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BCC Minutes 02/06/2024 WFebruary 6, 2024 Page 1 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS STRATEGIC PLANNING, AUIR, and BUDGET WORKSHOP Naples, Florida, February 6, 2024 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 WORKSHOP SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following Board members present: Chairman: Chris Hall Dan Kowal William L. McDaniel, Jr. Burt L. Saunders Rick LoCastro (Absent) ALSO PRESENT: Daniel Rodriguez, Deputy County Manager Edward Finn, Deputy County Manager Jeffrey A. Klatzkow, County Attorney Troy Miller, Communications & Customer Relations COLLIER COUNTY Board of County Commissioners STRATEGIC PLANNING, AUIR, AND BUDGET WORKSHOP AGENDA Board of County Commission Chambers Collier County Government Center 3299 Tamiami Trail East, 3rd Floor Naples, FL 34112 February 06, 2024 9:00 AM Commissioner Chris Hall, District 2; - Chair Commissioner Burt Saunders, District 3; - Vice Chair Commissioner Rick LoCastro, District 1 Commissioner Dan Kowal, District 4; - CRAB Co -Chair Commissioner William L. McDaniel, Jr., District 5; - CRAB Co -Chair Notice: All persons wishing to speak must turn in a speaker slip. Each speaker will receive no more than three (3) minutes. Collier County Ordinance No. 2003-53 as amended by Ordinance 2004-05 and 2007-24, requires that all lobbyists shall, before engaging in any lobbying activities (including but not limited to, addressing the Board of County Commissioners), register with the Clerk to the Board at the Board Minutes and Records Department. 1. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE 2. WORKSHOP TOPICS To consider alignment of strategic program budgets with the strategic plan, provide updates on strategic priority projects, review and update the strategic plan, review the Annual Update and Inventory Report (AUIR), and provide guidance on FY 2025 budget policies 2.A. STRATEGIC PROGRAM BUDGET ALIGNMENT Update on Current Strategic Program Budget Alignment 2.11. STRATEGIC PLAN UPDATE a. Priority Project Updates and Additions -Update on current priority projects, new priority projects, and discussion. b. Strategic Plan Consideration -Review of strategic plan updates and discussion. 2.C. ANNUAL UPDATE AND INVENTORY REPORT (AUIR) Presentation of key AUIR elements, coordination with strategic planning and budgeting, and discussion. 2.D. BUDGET POLICY DISCUSSION FY 2025 budget timeline, priority -based budgeting, budget funding overview, economic indicators, and budget policy guidance. 2.E. NEXT STEPS 3. PUBLIC COMMENTS 4. ADJOURN Inquiries concerning changes to the Board's Agenda should be made to the County Manager's Office at 252-8383. February 6, 2024 Page 2 MR. RODRIGUEZ: Good morning, Chairman. You have a live mic. CHAIRMAN HALL: Thank you. All right. If you-all would please stand, and we're going to say the prayer. Commissioner McDaniel, will you please lead us? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I'd be honored, sir. If you'll all bow, please. Heavenly Father, we want to thank you for the many blessings that you bestow upon us every single day. Father, as we move through these deliberations, help us to keep you in mind, for what we do is in your grace. Father, there are many who protect the lives of our citizenry every single day. Please keep them under constant care and your watch and keep all under your wing, sir. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner Kowal, would you lead us in the Pledge, please, sir. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: Yes, sir. (The Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.) CHAIRMAN HALL: Mr. Rodriguez. MR. RODRIGUEZ: All right. Good morning, Commissioners. This begins the Strategic Planning and AUIR and Budget Workshop. Before we got started, I just want to -- for the record that Commissioner LoCastro will not be joining us due to a medical emergency, and your County Manager, Amy Patterson, went to visit him to make sure that he's okay. So with that, we're going to get started right out of the gate with Ed Finn, your Deputy County Manager, who's going to cover your agenda and run your agenda today. MR. FINN: Thank you, Mr. Rodriguez. February 6, 2024 Page 3 Edward Finn, Deputy County Manager. Mr. Chairman, Commissioners, thank you today. Welcome to the Strategic Plan, AUIR, and budget policy workshop. This is a -- this is kind of a first where we've put all these together. These are all key planning documents. This is a -- really, the next step in our strategic plan coordination with the budget that we kind of reinvigorated last year about this time. So we're thrilled to be here. We appreciate the staff's commitment to these important topics, and looking forward to a productive morning. We have a number of items to cover today: Strategic program budget alignment, strategic plan update, we're going to go over a few key elements of the AUIR, and then we're going to wrap up the morning here with a budget -- budget policy discussion in preparation for bringing the budget policy back to the Board here in the very near future. Item #2A STRATEGIC PROGRAM BUDGET ALIGNMENT With that, Mr. Chairman, I'm going to move to Item 2A very briefly, which I'm just going to give the Board a sense of the alignment -- the alignment that we have made with the budget. And this is a little bit of an eye chart. So a key element for the strategic plan is proper alignment with the budget. To that end, the '24 budget includes alignment of programs with the budget and the strategic plan. The alignment will be one -- will be used in our priority-based budget process through ResourceX as we go forward. We did provide the strategic aligned -- strategically aligned budget to the Board in a binder last week. And I'd like to just take a February 6, 2024 Page 4 moment and just walk through one -- one example. The example we're looking at is the Code Enforcement Division. The Code Enforcement Division is part of the Community Development and Growth Management Department. You'll see that the budget programmatically is broken down primarily into regional investigations with an administration overhead element at the top. Further, the operations section which processes -- processes much of the key enforcement paperwork. Last on the second page is the Code Enforcement Board and Special Magistrate hearings. Last is the citation officer lien search. We also have some performance measures, and last on the second page is a sense of division priorities. You will see next to the various program elements some letters. The letters correspond to the strategic plan and provide that alignment. QP is for quality of place, CD is for community development, RG is for responsible governance, and the letters IAM refer to infrastructure and asset management. In summary, I just want to tell the Board we've had some success establishing programs and linking those programs to the strategic plan. These programs you're looking at in the linkage is going to be -- going to be refined through the priority budgeting process with ResourceX, and we're hoping for a lot of success through that program and lead to -- lead to informed decision making as we go through our budget process. Comments/questions on that? (No response.) MR. FINN: That really concludes my presentation on that matter. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And just for clarification, because I didn't really have a chance to review the small booklet. I was reviewing the big booklet. Is the -- from what I understand, this February 6, 2024 Page 5 is going to be the format that we're going to be utilizing going forward for projecting the budgets as we're going along with these new acronyms? MR. FINN: The new acronyms are -- we use those. We do tie the programs into that. The ResourceX process is going to allow considerable refinement of that. They are going to use the strategic plan as part of their criteria to establish the priority of various programs. So we have a good start on that. But I am certain that through ResourceX it's going to be considerably refined and presented in a manner that will allow for appropriate decision making in consideration of priorities. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Very good. Thank you, sir. MR. FINN: My pleasure. My pleasure. And -- excuse me. Item #2B STRATEGIC PLAN UPDATE The next item, which is 2B, is the strategic plan update. We have two elements to that. The first element are priority projects. We have 57 priority projects, and today what we want to talk to you about is one major update to one of our projects as well as a number of additional priority projects we want to add to this list. Because we have one of the projects that is subject to a major proposed update is the 800 megahertz radio hardening program, that was a priority -- a priority project. Last year, to harden the existing system, the Board earmarked $6 million for that hardening. Major components of that include the relocation of the Everglades/U.S. 41/29 cell tower or -- cell tower out off of that February 6, 2024 Page 6 property. That tower has to be moved. That accounts for about 1.5 million of that hardening. There's some other hardening elements that have taken place. And at this point, there's about 3.5 million of that 6 that has not been spent. And as staff worked through what they needed to harden and met with stakeholders, the stakeholders had recommended that instead of simply hardening the existing system, which is now 10 years old, consider looking at replacing the system. And to that end, Nate Hinkle is here. He's our -- he's our communications guy, and you'll see a lot of public -- public-safety professionals here in the room. They're very interested in this as well. And if it pleases the Chair, I'll bring Mr. Hinkle up here to briefly introduce this and allow the discussion to move as it will. CHAIRMAN HALL: Sure. How much money was that on the hardening? MR. FINN: The hardening was programmed at $6 million in the current budget. And if I may, I may have bumbled through that. As they went through that and looked at what they needed to do for the current system, they realized that they shouldn't just blindly go ahead and harden the existing system if there was a need to actually update it and replace it in its entirety. So I give them some credit to be able to look at it that way. And with that, I will bring Mr. Hinkle up here for a brief statement, and we'll see where it goes. CHAIRMAN HALL: Great. MR. FINN: Thank you, sir. MR. HINKLE: Good morning, everyone, Commissioners, Deputy County Managers. Thank you for allowing me to speak to you today. It is my privilege and pleasure to be your telecommunications manager now for the last year and a half at February 6, 2024 Page 7 Collier County. I come from a much larger system on the West Coast. And when I got here, I learned some things that were very disturbing about the way the system is currently run and has been managed. As many of you know, John Daly fell ill and was unable to participate in the radio system in his last days, and he passed away soon after retiring here at Collier County. So the information on the system has been an interesting discovery process. I've worked with a lot of our law enforcement personnel, with our fire personnel to get the background and the history on the system and to learn this carefully. The original project slides that you -- what we were going to present today were basically on hardening and redundancy, and this has morphed into something much more critical, and it's based on a life-safety need that our first responders really depend on. I'm here today to introduce and champion the need for a new public-safety radio system on behalf of our first responders. We need a radio system that is based on a partnership with our vendors that provides cutting-edge life-safety communications and is not one based on an adversarial tolerance of one another. We don't have that partnership today with L3 Harris and Communications International. It has been very disappointing. Our radio system was purchased in 2015, as Ed has mentioned. It was based on technology that's over 10 years old. And as we know, that in a data-driven society that we have today, cell phones last two to three years. How many of us have a cell phone that's over five years old or a computer that's over 10 years old? Do we even use those anymore? Technology changes at a rapid pace, and so should our radio system that our first responders depend on. It's much more than just simply a push-to-talk and a voice communications. We use data February 6, 2024 Page 8 every day. Many of our components have a life cycle of four to five years. As in any IT infrastructure, these devices are not necessarily manufactured by the vendors that we purchase from. Larger IT-based companies manufacture these. L3 Harris and Communications International have failed to meet the needs of Collier County time and time again. I've heard this from many of our agencies, and it concerns me greatly. They have serious deficiencies with a lack of timely response to critical system outages, and I'm here to express my concerns that this may lead to an officer safety issue in the near future. Collier County sheriffs, fire, and EMS have lost confidence in both L3 Harris and Communications International. Very disturbing. We need to replace our aging P25 digital radio system. We need a P25 public-safety land/mobile radio system that embraces technologies and puts our citizens and public-safety heroes' needs first. Many of our first responder are gathered here today and are asking for you to support this purchase of the new radio system. I greatly appreciate their support. I've heard them as a representative for Collier County, and we are responding. We're researching this effort. We're taking our time to make sure that we make an intelligence, fiscally responsible effort toward this purchase, and we will come back to you in the very near future with what we've found and which way we would like to move forward. Again, I greatly appreciate your time today. I'd like to give a few minutes, if that's okay, to our first responders to express their needs so that you understand this is not just me that's, you know, coming up here and asking for this, as I have a short time here at Collier County, and I depend on these people. February 6, 2024 Page 9 CHAIRMAN HALL: Hold on, Mr. Hinkle. Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: We all depend on these people. MR. HINKLE: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Do you have an approximate estimation to the cost for the new system? MR. HINKLE: I don't at this time. We are researching, and we are making sure that we do our due diligence. And I would hate to prematurely come out with a number that would be insufficient to meet our needs. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And when do you think you're going to be able to come back to us with that information? MR. HINKLE: I would figure in the next three months I should be able to get that information for you and give you an accurate number. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Is the system that we have now working? MR. HINKLE: It works for basic push-to-talk, yes, sir, it does, but it doesn't meet the needs of our first responders, and that's what's critical. We've had several failures, Hurricane Irma, for which I was not here, the system failed for over 12 hours. It went down. In Hurricane Ian the system took a hard failure for over six hours. We had to fall back on our backup system. And these are related to a combination of things which are hardening and our current vendors that maintain the system. The redundancies that are built into the system are not sufficient today to really carry us forward into the future. As we expand in Collier County here, we need to make sure that we have an adequate number of radio towers that provide coverage in those areas, particularly off of Oil Well Road and 29, as we expand out in that region of the county, February 6, 2024 Page 10 Immokalee. We don't have enough towers to cover those sites adequately. And like I say, in hardening the system, we took a good, hard look, and I heard what I heard from our public-safety first responders that it's time for an update to this radio system, something that they can depend on and move forward with in the next decade or two. CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner Kowal. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: Thank you, Chair. Good morning. MR. HINKLE: Good morning. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: So if we moved away from -- I'll just say in my past life I was never a fan. I used that system, and I was never a fan of the Harris. I came from a system that used Motorola. MR. HINKLE: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: And then spent 20 years here using -- which I never knew existed. But that being said, so what would you think -- if we moved in another direction, who would be capable to handle this system we need as in, like, another vendor, like a Motorola or something like that? MR. HINKLE: I think you hit it on the nose. Motorola is the only vendor of choice in this case, in my personal opinion. But, again, I need to follow this up with adequate research and basically weigh the needs of our public-safety first responders before I make that commitment to you here today. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: Thank you. CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner Saunders. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Thank you. I have a couple questions. I think the first one is let's assume for a moment that we selected a vendor and equipment. How long does it take to make that installation to replace what we have with what we -- just for the February 6, 2024 Page 11 purpose of this question, that we've selected? MR. HINKLE: Yeah, great question. So 18 to 24 months is the typical turnaround time to cut over a system. We have to keep the old system alive and install the new system at the same time. It requires retrofitting of some of the towers, add additional antennas on the tower, and we stand up equipment from both vendors at the same time, and we slowly cut people over. So this does take 18 to 24 months to do. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Okay. Now, we all have a great deal of confidence in you and the people that are involved in communications from our first responders. Do you need some assistance in evaluating what is needed for this community? Do you need us to hire an expert to assist you in that effort, some company that comes in and evaluates the needs -- MR. HINKLE: That would be wonderful. We would appreciate that assistance. And you know, fortunately I have, you know, all of the assistance from out public-safety first responders. We meet regularly to discuss these issues in enhancement meetings and team meetings. But, yes. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: The point is, we have great confidence in the team that's here working on this, but if you need more assistance, I think the Board could make some decisions here very quickly to provide you that assistance. MR. HINKLE: That would be greatly appreciated. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: And I don't know what -- that takes -- that takes several months just to get that started. So I would ask -- Mr. Chairman, if I might, ask that we have an agenda item at our next meeting next week to discuss the process of selecting a team to help you make the right decisions. And if it's going to take 18 to 24 months to install something, I think we need to get started on the process to determine what we want to install. February 6, 2024 Page 12 I will say, and everyone on this board would agree, that there's nothing more important than public safety. Nothing more important to our public-safety officials than to be able to communicate. And if they can't communicate effectively, then we've got a big problem. So, Mr. Chairman, I would ask that we have an agenda item next meeting to discuss a process that we can go through to get the assistance that these folks need to make sure we get the right system. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Second. MR. HINKLE: Great. Thank you. CHAIRMAN HALL: So in a perfect world, if you had -- if money wasn't an option [sic] and you had -- you could get anything that you wanted to get, what's your confidence level that you could make that happen with the team that you have right now? MR. HINKLE: With L3 Harris and Communications -- CHAIRMAN HALL: No, no, no. MR. HINKLE: -- nothing. CHAIRMAN HALL: No. If you could get what you wanted, the team -- however, what's the confidence level that you have with you and the team that you have right now to make that change with the new equipment? MR. HINKLE: Exceptionally high confidence level. I have no question about the fact that we could make a very good decision to move forward on what Collier County needs now and in the future. CHAIRMAN HALL: Very good. Thank you. MR. FINN: If I may, Mr. Chair, this is a substantial investment. It certainly is of paramount importance to the community. There's -- there's procurement niceties, and the consultant is something that had been used in the past. The consultant provides a needs analysis. They typically help with the scope of services that's going to be procured. They review what comes back from the proposed vendors, and they help us make that February 6, 2024 Page 13 selection, and they do, in fact, provide that outside expertise. Commissioner Saunders mentioned that. Certainly that's an important part of this as we move forward. So I think we should come back and give you a sense of what we can do here in the short run. We came in here -- came into this meeting today hoping to get the Board's authorization to bring back a little more robust discussion of where they are right now in order to kind of formalize going forward. I'm not -- I'm not convinced that isn't -- doesn't remain a good approach. We have not -- while I have tossed around the concept of a consultant, we're looking for some kind of direction today that the Board is interested in looking at this. And if that's the case, we could -- we could move on that consultant and get that going and still shoot for that three- or four-month report back to the Board. CHAIRMAN HALL: I certainly am not opposed to a conversation, but I'd much rather hear straight from the horse's mouth of the guys in the room of what they need and why they need it and why it's important, and then we can take what they say, and if we do a consultant, I think that to hear straight from the customer base would be better than a third party. So I'm welcome to hear any conversation that we have in the room. MR. RODRIGUEZ: Chairman, if I could just add to this. Dan Rodriguez, your deputy county manager. We've met with the delivery teams here in Collier County, which included the Sheriff's Department, all the fire districts, as well as your communications team, and they've pretty much isolated what -- the best vendor to provide the level of service that Collier County expects. And looking at our sister counties, we've looked at their systems February 6, 2024 Page 14 as well, so we have a pretty good idea and approach where we're headed. We have a good idea of what -- the estimate of the cost. But bottom line, you're out of capacity. And what the emergency services experience is, you don't have enough trunk line for all the communications that occur. During an emergency, people get dropped off; that includes your school board as well that uses our system as well for emergencies as well. So I have personally met, as well as the delivery team, with the vice president for the southern United States of Motorola, and he's pretty much sat down with us and showed us examples where they have done this transfer of old systems to the latest technology. There are not many vendors out there. If you look at the communications industry, you might have one or two or three top, but there's one that certainly stands out as it relates to emergency response communications. So with that, I think that's a great idea is to -- just to do a quick check -- that shouldn't take long, Commissioner Saunders -- to see what -- there are companies that specialize in that, but that has to be a quick turnaround, but I think that's also a great idea to bring up some of the first responders, the leaders in our community, and get their take as well. CHAIRMAN HALL: Yeah. MR. HINKLE: Thank you, Dan. I appreciate that. CHAIRMAN HALL: So feel free to call up who you need to, and we can make it brief. We've heard -- we know that there's a need, but maybe we can put some intensity on it. Yes, sir. MR. FINNEY: Good morning, Chairman, Commissioners, and Deputy County Manager. For the record -- yes? CHAIRMAN HALL: One second. Commissioner McDaniel. February 6, 2024 Page 15 COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I was just going to follow up on your suggestion, Commissioner Saunders. I'm all about having a consultant help, but we already have -- we already have the boots on the ground and the people that know what the need, in fact, is. I don't -- I don't want to get caught up in a procurement process that belays a necessity of our number-one job, which is keeping our families and neighborhoods safe. So I'm okay with that if you feel -- if our staff feels that that desire's requisite. But I'm kind of sort of already hearing that we have a -- it wouldn't be bad to have an extra set of eyes and ears, but I don't want to add to what I perceive to be an additional expense over and above at least making sure that the expenses is in parameters of what we need for keeping our families safe. So that was my comment. Thank you, sir. CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner Kowal. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: Thank you, Chair. Mine's more of a logistical question on who's paying for what, I guess, because I understand the system's falling [sic] on us, but when it comes down to mobile and hand-held radios within the Sheriff's Department, the fire department, and those stakeholders -- MR. HINKLE: Sure. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: -- you know, I know when they serve -- when they bring a vehicle in and they equip it, that's all part of the budget, equip it with the mobile radios and, you know, the MDU systems and things like that. MR. HINKLE: Right. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: Now, does that fall on their budget for the hand-helds and the mobiles -- MR. HINKLE: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: -- to change over to, let's say, a Motorola system? February 6, 2024 Page 16 MR. HINKLE: Correct. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: Because the system they have now won't be comparable to the Motorola because it won't. MR. HINKLE: The Motorola system will be better with some data enhancements and higher reliability. The great thing about this is is that all the radios that we currently use the radio system today, since they are a P25 digital standard, can be simply reprogrammed and used on the new system. Now, a Harris radio won't have all the features that some of the Motorola radios will offer, but as far as basic push-to-talk and some GPS location, it will work. So the great thing about this is that our public-safety first responders don't have to replace all of the radios immediately. They can slowly change out, or they can choose whatever vendor they like, whether that be Motorola, Harris, Kenwood. There's a variety of companies that offer radios that are P25 digital compatible. So what we're looking at is replacing the core system that they depend on every day to communicate with any brand of P25 radio system. And this is something that is a standard in the United States of America, P25 digital. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: Okay. Well, that cleared it up for me. MR. HINKLE: Okay. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: You know, we've got 2200 radios we've got to switch out just in the Sheriff's Department. MR. HINKLE: Yes. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: All right. CHAIRMAN HALL: Yes, sir. MR. FINNEY: Good morning. For the record, Bob Finney. I'm the Sheriff's director of communications technology. He couldn't be here today. He's in Washington, D.C., at the National February 6, 2024 Page 17 Sheriffs Association. But I've been at the Sheriff's Office for 23 years -- actually, today is the 23rd year -- and 17 of those years have been managing the technology that supports communications at various levels, whether they're the day-to-day communications or the mission-critical communications. It includes the community being able to call and report when they're having incidents, when they're having emergencies on the 911 system, the computer-aided dispatch system, and then, as Commissioner Kowal mentioned, the Sheriff's Office use of the mobile -- of the county's P25 radio system, both handhelds, mobile, and now even LTE or cellular type devices. Something to keep in mind as we go through this exercise is that there's two things that have drastically changed how we view public safety, really over the last couple decades, and we need to keep this in mind. First is how we respond to incidents as first responders and the second is the technology that's available to them, right. If we look back historically, agencies and jurisdictions tended to work in their own sandbox and handle things on their own, but because of the size of incidents, we think of active assailant type scenarios, the response now, it's not just an agency or a few officers responding. If we get an incident at a school, for example, we have hundreds -- literally hundreds of responders coming down on an incident and responding quickly. And so for that, communications is about most importance and the technology to keep that situational awareness, not just within an agency, but across the first responder community that we have here. If we look at failed responses, there's two things, again, that come up: Communications issues and lack of that situational awareness. February 6, 2024 Page 18 We're very fortunate here in Collier County. I do get an opportunity to travel a lot for the Sheriff's Office and visit different communities, and I'm sure you're all aware, but the community we have here works very well together. That's not the way it is in I would venture to say most communities where we get that participation working together, that ability to share information, and Nate kind of spoke to that in his meetings here just since he's been here. And it's