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BCC Agenda 07/23/2024 Item # 2C (BCC Budget Minutes from 06/20/2024)07/23/2024 COLLIER COUNTY Board of County Commissioners Item Number: 2.C Doc ID: 29418 Item Summary: June 20, 2024, BCC Budget Minutes Meeting Date: 07/23/2024 Prepared by: Title: Management Analyst II ā€“ County Manager's Office Name: Geoffrey Willig 07/11/2024 4:54 PM Submitted by: Title: Deputy County Manager ā€“ County Manager's Office Name: Amy Patterson 07/11/2024 4:54 PM Approved By: Review: County Manager's Office Geoffrey Willig County Manager Review Completed 07/11/2024 4:55 PM Board of County Commissioners Geoffrey Willig Meeting Pending 07/23/2024 9:01 AM 2.C Packet Pg. 10 June 20, 2024 Page 1 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS 2025 BUDGET WORKSHOP June 20, 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 SPECIAL SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following Board members present: Chairman: Chris Hall Rick LoCastro Dan Kowal William L. McDaniel, Jr. Burt L. Saunders ALSO PRESENT: Amy Patterson, County Manager Edward Finn, Deputy County Manager Jeffrey A. Klatzkow, County Attorney Troy Miller, Communications & Customer Relations June 20, 2024 Page 2 MS. PATTERSON: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN HALL: Good morning, friends and family. We're in for the budget workshop. And I guess, first of all, we've got Mr. Johnson. MS. PATTERSON: If you'd like, we could start with the Pledge of Allegiance. CHAIRMAN HALL: Pledge of Allegiance, sure. (The Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.) GENERAL OVERVIEW MS. PATTERSON: Good morning, Commissioners, and welcome to our 2025 budget workshop. So we have this broken down into sections. We're going to start with a general overview. We're going to move on to court and related agencies, then the constitutional officers, the County Manager's agency, the County Attorney, Board of County Commissioners, and then a recap and summary discussion. We do have our partners here from ResourceX, and so they're going to be participating throughout this conversation. And we are going to change up the way we handle the speakers for today so that we're able to take them after each section so if somebody's here to speak on, for example, courts, they don't have to wait until the end of the day. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Johnson to begin the presentation. MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, Ms. Patterson. Good morning, Commissioners. For the record, Christopher Johnson, your director of Corporate Financial and Management Services. June 20, 2024 Page 3 I'll be doing the general overview today before I hand it over for a quick briefing from our friends at ResourceX. So just to jump right in, I just want to kind of get us oriented on where we are in the budget process. So up on the screen here you have your budget timeline. As you recall, in February, we started with our -- the first initial -- the first initial strategic planning AUIR budget policy workshop. After that we -- in March, we adopted our budget policy, the Board's budget policy. On the 14th, last Friday, you-all received your recommended budget books from our office. And today, down there at the bottom, in bold is our priority-based budgeting workshop. Moving forward, if we're looking ahead here in the timeline, on 7/1, we will receive the certified taxable value from the Property Appraiser. That will be utilized to determine our required millage rate and to determine our maximum millage rate, which we will bring to the Board on July 9th for adoption. Again, that millage rate is going to be the maximum millage rate that we can utilize moving forward in the process. On the 12th, the Board will receive their tentative budgets from the budget office, and then by April -- I'm sorry -- by August 4th, we will -- we will send the millage rates, the rolled-back rates, and the information for the first public hearing to the Property Appraiser. The Property Appraiser will send out the TRIM notices to taxpayers by August 24th. And then moving on to the right there, we have our first public hearing on September 5th, our second public hearing on September 19th. And in the middle, there is the -- this is kind of a public service announcement. Any taxpayers that wishes to address the Value Adjustment Board, the deadline for that is typically the second Friday of September, which this year is September 13th. Any questions on any of that timeline-wise? (No response.) June 20, 2024 Page 4 MR. JOHNSON: All right. Then we'll jump right in. Okay. The FY '25 budget characteristics. The budget in front of you is presented and is balanced, and it was prioritized in conjunction with our friends at ResourceX. This budget remains a flexible planning tool. It provides sufficient budget required to conduct the business of government. The document reflects the best efforts of your staff and the constitutional officers to maintain and, where appropriate, enhance services to benefit the residents and visitors of this county, and the budget provides the financial approach for execution of the county's strategic plan. And if you notice behind me, this is kind of -- we put an easel up with our strategic plan just so it will be in the view of the camera today. Moving on, the budget includes