Agenda 05/26/2020 Item # 2B (Minutes 04/28/2020)05/26/2020
COLLIER COUNTY
Board of County Commissioners
Item Number: 2.B
Item Summary: April 28, 2020 BCC Meeting Minutes
Meeting Date: 05/26/2020
Prepared by:
Title: Executive Secretary to County Manager – County Manager's Office
Name: MaryJo Brock
05/12/2020 9:00 AM
Submitted by:
Title: County Manager – County Manager's Office
Name: Leo E. Ochs
05/12/2020 9:00 AM
Approved By:
Review:
County Manager's Office Nick Casalanguida County Manager Review Completed 05/18/2020 9:37 AM
Board of County Commissioners MaryJo Brock Meeting Pending 05/26/2020 9:00 AM
2.B
Packet Pg. 10
April 28, 2020
Page 1
TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
Naples, Florida, April 28, 2020
LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Board of County
Commissioners, in and for the County of Collier, and also acting as
the Board of Zoning Appeals and as the governing board(s) of such
special districts as have been created according to law and having
conducted business herein, met on this date at 9:00 a.m., in
REGULAR SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex,
East Naples, Florida, with the following members present:
CHAIRMAN: Burt L. Saunders
Andy Solis
William L. McDaniel, Jr.
Donna Fiala
Penny Taylor
ALSO PRESENT:
Leo Ochs, County Manager
Nick Casalanguida, Deputy County Manager
Jeffrey A. Klatzkow, County Attorney
Crystal K. Kinzel, Clerk of the Circuit Court & Comptroller
Troy Miller, Communications & Customer Relations
April 28, 2020
Page 2
MR. OCHS: Let's start with -- I want to welcome all of you this
morning, and I'm really glad to see everybody's practicing social
distancing. I want to thank our staff for making sure everyone's
accommodated with hand sanitizer and seats that are marked for
people to sit in and overflow rooms and everything that you're doing
to keep our staff safe as well as the public safe.
So I want to welcome all the commissioners. These are some
very trying times, and I'm glad to see that we're all here this morning.
Let's start with an invocation. And we'll ask our Commission
Member Mr. McDaniel to lead us in the invocation and in the Pledge
of Allegiance.
Item #1
INVOCATION AND PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Good morning, everybody. If
you'd bow your heads with me.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank you for the many blessings
that you have bestowed upon us. Father, these are trying times. It
has been evidenced throughout our history that, with your guidance,
humanity has come along and done very well.
Father, we ask that you continue to bless our community that
we -- and that you keep mankind safe. Father, as is always the case,
please keep our military people safe, protect them for the freedoms
that they fight for us every single day.
As is always, our first responders who are out there every single
day answering the call for whatever may arise.
And, Father, please, a new group, our physicians, our medical
facilities, those folks that are on the front line fighting every single
day to protect the health of our citizenry.
April 28, 2020
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It's in thy holy name I pray, amen.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Amen.
MR. OCHS: Amen.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And with me, ladies and
gentlemen.
(The Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.)
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Next on our agenda is the approval
of today's regular, consent, and summary agenda. And I believe we
have some amendments to that. So we'll start off with Mr. Ochs in
terms of the proposed changes to the regular agenda and the consent
agenda.
Item #2A
APPROVAL OF TODAY’S REGULAR, CONSENT AND
SUMMARY AGENDA AS AMENDED (EXPARTE DISCLOSURE
PROVIDED BY COMMISSION MEMBERS FOR CONSENT
AGENDA) – APPROVED AND/OR ADOPTED WITH CHANGES
MR. OCHS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, Commissioners. These are the proposed agenda
changes for the Board of County Commissioners' meeting of April
28th, 2020.
The first proposed change is to continue Item 16A18 and to
move that to your May 12th, 2020, meeting agenda. That is a
continuance at Commissioner Taylor's request. We're going to
provide a bit more information for her on that project.
And the final proposed change is to withdraw Item 16A30 from
your Growth Management consent agenda. These are a series of
updates to your Land Development Administrative Code, and we'll
bring those back after we have a chance to consult with the Planning
April 28, 2020
Page 4
Commission on a few of those.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right.
MR. OCHS: And those are all the changes that I have this
morning, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And you don't have any particular
issues with those changes?
MR. OCHS: No, sir. No, I don't.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. Commissioner Taylor.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: County Manager Ochs, so you're
intending it for review with the Planning Commission before it comes
to us?
MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Thank you very much.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Mr. Klatzkow, do you have any
changes?
MR. KLATZKOW: No, sir.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Good morning, sir.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Any changes -- any other changes
from the commission?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Then we need a motion
to approve the regular and consent agenda as amended.
MR. OCHS: Mr. Chairman, excuse me. Is there any ex parte by
commission members on either the consent or summary agenda, just
for the record?
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: No.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. I don't see any.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: No. Thank you.
April 28, 2020
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CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. No ex parte.
All right. Then we need a motion to approve the regular agenda
and the consent agenda as amended.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: So moved.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Move to approve.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Second.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: We have a motion and second. All
in favor, signify by saying aye.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Aye.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Aye.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Aye.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Aye.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All opposed?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: That passes unanimously.
April 28, 2020
Page 6
Item #2B, #2C, #2D and #2E BCC REGULAR MEETING MINUTES FOR MARCH 10, 2020; BCC EMERGENCY MEETING MINUTES FOR MARCH 16, 2020; BCC REGULAR MEETING MINUTES FROM MARCH 24, 2020; AND THE BCC EMERGENCY MEETING MINUTES FOR
MARCH 27, 2020 – APPROVED AS PRESENTED
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: We have a series of minutes for
four meetings. Let me just see if there are any corrections or changes
to any of the minutes that are listed there.
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And seeing none, then we just need
one motion to approve --
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: So move.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: -- the minutes of the four meetings,
2B, 2C, 2D, and 2E listed. We have a motion and second. All in
favor, signify by saying aye.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Aye.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Aye.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Aye.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Aye.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All opposed?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: That passes unanimously.
That takes us down to public comments to topics not on the agenda.
Item #7
PUBLIC COMMENTS NOT ON GENERAL TOPICS ON THE ~
April 28, 2020
Page 7
CURRENT OF FUTURE AGENDA
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Do we have any registered speakers for
that, or anybody in the audience want to speak on an item that's not
on the agenda?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Then we'll move on to --
MR. OCHS: Mr. Chairman, just -- I see Mr. Miller stepped out
for a moment, so in the event that he's got a slip over there -- here he
comes.
Anyone registered, Mr. Miller, for public comment on general
topics not on the current --
MR. MILLER: No, just for Item 11A, sir.
MR. OCHS: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Then we'll move on to Item 9A,
advertised public hearings. Mr. Ochs.
Item #9A
ORDINANCE PETITION PL20180002792/CPSS-2019-03, A
GROWTH MANAGEMENT PLAN SMALL SCALE
AMENDMENT SPECIFIC TO THE URBAN COMMERCIAL
DISTRICT OF THE FUTURE LAND USE ELEMENT, TO
CREATE A NEW SUBDISTRICT, VANDERBILT BEACH
COMMERCIAL TOURIST SUBDISTRICT. (ADOPTION
HEARING) [THIS IS A COMPANION TO AGENDA ITEM #9B]
(DISTRICT 2)
Item #9B
ORDINANCE OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
April 28, 2020
Page 8
OF COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA AMENDING ORDINANCE
NUMBER 2004-41, AS AMENDED, THE COLLIER COUNTY
LAND DEVELOPMENT CODE, WHICH ESTABLISHED THE
COMPREHENSIVE ZONING REGULATIONS FOR THE
UNINCORPORATED AREA OF COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA,
BY AMENDING THE APPROPRIATE ZONING ATLAS MAP OR
MAPS BY CHANGING THE ZONING CLASSIFICATION OF
THE HEREIN DESCRIBED REAL PROPERTY FROM A
COMMERCIAL INTERMEDIATE DISTRICT (C-3) ZONING
DISTRICT TO A COMMERCIAL PLANNED UNIT
DEVELOPMENT (CPUD) ZONING DISTRICT FOR THE
PROJECT TO BE KNOWN AS VANDERBILT BEACH
COMMERCIAL TOURIST COMMERCIAL PLANNED UNIT
DEVELOPMENT, TO ALLOW UP TO 17 HOTEL AND MOTEL
UNITS AND 7,000 SQUARE FEET OF COMMERCIAL
DEVELOPMENT ON PROPERTY LOCATED ON THE
NORTHEAST PORTION OF THE INTERSECTION OF GULF
SHORE DRIVE AND SOUTH BAY DRIVE, APPROXIMATELY
400 FEET NORTH OF VANDERBILT BEACH ROAD, IN
SECTION 32, TOWNSHIP 48 SOUTH, RANGE 25 EAST,
CONSISTING OF .62± ACRES; AND BY PROVIDING AN
EFFECTIVE DATE. (PL20180002793) (THIS IS A COMPANION
TO AGENDA ITEM #9A) (DISTRICT 2)
MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. 9A and 9B, Mr. Chairman, as you
indicated in the title on your executive summary, were scheduled for
March 24th and have been further continued to your May 12th
meeting, so these items are scheduled for hearing on May 12th.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. All right.
Item #11A
April 28, 2020
Page 9
COVID-19 UPDATE/DISCUSSION (All Districts)
MR. OCHS: Okay. So we're ready to move, sir, right into
the staff report, Item 11A.
This is an update and a briefing on the current conditions
related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We have a number of
subject-matter experts that are here to provide a briefing to the Board
and respond to questions, obviously, from the Commission, so we're
ready to go when you are, sir.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Well, we're all set. I want to
advise the speakers and the folks that are making presentations that
this, obviously, is the main issue for today, and take your time. We're
not in a rush, so we want to make sure that the public gets all the
information that is needed.
MR. OCHS: Thank you.
We'll begin this morning with a briefing from your public health
system [sic] Stephanie Vick, the state of Florida Department of
Public Health for Collier County will brief the Commission.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Good morning.
MS. VICK: Good morning. And for the record, Stephanie
Vick, Administrator, Florida Department of Health in Collier County.
We've got a lot to talk about. I'll try to keep it in a nutshell as much
as possible.
Just to bring you up to speed, you'll see in front of you some
statistics for the county. As of yesterday, these were what the
numbers are. And I say "as of yesterday" because the information
comes out so quickly. It comes out in the newspaper. It comes out in
the -- on the television screen, so I need to go with what the official
count is from Department of Health. And you may see some
April 28, 2020
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different numbers other places, but these are what the official
numbers are, okay.
So as of yesterday, we had 562 total cases. About 73 percent of
those have been acquired in Florida; most of them being in our
county, which is quite a difference from when we first started out.
Most of the cases came from travel cases, and now the vast majority
are transmittal here in our own county, okay.
We have some that were acquired other places in the United
States, like New York or California, so that that accounts for only
about 5.3 percent. We have still some that were acquired outside of
the United States. They could have been on cruises. They could
have come from other countries. And that accounts for 6.1 percent.
Some of them we're still investigating, and you'll see later when
I talk about the number of positive cases and the number of contacts
that we're investigating. We cannot verify exactly where those cases
came from until we're done with the investigations. So the total cases
for Florida residents are 495 and non-Florida residents are 67. And
as I said, the total cases are 562.
So you may wonder how many tests that we've done in Collier
County so far. We've done 5,230 cases [sic]. And I remember in our
last briefing I was asked, so how many tests do we need to do? To be
on a really good footing so we know exactly where we are, we need
to do -- we would have needed to do, by this point, about four times
that number of tests. So about 20,000 tests. Okay.
And as you saw 562 were positive. That gives us a 10.7 percent
positivity rate for the county of those cases that we know were tested
and we got a result on.
Okay. Our death data, the official report for Collier residents is
15; non-Collier residents but they have died in our hospitals, four. So
that brings us to a total of 19. And I regret to inform you that that
number should be going up today by at least one. We're at 20.
April 28, 2020
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So -- and later on in the sheet you'll see, you know, where some
of those deaths that are reported come from, because the Medical
Examiner is required to certify every death for COVID. So if it's a
death that happens at home, they're testing for COVID, and then
reporting those numbers. But then if the hospital and the physicians
in the hospital determine that it's COVID through testing, then they
go on and certify that, but...
Okay. So where we are now, as a nation and as a state, is we are
supposed to be looking at gating criteria. And this is a framework.
So there is some expectation that we will try to follow the gating
criteria, but there is flexibility in this criteria so that there can be
decisions made at the state level and at the local level as it applies to
what's happening in your county.
But the criteria looks at tracking symptoms that occur in your
vicinity, so in our case it would be in our county, and the cases, and
then what the hospital censuses are and how they're handling the need
in the county. So you see they come in three -- three different
categories. There are actually only five criteria that we are supposed
to meet, because the middle criteria for cases is an either/or situation.
You either meet the top, which is the downward trajectory of
documented cases within a 14-day period, or you meet the bottom,
and that's the downward trajectory of positive tests as a percent of the
total tests.
So when I was telling you that we range 10 -- around
10.7 percent -- and we've been holding that way since the beginning.
Ten to 11 percent is what our average has been. Now, some days
we're 15 percent of the tests; some days we're 6 percent. But the
average is --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Average.
MS. VICK: Yeah. So what we want to see is a downward slant
so that we are consistently going 7 percent positivity rate, 6 percent
April 28, 2020
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positivity rate, okay.
Again, I'll tell you when we look at these graphs, we're not as
big as Miami-Dade; we're not as big as Broward; we're certainly not
as big as Palm Beach in population numbers. And so with smaller
numbers, you do get quite a bit of variability in your charts and in
your reporting.
So with that, we have -- we have drawn trend lines for you over
a 14-day period of time and over a seven-day period of time, and
you'll see how that changes. I understood that our commission
wanted to look at a seven-day period of time. So for this first
indicator under symptoms, for influenza-like illness, if you see on the
top graph, the black dotted line shows you a downward slope, a
downward trend.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Mr. Chair?
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I'm getting a lot of messages
from folks that the TV feed and the live feed is not working, and I
think this is imperative information for our community to be able to
see. So if, in fact, it's still not --
MR. MILLER: We are having an issue. I'm working to direct a
secondary link to our web page. Give me a couple of minutes, okay.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Maybe we should take a brief
recess until that is accomplished, Mr. Chair.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I don't have any issue with doing
that. I think we should, quite frankly, just stay in place. Maybe we'll
just recess for a few minutes see what --
MR. MILLER: Let me see what I can do.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Give us a report back. But let's
stay in place.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And I didn't mean to interrupt,
Stephanie. Just I'm getting pinged that there's -- that the feed's not
April 28, 2020
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working.
MS. VICK: Oh, no. That's okay.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: More than just my mother.
MS. VICK: We need to hear it.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: My mother watches this.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. We're in recess at the
moment, so let's...
(A brief recess was had.)
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Perhaps if you could advise the
public at this point what they may want to do to --
MR. MILLER: Yeah. If you're attempting to watch online, you
may have to refresh your browser. We did have an Internet
connectivity issue with our external stream on our website, but
everything seems to be back up and running now, but you will have
to refresh your browser, so...
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. So we're all set. Ms. Vick.
MS. VICK: Okay. Well, I'm glad we did that, because that
gave me a chance to remember that I forgot to introduce Muhammad
Abbasi, who is here with us. He's here in the front row. And he's my
director of Communicable Disease Prevention and Control and has
the Epidemiology Department within his division. So should I need
to refer, he's right here.
Okay. Thank you. So back to the first graph and the symptoms.
And I was telling you, the gating criteria as it's proposed suggests that
we use a 14-day trend. And I did tell you about, with our number of
residents being smaller than major city areas, we get a lot of
variability in graphs when we do them.
So the black line, as I was telling you, the black dotted line on
this represents the trend over a 14-day period of time, which is
downward.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: So the small black --
April 28, 2020
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MS. VICK: The small black dots.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Do one of these so we can -- can
you make it bigger?
MS. VICK: That, yeah. Okay, great. Okay. So these small
dotted lines.
This red line is just over the past seven days. So if you just go
the past seven days, you see that there's an increase there. When I get
to the end and tell you where we score on the gating criteria, we have
used the recommended 14-day trend because of the reasons that we
have smaller numbers, and I think you get a better picture of trending
rather than using seven days, right?
Okay. So that's where we are in influenza-like illnesses. Over
14 days, we have a downward trend. All right.
In COVID-like illnesses, we are pretty much flatlined over the
14-day period. You see, the black dotted line all the way across is
pretty much flat. If you do that one for the seven-day period, that one
also ends up being flat.
So if we were asking the question on No. 1A, is there a
downward trend with influenza-like illness in Collier County, we
would say yes using 14 days, okay. Then the question is, is there a
downward trend in COVID-like illness syndrome in Collier County?
And we would say no because that's flat. No downward trend. And
we put them together in a category, so under symptoms. Because
there's one yes and one no, we gave that a no, okay.
Then looking at cases. So the next question is, is there -- is the
number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Collier County decreasing?
And, of course, they're not, and we probably will, for a long time, say
no because the testing is increasing. More testing, the more positives
we get. But remember in this category, in cases, in that overall
category, it's an either/or scenario. So either you have your number
of cases that are going down or the percentage of positive tests is
April 28, 2020
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going down.
So remember I talked about we're averaging around 10 percent,
10 to 11 percent right now. So you might want to see 9 to 10 percent
over a two-week period of time, and then you might want to see 8 to
10 percent and 6 to 7 percent, and then we would answer, yes, that's
going down. And so that category overall would be yes because it's
an either/or. Does that make sense?
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Fiala.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yeah. On this page it shows
confirmed on the one level and positive on the other. I would think
they were saying the same thing. So there must be a different
definition, or what is it?
MS. VICK: I'm sorry. I should have pointed that out right
away. The top chart is number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. The
bottom chart is percentage.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: So the confirmed is --
MS. VICK: Number of confirmed.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Is that a different level as
positive -- than positive?
MS. VICK: No. They both have to do with confirmed or
positive, but one is number versus percentage. So I might have -- I
might have a total of 10 tests that were being done, and five of them
were positive. So the number is five, and yesterday the number was
six, and tomorrow the number is three. So the average percentage
that came out was close to 50 percent over that time period.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I guess I just don't understand the
difference between positive and confirmed. So if it's only me, than
that's --
MS. VICK: No, those are not -- those are not different. It's the
number of cases and the percentage of cases.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor, you had a
April 28, 2020
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question?
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Director Vick --
MS. VICK: Yes.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: -- given the fact that we hope
there will be increased testing as we go forward and given the fact
this is not going to go away, is it conceivable that we'll hover around
a 10 percent for the next four or five months?
MS. VICK: That is conceivable.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Probable?
MS. VICK: Probable, but probably not the only thing you're
going to want to make your decision on --
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Right.
MS. VICK: -- because, again, under cases, it's either/or. So we
may get 10 percent, but we may get decreasing numbers as time goes
on. But, again, that's not likely because we're ramping up testing
right now.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Yeah. That's the other part.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Let's see if we can kind
of hold our questions until Ms. Vick is finished, because she may
answer some of those questions in her comments. So after each
speaker we'll take questions, if that's okay with the Commission. So
make notes as she goes through.
MS. VICK: All right. So now we're looking at the hospital
capacity. And I'm sure our hospitals are going to report more on
what's happening with them.
But the third category in the gating criteria has to do with how
our hospitals are able to deal with illness in their community, not
only COVID illnesses, but the heart attacks that come in and strokes
that come in and people that might have pancreatitis and need to be
hospitalized. So is the system being overrun by COVID or is the
hospital system -- are they able to treat anything that comes through
April 28, 2020
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the door and COVID and still have some space left over and still
have ventilators left over.
Okay. So we looked at from the 1st of April on this one on how
we're doing with -- and you'll see up at the top is the key. So the
black line tells you how many available vents we have among all the
hospital systems, and that would be Physicians Regional, NCH, and
Landmark Hospital, okay.
So right here at the end, they're -- at the last -- at the last
measurement, which was yesterday, and the last report that we got,
we had 78 ventilators available that were not in use, okay. Then we
have -- with the orange line, we have the number of available ICU
beds. Now, I worry a little bit more right now about the number of
ventilators being available than I do the ICU beds because the
hospitals have plans in place to make other rooms ICU beds if that
need be, but this does give us a good indication of what's happening
in the county right now.
So if you look at the available ICU beds and go all the way to
the 27th, you'll see that there were 24 reported yesterday. And,
again, that's among all three hospitals.
Okay. And then the last part are the cases in ICU, which I like
this one quite a bit in that you can see more of a trend because of the
widening band that is across there. But the number of cases that are
in ICU as of yesterday were nine. Could be more today. They
discharge them out of there to the floor or -- but you'll see that back
here in the beginning, around the 3rd of April, the 4th of April, we
had a much bigger rise, and then around the 10th we had a rise, but
it's starting to go down for longer periods of time with the numbers of
people that are in ICU.
Make sense? Okay.
Okay. So the answer, then, to our hospitals up here at the top
would be, can they treat all patients without crisis care, without
April 28, 2020
Page 18
putting people in their cafeterias or in the hallways or in their walk-in
clinics? Can they treat anybody that comes through the door without
crisis care? And they can right now. Do they have robust testing
programs in place? And that would be, are they testing all of their
staff for both positivity, and then the criteria asks, are they doing
emerging antibody testing? Which I don't think anybody in our
county's doing that right now. So we're going to look at the gating
criteria altogether.
So remember, the first one -- the first category was symptoms.
So we answered yes, there is a downward trend over 14 days in
influenza-like illness. No, there's not a downward trajectory of
COVID-like syndrome and cases. And so for that grouping we
answered no.
Okay. And 2A, there's a downward trajectory of documented
cases within a 14-day period. We said no. We said -- and then the
other thing is, it's an "or." So, or is there a downward trajectory of
positive tests as a percent of total tests? And the answer is no. So
with that grouping we answered no.
On 3 we said -- and that has to do with the hospitals -- we treat
all patients without crisis care, and the answer is yes. And do we
have a robust testing program in place for at-risk healthcare workers,
including antibody testing, and the answer is no, so -- for that group.
So you'll see the overall groups, our outcome is no, no, no.
However, we did this last week for a 14-day period, and we only
had one yes. So we're moving in the right direction. We just -- we
need to hold pretty steady and keep going, okay.
Okay. Right now the Health Department is -- their criteria is
that they're testing healthcare facility workers, and the hospitals are
testing healthcare facility workers with symptoms and hospitalized
patients, and then Priority 2 -- we're both doing pretty much Priority
1 and 2, patients in long-term-care facilities with symptoms. So the
April 28, 2020
Page 19
hospitals would be doing that if that patient gets transferred to the
hospital.
The patients that are 65 years of age and older that have
symptoms, patients with underlying conditions with symptoms, and
first responders with symptoms. It's all symptom-based right now as
far as the Health Department is concerned, hospitals are concerned,
the medical providers are concerned.
But we're very quickly getting ready to move to a stance where
we'll be testing high-risk people regardless of symptoms, and then
from there jumping off to testing anybody that wants the test, but
that's all predicated on the number of tests that become available in
the county, and we don't quite have that yet.
All right. So for the Health Department we're doing the Priority
1 and 2, and we're doing testing in both Naples and the Immokalee
locations.
Our specimens are forwarded to the Florida Department of
Health Bureau of Public Health Laboratories. And of those 562
positive cases that I told you we have, that, then, has led us to be
monitoring and doing contact tracing for 1,336 people, which then
has translated into changing our staffing around to meet the need,
requesting staffing from the state, working on a plan with the county
for when the testing continues to rise and we continue to get more
positive cases.
We're working closely with the long-term-care facilities. That's
one of the top priorities right now for all of Department of Health.
So we've been in contact with every single one of our long-term-care
facilities in the county. They have had several visits from assessment
teams to try to help them look at what their infection control practices
are to help them as to how they're managing their personal protective
equipment, and I think there is a little fatigue there with the number
of visits that they're getting, because they keep getting many different
April 28, 2020
Page 20
groups of people that are coming in.
But now there is an incident management team that has been
formed that's actually going to go to particular nursing homes that
have more than just one case, several cases coming out with staff and
with residents, that they're going to be testing everybody. All the
residents, all the staff.
Right now we have 52 long-term-care facilities, and of that, the
residents in those facilities, there are 32 positive cases among those
52 facilities and 19 staff people that are positive.
You know, early in the actions that were taken across the state,
we shut down visitation into the nursing homes right away, so
nobody was allowed in there except for staff. But that will tell you
oftentimes people in the community, including staff that may be in
nursing homes, may have the virus and have no symptoms and then
end up transferring it on to other people, which is another reason,
with whatever actions that we decide to do in our county, we need to
make sure that we are continuing social distancing, masking,
emphasizing hand washing. Those are our only tools until there is
adequate treatment or there's a vaccine. Okay.
So with more testing comes -- as I've been trying to drive home,
comes more positive cases, at least for a while. And this is going to
stress us as a system, but it's going to stress your health department as
well. A lot of it is going to end up in needs for support for where do
we put people when those people end up being positive and they have
nowhere to isolate themselves.
So we have plans that are in place, but that also costs in order to
do it, and it's going to run for a long time. So these are things that
we're going to need to think about. We're going to -- if we put people
somewhere, we're going to need to feed them, too, and we're going to
need to monitor them. So it's not just the facility. It's the staffing.
It's the food. It's all the wraparound services that go, which is what
April 28, 2020
Page 21
I'm talking about right here.
I did want to point out to you that, again, we have a plan in place
with the county where once our support from the state level goes --
and it -- right now what we have, it's scheduled to be here for about a
month. But once that goes, we need other support. And we do have
a plan with the county and a screening plan to determine who's right
for the role, but to train people and to be able to deal with this surge
of positive cases as they come along. So we are looking to the future
for that -- for that plan.
So the staff will be trained. We have to provide space for them.
We're going to have to provide electronic support, and we're going to
have to have them ready to go in June when these other people that
are with us leave. So training is going to happen this month so that
we're ready to go.
And that's it for me. I'll answer your questions.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. Are there any questions for
Ms. Vick? And I'll ask commissioners to use your buttons here.
Commissioner Solis.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Yeah. I'd like to just go back to
those gating criteria.
MS. VICK: Criteria.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: And I just want to make sure and
have you explain, for those watching, those criteria are gating for
what exactly?
MS. VICK: Think of -- I think the public should think of gating
criteria as like when you're getting ready for a horse race, and all the
horses are lined up behind the gate. And when you're able to meet
the requirements that will open that gate, that's when you should be
starting to open up your communities in a much bigger way. You can
start with a few small things, things that weren't in the original plan
to shut down in the very beginning, and limit exposure for those
April 28, 2020
Page 22
things. But you're supposed to be able to meet that gating criteria
before the gate opens and the horse race begins.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: And how does that relate to the
different phases that we've heard from the federal government? Is
that what we're talking about?
MS. VICK: That's what we're talking about.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay. That's what I was -- so this
is the criteria for how we should be looking at entering the different
phases that have been outlined by the federal government and the
CDC?
MS. VICK: That is true. It comes from the Opening America
Plan, which has then been carried to the states and then locally. But
as I started out in the very beginning saying, that the plan itself does
allow for some massaging to make it meet your community.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay.
MS. VICK: Okay.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: That's all I had. Thanks.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor?
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: How many ventilators do we
have in all of the hospitals in Collier County?
MS. VICK: Well, let's see. Let's go back here.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: You have 78 available.
MS. VICK: Right. We have 100 and some. Seventy-eight.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I can answer that.
MS. VICK: Maybe we should --
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: That's fine.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: We can't really tell.
MS. VICK: I would have to look it up. I can't pull it out of my
head right now.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I can answer it.
MS. VICK: You can? Okay.
April 28, 2020
Page 23
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I spoke with --
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel?
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I spoke with Paul Hiltz this
morning, and 160 available.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Hundred and sixty.
MS. VICK: Is that just in his hospital?
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: In his hospital, correct --
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: In his hospital.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- which is significantly
different than the 78 that you have here on the graph.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel, did you
have anything else?
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I just was answering her
question.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: No. But you were listed here. Do
you have anything else?
