way down the page. And that deals with the civic and institutional buildings. The original language indicates that civic or institutional buildings are not subject to the building height, building placement, building use, parking and signage criteria established for other buildings, provided that they address the perspective of creating focal points, terminating vistas and significant community landmarks. And any such variation from Page 139 January 29, 2004 those standards for that civic or institutional use will require Board approval. So that's what this clarification is intended to indicate. That the BCC approval will be required for that. Let's see. There was a minor change on Page 83, agenda Page 89, Paragraph P -- about the middle of the sentence. The phrase with trees planted 40 feet off center. They may be planted off center, but that was intended to say on center. So we're going to change that. The next change is on Page 87, which is agenda Page 93 under D. The single family residential use standards. The top portion of the page. It was pointed out that we really had not provided for any specific development standards for single family in there. And that's accurate. And part of the reason why there weren't any specific standards provided for us is that within this compact development, you're going to have a number of different types of single family products. They're going to be much more compact in the areas that are closest to the town center, and will be less compact as you move out to the outer edge. As a result, it doesn't make sense to create development standards as part of these design standards, but it does make sense to require that those development standards be developed and placed in the SRA document. So that when somebody does come in to entitle their land as a receiving area, they will have single family development standards that you will be able to look at as part of the document. And that's the purpose of that change. And that actually has to occur in a couple of locations as well. And those are cited for you. And the section has to be re-numbered. The next change is -- well, guess what. I don't have a page. But it's Paragraph M. See if I can find that. Again, I'm sorry. That's a repetitive change. That has to do with the civic and institutional buildings as well. It's just that it's another location for that change. That should have come out. I apologize. Page 140 January 29, 2004 There is another change that-- there was quite a bit of discussion with transportation staff. And that change deals with one of the cross sections. And I'll -- what page was it? MS. CHUMBLER: 73. MR. MULHERE: I'll put that on the visualizer. Maybe you can help me a bit with that. I can explain it to you, if it's hard to see. It's a relatively minor change. Well, maybe it's not minor from some people's perspective. This cross section was the only cross section that had a travel lane with less than 10 feet. It originally had a travel lane width of eight feet. In discussing it with the transportation staff, they were firm and felt strongly that the minimum travel lane, should be ten feet. We have revised that cross section to reflect that. Some -- just some minor comments about all of the cross sections. We will come back to you on your meeting on the 1 lth with some notations on these cross sections that we intend to provide for some clarity. For example, the dimensions that are on these cross sections, they've been well thought out in the design. Because, again, they are intended to create a very pedestrian oriented and pedestrian friendly. I'm just going to -- I'll come right back with you -- design component. And to reduce the speeds at which the vehicles travel to make it friendly and comfortable for pedestrians. However, those are minimum dimensions. That's what they're intended to be, is minimum dimensions. Now, we also believe that there are also optimal dimensions in many circumstances but they are minimal. I want to put on the record that this would not preclude an SRA from coming in with a design that included, for example, a pedestrian friendly design boulevard that might be four lanes instead of two lanes. So, you will have the opportunity to look at alternative cross sections, for example, a boulevard cross section, and that these dimensions may Page 141 January 29, 2004 vary slightly as different SRA applications come in. But these were designed in order to identify the minimums and the optimal design standards to enhance pedestrian comfortability and pedestrian utilization. I apologize, Commissioner Halas. Go ahead. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I look at the cross section of these drawings. In some cases we show sidewalks, other cases we don't. What about bike paths? Is that one of the reason the transportation department wanted to go to ten feet? MR. MULHERE: Actually, no. That really was not a concern for the Transportation Department. But I do know that based on the previous -- a previous speaker's comments, there have been some concerns raised that the cross sections do not provide for the specific designated bike paths. And there are very good design reasons for that. But I think probably the best thing to do is to hear from -- there are several other speakers, I believe. That might be the pathways advisory committee, or folks representing the pathway advisory committee. Now, I would tell you that we like to respond to those, but we would also like to hear what they have to say first. And then I think then we can provide you with a presentation and some information as it relate to the design a why that design is appropriate here. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I have one other concern, and that was in regards to six story buildings. Were you going to address that so that it was -- we had more open area? MR. MULHERE: Yes. I have that item down. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes, that is the distinction between bike lanes and bike paths. And the fact that for most of these cross sections you will have parallel parking. But rather than get into the details, which we actually have somebody here that has quite a bit of expertise I'd like to hear. I think we all want to hear what the issues are first. Page 142 January 29, 2004 MR. MULHERE: The last item I had on my list was exactly that issue. And this is -- height is measured in stories in these design standards. And the concern is that there should be an appropriate relationship between the expanse of the cross section of the right of way, the sidewalks, the landscaped areas, the travel lanes, and the height of buildings. That they shouldn't be disproportionate. And what we're trying to achieve here, remember, is a very different design. One where buildings are brought closer to the street so there's a comfort zone for pedestrians. And if you think about, for example, 5th Avenue, downtown Naples, it's a very good example. There are many other examples. And you'll see some of those I think shortly. But the point that I wanted to make is that there is an appropriate relationship between building heights and the width of the street that will insure that you don't have -- and I hesitate to use the term, but the term that's been used is canyonization. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I think I kind of know. And we don't -- we apparently don't want to have -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: The closing, in effect. MR. MULHERE: I know. All right. Okay. So what we did agree to do is, was to look at what exactly that optimal relationship is. We don't have exact language yet, but we did agree to come back on February 11 th with exact language that would identify how that optimal relationship could be determined so that you didn't have something that was sort of out of whack. And we will bring that back to you on February 1 lth. So I think at this point, unless you have other questions, those are the changes that have been identified. I think there probably are some public speakers, and we would like to be prepared to address their issues when they've concluded their points. CHAIRMAN FIALA: And I'll just add, that I was glad that Page 143 January 29, 2004 Commissioner Halas asked about the sidewalks and bike paths and so forth. Because I think that that's important makeup of presenting a neighborhood, a town, and creating an ambiance or camaraderie. MR. MULHERE: Correct. And I think that these designs really do bring all of these elements together. And just one last statement. I think that it's always a challenge to think a little bit out of the box. And we've done that through this process. And we've really brought in the expertise in terms of the design here to look at the cutting edge design for neo-traditional, or compact pedestrian-friendly types of developments. If you think back to what was so pleasing perhaps in the pre World War II era of, you know, of walkability, we've gotten away from it as we focused on the automobile. So that was considered in the development of these design standards. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I guess we have some great streets in the downtown setting. MR. MULHERE: Okay. I need to put on the record that there is also members of county staff, who have either comments or issues related to the bike lane, bike path issue as well. I assume that they would be here to speak as well. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Mr. Mulhere? MR. MULHERE: Yes. COMMISSIONER HENNING: In the downtown setting, are we allowing great streets or great sidewalks? MR. MULHERE: Great? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Wide sidewalks. MR. MULHERE: Oh, yes, yes. COMMISSIONER HENNING: They're called great streets. MR. MULHERE: And as part of the design. Some areas of the Page 144 January 29, 2004 sidewalks would be very wide. And as we discussed earlier, you may have, for example, cafe style dining outside in some areas in the downtown center, or the town center or the town core, yes. CHAIRMAN FIALA: May we hear from the speakers, please? MR. WEBB: Yes, Madam Chair. For the record again, Russell Webb from Community Development. We have two registered public speakers. First is Pat Spencer followed by Richard Houslt. MS. SPENCER: Good evening again, Commissioners. I'm Patricia Spencer. And rather than reiterate everything I spoke about before, I just wanted to insure that you understand that I believe that we should have bike lanes by the road sides as well. I do commend them on their design for the sidewalks in the neighborhoods. It's laid out beautifully. But I think we need, additionally, the four foot bike lane by the roadway. COMMISSIONER HENNING: In neighborhoods? MS. SPENCER: Well, wherever it's appropriate, yes. I think we should have consistent design standards throughout Collier County. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. But we don't have bike lanes in neighborhoods. You realize that. MS. SPENCER: Yes, I do. Okay. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thanks. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you. MR. WEBB: Next public speaker is Richard Houslt. MR. HOUSLT: For the record, I'm Richard Houslt. I live in old Naples and I'm a member of the pathway advisory committee. And I think if I could just speak on behalf of Pat, I think that our concern-- we understand you don't have, we don't have bike lanes on local streets, neighborhood. But on the arterials and collectors, I think it-- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Is it okay for you to speak for Page 145 January 29, 2004 Pat, or are speaking for yourself?. MR. HOULST: I'm turning around to ask her for you. I think you put her a little bit on the spot and I just wanted to make sure that she made a clarification because we don't expect bikes lanes on local streets. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I didn't mean to put her on the spot. It was just a question. MR. HOULST: Okay. And I just wanted to clarify. Thank you, Madam Chairperson and BCC members to allow me to speak today. As you are aware, only six months ago you voted to assure that minimum standards for bicycle and pedestrians would be achieved within Collier County. The PAC worked for months with the transportation staff and also with the Board of County Commissioners to eliminate the loopholes that got us in the situation we are today with sidewalks to nowhere and pathways to nowhere and bike lanes to nowhere. You have committed, and the Transportation Department has committed, over $100,000 to put a comprehensive pathways plan in place so we can have an infrastructure that is safe for bicyclists and pedestrians in Collier County. Frankly, we were a little bit shocked to find out that there is a whole other LDC happening with regard to pathways. Certainly with regard to the SRA and all these things I'm learning about, perhaps that's important. But from a bike lanes and pedestrian walkways, pathways, sidewalks thing, we don't really see the distinction. We think it's very confusing, and we don't understand why we would want to have something different than a minimum standard county wide. We were actually very mystified to find out that the SRA for the rural fringe land, did not provide for any bike paths whatsoever. And getting in and out of these rural villages and things like that on the Page 146 January 29, 2004 main streets, there's going to be a lot of bicycle and pedestrian traffic. And we think that that's a serious mistake. We didn't bring a bunch of experts to parade here. We can do that if that's necessary. But I think the bottom line is, we think that the minimum standards for bike lanes and pathways should be met throughout the entire county, and we don't really see the distinction -- Matter of fact, in environmentally sensitive areas, that would be even more the reason to encourage bicycle and pedestrian travel, I would think. And I would share past sentiments that what we've seen thus far, from a pedestrian perspective, is excellent. There's some nice, wide -- it's very walkable from what we can ascertain. But from a bikeable point of view, and we're concerned about bikes and pedestrian crashes and things like that, so, that's just -- we don't see why we would want to go backwards. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you. Okay. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Mr. Houlst? MR. HOUSLT: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Oh, sorry. CHAIRMAN FIALA: That's all right. While we're talking about this, one of the things I would like to see, as we talk about minimum standards, is also that we don't have a sidewalk stop and then about, you know, five yards down start again, or stop at a bush or stop at a tree. That's one of the things you have been dealing with. And that's just so frustrating. So I would hope that as we put these standards together, we'll also somehow put the wording in that our sidewalks actually lead to, or connect to each another. MR. HOUSLT: I think that's very important. And I think the same thing goes for the bike facilities. The book I brought up is the Florida Green Book, which is the standard. The Florida Department of Transportation green book. And it basically says that every single Page 147 January 29, 2004 transportation system should be designed with the infrastructure that assume bicycles are going to be there. And I think we've heard that there's going to be some multiuse pathways, perhaps eight feet or ten feet long. Or, excuse me, wide. Hopefully longer than that. And if you have a multiuse pathway perhaps one half of the street as a -- with all the bikes and peds, strollers, wheelchairs, et cetera, multidirectional traffic. It says in the Florida Department of Transportation standards that that is not an acceptable substitution for bike lanes on the road. Because it's dangerous. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Mr. Houslt, have you seen this expert's presentation that we're about to see? MR. HOULST: We just heard a little bit about it, but, no, I have not. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I'm sure you're open to take a look at it? MR. HOUSLT: Absolutely. I'd like to reserve the right to address this body again after I hear what they are offering. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, we're not going to adopt this tonight so maybe you can address this at the adoption hearing. MR. HOULST: Great. Thank you very much. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I just want to take a moment and thank you for your dedication to this committee and come in here on your own time and staying this late at night and being so dedicated and sincere about what you're doing. MR. HOUSLT: Well, thank you. It's kind of hard to keep the team together. We lost a pathway advisory committee member that lived in Golden Gate Estates when they found out that a whole other LDC was in process without our involvement. And the young man kind of said, I got no time for this to redo this again. And we were all really sort of surprised and we hated to see that happen. I guess Page 148 January 29, 2004 I'm a hard head. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, we're glad that you're sticking with it. We have a fellow in Immokalee that's putting in an application. MR. HOULST: Oh, wonderful. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I mean, it will be a wonderful addition if they decide to accept. MR. HOULST: Great. Well, if I could -- am I allowed under the sunshine law to help talk him into it because we could really use the representation? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, as long as he's not on it now, I don't think there's any conflict with the sunshine law. MR. HOULST: Well, I'll recruit him, because we need some participation from Immokalee in a big way. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I'd like to see my family this year. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes. I just want to thank you for bringing -- enlightening us in regards to this, in regards to bicycle paths and sidewalks and people coexisting together. I'm hoping that we can look at this, because this is going to be a college town. And of course a lot of college students do have bicycles where they ride them to class and so on. So I think that's going to be addressed, and I -- we will all make sure that it will be. MR. HOULST: Oh, good. Thank you very much, again. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you. MR. MULHERE: I think you may have some other speakers. I just wanted to clarify a couple of things because I think it's really important. This does require pathways and sidewalks. And these SRAs will be riddled with continuous sidewalks that don't stop at bushes or other things, and we'll have pathways. The issue here is Page 149 January 29, 2004 whether or not a designated bike lane on the street is appropriate where you also have parallel parking and huge conflicts between that. So, I mean, again I want you to see the presentation, but I did want to clarify for the record that pathways are required. They are part of the plan. And as far as the arterials leading into a village or a town, that's different. Those roads may be designed for a very high speed and a designated bike lane may be in appropriate there. But here you have low speed designs. Different situation is on street parking. We'll show you that. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Very good. MR. WEBB: Madam, Chair, we have no other registered speakers. Although, I think Bob stated there may be some members of staff that wish to speak and I think we have the expert. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Do we have any other speakers? Okay. Then shall we move on? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, let's flip a coin. MR. HALL: It's good to be with you this evening. My name is Rick Hall. Or Richard Hall. I live in Tallahassee, Florida. And I have been in the business of transportation engineering for over 30 years. And I think, let's go on to the presentati°n. We have -- we had a screen that said laptop computer. CHAIRMAN FIALA: How long is this presentation, Do you know. MR. HALL: How long? CHAIRMAN FIALA: Uh-huh. Just out of curiosity. MR. HALL: Well, I have versions of it that go about two hours. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Well, we'll try to take the short one. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Don't do the two hour one, please. MR. HALL: I think mine will go about 25 minutes. Twenty to 25 minutes. Page 150 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER HALAS: Can you shorten that up any? MR. HALL: I can go 15. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Let's do that. MR. HALL: Okay. It's a deal. COMMISSIONER HENNING: That would be nice. MR. HALL: The title I've put on is community street design. And I'm going to be highlighting throughout this series of power point slides, a difference, a key difference that's now emerging nationally. We have been in kind of the second generation of the automobile experience with this country. And we're about to get into one where the pedestrian is given some comfort level, which they certainly have not had for the last 40 or 50 years. Let me indicate that our focus is going to be walkable streets. I'm going to talk-- and I don't mean to lecture. I don't mean to embarrass anybody that may be well-versed in this. But I think it's important to cover some of basics of what we're really talking about, and what creates walkability. And then we'll talk about some of the rural land stewardship area of street designs and get into those specifically. And get really into actually talking about the travel lanes, parking lanes, as they're put together. Someone mentioned great streets a moment ago. There's a book called Great Streets and it's written by Alan Jacobs in '93. Alan Jacobs is a brilliant fellow that went around the world and collected what he saw as great streets. And he has a book put out by the MIT press. And what you see on the screen is what they call a figure ground. A building and street arrangement that is one square mile. And on the left you see Boston. And very walkable city, because it had to be walkable when it was started. And on the other side you see Los Angeles. Now there's a great deal of difference between the two. And primarily in Los Angeles Page 151 January 29, 2004 you see a series of these cul-de-sacs that are planned in to give people some comfort so they will not have the high speed and high volume movements that you see out on the freeway system. So, it's a much less compact way of putting houses and buildings together. But think of the walking path that someone would have to take if they wanted to go from one of these cul-de-sacs to the other one, one of the other side of the freeway. Almost an impossible task for safety. Whereas if you go to Boston, you know how walkable and wonderful that setting is for pedestrian comfort. There's a cartoon that was done a number of years ago here. And it contrasts what we call conventional suburban development. That's what 95 percent of the country experiences every day. And then the traditional neighborhood development, which you see on the southern half of this roadway. And on the northern part, if you leave the single family subdivision to go to the shopping area, you're out there on the -- you leave the local street, you get on the collector, you get on the arterial and then you dump into the shopping area. If you're going from the apartment complex -- or if you're going from