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BCC Minutes 04/11/2007 S (Proposed Annexation - Collier Park of Commerce) April 11, 2007 COLLIER COUNTY GOVERNMENT CITY OF NAPLES GOVERNMENT EAST NAPLES FIRE CONTROL & RESCUE DISTRICT April 11, 2007 Public Meeting to discuss the Interlocal Service Boundary Agreement relative to the proposed annexation of the Collier Park of Commerce by the City of Naples, pursuant to Chapter 171, Florida Statutes on April 11, 2007, at 1 :00 p.m., City Hall, Naples, Florida. PRESENT: Jim Mudd, County Manager Robert Lee, City Manager County Commissioner Jim Coletta Leo Ochs, Collier County Manager's Office Chief Jim McEvoy, City of Naples Robert D. Pritt, Attorney, City of Naples David Weigel, County Attorney Mike Pettit, Assistant County Attorney Bob Middletown, City of Naples Public Works Mike Sheffield, Assistant to the County Manager Jack Pointer, North Naples Fire Dept. Pension Board Page 1 April 11, 2007 CITY MANAGER LEE: Okay. Today's date, April 11 th, 1 :00 in the afternoon, thereabouts. The purpose of this meeting is to continue our discussion about the Collier Park of Commerce annexation. Parties represented here include the county and the city. We did receive correspondence that the representative for the East Naples Fire District will not be present today. Therefore, I think as previously agreed, we would not discuss fire services without their presence. But I did want to welcome you back here to City Hall for these proceedings and, if! may, just summarize some of the issues that I think that we have addressed, and try to focus in on those yet still under discussion. There's a tax question that was raised previously, and we have I think resolved that. Recycling, we've addressed that question as well. There was some clarification provided on concurrency, because that was raised also in a previous meeting. Also, road work to be paid by some Collier Park of Commerce property owners. And I wanted to ask Jim if you all received a letter from -- I think you had requested a letter from the Collier Park of Commerce. MR. MUDD: Yes. CITY MANAGER LEE: Okay, so we have that. MR. MUDD: And they basically talk about $175,000 in this letter. It's dated the 29th of March. And Commissioner Coletta and Leo Ochs went to a meeting, the Commerce Park owners meeting, here last Thursday. And the discussion on that, anything over 175, what did Mr. London Crew say? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, I believe the -- is Leo Ochs here? I thought he was. MR. MUDD: He was. He came with me. Page 2 April 11, 2007 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I believe the indication was is they're willing to cover the cost. Certain -- the group itself. We were quite surprised, the meeting really turned out to be almost a non-event. We didn't realize -- or I didn't realize that the board of the Commerce Park held a majority of the stock and the voting power, 75 percent, while the owners of the park hold 25 percent. And they take it upon themselves to accept the responsibility for the paving of the road, rather than make it a burden on the members of the park itself. There was also in attendance -- besides three people from the county, there was a person from the David C. Lawrence Center who was also there. Which brings up an interesting thing. There was discussion about how the City of Naples took a survey of the residents in the park on their interest in being annexed into the city. I would very much like to see the results of that survey with all the details to it. They do reference it, and I didn't bring it up. I thought they would be the wrong people to talk to -- MR. MUDD: I do have a copy of that, Commissioner. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Oh, you do? MR. MUDD: It's in the county attorney's office. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Fine. You can scratch that off. We have duplication. I'll just get it from the county attorney's office. Leo, did you want to add anything as far as that meeting went? MR. OCHS: No, sir. I think you summed it up pretty well. There wasn't all that much to it at the end of the day. CITY MANAGER LEE: Okay, thank you, Commissioner. MR. MUDD: So I guess what we're saying is even though they mentioned 175 in the meeting, or in their letter, that if there was additional cost, they would basically -- they would do that based on that board's action, and it would be under voluntary basis, and it would Page 3 April 11, 2007 not affect the fire district or Collier County. Or the fire districts, since that's going to be a joint facility that they're building. CITY MANAGER LEE: Then I can conclude we've got the clarification on that question then. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: (Nods head affirmatively.) MR. MUDD: (Nods head affirmatively.) CITY MANAGER LEE: I just -- I previously mentioned the fire service issue and how we'll delay that today. The only other issue that I'm aware of was the sewer issue, is that correct, that's still on the table? MR. MUDD: Yeah, I think so. But I'd like to, if! could, you said we have the taxes issue done, and I wanted to make sure. I just want to -- I got the e-mail.okay.thatMr.Pritt sent over. And I read it and I'm just trying to make sure I understand. When we talked about taxes waived, and this was back on the 5th of February, we talked about taxes waived for electricity, phone and those kind of businesses. Based on what I've got right here, that would hold true except for the franchise fee; is that correct? MR. PRITT: That's my understanding. Franchise fee is not a tax, of course, it's a franchise fee. And frankly, I was surprised that we have to pay it too. But I guess I just forgot about that. We know of no way to change that as far as FPL is concerned. So what we did is we just -- well, you saw the e-mail that we sent and we received back. So everybody pays it. MR. MUDD: Okay. I'll-- the question I have is, is the franchise fee in agreement between the city and FP &L ? MR. PRITT: Yes. MR. MUDD: Okay. Commissioner Coletta, if you could remember that next time we talk about franchise fees in the county, that it's not a tax, it's a fee. You could tell your other commissioners that who almost killed me twice now about that particular item. I'd Page 4 April 11, 2007 really appreciate it. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'd be happy to. I do have a question on that, too. If it's an agreement between the Florida Power & Light and the city, could we become a party to the agreement and maybe be exempt from it? Or is that possible in this case? MR. PRITT: This might sound more like an editorial comment than a legal comment, but editorially I would say that it would be easier to change the U.S. Constitution than to make any changes to that franchise fee. Our franchise agreement -- and I don't mean that with disrespect to Florida Power & Light or FPL, but they just flat do not negotiate very much. And Dr. Lee and I went through the process of negotiating the franchise, the new franchise, which was three years ago, two years ago, last couple of years, anyhow. And after 30 years it came up, and that was -- the previous was a 30-year agreement. And you get an agreement (sic) that FPL is very interested in making almost no changes because they're dealing with a whole lot of other cities and counties throughout the state and other states. And they just don't negotiate much. So apart from the question as to why you would want to become a party to that agreement would be the issue that I doubt if we could do much, even if you were. MR. MUDD: Okay. And Commissioner, I don't disagree with what Mr. Pritt basically said. When you come with a franchise agreement with FP&L, you basically take your entire municipality and/or county and you subject it to whatever areas they serve, okay. And so if we did one in the county, it would be everywhere that FP &L served in the unincorporated portions of the county, and there would be no exceptions, because it's basically an add-on to your electricity bill. Page 5 April 11, 2007 The issue with the county is what would you do with the lead co-op, electric co-op that's there, because they serve part of Collier County and Marco Island and they're separate and distinct. So you almost need two franchise agreements. In their particular case they've done it for the municipality, because it's all served by FP&L, and they've got that surcharge. But there's another way to do -- or take a look at that. I mean, that is a fee, okay, in which the city gets their 5.9 percent back from FP&L either monthly or quarterly or semi annually or whatever it comes to. You could have part of this agreement that still says that community development sit in the fire side of the house, we show them the bill where it was five and a half percent and you get refunded that particular issue from their take on their revenue from FP &L. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That would be something you'd have to take up with the City Council, I would imagine. MR. MUDD: Oh, absolutely. This entire agreement that we're going to craft is going to have to go in front of the board and the City Council as we run through that particular issue. It's something to consider. That's doable, without changing the agreement. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Do you agree, Mr. Pritt? MR. PRITT: From a legal point of view, sounds to me that that's a proposal to back door refund something that otherwise we couldn't do. I'd certainly have to look at it. That's apart from the issue as to whether or not that should be done. Whether or not it should be done is a City Council decision. MR. MUDD: Okay. The next question I've got then is let's talk sewers, since we pretty much got to where we are with that particular issue. I think it was our desire in February to be exempt from those city fees or taxes or whatever they were that are separate and distinct on Page 6 April 11, 2007 our particular buildings that we don't pay for now. And franchise fee nor a surcharge on electricity do we serve or on phones do we have in the county. So that's one of the issues that we had. And the clarification came up with Ms. Donaldson and her talk -- her conversation about tax versus fee and franchise fee. CITY MANAGER LEE: All right. Sewer. Are we on sewer now? MR. MUDD: Urn-hum. CITY MANAGER LEE: It's my understanding that there really hasn't been any progress, at least that our staff is aware of, in terms of the staffs doing any -- and maybe your staff has done some further due diligence. But as far as sharing any information that I could share today, I guess the only information I could submit is to suggest that, as I did last meeting, since we have been talking -- before this annexation occurred we were talking about swapping some service areas, which included Collier Park of Commerce. That perhaps we ought to look at that as a separate issue and get back to the table and just addressing that item and not -- for the purpose of this annexation we would move forward with the county providing -- continuing to provide the sewer service. But again, with the understanding that we would