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I do have other questions.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. You're recognized.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Commissioner Taylor's not
done. I was just answering her question.
MS. VICK: Okay. Let me tell you about this graph. This graph
is only as good as the people that are reporting into it. And the
information that comes out of it comes out of the ESS system that all
the hospitals are to be reporting into. So if they had more of a stash,
it's not being reported into the system.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor, anything
else?
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Yes. The gating criteria, to me,
is important here, and the testing, of course, is something that you
talked about over a month ago --
MS. VICK: Yeah.
April 28, 2020
Page 24
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: -- in our first time you came
before us. The -- so you're telling me there's wiggle room here with
this gating criteria, because the testing issue is not an issue locally;
it's an issue federally in terms of ramping up and getting enough.
Maybe the state, but --
MS. VICK: Statewide.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: State. State -- so that we can
get -- so that's not an issue that we can control. That's an issue we
can benefit from when more tests come.
MS. VICK: Correct.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: So could you say that, perhaps,
we -- that's the wiggle room we have here on our level of trying to
meet this criteria? Would you agree to that? I don't know how we
can be responsible or try to meet criteria when we don't get enough
tests to test.
MS. VICK: Right. And I would agree to that.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Okay. All right. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.
My first question, Stephanie, you made a comment early on that
someone said that this board wanted to see a seven-day running
average --
MS. VICK: Well, that's what came --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- as opposed to the 14?
MS. VICK: -- to me.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I just was wondering how that
got there without us actually talking about it.
MS. VICK: Yeah.
MR. OCHS: Commissioner, I can explain that.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Yeah. Mr. Ochs.
MR. OCHS: What that is, that came out of a discussion of the
April 28, 2020
Page 25
working group that I assembled with Marco Island, the City of
Naples, and Lee County to try to develop some criteria for re-opening
the beaches. And the proposal from the working group was to look at
a seven-day instead of a 14-day.
I had asked Ms. Vick to report on that data for me just so that I
had it for that working group. It's informative, but the number that
you're working with here from the public health standpoint is the 14
days.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I just --
MR. OCHS: Thank you for the clarification.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I saw that in your suggestions
with regard to our opening up of our beaches --
MR. OCHS: Yes, that's where it came from.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- and that came from that
committee, but that was also what she said that this board was
looking for as well, and --
MR. OCHS: No, I asked her.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- I don't remember having
that discussion.
MR. OCHS: You're correct.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Number two, did I hear you
say with regard to the fatalities that 100 percent of the fatalities are
being marked as COVID? Did I hear you say that?
MS. VICK: No, no. You didn't hear me say that. I said that
COVID deaths are being certified by the ME, the Medical Examiner.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Correct.
MS. VICK: So that means -- usually if there's a case that
happens in a hospital and a physician is certifying it, the ME will also
recognize that.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Correct.
MS. VICK: Okay. But if a case happens in the home, it could
April 28, 2020
Page 26
happen in a nursing home, you've never been to the hospital, that
person would end up going to the ME, he would test, and then certify
whether it was a COVID death or not.
So that's why we get resident deaths and then we have
nonresident deaths. We get resident deaths that are reported on the
DOH report. And almost every day there will be a discrepancy,
number one, because DOH only -- only reports resident deaths, and
then we know about the nonresident deaths, but then additional cases
have happened. So we'll report 19 deaths, okay. But another one has
happened during the last day, but it hasn't made it into our systems
that the ME has certified. And it may not be a resident. So when we
have our Monday, Wednesday, Friday calls, they keep us up to date
on how many overall deaths that we have.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And do you have that
information on an overall basis?
MS. VICK: Twenty as of yesterday.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I'm sorry?
MS. VICK: Twenty as of yesterday.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Nineteen of which are being
designated as COVID or COVID related? Is that correct?
MS. VICK: All 20 will be COVID related.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. And that's 100 percent
of the deaths that have occurred --
MS. VICK: In Collier County.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- in Collier County.
MS. VICK: To date yesterday.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: To date since March 1st-ish.
MS. VICK: Since we were tracking.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: So necessarily, then,
100 percent of the deaths are being attributed to COVID.
MS. VICK: Well, no. We have had other deaths, I'm sure, from
April 28, 2020
Page 27
heart disease and stroke and --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: That was what I was -- I'm
sorry. And maybe I wasn't being clear, Stephanie. I'm not being --
I'm not being -- I'm not being aggressive. I just -- I was asking about
all of the deaths that have transpired in the past 20 days. Do we have
that data?
MS. VICK: We have that data. I don't have it with me, but I
can get it for you.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I would like that. I'd like to
see that as well.
MS. VICK: Okay.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Now, you also made a
comment about the antigen test not being available as of yet?
MS. VICK: Not from the state.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Not from the state. It is in
private labs.
MS. VICK: That's right. If you are a private provider and you
would like to do the antibody test and you want to pay for them and
order them, there's nothing stopping you to do that.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Right.
MS. VICK: However, if you've been watching lately with
statements from WHO and from CDC, and this also has been coming
from our Department of Health as late as yesterday, that people
should be careful when ordering those antibody tests and thinking
that that gives them a passport to immunity. Right now there's no
evidence --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Correct. I just -- the statement
that you made was that the antigen tests were not available, and they
are. So, I mean -- and you might have been speaking specifically
with the Health Department, but the antigen test -- and, again, we're
aware that it's not conclusive data that if you have those antibodies
April 28, 2020
Page 28
that you're bullet proof.
MS. VICK: Right. They weren't available through the
Department of Health --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Correct.
MS. VICK: -- but they are available if you want to order them.
And if, when you order them, they get shipped to you, because the
Department of Health did order a batch, as they were told yesterday,
and they got hung up in China and we never got them.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And that -- about the -- how
about the number of recovered cases? That used to pop up on the
dashboard. And I'm not seeing it anymore. Do you have that data
available anywhere of folks that have tested positive and come
through the virus?
MS. VICK: I'd like to see where that came up on the dashboard.
It has not been reported to date, and it's not been available. And the
state home office has been trying to work on some sort of formula
that would be useful in doing recovered from COVID. If you have
that and you could share it with me, I'd appreciate it.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I don't have it. I was asking
for it. I have asked for it in the past, because we've been doing these
tests for 60 days, and a certain percentage of our folks have passed
away and a large percentage have recovered. And I would like to
know what that -- what that group -- what that subset is as well.
And, again, this is just something for us to talk about. I mean,
you've listened -- I've asked for data, data, data. And as
Ms. Stephanie has even said today, the accuracy of the datasets is
suspect. We're watching datasets being manipulated on a regular
basis, and not with malice by any stretch. I mean, I was on the -- I
was on the phone with Paul -- and are we going to have a report from
NCH and Regions [sic] today?
MR. OCHS: Yes, sir.
April 28, 2020
Page 29
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: You'll hear, then, from them.
I mean, I was on the phone with Paul Hiltz this morning, and they
have 160 ventilators available. They have 49 ICU beds available.
They can go to 75 more if they want. So the datasets that we're
looking at can oftentimes reflect a poorer or lesser or more dire
opinion than what's actually transpiring.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Sure. Let's see if there's any more
questions. On the issue of the number of people that have tested
positive and the number of people that have died, I think if you just
do the simple math there, you'll get at least an idea of the number of
people that tested positive versus the number of people that died.
That will give you an idea of the recovery rate. Obviously, some of
those folks are still in the hospital and that sort of thing, but that will
be fairly close.
MS. VICK: Right.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Fiala.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yeah. I liked hearing those figures.
I'm sorry that we couldn't hear the rest of it. But I thought that was
interesting, because we don't hear the positive. We only hear the
negative. And I asked that same question the very first time you gave
a presentation, you know, how many had recovered, you know.
Because if we've got all these hospital beds, we know they're not in
the hospital anymore. And so have they recovered? Is that the case?
I mean, they didn't die, because we have 19 deaths. You say this
morning might say another -- so we'll say 20, but not confirmed yet.
And I think those are positive things that we must look at as we begin
to make decisions today, and that's very, very important.
And that goes back to how we figure -- and these are my
questions. How we figure all of these numbers and figures because
that -- the wording has a lot to do with whether we add them in or
don't add them in.
April 28, 2020
Page 30
So I'm going to ask one more time: If you test positive, does
that mean you have COVID?
MS. VICK: If you test positive, you've been exposed to
COVID.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Exposed. That doesn't mean you
have it.
MS. VICK: You most likely are active with COVID. Because
there's a difference between active and able to spread it to other
people and in the middle of the disease, and you may have just been
exposed or you may just be finishing up and you're not contagious.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: So if you're testing positive, you've
got it, maybe?
MS. VICK: Okay. Probably.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Probably. Okay. So if you're
confirmed, do you have it?
MS. VICK: Yes.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. So confirmed actually
means yes, that is a positive case.
MS. VICK: Correct.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: But positive doesn't mean that?
MS. VICK: No, positive means that in the terms of the
reporting, yes.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: So in your figures you use both of
those analogies under positive and then confirmed, but we're actually
talking about the same beast?
MS. VICK: No.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: No?
MS. VICK: We are talking about numbers versus percentage.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, I guess I'll not get that.
Maybe that's where the figures kind of puzzle us a little bit, because
we're assuming that they mean the -- well, they all mean COVID, and
April 28, 2020
Page 31
you're saying no, they don't.
MS. VICK: No. They all mean COVID, but one is a picture
looking at the percentage of positive cases and one is a picture
looking at the numbers of positive cases over that 14-day period of
time.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, then this poor mind just can't
sort those things out.
So the next question I have is, as you were talking about the
figures again, how do flu-like symptoms figure into the things? Are
they at all COVID, or they're just flu-like? They --
MS. VICK: Flu-like symptoms, some COVID cases mimic
flu-like symptoms. And so when we look at flu-like symptoms, they
may or may not have been tested for COVID.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: So then how do COVID-like
symptoms figure into it? If flu-like symptoms are COVID-like
symptoms, how do COVID-like symptoms figure into --
MS. VICK: Not all flu -- not all people who have flu-like
symptoms have COVID.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: But you have two different
categories there. Flu-like symptoms and COVID-like symptoms.
MS. VICK: Right. I'd like to also point out to you,
Commissioner, that these criteria that I'm reporting on come from the
national gating criteria. I did not choose those criteria as the gating.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I don't care who chose them. I
want to know what I'm reading, what it's actually saying, so, you
know -- and right now it's not clear. Sometimes figures just are not
clear, and I'm trying to put them -- I try to make them black and
white, not hazy.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: And if I may support you in this,
because that was my question, what has flu-like symptoms got to do
with the COVID?
April 28, 2020
Page 32
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Let's try to keep this in order.
Commissioner Fiala, you're answering [sic] questions. We'll get back
to you.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Well, no. I was just supporting
Commissioner Fiala.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I understand, but we're going to be
back and forth here all day, so, you know.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I'm done, though.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Solis, you're next.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: So, again, I'm trying to understand
how we go making decisions in terms of this gating criteria. And
you're going to have to help me with the definition of "wiggle room,"
okay. I mean, what does that mean in terms of the criteria that we
have to look at or we've been asked to look at by the CDC, the
federal government, and the administration?
MS. VICK: I think, as Commissioner Taylor was pointing out,
that with testing -- and we think the testing is going to be increasing.
In fact, we know it's going to be increasing. I think Mr. Summers
will talk about -- when he talks, about a couple of bigger testing
clinics that are coming up. But as we get more tests, we're going to
have more positives. That's a given.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay.
MS. VICK: Okay. So to use an ever increasing number of
positives and be afraid to move based upon that criteria, for here, is
probably not the best think to use.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay. But then that's why the
testing is an either/or.
MS. VICK: Right.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Right? Because one, as you've
been saying, is the number, the raw number, the raw count --
MS. VICK: Right.
April 28, 2020
Page 33
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: -- and the other one is the
percentage of positives in relation to how many people have been
tested?
MS. VICK: Right.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: So the wiggle room -- and, again,
I'm trying to understand what "wiggle room" means. Then the wiggle
room is that we get to choose which one of those we want to look at,
or -- and then is there any other wiggle room in terms of the other
two sets of criteria?
MS. VICK: I think it would be you would choose which one
you want to look at in that middle category --
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay.
MS. VICK: -- and then --
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: And just -- and my impression is, is
that since just the raw number is not necessarily a good picture
because we're going to have increased testing and the numbers are
going to go up and we know that, that then looking at the
percentage --
MS. VICK: Right.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: -- is a better number to look at from
the Department of Health's standpoint?
MS. VICK: Right.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay. Okay.
MS. VICK: I think it is.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: So then in terms of the first criteria,
what's -- is there wiggle room in the first criteria, and what would
that be?
MS. VICK: I think if you were looking at one or the other --
because since I said that when someone has influenza-like illness, it
might not be --
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Right.
April 28, 2020
Page 34
MS. VICK: -- flu. It could be COVID because some of the
symptoms are the same. But they may not have been tested for
COVID, all right.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay.
MS. VICK: But COVID-like illness syndrome has many more
of the things that would lead you to believe someone has COVID.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Right.
MS. VICK: Okay. And then they might end up in the hospital
and ventilator and -- okay.
If I were making that determination, I would go more with the
COVID-like illness, because flu comes and goes, and that's -- the
flu-like illness is naturally going to go down probably in the next
month or so. I mean, we've pretty much past that peak. So that
might be a false thing to follow as much as the COVID.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay.
MS. VICK: Okay?
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Got it, okay.
And then in terms of the third criteria, is what -- again, I'm just
trying to understand how we go about looking at these gating criteria
for purposes of making a good decision. I'm not trying to stump you.
I'm trying to really be clear as to what -- how we go about making a
decision in all of this.
MS. VICK: Right. Well, in the third criteria where we're
looking at the hospitals having the antibody testing, for instance, I
would not -- personally, when I'm looking at that -- I don't know that
this is a DOH stance, okay. I can't give you a DOH stance on that,
okay.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay.
MS. VICK: All right. But I would personally, as your
administrator in the county, would say that because those tests have
not been readily available through DOH, because private providers
April 28, 2020
Page 35
need to shell out the money to do that, because there is so much
doubt about the validity of it, that when I'm looking at that part of the
criteria, I would not be looking at are they testing for antibodies. I'd
just be looking at are they able to test their healthcare workers when
needed.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay.
MS. VICK: Okay?
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay. That was very helpful.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: You've answered my question.
That was -- thank you very much. Just one more. Just a quick one.
Crisis care is ventilator, is it not? Would crisis care be ventilator
synony -- not synonymous, but require a ventilator?
MS. VICK: Crisis care, as I understand we are interpreting it, is
we're having difficulty as a hospital meeting the needs of our other
patients because we're being overrun with COVID patients.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Okay. Okay.
MS. VICK: Okay.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel, did you
have anything else?
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. Yes, I do. And I just
want to say, in deference to Stephanie, when we're asking these
difficult questions, it's certainly not a slight. There is no slight
from -- or -- at least from me personally with regard to the
information that you're providing. It's imperative, though, that we
have accurate information from with which to make our decisions.
And if we're only provided with information that is -- has a negative
bias, then it's difficult for us to make -- I believe it's difficult for me
to make a balanced decision as to how I go forward.
Even these gating criterion that you brought forth are subjective.
April 28, 2020
Page 36
There are subjectivities that are added in here. I believe that's the
wiggle room that Commissioner Solis was, in fact, talking about.
So I wanted to be very clear. You got a -- you got a little -- I felt
that you got a little defensive when I was adding in information with
regard to the availability of ventilators and ICU beds from one of the
three hospitals that we have here in Collier County.
This isn't new news for me. I've had communication with the
Health Department with the accuracy of the information that's, in
fact, being provided for weeks. And so when we're asking -- at least
when I'm asking these questions, please, there's no reason for
defensiveness from me personally. I'm well aware. I've been
watching, on a lot of different levels, the datasets being manipulated
as, in fact, time goes on.
And, of course, with more information, you certainly can, in
fact, be more accurate. But when you don't have all of the
information, the available beds, the available ICU beds, the available
ventilators and such to, in fact, care for our population who do, in
fact, test positive and then, in fact, require hospitalization and then, in
fact, require an ICU and ultimately a vent, if that's how they go, if
you don't have the beginning portion of that, you're left with a
fear-based decision-making process and not fact.
MS. VICK: Commissioner, I just want to say, if I appeared
defensive, I did not mean to be --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay.
MS. VICK: -- that way. And I just wanted to make it clear --
because I am aware that this is televised and the community watches
it, I wanted to make it clear as to where the data comes from, what
the expectation is that it goes in correctly. But as in any computer
program, misinformation in --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Garbage out.
MS. VICK: -- misinformation out.
April 28, 2020
Page 37
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Computer programming.
Garbage in, garbage out.
MS. VICK: Yeah. And so me as your administrator, I am
required to follow a certain set of data, because we are an integrated
Department of Health, and so when I report to the community, I
report the information that we're supposed to be given. But if I know
of a difference within our community, if I know -- so that would be
like the hospital. If I know there's so many more ventilators, I would
be reporting that as well.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Right.
MS. VICK: Okay.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: The only comment I'm going to
make -- I don't have any questions. But based on what Ms. Vick has
indicated, I do believe we meet the first phase gating requirement.
We have a reduced number of -- or the percentage, rather, has been
steady for 14 days. The fact that we're going to have more cases as a
result of more testing I don't think is an issue. I think the wiggle
room that Commissioner Solis was talking about is that we stick with
that percentage. If the percentage has been 10 percent or 11 percent
for more than 14 days, then I believe we meet the gating requirement
on that issue.
Clearly, from a hospital standpoint -- and we'll hear more
testimony from the medical community. But from the
hospitalization's rates and the amount of ventilators that are available
and ICU units that are available, we meet that gating criteria.
So, in my view, we're going to -- when the Governor comes out
with his proposals, we're going to be prepared to execute Phase 1, in
my view. Now, that's just mine. Now, we'll talk more about that at
the end. But I think the information that you've provided is very
instructive, and I think, clearly, we meet that first -- that first phase.
Anything else for Ms. Vick before we go to the next presenter?
April 28, 2020
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If not, let's move on. We're going to have to take a break probably in
about 30 minutes for our court reporter. I want to have our breaks to
be relatively short and encourage people to kind of stay -- relax in
place as much as possible.
Let's go to the next presenter.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Can I just -- I'm sorry. May I
ask one question about contact tracing? May I can ask one contact
tracing.
MS. VICK: Sure.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: This is, you know, from -- look,
I'm not the expert here, but certainly the press, you know, has again
and again a story how critical this is as we go forward. Is this
something that you have to have a degree in epidemiology to do? Is
this something -- we've got a lot of folks here that are unemployed.
Is this something that there could be job opportunities? Because I
don't see this as ending in a month or two in terms of contact tracing.
MS. VICK: That's a loaded question. You do not have to have
a degree to do contract tracing in epidemiology. You don't have to
have that, but it helps to have at least a baseline Bachelor's Degree. It
helps to have some health background to do that, unless you've been
working in public health for a long period of time. So if someone has
the right background, we certainly could work with them.
Right now, with the county doing it, those people would be
volunteers for us. The county is working on that and the things. But
as for hiring people, that also is a financial requirement, and we have
not been provided additional dollars to do that.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Okay.
MS. VICK: Okay.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Mr. Ochs, let's move on
to the next presenter.
April 28, 2020
Page 39
MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. We're going to hear a report on our
community healthcare systems. We'll begin this morning with
Mr. Scott Lowe, the CEO for Physicians Regional Healthcare
System.
Good morning, Mr. Lowe.
MR. LOWE: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
I did want to just start and, you know, real quickly just
congratulate and thank all the physicians and the medical staff at
Physicians Regional who have done a phenomenal job managing
during this pandemic. You know, they're on the front lines, and I
think we see it quite often. You know, they are the heroes during this
episode, but they really have done a great job of managing in very
uncertain times.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And I'll echo that as well. I'm sure
all of us are very appreciative of those front-line workers and really
appreciate the physicians, the nurses, the administrators that are
taking care of us. So thank you and thanks to them as well.
MR. LOWE: Absolutely. They've done a phenomenal job.
And I also want to thank the Collier County EOC, the Department of
Health, and the bonnets [sic], a significant number of community
members across the way that have done phenomenal things for our
organization, whether it be food deliveries on a pretty routine basis,
PPE utilization, masks. You name it, we've had tremendous support
from the community. So I wanted to just make that public as well,
because they've done a great job for us.
Really, a lot of what I was going to kind of go through echoes
along the lines of what Stephanie had done much more robustly from
a statistics perspective, but it's just to give you a general idea of what
we're seeing at Physicians Regional.
You know, as of yesterday -- and as Stephanie alluded to, the
numbers do change quite often. But we've seen or treated 770 cases
April 28, 2020
Page 40
that presented to us. Now, with that, we've seen 68 positive results. I
look at positives and confirmed as the same thing.
So we treat positive/confirmed the same. You know, again,
data's always different. But that means we've had 688 negative
results. So we're below that 10 percent threshold.
We still have about 14 results pending. Currently, at this point,
we're using both Lab Corp and Quest for our outpatient testing, but
we're using Sefia testing in-house, which is a rapid testing. So we
can get results within 45 minutes.
We're limiting those type of tests to our in-patient, the sicker
patients, so we can protect the organization at the two locations.
So currently in-house we have 14 patients in-house. That
represents less than 10 percent of our total patients in-house. And
we've seen that relatively consistently. Have not really seen a spike.
Have not really seen any real change. We've kind of gone like this
(indicating).
Now, about two weeks ago when we introduced the Sefia testing
prior to being able to utilize that lab test, we did have, you know, a
handful of positives and about 20 rule-outs or PUIs, as they're called.
But once we were able to introduce this testing, we were able to truly
isolate those that are sick and have tested positive for the COVID.
So when we're able to do that, we've isolated those patients,
which not only further protects the patient, the staff, but also allows
us to conserve PPE.
So over the last two weeks, things have been really, I want to
say, steady for us. You know, the PPE utilization has slowed because
we're able to isolate. The anxiety at the facilities has dropped
significantly just for the ability to be able to say we know where the
COVID patients are and we're isolating them, so we're protecting the
rest of the organization and anything else.
And, of course, you know, from the beginning we've done a lot
April 28, 2020
Page 41
of measures to protect the public. We've, you know, limited visitors
coming. A lot of those different aspects that most hospitals across
the country have done.
But we've really -- over the last two weeks it's pretty -- it's been
pretty steady for all intents and purposes. If anything, looking at the
number of tests that we're performing now -- I tried to look quickly
this morning. I think we had just the one new positive, but I think
that was a known positive that came from a nursing home. So out of
the 20 or so tests that we performed yesterday, we had no new
positives.
So it's more indicative of what we're seeing more routinely.
And I think as we introduce more tests, what we're going to see is I
think we're testing the sick folks right now. I think the patients that
have those flu-like symptoms and feel like they may have -- be
COVID positive are being tested. I think when we open the testing in
a grander scale, I think all of us are going to want to say I want to get
tested just so I know. And so I think that's going to change the
dynamics of the testing percentages and those sort of things as well.
So I do believe we are -- we do have the testing available to treat the
patients that are sick and do meet that COVID criteria.
One other piece that I wanted to talk about from -- just from a
data perspective, currently this morning across our two hospitals we
had six patients on vents, only one of those being a COVID-positive
patient. So -- and yesterday I had zero. So one of them's a new one.
So we're really -- I think we're seeing a trend -- and I don't know
if you have any physicians that are speaking today, but I think they
can speak to it a little bit. What we've seen at Physicians Regional,
the acuity of the patient is not nearly as high as has been publicly
reported. We're not seeing high vent utilization. If anything, we're
seeing a trend towards the opposite, and that may be indicative of
what Stephanie's graph also alluded to. It's -- you know, they're not
April 28, 2020
Page 42
seeing the results from a vent patient.
So when we talk about number of vents available, I think we
have plenty, but at the same time, I don't believe that the utilization
for the treatment of those patients is going to be as high as initially
anticipated.
You know, we have about 30 vents across our two campuses. If
need be, all of our anesthesia machines can be turned into vents. So
there's a lot more availability than maybe what is being publicly
reported. And, certainly, I'm part of a much larger organization. If
need be, we can pull from sister hospitals and whatnot.
So, really, you know, for the most part, we've had no issues -- I
don't want to say no issues because there certainly were some anxious
moments. But we have not run out of PPE. We've really had very
limited exposure of our staff because of our ability to isolate those
patients, you know -- and for the most part, you know, we're looking
forward to kind of getting to, you know, return to normal.
The elective cases is something that we look forward to building
back up and, you know, doing it in a very methodical and safe
approach. We want to make sure that if we're going to move forward
with elective cases -- hopefully Governor DeSantis allows us in the
next couple of weeks -- that we do it in a way that protects not only
the patient but our staff and go forward with that.
But we really do believe that we won't have any issues going
forward. We believe we have the resources we need to continue to
treat the patients.
My one concern is what we've seen a little bit over the last,
actually, four or five days is an increase in very sick patients coming
in, not COVID patients. So we're starting to see those patients that
were avoiding the ER over the last few weeks and -- because they
didn't want to be introduced to a COVID-positive area. But they're
sick. They need to go to the emergency room. And, you know, for
April 28, 2020
Page 43
the public's knowledge, we do isolate COVID patients. If you are
sick, I do encourage you to go to the emergency room sooner than
later and get the appropriate treatment. And, again, the staff is well
prepared to isolate and make sure that there's no additional exposure
concerns there.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: One quick question. Are you --
does that conclude your --
MR. LOWE: Yeah, I'm done.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Just one quick question, because
you talked about elective surgeries and elective procedures. Are you
ready to start having those?
MR. LOWE: We're preparing for that now. We're putting our
plans in place. But for all intents and purposes, yes, I believe we're
ready to start having those.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. And I think I heard the
Governor say on Saturday on his news briefing that May 8th is the
order -- is the expiration of --
MR. LOWE: That's the date of the expiration. So at this point
we're really -- that's a Friday. So we're planning for -- and, again, it
won't be 100 percent. We're going to make sure that we're isolating
the right patients and doing what's right for the patients.
But, you know, a lot of the patients that were considered
non-emergent or elective a month ago, those cases are starting to get
to a point where they're becoming urgent and more emergent in
nature. So the 11th is when we're hoping to resume.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I really appreciate you
bringing up that fact that the procedures -- I've listened regularly to
the administrators from Lee Health and NCH. They have a phone
call every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and they talk regularly
about the procedures that have, in fact, been put in place to provide
April 28, 2020
Page 44
for safe conditions for folks that truly need medical assistance, and
the increase in those that have avoided it for fear has been somewhat
problematic for them.
I have a couple of questions, if I may. How many total beds
does Physicians Regional have available?
MR. LOWE: We've got 105 licensed beds at Pine Ridge, 100
beds at the Collier facility. But we're able to -- obviously, during
season we have a surge plan in place. So we're able to go to about
260 beds across both campuses.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And you've got about how
many available right now?
MR. LOWE: Let's see. We're only at about 70 percent
occupancy, so we could add about 60 or 70 patients.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And ICU beds total?
MR. LOWE: Currently we've got -- let's see -- 12 and 18. So
we're only using six. We're only at about 25 percent occupancy in
our ICU.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Total -- and I listened to these
phone calls, and you folks all deal in those percentages, but I deal in
numbers. I got 210 beds, and then I hear about 30 ICU beds with six
that are currently occupied? Is that what I heard?
MR. LOWE: Yes.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. And that means we've
got 24 available.
MR. LOWE: That's correct.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And ventilators, you've got a
total, actual ventilators, of 30, and seven are being used right now?
MR. LOWE: Six are being -- no, I'm sorry. What did I say?
Yeah, six patients currently ventilated.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Got it. That was what I was --
those are the hard numbers, and I share -- those numbers make --
April 28, 2020
Page 45
those numbers resonate with me.
MR. LOWE: Absolutely.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: So I appreciate you sharing
that with me.
MR. LOWE: No problem.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. If no one else has any
questions, I want to get back to the elective surgeries just real
quickly.
If the Governor rescinds that part of the order saying that
elective surgeries will take place before May 8th, would you be
prepared to start more quickly than that?