a single family to the town center on the traditional, you go along small, comfortable streets. If you go from the apartment to the school, the apartment to the school. On'the lower half you would probably let your 10 or 11-year-old child take a bicycle trip in that kind of community. On the north side, you would never think of it. In fact, you don't want your 18-year-old to make trips on the one to the north because of the seriousness of the speeds that occur on the arterials. And so, when you read about congestion and fatalities in our urban travel movements, that's where they're happening. They're not happening back in the community. They're happening right on the arterial. And if everyone is forced to go out there and do it at high Page 152 January 29, 2004 speeds, that's where our most serious problem is. Now, speaking of that problem, this is a series of slides that were generated in England and the U.S. And it shows that, if you are a pedestrian, and you have the unfortunate experience of being hit by a moving vehicle, truck or car, if that moving vehicle is going approximately 20 miles an hour, you only have about a five percent chance of becoming a fatality from that accident. If the vehicles are moving at 30 miles an hour, the result is over 50 percent. You have a worse than 50 percent chance of dying from that impact. If the vehicle is moving at 40, then it's over 80 percent chance that you will not survive that accident. Now, this is simply a numerical statement of something that we all inherently know inside ourselves. That's why when you go to the arterial roadways that have been constructed for fast and high vehicle mobility, you see no pedestrians. Unless they're homeless. If you get really motivated and you want to do this for your physical fitness and you get out and walk along some of these six-lane arterials, your friends will call you when you get home and say, is there something wrong with your car, may I help you? Because it's such a rare sight to see one out on the big arterials. So -- and that's the reason why. That's the difficulty. A little bit about how to put streets together if you want walkability. You'll hear me say that three or four times. If you want walkability. And we know how to design that for you. And if you don't, then you can continue with a good bit of what's been happening since World War II. And the way to do that is to have buildings that are actually back to the back of the sidewalk. Old style. All right? Then you have a sidewalk. Street trees are wonderful for keeping the shade, for keeping the hot tropical sun off of you down here, and providing Page 153 January 29, 2004 a more humane environment on the street. And then it's important to have vehicles parked adjacent to the sidewalks because -- one of my favorite phrases is, parking produces pedestrians. Someone may come from four miles away to this wonderful town center and they park once and they visit the book store, the restaurant, the tobacco shop. You know, they'll go to three or four places with their entire family. And then finally get back in the car and drive away. Now, you try that in a suburban location -- I know people that go into a power center and park their car and go into the first big box, come back to the car and drive to the next big box and go in there. And the parking lots are so vast they're uncomfortable for walking. And we'll research some of that in a moment. So buildings to the back of the sidewalk, sidewalks, street trees, parallel parked cars, and slow moving lanes in the center. That's the formula. Now this is -- you've got a series of streets that are both walkable and not walkable. And this is my first one. And the clue is, when you see the utility pole directly in the middle of the sidewalk, that's your first clue that you really are in the auto zone here. So that gets my "don't walk" symbol. This road was not developed for walking in mind. Now you do see a sidewalk. And DOT, in their public wisdom, has a policy that in urban centers they will put a sidewalk there. And I call this a low probability sidewalk. It makes it possible to walk, but not probable. All right. And there's a great deal of difference. These are actually no-mow strips. You don't have to mow the grass for that three or four feet. So they're doing their best and they're following a uniform policy that's standardized for the entire county, but it's inappropriate in trying to help the pedestrians here. By contrast, Winter Park Florida. It's an old traditional compact Page 154 January 29, 2004 community. Buildings to the back of the sidewalk, sidewalk, street trees, parallel parked cars, slow moving vehicles: Voila, pedestrians. So that gets one of my walking symbols. That's a good walkable street. That's how to put it together. Those buildings look like they're 40, 50 years old. They're about eight. Eight years old. You can do wonderful things with architecture, color and scale that will give you that home town feel that so many people miss. Here's another example. This just happens to be the series of buildings just to my back when I took this photograph, is the office building for the State Comprehensive Planning Office. Department of Community Affairs is right to my back. And this is a beautiful office complex. It's just not walkable. Now look at -- you have the same elements and components that we had before, but you have the building that is just simply too far away from the sidewalk. And you have these trees that will -- it'll be a long time for those trees to give shade to anyone. And then the street is just too far. So it's all spread out. And it looks attractive, I think, from an architectural standpoint and aesthetic standpoint but their point is it's not walkable. If you want walkability, this is not the way to do it. This is a prime example of big scale and non-walkability. So that gets the old don't walk. Just outside of Washington, DC there's a TND community. And it is fairly new. CHAIRMAN FIALA: What's a TND? MR. HALL: A traditional neighborhood design. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Oh. MR. HALL: And it's called the Kentlands. It's an old farm that was in the suburbs in the country and got developed. And in this particular slide you see eight foot parking lanes, two Page 155 January 29, 2004 ten-foot lanes, building to the back of the sidewalk. Trees, as I said, et cetera, et cetera. And they do walk there extensively. This is up in Toronto. I love this slide because it has all the modes of transportation present. You'll see the buildings to the back of the sidewalk, trees, parked cars, you know. I won't say that many more times. But look at all the good pedestrian activity on the far side. There's a car, there's transit, there's bicycle. Professional bicyclist. Okay. He's not a casual one. And even there's a truck loading down the street there in the background. And I watched that loading truck and all this interaction of wonderful transportation for about a half an hour and no one died. They interact, they behaved, and it was really, really a great experience. Amelia Park is up near Jacksonville. If you're up near Femandina just ask someone where Amelia Park is. And here the buildings are up close to the street and sidewalks and the parked cars. Now, I have -- I was first introduced to this walkable pattern of development in 1984. Very briefly, I worked for DOT and did MPO work. That's how I met Jeff Perry. And I did that for nine years with Florida DOT, left them and got into the DRI business. And I did the transportation chapter in DRI. And I stopped counting at hundred DRIs. Bush Gardens. And my favorite was Seaside, Florida. And I found out that -- I kind of stumbled in on it. I do a lot of work in the panhandle where my folks live. And they had, within a half a mile distance along a two-lane county road, they had 14 intersections. I said