go back to the table on this other issue and work this out on a much broader basis. Because there are -- in terms of service areas, I think this is probably -- percentage-wise of the service areas we're talking about, this is not the majority of the service areas. It's minority in terms of size. So I would respectfully suggest that we consider that today. MR. MUDD: Commissioner, from my perspective, I don't have a problem with that. We have bigger areas that we need to flop out in this one, and this is rather a small area. And if you had to flop it out, we'd have to take people that aren't being annexed in and we'd have to put them on the city process and then they would have a surcharge, okay, on their service bill, and I'm not sure it's too fair for them either. So that gets into a little bit of a political sticky wicket, so to speak. Page 7 April 11, 2007 And it probably wouldn't be a good thing. I think at this particular juncture, I think we need to note that in the agreement that the analysis had -- there was -- there was infrastructure that needed to be purchased with an estimated value of blankety-blank, and then the swap parts. And we basically said, you know, to have to pay for that infrastructure in the ground, it is a bit of a -- it's expensive, okay? Lack of better words, it's expensive. And it could cause -- it causes issues, and we've got other ones to work out. We've got to worry about how we're going to switch out the county complex and some other things that we've been dialoguing with the city for almost a year and a half now, so-- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Will this run concurrently with what we're doing and reach the same conclusions before we reach the ends of the conclusions of this? I think it was, what, one year of negotiations, so many meetings? I'm not too sure with that. MR. MUDD: Six months. CITY MANAGER LEE: I think it was six months. I think with the -- if! may, the sewer issue, I agree with Mr. Mudd on this. There are other -- a number of other issues too. One is the value of the infrastructure. And I think part of the due diligence is the condition to assess that of the infrastructure. And I think the fees that he referenced, there are a number of issues that I would like us -- coupled with I think we've got a situation where there's several amendments to a contract that the city and the county have which we really need to -- I think our intention was to work on that at the same time. So given those myriad of different issues, that may take much longer than -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay. So the time frame necessarily won't mesh. In other words -- Page 8 April 11, 2007 CITY MANAGER LEE: No. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: -- we're what, in our third or fourth month with these negotiations? Which month is it? CITY MANAGER LEE: I think it's the fourth month. MR. MUDD: This is the fourth meeting. CITY MANAGER LEE: Fourth meeting. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: So we only have two more meetings to go before we were supposed to bring this to a conclusion. But we will not have the issue of the sewers resolved at that time. CITY MANAGER LEE: I doubt that very much because of the -- again, there's legal issues of the contracts would have to develop, even if we could get the rest of the material together. And I think the six months was to be up to six months. In other words, if we don't need that, if we -- today, for example, if we've considered all the issues that we have on the table and say fire issue is the only one left, then if we're able to deal with that in one meeting, then perhaps we won't need the sixth meeting is what I would offer. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: So six months is final. That's the end of these meetings. When we reach the sixth meeting, at the end of that meeting there will be no more meetings? CITY MANAGER LEE: I think -- Mr. Pritt, I think you can address that. But I think the requirement is with that 2006 statute that we're to negotiate up to -- take up to six months to -- MR. MUDD: Yeah, the statute -- I can help you, Bob. The statute reads, paragraph 13, no earlier than six months after the commencement of negotiations, either of the initiating local governments or both, the county or the invited municipality may declare an impasse in the negotiations and seek a resolution of the issues under Statute 164.1053-164.1057. If the local governments fail to agree at the conclusion of the process under Chapter 164, the local government shall hold a joint public hearing on the issues raised in the negotiation. Page 9 April 11, 2007 So I guess where I am kind of on this piece, Commissioner, is we pretty much discussed everything. There are some -- there are some things that we need to resolve, and I believe we need to have the fire person there, because there's three things that are there: Sewer, I kind of agree with the city manager, that we leave the sewer the way it is, because we're working on a bigger proposal to swap out sewer as a way to fix those previous contracts that were negotiated in 1970. Okay. So they've been around for a long time. And there's numerous changes. And some of the places they talk about in Collier County are long lost on me and anybody that I can find that's still alive in Collier County. So we get those things fixed. I think we have an issue on taxes, and it's something that they're going to have to stand. And what I would say to you, if you're willing to make the consession on the sewer and let it stay without having it