MR. LOWE: I believe we would. And, again, we're going to
take a methodical approach to it to make sure that we can safely do
the cases that we need to do. But, you know, again, if he were to lift
it today and try and start tomorrow, no. But if you were to lift it
today and say we can start sometime next week, we would be
prepared.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I think if it's lifted, it's gong to be
when you're prepared to start.
MR. LOWE: Absolutely, yeah. I think that's (unintelligible) is
everything.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And the only reason I point that out
is I think that it may be worthwhile, given some consideration, that
this could be lifted sooner than May 8th.
MR. LOWE: Sure.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Because there's a lot of pressure to
begin those elective procedures, and rightfully so. All right.
MR. LOWE: And we're preparing and hoping for that, to be
honest with you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Thank you.
MR. LOWE: Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate it.
April 28, 2020
Page 46
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And I see that we have a gentleman
here. I use that term somewhat loosely, but we have a gentleman
here from NCH.
MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. We have Mr. Phil Dutcher, the chief
operating officer with the NCH Healthcare System.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And, Mr. Dutcher, I want -- just
part of your comments, the same question concerning elective
procedures. I think we're ready to open those up as quickly as
possible. I know the Governor is. That's not our decision, but I'm
hoping that the Governor will do that. And I want to hear your
comments whether you're prepared to begin those types of procedures
prior to May 8th.
MR. DUTCHER: Certainly. Mr. Chairman, members of the
County Commission, County Manager, my name's Phil Dutcher. I'm
the Chief Operating Officer for the NCH Healthcare System. And it's
a pleasure to come this afternoon -- or this morning to come and brief
you on the status of NCH in this COVID-19 pandemic.
To answer your question immediately, Chairman Saunders, we
are preparing to do elective surgery, as Physicians Regional is, once
the Governor's executive order expires. Right now we're planning on
starting on Friday and Saturday the 8th and 9th to phase. And it will
be a controlled admission of elective cases. We're already identifying
a couple of physicians and testing their patients ahead of time to get
ready for those -- that opening, and then Monday, the 11th, we'll
probably go full open with our elective surgery program. So that's
kind of our plan right now.
I'd have to echo Scott's comments. You know, the nurses, the
techs, the respiratory therapists, the physicians throughout the entire
community have just done a tremendous job in addressing this very,
very tragic pandemic. And, you know, my special thanks go out to
all the people at all of our hospitals for what they've really done to
April 28, 2020
Page 47
step up.
In fairness to our representative, Stephanie, from the Health
Department, this is a very complex issue. And I'll make sure, and I
know we'll talk with Scott and his team, that the appropriate
information, facts get to the Health Department so we're dealing with
facts. And if we've in any way contributed to the uncertainty there,
we certainly apologize. No harm meant. But we'll make sure that the
facts get communicated to the Health Department so you're getting
accurate information on a regular basis.
Currently, NCH has tested -- or has treated 350 COVID-positive
patients. So 350 have come and been treated in our hospitals. We
have test 31 -- a little over 3,100. So almost 10 percent of those
tested have been actually positive and been treated.
We have, on the good news side, Dr. Fiala -- or, Commissioner
Fiala, we have discharged 92 COVID-positive patients back to their
homes, and the Health Department now is following up with --
they're ongoing, but we don't hear any bad things. So 92 have been
discharged and safely back to their own homes.
Twenty-five percent of our positive patients are admitted to the
hospital. So as we test 3,000, about 25 percent of that come into the
hospital. Of that 25 percent, 35 percent end up in our critical care. I
know I'm confusing you with some percentages there, but I think the
key there is that these are sick patients and, for the most part, as
you've heard on a lot of the national and local news, these patients
have a lot of complications. It's not just COVID-19. It is a lot of
comorbidities and complications that these patients have.
Frankly, we've had, I think, eight deaths at NCH, and I think
90 -- I think seven out of the eight, if not all eight, in the end were
DNR patients. I mean, the family just said, you know, it's not -- they
weren't worth -- well, I've got to make my words correctly here. The
effort to continue with their treatment just, you know, didn't make a
April 28, 2020
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lot of sense to the family, but -- so anyway...
We have -- we're testing on an average of 115 tests a day. We're
doing not only tests on our patients in the hospital, but also on our
drive-through, and also we have one of our physician offices at Eagle
View that is testing for COVID. So about 115 tests a day.
In terms of the hospital's capacity, we're only at about 60 percent
capacity in the hospital. We have noticed over the last week a couple
of days census starting to creep up a little bit. But we're sort of at
summertime, off-season census. So in terms of capacity, we really
are pretty well off in terms of capacity.
PPE equipment, we've charged our supply chain management
team with making sure that we have ample supply of PPE equipment
knowing that once we get to a point where we do go back to opening
up and getting back to whatever will be normal in the future, we'll
need a lot of PPE equipment. I mean, we're going to treat -- as we
talked about elective surgery. Frankly, we're going to treat every
patient that comes in elective surgery COVID -- potential
COVID-positive patient. So all of staff will be in PPE equipment and
making sure that we're taking all the precautions.
We're very proud of the fact that we've had one employee that
was exposed to a COVID patient unknowingly. It was a patient that
came in from a nursing home, long-term-care facility. Did not in
with COVID symptoms. Came in with heart issues. Didn't see any
reason -- was asymptomatic. Didn't test him. Finally, on a discharge,
the long-term-care facilities are now requiring us to positively -- or
test each patient that we discharge back, we found that the individual
was positive. And we had one employee. So we're very, very proud
of the fact that our employees have really adopted our PPE policies
and procedures, and we haven't had a lot of problems with our own
employees.
Ventilators. So the ventilator situation. Let me try to do some
April 28, 2020
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clarification. We have about, as Mr. Hiltz, I know, has
communicated with you, Commissioner McDaniel, we have about
160 ventilators. We have the ability to expand that up to about 183,
because anesthesia machines can be converted to ventilators when
you absolutely need them. And we'd have to take them out of service
for treating surgical patients and things like that. But if you
absolutely needed them, we could expand that to another 23. But,
frankly, we have ample ventilator capacity at NCH today to take care
of, really, any type of an increase in patient volume that would need
that.
In terms of beds, we have about 50 ICU. I'm trying to think.
Downtown plus the North Naples campus, we have about 50 ICU
beds. We have the ability and have gone forward and converted
about 25 more rooms to be negative -- negative airflow, which is
what you need for this type of isolation treatment.
So we've gone ahead and converted about 25 other rooms in
both the campuses. So, again, pretty set and think we're pretty
comfortable with the amount of ICU negative-pressure rooms that we
would need to see any type of a surge at our institution.
In terms of antibody testing -- I'm going to get into a little
slippery -- slippery territory here, but NCH has acquired, has ordered
a piece of equipment that will do and is one of the few that are
approved for antibody testing and will be here, we think, near the end
of May. We'll get it hooked up, get it tested. Probably early June
we'll start doing antibody testing.
I do have with me Dr. David Lindner, our medical director for
critical care and pulmonary medicine and has been our medical
director for the whole COVID-19 effort at NCH, with me; probably
could answer more technically any more questions you have
regarding that.
But our view is that antibody testing is not the silver bullet.
April 28, 2020
Page 50
Clearly, we need to continue to test the positive testing for
COVID-19 as well as be anti-testing. So we don't view it as either/or.
It is a combination of testing both for the positive anti -- or positive
COVID virus as well as the antibody. And so that's kind of our
strategy is to try to be a comprehensive way of doing that.
We think that the antibody testing will, in fact, help the
community. It's our intent to provide that. We'll be able to do, when
it's up and running, almost 3,000 tests a day. The one machine is
going to do a thousand. We have our Semens in our lab should be
ready by the end of May to test for antibodies as well. Semens is
coming out with a new test that we think is going to be accepted and
approved.
So about 3,000 antibody tests per day. And it's our intent to do
as much antibody testing for the community as we possibly can to
help get things back in order.
But, again, I want to caution, it is not an either/or. It is a
combination of testing.
So with that, I'll be glad to answer any questions you have, or if
it gets too technical, I'm going to refer to my doctor friend,
Dr. Lindner.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. And mine's not
technical at all. It's just, you administrators deal in percentages, and I
deal in real numbers. How many beds does NCH have available in
aggregate?
MR. DUTCHER: Seven hundred fifty licensed beds.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And how many are available
right now?
MR. DUTCHER: We're -- our bed census this morning was
385. So 330 beds.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Plus or minus.
April 28, 2020
Page 51
MR. DUTCHER: Yep.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And those are numbers, sir,
that I was looking at.
When I was speaking with Paul yesterday, he continually talks
about these percentages, but a lot of folks, if you don't know the top
number, a percentage is virtually valueless, at least to me. And as far
as ICU beds goes, you currently have available 49 and can take that
up to how many more?
MR. DUTCHER: About 75. As a matter of fact, we've already
done that. We have converted another 25 beds to negative-pressure
rooms. So if we needed them for COVID-positive patients, we could
use them at a moment's notice.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And approximately how many
ICU beds are being occupied right now?
MR. DUTCHER: About 50 percent of our ICU beds. So 50 --
about 25 patients right now in the ICU.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Those are just real numbers
for me. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Two things: Pass on to your staff
and the nurses and everybody how much we really appreciate all the
efforts that you guys have made on our behalf.
You mentioned Dr. Lindner. Did you want Dr. Lindner to
answer -- or to make some statements or just -- because we want to
get you medical folks out of here as quickly as possible.
MR. DUTCHER: Sure, sure.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Dr. Lindner.
DR. LINDNER: I'll leave on since I was in patient rooms this
morning with that.
First off, Mr. Chairman, members of the commission, I think a
couple things I can bring before you in entertaining questions. I can
bring a little clarity with that. I know where she got her number, and
April 28, 2020
Page 52
she was correct and you were correct, both, with that. There are 76
first-line vents available, so that's where she got that number. Those
are our traditional vents with that. Further clarifying the numbers
that -- you know, that Mr. Dutcher just said.
Thirty-five noninvasive vents can be utilized as ventilators. We
have -- we received between 10 to 15 ventilators from the state. We
have 35 disposable vents in that number. That means those are
one-time ventilators that could be utilized. And as he said, there's
around 20 to 23 anesthesia machines that can be converted to
ventilators. The only caveat on that number is that any anesthesia
machine that is utilized as a ventilator has to be accompanied by a
staff member, a CRNA who runs it. Those are not ventilators that
you can set and forget like the other ventilators. So I hope that helps
with that.
And then, obviously, in -- there has been numerous statements
and -- with that. We do have the technology to, I'm going to use the
term, piggyback two people on a ventilator. We all recognize that
every major medical society has recommended against doing that.
Albeit, I do know and have personally contacted and discussed with
individuals in New York who have done it because they had to. And
so we have that technology to expand.
However, I would also comment the vents are less of the issue
right now. When we started this pandemic -- and this came out of
Seattle, the people who were taking care of the cases there discussed
intubating people early. The paradigm has absolutely switched. Our
paradigm now is to intubate people only at the last resort, and that has
changed totally, and that was because we were told to avoid the
noninvasive and aerosolization of this, and now we have learned how
to use input and output viral filters. And so we are doing the exact
opposite. And I am, basically, only doing it as a last resort. So I
don't think ventilators are going to be our issue. I concur with her
April 28, 2020
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with that.
And, basically, I think that the main reason that Mr. Hiltz asked
me is I also agree with her statement. This is not a -- antibody testing
is not a passport to immunity. I think that where things are really
confusing here is you have to understand that, basically, we're going
to have two tests that are going to be vitally important to the
management, opening up our community, which is something I think
everyone, I mean, is absolutely wanting to do.
First of all, you have to understand the PCR tests, the swab that
you hear about, it detects -- this virus is an RNA virus, so it detects
part of that RNA, okay. So it's like -- basically, when I swab and you
send it to the lab, it detects a piece of the virus, okay.
She was not trying to be vague, okay. She was -- with that. The
problem is, it can detect live virus. It can detect dead virus. So it can
tell you that there is virus present, okay.
The problem we all know is that now we have patients who have
recovered and I swab them, and I can still detect virus. That means
there is pieces of it left.
Antibody testing, okay -- antibody testing will absolutely tell
you whether you've been exposed. Absolutely. That has been
proven. We're four months into something, depending on who you
want to believe when it started. We're four months into this
pandemic and, basically, we know that there are antibodies right now.
My caveat to, yes, you can order it, but you have to make sure that
the antibody test you're ordering has actually been approved.
The FDA took unprecedented steps to approve non -- basically
non-documented or non -- basically fully vetted testing, okay.
When Mr. Dutcher stated that we've purchased antibody testing
that has now been validated, yes, that is true. And so that is a real big
problem.
And right now we know that you can do tests for a total virus --
April 28, 2020
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or I'm sorry -- total antibody, okay, and that includes -- and I'm going
to be -- have to be more technical here -- what's called an IGG and an
IGM, okay. The IGM raises first and can indicate a person may still
have active disease. IGG is what we hope will mean immunity.
Can I stand up here or anyone stand up here and say that you --
that we can prove that you have immunity? At this stage, four
months into a virus, no, there is no conclusive evidence that the
SARS-CoV-2, that -- you know, we have antibodies that show that
you are immune. We're four months into this.
What evidence is there? We know -- and there is good evidence
in some animal literature, and that's mainly in primates that there may
be some immunity. That has been demonstrated and vetted.
All the rest of our evidence comes from two things. In the
1990s we did extensive testing on coronavirus, seasonal. That's what
the vast majority of us have probably already had. I can definitely
say I had it. I'm a medical professional. We know that that immunity
maybe lasted one to three years depending on the fact that the virus
did not mutate.
Again, hence why she says, well, yes, maybe okay. Because,
remember, the virus likes to go around the world, and it likes to
change a little bit.
We also know from SARs and MERS, okay, which were in
China and Hong Kong, that those people, especially healthcare
workers, were exhaustively evaluated for antibodies, okay. Some of
those people still have antibodies, good IGG neutralizing antibodies.
SARs and MERS are very close relatives of COVID, right? So
we're making some assessments. My institution just plopped down a
very large check for antibody testing based upon what I just said. We
believe that we're going to have that data. She is very correct in
saying we do not have that data yet. For us to -- you know, so we
have to be cautious on how we act even though what we are doing
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seems very, very appropriate.
As to the testing, my comment, and the thing I look at as the
medical director of COVID, is not -- I agree, our numbers are going
to continue to increase. Why? We're going to find more patients.
We know that. I mean, I've seen estimates that there may be up to
10 percent of our population right now in this county who could have
this disease and we don't even know it, okay. And if we were able to
test -- and, yes, how much more testing do we need? Probably, you
know, about 20 to 30 times more testing than we have. I mean,
obviously, if I could, I'd test everyone. I mean, that's easy; however,
basically, the key number to look at is the percentage of tests that are
positive to the number of tests done. That's that number that she was
quoting.
And so if you look at that, we have statistically stayed the same.
Every community that's surged, the number, that percentage has
grown. So if we go from 10 to 11 percent to 14, 15, most of the
communities that have gone into pandemic surge, their test-positive
to test-total ratio went greater than 15 percent.
We've -- every so often I see a day or two where our percentage
goes up and, basically, we all kind of -- I grab the side of the rail and
I get worried, okay. I can only say over the last few days several of
us, including my ER colleagues and I, have noted a slight little
increase. And so while the 14-day total that was actually showed, the
last few days we have seen a slight uptick in the percentage of
patients, okay. And is that real? Is that something? Only the next
few days will tell.
However, I will remind everyone that when we instituted the
social distancing which, by the way, has worked, obviously -- I don't
think there's a place in the world from Italy, you know, to definitely
South Korea, you know, Singapore where you can see that the
mitigation efforts have not been successful. So I do congratulate the
April 28, 2020
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community on doing that. As hard as it is, it's worked.
I think we need to be very cautious, because many of our
predictive models suggested the next two-week period of time was
going to be the time period that we were going to follow the East
Coast.
So if we see the numbers tick up, then we'll know that -- when
we're doing that, if we see the numbers not go up, I think we can start
making some discussions.
I would agree with her in my medical opinion that we have not
reached the gating criteria as of yet, though we're better.
And then finally I will say that basically, yes, we are making
preparations to open back up. I will note that the CMS guidelines
that just came out suggested that the hospitals -- and I know that all
of the hospitals in this area are doing this -- establish what we call
NCC or non-COVID care areas of the hospital. We have already
done that. I'm sure that all the other institutions have as well, and
that means that it is safe to be there because, basically, patients in the
future are going to be segregated to COVID, non-COVID, and that
is -- and the staff like myself will continue to live in a mask and
gowns and gloves for the foreseeable time until herd immunity and/or
a vaccine is available.
I had made those notes based upon some of the things that were
just discussed. I hope maybe I helped bring a little bit of clarity to a
few of the things. If -- and I know my specific role here today was
supposed to be, or at least Mr. Hiltz asked me to comment on the
antibody testing. I hope that has helped. And if there are any
questions, I'd be glad to entertain them.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: There are some questions, and your
comments have been very, very helpful. Thank you.
Commissioner Solis, you were on the first --
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Just a quick question. And I want
April 28, 2020
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to make sure that I understand and anybody watching understands,
too, that the availability of the anesthesia ventilators is kind of a
double-edged sword in that if -- they're available, but if you use them
for COVID patients, then they're not available for other patients that
need a ventilator because they need emergency surgery or something
like that.
And so -- I mean, my understanding is is that in the places
where, you know, ventilators became an issue, that that created
another issue in the sense that then patients, not even COVID-related
patients, couldn't be treated, and they had to go somewhere else. I
mean, is that a fair assessment of the significance of having to use
those?
DR. LINDNER: Yes. And we work through predictive models
based upon the number of patients that we would have, the number of
patients who would go to the ICU, and the number of patients that
may need to be intubated. And, basically, our census would have
to -- you know, our census would have to get, and our pandemic
model, well over 500 before we start getting into any of the other
alternatives of disposable vents or that.
When we get to -- if we got to 700 patients and if we start to
have to expand beyond that, that's when we would have had to use
the anesthesia machines. So at this point in time, because of the
social distancing and mitigation, I don't personally see that
happening. But you are correct in your assessment of the
double-edged sword.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay. Thank you. And thanks for
everything that you're doing for the community as well.
DR. LINDNER: You're welcome. We have a fabulous team.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. And, again, I agree with
Commissioner Solis. Thank you for all that you're doing for us.
April 28, 2020
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Do you have any idea or basis of percentage with regard to those
who have been tested that potentially or were asymptomatic, or has
the testing been strictly confined to those that are symptomatic?
DR. LINDNER: The percentage of asymptomatic carriers,
which is something that is really important, has varied based upon the
geographic area and the level of disease. So that's going to be a very
difficult number that the asymptomatic carriers in one community
versus if we went to New York and looked at the asymptomatic
carriers in Manhattan, for instance, or the Bronx, it would be a very
different number because there was a much higher disease penetrance
with that.
We know that the vast majority of the data now suggests that
each COVID patient infects maybe three, maybe four patients. That's
called a row. That number will be established for this disease only
with time. So the problem is is that until we have antibody testing --
and one of the reasons we want to do this is we will then be able to
establish for Collier County what is our asymptomatic carrier rate,
because antibody testing will absolutely document exposure. I mean,
that part of the equation I do not have to -- that part's been proven.
So that part we know antibody testing will do.
When we can start to do that, we will start to have an
understanding of what our asymptomatic carrier rate is. We know it
exists. We just don't know the number.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And one more quick question.
Will 100 percent of the people that are exposed to this virus actually
contract it, or if there is a sufficient immune system there to ward it
off or circumstances that are there, would the antigen test prove that
the exposure was there, or are there those that aren't going to test
positive for either?
DR. LINDNER: Okay. I think you just asked three questions,
and I'm going to try to see if I can make sure I get them.
April 28, 2020
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COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: You did.
DR. LINDNER: First, 100 percent of the people will not
become symptomatic, okay. So if you are exposed to it, there will be
people who will have COVID, and they are going to be
asymptomatic. I think what you're really asking, is that person
contagious? There is evidence that for some of those people, they are
definitely contagious, okay. Those are the asymptomatic carriers.
And the real problem is is that there is a period of time between you
contracting the virus and symptoms in which all patients have no
symptoms but yet they shed the virus, and so they are contagious, and
they can pass it on.
So I think that's the first question you asked, does 100 percent of
people, you know, become symptomatic.
Do we understand why a certain individual develops more
problem than others? That information is still coming. We don't
know. We definitely know that there seems to be age. We know that
there seems to be disease states that have greater risk for it. And
those -- the risk factors for this are still evolving. I could list off
some things that would probably make some people nervous, other
people not, but none of that has been proven either, so I'm going to
refrain from listing things that I can't prove.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And I wasn't asking you to go
there, and maybe -- and, apparently, I wasn't as clear. I guess my
question was, if -- will 100 percent of the people that are exposed to
the virus contract it? That was, I thought, what I was asking in the
first question.
DR. LINDNER: And that answer is no, because we already
know that. We have had staff at all three hospitals. We've had staff
at extended-care facilities. Her staff has definitely been exposed. I
mean -- and sometimes they may have been exposed with or without
appropriate, you know, PPE on. And we have people who have not
April 28, 2020
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contracted -- who have not contracted it. So mere exposure does not
mean that you will get the virus.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And so then -- and that was
where my brain was working with regard to an immune system that
was there that could ward it off. You wouldn't necessarily be
symptomatic and/or produce the antigens.
DR. LINDNER: I cannot answer whether it's your immune
system or the fact that, Mr. McDaniel, you and I both wear glasses.
The likelihood of us touching our face is much greater than all the
individuals up there who do not have glasses on. So, you know, there
are many things that would lead from an exposure to a greater -- you
know, a greater chance of you contacting the actual symptomatic
COVID or actually having the virus do its job.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Yeah. Just a couple of
questions. The antibody test can test positive for antibodies, but the
antibodies don't have to be the coronavirus; is that correct?
DR. LINDNER: Okay. That's an excellent question. Many of
the initial antibody tests that were offered and we actually looked into
were coronavirus antibody tests. So you are correct that they
cross-reacted to the other coronaviruses. SARS, MERS, which, you
know, we do not have with that, but seasonal coronavirus, correct.
The antibody testing that we purchased and that the people are -- both
Semens as well as Ortho Diagnostics have is specific to COVID-19
and does not cross-react. The data is excellent on that. And so the
antibody testing that is offered is specific to COVID-19.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Okay. And then a final
question, and it's a Miami. You did mention it. And you said,
what -- and I think your reference was what's going on in Miami, so
I'm going to ask you a question. What is going on in Miami? Why
April 28, 2020
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are they so high? What's going on that they can't seem to handle it,
and what's your prediction over there?
DR. LINDNER: Well, there's multiple things that have gone on
there. First, from a standpoint, I think, that is something that is
germane for the commissioners is that if you note the positive-test to
total-test ratio in Miami-Dade, Broward, and those counties, I think I
saw at one point in time 18 to 20 percent compared to our around 10
to 11. So that's the first number that shows what's going on over
there. And you can correlate our numbers to their numbers, okay.
That percentage has been valid. New York City went up to
40 percent. So that is the first thing.
Secondly, in an urban environment such as that where people
are in very close contact and were exposed to the disease before they
became symptomatic, that person had that maybe five-day period of
time where they were shedding the virus even though they had no
symptoms, before they became symptomatic, and they had contact
with people, all right. That's -- that's why it spread: Much more
densely populated area than here, and also an area where many
people spent more time in close contact in a closed environment.
Collier County, our population likes to be outside. We like to
eat outside. We -- you know, our close contact was much less. And I
think that what happened is we did not get the ball rolling, so to
speak, and then we instituted this social distancing mitigation that
worked.
So I think the difference is is the ball got rolling there. They had
a lot more travel related initially because of the cruise ship lines and
all the other things that came in with that. I was concerned. I
thought our risk factors in Collier County were much greater because
of our elderly population. But it got rolling there. Every place
you've seen it get rolling it, it just -- it goes. And the only avenue we
had was to try to shut it down, which you-all did by social mitigation.
April 28, 2020
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COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Ochs, we need to take a short break. Why don't we come
back at five minutes after 11:00. Seven minutes. Come back at five
after 11:00. Those of you in the room, if you want to stay in the
room, that's fine. And we'll be back in -- we'll be back in seven
minutes.
(A brief recess was had.)
MR. OCHS: Mr. Chairman, you have a live mic.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen,
if you'd please take your seats. We're about to begin.
MR. OCHS: Commissioners, we move now to the Emergency
Services component of today's briefing. I'll begin this morning with
Sheriff Rambosk to give a quick briefing on law enforcement
activities related to the pandemic.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Good morning.
SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Good morning, Chairman, members of
the Board.
I will be brief. Just a couple of things. I do also want to
recognize everyone on the front line from the doctors to the nurses to
the Health Department to our first responders, fire rescue, EMS, and
deputies who are going into situations each and every day and night
not knowing what they're going into and with the potential of being
exposed. We actually had two of our deputies that were found to be
positive. They are actually back online. They are doing well.
Originally, in my earlier updates, I let you know that we had
approximately 60 people that were quarantining, self-quarantining for
some reason, either travel and/or exposure, potential exposure. We
are down to about four to six people right now. And I tell you that
and the community to reassure everyone that we virtually have a full
complement of staff both in the support function and in the street.
April 28, 2020
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The other more important updates is that we continue to have
great compliance from the community with regard to the existing
orders. We all know that those orders are about to expire and, more
importantly, we've found people want to do the right thing as
opposed to being told to do the right thing. I think that's going to
become critical as we move forward to allow us to move forward and
do it more safely than not.
Our boat traffic, we've had a number of complaints there from
boat ramps. This particular weekend it was not as bad mainly
because of the weather. I understand that Miami has opened their
boat ramps effective Wednesday. We believe that that will lessen the
impact to our eastern part of the county. So that is one of the
complaints we had been dealing with.
I will tell you that we had been doing enforcement on land with
that for parking. We were doing marine enforcement and regulation
along with the Coast Guard and FWC. And, you know, if you think
about regulations or not, boats have a particular capacity for safe
operation. Most of them are less than what the order requires. So if
you're operating safely on a vessel, you would be in compliance
anyway. And if you're not, we're going to tell you you're not
operating safely. But from a marine perspective -- and we're going to
cite where necessary, and we have been doing that.
We have had support from FWC, particularly with the barrier
islands, and we will continue to have that.
The -- a couple of things that are -- we thought were important.
Traffic counts over the last two weeks are up 25 percent prior -- to
the two weeks prior to that. So we know, and if you've been on the
roads, you've seen that increase in traffic. We're not back to where
we were for normal.
Our 911 calls are up 10 percent compared to where we were a
couple of weeks ago, but we're actually still down for this time of the
April 28, 2020
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year that -- what would be normal. So not a concern about where
we're going there.
Traffic crashes are down about 50 percent. That's a good thing.
They will go up as traffic goes up. That's just the way it's going to
be.
Domestic violence calls, although we don't endorse any
domestic violence call, they are, on average, in par with what normal
reporting incidents are. We've had some disturbance calls, so that's
other than domestic violence. That's been pretty consistent. On a
weekend or weekend evening, we've had a blip here and there but,
again, nothing outside or well outside of the norm that I would raise a
concern to you about.
I think with all that in mind, we have had in place for the last
several weeks an anticrime team, because that's what you and our
community expect, and certainly our business owners who are not
operating at this point, to make sure that their businesses are safe.
They're patrolled 24/7.
We had our official crime statistics published last week by the
State of Florida. We continue to remain at the lowest crime rate since
1971 officially. That's important. What's more important is that year
to date we are down 3 to 5 percent below that number. Now, that
will change by the end of the year, but particularly looking at the time
frame that we are in, we have been working together as a community
to hold the line on increasing crime. But it's still a concern as we
move forward. We've got a strong plan to do that, and we are here to
help facilitate the re-opening of Collier County.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: That's great.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. I don't see any -- oh,
Mr. Solis.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Sheriff, thank you and to everyone
at the Sheriff's Department for doing what they're doing.