this is new. This is not standard. And, so, I began looking at it and delving into it. And Robert Davis, the town founder there, had stocked Sun Dog books with a lot of architectural books that talked about this. So I just, you know, started picking those up and reading them. And I fell in love with the concept. Because it reminded me of what I experienced growing up as a child in Europe. My father was in the Page 156 January 29, 2004 Air Force, like many others. And when I was 12 I'd been over there six years. So I remembered, I had the mental experience of seeing people walk around. Which is a great experience. And I said Seaside does it again. So Seaside is the first community, built from scratch, since World War II, that embodies the idea of walking as a major mode of transportation. Great experience. So from that I moved on and I've done about 35 or 40 of these walkable community charrettes, they call them, of these week long sessions where we plan from the ground up. And I've learned a lot of architectural, and they've learned some transportation from me, I hope. So I have concluded that there are a number of walkability factors. Number ten, narrow streets. We spent a lot of time talking about that, but it's not in the top three. Okay. Because there are more important ones. Street trees are very important. Traffic volumes, it's better to have lower volumes than high volumes. Sidewalks are number seven. In Seaside they have sidewalks in the town center. And they started branching out on one of their major avenues and they put sidewalks in. No one used them. The streets are so comfortable that they're strolling babies down the lane. So I said, well, we're not going to waste any more money on sidewalks. So the rest of Seaside was constructed with no sidewalks. And it's one of the most comfortable walking towns you can imagine. And the cars still get around as they need to. Kids that go there on the vacation have the run of the entire town. CHAIRMAN FIALA: I have a picture of Seaside in case anybody wants to see it. It's in my office. I'll go get it. Really. Do you want to see it.9 Page 157 January 29, 2004 That's all right. Go ahead. I'm going to get it for the guys just so they can see what it looks like. MR. HALL: I have about 400 pictures of Seaside I could show you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: I just have one. Go ahead. I don't want to interrupt. MR. HALL: Interconnected streets. If you're going to walk, you're need to be able to take the minimum path. You don't need a cul-de-sac that goes on for a half a mile. On-street parking we've talked about. Produces pedestrians. Lower traffic speeds. Speeds are much more important than volume. Okay. I ask people multiple times, if you're in a neighborhood group would you rather have -- if you could only have these two choices, low speed and high volume, or high speed and low volume, which would you choose? You would choose the low speed for more cars and the occasional speeding car coming through. So the high speed is what makes people nervous. And that red bar chart showed you the reason why. Now, mixed land use. You'll have walkability if a person walking at the human pace can get to a number of different kinds of places within a five minute walk. If you're in a four square mile subdivision, you will only have so many friends you want to visit on a weekly basis to walk to. I mean, so it gets a little boring, so you get in your car and go to the shopping center. But if you have a mix of uses to walk to, then you're better off. Number two, buildings fronting the street. That enclosure idea. There's a ratio we talk about. The width to height ratio. If it's one to one, where your street is one wide to one high on the buildings, that's comfortable. Two wide to one high is comfortable. Three is even comfortable. But you go to a power center out in the suburbs and it's 28 to one, you get no sense that the buildings are out there at all. If Page 158 January 29, 2004 you got off of a transit vehicle out there, you would only do it once because you just do not feel comfortable. So enclosure is important. Number one is small block size. Small block size gives you buildings fronting the street, because they can't go back to the middle of the block. There's no room. So your blocks are built to the edge, which is important to the pedestrians. You have a mix of uses, because if you have small blocks they build different kinds of buildings on every block. So, small block sizes are very important. Keeps the speeds down because you have more intersections per mile like Seaside has. Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HALAS: You said that Seaside doesn't have any sidewalks. How do couples walk down the street without getting hit with cars? MR. HALL: The cars are going nine, ten, eleven, twelve miles an hour. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I haven't seen that here in Collier County. MR. HALL: You don't have a place that's built like Seaside. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Well -- MR. HALL: Because you haven't -- you don't have a place that's built like Seaside. If you build it, they will come. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I think you need to segregate the traffic from pedestrians. I think also you need to segregate bicyclists from traffic and pedestrians. MR. HALL: In our experience when we put the things together this way, it works every time. CHAIRMAN FIALA: And you know, we've had 20 minutes now. And I think we were going to try to do that in 15. And sometimes you lose your audience when it goes on a little too long. I'm sorry. I don't mean to insult you or anything, but we have to Page 159 January 29, 2004 move it along. Okay. Please. MR. HALL: Okay. Can I do three or four more slides? CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. MR. HALL: Key West, Florida. Twenty-eight miles per hour, 16 feet wide on the roadway. Seven foot parking lanes. One of the key issues we've heard that is of concern is the bicycle facilities. When you pull together a community that is built this way, the bicyclists are more comfortable, when the vehicles are slowed down, then the bicyclist can return to the center of the lane where there is much greater visibility. In our experience, 30 miles per hour is the break point. If it's above 30, you need your own bike lane to separate you from the speeding cars. Separation is the answer above 30. And it's very hard to visualize cars and trucks moving at 25 and 15 miles her hour, but they do in places like this. You see, people have a conversation at the end of a parked car, and the bicyclist comes around. And it all comes back into focus the way we felt good about communities a long time ago. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Well, thank you very much. MR. HALL: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Sorry to cut you off anymore, but we've been here since two o'clock. We're getting a little tired. And this is -- this is -- all of this is so important for on future, and we're planning now for our future of our county and what we're going to look like, but I think we also, we need to move on. Thank you. MR. HALL: Thank you. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Bob or Marti? I don't know who's on bat. Who's on base, rather. MS. CHUMBLER: Unless there's other comments on the design standards. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I just think we need to maybe look at it a little closer to make sure we have some type of segregation, Page 160 January 29, 2004 especially in a college town where you're going to have a lot of students riding bikes, and they're probably going to be doing it at a fairly high rate of speed going to class. And I think it needs to be addressed along with the pedestrian issue. I'm not comfortable about pedestrians walking on -- sharing the same area, avenue, with the cars. MS. CHUMBLER: And it's not done that way. The sidewalks are mandated throughout. So there would not be pedestrian, unlike Seaside, there would not be pedestrians in the roadways. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Great. I think we need to address bicycle paths. MR. MULHERE: I just wanted to add. There are bike paths throughout the project. It's just in these areas, which is basically the town center, the town core where you have those low design speeds and on-street parking, that a designated bike lane on the street is going to create more conflict with car doors opening, bicycles in those situations are going to be safer riding in the travel lane. COMMISSIONER HALAS: What we need to do like is do like they do in Europe where they have a wide sidewalk and then they have they've a designated bike lane that's segregated from the sidewalk by lines or whatever. And that's all we need to do. It's lined out. There's a lane. You don't walk in there when you're a pedestrian. MR. MULHERE: You're suggesting a bike lane that's designated on the sidewalk? On the outside edge of the sidewalk? COMMISSIONER HALAS: That's correct. MR. MULHERE: But still bicyclist, I mean, I don't disagree with what you're saying, but some bicyclists are going to prefer to ride in the street. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Well, that's their option. I think we need to address that. Because people are going to ride bicycles Page 161 January 29, 2004 downtown to go to the candy store -- speaking of the candy -- candy store or ice cream shop or the book store. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And what you said, there's a lot of truth to it. When you're talking about kind of cities and towns that we know around here and the streets that we know. You know, you got to have bike paths, you got to make sure that they're open. But I understand the concept we're talking about. And the reason I understand is, we ran into a situation like this on 13th where we built the bridge before we built the sidewalks. And we found they had a terrible speeding problem. So what we did in order to -- a temporary solution was that we stripe the road in such a way that it was restricted. The long range solution, and the residents have all seen it, and with the exception of one or two endorsing it, is that the road's got curves and it's got barriers in such a way that you can't see straight ahead. And that causes you to go slower. Now when you get on that road today, before they put these barriers in place and everything, before they did it, you had a very difficult time holding your car 30 miles an hour, because you had this wide open expanse that went on for like two miles across the bridge. And they had a lot of trouble with speeding. When they made these minor improvements, it reduced the speeding considerably and the improvements they're going to make after that. Now, if you go to Florida Gulf Coast University, you don't see bike paths through the whole place because you have a certain clientele there that aren't small kids, and they're using what exists there. They have a peripheral road that goes along the outside and everything else is in the center. It's quite safe. It works very well, and it doesn't cramp the style. I personally, from what I see, I don't have a problem with it. But I understand your concerns. Based upon Page 162 January 29, 2004 present values that we have in the rest of our community. COMMISSIONER HENNING: As long as the road leading into the -- well, let's say the University, Ave Maria, I would imagine is going to be 35 miles an hour, 40 miles an hour? I would think we would want to provide infrastructure for pedestrians, bicyclists. MS. CHUMBLER: Yes, they would all have pedestrians. Did you all have a question? MR. MULHERE: Yes. I think there is a cross section for that. It's 22. I got to find it. I understand the concept of a traditional neighborhood. And it works very well for, like the gentleman said, for pedestrian traffic. And, in fact, it's kind of like what we want in Golden Gate City with, you know, the taller buildings, the wider street sidewalks to intermingle. MR. MULHERE: I don't know if you can see that. But there is a separated pathway there separated from the travel lanes with -- there's actually a six-foot shoulder and a swale. The swale is eight to 16 feet in width, then you have a pathway. And of course you have a another clear over here. So on those roads that are leading in, they're higher design speeds because you actually separate those activities. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Is it stated the design speed limits? MR. MULHERE: I'm not sure what the design speeds are. I'm not sure what they are. Certainly they're not designed for the 25 and lower design speeds that you'll get inside the town center. COMMISSIONER HENNING: The neighborhoods, and I know Golden Gate in particular, that everything is 25 except for some of the collector roads that are designated at 35. There's no combination for bike paths in those neighborhoods, traditional neighborhoods like Golden Gate. MR. MULHERE: Yeah. I think we just have a little bit of Page 163 January 29, 2004 confusion here. Within the town center, again, where you want to encourage and you want to have the on-street parking because it's a critical component for this new urbanist design where you want to promote walkability, you want to be careful about the conflict. I think the idea of allowing those that are most comfortable riding on the wider sidewalks is fine. But those that are going to ride on the street, you don't want to have -- force them closer to those vehicles. You want the low design speed. You want them to be able to ride in the travel lane. MS. CHUMBLER: The parked vehicles? MR. MULHERE: The parked vehicles. That's what I'm talking about. Where you have opening doors and those types of things. COMMISSIONER HALAS: What I was suggesting is, the sidewalk is wide enough. MR. MULHERE: Right. COMMISSIONER HALAS: So you got your cafes out there. You still have room for pedestrians, and then you have a narrow strip that is -- MR. MULHERE: I understand. COMMISSIONER HALAS: -- striped off where the bikes can travel on that road, or on that sidewalk without being out in the road, so that somebody opens a car door on them, on the poor guy. MR. MULHERE: Yeah. And of course, you know, you have to be -- you have to have a clear enough area for that to occur because you have car doors opening on the pedestrian side as well. On the sidewalks. So you have to have that clearance. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So I guess the consensus is just bring it back as is. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: We can address it. Probably have -- maybe we get another slide presentation. No I'm just joking on that. It was a very good presentation, by the way. Page 164 January 29, 2004 COMMISSIONER HALAS: I don't know -- excuse me. What did you mean by, exactly, bring it back as it is? Are we going to make any changes so that we have the pedestrians? I think the on-street parking is great. I think that's what we really need. I also think -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Especially in Naples Park. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Right. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Let's not go there. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I think you also need to address pedestrians, and you also need to address bicyclists. Especially when you're dealing with this concept of small hamlets and villages. Because what you're trying to do is, get people to get out and interact with one another. MS. CHUMBLER: Right. And we can look at that. And I think we need to make sure we keep a distinction in our mind between the bike paths, which is something marked off on the sidewalk, and the bike lanes, which would be something striped off on the roadways with the traffic. And those are two different terms that are used and sometimes mixed up. When someone talks about a bike lane, that's in the street. A bike path would be separated, either in the pedestrians walkway or elsewhere. COMMISSIONER HALAS: But you wouldn't put a pike lane in the road where you have parallel parking and somebody opens the door up on the individual riding down the road. MS. CHUMBLER: Exactly, exactly. That's our concern. CHAIRMAN FIALA: One minute, sir. Richard, is it? MR. MULHERE: I just need to put on the record that your staff, the transportation staff, is -- has indicated to me that they want bike lanes on the entryways, the roads leading in, as well as those roads that are, I guess, collector roads. That aren't neighborhood Page 165 January 29, 2004 roads. They want bike lanes on there. You need to know that. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. MS. CHUMBLER: Which would be the ones that have parallel parking. CHAIRMAN FIALA: One minute, sir. MR. HOULST: I just have a question for clarification. In the town center-- CHAIRMAN FIALA: Oh, wait. State your name, please. MR. HOULST: Oh, I'm sorry. Richard Houlst. PAC. Sorry. Where do you intend the cyclist to go? I've heard a couple references to 5th Avenue. I live on 7th Avenue. I walk 5th Avenue every day or ride my bike. Do you expect the cyclist to go in the street with the cars, or on the sidewalks with the pedestrians? I just have a question. MR. MULHERE: And I think in many circumstances it will be both. It will depend on the comfort of the rider, the age of the rider. Where the sidewalks are wide enough, then, you know, perhaps a young or less experienced rider will ride on the sidewalk. However, I think on 5th Avenue, when I've ridden my bike on 5th Avenue, I've ridden in the travel lane. I don't know where else to ride. There's parked cars everywhere' else. MR. HOULST: I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but it's illegal to ride your bicycle on the sidewalk on 5th Avenue. MR. MULHERE: I didn't say I rode on the sidewalk. I said I rode in the street. MR. HOULST: Right. I heard what you said. But you said that people would be permitted to ride wherever they wanted to and I -- MR. MULHERE: I didn't say wherever they wanted to. MR. HOULST: And there's a possibility of some bicycle and pedestrian crashes. So I just was curious where you wanted the cyclist to go. Page 166 January 29, 2004 MR. MULHERE: You know what, understand this. The staff is also recommending the same as the pathways advisory committee, the only -- my purpose here is to try to enlighten the Board in making these decisions as to why these designs are here. We are trying to think out of the box. You know, there's a sense of comfort from the experts that there are not safety issues. From my perspective, the sidewalk is wide enough. I don't know. I mean, children do ride their bicycles on sidewalks. I don't know if it's illegal, but I know they do it. CHAIRMAN FIALA: So the Board, do you have direction. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Just throw them all in jail. You know, the design for bicyclist traveling needs to be designed for the speed of the traffic. And, you know, the professional bicyclist prefers to go with the traffic. So, if, we're you know, at an arterial roadway that is designed for a speed limit of 40 miles an hour, yeah there should be a bike lane. But if you're in a downtown setting, that traffic speed is going to be traveling so slow that a bicyclist is going to go a heck of a lot faster. So, you know, you're going to have to travel with the traffic. MR. MULHERE: Just one thing I wanted to put on the record. That although there's diverging opinions here, the issue -- the concern is the same. The concern is safety and comfort of the bicyclist. The opinions are different. It's just that some people have the opinion that there has to be a separately striped bicycle path on the street, and others feel that that will conflict with the parallel parking on the street or the on-street parking that because of the design speeds, the cyclist is safer and will feel comfortable riding in the travel lane. The experienced cyclist. And so, that's really what the issue is. But I don't think anyone is arguing about the intent. The intent being safety. MS. CHUMBLER: There's been a suggestion from the Page 167 January 29, 2004 audience, that perhaps among the cross sections, that there be a new cross section added to the package that will show bike lanes so that would be one of the options there shown as a cross section. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Would that be acceptable? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: You know, as long as we got out all options still open. I don't want to impede the building of something that's supposed to be really beautiful and functional with our overthought at this point in time. MS. CHUMBLER: This would be amongst the package that a developer came in when they're choosing amongst the cross sections. That would be that one this board and that developer could look at amongst the options that would be appropriate for that particular development. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Just one last comment and I'll be quiet. Last summer I did something that was quite unusual. It was went back to where I originally came from. No, I'm not going to go back forever. But I went to Almyra, New York. It's been many years since I got back there for the summer. And we actually took a vacation there. My wife and I spent some time bicycling around. We -- I couldn't believe how easy it was. It was a small town. For the most part, we were able to ride right in the street. I mean, we don't go 20, 30 miles an hour. You know. We're a couple of old fogies out there moving along with the rest of the crowd. But, when it came to a couple of the larger roads that we came up to, the sidewalks were there and we used them. And it just -- everything just seemed to blend together. There was no real provisions for bicycles, but we didn't feel at any put out. I wouldn't try to do this on 951, I'll tell you that. But we went over 20 some miles. We were gone for part of the day. We just had an absolutely wonderful time. Now, I never thought about it. But the town, because it was Page 168 January 29, 2004 built many years ago where people had to walk to reach their destination, had a different type of layout and it worked well. Now, you know, I'd say all those don't apply for all situations. I think an open mind is in order. And I believe that what you're offering to do and bring back some different options is a wonderful idea. CHAIRMAN FIALA: And I remember they were having a little problem in Pelican Bay, weren't they, about a year ago where all the cyclists, even though there are sidewalks -- they're not very wide sidewalks, and the cyclists, they were professional cyclists, were riding on the streets and stopping the cars. And the cars were getting pretty angry. And there was some road rage involved. So, you know, I think that's all -- and that's a quiet community where they don't speed. Well, you would think that they don't speed. And still, they have the problems. So I hope when you come back to us you can solve this problem. Okay. We can move on. MS. CHUMBLER: Okay. If that's all that -- all the comments on Tab C. CHAIRMAN FIALA: I think that's enough. MS. CHUMBLER: There were, as I mentioned to you earlier, there are a number of the tabs which we didn't intend to submit specific comments. And, but, we obviously -- members of the public that want to comment, should be able to do so. And if you have questions, let me just run down that list. The first one would be Tab B, the conservation district. Russell, do you have any speakers on that? MR. WEBB: Oh, I'm sorry. No. No registered public speakers. MS. CHUMBLER: And are there any questions from the commission on Tab B, conservation district? Next would be Tab D, the regulation on the NRPAs, the N-R-P-A. Page 169 January 29, 2004 MR. WEBB: No registered public speakers. MS. CHUMBLER: No registered speakers? Tab E, North Belle Mende overlay. MR. WEBB: No registered speakers. MS. CHUMBLER: F, essential services. MR. WEBB: No registered speakers. MS. CHUMBLER: G, communication towers. MR. WEBB: No registered speakers. MS. CHUMBLER: H, LiHoral shelf planning areas. MR. WEBB: No speakers. MS. CHUMBLER: J, density blending. MR. WEBB: No registered speakers. MS. CHUMBLER: K, EIS. MR. WEBB: No registered speakers. MS. CHUMBLER: And L, vegetation. MR. WEBB: One registered speaker. Brad Cornell. MR. CORNELL: Brad Cornell with the Collier County Audubon society. Now, I want to raise -- I want to raise your -- I want to make a suggestion that is really -- I'm trying to fix something that I had recommended in error. And I made a mistake. I was mistaken about the meaning of the policy under the mitigation portion of the rural fringe mixed use district. 