switched over, they can talk about taxes and waiving not only the taxes plus the fee part, the electricity and the phone and that particular issue as per what we thought was done on the 5th of February. So that's an issue they're going to have to talk to their council. And the last piece is what do we do with fire? And the last time I was in this room, or in our room or in this room, because they hadn't changed their stance in two meetings, right? CITY MANAGER LEE: Correct. MR. MUDD: Is basically they were going to leave it at the four years and they were going to provide all the services. And my recommendation and suggestion is at this particular juncture we asked our attorney staffs to start drafting the agreement or the interlocal or whatever, and at the next meeting we come back and start taking a look at what things we don't agree with so we can get a lot closer. Because it says no earlier than six months, but you as a board have got to agree to it and their city council's got to agree to it. And you've got to give them a couple of meetings to do that, because you know there's going to be some discussions about that particular issue, Page 10 April 11, 2007 as will there will be discussions with the Board of County Commissioners. So I believe if we do that and we put all the things we've agreed to in previous meetings in that agreement and then start hashing that through, then I think we've got ourselves at least a draft that we can start talking about. David, Michael, does that sound -- MR. PETTIT: Yeah. I apologize, you finished up on the franchise fee quickly. I'm going to want some information exactly how that works. I have a copy now of the ordinance, but I haven't had a chance to study it. And I do agree that it's not a tax, but I want to see exactly what the impact would be on the Collier County facilities from your point of view. It's not quite clear to me yet. Who would I talk to about that MR. PRITT: Yeah, I don't know-- MR. PETTIT: -- you? MR. PRITT: Probably not me. Because-- MR. PETTIT: How about if I send you the questions, though, Bob, and then you can give me your answers. MR. PRITT: Sure. Do you have a copy of the franchise agreements? MR. PETTIT: I have the ordinance. MR. PRITT: And it should have the agreements attached to be part of it. CITY MANAGER LEE: So you'll send some questions -- MR. PETTIT: I'll send some questions to Mr. Pritt. I'll just send you an e-mail. MR. PRITT: And these are tied up in the FPL tariffs, I guess -- MR. PETTIT: Right. MR. PRITT: -- which is something that's pretty foreign to almost Page 11 April 11, 2007 anybody that doesn't do that type of rate work. And they've actually filed those with the state, with the Public Service Commissioners. MR. PETTIT: As far as what you said, Mr. Mudd, I don't see any reason we can't begin to work on an agreement. MR. MUDD: Okay. I think that would be good, because then we can start tying it up. We can take our notes from the previous board meeting, we can check those things off. We talked about intersection improvements at Airport as far as Conservancy, and that was an Archibald/Feder discussion. We can talk about that and just let it -- put it down as a given, okay, that that's going to work through it as you take a look at that intersection. We can make sure we get the taxes thing, the fire district, the sewer, the roads for that 250 or l75, and we can put that down there. And then we basically -- we can lock it down. And I think in that particular way it's a good way to get it done and we've got the things and then we can talk one meeting about what's there and did we miss something or not and we can get on with it. CITY MANAGER LEE: From a standpoint of timing, are we in a position to have a draft agreement by -- what time? Is there -- MR. PETTIT: I would like to just review the minutes of the meetings, but I think we've got all those published already except this set. CITY MANAGER LEE: I mean, I think we tried to get -- I think something Jim, you start -- MR. MUDD: The question is, can we have a draft within 30 days, Mike? MR. PETTIT: Yeah, I think -- MR. PRITT: For the next meeting. MR. MUDD: For the next meeting? I think that's doable. CITY MANAGER LEE: Yeah. And I just wanted to comment, the six months doesn't necessarily correlate with six meetings, but I think we tried to do it within 30 days Page 12 April 11, 2007 the best that we could. So we're along that -- I think we made a lot of positive -- addressed issues in a very positive way. Made some progress. So I think -- so I agree that the next step is to look at a draft and see if it's going to be acceptable to our respective elective bodies. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Of course this all presumes that we're not going to have major restraints put on our budget by the state. If that happens, I assume that probably everybody is going to want to rethink their positions from one end to the other. Of course we can't deal with those things that we don't know about. MR. MUDD: Well, I was thinking about the whole county annexing into the City of Naples at that particular juncture, okay, and demanding the same service levels that we have right now at a really low millage rate. What do you think, Commissioner? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I think that's a great idea. Can you pick up the garbage? CITY MANAGER LEE: Actually, I would suggest to you that we would be very receptive to that offer by the county manager. And we won't even -- we'll charge less than the millage rate that the county currently has. MR. MUDD: No, I want the city's millage rate. CITY MANAGER LEE: No, we'll be glad to look at that. If you could send us a letter, we'll get that started. We'll get a resolution with the City Council and proceed with that. MR. MUDD: I don't think there will be anything left to annex, I'll tell you. MR. PETTIT: Well, seriously, the next meeting, if it's a month from now, would be about the time the session is over, isn't it? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That's correct. MR. PRITT: Session's over -- MR. MUDD: 8th of May. MR. PRITT: -- 3rd or -- okay. Page 13 April 11, 2007 So we may have enough of an answer to know whether all this hard work is for naught or be able to at least proceed knowing what the situation's going to be by the next meeting, if we have it after the 8th. CITY MANAGER LEE: And I do want to suggest that we look at the summer recess. In our particular case, the council leaves in mid-June. I would hope that we'd be in a position where we can get this before them before the summer recess so that a decision could be made on this annexation. Otherwise, we're looking into mid-August. And I know, I believe the county commission generally takes some time during the summer as well. MR. MUDD: Starting around 1 July. They have a meeting on the 24th of July this year and then comes back the first week of September for budget hearings. So a little bit better than yours. You're envious of that. See, if you annex us, then the city council and the county commissioners, you have that same schedule, Bob. CITY MANAGER LEE: Okay, I hear you. Well, okay, I just wanted to be sensitive to that time. MR. MUDD: Let's make sure when we get this draft, though, we come at the meeting with the draft. Hopefully everybody's looked at the draft. And if there's anything missing from your perspective, you're prepared to talk about it at that meeting. So that we've got it locked, we can get it changed quickly, and from then on we can say okay, now it's time to go to the different boards and get this thing approved or disapproved or whatever. And then if we have to have another meeting to try to work out details in between, we can. CITY MANAGER LEE: And our City Council yet needs to have some readings on the annexation itself. So okay, Bob, is there anything else you want to -- MR. PRITT: Well, just to clarify, Mr. Mudd said -- I think he used the word "we" when we were talking about the agreement. This Page 14 April 11, 2007 does not include the fire district. I think we said that earlier. But I want to be careful that we're not in any way prejudicing the fire district's ability to come in and have the meeting that they're missing today. We did get a letter from Ms. Donaldson, seemed to be kind of objecting to the meeting. I thought we had made it clear that we needed to keep on moving. She is actually working with the legislature to try to get some legislation on some of the matters that we're negotiating, and so we're at a loss as to what to even try to negotiate with them at this point. But I just wanted to make sure that we're not doing anything and would not want you to do anything that would in any way prejudice their position. I know you wouldn't do that on purpose, but I just wanted to make it clear for the record we're not trying to go around the fire control district -- MR. MUDD: We'll put a section -- MR. PETTIT: -- but we do need to keep moving. MR. MUDD: -- in there that says fire protection to be determined or something like that in the agreement so that we have an idea or by separate agreement or whatever. MR. PRITT: Right. CITY MANAGER LEE: Good. I have nothing else today. Unless Commissioner -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, yes, just for a moment or two. I know that we've dwelt on the concurrency issue, and we had Archibald get together with Feder and they determined that one intersection needed to be fixed to bring everything up to current concurrency. I still got concern about what the park may do in the future under the rules that the City of Naples has as far as how effective the concurrency for Airport Road and the transportation element. Somehow I'd like to have somebody be able to address that Page 15 April 11, 2007 before we get to the end to be able to know in the future. Because it serves little if we meet the immediate needs and then the City of Naples goes their way and we have to deal with the Airport Road issue of maintaining it and bringing it up to par with the growing aspects of the park itself. Right now we have a checkbook concurrency in place within the county where it just brings everything to a stop until the roads get to a point. I'm a little bit concerned there, that somehow I'd like to see that addressed, if we could. That would probably just satisfy most of my concerns. CITY MANAGER LEE: We'll seek additional clarification for that -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you. CITY MANAGER LEE: -- for that, Commissioner, on that item. Okay. Is that it? MR. MUDD: That's it. CITY MANAGER LEE: Thank you all for attending. Next meeting, you want to set up like we've done before? MR. MUDD: I'll set it up for close to a month. I'll try to get it so it's on the end so Ms. Donaldson can come and she doesn't have to write us another letter. And we'll do as close to 30 days as I can possibly do it, okay, and try to clear everybody's calendar so that we can get it done. CITY MANAGER LEE: Okay, thank you. MR. MUDD: My secretary will start working on it as soon as I get back. (The meeting was adjourned at 1:30 p.m.) TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICES, INC., Page 16