April 28, 2020
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Just curious as to -- one of the things that we've heard a concern
about is that this shelter-in-place requirement is going to create an
uptick in mental-health related calls. Do you have any data on those
kinds of calls?
SHERIFF RAMBOSK: I don't have any specific data. I can tell
you that we have had a couple of incidents where we have had
mental-health issues that have escalated into barricaded subjects or
suicidal subjects, but not so far out of the norm at this point that it
would cause us more of a problem.
We continue to be working with the David Lawrence Center on
a regular basis. So we continue to do everything we do as normal,
but we've not seen a huge significant spike in calls to us for that.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Great. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Thank you for your --
and thank you for all your men and women that are out there
protecting us.
Mr. Summers, if you could be relatively brief. I know you've
got a lot of material here, and I think we've all gone through it. But
there's some decisions that we're going to have to make as a board
here today, and so I want to try to get to that as quick as possible, and
we also have, obviously, some public comment, so...
MR. SUMMERS: Commissioners, good morning. For the
record, Dan Summers, director of Collier County Bureau of
Emergency Services and Emergency Management.
I just want to highlight a couple of things, quickly. Thank you.
Again, our core mission here has been to continue to support in
our unified command component with DOH and the Sheriff's
Department. You will see there some of our mission requests that
we've made to the state. And I have to tell you, with all 67 counties
being impacted, it's been a phenomenal job of the resource
distribution under a very trying global challenge to supply chains.
April 28, 2020
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We worked very closely with FEMA for some approvals for
non-congregate sheltering. That has a 30-day time lapse on it, and I
have to renew that every 30 days.
The second component I would just share with you is that
through our office and what we're referring to as single-portal
delivery, I'm very proud of our logistics team and our entire small
staff. We have distributed 282,000 pieces of protective equipment
through our Emergency Operations Center with combined donations
from the community and Department of Health; 285 supply pickups;
eighty-some organizations have been supported; and we have
processed resource requests within the community to the
neighborhood of -- about 212 mission requests have been made into
our EOC.
We have also sort of become a backup in the food chain for
some of our food banks, and I want to commend them for their hard
work. I want to remind the public that our food banks still need their
donations, and we are still having challenges there.
The meals that we're able -- and resources we're able to provide
from the state Emergency Operations Center are disaster-type
palletized food. They're not normal retail food, but at this point
something is better than nothing.
So we have been delivering and working through the Health
Department, working with the Sheriff's Office, our food banks, many
community partners to bring hurricane-type supplies into the food
banks, and we've worked very hard in that and also worked to support
the homeless population as well we've been providing kits, as you see
there, in large volume to some the food pantries like Marco Island
that also supports Everglades City, Chokoloskee, Wounded Warriors,
and I can't say enough about Dr. Patton's effort for school lunches.
She's working to find opportunities to keep that going through any
summer break as well as summer programs. Her effort has absolutely
April 28, 2020
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been -- and her team has just been phenomenal with these close to
approaching 200,000 meals. And for the first time, we've supported
bulk ordering of pet food, and that was received in our facility today
for distribution.
We continue to support Saint Matthews House periodically as
we can.
Let me move on; just a couple other bullets here real quick. As
you've already talked to the hospitals, we've not exceeded any
medical surge capacity. Medical surge was what was keeping me up
at night in terms of remote resources that might be needed, and we're
very blessed not to be in that scenario.
PPE is a big challenge internationally, and we really are trying
to get a 10-day PPE inventory established countywide that is a
benchmark for the state. We are nowhere close to being able to
provide yet a 10-day inventory based on current burn rate. And as
the Sheriff mentioned again, we're very blessed not to have any other
impact on public safety workforce.
Just a few summary items. We're still working with the Florida
Natural Guard and the Florida Division of Emergency Management
for some random sampling in high-risk areas. Immokalee is one of
those. Those plans are still ongoing, and it is challenging because,
again, supplies and material that are expected are not showing up on
time. And that's just the world that we live in. And we don't want to
make any commitments till we have 100 percent visibility on the
supplies and resources necessary to do that.
The state is also looking, as was mentioned earlier today, at
some state-driven mass testing. That, too, is running into some
roadblocks with planning in terms of staffing and location and testing
media. That's still being worked on. And as I mentioned, we're in
the final stages of some further logistical planning for non-congregate
sheltering. That's a new term. Our new acronym there is NCS,
April 28, 2020
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non-congregate sheltering.
I can't say enough about the partnerships. I can't say enough
about the community's support. Our team has been working on calls
literally around the clock. I want to thank our Human Services group
as well. Commissioner McDaniel, you've been on the calls with
Immokalee to make sure that we're providing all the information, not
necessarily all the information they like to hear, but being
100 percent transparent with all of our nonprofit partners countywide.
But, again, everybody's working hard and, I think, has good visibility
on the challenges that we have, and thank you all for the continued
support, and that's all I have unless you have questions.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. And thank you, Dan.
And I appreciate the efforts that are going on across the
community. There are areas in our community that have different
circumstances, and, of course, Immokalee is a very unique
circumstance with our community there and people having a difficult
time just meeting the criterion of social distancing and so on and so
forth.
And it's been -- it's been very transparent, as you said. It was a
very -- it was a very, very good effort that has been done for our
community.
The question that I had for you had -- and I feel similarly, that I
stayed awake a lot at night with regard to the predictive models and
the medical surge that were going to be put upon us. And it seems to
be, without getting too far ahead, that the Governor's orders and such
are going to get amended at some stage.
How long would it take for additional medical facilities to be
brought here in the event that -- in the event that the necessity arose?
How long would it take for one of those field hospitals to, in fact, be
set up?
April 28, 2020
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MR. SUMMERS: Let me talk about that, and let me backtrack
on the answer just a little bit.
First of all, the very last thing we want to do, because of our
climate, the upcoming rainy season, is to go into a field hospital
environment. It seems to be the first thing that you want to reach for.
But the hospitals have done all the right thing in terms of building
capacity within bricks and mortar. That's what you want to do, and
that's the first component; expand your existing because of our
climate.
The second thing that we need to remember is that we can do
medical treatment on a regional basis. We've got bed capacity in
Lee, so we don't want to turn down beds in Lee, or we may
reciprocate. Maybe we might help Lee County with the surge. So,
again, maintaining that concept under what I term as bricks and
mortar.
The third component is that the state has made provisions for
field hospitals, in this case, an absolute tent, which is not my
preference, but at least the equipment that goes in it we can find in a
covered space. The state is strategically staging some of those
resources in that they are not -- they are still in the box, meaning they
have not been unpacked; they have not deployed as demand
continues to change.
And then the other reason that the field hospital is a challenge is
that any time you go off site of existing bricks and mortar, you've got
to come up with staffing, and that staffing is almost impossible at this
point to come up with. So if you do field hospital or you expand
capacity, you want to stay on these hospital campuses so that you can
maximize the existing level of personnel.
So it is a contingency. It's a little further down the list, because I
want to keep us, especially going into the summer, within that bricks
and mortar, keep that manpower, and let the hospitals build that
April 28, 2020
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efficiency internally.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you, Mr. Summers.
MR. SUMMERS: Thank you, all. Mr. Ochs.
MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. We move on to the briefing on our local
business conditions and assistance assessment. Mr. Michael Dalby
for the Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce will begin the briefing.
MR. DALBY: Good morning, Commissioners. Good to be
here.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Good morning.
MR. DALBY: Let me just start with since the beginning of --
well, really the last of March, we've been reaching out to businesses
and employers all across Collier County and trying to get a feel for
what's going on with them, one-on-one conversations with them
about what they're seeing and what's happening.
Obviously, many businesses impacted by this, seeing employee
layoffs, furloughs, cutbacks. We estimate that about 70 percent of
our members have had some kind of major negative effect that's
happened to them. Maybe they're still operating but only operating at
maybe 10 percent of the revenue they would normally have, or
they're not operating at all. They're temporarily closed, and they
don't want to say they're completely closed because they intend to
come back. And we've seen very few that have completely closed,
but we know that the vast majority are impacted, particularly in three
areas of our economy: Hospitality. That industry has been heavily
impacted; restaurants, hotels, retail, and personal services. Each one
of those areas they practically can't do their work. Kind of the scale
here goes, the smaller the business, the more the economic impact,
and also the more of the customer interaction of the business, the
more impact that this has had in terms of shutting down.
Most of these businesses have applied for one of the government
programs, the PPP or the EIDL. Very -- a number of them have
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received information they've been approved, but few of them have
actually gotten the money. So it's kind of a half and half on there.
The businesses very much want to open, but they also want to
make sure that we do it right. There are industries that are already
starting to put out their own kind of industry guidelines as to how to
open in a safe and healthy way. And everybody's waiting for,
essentially, the Governor's statement of, okay, here's where the
general guidelines are and then trying to work through those
guidelines.
Some businesses -- and I had a slide somewhere there, but --
don't worry, it's okay. Is it -- do I touch it? All right. There you go.
Okay. And I'm going to correct this because there's 30 and -- or 70
and 37. I can do math. It should be 70 and 30.
But you've got 70 percent of them impacted. Thirty-seven -- or
30 percent of the businesses are actually doing pretty well. And it's
interesting to see the businesses that are hanging in there and doing
well within our community, and I've listed some of those areas like
financial services; legal services; IT. All kinds of IT support that
everybody's using now because of acting remotely; manufacturing
and construction, particularly infrastructure construction seeing some
really strong activity. So there are some areas where things are going
well.
Those businesses it's interesting to look at because as we talk
about not just recovery but reimagining our economy and looking at
diversifying our economy, these are lessons that we can realize from
looking at those businesses that have been least impacted by this.
Fortunately, many of these businesses are some of our larger
employers, particularly when we add in senior living facilities; large
employers that are continuing to go forward there.
As we transition to re-opening, we like to use the term "re-open
and stay open." So it's not just what do you kind of do to get yourself
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open, but what actions do we need to take ongoing to remain open,
and if something flares up, that we're able to contain it. I think our
statement has always been that health and safety comes first, not just
because it's the right approach to take, but also we are an economy
that relies a lot on visitors and guests, and we want to tell them that
we are taking all the right measures to ensure health above all else.
We also have a large percentage -- I think 33 percent of our
population is over 65, so that puts -- in age, and that puts them over
in that vulnerable category as well.
Towards that end, you also want to re-open some of those other
associated health entities that have -- sometimes it's called non -- you
know, nonelective -- or elective surgeries and -- or elective
procedures. Those are some of the areas that they have the things in
place to be able to start to re-open, and I think that would help us just
from an overall health standpoint.
As I've said before, some employers are easier to open than
others. Business-to-business companies or entities are easier to
re-open, and sometimes they just need to have the right guidelines
and directives. Think of it mostly as office-type work or work that's
done within their business. They're not really interacting with the
general public. Those are probably the easier ones to start with.
The harder ones are the B to C or the business to consumer,
where it's a little more challenging and yet at the same time, they're
the ones who have been most heavily impacted.
Some concerns raised by businesses that we're starting to hear as
we have these re-opening conversations is, is acquiring personal
protective equipment. So whether that's masks, the infrared
thermometers, cleaning supplies, some businesses have found, as
they go out and try to source these things, that it's either very hard to
find or they're having to source them from sources that they're not
really certain of the quality that they're going to get. And any help
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that could be used in that area or provided in that area would be
helpful.
Legal parameters, that's been a question that's come up about a
lot of legal factors as you start to re-open. And occupancy limits that
impact a number of different things. Obviously, we have a large
event part of our economy here in Collier County, and determining
where those -- those congregation limits are at, which may start
smaller and then kind of grow from there.
And, lastly, as they reconstitute their workforce, the whole
childcare issue is one that has continually been discussed. And it's --
you know, we're coming up on summer. School would not be in
session, but that's also a time when we also would frequently have
camps of various types that are working with kids. And a lot of
childcare has obviously been closed down, and it just impacts a lot of
our workforce to be able to get back fully into doing work and still
deal with those childcare issues.
So I will stop there, and if there's any questions, happy to
answer them.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. There doesn't appear to
be any questions. I want to thank you for your --
MR. DALBY: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: -- and we're going to be, I'm sure,
talking to you as Collier County opens up so --
MR. DALBY: Absolutely, and we want to help in any way that
we can. We've got a great board of directors that can act as a task
force towards these issues, and we're constantly getting information
from our businesses, and we want to be whatever help we can.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you.
Mr. Callahan, you've got quite a bit of material here, and I
would ask you to go through that as quickly as possible in light of the
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fact that we do have to begin to focus on the public comment as well
as our decision making on several things and --
MR. CALLAHAN: Understood, sir, and I'll be as brief as
possible and not belabor any points that Michael's already covered.
I think he gave a great update on where most of the businesses
in Collier County are at.
For the record, Sean Callahan, executive director of corporate
business operations.
Just to briefly touch on this, you've heard that the hospitality
sector is obviously the most hit. I do want to point out that we are
real-time tracking. Most hotels are at under 10 percent occupancy.
That's coming off record months in January and February, but we've
been adjusting our TDT budgets accordingly for this year and the
next.
Over on the construction side, I talked -- spoke with Mr. French
earlier. There's been no notable drop off in permitting thus far. And
two highlights is that they've implemented a virtual inspections
program that's working very well, and about 92 percent of permits are
being issued electronically, where it was about 65 percent
pre-COVID-19. And the regional coordination with our partner
counties has been great. So many thanks to all of them.
Our job with all the different federal resources and state
resources that have become available is to provide as timely and
accurate information as we can to the public. We've done that
through our website. Anybody who's interested in hearing about it or
learning more about these different programs that they might be able
to take advantage of, please go to our website. There's two separate
pages, one that sets up for resources for individuals and families and
then one that's set up specifically for business resources that are
available.
We update that on a weekly basis through our staff. And I'll tell
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you a little bit more about some of the different programs that have
come.
Reemployment assistance, a brief update on that for the
Commission. I know that's been a source of frustration of many in
the community is accessing that program and getting benefits paid
out. It does appear that some of -- those benefits are being paid out
exponentially at this point, although some folks are still having
trouble with denials for that unemployment. We're working -- the
state is working through problems for that.
But I will point out that the DEO has a virtual dashboard much
like you'll see on the health realm that shows the amount of
reemployment assistance benefits that are being paid out. And just
paid to claimants, over the last week, last Monday that was about
$50 million. That's at about $500 million. So it appears that DEO is
beginning to work on some of the issues that we've seen and actually
be able to pay out some of those different claims for reemployment
insurance.
They did launch a county page last week that doesn't have as
timely information as being updated, but hopefully we'll get to that in
the future.
For us to support that mission, I will point out that our libraries,
which were previously closed, we've opened up seven locations, and
we've allowed for folks to come in and pick up a paper application to
be able to fill that out and apply for the program through the paper
application. They've processed approximately 200,000 applications,
paper, at DEO, and there are four FedEx locations that will mail those
for free.
DEO's hired and re-purposed about 2,000 workers to process
those, and that's why you're seeing the flow of those start to come in.
They processed about 400,000 claims over the weekend.
And then our CareerSource Southwest Florida has about 50 staff
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members that are available to help folks reset their pins that you'll
need to access those employments.
The Paycheck Protection Program, which has been a big subject
of the news, I won't belabor the point, but I do want to point out that
out of the first 349 billion that was appropriated by Congress for that
program, approximately 18 billion has come or is coming currently to
Florida. We've heard from several of our community lenders that
they are starting to actually issue those payments to businesses.
We spoke with one community banker last Friday that said he
had issued or had in the pipeline of issuing approximately
$100 million to businesses here in Collier County. So I do want to
point that out. It's about 5 percent of the total funding that was
available, and there has been more re-appropriated.
The SBA economic assistance and bridge loans, I'll update this
number live and on the spot. We just got new data. It's
approximately about 540 billion and 2,900 loans that have come to
Florida businesses, and that percentage of funding for Florida has
stayed about the same. It's about 6.8 percent. The average payout
being about $180,000 to businesses.
Last Friday, President Trump signed the Paycheck Protection
Program and Healthcare Enhancement Act, which is commonly being
referred to as CARES 2. It's the second stimulus package. Re-
appropriate another $310 billion to the Paycheck Protection Program.
If we take the same percentage that we got in the first tranche of that
funding, we should see approximately another $16 billion coming to
the state of Florida which, through that program, would be about
$34 billion that's going to be coming into our economy or has already
come into our economy.
Additional $10 billion for the Economic Injury Disaster
Assistance grants in loans that are available through the SBA, and
another 50 billion for SBA disaster loan program, as well as
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allocating a separate 100 billion through the Department of Health
and Human Services that covers about 75 billion in reimbursable
expenses for hotels for COVID-related expenses or lost revenues and
sets aside 25 billion for COVID-19 testing.
So I will tell you that the Paycheck Protection Program did open
up again yesterday, two new applications, at 10:30 a.m. They're
overwhelmed, and it's looking like it's going to be oversubscribed
again very quickly. But like I said, some of that funding is obviously
going to come here to Florida.
Locally, working with Commissioner Taylor and some of our
folks in the community, we did stand up a group to talk about the
potential economic task force that could be implemented to out --
reach out to the community, be able to help us allocate some of the
different funding that is available. You see some of the members
there; discussing with them on the potential establishment of one of
these task forces. They opined on Friday that they would like to be
part of any bigger effort that's here to open the county.
We do have some different CDBG funding that's been allocated.
You'll see this week we are standing up, through the United Way, a
rental assistance program using some CDBG funds that have become
available as a result of COVID-19 and also some flexibility on
different housing funds that we have through our housing division
that was given to us by HUD, and that will be through a partnership
with the United Way in an electronic portal. And then staff is
obviously monitoring all of these different federal and state programs
and looking for ways that we can actively supplement or come up
with creative ways to help local businesses.
So I will breeze through that there, and I'll stop if anybody has
any questions.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I'll have to say that that was very
fast. You're very good at that.
April 28, 2020
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Commissioner Fiala has a question.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes. First of all, don't worry about
it, because we don't have any place to go anyway. So when we leave
here, what are we going to do? Go home. There's nothing else open,
so you don't have to worry about talking so fast. We have nothing
else to do anyway.
First of all, the libraries open for business, you said, to give out
these --
MR. CALLAHAN: Yes, ma'am. There are --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- applications. Are they also open
for regular business?
MR. CALLAHAN: They're not currently at this point in time.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Ah-ha. I thought I noticed you just
referring to that one item that they are offering, okay.
The second thing, you've mentioned the task force. I know a lot
of people have applied for that. Do we then -- does the County
Commission get to choose the people on that board?
MR. CALLAHAN: Ma'am, I think you're going to discuss that,
potentially, in the next segment. This was a smaller group of folks
who really just gathered together to help us take the pulse of local
businesses.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, okay.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: That's one of the issues that we
need to make some decisions on. That's why I wanted to get to that
as quickly as we can.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, okay. Oh, we've got all
afternoon. Don't worry.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: We have a lot of people out here
that are interested and maybe don't have all afternoon.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yeah.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Mr. Ochs?
April 28, 2020
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MR. OCHS: Thanks, Commissioners. I'll just conclude with a
real quick summary of some of our county operations and their
current status.
Let me just begin by saying, obviously, then, the Board knows
this, but for the public's benefit, your county government team, since
the beginning of this event, has continued to provide all the essential
services required to our residents and visitors. Our business has been
conducted through, I'd say, a combination of some normal business
operations and certainly modified work methods and schedules and
some alternative delivery methods focusing on trying to limit our
interactions with our front-facing departments and direct customer
contact.
This first page basically tells you that with the exception of your
Public Services Department, most of your other county operations are
continuing to function at or near 100 percent level of service through
some method of service delivery, either direct or some modified
method.
When we get into your public services departments, these are
your primary front -- front-facing county government services. So
right now your city and county beaches, obviously, have been closed.
Parks have been partially opened. Your boat ramps have been open
throughout with the exception of Caxambas boat ramp, your trails
have been continued to remain open, and all your parks and your
Greenway's been open as well.
Museums are closed. Libraries, the facilities have been closed.
They've continued to do virtual programming and checking out books
by curbside delivery and checkout. So there has been activity in your
libraries, but the facilities themselves have been closed.
Your Domestic Animal Services has moved to an adoption by
appointment only; continued their enforcement in the field. And your
transit operations have had limited availability. Your Veterans
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Services continue to reach out to our veterans by appointment only,
and that's worked very well, and your Community and Human
Services continue to work at 100 percent.
These next few slides, Commissioners -- and I'm not going to go
through them, but the basic emphasis in these slides is that everything
we're doing now is with the obvious primary goal of maintaining the
health and safety of both your workforce and the public and the
vendor community that we come in contact with. Your Human
Resources and your Risk Management staff are continuing to do a
thorough risk assessment of all the exposures that we have in our
workplace and our employees may encounter in developing a number
of mitigating measures that you'll see here in these next few slides to
try to mitigate any exposure to the COVID-19 virus.
And then, finally, what we really wanted to get to today,
Commissioners, was a discussion on the potential for re-opening
some of your services to the public. As you've been reading over the
past week, the number of counties and cities have begun to open their
public beaches and their beach parks.
Talked with my counterpart in Lee County this morning.
They're meeting, just as you are, to discuss opening their beaches and
re-opening their park system. I know Charlotte County and Sarasota
County opened their beaches just yesterday, I believe. So I think it's
in order, certainly, that this board have some discussion about that.
Your staff's ready. We could be ready as soon as Thursday of this
week to re-open your beach park facilities if you deem that
appropriate.
Also, your parks, as I said, we've maintained the trail systems in
your parks and your greenways. We have closed the rest of our
facilities but, again, I think we're ready, again, as soon as Thursday or
Friday to re-open some of your athletic fields and your hard courts.
With appropriate social distancing and appropriate enforcement, we'd
April 28, 2020
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be ready when you're ready to move on those as well.
And, finally, there was a discussion -- Mr. Dalby mentioned
summer camps. We are going to make an effort to stand up our
summer camp program. That normally begins on June 8th. And
that's our intent again. We've got already 800 children that have
registered for the program. The challenge there is to find a way to
deal with large numbers of kids without congregating them in big
groups, so -- but we're going to take that challenge on and try to
figure out a way to run these programs to help those parents that need
to get back to work to have a place to send the kids during the
summer months.
So that, essentially, concludes the report, Mr. Chairman. Look
forward to the discussion.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Mr. Ochs, if you could
leave that slide up during the public comment, because once we
conclude that, we need to start talking about these types of issues that
we need to make some decisions on.
Commissioner Fiala.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes. Just a question. I have a
picture of what happened with the pickleball courts, so I didn't know
if they were open. I have -- if you'd like to show it. I don't know if
something like this would show on there, or I could just --
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Why don't you work on that. Let's
get into public comment.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: It's kind of ripped all apart, so I
didn't know if that was open. We're opening the parks, so that's what
I'm asking.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Yeah. And we're going to get to
those -- pickleball courts are closed right now.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, that -- I'm just --
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: We're going to talk about opening
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these types of facilities.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Right. That's what I'm asking him:
Are they going to open that?
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: That's going to be a decision that
we have to make. And I'm suggesting that, let's hear the public
comment, and then let's get into the list of decisions that we need to
make, if that's okay with the Board. I don't know how many speakers
we have.
MR. MILLER: Mr. Chairman, we have 11 registered speakers.
I'm going to go ahead and call three names so that if they're located
out of this room, they'll have time to queue up.
We're asking all public speakers to use this center podium as
well, just the center podium. Your first speaker is Alfie Oakes. He
will be followed by Falynne Miller, and then Laurie Harris.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. And I'll remind the speakers
that -- limited to three minutes, and we're going to strictly adhere to
that time limit.
MR. OAKES: My name's Alfie Oakes. Thank you for hearing
me today.
First, I'd like to say that we need to open -- open our businesses
as soon as possible. I have 2,100 employees. Every single employee
comes to work every day. We've not missed a day. I see -- I'm in
front of thousands of people a day. None of my employees are sick.
None of us -- very few of us are wearing masks. If they want to wear
a mask, they can, of course. But this has turned out, obviously, not to
be, you know, anything like the fear of what we thought it might have
been three or four, you know, weeks ago or months ago. Right now
we're still not at a normal flu season amount of fatalities in the
country.
The pandemic is a political pandemic and a fear pandemic, and
the pandemic will end as soon as the fear ends. And the media keeps
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hyping up the fear. If I owned a media station, I'd keep the fear
going, too, because it's good for ratings. If I owned a hospital, I'd
play it up as well. I mean, everyone's doing what they're supposed to
do in their prospective place here, but the reality is is that this is --
this has not turned out to be anything that's alarming; otherwise,
how -- there's a quarter million people that work in Florida that work
for another big grocer. They don't have any alarming amount of
people that are getting ill or fatality rates of all the people that are
coming to work.
Is it more safe for you to go shop in Walmart than it is to a
boutique down on Fifth Avenue? Absolutely not. It's absurd.
So at some point we've got to start thinking logically and start
talking about the facts. I heard the woman from the Department of
Health here spoke a lot. It was very confusing. A lot of times if
you're trying to dupe somebody, it seems very confusing. Obama
Care was 46,000 pages. Very confusing.
If you want to talk about simple truths, simple truth is we have
19 people in two months that's died in Collier County, maybe 20
now. That's not different than it would have been during a normal flu
season.
We've made -- we've put all these people -- and how many --
what they don't bring up how many additional suicides have we
had -- and I'm not talking about the total amount of suicides, because
it's probably four times the amount of the 19 COVID deaths. There's
more than 19 additional suicides during this time, and there's going to
be much more when people are out of work.
The Ritz-Carlton, when they re-open, there's 130 people that are
not coming back to work, and that's just one place. There's plenty of
businesses. There's going to be, you know, plenty of people out of
work, and the repercussion of the bad -- you know, bad governing
that's happened from our leaders from the top on down, it's going to
April 28, 2020
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be endless.
I watched all of you. We all held our hands over our hearts and
we said the pledge. Did it say protection of viruses and justice for all,
or did it say liberty and justice for all? We need to protect our
liberties, and our liberties have been taken away here. So we need to
re-open the government.
MR. MILLER: Your next speaker is Falynne Miller. She'll be
followed by Laurie Harris and then Scott Lowe.
MS. MILLER: Good morning. My name is Falynne Miller.
I'm a lifelong resident of Collier County, and I'm here to address the
Board regarding the continued closure of our parks and beaches.
Just a note, it was reported about 45 minutes ago that Lee
County did, in fact, vote to open their parks and beaches tomorrow.
It doesn't seem like there is any, if at all, restrictions other than social
distancing.
When this all began, we were told a story that this virus was the
scourge of the earth and that millions of people were going to die.
We were warned that this virus was highly contagious and our
hospitals were going to be overrun with patients.
A picture was painted of overflowing morgues, dying patients
being denied lifesaving treatment, and death panels being formed to
decide who lived and who died and, yet, here we are with nothing
even close to those predictions having transpired.
I know you said you like numbers. I'm sorry. I prepared
percentages. Collier County has an estimated population of over
32 -- 372,000 people. As of 9:00 p.m. last night, 15 one-hundredths
of 1 percent of the population were confirmed to have COVID-19,
and then only 2.67 percent of those cases resulted in death. And it is
noteworthy, as it was mentioned earlier, that a very large percentage
of those hospitalized patients had underlying health conditions.
Our hospitals are relatively empty, and many staff members are
April 28, 2020
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bored with no patients coming in COVID or otherwise. A friend of
mine at NCH North said they have nothing to do but eat. This
mirrors reports we are hearing from across the country. Hospitals are
cutting back hours and laying off staff due to lack of patients.
Fear drove us to where we are today, but if you look at the data
and the emerging knowledge of how this virus affects us, we do not
need to fear this as if it was the plague. There's no reason to keep our
parks and beaches closed.
Government is calling for more and more data to re-open, but
we closed on nothing but conjecture and hyperbole. We need to stop
moving the goal posts, and we need to re-open. Your constituents
require access to their beaches and their outdoor spaces.
The Governor's order even carves out outdoor activities as
essential. We are taxpaying, law-abiding adults, and we do not need
time limits or activity restrictions. What we need is for our elected
officials to honor our rights to our public property that our taxes pay
for.