3.9.5.3. The mitigation portion which is B, and then sub one mitigation requirements. MS. CHUMBLER: Page 169. MR. CORNELL: Is that what it is? Oh, good. I don't feel brave enough to say those page numbers. MS. CHUMBLER: The middle page number. MR. CORNELL: You'll see under that, it says mitigation requirements. There's A, B, and C. There used to be another B, and there actually were A, B, C, and D. And I misunderstood the original B. And I would like to recommend that B be put back there. And Page 170 January 29, 2004 the reason is, it addresses the management and protection of preserve areas after mitigation has already been done. And I think this is important. And I had advocated that it be taken out because I thought it was condoning exotics clearing as mitigation. It's not. Once you've done your mitigation, it's what you do to make sure that your preserve area stays good. Which includes keeping exotics out. And that reads, protection shall be provided for preserved or created wetland or upland vegetated communities offered as mitigation by placing a conservation easement over the land in perpetuity providing for initial removal of Class One exotics, and continuing exotic plant maintenance as provided in the management plan required by section 3.9.7.1 Sub F. I would recommend that that be put back. I think it's important and -- CHAIRMAN FIALA: I think that's what I was asking about earlier, wasn't it? You know, maintenance with the land. MR. CORNELL: It does refer to that. It touches on that issue, right. CHAIRMAN FIALA: How do you feel, Commissioners? COMMISSIONER HENNING: I want to fully understand -- in a sense this is something that just came up and we didn't get to review it. MR. CORNELL: It was in all of the original drafts. And I really apologize. I misunderstood it. COMMISSIONER HENNING: This is our first hearing on this. MS. CHUMBLER: I think, Commissioners, part of the reason we agreed with Brad's comment to take it out, was that we felt it was already covered on page 174 G, Sub paragraph two. That's the preserve management plans where it requires exotic vegetation removal and maintenance plans in all preserves. So we felt like that language wasn't as necessary over on the earlier page, because we felt it was adequately covered at page 174. Page 171 January 29, 2004 MR. CORNELL: But do you have the mention of the placement of the conservation easement under that policy? COMMISSIONER HENN1NG: Well, it's a management preserve plan. So, it's quite distinct instead of mitigation. MS. CHUMBLER: Yeah. All preserves are required under conservation easement. MR. CORNELL: So listing that in that form Sub B, that was just duplicative? MS. CHUMBLER: Yeah. And if you look back at page 172, paragraph D, as in David, protective covenants, requires the protective covenants. Another legal term for conservation easement be placed over lands that are in preserves. MR. CORNELL: Okay. I'm happy. I just didn't want that to be left out. I didn't see that fuller content. It was an error on my part. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Thank you. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thanks for staying this late. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. MS. CHUMBLER: And I think that covers everything. Remember, you have this document. You've got the errata sheet that Bob Mulhere went through, and then you have the earlier circulated one. So what we would propose to do is take the direction that you've given us tonight. Incorporate those. There's some areas where we would be but having to come up with some language, and we will then get to you a new draft showing those changes. Russell? MR. WEBB: I don't think we mentioned Tab N. MS. CHUMBLER: Oh, Tab N. He's correct. Which is the definitions. They're not aware of any controversy on Tab N. Russell reminds me that we didn't offer public comment on Tab N. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Anybody want to comment on N? Page 172 January 29, 2004 MS. CHUMBLER: No. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. So from here then you have your marching orders. And is there anything further from any staff?. MR. WHITE: I think it's necessary for the record just to announce that the next meeting with respect to these proceedings will be held on February 1 lth. And correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that would be at 5:05 p.m. in these chambers. And that would be the second hearing for the Eastern Lands Provisions that you heard for the first time today and a final consideration of both those matters and the ones you previously voted on individually, all taken together collectively. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Very good. Commissioners, anything that you would like to say? MR. WHITE: And I believe there's -- if we could just telegraph to the folks out there that there will be a first public hearing that evening at the same 5:05 time frame for provisions relating to division 3.13, coastal construction setback line, a slimmed down version of needed changes, and that would be the first hearing. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Commissioner Halas. Commissioner Coletta, Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I just want to say on February 1 lth that I'm going to be late. I have to be in a meeting in Fort Myers. And you can wait and watch some slide shows if you want. Mr. Anderson? MR. ANDERSON: Point of clarification. Mr. White made reference to a first hearing on a coastal construction setback line issue. And at your prior hearing, you all voted not to tamper with that language. Are we talking about the same thing? COMMISSIONER HENN1NG: No. We're talking about something different. We're talking about putting beach on the sand -- or sand on the beach. And when we discussed that coastal setback Page 173 January 29, 2004 issue, we did not address that. We did not pull that out and adopt it. MR. SCHMITT: I'll explain it to you and I'll certainly provide you a copy of the proposal. COMMISSIONER HENNING: It is the same division, but it does not contain the provisions I think that the board was concerned with. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Joe, anything else? MR. SCHMITT: That's it, ma'am. CHAIRMAN FIALA: Okay. Meeting adjourned. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 7:45 p.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL DONNA FIAL~n ATTEST: DWIGHT E. ~,,,O, CK, CLERK ~"~:'"'~ ...... ~ ..... '~"';:~:~*:'~'~'~ Page 174 January 29, 2004 These minutes approved by the Board on ~'~ as presented v/ or as corrected TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC. BY TERRI LEWIS AND CHERIE NOTTINGHAM AND DANIELLA AHREN Page 175