for reasons like these, these technology improvements, not just the push-to-talk. Talk about it -- my seven- and nine-year-old have technology at home that they play games with and communicate with that's more than -- not here in Collier County, but more than, really, a lot of responders have in their hands in their communities. And so Sheriff Rambosk has moved forward this last year. He actually made an investment in the radio infrastructure. He did buy a Motorola M3 core. He's the only sheriff in Florida and probably one of the very few in the United States that's actually purchased a core, and that's to be able to tie in not just the push-to-talk, pushing the button, but be able to tie in cellular technologies and bring in other data into the radios that we have and that many of the first responder agencies are already purchasing. It is an investment, obviously, looking forward, but it is one that the public does expect here in Collier County. We know we have visitors that come down, and they'll call me and say, hey, we can do this. When we dial 911 -- or we can send pictures to 911. You know, they are aware of the technology in other places, and they want to make sure they have it here, too. So just in closing, I'll let you know that Sheriff Rambosk does have the staunch support of what Manager Hinkle's doing and looks forward to moving forward to working with the county and the first February 6, 2024 Page 19 responders in this effort. So thank you very much for your time. CHAIRMAN HALL: Thank you, Mr. Finney. MR. FINNEY: Thank you. MR. SAPP: Good morning. Nolan Sapp, fire chief, Greater Naples Rescue. As of yesterday, I've got 33 years in Collier County in public safety. And I was part of the original committee that selected General Electric to be the vendor for our radio system in 1994. Since then, that company's been sold, like, six times. We've been passed around from one agency to another. The equipment has -- we've had difficulty with the equipment. The core of the system, we've had problems with that, so much so as Mr. Hinkle said, we're just -- we just can't depend on it any longer, but we're stuck with it because that's the core of the system, and that's sad and unfortunate because whether we're at a wildfire or we're sitting in the command and control headquarters of the fire stations trying to reach our personnel for Greater Naples -- that's 1512 square miles -- when suddenly you're able to talk to everybody and then all of a sudden the system goes down because the antenna moved a half inch. Because the tower was blown a half an inch, you've lost your direct line through your control links. So our communications with Everglades City, with East Naples, with our partners North and Marco City, all of them, suddenly goes dead, what are we stuck with? And this has happened at least twice during hurricanes where we've had to actually put people in vehicles as runners to go south to give information to crews: You need to check this resident, you need to go here, you need to go there. We've had situations where we've had house fires in Golden Gate City, and the communication would just drop out for no reason. People, literally, as close as the gentlemen are in the back of the room were unable to talk to them because the system dropped us. The February 6, 2024 Page 20 system failed us. It has failed us numerous times. Again -- the fact that the company's been sold so many times, the fact that it's been passed around from one to another is just key evidence they've not done the research and development that they need. They just bought a company they thought they could make money off of and move forward, and then whenever we complained about it, they try to either Band-Aid it or just cover it up altogether. We have -- as a collective, all the fire districts, we have just quietly started migrating our portable hand-held equipment and our mobile radios away from Harris. I haven't bought a Harris radio from the day we went P25 in 2015, and I was a part of that committee as well, and I begged everybody, let's get rid of this. It's not doing what we need it to do. So once we went P25 -- and as Mr. Hinkle pointed out, you're able to buy whatever user equipment -- that's what it's called -- the mobile radios, the portables, and so forth, you could get what you felt was going to be reliable for you, and we've vacated Harris altogether; haven't bought a single component of Harris since that took place. We've bought strictly Motorola. Many agencies in here have already gone full Motorola, and the rest of us migrating to it because we know it works, we know it's dependable. But the only flaw in the system right now is the core of the system, and that's what Mr. Hinkle's trying to address. There's nothing worse than being in your command center trying to navigate through whatever's happening in your community and then you suddenly can't talk to anybody. Imagine if you're sitting there trying to talk to your staff in the back of the room, you can see them, but you can't talk to them, and that's what's happening to us today. It's not necessarily across 1,512 square miles. It literally could just be in the next building or in the same building, when you're in a February 6, 2024 Page 21 high-rise, when you're in a stairwell. When that door closes and you lose your connectivity with the system, it just drops out because the building is built harder than the radio system that you're trying to utilize to do that. So I, along with many others in this room, greatly appreciate the fact that we're taking a serious look at it and finally are going to move to something that this county with be proud of and rely on heavily and help us get the mission accomplished as we move forward. Thank you. CHAIRMAN HALL: Thank you, Mr. Sapp. MR. SAPP: Sorry? CHAIRMAN HALL: I said thank you. MR. SAPP: Thank you. MR. HINKLE: Okay. Any more questions for me? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: No, sir. CHAIRMAN HALL: Nope. MR. HINKLE: Thank you, all. I really appreciate your time. CHAIRMAN HALL: You got a question? COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I don't have a question. Are we moving onto the next topic? Because I don't want to leave this one just yet. I had suggested that we have an agenda item to discuss the best procedure for going forward. We don't, obviously, need to do that on February 13th, but I still would like to have a dialogue at some point to determine whether or not we want to bring another expert in to assist our staff in making sure we get not necessarily the right company -- I think everybody agrees that it's Motorola -- but make sure we get what we need for our community. We can rely on Motorola to be the supplier and not have any other discussions with other experts, but I'm not so sure that that would mean we'd get exactly what we need. February 6, 2024 Page 22 So I guess the question is, are we going to schedule an agenda item on this at one of our meetings in February to really go through a process here? CHAIRMAN HALL: I think so. I think the sooner the better. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I think next Tuesday is a really good idea. CHAIRMAN HALL: And I just want to make sure -- we are very well aware of the problem. I want to really focus on the solution to this. I don't want to kick this problem down the road over and over and over. We get that. So I want to make this agenda item really solution based. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Do you need a motion out of us, or are you getting a positive head nod to be able to put it on next week's agenda? MR. FINN: No, sir, that's fine. Staff will pull together an approach and a process, executive summary to discuss with the Board, and we will do everything we can to get it on the next meeting. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Perfect. CHAIRMAN HALL: Thank you, Mr. Hinkle. MR. HINKLE: Thank you, all. MR. FINN: Very good. So the Board -- the Board did receive these what are about 57 project slides that we provided. I have no intention of going over all of them. I want to put on the visualizer our 13 new items that we're proposing to put on our strategic priority list. That priority list -- I think these are good additions. These are not necessarily new programs, and the item we just discussed is also on there identified as an update. So we did talk about that update. The other projects on there are the aquatics capital program, and that's a capital renewal and replacement program for existing February 6, 2024 Page 23 facilities. Order of magnitude there is about $10 million. That is a critical project that -- while it has been moving forward, we want to give it the added -- the added heft of being a priority project to make sure that no one loses sight of that. And what I just said, really, is the theme for all of these. Caxambas is an important project that has been moving forward, but we want to give it the prioritization to make sure that the Board knows that we're not taking our eyes off of it. The Immokalee Sports Complex certainly is a matter of concern. And, again, we want to make sure that these projects get the right -- right prioritization. The next two -- or I see the Hussey property site prep and master planning, that is moving forward. We just want to make sure that's on the Board's radar. EMS Station 74, the Board approved that contract. That's an important partnership project, and that should be prioritized in this manner. The 800 megahertz we just talked about. Underground stormwater pipe cleaning is obviously important. That has kind of gone on and off our radar and the Board's radar, and we want to make sure that that gets some prioritization. The TIGER grant, obviously a critically important project; Goodlette-Frank Road; Collier Boulevard; Vanderbilt Beach Road extension, Phase 2, not Phase 3, I believe; West Goodlette, stormwater; and the Immokalee Road/I-75 interchange initiative that the Board discussed here most recently. And if it's not on there, it's an oversight, but the other planning priority is, in fact, the Camp Keais project, which is starting to gather some momentum at this point in time. So relative to the priority projects, staff is simply seeking an acknowledgment that these do represent some additional priorities that should be tracked along with those other -- other priority projects. February 6, 2024 Page 24 With that, I'll attempt to respond to questions. Staff is prepared to discuss any specific -- specific projects the Board wants to discuss. CHAIRMAN HALL: These are the new priorities compare to 57 total? MR. FINN: Yes, sir. These would be -- we currently have 44 priorities. This would add three [sic], so this would bring us to 57 priorities. And they're in different areas, so we always -- we always worry about priority overload. If everybody's a priority, nothing is. But I can assure you that this -- these 57 projects represent, certainly, the most important and prioritized projects. But in terms of the gross number of projects and initiatives that are going on, this is actually a fairly -- fairly small number at 57. CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: So just as a topic of discussion -- and I'm assuming you're ready to listen to a little bit of this. I would like to have the Camp Keais piece added into the Hussey piece to make sure that our planning for those two acquisitions is, in fact, moving forward. It's -- it's -- it's astounding to me that we've owned those properties for three-plus years and haven't even begun the planning process for utilization of those assets that were bought with taxpayer money. The other thought I wanted to propose to my colleagues on the Board is your number one -- or the number one on this particular list. And I assume these are all important. They're not -- they're not here because -- because we do think that they are. But in regard to the -- that's the Camp Keais piece right there. So like you said -- and you did acknowledge that it was an oversight that it wasn't on the list, but I just wanted to bring it up -- CHAIRMAN HALL: It is here. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- and make sure that -- for topic of discussion, if this board approves the purchase of a piece of February 6, 2024 Page 25 property, the zoning needs to be done as soon as possible. If we -- because without zoning, we just get to sit around and talk about a piece of property that we've purchased and the greater good that we've done by making that acquisition. So I want -- I want the planning and zoning aspect of our acquisitions to become forefront. Even while we're in contract negotiations, if we're engaging a consultant, we're talking to the -- talking to the stakeholders, and we're bringing in the proposed use -- we don't buy a piece of property for fun. We typically don't. Sometimes we do. But the -- I saw Jennifer laughing when I said that. The bottom line is, we -- it's imperative that we move forward with the planning and the zoning initiative as soon as possible, number one. Number two -- go back to your other list, please -- and that's the aquatics -- yes, our aquatics capital program. Before we -- or as we're going through this list of priorities, I had a -- I had a thought the other day, and I'd like to propose this as a thought and maybe generate an ITN, an intent to negotiate, through procurement and have a discussion about privatization of our aquatics facilities, bringing in a public for-profit entity to operate one. Stick our toe in the water, give it a try, and have a discussion as to whether there's economic viability, whether there's benefit to our community, whether there's an opportunity for us to engage with the private sector to operate these facilities in a manner and fashion that we're not geared for. And so if that were to meet with positive thought processes, I would like to explore that. You just mentioned that this is a plus/minus $10 million proposition for what we're -- what we're talking about here from a capital standpoint that doesn't get into O&M and everything else that goes along. We have some very, very February 6, 2024 Page 26 expensive assets, and maximization of their utilization is imperative. So if it meets -- if it meets with your pleasure, I'd like to -- I'd like to have a look at that from a process standpoint to see if we could bring in some outside ideas as to how we can better manage those assets. MR. FINN: And if I may, Commissioner, thank you for your comments. I don't know that we need to report back to the Board, per se, on the process. It is an internal discussion that we've been having. The County Manager and the procurement director have the ability to initiative the ITN, and we could potentially do that and bring that -- bring back the results for Board consideration without a predetermination that we're moving in that direction. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. I'm okay with that, but, you know, I just thought maybe you'd like a head nod or four. CHAIRMAN HALL: I'm definitely -- I'm definitely for the conversation. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: That's all I'm looking for. CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner Saunders. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At our public hearing a few weeks ago, we discussed potential improvements on Immokalee Road, and you've got one of them listed here, the I-75 interchange. Obviously, that was -- that's the big one, the diverging diamond intersection, but there were several others that we discussed and voted to move up on the priority list. Some of them were very minor; some restriping, things of that nature. Ms. Scott's not here this morning. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: She is. She's hiding in between Ed. You can't see her. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Oh, okay. I'm sorry. MR. FINN: And if you'd like, why don't I just bring Ms. Scott up, and she can respond directly to your question. February 6, 2024 Page 27 COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Yeah, because some of those we may want to -- we may want to put some of those on this list because they are a priority, but they're not particularly expensive. MS. SCOTT: For the record, Trinity Scott, Transportation Management Services department head. Commissioner Saunders, for many of those smaller projects, we hope to have them done before Fiscal Year 2024. So no need to go onto your 2024 priority list if we can get them done before October. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Okay, great. I just wanted to make sure we weren't missing anything. CHAIRMAN HALL: Would that be the restriping and the light coordination? MS. SCOTT: The interim restriping, yes, that we discussed, as well as the signal retiming would be completed over the next couple months. CHAIRMAN HALL: Okay. Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And on that note, you'll recall, Commissioner Saunders, during the hearing there was a fellow that come up I offered a job to when he was talking about their light retiming and everything, I had lunch with him last week. He's agreed -- because he is a paid consultant for the Federal Transportation Department. He's agreed to come and meet with our staff. I talked to Trinity. We're in the process of orchestrating that meeting, have him come to Traffic Ops, talk to Jay and our team over there as to how we're doing, what we're doing, and making some suggestions as to what he's seen in his life. Just -- and on that note, one of the things that I really enjoyed from that conversation with him last week was land-use planning is an integral part of your traffic flow, and that brings in Mr. Bosi and the discussions that we've been having for an eternity with February 6, 2024 Page 28 infrastructure. And infrastructure isn't -- by definition isn't just road, bridges, stormwater, subsurface infrastructure. It's support. It's supplies. It's entertainment. It's a mechanism to actually better manage your traffic flow and providing the necessities of the community in locations where they can get to them, and they're not coming out and burdening our road systems. The other side of that equation is internal connection. We've had several conversations in here with this myriad of gated communities. You've got one way in, one way out, sometimes two, but the only people that get to utilize that facility are the folks that live there. So he brought up, in a very -- well, relatively speaking, brief period of time some really nifty ideas that we might be able to implement in a fairly quick process to be able to help some of these circumstances. So -- and so I spoke with Ms. Scott, and she was very pleased to help orchestrate that meeting with him and our staff over at Transportation. MS. SCOTT: But, Commissioner Saunders, we did not want to lose sight of the I-75 and Immokalee interchange. That is going to be a very important priority for us. And while construction may not commence next year, we want to keep that on the radar, because there will be certain planning and design that we need to do with our partnership with the Florida Department of Transportation. So we want to keep that on the forefront for our priority. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Thank you. CHAIRMAN HALL: Okay. MR. FINN: Terrific. If everyone's good with adding those priorities -- and I assure you that Camp Keais is absolutely on that list. I can show you the slide if you'd like. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: You did. You did. February 6, 2024 Page 29 MR. FINN: I apologize for not having it on my little cheat sheet there. With that, we can move to No. 2B, which is -- which is an actual -- just a quick update on the strategic plan itself. We don't have a lot of changes proposed in this plan. The experts tell me that we need to leave the big pieces holding still, but nonetheless, this little circle represents kind of the "plan, do, check, and act" constant improvement cycle that we're striving for with our strategic plan and our daily operations; our vision statement, to be the best community in America to live, work, and play; our mission statement, to deliver high-quality and best-value public services; programs and facilities to meet the needs of our residents, visitors, and businesses today and tomorrow. We have our strategic focus areas. There are four. Quality of place. The edit you see there is moving one strategic objective from another area into quality of place. Maintain a fully responsive best-in-class emergency management capability. That was part of the plan. We have moved that from responsible governance into quality of place, a very modest -- modest edit. And, if I may, infrastructure and asset management. The last item there dealt with the management of the county's waste stream. Looking at it this year with fresh eyes, we think that that would be more appropriate under the community development strategic focus area. And as you might imagine, we have a task team on the strategic plan. We met with this as well as the priorities. Our goal is -- at this point is not necessarily to make substantive changes to the strategic plan but, rather, work with ResourceX -- through our budgeting process with ResourceX to more fully integrate the strategic plan into our detail work, and that needs to start with February 6, 2024 Page 30 integrating it fully into our budget. So that's kind of our thrust, rather than wordsmithing the existing strategic plan to death. This gives you a sense of what we attempt to do annually. I will point the first -- point to the first bullet as something that we're going to ask the Board to consider not this year but perhaps for '25. We do have the benefit this year of the Community Foundation survey, and that informs our actions at the moment. Affordable housing, transportation come to mind as the top priorities out of their plan. I suspect if we were to do the survey, it would sound just like that. Obviously, ongoing resident engagement and outreach in our daily work, update our initiatives and action items, align those action items with the budget, and, again, the sense of continuous improvement, review progress, adjust, and report. With that, future consideration will be the reinstatement of the survey. Not necessarily this year, but perhaps in '25. Comments? Questions? (No response.) Item #2C ANNUAL UPDATE AND INVENTORY REPORT (AUIR) MR. FINN: The next item on our agenda is review of a few key AUIR items, and Ms. Scott is going to take the lead on that. The key items that we'd like the Board to review are the stormwater element and the transportation element. And with that, I'll turn it over to Ms. Scott. MS. SCOTT: Thank you, Mr. Finn. Once again, Trinity Scott, Transportation Management Services department head. February 6, 2024 Page 31 As we discussed at our last Board meeting, you know, the Board, as part of the strategic plan, made the Annual Update and Inventory Report part of one of our objectives under infrastructure and asset management. In this -- while it used to be a requirement, we are the only county that has continued it on, and it is an amazing planning tool for us as we move forward with our capital planning. So the AUIR consists of Category A, B, and C facilities. Today I'm going to be talking about our stormwater as well as our roadway section. With regard to -- our stormwater section, obviously, falls under the infrastructure and asset management objective of your strategic plan. Our level of service is broken down by different basins, and those basins work together as a network, if you will. So it's individual roadway kind of thing that then lead -- because I take every analogy back to Transportation. They all hate that, by the way, in Stormwater. But, you know, water has to ultimately flow out. So our level of service really comes down to what our discharge rates are within those individual basins. Some of the observations that we had when we're developing the AUIR, from a stormwater perspective, is our partnership projects are really driving the funding need for our priorities. Those partnership projects are ones that we do with our utility providers, whether that's Dr. Yilmaz's shop with Collier County Water/Sewer District. We also partner with City of Naples as well as the Immokalee Water/Sewer District. So the need for those infrastructure projects really also drive the need for our stormwater infrastructure projects. And if you could imagine, if you look at some of our partnership projects, this infrastructure was put in the ground decades ago, and so it needs attention. It's been underground for quite some time, and now it's time that we need to rehabilitate and replace. February 6, 2024 Page 32 So this is just a map showing just the various partnership projects that we have over the next five years. Naples Park has been going on -- ongoing for quite some time. Palm River, Lely, Naples Manor, Brookside, County Club of Naples, as well as the Immokalee Water/Sewer District. Our stormwater needs over the next five years are in excess of $250 million. A large portion of that is driven by our partnership projects. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Can I ask a quick question? CHAIRMAN HALL: Go ahead. MS. SCOTT: Sure. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: You keep talking about partnerships. Who are we partners with? MS. SCOTT: So we partner with Collier County Water/Sewer District, we partner with Immokalee Water/Sewer District, we partner with the City of Naples Water/Sewer District. So those partnership projects are there's a need to replace infrastructure. Let's go a water main needs to be replaced, or we're doing a septic-to-sewer conversion. And when I say "we," we collectively as an entity "we." So there's a need to go in and replace that infrastructure in the roadway. It all falls within the right-of-way section. So the roadway has to be torn up. The stormwater makes sense for stormwater to partner to bring that stormwater infrastructure up to current design standards as well, because many times it has to be relocated, et cetera. So we're partnering with them to share the costs. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: How's that working out? MS. SCOTT: It works fine. We have completed several projects with Dr. George -- Dr. Yilmaz in Naples Park, starting some in Palm River, as well as Old Lely, Naples Manor; completed the West Goodlette Phase 1 project with the City of Naples; and now starting on the West Goodlette Phase 2, which is a septic-to-sewer February 6, 2024 Page 33 conversion. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. MS. SCOTT: But it does definitely lead the projects, you know, that we're doing and lead us on the necessity for funding. So just looking at the current fiscal year and next fiscal year -- I should take a pause here to say that typically our stormwater projects are funded at about $8 million per year. So in this current fiscal year, we have about a $3.2 million shortfall, and next fiscal year we have an approximately $99 million shortfall. We are working with our Office of Management and Budget as well as our Finance Committee to come up with strategies to be able to continue forward with these partnership projects because, as I said, it makes so much sense to be able to do them. We share the expenses. Also, from a public standpoint, the roadway gets torn up one time versus their roadway being torn up multiple times and us each time paying to replace it. So over our five-year Annual Update and Inventory Report -- and this data was calculated at the time of AUIR preparation -- was approximately $213 million over the next five years that's necessary for infrastructure. I can tell you that from my perspective I've been really pleased with the conversations that the Board is having about priority-based budgeting, looking at our asset in our infrastructure as a top priority. Stormwater has been one that historically has -- you know, it's underground, typically. We don't see it, so when we don't see it, it doesn't get the -- you know, the big hurrah that typically -- that other infrastructure projects do. So we're very pleased to have the conversation with the Board about our -- perhaps our new strategy as far as budgeting goes. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Speaking of new strategies, when is going to be the appropriate time to have a discussion about a February 6, 2024 Page 34 stormwater utility that a regular person can understand? And I'm looking at you, Mr. Finn. There was -- in Commissioner Saunders and I's life, there was another stormwater utility that was just a debacle. When I look at my tax bill, there is an appropriated line item on there for stormwater. That doesn't equate to 8 million a year. In my brain, it's more like 25 million a year that should be appropriated out of our tax funding towards stormwater. So when's a good time for us to have a -- I'm not, obviously, in favor of a new tax, but a replacement funding source to be able to support this deficit that's been created over time by lack of funding being appropriated to stormwater. When's a good time to have that discussion? MR. FINN: Okay. I'm formulating a plan. If the Board suggests that we do that, we would put some preliminary information together. We're not going to be able to do it necessarily for next fiscal year, is my sense of it. Nonetheless, with some direction from the Board, we will add an element into our budget guidance adoption when we get back to the Board with that and have that discussion as part of budget guidance. Perhaps not necessarily for this year, but put the -- put that element into budget guidance that we're moving towards exploring that and reporting back to the Board. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And as a proviso, when we're putting that budget guidance together to start that wheel rolling, I want it to be a replacement revenue source commensurate to the ad valorem that our citizenry's already paying. So if we -- if we add a utility, I want a reduction in ad valorem coming over here to offset that to give to -- give us a more stable funding stream to be able to be dependent upon. MR. FINN: I understand the concept. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Good. And I'll further February 6, 2024 Page 35 explain, if you wish. MR. FINN: No, sir, I understand the concept. Thank you, sir. MS. SCOTT: So the next topic would be our road and bridge facilities. Many of these things I covered at our last Board meeting. But once again, the Annual Update and Inventory Report, roads and bridges is covered under our infrastructure and asset management objective. The AUIR with regard to the roadway system is really a state of the system. How is the system operating as of today? But then we also utilize it as a planning tool by applying growth factors to try to predict when the roadway may exceed its level of service. All of you know and all the traveling public know it takes a long time to get a road project from planning all the way through construction. And so this tool is very key to us to be able to help predict that. Our five-year capital program, we have extensive projects that are included in our five-year capital program. Some include many of the priorities that Mr. Finn talked about; Vanderbilt Beach Road extension Phase 2, Everglades Boulevard, Oil Well Road, but not to forget about the Immokalee Road restriping project, which is a major project for us, as well as improvements on Vanderbilt Beach Road, Airport, Goodlette-Frank, Collier Boulevard. Pine Ridge Road as well. So as has been shown for many years within our Annual Update and Inventory Report, our unfunded need over the five years for transportation projects calculated based on the AUIR was $295 million. I will tell you this does not include any funding that we may need to come up with with regard to the Immokalee/I-75 interchange. We had talked about approximately $40 million for that, but we are working with the Florida Department of Transportation to develop some strategies. Once again, we've been working with our Finance Committee February 6, 2024 Page 36 and our Office of Management and Budget. We do have some opportunities for gas tax bond that we can do within the next couple -- year or so. That will certainly help with this deficit, but we're looking at strategies to be able to overcome this deficit. There's no unfunded need in the current fiscal year. So as we work through our budget policy this year, any unfunded need that we may realize next year, we'll work through that. And that is everything that I have unless you have any other questions. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Is that everything? MS. SCOTT: Just -- what's a half a billion dollars amongst friends? I'll turn it over to Mr. Finn. MR. FINN: Very good. Item #2D BUDGET POLICY DISCUSSION Mr. Chairman, the next item on our agenda is Item 2D, which is the budget. I do note it's 10 o'clock. Perhaps a little early for a break, but I don't know how long the budget discussion's going to go. CHAIRMAN HALL: I think it's a good time for a break. MR. FINN: Very good. CHAIRMAN HALL: Terri agrees. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: He's the Chair. CHAIRMAN HALL: Yes. Let's take a break. Let's take a 15-minute break, and we'll come back and get into that budget. MR. FINN: Thank you, sir. February 6, 2024 Page 37 COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: 10:26. CHAIRMAN HALL: 10:26 -- or, what, 10:21. Let's just come back at 10:20. (A brief recess was had from 10:07 a.m. to 10:20 a.m.) MR. RODRIGUEZ: Chair, you've got a live mic. CHAIRMAN HALL: Hello, Mr. Johnson. MR. JOHNSON: Mr. Chairman, how are you doing today? CHAIRMAN HALL: Very good. MR. FINN: ***If I may, Mr. Chair, the last item on our agenda, Item 2, is the budget, budget policy discussion. This discussion is going to guide us in developing the actual budget policy that we bring back to the Board for adoption for the FY '25 budget. This workshop represents an important kind of new step of getting to the Board prior to us developing that budget guidance. I think it's consistent with what we're trying to achieve by blending together the strategic plan in the budget. This gives us a good chance to have that discussion, and staff greatly appreciates the opportunity. So having said that, I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Johnson. He has a brief slide show. It can't be more than 70 or 80 slides that I'm sure we can buzz right through here this morning. MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, Mr. Finn. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners. For the record, Chris Johnson, your director of Corporate Financial Management Services. And as Mr. Finn said, I'm going to welcome you to the FY '25 February budget workshop. So now we're onto '25 here. Today we will be starting off with a brief overview of the budget timeline followed by kind of an overview of the priority-based budgeting approach that we're working through with ResourceX. Then we'll go into a quick budget funding overview of the FY '24 February 6, 2024 Page 38 budget, followed by the real meat of the conversation here, the budget policy discussions, and then we'll go on to the next steps after that. So moving on, I'm going to briefly go through kind of our budget timeline for the FY '24/FY '25 budget. As you can see there in bold, today we are at our strategic planning, AUIR, and budget policy workshop, as Mr. Finn stated. This is kind of a new step in our budget process. We haven't done this in the past. Moving on, we will be -- in March we will be bringing back the Board's policy to be adopted at the first meeting in March followed by the June workshops where we will have priority-based budgeting discussions. The tentative dates for those are June 20th and June 21st. CHAIRMAN HALL: I've got a question. MR. JOHNSON: Yes. CHAIRMAN HALL: What are we doing with ResourceX? We've thrown that term around several times today. What's happening between now -- actually, what's happening between the time that we decided to grab them and June? MR. JOHNSON: So I'm going to flip slides on you. You got a little ahead of me, but that's all right. We'll jump into -- CHAIRMAN HALL: Oh, I can wait for the -- I can wait for the good stuff. MR. JOHNSON: Are you sure? CHAIRMAN HALL: Yeah. MR. JOHNSON: All right. I'll continue with this, and then we'll get into that. So we'll get into the -- into the whole discussion on what we've been doing and what we are doing. All right. So then moving on from our June workshops, the next dates you're going to want to look at on here are our public hearings. Tentatively, we have the first budget public hearing set for February 6, 2024 Page 39 9/5, September 5th, 2024, and our final public hearing set for 9/19/2024. So with that, I will move on into the next subject, Mr. Chairman, the priority budgeting approach. So I'll start with kind of what is priority-based budgeting. Priority-based budgeting is a strategic approach to budgeting that aligns our financial resources with the strategic priorities of our organization. Now, in this workshop, we've obviously addressed those strategic priorities, and we're working on what -- we'll bring back the strategic plan, I believe, at the end of February to be finalized and approved by the Board. By connecting these budget decisions to the strategic goals and objectives, the county can achieve a greater efficiency and effectiveness. Now moving on into kind of what we're doing and how we're working with ResourceX. Today we defined our strategic goals and priorities. Moving on, we're going to work with ResourceX to establish the prior- -- I'm going to say that -- prioritization criteria to be utilized in prioritizing our budget. We're going to be gathering budget data, which we have actually already done with ResourceX. The initial discussion that Mr. Finn had with you with that programmatic budget that we supplied, that has -- that's kind of the basis that we've provided to ResourceX to start using their software solution to kind of refine our programs and look into how they will align with our strategic plan and our priorities. And, again, that's Step 4, then, aligning the data we provide with these priorities, and then we will allocate this budget based on these priorities, and we'll take a look at that in the June workshop. And, finally, we'll evaluate the effectiveness, which will bring February 6, 2024 Page 40 us back around to next February where we'll be kind of looking at how these priorities worked out, what were the outcomes, and what do we need to do and adjust moving forward. So to -- and to kind of get in a little more depth into your question about what we've done with ResourceX, we've had them -- we've had a purchase order for them for about two weeks now, I believe. So we've had initial -- initial kickoff meeting with them, we've provided them with that data and the backup programs that we have currently in our FY '24 budget. Moving forward, we're looking at a workshop for staff next Friday. The 16th is the tentative date on that. We're looking on the logistics of that where they come down and basically go through their process with staff, and then -- and my staff as well so that we can work on implementing the actual software solution and providing those decision packets to management staff and the Board. And I'll actually kind of go on to this next slide here that kind of shows -- I stole this from them, so -- CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: You know what, I'll wait till you're done and then come back. Because I was just going to ask this question, so... CHAIRMAN HALL: All right. All right. I think I prepared well for the questions, if I've got all these slides in line here. So, again, I stole this slide from ResourceX. This kind of describes their process. As I stated earlier, you'll see it kind of goes from the bottom up here. We've provided them with our current program inventory, and we've provided them with our line-item resource data. This program inventory and line-item data will be utilized in their system, and staff will provide these kind of program attributes February 6, 2024 Page 41 with the help of ResourceX and their program to determine kind of what these programs -- how these programs impact the outcomes of our strategic goals and priorities. From there, we'll develop decision packets or budget proposals to be reviewed and recommended to the Board and the County Manager. And from there, we then will determine the finalized budget based on this priority-based approach. Are there any questions on kind of this process or where we're at currently? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: All right. With that, I will move on to a brief budget overview. This is -- this is of the current FY '24 budget. The current FY '24 budget, net adopted budget is $1.995 billion. This chart here depicts the FY '24 budget kind of by function. As you can see, reserves are the largest area there, and I guess it's like a darker brown color followed by the physical environment in the tan color there, that includes, like, your Water/Sewer district, solid waste, stormwater, beach renourishments, and dredging. When you look over in the -- at the red section there, that's our general governmental services, and then in the orange there you see 18 percent of the budget is our -- is our public safety. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Quick question. CHAIRMAN HALL: Yeah. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Just, you know -- and I -- as I said, I wasn't able to review the small book. I only got to review the big book. And I'd like to have a discussion about these reserves that are appropriated. You've got them all lumped into one, but I assume that 660 million in reserves is a myriad of reserves for capital projects, utilities, so ons and so forth. It's not -- it's not money sitting over there. Because when the word "reserve" comes up, everybody thinks they can get their paws on it, and that's not the case. February 6, 2024 Page 42 MR. JOHNSON: You are correct. That's the total reserves for all the funds in the county. Just to put it in perspective, currently the infrastructure and sales tax fund has a reserve of $210 million, so that's one-third of that. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Even though you call it a reserve, it's accounted for. It's -- MR. JOHNSON: Correct. These projects are earmarked. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: It's -- I say "accounted for." It's committed. It's basically already spent; it just hasn't been expended? MR. JOHNSON: Correct. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: So it's not discretionary money that's held in reserve for -- for a new communications tower? MR. JOHNSON: You are correct. In that fund particularly, most of those reserves have been allocated to -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Correct. MR. JOHNSON: -- projects. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And if we -- and not today, but at some particular stage, I'd like to see in greater detail a division of those reserves and where they're appropriated and what they're appropriated for without having to go through the capital side of this book, because that (indicating) -- MR. JOHNSON: It's a big book. I think it's 900-something pages this year. We can do that -- if you would like, we can include that with our budget policy -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well, Mr. Finn -- MR. JOHNSON: -- and bring it back. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- doesn't do 1 through 900. He renumbers each department and each one, and it's Section 5, Page 62, and all that sort of thing, so... MR. FINN: Yes, sir. It's important that we embrace the more February 6, 2024 Page 43 sophisticated approach. CHAIRMAN HALL: We need pictures. MR. JOHNSON: This is the first year we've included the color chart. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Pictures are good. MR. JOHNSON: We're working on it. We're working on those improvements. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. MR. JOHNSON: All right. Moving on from here, this next chart depicts the major revenue sources for the county. As you can see, ad valorem is the number-one revenue source, followed by service charges, gas and sales tax, permits, assessment -- assessments and fines, and impact fees as well. And I'm just going to kind of -- the next slide I'll kind of dive into the ad valorem. So as you can see here, when we take that large source of revenue and split it up, the General Fund is the majority of the ad valorem, followed by Unincorporated General Fund, the Conservation Collier Fund. And as you see there, the MSTUs is the aggregate of all 23 of our FY '24 MSTUs. We do have a new MSTU coming online for '25. That will be the unpaved road MSTU, so we will have 24 moving into this budget year. And this next slide depicts the General Fund ad valorem broken down by category. As you can see, the largest category for ad valorem is our health, safety, and welfare category at about 57 percent, followed by general governmental at approximately 30 percent of the ad valorem revenue. And, finally, we have the Unincorporated General Fund. The majority of this ad valorem revenue goes to general governmental functions that are listed over there on the left, and that's followed by our health, safety, welfare as well. So moving on to the budget policy discussion. Now, as February 6, 2024 Page 44 Mr. Finn had indicated, past practice has been for staff to develop a budget policy. That was typically done with the County Manager behind the scenes and brought back to the Board as a finished product for a routine adoption. As we work through priority-based budgeting and ResourceX, we feel it's important to have this preliminary budget discussion to make sure we're all in alignment moving into that policy discussion and adoption in March. With that said, I've put together a few slides with some preliminary recommendations to kind of foster discussion on the topics. These topics include employee compensation; health insurance; setting operating control lines for our departments to work with. If you recall last summer, we kind -- we had a brief presentation on compliance. That would be what these operating control lines are; and a brief discussion on millage policy options; and then capital allocations. CHAIRMAN HALL: Chris, are these in anticipation of what ResourceX is going to bring, or is it -- MR. JOHNSON: These are -- these are to kind of set the guidelines or the policy moving in. So, essentially, we'll put together budgets based on these policies and then utilize ResourceX -- the solution ResourceX offers to prioritize these and bring it out at the end in June to kind of have discussions on where we need to move, how we need to adjust the budget based on the prioritization. So this is kind of the initial step to kind of set control lines, make sure we -- make sure we're all moving down the tracks at the same pace here. Commissioner? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: This is the politically correct stance. I'm waiting for you to go to the next slide. MR. JOHNSON: All right. Next slide, employee February 6, 2024 Page 45 compensation. I'm just going to go over a few of the economic factors here. The December year-over-year CPI for Miami was 5.7 percent; Tampa was 5.2. The most recent Florida price level index ranked Collier County as the highest of the 67 counties for employee wages -- I'm sorry, not wages -- employee cost. That's a change. We were No. 2 last year, so we jumped up one spot to the No. 1. With that said, the recommendation or the discussion starting point that we were looking at was a 5 percent adjustment for employee compensation. This would be inclusive of a general wage merit and pay plan maintenance. And this recommendation aligns with your board priority of human resources recruitment retention to position Collier County as an employer of choice. With that said, I'm open to discussion on this if the Board wants to have discussion. CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes, I do. Economic factors are nice, but where does the pay scale where we're at put us in relationship to the Board's priority of retention and gaining employees, number one? And then I would like to have a discussion on the next slide -- I assume that's when we're going to get into the health benefits. I'd like to have a discussion about correlating those in regard to the -- in regard to the pay scale. MR. JOHNSON: Okay. I'm going to look over my shoulder here. Ms. Lyberg's in the room. Amy, if you want to help answer that question for the commissioner. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And, again, it's not a hard, fast answer, of course. I just want to know how we're doing -- because we've made -- Commissioner Saunders, we've made February 6, 2024 Page 46 several efforts to realign our pay scales companywide, and I just want to see how we're fitting into the mix. MS. LYBERG: Good morning, Commissioners. For the record, Amy Lyberg, Human Resources director. We have just concluded a review of the external market regarding our compensation, and we were able to go out and look at some of those factors that you're talking about. Where do we stand with our compensation? We implemented a new pay and classification plan at the start of FY '23. We did make some movements at the beginning of FY '24 for a 5 percent general wage adjustment for our employees. And when we went out and looked, actually, our pay ranges compared to the external market are actually trending about where we expect. I mean, we're running comparable and on some cases a little bit ahead of our peers. Now, we've looked at mostly other public sector agencies. It's a little difficult to get the private sector compensation data. But I will say that, you know, our pay plan is pretty strong right now compared to others. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Good. And do you have a prophecy -- and this may come in future discussions. But, you know, I've advocated for a merit pay program forever, all my -- ever, seven years, and we've just now implemented that, I think, into this budget cycle, if I'm not mistaken, is that correct, or did I just read that it's part of the plan? MR. FINN: That's a little bit nuanced. I think Ms. Lyberg is probably in a better position to respond. I will say that we're working through a pilot right now to get the bugs worked out of it before we try to hit the ground running. If I'm wrong, she will tell me. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And if ResourceX is February 6, 2024 Page 47 listening, that can be a portion of what I would like to see coming out of the recommendations for management on a departmental level with regard to the merit pay process and be able to help compensate our employees who are benefiting the taxpayers. You know, Commissioner LoCastro's regularly said, it's not our money; it's the taxpayers' money. And if it's managed appropriately, we can then compensate our folks for that appropriate management. MS. LYBERG: So, sir, we actually had -- this year was the first year that we had -- we had recommended that there was a merit component to this. This is -- we are in the process. We just launched a brand-new performance evaluation system for our employees, and we're currently going through that. We've got about 30 percent of our evaluations back to date, and at the end of that, we're going to actually take a look at what is that -- what does that performance evaluation look like in terms of a -- how do we build that into a merit pay program that we anticipate bringing back either later this year or early in FY '25. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Have I seen that yet? MS. LYBERG: The performance evaluation system? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. MS. LYBERG: No, sir, you have not. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I would like to, if I can. MS. LYBERG: Sure. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: It's something that I've advocated for since I came in. I have a very simplistic viewpoint on merit pay at large, and so I want to see what the implementation of you folks' perception of a merit pay is in comparison to what's swimming around in my brain. MS. LYBERG: We are happy to share the information about our performance system and then talk -- and what we've got so far. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Good. Perfect. February 6, 2024 Page 48 CHAIRMAN HALL: "Swimming" was a keyword. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: It sure is. You would be amazed what's in there. MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, Amy. All right. Moving on to the next slide here, which is your employee health insurance, the economic factors behind this are a 7.5 percent healthcare cost increase for 2023 and expected 2024 cost increase between 6 and 9 percent. The recommended reserves -- the required reserves in this fund are 16.3 million. The recommended, if you will, is 22.5 million which achieves a 99 percent certainty that will hit our claim verse [sic] revenue mark. With that said, we are kind of chewing through our reserve. Our reserve at the end of '24, based on our actuaries report, is expected to be at $26.5 million, and moving forward into 2025, we believe that a 7 percent adjustment would help us maintain that recommended reserve amount at the -- by the end of FY '25. Again, the recommendation is 7 percent adjustment to employee and employer contribution, and this aligns with our quality-of-place strategic objective, access to health, wellness, and human services. Any discussion on this point? MR. FINN: Chris, can I ask, do you recall what the reduction to reserves was across last year? Do you remember -- MR. JOHNSON: I have the projected for this year. MR. FINN: Right, but relative to our actual performance, was there about a $5 million reduction to reserves? MR. JOHNSON: I believe it was 5 million. CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Two questions, and that -- you brought up one. If the recommended reserve to meet the 99 percent capacity is 22 million and you're at 26 and you're burning through reserves, is someone having a look at the recommended February 6, 2024 Page 49 number? Because that certainly sounds like -- if you expose [sic] 5 million out of reserves to compensate, maybe we're shooting a little low. MR. JOHNSON: And we're looking at that number every year. That -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And for purposes of discussion, we're a self-insured agency with health benefits. I have experience with that in my other life. And there's -- it's a hard target to hit, because people's health circumstances change, and as your population ages, different health circumstances arise that have different costs associated. So it's a difficult -- it's a difficult number to hit. But it just, you know, on the surface, it will -- it sounds like we might be -- we might be shooting a little bit low with regard to the reserve capacity. MR. JOHNSON: And we can take a look at that as well. Kind of the incremental step last year, as you know, we implemented a 5 percent increase. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Right. MR. JOHNSON: That actually went into effect on the employee side on January 1st. Now they're utilizing that in their -- in calculating their scenario here. At the moment we believe the 7 will at least be sufficient to get us through to next year when we can reevaluate. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Have a look and see what our exposures are. The second part of the question that I had with regard to this, coming from the compensation side, was we have, I know, for one, constitutional officers, and they set their own budgets and do their own internal analysis. The -- one of the constitutionals has a 90 percent offset to the employees with regard to their health insurance exposure, or their health-cost exposure. And I think the county is February 6, 2024 Page 50 running at about 80 percent. MR. JOHNSON: We try to stay around 80. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. And so -- and, again, in my other life in the private sector, when you give someone a raise, what also goes up? FICA, MICA, federal withholdings, and those are -- those are expenses to the employer. And so whereas an increase in health benefit assistance, if you will, or a reduction in the exposure to the employee for health insurance or health expense is a direct -- is a direct cost to the employer, you don't have the incremental increases that come along with a pay increase for tax -- taxation. So I'd like to see some kind of an analysis with increasing that health insurance expense in relationship to the exposure for the employer's side and the benefit to the employee's side, because to a worker, to an employee, the money in, money out, if we have a savings accommodated over here, it's the same to them, and -- but the employer has additional expenses. When you're paying somebody $12 an hour, which is an unheard-of thing these days in the employment world, but your employer expense equates to almost $22 an hour for that same employee with the FICA, MICA, federal withholdings, and taxations that comes along with it. So if we could, sometime in the near future, see an analysis with regard to that, there's some rationale for some potential savings but yet still effectuate a similar household income by reduction in exposure for the health benefits offset. MR. JOHNSON: We can do that analysis. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. MR. JOHNSON: And report back when we bring the policy in March. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Perfect. February 6, 2024 Page 51 MR. JOHNSON: Very creative idea. CHAIRMAN HALL: Pictures. MR. JOHNSON: Pictures, with pictures. All right. Any more discussion on the health insurance? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: No. MR. JOHNSON: Okay. We'll move on to the General and Unincorporated Fund operating control lines. Again, the goal here is to establish our budget control lines for departments. This is a critical step in the preparation of a priority-based budget. It establishes the total resources available to the departments. It kind of fosters an environment where they have to do an initial prioritization and have tradeoffs between their programs before we go to the overall county prioritization, and it provides for accountability and transparency. The current starting point or recommendation, we're looking at a 3.5 percent operating control line for departments. Again, this is subject to prioritization at a later stage in the budget process. Any discussion on that? And that would be inclusive of wherever we go with employee compensation, healthcare, so on and so forth. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: It all -- Mr. Chair, is it my turn? It all feeds into the same pie, if you will. MR. JOHNSON: Correct. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And I want everybody to hear this, everybody that's pushing buttons on preparing budgets. I've served as a County Commissioner for seven years, and rarely are the budget policies put forth with year-over-year expenditure increased adhered to both by departments and by constitutionals. It was one of my chirps last year. It was a chirp that I had the year before we had put out budget policy of a 1 percent year-over-year February 6, 2024 Page 52 increase, and nary a deposit -- nary a department or a constitutional hit that was recommendations of the Board's policy. So I'd really like to see adherence to that going forward in our budgeting process. That will ultimately, in my oversimplified swimming pool of a brain, feed back into the merit pay subject matter that we were just previously discussing. MR. JOHNSON: All right. Any other discussion with that? Are we good with the 3.5 percent? And, again, we'll bring this back to be -- CHAIRMAN HALL: The question is, are you good with the 3.5 percent? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. I was just going to say, it's -- MR. JOHNSON: I believe it's a starting point. Obviously, working with ResourceX and the prioritization, we'll see where that -- where that comes out with the results from them. I think it's -- I think it's achievable. CHAIRMAN HALL: Okay. What's swimming around in my brain is 10 percent. No, I'm just teasing. MR. JOHNSON: Well, I mean, if we want to go that route. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Get Commissioner Saunders first and then me. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Last year we had budget guidance. If we're talking about the same number, that was 5.7 or 5.9 percent. Is that -- MR. JOHNSON: The 5.7 was the taxable value. I believe the budget guidance was 4.25 or 4.75. I don't have it in front of me, but it was in the 4s. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I have 4.5. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: That's the same number we're talking about? February 6, 2024 Page 53 MR. JOHNSON: Yes, correct, correct. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Four and a quarter plus-or-minus percent. This year you're at 3.5 percent. I could easily see that number, as we get to the budget process, going down. I don't see that number going up. So if you're at 3.5 percent, you better be real comfortable with that because there's -- I don't see any potential of that number going up as you get more into it. So when you say 3.5 percent, are you just -- is this sort of a range where it could be a little bit more, a little bit less? MR. JOHNSON: I'm pretty confident with that number, looking -- again, this is for the General Fund and the unincorporated area -- Unincorporated Area General Fund operating departments and those that are funded through transfers from there. MR. FINN: And Chris is making the distinction between what we refer to as revenue centric, the enterprise funds where they're generating revenue. They're able to -- our policy typically says that they budget according to their requirements and their funding availability given the rate and the rate base they have right now. And utilities, solid waste, the permitting -- permitting operation all fit into that category. There are others as well, but they aren't necessarily held to this; rather, they're held to meeting the needs of their customers. CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And just on the note of the 3 1/2 percent, in the previous slide you were talking about an expense to the employees increases at 5.2, 5.7, and other municipalities. Our expenses are, on an equivalent basis, sometimes even higher. And so, you know, to Commissioner Saunders' comment, make sure that what you bring to us as -- that we then get back to you as policy is comfortable for you. February 6, 2024 Page 54 MR. JOHNSON: And as we move towards policy, to that point, we'll be running some more in-depth scenarios where, if we feel that needs to be adjusted, we can bring it up in March. CHAIRMAN HALL: Can you feel the floor getting a little hot? MR. JOHNSON: Just a little. It's not lava yet, as they say, right? All right. Moving on from here. Any other questions on this? Comments? Discussion? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: All right. Here we go. Millage rate policy options. So with the -- again, with moving forward with priority-based budgeting, we kind of put out two options here for our millage rate policy. Either we establish a target millage rate now or with policy in March, or we -- we calculate the millage rate based on the budgetary requirement utilizing the preliminary taxable value that we would get in June. Again, any program adjustments or funding alignment -- realignment would result in changes to that calculated millage rate, but this is kind of to foster a discussion on where the Board would like to move with this for policy. Do we want to establish a target? Do we want to -- do we want to utilize these control lines to develop a budget where we calculate a millage rate in June, and then we do our priority work then? CHAIRMAN HALL: So, Commissioner Saunders. MR. FINN: And if I may. I'm so sorry, sir. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Go ahead. MR. FINN: Historically, we have established our policy as what we call millage neutral, which is carrying forward the same millage from last year into the following year. So, again, as a departure from that, we're saying do we simply want to establish the target now without saying millage neutral is the February 6, 2024 Page 55 target? And the second approach that Chris mentioned, which is allow the priorities in the requirements of the budget to come forward and then establish the millage based on those needs at that point in time and give us the flexibility to do that within a certain range. So -- CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner Saunders. MR. FINN: -- either way, it's a little departure from the past. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Thank you. I don't think it's possible for us to set a millage rate target right now. But I would say that millage rates only go in one direction in Collier County. There's not going to be an increase in the millage rate. So whatever planning you're doing, I think that would be a safe assumption regardless of what we ultimately set as the potential millage rate. It's omnidirectional. MR. JOHNSON: And I see all the head nods in agreement here, so... COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Omnidirectional. CHAIRMAN HALL: That's the word of the day. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I'm not sure if it's the right word, but what I meant to say is it only goes one way. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well -- and on that note, I would like to see if it's at all possible -- because there is some -- there is some data that's out there about properties that are coming onto the tax rolls that haven't yet hit, and I would like to see some analysis with regard to the potential revenue streams. Because when we're making our budget decisions, it's in advance of the tax roll that comes from the Tax Assessor's [sic] Office to the Tax Collector's Office, to us, and we're making decisions based upon a prophecy of revenue, and I haven't really seen a very close equivocation of the potential dollars that are coming forward. And I concur with, on that note, Commissioner Saunders with February 6, 2024 Page 56 regard to setting the millage rate and the timing that we do, in fact, do it. We don't want to get caught like we did before where we've always done the millage neutral scenario and then end up having the discussions that we had last year. I don't want to do that twice. MR. JOHNSON: Agreed, agreed. And to your point, the historical growth component of the taxable value is between 1 and a half and 2 and a half percent. So I haven't seen the data this year broken down that way. I've seen the overall estimate on taxable value increase, but it didn't include the delineation between just your new growth and just your appreciation, so... COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: You know, there again, we -- there are -- there are entities that are coming online that are -- that have huge taxable values. I visited the Great Wolf facility last year, and there's -- you know, there's a couple hundred million in that one development alone that's coming into our -- that's coming into our tax rolls. Now, a portion of that money is appropriated back for TIF that we put in place to actually attract them. But those -- those are things from a timing standpoint with permitting and CO and TCO -- what's in a TCO status, temporary certificate of occupancy -- and what's out there to be coming online would be, I think, hugely beneficial. For me, anyway. MR. JOHNSON: And we can look and work with Jamie's group to maybe determine -- Thank you. CHAIRMAN HALL: So I would concur with both. I don't think there's any way that we can come up with a millage rate. We -- with the analysis of the revenue, according to what Commissioner McDaniel's requesting, we can couple that with the priority-based budget. Then when we see all the data, we can match the millage rate to meet the need. MR. JOHNSON: All right. February 6, 2024 Page 57 CHAIRMAN HALL: And I love the fact that we're doing it different. I love that. Just because the way we've always done it doesn't make it right or doesn't make it effective. I'm good with change. And so thanks for that. MR. JOHNSON: We appreciate it, too. So I see all the head nods then. So we'll move forward with that language in the policy document as well. Moving -- anything else on the millage rate there -- millage rates there? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HALL: No. MR. JOHNSON: I do have another slide on the MSTU millage rates. Basically, what we're recommending here is limit the millage rate to an amount to generate enough revenue to cover just the current-year operating expenses. I know we had that discussion last September. And any one -- any specific taxing district that varies from that, we'll bring back to the Board with the reasons associated. Obviously, through the priority-based budgeting process, those will be -- CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And just to further that point, reaching out to those advisory boards that are managing those MSTUs with an historical look as to what their expenditures is as a good way to get to that number. MR. JOHNSON: And we'll work with our MSTU folks just to ensure that that's happening as well. All right. And, finally, we have the policy on capital allocations. Again, the December CPI is listed there. Our recommendation is a 5 percent adjustment to the maintenance portion of the capital transfers out of the General Fund and Unincorporated General Fund just to kind of tie with the inflationary increases. February 6, 2024 Page 58 Again, this is the maintenance portion, not the named projects. Obviously, those are on a year-by-year basis and based on Board priority. Any questions on that at all? CHAIRMAN HALL: Where did the 5 percent come from? MR. JOHNSON: CPI essentially. CHAIRMAN HALL: Okay. No raw -- no hard data? Nothing from facilities or anything driving that? It's just straight across the board? MR. JOHNSON: Not at this moment. CHAIRMAN HALL: Okay. MR. JOHNSON: Again, as we go through the budget process, I feel like we'll have those in-depth conversations. CHAIRMAN HALL: Perfect. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Quick question. CHAIRMAN HALL: Sure. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And that's -- are we taking into account the latent maintenance that's lingering out there in this number? MR. FINN: Ask the question again, sir. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Are we taking into account the latent maintenance, the accrued maintenance on all of our assets that has been traveling with us for quite some time? MR. FINN: I'm going to say that over the last three budget cycles, the Board actually has increased those capital renewal and replacement that Chris called maintenance fundings in all these areas. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. MR. FINN: I won't say that they are robust, and there certainly are areas it's completely not sufficient. But in the absence of us having an absolute robust certainty on that, we're comfortable at this point going with the CPI inflation. I think -- I think the processes that we're engaged in are going to February 6, 2024 Page 59 lead to a more -- a more specific set of numbers as we go forward. But keep in mind, Commissioner, that the likelihood of the millage increasing substantially to support those functions -- because we're talking about General Fund support of those renewal and replacement fundings -- we don't foresee the Board being in a position to provide that this year. So when we talk about these numbers, we're also trying to control -- control the budget. We're not solely looking at the need or the desire side, but we're looking at how can we bring the Board back a budget that's going to meet with their broad direction to keep these costs under control? So it's a balancing act, and that's what we're trying to achieve here. MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, Mr. Finn. Any other questions on the capital allocation? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HALL: No, sir. MR. JOHNSON: All right. Well, that concludes our policy discussion. Ed, I'll turn it back over to you, unless there's any other questions with regard to that. I will just say I appreciate the discussions. I think this will set us off on the right path moving through our strategic priority-based budgeting. So thank you, all. CHAIRMAN HALL: Thanks, Mr. Johnson. MR. FINN: Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Very nice job. I want to thank Chris and the balance of the staff that helped out on all the product we have today. Certainly those 57 project slides take a substantial effort to put together. The additional presentation in the AUIR was desirable. And the task team and the entire executive management work together on February 6, 2024 Page 60 the strategic plan. Having said that, our next steps: We're going to bring back the strategic plan just for a technical approval from the Board. Budget policy, we'll be back to the Board for approval as well -- I think Mr. Johnson mentioned that -- in March. And the AUIR and the Capital Improvement Program adjustments will be reflected in the annual work product. The AUIR typically returns to the Planning Commission in November and to the Board in December of the year. We are hoping to make that process a little more robust and consistent. When Trinity presented the AUIR for transportation and stormwater, and I can also speak to the utility AUIR, those AUIRs, when they're presented, they include the maintenance -- renewal and replacement maintenance element that's required to support those. It's our hope for the Category B elements and Parks and Rec, as we move forward, that we make those presentations a little more robust by including that renewal and replacement element which, again, is consistent with trying to be a little more strategic in how we handle all these things. With that said, Mr. Chairman, that's all staff has for today. We appreciate the Board's -- Board's active participation and support. With that, I'll turn that over to you. CHAIRMAN HALL: Troy, have we got any public comment? MR. MILLER: I do. I have one registered speaker, sir. Daniel Zegarac. MR. ZEGARAC: Good morning. Daniel Zegarac from Collier County. Very interesting this morning listening to some of the issues that may come with sustainability. As you guys navigate this business called Collier County, I'm sure you'll continue to consider accountability as your top -- one of your top resources. Do the February 6, 2024 Page 61 things that make sense; do not do things that don't make sense. It is apparent that we can't rely on Tallahassee or Washington to solve or help solve our problems. I don't think that's going to happen at all. But I would say overall you folks had a great meeting this morning, and I look forward to the discussions that come out of it. Thank you. Oh, and Mr. Finn and Mr. Johnson, thank you. No offense, Ed, but he does a great job. Thanks. MR. FINN: Thank you, sir. I appreciate those kind comments, and you're absolutely correct, Mr. Johnson does an outstanding -- outstanding work. CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. I have a couple of points. And, again, I spent a lot of my time in the big book, so just, if you'll bear with me. I read in -- and maybe Mr. -- well, you can answer me, Ed, or Chris can, either one. There was some budget policy set at some stage in advance of my tenure that talked about reserve positions being between 8 and 16 percent, and that is -- is that -- is that the budget policy reserves for revenue so that we don't have a gap between tax collection and the new fiscal year? MR. JOHNSON: Correct. That provides about two -- a little over two months of -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Operating. MR. JOHNSON: -- operating so we can -- as you saw, ad valorem is our -- is our largest revenue in the General Fund, so... COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: That's correct. Because the memo was we are currently at 11 percent, and I just wondered where -- and if that spread between 8 and 16 percent was sufficient for the operating side of our -- of our expenses. February 6, 2024 Page 62 MR. JOHNSON: And, yes, it has been. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay, okay. We talked about the stormwater. I noticed in the prophecy for the adopted budget of this year that the reserves for capital replacement and maintenance was dropped from 17 and a half million last year to 23 -- or to 5 million this year. Have we -- have we -- have we attempted or have we come up with a more true-up number as to what that actually needs to be? Because that's a fairly new line item in our budget process. We really never had one for a long -- forever. And have we came up with what that real number is? MR. FINN: Well, the real number certainly is all of the 35- or 37- that was in there at one point that was all utilized for Hurricane Ian. Our goal would be to achieve somewhere between 30 and $40 million in there. I don't see that happening immediately. When the -- when you and Mark developed that approach, the approach was $5 million a year. Again, kind of the difference between what we would like and what's reality. It would be nice to put 10 million a year in, $20 million a year in, but in reality $5 million is something that is, to use the same word, sustainable in our budget process and allows us to achieve the other objectives the Board may have as it involves millage rate, because that money does come from the General Fund from the taxes generated from the General Fund millage. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And just for clarification purposes, the number wasn't so focused on the amount that was in the account. The number was based upon the necessary revenues to be able to fix, repair, and ultimately replace our assets based upon a useful life of those assets, and that would then -- once that number was generated, that would then give us semi-discretionary money for the further-out number for the 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years of the useful February 6, 2024 Page 63 life. If a natural disaster, in fact, transpired, we could hit that 50-year number for short-term expense in an unforeseen natural disaster and then be able to replace that once the FEMA money or insurance money, in fact, came in. And so what I was really looking for was not really to have a cap on that reserve account. I was looking for the annual requisite to meet the number necessary for fix, repair, and ultimately replace, just for your own edification. MR. FINN: Very good. Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And somebody at some state told me that it was -- it was in the 22- to 25 million a year deposit side. That's what I had in my brain, and that was several years ago that that came to me. So, just -- that's what I was thinking about just to be able to have that kind of flexibility going forward. MR. FINN: And let me be clear, that is a reserve that staff is quite serious about maintaining and growing. It, in fact, has a huge -- is a requirement that -- we believe it needs to continue and grow. Insofar as that source of funding would supplement our annual renewal and replacement, when something comes up out of cycle that wasn't -- isn't conventionally provided for, certainly that would be available. Ultimately, the replacement of buildings is an interesting dynamic. The building we're in now was built in the late '60s, early '70s, the original four floors, and there's -- there's kind of an ongoing study that we're doing, kind of, is it better to continue in this building for the next 30 years and make that investment, or is it better to take the longer view and potentially do a reconstruction on site here setting us up for the next 35, 40 years as opposed to dropping a huge investment in this building and it just be sustainable for another 10 February 6, 2024 Page 64 years. So I don't know if that's directly related to where you were coming from, but -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: No. MR. FINN: -- those are the kind of ongoing -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: It's good -- MR. FINN: -- dialogues that happen here and among our professional staff. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: It's a good discussion point for us to have because everything has a useful life. And once the -- once the -- once a number is ascertained as to what we need to be putting away on an annual basis to fix, repair, and ultimately replace, then we can apply the -- we can apply the percentage on the matrix for the further-out expenditures to allow for greater discretion on the short-term as long as that discretionary spending on the short-term is also coming with a plan for replacement. MR. FINN: Right. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: You don't want to be looking at 50-year money and not have a plan for replacement, so... That was where, when we established that capital asset, replacement, and maintenance fund, that was the rationale that I had going on to be able to -- once we got the data entry completed for almost $2 billion worth of assets, then apply the theoretical useful life that's necessary for not only maintenance, but ultimately capital reserves for replacement. We have -- we have a timeline associated with those -- with those expenditures, and then we can apply the shorter-term needs that pop up, like a -- and I'm using it -- because we talked about it this morning -- like a new telecommunications system for our first responders. We have a -- we have a capacity to be able to take care of some of those things. Because at the end of the day, I mean, February 6, 2024 Page 65 Commissioner Saunders and I have been in service now for in aggregate of seven years, and we've had two hurricanes and a pandemic. Jiminy Christmas. We're going to have another natural disaster at some stage, and that can be a fund that we have availed to us to be able to take care of those unforeseen expenses that pop up. On Page 52 of the big book, there's some discussion about the carryforward number that happens regularly, the carryforward number in the budget process. That's something that I'd like to have a look at with regard to -- because those are purported savings that are effectuated departmentally, both with the constitutionals and the department, and that's -- those are the numbers that I'm looking at for application of a merit pay process, just so you know, so you know what I'm thinking there. MR. FINN: Understood, sir. And just -- the mechanics of that are the carryforward. While it's -- in concept, it's fairly simple. It's nothing -- nothing that much more sophisticated than your checkbook carryforward every month. But that is fully reconciled and fully accounted for when we do the budget process. So that is -- that money is not invisible. It is right there on the radar when the budget is being prepared, and it is the foundation of our sources of money for the following year, so... COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Understood. Just sharing my -- MR. FINN: Copy that. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: When I was reading this, I was sharing my thoughts. On Page 53, there was some discussion -- and it's been a thorn. Commissioner Saunders had some discussion with regard to words matter, and this theory of a loan out of ad valorem into impact fees, some language shifts I would prefer occur there in some form or format. We talk about a loan out of the General Fund into the February 6, 2024 Page 66 Impact Fee Fund, and, you know, it -- a loan put forward the premise of a debt at some stage. These are -- these impact fees are collected on the rationale that it supports new capital projects for the growth that we're, in fact, experiencing. And so a reconciliation somehow with regard to the generated impact fees and the need for these essential life-sustaining infrastructure components, that needs to be -- I think needs aligned and minimally shifting the language away from a loan thought process. We talked about -- we talked about the millage rate and the historical rate neutral. There was a page in here that talked -- was still carrying at our previous millage rate that we adjusted last year, and in these pages it was -- it was still -- that same millage rate was still out there, and that needs to be adjusted as well. MR. JOHNSON: If I may, Commissioner, that might -- that might be in the policy section. So that would have -- that would have been the policy rate that we determined last -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Understood. MR. JOHNSON: -- last March, so... COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: On Page 55, there was a -- there was a discussion about the historical projected changes in Collier County's taxable values. One of the things that I would like to start seeing is actual dollar amounts to those -- to those graphs as opposed to a percentage. A percentage increase from one year to the next is difficult if you don't know what the previous year, in fact, was. Pictures matter. CHAIRMAN HALL: Dollars matter? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well, actually, dollars matter as well. Now, in the -- and this may be getting over into some of the previous discussion with regard to our priorities. There was February 6, 2024 Page 67 a -- there was a '24 list of significant expense assumptions, and there was a 1.5 for the switch gear upgrades at a parking garage somewhere. Is that the parking garage up at Vanderbilt? MR. FINN: No, sir. That would be -- I believe that's PG1, which is the parking garage adjacent to the jail, and that switched gear supplies electricity to the jail in part. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. MR. FINN: And it is in excess of 20 years old at the end of its useful life. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And the word -- by the way, just so you know the word I thought of rather than loan was "subsidy." MR. FINN: Copy. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: General Fund subsidy as opposed to a loan. And then last, but not least, and for the -- for the sake of repetition, there was a proposed budget summary that was in here that talked about the year-over-year expenses, and how -- and we've put a greater priority on the adherence to the Board's policy that's put out. There was discussion about -- and it's a fairly large number -- of transfers, and those -- are those the BA -- the budget amendments that we see on a regular basis coming through? MR. JOHNSON: Without looking, I'm assuming the transfers that we're discussing are the interfund transfers that are built into the budget. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. MR. JOHNSON: Not budget amendments that would adjust those. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Maybe next week we can have a discussion on the one-on-ones with that. I don't need to belabor that. February 6, 2024 Page 68 MR. JOHNSON: Yeah. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And then last but not least -- I think I'm to the end of my notes with regard to this -- there was not -- in the '22 to '23 budget that was actual, there wasn't -- there wasn't delineated appropriations for gas tax revenues here, and then there was a significant drop from the '23 to '24 proposed revenue. And, again, we don't have to -- these were just things that caught my eye as I was reviewing. So if we could maybe offline -- I don't want to take anybody -- we've expired enough time on me, so... I just had some questions with regard to the proposed '24 budget. There were significant reductions in those line items from a revenue standpoint, and I wasn't sure why that actually transpired. MR. JOHNSON: We'll set up some time to go through that. I appreciate it. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. And then my last question -- and this is the $24,000 question is: Where are -- there was some discussion in this -- in this paperwork with regard to borrowing capacities. And do we have a plan with regard to -- with regard to our future planning for borrowing? MR. FINN: Yes. Generally, we do. We have done borrowing here in recent memory to provide funding for our parks aquatics renewal and replacement as well as stormwater. Those were permanent financings. We've done interim financings here to establish budget for the Vanderbilt Beach Road extension; you may recall that. Trinity mentioned in her AUIR discussion the scheduled -- the scheduled deficit in funding. The gas tax, the local option gas taxes are currently pledged against current bonds. Those bonds are expiring in the relative near term. Upon expiration we will be working toward re-bonding those funds in order to close some of that gap. Of course, our goal is to time up those major refinancings February 6, 2024 Page 69 or -- that's a new financing with the best possible interest rates. Sometimes we are very lucky. Other times -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: We're not so lucky. MR FINN: -- circumstances are such that we need to move forward. But, certainly, that's on the table. We will likely find utilities has a substantial bond that is not terribly far away for the northeast expansion or the balance of the northeast expansion. So there are -- there are some financings that are working their way through. None are immediately at the fore. Having said that, there are some -- some efforts -- potentially this radio replacement effort. It may well lend itself to some level of financing given budget limitations. But if we can pay-go that in some way, we would like to do so. That comes to mind as something relatively new. If the -- additionally, there's some short-range shortfalls in the stormwater that may not coincide with the ability to do some bonding. So we could potentially see some interim financing for that, eventually leading to a bonding situation or a full funding situation. So you're likely to see dialogue along the same lines continue in this budget policy when we bring it back to you. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. And then since you brought it up, you know, I would also like, while we're doing the analysis on the new radio system or communication system, exposure to other taxing districts. It was mentioned the school district uses it. The independent fire districts use it. Of course, our Sheriff and EMS use it. So I would like to at least see exposures so that -- so that we have an -- when I say "exposures," who can help pay for the new system and how. MR. FINN: We will attempt to put that dialogue in some preliminary manner into the item coming back before the Board. February 6, 2024 Page 70 COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. MR. FINN: Thank you, sir. MR. JOHNSON: Thank you. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Thank you. CHAIRMAN HALL: Any other comments? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HALL: Good job, gentlemen. With that, we're adjourned. MR. FINN: Thank you, sir. MR. JOHNSON: Thank you. ***** February 6, 2024 There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 11 :25 a.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL CHRIS H L, CHAIRM N ATTEST CRYSTAL K. KINZEL, CLERK Attest as to alrmail signature only These minutes approv d by the Board on 41°17/94 as presented or as corrected TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF FORT MYERS COURT REPORTING BY TERRI L. LEWIS, REGISTERED PROFESSIONAL COURT REPORTER, FPR-C, AND NOTARY PUBLIC. Page 71