I urge you to move forward to doing your part in Collier County
and open our beaches and parks. If we can manage our safety in
Publix and Walmart, we can certainly manage ourselves at a beach or
a park.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you.
MS. MILLER: Thank you.
MR. MILLER: Your next speaker is Laurie Harris. She'll be
followed by Scott Lowe and then Daniel Cook.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I think Scott Lowe has already
spoken, if I'm not mistaken. He was with the hospital.
MR. MILLER: Thank you, sir. Laurie will be followed by
Daniel Cook -- Phil Dutcher has already spoken -- and will be
followed by -- well, I think Dr. Lindner has already spoken. Let's go
April 28, 2020
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with Patrick Dearborn after Daniel Cook.
Go ahead, Laurie.
MS. HARRIS: Hi, there. I am Laurie Harris from Marco
Island, Florida.
We were told that we had to flatten the curve. Flattening the
curve never meant dropping the number of cases. It meant leveling it
out so that they all didn't appear at the hospital at the same time.
We've done that. We were asked as Americans to flatten the
curve so the virus didn't spread all at once at the same time to
everyone and we all showed up at the hospital at the same time. We
did what we were asked to do. The hospitals are now laying people
off.
The Comfort that arrived in New York City went home. We are
not overrun. Our hospitals are not overrun. Our morgues are not
overrun.
It is the first time in our history that the healthy have been
quarantined. Think about that for a moment. The healthy have been
quarantined. Our seasonal restaurants will not survive. Marco Island
is a three-season -- three-month seasonal island. Our businesses and
restaurants make their money January, February, and March. They
have been denied March and April so far. I fear that they will not be
back next year.
The cure seems now worse than the illness. It must stop. When
abortion clinics are open and churches are closed, we've lost our way.
Someone else's fear does not negate my rights. If you have a
restaurant and you're fearful of re-opening it, don't. If restaurants are
open and you're fearful of going to one, don't. Might I say the same
with the beaches. If I can stay six feet apart from somebody at
Walmart, I can stay six feet apart from somebody on the beach.
In the words of George Washington, I would rather die on my
feet than live on my knees. With that, I ask you to re-open the
April 28, 2020
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economy of Collier County. May God bless you. Where we go one,
we go all.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. As the next speaker comes
up, let me remind the public of what may be a misconception.
The closing of restaurants was done pursuant to the Governor's
executive order. The -- no churches are closed. The executive order
is clear about that that the churches are not closed. And so Collier
County Government has some options in dealing with issues, but
we're not in a position to just simply say we're going to open up the
economy. We're waiting for the Governor's instructions. And I can
assure you that we're going to be anxious to do whatever we can to
get business going, but we're not the ones that are in whole of control
of that.
So I just wanted to make that point clear as we go through these
speakers.
MR. MILLER: Your next speaker is Daniel Cook. He will be
followed by Patrick Dearborn, and then representative Byron
Donalds.
MR. COOK: Thank you.
So about six weeks ago all levels of government went into
overdrive to protect the people from the virus. We closed up schools.
We canceled concerts and sporting events. We shut down
restaurants; at the state level, of course. Salons, other nonessential
businesses, and we put into place social distancing guidelines, and
you told the people to stay home to prevent the spread of the virus.
And the people, we complied. We sacrificed our leisurely
activities. We sacrificed our workouts at the gym, our nights out on
the town, and many of us, myself, included, even sacrificed our jobs,
our ability to put food on the tables so that the government can keep
us safe from the virus.
You said that the purpose of the shutdown was that keep our
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healthcare system from being overrun, and you did a good job. Our
hospitals have not been overrun and, in fact, as the Governor said
yesterday, our healthcare system is equipped to be ready for an
increase in cases as we open up in the coming weeks and months.
The Governor also said that he wants a data-driven, slow,
methodical, and thoughtful re-opening. I hope that whatever role that
you, the county commissioners, decide to play in the re-opening of
Collier County, that you'll consider not just the COVID-19 data, but
also the data regarding some of the unintended consequences of the
shutdown that has already taken place and that will continue to take
place if we don't open up soon. That includes layoffs, evictions, food
lines, stress, defaults on car payments, credit card payments,
bankruptcies, rationing, disruptions to supply chains, and our
children's educations, mental health, citizens snitching on one another
for not wearing a mask in the proper place.
The people that afraid of -- some people are afraid of the
government arresting us or fining us for trying to make a living.
That's what -- you know, that's what we're concerned about. People
just want to make a living.
These are some of the things that most of us nonessentials are
thinking about, and these are the worries that we have about our
future. And I think maybe this is why some of our founding fathers
said that he who trades liberty for security deserve neither.
The Declaration of Independence states that all men are created
equal, that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable
[sic] rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed.
The purpose of government is not to protect us from ourselves.
The purpose of government is not even to protect us from a virus.
April 28, 2020
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The purpose of the government is to secure our rights, our life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It's time to open up for business, not on the 8th of May, not on
the 1st of May, but today. The people who need to protect
themselves from COVID-19 or any other contagious virus can do so
by staying home, social distancing, wearing a mask. You don't need
to pass the buck to some unelected task force, and you don't need to
wait for the Governor's permission to take action. We elected you.
So stop treating us like peasants and remember that you work for us.
And if you don't remember, we'll remember in November.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: We do have to wait for the
Governor, unfortunately, but -- there is an executive order that we're
all living under throughout the state. There's going to be changes to
that, but we are living under the executive order of the Governor.
Next speaker?
MR. MILLER: Your next speaker is Patrick Dearborn. He will
be followed by Representative Byron Donalds and then Allen Biles.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Hang on just a second.
Disinfecting this just for you.
Good morning.
MR. DEARBORN: Barely good morning. Commissioners,
Sheriff Rambosk, if he's still here as well, and everybody that's
spoken today, thank you, guys, for taking the time and allowing us to
come speak.
I think we all need a heavy dose of common sense, and I'm not
just saying that directed to you; I'm just saying as Americans. And I
feel like I'm hearing some great things today from the commissioners
just based on feedback. I've heard some great things from most of
the speakers you've had here today. I think common sense is, again,
starting to prevail.
I'm actually here speaking today because I've got so many
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friends, like a lot of you do, that own these small businesses. I was
blessed, because I'm a realtor, we were deemed essential. So I'm still
able to work every day and try to provide for my family, and it's been
tough.
But I'm actually not here today about that. I'm here today about
the small business owners and businesses that weren't deemed
essential. And let me clarify right now that I truly believe in my
heart that all of us, all of you, everybody in this room, and everyone
that works in this county, whatever you do, the nice young lady that
just wiped this thing down is as essential as anybody in this room.
And I think everybody has a right to be considered essential and have
the right to work and provide for their families.
Speaking of restaurants -- and I love that Alfie came up here and
spoke because I've been through -- been by Costco and the Walmarts
and those big places, and I've seen the crowds, even the crowds
outside in lines. And I'm sitting here scratching my head, like many
of my friends in this county are, going, what are we doing when we
are crowding up in lines at Walmart and we're getting to go to Seed
to Table, which is a place I frequent often, grocery stores, et cetera,
and yet we can't walk on the beach? Common sense should always
prevail.
And regarding our restaurants, I know from talking to many of
my friends, and I know you all know many of your friends and
constituents who own these restaurants and work in these restaurants,
they have been devastated. Because of this reaction nationally, state
level, and local level, these restaurants now, locally, here in Naples
have been decimated. Our season, "season" -- and we use the word
"season" in real estate as well -- is over. Our population is already
turning into our summertime population here and will continue to go
down like it normally does because people that were here for the six
months or the snowbirds are gone.
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I don't know how many of our restaurants and our fellow
citizens are going to be out of business permanently even if we snap
our fingers today and open things back up. So I think we have got to
quickly --
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: We need you to go ahead and wrap
up.
MR. DEARBORN: -- smart and safely and strategically -- and
like I'm hearing from you guys today -- and God bless you guys for
saying these things -- get our beaches and our parks fully open so we
can continue to get back to enjoying our lives and, more importantly
than that, let's embrace the experts that say herd immunity works.
Let's open things up as fast as we can, especially our restaurants.
Even at 50 percent open capacity, they've got to get back. They've
got to provide for their families.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you very much.
MR. DEARBORN: Thank you.
MR. MILLER: Your next speaker is Representative Byron
Donalds, and he will be followed by Allen Biles, who is the last
speaker I have registered here today.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Representative, good afternoon.
REPRESENTATIVE DONALDS: How you guys doing? It's
good seeing you all in this room, actually. It seems like I was here a
month ago in a different order.
Burt, I'm kind of upset that your beard looks better than mine,
but...
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Well, give yours another 30 years,
and it will look as good as mine.
REPRESENTATIVE DONALDS: I'm going to just keep dying
mine. I like how it looks.
Listen, guys, to be quick; I know you guys have a lot of business
today. There's been a lot of data we've all been looking at. I've been
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on the COVID-19 calls that Director Summers has been holding three
days a week; I've been on them listening to the data just like you guys
have.
I think this -- it's been pretty clear where we are. We have a
virus situation that is contagious but is not nearly as deadly as the
experts originally thought.
The American people, the people here in our great state of
Florida, the people of Collier County have taken social distancing
extremely serious. It's been said up here at this podium, so I don't
want to belabor the point, but whether you're at Seed to Table,
Target, Walmart, Costco, Sam's Club -- if I left your store out, I'm
sorry -- Publix, people even as they go down the aisle, are doing
anything they can to avoid each other and to maintain a level of
distance.
But, Commissioners, one of the things that you have the
authority to do, even though the Governor has an order that he will
chose either to extend or lift completely or amend, is you have the
responsibility and the ability to do something about public parks,
public beaches, recreation centers, summer camps that are going to be
opening up, hopefully, on June 8th, and what you have the ability to
do is to begin to change the narrative for the people of Collier County
and in the media. The media is looking at what you're going to do.
And I think that your decision here today about re-opening
beaches, like what's happened, obviously, in Lee County about an
hour ago, Charlotte County yesterday and other places, is that you
have the ability looking at the data on the ground in our county to
show your constituency and to also show the media that we do have
this under control; that we are going to take this very seriously; that
our medical community has the capacity and the ability to treat
people and to send them back home so they can get better and they
can get well.
April 28, 2020
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But at the end of the day, human beings aren't meant to be
cooped up for long periods of time. We simply can't continue to do
this. It is not healthy on a myriad of levels far surpassing COVID-19.
So my hope is is that you guys seriously consider re-opening our
beaches, re-opening our parks, re-opening recreation centers and,
please, get these children into something else, and get my kids out of
the house, too, okay. They need something to do.
But in all honesty, I know you guys have a serious decision
ahead of you. Like I said to you last month, I take serious decisions
as well when we're in the legislature. But, really, at this point I think
the data's crystal clear. We can begin to re-open some of the things
that will allow people to get back to normal life so we can get back to
just being people and being Americans.
So, you know, take care. You guys stay healthy, and I hope you
make the right decision today.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you.
REPRESENTATIVE DONALDS: See you, guys.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: We have one more speaker?
MR. MILLER: Your final speaker today is Allen Biles.
MR. BILES: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. My name is
Allen Biles, a proud resident here of Collier County. My parents
have been residents here since 1984.
And I had a lot of things I wanted to say today, and a lot of what
I wanted to say has already been spoken by Alfie and the young lady
back there and the gentleman who just spoke.
And I appreciate, Mr. Saunders, what you spoke, that you're
only empowered with certain things. There's certain aspects of power
granted to you as commissioners of this county.
So what I would like to request, as has already been requested,
within your ability to open up our county, to open up our businesses,
to do so and move forward. Government -- as Mr. Cook stated, your
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job and all elected officials' number one job is to defend our rights
protected by the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights,
and the Constitution of the State of Florida. That's your number-one
job. Everything else falls second.
And it's not about protecting us, as somebody else said, from
ourselves. I think we're all adults, and we know how to protect
ourselves effectively.
So I'm requesting, very respectfully, on behalf of all of my
friends who are business owners and all of my neighbors, several of
who I know are damaged permanently financially because of this that
are not going to be able to re-open, they don't want to take a
government handout and a government loan, please do the right thing
and re-open our county to the ability that you have the power to do,
please.
And I thank you, and I appreciate you. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you.
MR. BILES: Bless you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. What I'd -- that
concludes the public comment.
There are certain things -- decisions that we can and should
make today. And I've got a little bit of a list, and if you want, we can
do these one at a time, and I think that that might be the most
efficient thing to do, and, of course, there may be others that other
people have on their mind as well.
But if it's okay with the Board, I'd like to suggest that we begin
with our beaches. We are clearly, under the Governor's order,
enabled to deal with our beaches as we see fit. Most communities are
dealing with that. And I would suggest that perhaps we have the
conversation about what do we do with our beaches initially, and then
we'll move on to some other items, if that's okay with the Board.
All right. So let's start off with the beaches. The situation right
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now is all of our county parking facilities are closed, the beach access
points are all closed, and there's no activity on the beaches.
Most communities are opening their beaches with certain
restrictions. I have a personal view. My personal view is that we
should open the beaches, open our parking facilities, bathroom
facilities, and open the beaches for whatever activities people want to
engage in as long as social distancing is strictly maintained.
So, for example, in my view, if someone wants to come to the
beach with a sandwich and lay on a blanket with their family, so be it.
If somebody wants to go swimming, jogging, fishing, whatever you
are normally permitted on the beaches, I think we should do other
than congregation of people beyond the CDC guidelines.
So I'll open it up for discussion, and we'll make a decision as to
what we want to do with our beaches. That's my view.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Do you want to make that as a
motion?
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Well, no. We've got several
speakers, so let's see what everybody has to say. Mr. Solis.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd just like to see if we can get some clarification on exactly
what the decision was that Lee County made today. I mean, opening
the beach, was it opening the beaches, opening also the parking
facilities? Bathrooms? Do we know exactly what that --
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Dawn to dusk. Dawn to dusk.
They can sunbathe. They can recreate on the beach, according to
NBC news.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Does that mean parking facilities? I
mean --
MR. OCHS: Commissioners, in my discussions with Lee
County and the cities, it was the joint recommendation that we open,
or we recommend opening to our elected bodies with full facility
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capacity, including the parking and restrooms and normal activities
on the beaches with the provisos that the chairman just iterated.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And I will add to that -- the Sheriff
is still here. We may need to have him comment. But my
understanding is from conversations with the Sheriff, that the
requiring of social distancing is something that can be enforced and
that he has the manpower to, in general, make that a reality.
So, Sheriff Rambosk, I don't want to misstate your position, and
your thoughts would be very important on that issue.
SHERIFF RAMBOSK: I think the question of enforcement
relative to all of this is going down a very slippery slope with regard
to the Constitution; however, we have the staff that would enable us
to remind people as long as there's an order in force that has been
adopted, as we have done throughout -- and compliance has been our
number one goal -- I would hope and I would ask the public just not
to do that. Go recreate. Go get outdoors. You don't need a party of
30 on the beach.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: But...
SHERIFF RAMBOSK: So, yes, we have the capability to do
that; however, I would ask the public to just do what is right.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I think the -- if I'm not mistaken,
the Governor's executive order basically permits localities to open
their beaches but requires the social distancing limitations to be
imposed.
MR. OCHS: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: So that's why I'm saying, I think
we can open our beaches with that requirement, and unless the
Governor changes his order, that is the order that would be in place.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay. I have a couple parts to my
question.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Yeah. I'm sorry.
April 28, 2020
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COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay. So that was the
recommendation, open up full facilities. I mean, I have gotten I can't
tell you how many emails from constituents concerned about not
necessarily Collier County residents coming to the beach, but because
of our proximity to Dade County, Broward County, which are the
worst areas in the state, as we saw at the beginning of this with the
spring breakers, that they -- that we will be the place to go because
the East Coast beaches are not -- are not open.
So -- and maybe this is a question for the County Attorney. I
mean, how do we deal with the potential for having large crowds that
are going to ignore our Sheriff's efforts and want to come to the
beach in Collier County because the beaches on the East Coast are
closed?
MR. KLATZKOW: One approach would be that we do control
our parking garages. And there may be an enforcement issue. I don't
know. But if you limited your parking garages to county residents
and those with existing beach stickers, I think you might alleviate at
least some of it. You can't stop anybody from going to a hotel. That
would -- I think that would be difficult, and certainly the Sheriff can
walk up and down the beach and find out where you're from. But
from a practical standpoint, one of your choking points is beach
access, and we do control the garages.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Yeah. I mean, I don't -- personally
don't see -- from a legal perspective, the public's the public. We've
got probably -- I wish the Property Appraiser was here. He could tell
us what percentage of people that own property in Collier County
don't have a -- aren't residents. It's probably half.
So, I mean, I see that that's going to be really difficult to do, but
that's been a question that's been raised to me, I mean, you know,
hundreds of times in the last two weeks. And I think it is a valid
concern, because that's one of the -- you know, obviously, what's
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happened in Dade County and Broward County and Palm Beach
County, I think, is safe to say -- I'm looking at Stephanie Vick, but
related to spring break and the numbers of people at the beaches and
things.
So, I mean, I think we should open the beaches, but I am
sensitive that we should have some plan in the event that it becomes
an issue. I think that's the biggest concern I've heard around opening
of the beaches.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Fiala.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes. Thank you very much.
I wanted to say, first of all, that I think that if we limit it to less
than 10 people per group or something, that would be in going with --
in keeping with the Governor's comments. And when we talk about
social distancing, which I think is absolutely perfect, except if you've
got a family that live together in the same house and they're all laying
on the blanket or something like that. I mean, you know -- and I'm
sure if the Sheriff was going over and talking to them -- I don't know
where Sheriff went. Oh, there you are. But then he would find out
quickly that's a whole family, and to do that. I think that that's
important.
And you were talking about the people from the other coast.
Leo Ochs was in my office the other day, and we were talking, and I
said, that's the problem everybody's worried about is a lot of people
coming from other coasts over here and bringing with them things
that aren't in our county right now, possibly the disease or something.
And so you said -- your words were, what do we do if we find
that's a problem? And I thought, well, maybe we could quickly, then,
as Leo suggested -- I would love to claim credit, but it wasn't my
idea. Maybe we have certain hours. People could go to the beach
from, say, 9:00 in the morning to noon and then close, again, the
beaches, and then they can go back to the beach at 5:30. Well,
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anybody driving over from the other coast wouldn't care to do that,
you know, because by the time they drive over here, they'd lost their
time. So that might be a way -- a thing that we could suggest.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. Commissioner McDaniel.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: I did some of my -- not my
colleagues, but my council in the City of Naples, and I would remind
everyone that the City of Naples has three -- two parking garages and
ample parking for the beach. So the idea that we could restrict to
residents probably's not going to work.
And I did make our office -- Sherry made a call yesterday. Just
FYI, the City of Miami Beach is not opening their beaches until June,
the City of Miami is not talking about opening up their beaches, and
Broward has no discussion at this point.
We've heard testimony this morning that -- from our doctor from
NCH that part of the problem with Miami is that there were people
that didn't know they had the COVID virus, and they were shedding
it. I kind of visualized that as we were talking. We know from our
boat ramp experience that we are a destination for the East Coast.
So I think we could open the beaches. But I agree with
Commissioner Fiala, I'd like to see the hours maybe 8:00 to 10:00,
something like that for the beach walkers, and then late in the
afternoon. I did speak to Sheriff Rambosk about this. He said
enforcement is a nightmare no matter what. Forgive me, Sheriff
Rambosk, but we can do it.
So whether it's all day or whether it's these period of times
where we, you know, open the gates and let folks recreate, which is
so important, he's willing to enforce it, and I think we need to remain
nimble as a government. I think what we could do is see how it's
going. We'll get lots of folks writing us. We'll have the Sheriff
looking at things, and then if it looks like everything is moving in the
right direction, we relax it a little bit more, do it gradually, but let's
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open these beaches.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well, I -- yes, thank you,
Mr. Chair.
I've gone back and forth on this a lot. And I'd like to give our
community a little more credit, I think, than what's been given so far.
Unlike other communities, Charlotte County, Lee County, Bonita,
who have the large I call it the funnel effect of masses of people
living here and getting to beaches in fairly easily regulated
circumstances, we don't. We have miles and miles of open beach
access that would be very, very difficult.
So I understand the rationale of the balloon effect. We've talked
about it on a regular basis and potentially overloading the facilities
that we have. But I've watched our community. I've watched our
community adjust to the circumstances that are requisite to provide
for good, healthy conditions.
So my thoughts are, if our staff is ready -- and Leo Ochs shared
with us that he could be ready as early as the first, which is Thursday,
I think --
MR. OCHS: It's the 30th.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: The 30th.
MR. OCHS: Yes.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. I would be -- I'm
ready -- I'm ready to go ahead and open up our beaches. I don't want
to see restrictions. I understand the rationale of hours of operation
just to theoretically disincent people from coming here from other
places, but there are other beaches that have already been open. I
have friends up in Jacksonville and St. Augustine that are similarly
distanced away from Miami-Dade. They opened up their beaches
with little to no issue whatsoever.
The enforcement was negligible. People came and went. They
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set up hours of operation. I think in Jacksonville it was 6:00 in the
morning until 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning, and then they came
back in the evening. But there wasn't a major flux of people, in fact,
coming.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Miami is much further away
from Jacksonville than they are --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: It depends on how fast you
drive.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Oh, okay. He's talking about
time. He's not talking about distance.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes, he is. So the long -- the
rash -- my thought processes are, I think we ought to give our
community credit. I think we ought to give them the opportunity to
show -- I'm not suggesting that we go past our CDC guidelines and
certainly the guidelines that are put out by our governor, but I think
we ought to -- and our staff has shared that we can and do have the
facilities to do it. And I'll make that motion that we do, in fact, open
up our beaches as of Thursday.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. Let's -- in terms of the
motion, let's put some meat on that little skeleton there. When you
say "open the beaches," what is it that you're talking about? Are you
talking about just -- as I had mentioned earlier, just the CDC
guidelines in terms of --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Correct.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I mean, if you want a little -- I
mean, I don't know -- I think the less specific we are from a limitation
standpoint, the greater opportunity we have of managing the
circumstance. I had a long conversation with our staff. We've got
restroom facilities. We're going to enhance the -- and I don't think
we need to necessarily go through, unless we want to. We can
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review what we've done when we come back in May as to enhanced
sanitary practices and recommendations of social distancing from an
enforcement capacity. We have park rangers and Sheriff's officers, in
fact, if that's a requirement.
But I don't want to see -- I would rather not see restrictions on --
again, Dr. Birx, when she was talking on TV and the guidance with
regard to not congregating more of [sic] 10, she said it out loud. If
you're -- we're not talking about family members with regard to that.
And spring break is necessarily over. And the decision to close the
beaches probably worked out well because of that balloon effect and
those spring breakers running from the other side.
But I think if we open up on a regional basis, Charlotte's open,
Sarasota's open, Lee's opening, we open, City of Naples, Marco
Island, we've got sufficient area to spread -- to spread folks out.
People can go, and I believe if we afford them a little bit of
opportunity, they'll behave well.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Let me ask, on the
motion, Mr. Ochs, I know you've been meeting with the City of
Marco Island and the City of Naples, and they're talking about
reopening their beaches. Obviously, they want to do that, whatever
happens in conjunction with Collier County. In your conversations,
have they been talking about generally opening up for -- as this
motion indicates and I've discussed, you know, people want to lie on
a blanket and all things that you normally do, but following the CDC
guidelines. Is that kind of where you think the City of Naples is, or
do you know that yet, the City of Marco as well?
MR. OCHS: Yes. I believe they're both, essentially, in that
position with the caveat that the city that, I think, is still going to
close the pier, and they may make some separate decisions on
Lowdermilk Park because of the concession activity there. But in
terms of opening the parking and opening the beaches to normal
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beach activities without restricting hours or specific activities, that
was the consensus of the working group that met last week to talk
about that.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I think that -- and we'll have some
more discussion, but I think that the limitation on people coming
from the East Coast to Naples to use the beach, I think the parking is
really the limitation. We have a certain number of beach parking
spots, and unless you have, you know, college kids on spring break
by the dozens in hotel rooms and in Airbnbs, I don't know that you're
going to have this tremendous influx of people because there's just
not going to be that many places to park.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: You will in the city. You will in
the city, because they have two parking garages, and it's within
walking distance.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And the city has the ability to
restrict their parking in their garages as well.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: But, you know, the people have left
for back home, so we don't have as many people. So I don't think
parking would be the limitation because right now the parking that
we have would probably be sufficient for many things, you know,
other than --
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- other than just our own people.
So that means it would invite other people in. And, by the way, in
your motion you didn't say when you wanted to start this.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I did. Thursday.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thursday.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, I'm sorry. I did not hear that
then.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I'm sorry. Yes, ma'am. I did.
I said it, on Thursday. That was when our County Manager said staff
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could be prepared. The earliest they could be prepared to be opened
would be Thursday.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, okay, fine.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: We have a motion. We don't have
a second yet. Commissioner Solis.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: One more question, because the
County Manager mentioned this in relation to the concessions. I
mean, I think we have to include in our motion what we're thinking
about doing or allowing in terms of the concessions. I mean, Clam
Pass Park --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Right.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: -- that is a place at the concession
there where a lot of people gather, a lot of people are going to get
food if it's open, and the other concessions that, say, operate on the
beach. I think we have to at least talk about those and address it
specifically in the motion.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: If you want me to address it,
I'd be happy to. I mean, again, I have been -- I've been watching. I
watched -- I watched folks at different restaurants where you have
walk-in capacity of where it's only takeout. I think our concessions
ought to be open. I think we ought to do similarly to what the other
retail businesses have done. You mark off spacing on the sidewalk
and tell people where they can stand. You -- and you make -- you
make the recommendations to continue to abide by the CDC's
recommendations and the Governor's guidance.
It's going to come. The Governor -- I heard the Governor was
coming on the TV this morning around 11:30. It may be going on
now. And we adhere to the guidance that is given from the Governor
with regard to that. But I think our concessions can be opened. I
think that folks are -- folks -- I think -- I think that our community
deserves the credit that they, in fact, have to be able to abide by and
April 28, 2020
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provide for safe operations of our facilities.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Solis.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: And I would agree with you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Hang on a second.
Commissioner Solis, did you have anything else? You're still on
the list.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Did I address that
accordingly?
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: You did. I mean, I disagree. I
think -- I think opening the beach is one thing. I think having
concessions, which you're going to create, you know, situations,
whether people intend it or not. I mean, I think, restaurants aren't
open right now by the Governor's order, so...
MR. OCHS: Mr. Chairman, if I might. With respect to Clam
Pass, my understanding is that that restaurant concession is actually
an operation of the Naples Grande. They lease the space, but they
determine when they operate there. I don't believe they've been open.
I'll verify that. I mean, their requirement to you is to abide by the
lease terms and to provide a certain menu of reasonably priced food
and drink for beachgoers. But whether or not they're open, I think, is
primarily their decision in terms of the restaurant operation there.
And I'll confirm that as discussion goes on here, but...
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: No one else is on the screen here.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, then I'll second the motion.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Did you have anything
you wanted to --
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: I did.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: As we all are members of the
Florida Association of Counties, the Florida Association of Counties
had two webinars over the last month, both of them dealing with the
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COVID-19 virus. The last one was Thursday.
One of the recommendations by the University of Florida Public
of Health [sic] that's listed on their website is to limit exposure to hot
spot areas. I spoke to two medical professionals over the last 24
hours, and one of them succinctly said, why would you want to create
an attraction for a hot spot when their beaches are closed and you
open yours?
So I am very concerned about a -- this is -- we're going back
where we are, everything-is-fine kind of attitude. I'm not suggesting
we close our -- keep our beaches closed. I think the public have
really made it very, very clear that they would like to use the beach,
and I think our community has been -- I'm so proud of our
community and what they've done and what I know they'll continue
to do.
My concern is creating the attraction. I think we put our
residents at risk, and I'm not willing to do that, but I am willing to
say, limit the time to make it unattractive to spend an hour to drive
over here if you drive fast or an hour and a half to drive over if you
drive slowly to come to beaches that aren't open when you want to
come there.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. In terms of the
concession, you've added that to your motion, I believe, and you
second that. Any other comments on the motion?
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I'm going to support the motion
because I think that if a group of people want to come over from
Miami, which, you know, that's always possible, our folks don't have
to be exposed to them if we're maintaining social distancing. And so
I think that opening the beaches is the right way to go. If we have a
problem, we can back off on that.
So if there's no other comment, I'll call for the question. All in
April 28, 2020
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favor, signify by saying aye.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Aye.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Aye.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All opposed signify by saying no.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Aye.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: No.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: That passes 3-2.
(Applause.)
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: The next thing on my short list of
things that we need to discuss is we're going to get some direction
from the Governor in terms of opening businesses. There's going to
be a phased approach to that. And the question is, do we need to
establish some kind of a committee to digest the information, meet
with the various affected entities, such as realtors, hotel operators,
that sort of thing, and then make recommendations? If we don't need
a committee, then that's fine. I'm just suggesting that if we do want
to establish a committee, then we can discuss doing that.
So the first question is, do we feel that we need to have a
committee to advise the County Commission going forward in the
event that there are issues that need to be determined by the county
based on the Governor's process of opening up Florida? So that's
kind of the first question. If we don't need a committee, then so be it.
So, Commissioner McDaniel. I know we've all been thinking
about this. So, Commissioner McDaniel.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. And I believe -- well,
I've actually wanted to have a startup council for quite some time. It
hasn't come to fruition. I believe if we do anything as a board, we
should maybe schedule another interim meeting in between now and
when the Governor comes out with his specific recommendations for
us to review those and, at best, select members of our -- a small
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group -- jiminy Christmas -- a small group of people to make
recommendations to disseminate information as to what's, in fact,
going on, what practices are available to provide for safe operations
of businesses and the like in more of an advisory capacity back to us
as opposed to proactive or suggestions as to what we could do when
the -- when the opening up, in fact, transpires.
I mean -- and just one little aside. You know, I speak to our
hospital folks regularly. I talked to Paul yesterday, and they -- Paul
Hiltz, and they actually have -- I call them a bug zapper, one of those
UV light that kills everything, and -- they've actually gotten
permission to bring that out of the hospital environment and use it in
different circumstances, and that might be -- you know, there are
things that -- initiatives that can be done, as you said earlier,
Commissioner Taylor, to provide for safe environments for our
community and enhance that safety aspect as we go forward.
So I'm not -- I'm not in -- I'm not thinking we need to have a
startup council at this stage. I would rather this board come back
within a day or two after the Governor actually announces his
adjustment, his amendment, and/or the lifting of the stay-at-home
order and review that publicly and have discussions, and then make
our recommendations accordingly.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. Commissioner Fiala.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes. I just don't want to wait too
much longer. I think if we have a committee, by the time the
committee meets and so forth, then everybody has to be publicly
noticed, so now you've got certain time limits for publicly noticed. I
think we're going to hold it up too much. Not only that, but we all
are getting lots of mail from everybody. So we know the public
sentiment, and we should all adhere to that. We're here to serve the
public anyway, and I think we all feel that in common. And so I
think we should be moving forward.
April 28, 2020
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Yes, I think we have to hear from the Governor on things, but
hopefully we hear from him pretty soon. But there are some things
that make absolutely good sense. Like, beauty shops, for instance.
I'm just going to say that for a second. My beauty shop, first of all,
you can't go in unless she took your temperature, right. And then you
have to fill out a little form if you've been traveling overseas before
she even lets you -- well, before. Anyway, before she even let you in
the shop. Well, those are nice little things to make sure that
everybody in there feels safe, but they're not all overcrowded either.
It's not like you have a huge group of people, and I doubt that you
have 10 people in there, so I think beauty shops might be one of the
things you want to open up.
There are others, I think, that make perfectly good sense, and
some people have said, you know, this is open, and we use it all the
time, and yet these are closed. Why can't you do the same thing?
And so those are common-sense things. But I would like to get
together and us, as decision makers, make that decision.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Solis.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: I think anytime that we have input
from people in the community it's good, especially the business
community. I think that, you know -- I guess he's left now. Mr.
Oakes is fond of saying that we'd be abdicating our decision-making
authority, which is totally ridiculous, by having this committee. But I
think -- I think having some feedback from the major employers,
different segments of the economy on what to do, what not to do, I
think, is always good for us to hear. We ultimately make the
decision. Because one of the things that I found surprising in
speaking with the people I would like to see on this committee is
whatever you do, don't open up the county and then have to shut it
down again.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Right.
April 28, 2020
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COMMISSIONER SOLIS: And that kind of surprised me that
that was the -- that was uniformly what they've said to me. Whatever
you do, do it very carefully, even if you do it slowly --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Right.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: -- so that you don't have to turn
around and back up and shut it down completely again because
there's a spike.
And so, you know, I think we will hear things that maybe we
wouldn't necessarily all think of here. So, I mean, I think we should
go ahead, and if we're going to make a decision to have one, let's at
least have it ready in the event that, depending on what the Governor
does, we need to start making some decisions really quickly, because
that's one of the things I think about is if the -- if the Governor either
just let's it expire or -- you know, we've heard kind of where he's
going with things, but until it happens, we don't know what -- how
we're going to have to react. I would like to just -- I think we could
go ahead and create it. If we don't need it, fine, but as Commissioner
Fiala said, it's better to be prepared than not prepared.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And that's why I brought it up,
because we may not have any authority at all.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Right.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: We don't know. On the other
hand, we may have a lot of authority. And we're going to want to be
in a position to exercise that authority if we have it as quickly as
possible. And that's why I thought that we would, perhaps, create a
committee today, indicate who we -- not necessarily individuals that
we thought would be on it, we could do that as well, but at least
categories of people so we would be ready to meet immediately with
that committee.
Commissioner Taylor.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: My understanding of the
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businesses in this community is they're already ready. They're
poised, ready to open. They know what they're doing with protocol.
They've paid attention to CDC. They're ready to go. So there may
need to be some coordination on a large area in terms of law
enforcement or -- and I don't even know if that's -- I'm sure they've
already figured this out.
So I kind of see that once he makes a decision, we call a
meeting. We come in here, we deal with it, and then go forward. I
don't see creating a committee, a task force.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. Well -- and I have
changed from the beginning when we went on with this. I do concur
that hearing from our community is important and that I think we, as
an organizing body, depending on what the Governor's orders, in fact,
are, can -- we can whip up a committee if we, in fact, need one. But
if we were to go -- if we were to do that now, it would be -- it's too
late now. I mean, if we were going to do that, we should have been
doing it the day after the CDC guidelines came out. We could have
then married up that plan from a local basis with the CDC guidelines
and then with the Governor's guidance.
But at this stage we are where we are because of the guidance
coming out of Tallahassee, and I think we should -- oh, yeah, by the
way, it's very good guidance. So it's -- I think -- I think we should
stay the course and maybe plan on an early meeting, depending on
when -- depending on when -- but this group get back together again
and go through those guidelines specifically and receive a report from
our enforcement authorities as to how folks are acting.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Commissioner Fiala, I'm
sorry, your --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay, fine. First thing is, maybe
we should choose that date to meet again right away, because then we
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can notify everybody; otherwise, we'd have to choose a date, and then
you have to make sure everybody is aware that we're going to have a
meeting. So just in advanced preparation we can do that.
Second thing is, one thing we didn't discuss today, but we all
discussed the fact that everybody wants the parks open, too, but we
didn't discuss it.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: We're going to get there.
(Simultaneous crosstalk.)
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: We're going to get to that.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, okay, good. Okay, good.
Thank you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: We have, you know, advisory
boards and a whole lot of issues that we need to resolve, and I just
thought we'd deal with the hard ones first, and...
All right. So my thought was that, you know, if we're late in
terms of setting up a committee, there's no point in making us more
late by waiting. So I don't disagree with you that we could have done
this a week ago, a month ago, but we haven't. And if the feeling is
that we're late in doing that, by delaying we're simply making us
more late in doing it.
So my thought was that we would create a committee, and we'll
have a vote on it. I think there's a majority that wants to go ahead
and at least get the concept together so we can move quickly. My
thought was -- and if you take out a pen and a piece of paper, let me
go through a list of categories that I thought might be who would be a
representative on this: Someone from NABOR, the board of realtors;
someone from the Chamber of Commerce, which would be Mr.
Dalby; a representative of the hotels and restaurants. Just one person;
a representative of the medical community. That could be someone
from NCH. It could be the Medical Society, but some medical expert
on there; someone from construction; and then we have a
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representative of the City of Naples; a representative of the City of
Marco; a representative of Everglades City; and a representative of
the County Commission.
I thought if we at least put this type of a committee together, just
in case we need it, that we could call a meeting of that committee
very quickly if it would be of any benefit. So those are sort of
categories.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: What would restaurants be under?
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I just had hotels and restaurants.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, okay.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: I think you could separate those.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. So we have someone
from hotels and someone from restaurants.
Commissioner Taylor, you --
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Yeah, I'd like to add somebody
from Immokalee. I think Immokalee is -- unless you're the
commissioner that's going to handle this task force, I think
Immokalee needs to be represented, and the reason being that they
are unto themselves and in so many ways uniquely positioned
because of the agriculture and also, understanding from
Mr. Summers, they're setting up a special testing area up there. For
those reasons, I think they need to be included on this.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Isn't agricultural already going on?
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes, it is.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Can I make a suggestion?
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Solis.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: I'll push my button if I need to. I
think there's -- some of the sectors that have been hardest hit should
be on here, for example, retail. I think that's -- next to the hotels have
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probably been the hardest hit.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Would the Chamber satisfy that
need? Again, if you have too many sectors, then you're going to have
25 people on a committee, and that's --
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Well, we've got one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Twelve.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: I think -- I mean, the Chamber
could represent all of it, but I just think that having -- I mean, it
would be -- if we separate out hotels and restaurants and we added
somebody from the retail sector, that'd be 11. I think that's a good
number.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Nonprofits need to be on this
committee.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Commissioner
McDaniel.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. We're heading down a
rabbit hole again. This is not requisite at this stage. We are operating
underneath the guidance from the CDC and the Governor's orders.
The Governor's going to, perceptively, lift the stay-at-home order as
of May the 1st. I think this board -- we don't have to -- I mean, by
the time -- by the time we all get done adding somebody into this
committee, we're going to be wore out just with instructions in five
minutes of who's doing what.
I don't disagree, Commissioner Solis, that having input from our
community is imperative, but I think we can do that as a board and as
a group and not appoint another bureaucratic committee that's going
to -- that could potentially be a waste of everyone's time.
Our community -- you know, the gating processes that we talk
about, our folks are pushing at the gate right now, and I think that the
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less bureaucracy that we put up in place in front of that and allow for
common-sense activities, reminding folks of the individual
responsibility to take care of themselves, I think, we would be better
off as a group.
I think we could pick a day, next Monday, that's fairly certain
the Governor will come off his -- the stay-at-home order, and the
guidance will have come from the Governor by then, maybe as early
as this Friday, just to give people sufficient notice for us to have
another meeting.
But either Friday or Monday, pick a date certain. And then if
we do anything, a small advisory group of -- I would rather see us set
up a some sort of an information portal where people who have
innovative ideas, business practices, that can, in fact, enhance health,
safety, and welfare, things that people are doing could be shared so
that we could, as Commissioner Taylor has said, better enhance the
safety of our community. So that's where I'm staying on that, so...
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. I think this has been a
good conversation. I can't disagree with the fact that we're going to
hear from the Governor in the next day or so and whether we need
this committee or not. I'm sort of going back, doing a 180.
We have at least a concept -- if we were going to create a
committee, at least we have a concept of who -- the types of
organizations we would want on that. We can meet in an emergency
basis, if necessary, with very little notice so we can satisfy that
problem of getting together quickly.
So why don't we -- why don't we hold off on the creation of a
committee. Keep in mind, if we do need to form one, we've got
categories that we've talked about, think about who you'd want to be
on that so that if we decide to call a meeting tomorrow based on an
order from the Governor tonight, that we would know in our own
minds who we'd like to have on this type of a committee if we need
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one, all right.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I think that that's great. Now what
you're doing is even addressing the people who need to get back to
work, and you're emphasizing that we get together, the five of us,
because we don't need anything else but just an announcement that
we're going to have a meeting. I agree.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And if I can make one quick
comment. Commissioner Taylor brought up the folks in Immokalee,
and I would like to remind everybody that we have a partners call,
and you're all welcome to join, every Tuesday at 4:00 with all of our
organizations in Immokalee that talks about the educational processes
that we have in place, the assistance processes that we have in place,
medical facilities, our Health Department, Healthcare Network and so
on. So by no means is Immokalee being left out of the equation.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Oh, I didn't mean to imply that
at all.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Oh, no, I didn't take -- I just
wanted to say it out loud.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Let's move on to the -- because
there are a couple of other things that we do need to decide.
I spoke with the Clerk yesterday concerning the Clerk's Satellite
Offices, and the constitutional officers have their own facilities. And
I think it would be appropriate for the Commission to basically say to
the constitutional officers, you have your facilities, you know what
the rules are. You're in control of when you want to open them and
how you want to open them. If that's okay with the Board, I think
that would be the direction to give to the constitutional officers.
The Clerk, Ms. Kinzel, is in the back. I don't know if you have a
microphone back there or not. And the question becomes, do you -- I
know you've got some satellite offices that you want to open. Do you
need any specific direction from us or just the kind of a general
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consensus that constitutional officers are running their own show?
THE CLERK: Thank you. I would appreciate that,
Commissioner.
We've been in close communication not only with the other
constitutional officers but obviously the Supreme Court Chief Justice.
The chief judge on the court-related functions, and we're working
with county facilities to do everything in conjunction with safety and
security for the public as well as our staff. We've got shielding and
masks, and we're begging for some sanitizer. But we'll have that
before we open.
But we're looking at probably Monday we would like to open a
little more. We've done a lot by appointment. We've been active
from the Clerk's Office during this whole thing with e-filing,
e-recording, processing as much as we can electronically, and we still
encourage that. That saves money. It saves time. Electronic is the
way to go. But for those people who do need to work on payment
plans for their fines and fees, we need to get them into a facility to
work with our staff. So, yes, we'd like to continue to work with the
other constitutionals as well as the County Manager's Office and
determine when our services should go ahead.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Well, let me just ask, is
there any objection to what we just said in terms of the constitutional
officers will determine how they're going to handle their facilities
going forward? Is there any objection to that?
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: That's very wise. I would agree.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. So you have your
direction there. I think we need to put something on the county web
page that when you open a facility, it should be on our county page,
too, so that people know. I think -- and the telephone number that we
have, was that a 211 number for information?
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: 311.
April 28, 2020
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CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: 311. I should have known that.
I've never used it. 311. So those folks need to know that if they want
to pay a fine and they call that number, Ms. Kinzel will be there to
collect their checks.
All right. I have on my short list the issue of our land-use
decisions and how we want to proceed with advisory boards. We've
shut all of that down. And I personally think that unless there's some
advisory board meetings that are necessary, we should still continue
to minimize those, but we do have an issue of land use and whether
or not we should -- we'll get to the parks in just a second.
On the -- is there a sense of what we should do in terms of
beginning to initiate our planning board meetings? We can do that
using Zoom or other technology.
So, Mr. Ochs, that's kind of a question for you and kind of a
question for the attorney, because now we are dealing with people's
abilities to develop and use their properties.
MR. KLATZKOW: Well, one of the things you did this
morning on the consent agenda was approve a process where people
could -- the advisory boards can meet electronically, so that's been
taken care of.
The question now is a policy standpoint on which advisory
boards you want to open. On the one hand, it would be nice to get
the business of the county restarted. On the other hand, a big point of
land use is that it requires public participation from the
neighborhood. And I know we're not doing NIMs right now, and I
wouldn't suggest we start them. And I don't know how many people
are comfortable coming out of their homes and participating in the
process.
I mean, I know my neighborhood, half the people have just
locked themselves inside and won't leave for anything. I mean, I
literally delivered a package to my landlord last night, and he just
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waved at me. Just leave there.
So I don't know. It's really up to the Board as a question of
policy what you want to do.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. So any thoughts from
the Commission?
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Yeah.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Yeah, I think that -- I think we
should definitely move towards slowly re-opening, but to have NIMs
and to have the most controversial issues that are facing us that are in
the pipeline right now and expect people to weigh in on an even basis
and a fair basis is just putting too much burden on an individual and
their concern about their personal safety. That doesn't mean we don't
look at it in two weeks.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. I don't disagree with
that.
Commissioner Solis?
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: You know, I want to look at this in
terms of what we were presented as to how to make these decisions,
right? We had this grid. We have these phases that have been
recommended by the federal government. We had testimony today
that we didn't meet Phase 1. We have thrown that out the window. I
don't think -- I think incorrectly, because we are relying upon the
experts in this field.
I don't think that we're in a position, based upon the data and the
way this is supposed to work, to make any other decisions about
opening things up.
The beach is a different thing. I agree we should open up the
beaches. I voted against it because I didn't think we should create
areas that are intended to bring people to congregate.
But, you know, I don't think we've met Phase 1 based upon the
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statements that I heard today. So I don't think we're in a position to
make that kind of a decision and create situations where either people
won't come to a hearing that will affect them because of the
pandemic or will come, and then we have a different issue.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. Why don't we revisit that.
Commissioner McDaniel.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. Well -- and I think -- I
don't agree with Commissioner Solis with regard for the rationale as
to why not to have these meetings, but I believe that we're going to be
able to acquire more data and see how things go with regard to our
opening-up processes. I don't think we should incent congregations
within buildings and the like at this stage, but I believe that we're
going to have and should have more regular meetings with regard to
how and what we should be doing as business practices.
We're currently operating under the guidelines of the CDC and
that that's recommended to us by the Governor, which don't incent
groups of more than 10 to be able to be congregating inside a facility.
So the -- I don't think we're ready to start having land-use
meetings and the like; neighborhood information meetings and the
like. I think the Governor will give -- I hope, anyway. I hope we'll
get some guidance. He's already given guidance on how we can have
public meetings and attend telephonically and electronically and the
like that -- and as the evolution of this process transpires, we'll be
able to get to those things and get to them in short order.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. And we're meeting every
two weeks, so we can revisit this at the end of May.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Right. Maybe Friday if we
meet again. Friday or Monday.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Well -- and that brings us to
another issue. As we're meeting -- we're going back to our normal
April 28, 2020
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schedule of meetings, I'd like to see if we can -- if there's support on
the Commission that we don't have a state-of-emergency declaration
anymore, that we go back where we have regular meetings, and that
the decisions will be made as we always have before the state of
emergency.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I think two points I would make on
that. The issue of meeting remotely is in the Governor's order, and so
until that's rescinded, we have that ability to comply with it or not. I
mean, we don't have to. But that's the Governor's order, not ours.
And, secondly, in terms of the emergency declaration, that's to
assist us in being able to get federal funds because of the declaration
of an emergency. It doesn't have any practical effect on how we do
business. And that's kind of a question for Mr. Ochs. I want to make
sure that that's not an incorrect statement.
MR. OCHS: Well, it does have some potential implications for
doing business. Part of that order, at the Board's direction, allowed
me to process certain contracts for goods and services in your
absence. And now that we're getting back to a regular board meeting
schedule, that shouldn't be much of an issue.
The other thing is -- and, Jeff, help me if I'm misstating this, but
I believe we link the duration of your local state of emergency to the
state's state of emergency so that they would end or run concurrently.
MR. KLATZKOW: Yes. That's what we did, because normally
a local state of emergency only last seven days.
MR. OCHS: So I would recommend that when the state
terminates their order, yours will automatically terminate as a
function of what you did previously.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Okay. That's fine.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. And my thoughts are in
that regard, I like the idea of us staying with our state of emergency,
April 28, 2020
Page 122
but I would like to clarify procedurally that no unilateral decisions
are made and that even in decision-making processes that are done in
absentia, they come back to this board for ultimate discussion and
ratification so that we're not -- this isn't a -- this isn't a hurricane.
I spoke with Jeff about this yesterday. This isn't a place and
time where phones are off, power's off, and all we can get to is the
Chairman of the Board. All of us are able to be reached and
communicated with and polled, necessarily, as to decision and things
that come up. So I just want to -- if, in fact, we need to amend the
existing emergency declaration to ensure that that is continually --
going to continue to transpire, then -- and -- or if what we have is
okay, then let's leave it alone and just leave it.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I think what we have is okay. The
Manager's not going to take advantage of that. The fact we're
meeting every two weeks now --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Never.
MR. OCHS: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I wasn't suggesting --
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: No, no. I just don't think there's
any need to amend the order at this point unless there's -- a majority
of the Board wants to.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I think having it in place
allows us to qualify for funding --
MR. OCHS: Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- and things that may come
from the federal and state government, so...
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Exactly.
All right. Then the last thing on my list -- it's actually
Commissioner Fiala's list -- is how do we deal with our parks. The
current situation with our parks is that they're basically open without
any organized activities except for pools are closed, the centers are
April 28, 2020
Page 123
closed, but people can go out there and walk and hike and whatever
types of activities they want to do outdoors following the CDC
guidelines. The question I think you're asking now is do we need to
open our parks even more than they already are. And perhaps you
could kind of tell us where we are with our parks and how that's
been --
MR. OCHS: Sure. You hit it on the head, sir. My
recommendation to the Board would be, you know, effective this
Thursday, that you authorize me to begin to re-open elements of your
parks, primarily your playing fields and your hard courts, while still
maintaining social distancing regulations that are in the CDC
guidance.
I wouldn't recommend opening aquatic facilities or any of your
gymnasiums or fitness centers or indoor spaces at this point, but I
would tell you that we're working on those plans, and we can bring
those forward perhaps at your May 12th meeting and give you a
sense of, again, with the Governor's update, when we might be able
to make those recommendations to the Board.
But, again, I would like to move as soon as this Thursday to
begin opening playing fields and your hard courts in some of your
park facilities.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. Commissioner Taylor -- I
mean, I'm sorry, Commissioner McDaniel was first.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: No. And I -- he brought up
two points, and it wasn't clear in my motion as far as the opening of
our beaches and parks on Thursday. Is that Wednesday night at
midnight, or is that Thursday morning, or what's the time?
MR. OCHS: The parks open at dawn and close at dusk.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And our beaches?
MR. OCHS: Those are your beach parks. I'm sorry.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay.
April 28, 2020
Page 124
MR. OCHS: Your parks -- I'm looking at Mr. Carnell because I
don't want to --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Parks and rec. Just to be clear
for the community so that we're not misleading people.
MR. OCHS: Park hours, Steve?
MR. CARNELL: Yeah. Right now we're opening sunrise to
8:00 p.m.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. So Thursday morning
at sunrise is when we could actually see those openings transpires?
MR. OCHS: Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. Going back around
to --
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I have a question for Steve, so don't
leave. Go ahead. I didn't want to interrupt you, but...
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: That's all right.
I agree with the Manager with regard to --
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Steve, you need to social distance
from the Sheriff.
MR. OCHS: For your own good, Steve.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Somebody remind me what I
was talking about.
MR. OCHS: You agreed with the County Manager. I always
remember that part.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: You remembered that part.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Oh, yeah, that's right. I agree
with County Manager. That's what it is.
I think we ought to hold off on our gymnasiums and indoor
facilities for a minute but allow for the hard courts and our fields and
such to be opened back up again as long as people are abiding by the
guidelines that are set forth. The boys can't play five on five.
They've got to do three on three, and those that are waiting for their
April 28, 2020
Page 125
turn to play, six feet apart and stay off to the side, so -- and I think
we'll be able to get there.
You know, I don't -- I really -- I have a lot of confidence in our
community and their capacities to be able to abide by the guidelines
that are set forth.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. Commissioner Taylor.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: So I'm going to put in my little
two cents here. Aquatic facilities, you could allow lap swimming.
That could continue. You don't have to allow the playground to be
open and whatnot. But I'm assuming the parks you're talking about --
are we talking about playgrounds opening?
MR. OCHS: No.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: No. So you wouldn't have to
have the aquatic playground, and that would help a lot. But lap
swimmers are notoriously solitary, and they -- by the time they finish,
you know, their 50 laps, they're so tired they don't talk to anyone. So
I'm thinking that perhaps we could start lap swimming. And it is
chlorine they're immersed in also.
MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Does that help? It helps. Okay.
We heard it. CDC says it helps.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: That's if you stay under water for
more than 30 minutes, and then that kills the virus. It kills the host,
but it kills the virus.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: You're in the water for more
than 30 -- you're in the water for about an hour.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Fiala.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Steve, you had said that the parks
will close at 8:00, but a lot of these soccer games over at Eagle Lakes
don't even start until after dinner, and they're always gone -- going
until it gets dark. In fact, even after it's dark. They use the lights.
April 28, 2020
Page 126
Will they not be able to then play their soccer games?
MR. CARNELL: Well, ma'am, we're not recommending that
anybody be playing soccer games at this time with competitive
games. What I think we're contemplating is opening the fields, 10
people or fewer at a time on the fields and socially distanced. And
what we're seeing in other counties that are re-opening their parks,
they're putting that specific limit of no competitive activities. But
more what you were alluding to, Commissioner, three on three,
spaced-out activities. Almost like individual practice, because that's
what keeps people six feet apart.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Can I get the Manager or,
Mr. Carnell, get you to concisely tell us what you want to do with the
parks, what you want to be open and what you want to be closed, and
then we can make a motion to effectuate what you guys are saying
that you want to do.
MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. Again, our recommendation was to open
the hard courts and the playing fields subject to the social distancing
requirements in the Governor executive order beginning Thursday
morning.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: So moved.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: So moved.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: And the playgrounds are open, too?
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: No.
MR. OCHS: No, ma'am.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Pools are closed. Everything's
closed except for what he -- that's why I wanted him to clarify exactly
what would be open.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Dog parks?
MR. CARNELL: Not yet, but we could include that if you'd
like.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Fine.
April 28, 2020
Page 127
MR. CARNELL: It wasn't in the original recommendation.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: What about the children?
MR. OCHS: I'd just keep it to the recommendation I gave you.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Let's get back to, okay,
what it is that you want us to do, specifically.
MR. OCHS: Yes.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And then we already have a
motion, but let's go ahead and restate it, and it just what you've said.
MR. OCHS: Yes. Our recommendation is to open the hard
courts and the playing fields subject to CDC and Governor's
executive order social distancing requirements beginning this
Thursday morning.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And you have the ability to enforce
that?
MR. OCHS: Yes, sir, and that goes back to some of -- the point
about opening some of these other things. We're moving people from
those areas to help us with enforcing beaches and these other areas
we'd like to open.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I believe Commissioner Solis had
made a motion to accept that; is that correct?
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Yes.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And was there a second?
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. He beat me.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: There was a second on the motion.
Commissioner Fiala.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes, on the motion -- and in a
couple of our parks they don't have all of these other things. They
only have a playground. And where will the children go then?
We've got --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: We're not going to open up
the playgrounds yet. We can't do that --
April 28, 2020
Page 128
COMMISSIONER FIALA: I hear that. What do the kids do in
the park?
MR. OCHS: Commissioners, if I could get till your next board
meeting to develop some additional plans and figure out where we're
going to get the janitorial services to do the kind of cleaning on hard
playground surfaces that's required, I'll bring that all back to you on
the 12th.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. We have a motion and a
second. It's a very limited motion in terms of continuing our park
operations. All those in favor, signify by saying aye.
COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Aye.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Aye.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Aye.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Aye.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Aye.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All opposed, signify by saying no.
(No response.)
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: That passes unanimously.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: No, I'm not going to say no, but I
need to talk to Leo after we leave here.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. You can always do that. So
you said yes, so the motion passed.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes, I said yes.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. The motion passed
unanimously.
Okay. That was my list of things that we needed to discuss
today. Does anybody have anything else from the Commission?
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I think we're good.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: So we're going to be meeting again
at the call of the Manager and the Chairman in terms of an
emergency meeting after the Governor issues his order. We'll
April 28, 2020
Page 129
probably have to have a meeting --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: We should.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: -- to discuss that. Our homework
is, if we do decide to create a committee, we're going to have an idea
who we want to be on that committee.
I want to -- and there may be some closing comments from the
Commission, but I want to -- my closing comment is that there has
been a misconception -- and I've mentioned it once today. I'm going
to mention it again -- and that is that Collier County businesses are
closed because of Collier County Government. That's not the case.
Businesses are closed in Florida right now because of the Governor's
order, and we're complying with the order, and the citizens of Collier
County have done a fantastic job of social distancing, and we're
going to continue social distancing.
What we've done today is we've opened our beaches. If there's a
problem on the beaches, I'll be the first to call the emergency meeting
to close down our parking facilities. So the citizens of Collier
County need to exercise social distancing, or we're going to have to
re-think what we've done.
The only other thing that we've done today is basically open
some more facilities at our parks or more opportunities at our parks.
And I think that's all been very proactive and very positive stuff.
Anybody else have any other comments you want to make
before we adjourn? Commissioner McDaniel.
Item #15
STAFF AND COMMISSION GENERAL COMMUNICATIONS
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well, commissioner
comments, and it's just -- I'm going to -- and it has to do with what
April 28, 2020
Page 130
we were talking about with land-use items and the like. At our next
meeting, not the emergency meeting that we have to talk about the
Governor's order and particularly with regard to the opening, but I'm
going -- I want you to be thinking about this -- and I know your
stuff's already packed, but I'm going to make a -- bring forward a
resolution to extend our meetings through the summer and not take
our typical summer break off and allow for -- yeah.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: Excuse me.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: She's already not feeling
good. But I just want you to start thinking about that and how you
can add that in. At our next meeting I'm going to bring forward that
in an executive summary so we can come to a consensus there.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Anything else?
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Yeah, just --
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: -- one thing. In the history, in
past, not with me on this commission, but in the past they have had
meetings that have lasted more than one day. So there is that
opportunity also.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Sure.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Okay.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And I will resist with the last
breath in my body two-day commission meetings.
COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Oh. That's good. So we'll get a
lot of work done.
COMMISSIONER FIALA: What did you say, resist with --
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: With the last breath in my body to
have a two-day county commission meeting.
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: You've done those before,
haven't you?
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: No. I've never done a county
April 28, 2020
Page 131
commission meeting that lasted that long. Other commissioners did
that, and --
COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Oh, okay. We don't need to
have that.
CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And I think that was -- I think that
was crazy. We are adjourned.
*****
**** Commissioner Solis moved, seconded by Commissioner
Fiala and carried that the following items under the Consent and
Summary Agendas be approved and/or adopted ****
Item #16A1
RECORDING THE FINAL PLAT OF ESPLANADE GOLF AND
COUNTRY CLUB OF NAPLES HATCHER PARCEL,
(APPLICATION NUMBER PL20190001680) APPROVAL OF THE
STANDARD FORM CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE
AGREEMENT AND APPROVAL OF THE AMOUNT OF THE
PERFORMANCE SECURITY – W/STIPULATIONS
Item #16A2
RECORDING THE MINOR FINAL PLAT OF VINCENT ACRES
REPLAT, APPLICATION NUMBER PL20190001665 –
W/STIPULATIONS
Item #16A3
RECORDING THE AMENDED FINAL PLAT OF MANATEE
April 28, 2020
Page 132
COVE (APPLICATION NUMBER PL20190002421) APPROVAL
OF THE STANDARD FORM CONSTRUCTION AND
MAINTENANCE AGREEMENT AND APPROVAL OF THE
AMOUNT OF THE PERFORMANCE SECURITY –
W/STIPULATIONS
Item #16A4
RECORDING THE MINOR FINAL PLAT OF AZURE AT
HACIENDA LAKES – PHASE 2 LOTS 178-199, APPLICATION
NUMBER PL20200000024 – LOCATED OFF COLLIER
BOULEVARD/RATTLESNAKE HAMMOCK ROAD
Item #16A5
RECORDING THE MINOR FINAL PLAT OF HAMILTON
PLACE - REPLAT, APPLICATION NUMBER PL20200000101
Item #16A6
RECORDING THE FINAL PLAT OF THE CAREER PATHWAY
LEARNING LAB, (APPLICATION NUMBER PL20190000473)
APPROVAL OF THE STANDARD FORM CONSTRUCTION
AND MAINTENANCE AGREEMENT AND APPROVAL OF THE
AMOUNT OF THE PERFORMANCE SECURITY – LOCATED
OFF OF NEW MARKET ROAD, IMMOKALEE, FLORIDA
Item #16A7
FINAL ACCEPTANCE OF POTABLE WATER AND SEWER
FACILITIES, AND ACCEPTING CONVEYANCE OF A
April 28, 2020
Page 133
PORTION OF POTABLE WATER FACILITIES FOR VANDERBILT COMMONS LOT 3 PHASE 2, PL20190002287 – A FINAL INSPECTION TO DISCOVER DEFECTS IN MATERIAL AND WORKMANSHIP WAS CONDUCTED BY STAFF ON DECEMBER 4, 2019, IN COORDINATION WITH PUBLIC UTILITIES, AND THE FACILITIES WERE FOUND TO
BE SATISFACTORY AND ACCEPTABLE
Item #16A8
FINAL ACCEPTANCE AND ACCEPTING CONVEYANCE OF
POTABLE WATER AND SEWER UTILITY FACILITIES FOR
NAPLES RESERVE CIRCLE, PL20180002717 AND
AUTHORIZING THE COUNTY MANAGER, OR HIS DESIGNEE,
TO RELEASE THE FINAL OBLIGATION BOND IN THE
AMOUNT OF $4,000 TO THE PROJECT ENGINEER OR
DEVELOPER’S DESIGNATED AGENT – A FINAL INSPECTION
TO DISCOVER DEFECTS IN MATERIAL AND
WORKMANSHIP WAS CONDUCTED BY DEVELOPMENT
REVIEW STAFF ON FEBRUARY 24, 2020, IN COORDINATION
WITH PUBLIC UTILITIES, AND THE FACILITIES WERE
FOUND TO BE SATISFACTORY AND ACCEPTABLE
Item #16A9
FINAL ACCEPTANCE AND ACCEPTING CONVEYANCE OF
POTABLE WATER AND SEWER UTILITY FACILITIES FOR
WINDING CYPRESS PHASE 2B, PL20170001128 AND TO
AUTHORIZE THE COUNTY MANAGER, OR HIS DESIGNEE,
TO RELEASE THE FINAL OBLIGATION BOND IN THE
AMOUNT OF $4,000 TO THE PROJECT ENGINEER OR THE ~ er,
April 28, 2020
Page 134
DEVELOPER’S DESIGNATED AGENT
Item #16A10
FINAL ACCEPTANCE OF POTABLE WATER AND SEWER
FACILITIES FOR CREEKSIDE CORNERS AT CREEKSIDE
EAST, PL20160000024, ACCEPT THE CONVEYANCE OF A
PORTION OF POTABLE WATER AND SEWER FACILITIES,
AND AUTHORIZE THE COUNTY MANAGER, OR HIS
DESIGNEE, TO RELEASE THE UTILITIES PERFORMANCE
SECURITY (UPS) AND FINAL OBLIGATION BOND IN THE
TOTAL AMOUNT OF $26,687.72 TO THE PROJECT ENGINEER
OR DEVELOPER’S DESIGNATED AGENT – A FINAL
INSPECTION TO DISCOVER DEFECTS IN MATERIAL AND
WORKMANSHIP WAS CONDUCTED BY STAFF ON MARCH 6,
2020, IN COORDINATION WITH PUBLIC UTILITIES, AND THE
FACILITIES WERE FOUND TO BE SATISFACTORY AND
ACCEPTABLE
Item #16A11
FINAL ACCEPTANCE OF POTABLE WATER AND SEWER
UTILITY FACILITIES AND ACCEPT THE CONVEYANCE OF A
PORTION OF THE POTABLE WATER AND SEWER UTILITY
FACILITIES FOR HEALTHCARE NETWORK OF SOUTHWEST
FLORIDA NICHOLS COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER,
PL20190002129 – LOCATED ON COLLIER BOULEVARD
Item #16A12
FINAL ACCEPTANCE OF POTABLE WATER AND SEWER
April 28, 2020
Page 135
FACILITIES FOR DAVIS BOULEVARD SELF STORAGE,
PL20190000073, ACCEPT THE CONVEYANCE OF A PORTION
OF SEWER FACILITIES, AND TO AUTHORIZE THE COUNTY
MANAGER, OR HIS DESIGNEE, TO RELEASE THE UTILITIES
PERFORMANCE SECURITY (UPS) AND FINAL OBLIGATION
BOND IN THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF $18,806.16 TO THE
PROJECT ENGINEER OR DEVELOPER’S DESIGNATED
AGENT – A FINAL INSPECTION TO DISCOVER DEFECTS IN
MATERIAL AND WORKMANSHIP WAS CONDUCTED BY
STAFF ON MARCH 23, 2020, IN COORDINATION WITH
PUBLIC UTILITIES, AND THE FACILITIES WERE FOUND TO
BE SATISFACTORY AND ACCEPTABLE
Item #16A13
RESOLUTION 2020-66: FINAL ACCEPTANCE OF PUBLIC
ROADWAY AND DRAINAGE IMPROVEMENTS FOR A
PORTION OF THAT ROADWAY KNOWN AS WOODCREST
DRIVE, LOCATED BETWEEN ACREMAKER ROAD AND
TREE FARM ROAD, APPROXIMATELY 1,000 FEET OF TWO-
LANE ROADWAY, PERMIT NO. PRROW20190204809
Item #16A14
RESOLUTION 2020-67: FINAL ACCEPTANCE OF PRIVATE
ROADWAY AND DRAINAGE IMPROVEMENTS FOR THE
FINAL PLAT OF BENT CREEK PRESERVE (PHASE 1),
APPLICATION NUMBER PL20120001267, AND AUTHORIZE
THE RELEASE OF THE MAINTENANCE SECURITY
Item #16A15
~~ ~~
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April 28, 2020
Page 136
AUTHORIZING THE CLERK OF COURTS TO RELEASE A PERFORMANCE BOND IN THE AMOUNT OF $38,360 WHICH WAS POSTED AS A GUARANTY FOR EXCAVATION PERMIT NUMBER PL20170002567 FOR WORK ASSOCIATED WITH MOORINGS PARK AT GRANDE LAKE – PHASE ONE
Item #16A16
AUTHORIZING THE CLERK OF COURTS TO RELEASE A
PERFORMANCE BOND IN THE AMOUNT OF $25,000 WHICH
WAS POSTED AS A GUARANTY FOR EXCAVATION PERMIT
NUMBER PL20180003258 FOR WORK ASSOCIATED WITH
MOORINGS PARK AT GRANDE LAKE – PHASE TWO
Item #16A17
AWARDING INVITATION TO BID NO. 20-7681, “MOTOROLA
IRRIGATION CENTRAL CONTROL SYSTEM PARTS AND
SERVICES” TO CONTEMPORARY CONTROLS &
COMMUNICATIONS, INC. – TO PROVIDE TECHNICAL
SUPPORT, SERVICE, TRAINING, PARTS, AND EQUIPMENT
FOR THE COUNTY’S IRRIGATION SYSTEM, MOTOROLA ™
ICC PRO
Item #16A18 – Continued to the May 12, 2020 BCC Meeting
(Per Agenda Change Sheet)
RECOMMENDATION TO AWARD AGREEMENT NO. 14-6213-
135, GOODLETTE ROAD WEST BANK PILOT PROJECT, TO
QUALITY ENTERPRISES USA, INC., IN THE AMOUNT OF ~ ~
April 28, 2020
Page 137
$426,100.30 FOR THE GOODLETTE ROAD WEST BANK
STABILIZATION - PILOT PROJECT, AUTHORIZING
NECESSARY BUDGET AMENDMENTS, AND AUTHORIZING
THE CHAIRMAN TO SIGN THE WORK ORDER. (PROJECT NO.
50186) – TO PROVIDE EROSION CONTROL AND BANK
STABILIZATION IN A SECTION OF THE STORMWATER
CONVEYANCE DITCH LOCATED ON THE WEST SIDE OF
GOODLETTE FRANK ROAD BETWEEN POMPEI LANE AND
GRANADA BOULEVARD, AS A PILOT PROJECT
Item #16A19
THE COLLIER COUNTY FLOODPLAIN MANAGEMENT PLAN
2018 AND 2019 PROGRESS REPORT, AND APPROVING THE
PROPOSED ACTION PLAN FOR 2020 AND DIRECTING THE
COUNTY MANAGER OR DESIGNEE TO INSERT IT INTO THE
EFFECTIVE FLOODPLAIN MANAGEMENT PLAN – STAFF
PROVIDES THIS ANNUAL REPORT TO KEEP THE BOARD
INFORMED OF PROGRESS WITH REGARDS TO FLOODPLAIN
MANAGEMENT WITHIN THE COUNTY
Item #16A20
AWARDING INVITATION TO BID NO. 20-7705 “MULCH AND
INSTALLATION SERVICES” TO FORESTRY RESOURCES,
LLC, D/B/A THE MULCH AND SOIL COMPANY, AS THE
PRIMARY VENDOR, AND SOUTHEAST SPREADING
COMPANY, LLC, AS THE SECONDARY VENDOR AND
AUTHORIZE THE CHAIRMAN TO SIGN THE AGREEMENTS –
TO INSTALL MULCH WITHIN COUNTY MAINTAINED
FACILITIES, ROADWAY MEDIANS, AND RIGHT-OF-WAY
~~
~
~
:i~
~; --
April 28, 2020
Page 138
Item #16A21
A SHORT-LIST OF PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING
CONSULTANTS PURSUANT TO REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL
(RFP) #19-7599, DESIGN SERVICES FOR LOCAL AGENCY
PROGRAM (LAP) FUNDED PROJECTS AND TO AUTHORIZE
ENTERING INTO NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN COLLIER
COUNTY AND CAPITAL CONSULTING SOLUTIONS, FOR
"ENGINEERING & DESIGN SERVICES FOR LAP FUNDED
PROJECTS", GROWTH MANAGEMENT GRANT FUND 711 –
AS DETAILED IN THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Item #16A22
ACKNOWLEDGING AN ALLOCATION OF SURFACE
TRANSPORTATION-URBAN (“SU”) FUNDS TO THE COLLIER
METROPOLITAN PLANNING ORGANIZATION (“COLLIER
MPO”) IN THE AMOUNT OF $200,000, AND AUTHORIZE THE
NECESSARY BUDGET AMENDMENTS – TO PREPARE THE
2045 LONG RANGE TRANSPORTATION PLAN (LRTP)
Item #16A23
SELECTION COMMITTEE RANKINGS FOR REQUEST FOR
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES (“RPS”) NO. 19-7639R, “CEI
SERVICES FOR GATOR CANAL BRIDGE REPLACEMENT
(BRIDGE NUMBER 030160),” AND AUTHORIZING STAFF TO
BEGIN CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS WITH TOP-RANKED
FIRM, HARDESTY & HANOVER CONSTRUCTION SERVICES
LLC – THE BRIDGE IS EXPERIENCING EXPONENTIAL
~~ ~~
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April 28, 2020
Page 139
TIMBER PILE DECAY
Item #16A24
CREATING AND FUNDING A PILOT PROGRAM FOR SPEED
FEEDBACK SIGNS IN THE GOLDEN GATE ESTATES
COMMUNITY – A BUDGET AMENDMENT IS REQUIRED TO
FUND THE PURCHASE OF TEN (10) DRIVER FEEDBACK
SIGNS AT THE COST OF $10,000 EACH AND TWO YEAR OF
ANNUAL MAINTENANCE AT A COST OF $10,000 PER YEAR
Item #16A25
RELEASE OF FOUR (4) CODE ENFORCEMENT LIENS, WITH
AN ACCRUED VALUE OF $527,564.40 FOR PAYMENT OF
$964.40, IN CODE ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS ENTITLED
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS V. PEE-WEE’S
DUMPSTERS, INC., CODE ENFORCEMENT BOARD CASE
NOS. CESD20120014608, CELU20120014618,
CEOCC20150022849, AND CEOCC20160012333, RELATING TO
PROPERTY LOCATED AT 721 LOGAN BLVD. S., COLLIER
COUNTY, FLORIDA – FOR PROPERTY IN FORECLOSURE
AND LATER ACQUIRED AT AUCTION BY CDL NAPLES
INVESTMENT, LLC, VIA CERTIFICATE OF TITLE
Item #16A26
AUTHORIZING THE CLERK OF COURTS TO RELEASE A
PERFORMANCE BOND IN THE AMOUNT OF $15,000 WHICH
WAS POSTED AS A GUARANTY FOR WORK WITHIN THE
COUNTY RIGHT-OF-WAY; PERMIT PRROW2018010071601 –
April 28, 2020
Page 140
FOR WORK ASSOCIATED WITH WIRELESS FACILITIES
Item #16A27
ACCEPTING A SUB-AWARD AND GRANT AGREEMENT
H0452 WITH THE FLORIDA DIVISION OF EMERGENCY
MANAGEMENT (FDEM) FOR FUNDING IN THE AMOUNT OF
$72,000 UNDER THE FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
AGENCY (FEMA) HAZARD MITIGATION GRANT PROGRAM
FOR THE DESIGN OF FREEDOM PARK DRAINAGE
IMPROVEMENTS AND AUTHORIZE NECESSARY BUDGET
AMENDMENTS – PROPOSED IMPROVEMENTS WILL HELP
ALLEVIATE FLOODING WITHIN THE UPPER GORDON
RIVER BASIN
Item #16A28
ACCEPTING SUB-AWARD AND GRANT AGREEMENT H0469
WITH FLORIDA DIVISION OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
(FDEM) FOR FUNDING IN THE AMOUNT OF $112,500 UNDER
THE FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY
(FEMA) HAZARD MITIGATION GRANT PROGRAM FOR THE
DESIGN OF THE PINE RIDGE ESTATES SUBDIVISION
DRAINAGE IMPROVEMENTS AND AUTHORIZE NECESSARY
BUDGET AMENDMENTS – PROPOSED IMPROVEMENTS
WILL HELP ALLEVIATE FLOODING WITHIN THE PINE
RIDGE ESTATES SUBDIVISION
Item #16A29
ACCEPTING SUB-AWARD AND GRANT AGREEMENT H0459
April 28, 2020
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WITH FLORIDA DIVISION OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
(FDEM) FOR FUNDING IN THE AMOUNT OF $66,000 UNDER
THE FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY
(FEMA) HAZARD MITIGATION GRANT PROGRAM FOR THE
DESIGN OF THE UPPER GORDON RIVER CHANNEL
IMPROVEMENTS AND AUTHORIZE NECESSARY BUDGET
AMENDMENTS – PROPOSED IMPROVEMENTS WILL HELP
ALLEVIATE FLOODING WITHIN THE UPPER GORDON
RIVER BASIN
Item #16A30 – Withdrawn (Per Agenda Change Sheet)
RECOMMENDATION TO ADOPT A RESOLUTION OF THE
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF COLLIER
COUNTY, FLORIDA AMENDING THE ADMINISTRATIVE
CODE FOR LAND DEVELOPMENT, WHICH WAS CREATED
BY ORDINANCE NO. 2013-57; AND PROVIDING AN
EFFECTIVE DATE
Item #16A31
ACCEPTING GULF CONSORTIUM SUBRECIPIENT
AGREEMENT NO. 200097221.01 UNDER THE RESTORE ACT
SPILL IMPACT COMPONENT AND THE STATE OF FLORIDA
STATE EXPENDITURE PLAN (POT 3) FOR MONITORING OF
THE COLLIER COUNTY COMPREHENSIVE WATERSHED
IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM AND CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS
FOR THE NORTH BELLE MEADE DRAINAGE AND ROAD
NETWORK AREA FOR THE COMBINED AMOUNT OF
$775,760 AND AUTHORIZE THE NECESSARY BUDGET
AMENDMENT (PROJECT NO. 33673) – AS DETAILED IN THE
April 28, 2020
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Item #16A32
A RESTORATION AND SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT
BETWEEN WINCHESTER LAND, LLC AND COLLIER
COUNTY TO RESOLVE A PENDING CODE ENFORCEMENT
CASE – TO ADDRESS OVER-EXCAVATION ON THE
PROPERTY FROM MINING ACTIVITIES AND RESOLVE
PENDING CODE ENFORCEMENT CASE CESD20180014546
Item #16A33
AWARDING A WORK ORDER TO KYLE CONSTRUCTION,
INC., UNDER AGREEMENT NO. 14-6213, FOR THE LELY
GOLF ESTATES STORMWATER IMPROVEMENT PROJECT,
IN THE AMOUNT OF $103,670 (PROJECT NO. 60224) AND
AUTHORIZE THE NECESSARY BUDGET AMENDMENT –
LOCATED ON THE EAST SIDE OF BIG SPRINGS DRIVE
Item #16A34
TERMINATION OF A UTILITY EASEMENT, ACQUIRED FOR
SANITARY SEWER UTILITY FACILITIES ASSOCIATED WITH
CIRCLE K STORE NO. 3860, PL20190000401 – CONVEYED IN
ERROR AND NOT NEEDED FOR THE CIRCLE K PROJECT
Item #16B1
THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS, ACTING AS
THE COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY BOARD,
April 28, 2020
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RECOGNIZE RECEIPT OF SETTLEMENT PROCEEDS,
APPROVE THE PREPAYMENT OF CRA TAXABLE NOTE,
SERIES 2017, PRINCIPAL IN THE AMOUNT OF $360,000 AND
AUTHORIZE NECESSARY BUDGET AMENDMENTS – TO
UTILIZE SETTLEMENT PROCEEDS FROM LAWSUITS
STYLED BAYSHORE-MARCO ISLAND, LLC V. CRA, NAPLES
FUNDING, LLC V. CRA, AND LENDEQUITY, LLC V. CRA; THE
SETTLEMENT RESULTED IN THE PAYMENT OF $24,000 FOR
15 LAND SALE PARCELS
Item #16B2
THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS, ACTING AS
THE COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY BOARD,
APPROVE AND AUTHORIZE THE CHAIRMAN TO EXECUTE
A SHORELINE STABILIZATION GRANT AGREEMENT
BETWEEN THE COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY
AND DENNIS SAMBLANET, “DENNIS J. SAMBLANET AND
KATHLEEN J. RILEY, AS TRUSTEES OF THE SAMBLANET-
RILEY JOINT REVOCABLE TRUST DATED, MAY 24TH, 2019”
IN THE AMOUNT OF $5,000 FOR THE PROPERTY LOCATED
AT 2998 POPLAR STREET NAPLES FLORIDA 34112 LOCATED
WITHIN THE BAYSHORE GATEWAY TRIANGLE
COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AREA – AS DETAILED IN
THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Item #16C1
AWARDING FOUR AGREEMENTS FOR REQUEST FOR
QUALIFICATION ("RFQ") #19-7622, “ANNUAL AGREEMENT
FOR WASTEWATER PUMP STATIONS REPAIR AND
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RENOVATION,” TO: QUALITY ENTERPRISES USA, INC.,
DOUGLAS N. HIGGINS, INC., PRECISION LIFT STATIONS,
INC., AND US WATER SERVICES CORPORATION, AND
AUTHORIZE THE CHAIRMAN TO SIGN THE AGREEMENTS –
ROUTINE WASTEWATER PUMP STATION RENOVATION
FOR MAINTAINING 903 WASTEWATER PUMP STATIONS
Item #16C2
AWARDING A $502,447.35 WORK ORDER UNDER
AGREEMENT NO. 14-6213 TO QUALITY ENTERPRISES USA,
INC., TO INSTALL AN 8” HDPE FORCEMAIN PIPE TO
CONVEY LEACHATE FROM THE EXISTING COLLIER
COUNTY LANDFILL LEACHATE MASTER PUMP STATION
TO THE NEW DEEP INJECTION WELL LOCATED IN THE
RESOURCE RECOVERY BUSINESS PARK AND AUTHORIZE
THE CHAIRMAN TO SIGN THE WORK ORDER – THE
PROJECT CONSISTS OF MULTIPLE CONSTRUCTION
COMPONENTS, INCLUDING A PUMP STATION, SCADA
MONITORING SYSTEM, AND CONVEYANCE PIPE
Item #16C3
AMENDMENT NO. 2 WITH SOUTH FLORIDA WATER
MANAGEMENT DISTRICT TO CONTINUE LEASING OFFICE
SPACE FOR TOURISM ON HORSESHOE DRIVE NORTH AND
TO REVISE THE ANNUAL RENT AMOUNT – A 1-YEAR TERM
FOR A LEASE AMOUNT OF $74,371.14, UNTIL TOURISM CAN
BE RELOCATED TO A COUNTY-OWNED FACILITY, WHICH
IS PLANNED TO OCCUR PRIOR TO THE 1-YEAR EXTENSION
April 28, 2020
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Item #16C4
THE SELECTION COMMITTEE’S RANKING OF REQUEST
FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES (“RPS”) NO. 19-7637,
“GOLDEN GATE CITY TRANSMISSION WATER MAIN
IMPROVEMENTS DESIGN,” AND AUTHORIZING STAFF TO
BEGIN CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE TOP RANKED
FIRM, JOHNSON ENGINEERING, INC., SO THAT STAFF CAN
BRING A PROPOSED AGREEMENT BACK FOR BOARD
CONSIDERATION AT A SUBSEQUENT MEETING – POTABLE
WATER UTILITIES WITHIN GOLDEN GATE CITY HAVE
REACHED THE END OF THEIR USEFUL LIVES AND PLANS
TO EXPAND POTABLE WATER SERVICES TO GOLDEN
GATE CITY RESIDENTS REQUIRE UPSIZING OF THE
TRANSMISSION SYSTEM
Item #16C5
AUTHORIZING NECESSARY BUDGET AMENDMENTS TO
REALLOCATE PUBLIC UTILITIES DEPARTMENT PROJECT
FUNDS – AS DETAILED IN THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Item #16C6
AWARDING A $271,800 WORK ORDER UNDER REQUEST
FOR QUOTATION NO. 14-6213-205372-2 TO DOUGLAS N.
HIGGINS, INC., TO REPLACE AERATION TREATMENT
EQUIPMENT AT THE NORTH COUNTY WATER
RECLAMATION FACILITY (NCWRF), PROJECT NO. 70148 –
ANTICIPATED TO BE COMPLETED IN 2020
April 28, 2020
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Item #16C7
AWARDING INVITATION TO BID (“ITB”) NO. 20-7709,
“SOUTH COUNTY WATER RECLAMATION FACILITY PUMP
STATION NO. 5 & PIPING IMPROVEMENTS" (PROJECT
NUMBER 70251), TO DOUGLAS N. HIGGINS, INC., IN THE
AMOUNT OF $1,527,400, AUTHORIZE THE CHAIRMAN TO
SIGN THE AGREEMENT AND AUTHORIZE NECESSARY
BUDGET AMENDMENTS – TO INCREASE THE CAPACITY OF
THE PLANT DRAIN PUMPING SYSTEM AT SCWRF
Item #16C8
SELECTION COMMITTEE RANKINGS OF REQUEST FOR
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES ("RPS") NO. 19-7633, “SOUTH
COUNTY REGIONAL WATER TREATMENT PLANT
REACTOR TANK NO. 4 – CEI SERVICES,” PROJECT NO.
70135, AND AUTHORIZE STAFF TO BEGIN CONTRACT
NEGOTIATIONS WITH TOP-RANKED FIRM, STANTEC
CONSULTING SERVICES, INC., SO STAFF CAN BRING A
PROPOSED AGREEMENT BACK FOR BOARD
CONSIDERATION AT A SUBSEQUENT MEETING
Item #16C9
AWARDING AN AGREEMENT FOR REQUEST FOR
PROPOSAL (“RFP”) NO. 19-7592, “BUILDING AUTOMATION
ENERGY MANAGEMENT SERVICES,” TO JUICE
TECHNOLOGIES, INC. D/B/A PLUG SMART, AS A PRIMARY
VENDOR, AND ELECTRONIC SYSTEM SERVICES, INC., AS A
SECONDARY VENDOR FOR COUNTY-WIDE BUILDING
April 28, 2020
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AUTOMATION AND CONTROL SYSTEM SERVICES – TO
OBTAIN BUILDING AUTOMATION ENERGY MANAGEMENT
SERVICES FOR REPAIRS, MAINTENANCE, TRAINING,
TECHNICAL SUPPORT, EQUIPMENT, AND REPAIR PARTS
Item #16C10
AUTHORIZING STAFF TO ELECTRONICALLY APPLY FOR A
FOAM RECYCLING GRANT, IN THE AMOUNT UP TO $50,000,
THROUGH THE FOAM RECYCLING COALITION (FRC) TO BE
USED AT SOLID AND HAZARDOUS WASTE MANAGEMENT
DIVISION (SHWMD) RECYCLING FACILITIES – TO SUPPORT
INCREASED RECYCLING OF FOODSERVICE PACKAGING
MADE FROM FOAM POLYSTYRENE AND START OR
STRENGTHEN POST-CONSUMER FOAM RECYCLING
Item #16C11
AN EASEMENT AGREEMENT WITH ISTORAGE PO, A
DELAWARE LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY, AT A COST
NOT TO EXCEED $2,100 FOR THE ACQUISITION OF A
COUNTY UTILITY EASEMENT FOR THE INSTALLATION OF
NEW WATERMAIN LINES TO FACILITATE I-75/ COLLIER
BOULEVARD UTILITY RELOCATION PROJECT NUMBER
70229 – COMMENCING AT THE SOUTH COUNTY REGIONAL
WATER TREATMENT PLANT AND ENDING AT THE
SOUTHERN BOUNDARY OF FOREST GLEN GOLF &
COUNTRY CLUB
Item #16C12
April 28, 2020
Page 148
AN EASEMENT AGREEMENT WITH FOREST GLEN GOLF &
COUNTRY CLUB MASTER ASSOCIATION, INC., A FLORIDA
NOT-FOR-PROFIT CORPORATION, AT A COST NOT TO
EXCEED $60,133 FOR THE ACQUISITION OF A COUNTY
UTILITY EASEMENT AND TEMPORARY CONSTRUCTION
EASEMENT FOR THE INSTALLATION OF PROPOSED WATER
MAINS TO FACILITATE THE I-75/COLLIER BOULEVARD
UTILITY RELOCATION PROJECT, PROJECT NUMBER 70229 –
COMMENCING AT THE SOUTH COUNTY REGIONAL WATER
TREATMENT PLANT AND ENDING AT THE SOUTHERN
BOUNDARY OF FOREST GLEN GOLF & COUNTRY CLUB
Item #16C13
AWARDING AGREEMENT NO. 19-7621 IN THE TOTAL
AMOUNT OF $7,622,000 TO TETRA TECH, INC., FOR THE
"GOLDEN GATE WASTEWATER ENGINEER OF RECORD
(EOR) AND INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENTS," WITH
AUTHORIZATION TO ISSUE AN INITIAL PURCHASE ORDER
FOR PORTIONS OF PHASES 1, 2 AND 4 IN THE AMOUNT OF
$4,467,000, FOLLOWED BY FUTURE PURCHASE ORDER
MODIFICATIONS FOR SUBSEQUENT CONTRACT TASKS
SUBJECT TO BOARD APPROVAL AND AS DICTATED BY
BOARD-APPROVED FUNDING, IN SUPPORT OF GOLDEN
GATE WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANT PROJECT NO.
70243 AND THE FUTURE REPAIR, REHABILITATION AND
EXPANSION WITHIN GOLDEN GATE CITY – AS DETAILED
IN THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Item #16D1
April 28, 2020
Page 149
TWO SUBSTANTIAL AMENDMENTS TO NEIGHBORHOOD
STABILIZATION PROGRAMS 1 AND 3 TO ALIGN WITH THE
DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT'S
FEDERAL REGISTER MODIFICATIONS ALLOWING FOR THE
EXPANSION OF THE TARGETED GEOGRAPHIC AREAS – TO
INCLUDE REVISED GEOGRAPHIC AREAS
Item #16D2
A STATUTORY DEED BETWEEN COLLIER COUNTY’S
STORMWATER MANAGEMENT SECTION AND THE
CONSERVATION COLLIER PROGRAM FOR
APPROXIMATELY 0.826 ACRES UNDER CONSERVATION
COLLIER LAND ACQUISITION PROGRAM EXCEPTIONAL
BENEFIT ORDINANCE, TO INCREASE DITCH CONVEYANCE
CAPACITY AND CREATE A SPREADER SWALE SYSTEM
ALLOWING BETTER DISTRIBUTION OF STORMWATER
FLOW INTO THE NATURAL WETLAND SYSTEM ON THE
EAST END OF THE PARK PRIOR TO ENTERING THE
GORDON RIVER, AT A COST NOT TO EXCEED $5,450 – AS
DETAILED IN THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Item #16D3
RELEASING SEVEN (7) MORTGAGE SATISFACTIONS FOR
THE STATE HOUSING INITIATIVES PARTNERSHIP LOAN
PROGRAM IN THE AMOUNT OF $350,000 – AS DETAILED IN
THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Item #16D4
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April 28, 2020
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AWARDING CONTRACT #19-7596, SERVICES FOR SENIORS
RESPITE FACILITY & ADULT DAY CARE, TO ARDEN
COURTS-LELY PALMS OF NAPLES FL, LLC D/B/A ARDEN
COURTS OF LELY PALMS AND SHIFTING SANDS ADULT
DAY CENTER, LLC AND AUTHORIZE THE CHAIRMAN TO
SIGN THE ASSOCIATED AGREEMENTS – TO PROVIDE
FACILITY RESPITE AND DAYCARE SERVICES TO THE
ELDERLY IN COLLIER COUNTY
Item #16D5
AN “AFTER-THE-FACT” CONTRACT AMENDMENT AND
ATTESTATION STATEMENT BETWEEN THE AREA AGENCY
ON AGING FOR SOUTHWEST FLORIDA, INC. AND COLLIER
COUNTY SERVICES FOR SENIORS TO AMEND THE OLDER
AMERICANS ACT, COMMUNITY CARE FOR THE ELDERLY,
HOME CARE FOR THE ELDERLY, ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE
INITIATIVE PROGRAM, AND THE EMERGENCY HOME
ENERGY ASSISTANCE PROGRAM TO CORRECT THE
COUNTY’S FEDERAL TAX ID NUMBER AND DUNS NUMBER
ON THE CONTRACT
Item #16D6
THREE (3) MORTGAGE SATISFACTIONS FOR THE STATE
HOUSING INITIATIVES PARTNERSHIP (SHIP) LOAN
PROGRAM IN THE AMOUNT OF $54,735 AND ASSOCIATED
BUDGET AMENDMENT – DEPOSITED FUNDS WILL BE USED
FOR SHIP ELIGIBLE ACTIVITIES
Item #16D7
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April 28, 2020
Page 151
ONE (1) RELEASE OF LIEN FOR FULL PAYMENT OF A
COUNTY-WIDE IMPACT FEE FOR AN OWNER OCCUPIED
AFFORDABLE HOUSING DWELLING – FOR PROPERTY AT
7524 BRISTOL CIRCLE, NAPLES, FL
Item #16D8
COOPERATIVE PROCUREMENT AND USE OF
JACKSONVILLE TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY’S
CONTRACT NO. P-18-005, STATE OF FLORIDA HEAVY DUTY
BUSES, FOR THE PURCHASE OF 30, 35 AND/OR 40-FOOT
BUSES FOR THE COLLIER AREA TRANSIT SYSTEM – TO
REPLACE OR EXPAND COLLIER AREA TRANSIT’S (“CAT”)
BUSES BETWEEN JANUARY OF 2020 AND MAY 2024
Item #16D9
AUTHORIZING BUDGET AMENDMENTS TO ENSURE
SUFFICIENT PROJECT FUNDS ARE AVAILABLE TO
COMPLETE THE REPAIRS RESULTING FROM HURRICANE
IRMA DAMAGE TO THE UNIVERSITY EXTENSION
BUILDING – LOCATED AT 14700 IMMOKALEE ROAD
Item #16D10
ELECTRONIC SUBMITTAL OF A 2020 FEDERAL TRANSIT
ADMINISTRATION 5339 BUS AND BUS FACILITIES GRANT
APPLICATION IN THE AMOUNT OF $9,020,000 FOR THE
PURCHASE OF SIX (6) 30’ FIXED-ROUTE BUSES AND THE
RENOVATION OF THE COLLIER AREA TRANSIT
April 28, 2020
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MAINTENANCE FACILITY ON RADIO ROAD – REQUIRES A
TWENTY PERCENT (20%) MATCH IN THE AMOUNT OF
$2,051,324
Item #16D11
AFTER-THE-FACT ELECTRONIC SUBMITTAL OF YEAR
THREE CONTINUATION APPLICATION TO THE
CORPORATION FOR NATIONAL AND COMMUNITY
SERVICE, FOR THE RETIRED AND SENIOR VOLUNTEER
PROGRAM GRANT IN THE AMOUNT OF $62,022 AND, IF
APPROVED, ACCEPT THE AWARD AND AUTHORIZE THE
NECESSARY BUDGET AMENDMENT – REQUIRES A LOCAL
MATCH OF $26,581
Item #16D12
A NECESSARY BUDGET AMENDMENT TO RECOGNIZE
REVENUE FOR FY20 RECEIVED FROM THE STATE AID TO
LIBRARIES GRANT IN THE AMOUNT OF $210,937
Item #16D13
“AFTER-THE-FACT” ELECTRONIC SUBMITTAL OF A FY20
NATIONAL DAY OF SERVICE GRANT APPLICATION FROM
THE CORPORATION FOR NATIONAL AND COMMUNITY
SERVICE IN THE AMOUNT OF $49,975 TO COMPLETE THE
FREEDOM MEMORIAL AT THE FRED W. COYLE FREEDOM
PARK – BY PURCHASING “STATE STONES” TO COMPLETE
THE MEMORIAL
April 28, 2020
Page 153
Item #16D14
RESOLUTION 2020-68: SUPERSEDING RESOLUTION 2019-29
AND UPDATING THE CO-PAYMENT WAIVER PROCEDURE
FOR SENIORS WHO ARE ENROLLED IN THE STATE GRANT
PROGRAMS COMMUNITY CARE FOR THE ELDERLY AND
ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE INITIATIVE ADMINISTERED BY
THE COMMUNITY AND HUMAN SERVICES DIVISION
Item #16E1
RESOLUTION 2020-69: ADOPTING COLLIER COUNTY’S
MULTI-JURISDICTIONAL LOCAL MITIGATION STRATEGY
(LMS) FOR COLLIER COUNTY AND ITS JURISDICTIONS IN
ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE
FEDERAL DISASTER MITIGATION ACT OF 2000
Item #16E2
AN ASSUMPTION AGREEMENT ASSIGNING ALL RIGHTS,
DUTIES AND BENEFITS, AND OBLIGATIONS TO HERITAGE
LANDSCAPE SUPPLY GROUP, INC., UNDER AGREEMENT
#19-7586 “SUPPLY AND DELIVERY OF HERBICIDES,
FUNGICIDES, AND PESTICIDES” – DUE TO A 2019 ASSET
PURCHASE
Item #16E3
AN AMENDMENT TO AGREEMENT NUMBER 18-7263 FOR
THE COUNTY’S VISA COMMERCIAL CREDIT CARD WITH
J.P. MORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A. – CHANGING THE BILLING
April 28, 2020
Page 154
CYCLE FROM THE CURRENT CYCLE TO ONE THAT
COORDINATES WITH BCC MEETINGS AND ADDS A 30/25
TERM OF PAYMENT (30-DAY CYCLE WITH PAYMENT DUE
WITHIN 25 DAYS)
Item #16E4
AMENDMENT NO. 15 TO THE AGREEMENT WITH COLLIER
COUNTY DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARD FOR THE DRIVER
EDUCATION PROGRAM – IF APPROVED, FUNDS IN THE
AMOUNT OF $151,000 WILL BE PROVIDED WITHIN 45 DAYS
TO THE DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARD FROM THE DRIVER
EDUCATION TRUST FUND
Item #16E5
AWARDING REQUEST FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
(“RPS”) NO. 18-7432-ME, “PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
LIBRARY – MECHANICAL, ELECTRICAL, PLUMBING AND
TECHNOLOGY ENGINEERING CATEGORY,” TO: JACOBS
ENGINEERING GROUP INC., MCKIM & CREED, INC., WOOD
ENVIRONMENT & INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS, INC.,
JENKINS MAAG ASSOCIATES LLC, AND STANTEC
CONSULTING SERVICES INC., AND AUTHORIZE THE
CHAIRMAN TO SIGN THE AGREEMENTS
Item #16E6
AWARDING REQUEST FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
(“RPS”) NO. 18-7432-UC, “PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
LIBRARY – UTILITY COLLECTION & DISTRIBUTION,” TO:
April 28, 2020
Page 155
JOHNSON ENGINEERING, INC., Q. GRADY MINOR AND
ASSOCIATES, P.A., TETRA TECH, INC., AECOM TECHNICAL
SERVICES, INC., STANTEC CONSULTING SERVICES INC.,
CARDNO, INC., CAROLLO ENGINEERS, INC., AND CDM
SMITH INC., AND AUTHORIZE THE CHAIRMAN TO SIGN
THE AGREEMENTS
Item #16E7
AWARDING REQUEST FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
(“RPS”) NO. 18-7432-SC, “PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
LIBRARY – SCADA ENGINEERING AND INTEGRATION
CATEGORY,” TO: TETRA TECH, INC., CAROLLO
ENGINEERS, INC., MCKIM & CREED, INC., AECOM
TECHNICAL SERVICES, INC., AND JACOBS ENGINEERING
GROUP INC., AND AUTHORIZE THE CHAIRMAN TO SIGN
THE AGREEMENTS
Item #16E8
AWARDING REQUEST FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
(“RPS”) NO. 18-7432-UP, “PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
LIBRARY – UTILITY PLANTS DESIGN AND ENGINEERING,”
TO: TETRA TECH, INC., AECOM TECHNICAL SERVICES,
INC., CAROLLO ENGINEERS, INC., STANTEC CONSULTING
SERVICES INC., CONSOR ENGINEERS, LLC, SUCCESSOR BY
MERGER TO TKW CONSULTING ENGINEERS, INC., CDM
SMITH INC., Q. GRADY MINOR AND ASSOCIATES, P.A.,
BLACK & VEATCH CORPORATION, HOLE MONTES, INC.,
CARDNO, INC., WATER SCIENCE ASSOCIATES, INC., CPH,
INC., JACOBS ENGINEERING GROUP INC., AND MCKIM &
April 28, 2020
Page 156
CREED, INC., AND AUTHORIZE THE CHAIRMAN TO SIGN
THE AGREEMENTS
Item #16E9
AWARDING REQUEST FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
(“RPS”) NO. 18-7432-ST, “PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
LIBRARY - STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING CATEGORY,”
TO: JACOBS ENGINEERING GROUP INC., STANTEC
CONSULTING SERVICES INC., KISINGER CAMPO &
ASSOCIATES, CORP., BRIDGING SOLUTIONS, LLC,
HIGHSPANS ENGINEERING, INC., T.Y. LIN INTERNATIONAL,
WESTON & SAMPSON ENGINEERS, INC., TRC WORLDWIDE
ENGINEERING, INC., STANLEY CONSULTANTS, INC., AND
BLOT ENGINEERING INC., AND AUTHORIZE THE
CHAIRMAN TO SIGN THE AGREEMENTS
Item #16E10
AWARDING REQUEST FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
(“RPS”) NO. 18-7432-AR, “PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
LIBRARY ARCHITECTURAL STUDY, PLANNING AND
DESIGN CATEGORY,” TO: VICTOR J. LATAVISH,
ARCHITECT, P.A., WOOD ENVIRONMENT &
INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS, INC., JACOBS
ENGINEERING GROUP, INC., HARVARD JOLLY, INC.,
BSSW ARCHITECTS, INC., ADG ARCHITECTURE, LLC,
STUDIOPLUS, LLC, PK STUDIOS, INC., AND RG
ARCHITECTS, P.A., AND AUTHORIZE THE CHAIRMAN
TO SIGN THE AGREEMENTS
April 28, 2020
Page 157
Item #16E11 MODIFICATIONS TO THE 2020 FISCAL YEAR PAY & CLASSIFICATION PLAN WHICH CONSISTS OF TWO ADDITIONAL CLASSIFICATIONS AND SIX RECLASSIFICATIONS MADE FROM JANUARY 1, 2020
THROUGH MARCH 31, 2020
Item #16E12
AN ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT PREPARED BY THE
PROCUREMENT SERVICES DIVISION FOR DISPOSAL OF
PROPERTY AND NOTIFICATION OF REVENUE
DISBURSEMENT – INCLUDES ON-LINE SALES THIS PERIOD
IN THE AMOUNT OF $2,362.50
Item #16E13
ADMINISTRATIVE REPORTS PREPARED BY PROCUREMENT
SERVICES DIVISION FOR CHANGE ORDERS AND OTHER
CONTRACTUAL MODIFICATIONS REQUIRING BOARD
APPROVAL. NOTE: THIS ITEM WAS ORIGINALLY
SCHEDULED FOR THE 4/14/20 BCC MEETING WHICH WAS
CANCELLED – WITH A NET TOTAL FOR SEVEN (7) ITEMS =
$1,643,182.57
Item #16E14
ADMINISTRATIVE REPORTS PREPARED BY PROCUREMENT
SERVICES DIVISION FOR CHANGE ORDERS AND OTHER
CONTRACTUAL MODIFICATIONS REQUIRING BOARD ~ ~ ~
April 28, 2020
Page 158
APPROVAL – NET TOTAL FOR EIGHT (8) ITEMS = $330,257.88
Item #16F1
AN ASSUMPTION, ASSIGNMENT AND EXTENSION OF
AGREEMENT NO. 12-5957, ACKNOWLEDGING THE
ASSIGNMENT OF THAT AGREEMENT TO PUBLIC
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, INC.’S (THE “CONSULTANT”)
AFFILIATE, PFM FINANCIAL ADVISORS, LLC (“PFM”), AND
EXTENDING THAT AGREEMENT WITH PFM THROUGH MAY
31, 2022, AS AN EXEMPTION TO THE COMPETITIVE
PROCESS UNDER SECTION 2-193 OF THE CODE OF LAWS
AND ORDINANCES OF COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA –
AVERAGE (ANNUAL) EXPENDITURES FOR 2018 AND 2019
HAVE TOTALED $95,700
Item #16F2
A REPORT COVERING TWO BUDGET AMENDMENTS
IMPACTING RESERVES AND MOVING FUNDS IN AN
AMOUNT UP TO AND INCLUDING $25,000 AND $50,000,
RESPECTIVELY – BA #20-395: VETERINARIAN FEES IN THE
AMOUNT OF $25,000
Item #16F3
AWARDING REQUEST FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
(“RPS”) NO. 20-7680 FOR “PELICAN BAY SIDEWALK
IMPROVEMENTS DESIGN,” IN THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF
$314,894, TO AGNOLI, BARBER & BRUNDAGE, INC., AND
AUTHORIZE THE CHAIRMAN TO SIGN THE AGREEMENT
April 28, 2020
Page 159
AND AUTHORIZE THE NECESSARY BUDGET AMENDMENT – WORK FOR THIS PROJECT INCLUDES PREPARATION OF ENGINEERED CONSTRUCTION DRAWINGS THAT SHOW SPECIFIC DETAILS NECESSARY FOR PERMITTING, BIDDING, AND CONSTRUCTION TO REPLACE EXISTING ASPHALT SIDEWALKS WITH CONCRETE AND WIDEN
SIDEWALKS TO 6 FEET
Item #16F4
RESOLUTION 2020-70: APPROVING AMENDMENTS
(APPROPRIATING GRANTS, DONATIONS, CONTRIBUTIONS
OR INSURANCE PROCEEDS) TO THE FISCAL YEAR 2019-20
ADOPTED BUDGET
Item #16G1
THE SELECTION COMMITTEE RANKINGS FOR REQUEST
FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES (“RPS”) NO. 20-7692,
“DESIGN SERVICES FOR EVERGLADES AIRPARK RUNWAY
REHABILITATION,” AND AUTHORIZE STAFF TO BEGIN
CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE TOP-RANKED FIRM,
HOLE MONTES, INC., SO THAT STAFF CAN BRING A
PROPOSED AGREEMENT BACK FOR THE BOARD’S
CONSIDERATION AT A SUBSEQUENT MEETING
Item #16G2
RESOLUTION 2020-71: AUTHORIZING EXECUTION OF
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION GRANT AGREEMENT
CONTRACT NO. G1K34 WITH FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF ~ ~ ~ ~
April 28, 2020
Page 160
TRANSPORTATION FOR $80,000 FOR THE SEAPLANE BASE
PROJECT AT EVERGLADES AIRPARK, AND ASSOCIATED
BUDGET AMENDMENTS
Item #16G3
CHANGE ORDER #3 TO AGREEMENT NO. 18-7240, “MARCO
EXECUTIVE AIRPORT NEW TERMINAL & ASSOCIATED
IMPROVEMENTS,” WITH WEST CONSTRUCTION, INC., IN
THE AMOUNT OF $115,412.08 – AS DETAILED IN THE
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Item #16G4
A DOCUMENT NECESSARY TO CONVEY AN EASEMENT TO
FLORIDA POWER & LIGHT (FP&L) COMPANY OVER
PROPERTY OWNED BY COLLIER COUNTY AT THE MARCO
ISLAND EXECUTIVE AIRPORT – PARCEL #00744080001,
APPROXIMATELY 774.115 SQUARE FEET (0.02 ACRES)
Item #16G5
AFTER-THE-FACT ACCEPTANCE OF A FEDERAL AVIATION
ADMINISTRATION (FAA) GRANT AMENDMENT AND AN
ADDITIONAL $150,000 OF FUNDING FOR CONSTRUCTION
OF AIRFIELD SAFETY IMPROVEMENTS AT THE MARCO
ISLAND EXECUTIVE AIRPORT, AND APPROVE THE
ASSOCIATED BUDGET AMENDMENTS – A REQUIRED
MATCH OF $16,667 EXISTS WITHIN MATCH FUND (499)
PROJECT NO. 33484
April 28, 2020
Page 161
Item #16H1
A PROCLAMATION DESIGNATING MAY 7, 2020 AS
NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER IN COLLIER COUNTY.
THE PROCLAMATION WILL BE MAILED TO NEW HOPE
MINISTRIES, 7675 DAVIS BOULEVARD, NAPLES, FLORIDA
Item #16H2
A PROCLAMATION DESIGNATING APRIL 2020 AS
NATIONAL FAIR HOUSING MONTH IN COLLIER COUNTY.
THE PROCLAMATION WILL BE DELIVERED TO TAMI
BAILEY, FEDERAL & STATE GRANTS MANAGER, COLLIER
COUNTY COMMUNITY AND HUMAN SERVICES DIVISION
Item #16H3
A PROCLAMATION RECOGNIZING THE RESOLUTION OF
THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF THE AVE MARIA
STEWARDSHIP COMMUNITY DISTRICT DESIGNATING THE
FEAST OF THE ANNUCIATION (NORMALLY MARCH 25TH)
AS THE TOWN’S ANNUAL FEAST DAY AND RECOGNIZING
MARCH 25TH AS THE BIRTHDAY OF TOM MONAGHAN,
FOUNDER OF AVE MARIA TOWN AND AVE MARIA
UNIVERSITY. THE PROCLAMATION WILL BE MAILED TO
ROBERT L. KLUCIK JR., P.A.
Item #16H4
A PROCLAMATION RECOGNIZING THE SUCCESSFUL
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ARTS OF COLLIER COUNTY,
April 28, 2020
Page 162
FLORIDA FOR THE PAST 50 YEARS BY THE MARCO ISLAND
CENTER FOR THE ARTS. THE PROCLAMATION WILL BE
MAILED TO DEBBY RODDY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE
MARCO ISLAND CENTER FOR THE ARTS
Item #16H5
A PROCLAMATION RECOGNIZING THAT APRIL 12 - 18, 2020
WAS NATIONAL PUBLIC SAFETY TELECOMMUNICATORS
WEEK. THE PROCLAMATION WILL BE DELIVERED TO THE
COLLIER COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE
Item #16H6
A PROCLAMATION DESIGNATING THAT APRIL 19-25, 2020
WAS NATIONAL CRIME VICTIMS' RIGHTS WEEK. THE
PROCLAMATION WILL BE MAILED TO EILEEN WESLEY,
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PROJECT HELP, INC.
Item #16J1
TO RECORD IN THE MINUTES OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY
COMMISSIONERS, THE CHECK NUMBER (OR OTHER
PAYMENT METHOD), AMOUNT, PAYEE, AND PURPOSE FOR
WHICH THE REFERENCED DISBURSEMENTS WERE DRAWN
FOR THE PERIODS BETWEEN APRIL 2, 2020 AND APRIL 15,
2020 PURSUANT TO FLORIDA STATUTE 136.06.
Item #16J2
REPORT TO THE BOARD REGARDING THE INVESTMENT OF
April 28, 2020
Page 163
COUNTY FUNDS AS OF THE QUARTER ENDED MARCH 31,
2020
Item #16J3
THE BOARD APPROVE AND DETERMINE VALID PUBLIC
PURPOSE FOR INVOICES PAYABLE AND PURCHASING
CARD TRANSACTIONS AS OF APRIL 22, 2020
Item #16K1
AUTHORIZING THE CHAIRMAN TO SIGN A SETTLEMENT
AGREEMENT IN THE AMOUNT OF $5,000 TO SETTLE THE
LAWSUIT STYLED JOSEPH GIANNONE V. COLLIER COUNTY,
FLORIDA, CASE NO. 19-CA-2386 NOW PENDING IN THE 20TH
JUDICIAL CIRCUIT IN COLLIER COUNTY
Item #16K2
RESOLUTION 2020-72: REAPPOINTING JOHN AGNELLI
TO THE EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES AUTHORITY TO A
5-YEAR TERM EXPIRING MARCH 23, 2025
Item #16K3
RESOLUTION 2020-73: REAPPOINTING GEORGE FOGG TO
THE FOREST LAKES ROADWAY & DRAINAGE ADVISORY
COMMITTEE TO A 4-YEAR TERM EXPIRING APRIL 21, 2024
Item #16K4
April 28, 2020
Page 164
RESOLUTION 2020-74: APPOINTING MICHAEL MCCABE
(CITY OF NAPLES REP) AND REAPPOINTING AMANDA COX,
NANCY KERNS AND VICTOR RIOS TO THE TOURIST
DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL TO 4-YEAR TERMS EXPIRING
APRIL 21, 2024
Item #16K5
EXECUTIVE ORDER 2020-01: AN EXECUTIVE ORDER
AUTHORIZING THE USE OF COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA
TECHNOLOGY FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT PUBLIC
MEETINGS
Item #16K6
MODIFICATIONS TO THE COUNTY ATTORNEY OFFICE PAY
PLAN BASED ON RECOMMENDATIONS FROM A 2020
SALARY STUDY CONDUCTED BY CODY & ASSOCIATES –
AS DETAILED IN THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Item #17A
RESOLUTION 2020-75: APPROVING AMENDMENTS
(APPROPRIATING CARRY FORWARD, TRANSFERS AND
SUPPLEMENTAL REVENUE) TO THE FISCAL YEAR 2019-20
ADOPTED BUDGET
*****
April 28, 2020
Page 165
There being no further business for the good of the County, the
meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 1:13 p.m.
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX
OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF
SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL
___________________________________
BURT SAUNDERS, CHAIRMAN
ATTEST
CRYSTAL K. KINZEL, CLERK
___________________________
These minutes approved by the Board on ______________________,
as presented _____________ or as corrected _____________.
TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF FORT MYERS
COURT REPORTING BY TERRI LEWIS, FPR, COURT
REPORTER AND NOTARY PUBLIC.