funding for strategic priorities including, but not limited to, DAS facilities; aquatics capital maintenance; strategic real estate acquisitions, specifically we're looking at sheriff acquisitions; cybersecurity; Vanderbilt Beach Road Phase 2; 951, Golden Gate to Green Boulevard expansion; roadway resurfacing; and funding for employee recruitment and retention. I'm going to kind of go through a few of the -- some economic indicators to kind of show you how our current economic landscape is looking. County single-family permits issued in April of this year total 214. This is a 16 percent increase from April of 2023. Collier County's unemployment rate was 3 and a half percent in April. It's a slight increase over the 2.7 percent last year. The county's unemployment rate is slightly above the Florida rate of 3.3 percent and modestly below the United States rate for April of 3.9 percent. The median single-family home value has dropped slightly to 889,000 from 922,000. It's a decrease of 3.6 percent. With that said, single-family home sales rose to 508 in April, an increase of 8 percent from the prior year. June 20, 2024 Page 5 Visitation to the destination totaled 1 million 667 for October to April -- for the October to April 2024 period. This is 7.7 percent higher than last year. In April 2024, the Miami/Fort Lauderdale Consumer Price Index for all urban customers rose to 4.5 percent. The core inflation index for all items, less food and energy, was 5.8 percent over the same period. Some of the keynotes here, the electricity price has actually decreased 11.1 percent, and that's due to the surcharge being lifted from the hurricanes. Food costs modestly increased .8 percent, cost of goods and services grew 5.6 percent, and prices increased 7.2 percent for rent of a primary residence. Iā€™m going to jump right into our FY '25 tax policy. Based on policy, tax rate is based on the budget requirements. The FY '25 recommended budget developed by the County Manager in front of you is built on the rolled-back tax rate. What this means is it includes the net new taxable value, the ad valorem associated with the net new taxable value, and we'll get onto that in the next slide. The millage rates -- the millage rates were developed in the General Fund and Unincorporated Area General Fund operating budgets utilizing a priority-based budgeting approach. Further program adjustments throughout this process may result in changes to the actual millage rate. And then our MSTUs were limited to a millage rate sufficient to cover their current operations and any capital planned allocations. So now we'll jump into the preliminary taxable value. You can see the chart there has the prior year, and at the far, far right column you'll see the current year. There's a $12.1 billion taxable value increase countywide; 4.1 billion of that is net new taxable value or a taxable value associated with growth. The tax related to that growth taxable value is included in the rolled-back millage rate. June 20, 2024 Page 6 For the unincorporated area, the increase was 7.7 billion; 2.7 billion related to new taxable value. And according to the State's estimated conference, they project continued tax base increases over '25 and '26; 10.2 percent in '25 and 7.1 percent for tax year '26. And that's tax year. So 2025 would be our FY '26. 2026 would be our FY '27. And this is just kind of an interesting chart that shows the trend of our taxable value. If you look at this, the top is the General Fund, the bottom is the Unincorporated Area General Fund. The increases in taxable value over the last five years in both areas is about 50 percent. So it's significant. Going into our preliminary taxing scenarios. As I stated, the taxable value increase related to net new or growth was 4.1 billion in the General Fund. In the -- highlighted in green there on the first row, you'll see the tax dollars associated with that, $12.3 million. Then you have the additional ones for the countywide. The total in the countywide, based on the net new growth, is $13.1 million, and then right below that is the Unincorporated Area General Fund. The net new growth of 2.7 billion there results in an ad valorem revenue increase of $1.8 million. Moving on to the blue column there, you'll see this is the tax value increase with the millage-neutral rate, so essentially taking the same millage rate we have this year and applying it to the new taxable value. In the General Fund, that was 12.1 billion in taxable value. That results in $36.7 million in additional ad valorem revenue. And, again, if you go down to the subtotal for countywide, it would be 39.5 million. And in the Unincorporated Area, it would result in 5.2 million in additional ad valorem revenue. And then, finally, in the column on the right there, you'll see the variance between your rolled-back rate and your millage-neutral rate. So based on the discussions we had in our February workshop, June 20, 2024 Page 7 that's kind of the range that we're looking at here to set these final millage rates between the -- between the rolled-back rate and the millage-neutral rate. Any questions on any of that? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Troy? MR. JOHNSON: All good? All right. CHAIRMAN HALL: Anybody lit up? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: No. MR. JOHNSON: Moving on to the FY -- a few additional FY '25 budget highlights. The budget presented to you, the net budget is 2.088 billion. That's an increase of 92.9 million over FY '24, which was $1.995 billion. The General Fund budget is at 688.3 million. That's an increase of 890,000 over FY '24. And the Unincorporated General Fund is budgeted at 84.4 million. This is an increase of 655,000 over 2024. Overall, the recommended budget is within guidance for the County Manager's agency with operating budgets funded through General and Unincorporated General Fund based on their net cost impact. Net cost impact is your program expense minus your revenue, basically how much of the General Fund is supporting you. That's across the board. Most divisions were actually under guidance this year. And as you page through your book and as the departments come up and do their presentations, you'll be able to see those compliance sheets at the front of each section. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Mr. Chairman, can I ask a quick question? Just so I understand, then, the budget's built on a rolled-back millage rate basis. And using that basis, the budget -- the increase in revenue will be enough to keep the county within guidance of the 3.5 percent? MR. JOHNSON: Correct. June 20, 2024 Page 8 COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Okay. So millage -- rolled-back millage is kind of where you're heading? MR. JOHNSON: On the operating side, yes. To get to the rolled-back millage, there were some challenges on the capital side that -- a few adjustments we had to make to achieve that. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Great. MR. JOHNSON: And we can go over those if you'd like, or we can save it for a wrap-up conversation. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: It sounds like it makes our job a little bit easier. What is the impact on using the rolled-back millage rate? What is the impact on Conservation Collier? MR. JOHNSON: On Conservation Collier specifically? Let me just get back here. So the rolled-back rate for Conservation Collier would generate an increase of $707,000 next year, an additional 707-. So the total would be $31.8 million. If you went to millage neutral, you'd be at $33.6 million or an increase of 2.5-. And keep in mind, with Conservation Collier you do have a ceiling on that of .25 mills, which would have been the -- which is above and beyond the millage-neutral rate. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Great. Thank you. That sounds good. MR. JOHNSON: No problem. All right. Expanded service requests, budgeted County Manager expanded service requests include 27 full-time employees, plus 10 vehicles and operating increases for EMS, Code Enforcement, Domestic Animal Services, the Immokalee CRA, Human Resources, and Facilities. The total of these requests is $4,012,900. In addition, there's a budgeted expanded request for the Clerk of Courts, which includes funding to support improvements to the SAP payroll system of $208,800. That expanded service request falls June 20, 2024 Page 9 within 3 and a half percent increase from compliance that we allow. So she's within that amount with the expanded requests. Moving on, here's kind of a breakdown of where these are. Three FTEs in Human Resources, 10 FTEs in Code Enforcement, four staff members for Domestic Animal Services. We have a Facilities request of a million dollars. That's for an HVAC preventative maintenance program. We have a hardening of an employee in the Immokalee CRA, and we have another crew, nine paramedics, for EMS. And I already explained to you the Clerk of Courts. So that's for the SAP time and attendance upgrade. Any questions on any of those at all? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: Investment in the workforce. Per budget policy for FY '25, the recommended budget includes a 3 percent wage increase to all classifications, an additional one and a half percent for the implementation of a merit-based incentive program, and a half a percent pay plan maintenance component to strengthen targeted classifications that are under market. The employee healthcare, per the budget policy, the recommended budget includes a 7 percent increase to the existing rate structure. These are your CRA and Economic Development Zone transfers. The General Fund this year will be transferring $14.9 million to these zones and CRAs, and the Unincorporated Area General Fund will be transferring about 1.8 million, for a total of $16.7 million. This is up 2.3 million from last year. And if you recall in our discussions in September, this is directly related to the millage rate. So if you changed the millage rate, these numbers will fluctuate based on -- based on their increment. On to reserves. General Fund reserves increased to 78.1 million, or 12.8 percent of expenses. That's within the budget June 20, 2024 Page 10 guidance of 8 to 16 percent. Unincorporated Area General Fund reserves modestly decreased to 5.9 million, or 7.5 percent of expenses. Below on the left, you'll see the graph for the General Fund, the trend for General Fund reserves, and on the right is the Unincorporated General Fund reserves. The reason for the drop in the Unincorporated Area General Fund reserve is the anticipated transfer that we've all discussed one on one to Conservation Collier being reduced. So we had to reduce some of our reserves to accommodate the operations. Moving on to the capital budget. This is the overall capital budget. This year it's programmed at $686 million. You can kind of see the breakdown there. The majority of the capital is in our Public Utilities department, as would be expected, followed by our transportation network, and then the office of the County Manager, which includes all of our general governmental facilities and our TDC. Any questions on this one at all? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: All right. So this slide depicts the General Fund and Unincorporated Area General Fund transfers to capital. What I wanted to point out on this slide is you'll see the year-over-year transfer has been reduced. The overall program hasn't been reduced by much. What we're doing is we're utilizing that capital reserve in our countywide Capital Fund 3001 to fund some of the projects moving forward. So the amount being transferred out of the General Fund is reduced, whereas the capital is still in line with what we've done in previous years. So if you look at this next slide, you can see the total capital for the Unincorporated and General -- and General Fund funded capital budgets is $96.13 million. And of that, we're kind of looking at this another way. What June 20, 2024 Page 11 are we doing with this money? We have 73.6 million going into renewal and replacement projects, 18.8 million going into kind of new named projects, and then we have another category that's kind of like our softwares and planning and those types of things. Any questions on any of this? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HALL: Chris, can you go back to the screen before that? MR. JOHNSON: Certainly. CHAIRMAN HALL: The next one first. That one there. We got monitoring in a Capital Fund account? Sea turtle monitoring? MR. JOHNSON: That's dealt with as a project. So it's a project fund. So what happens is there's two funding sources for sea turtle monitoring, the General Fund and then the TDC, and that goes into a project so that money can roll over on its own every year. So it's kind of a mechanism to, I guess, administer the program. We do that as well in our landscaping. CHAIRMAN HALL: Yeah, I just -- when I saw a service -- service thing in a Capital Fund, it just made we question it. So thank you. MR. JOHNSON: No. It's a very good question. And we can look at that. Any other questions? COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: If you don't mind, on the Parks and Recreation repairs and maintenance, 6 million -- I'm sorry. Of the Parks and Recreation repairs and maintenance of 6.3 million, a couple questions. We have a fund, I believe, that has about $10 million left in it for aquatic facilities. MR. JOHNSON: Correct. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Should that be on this list or -- June 20, 2024 Page 12 MR. JOHNSON: This is just General Fund and Unincorporated General funded capital. In the overall capital, it is part of that 668- or -86 million. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Understood. Then in terms of the amount of money that's on that line item, is that going to be sufficient to deal with the aquatic issues that we are faced with? MR. JOHNSON: There's a million dollars included with -- from the General Fund, and then the 10 million from the bond. And currently, with -- I know at this moment -- I believe -- and I'll kind of look at Ed a little bit here -- we're moving forward with kind of an assessment of the aquatics. So at the moment, moving forward with the 11 million, I think we're in a pretty good spot until we have an overall assessment of what needs to be -- needs to be done. And I'll -- Ed, if you want to add to that, I can -- COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: No, I don't need -- I don't want to add anything, or if you're asking Ed, I don't need any further clarification on it. I think you've addressed it. MR. JOHNSON: Okay. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: But in reference to animal services and the newly -- some of the newly discovered needs there, is that something that is included in these numbers here? MR. JOHNSON: Yes, sir, it is. There's $3.5 million specifically for animal services, two and a half million for the current facility, and we put a million aside to look towards the potential of another facility out to the east. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Great. Thank you. MR. JOHNSON: You're welcome. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: How much more is that money compared to what we did last year? What's the delta? June 20, 2024 Page 13 Those are increases? MR. JOHNSON: There was not a budgeted project for that -- COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Okay. MR. JOHNSON: -- in the general countywide Capital Fund that last year. So, yes, yes, it is. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: That's new added money that we didn't do last year? MR. JOHNSON: Correct. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Okay. All right. MR. JOHNSON: Well, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Chris Fabian with ResourceX. MR. FABIAN: Thank you, Chris. Good morning, Commissioners. Good morning, staff and administration, and good morning, members of the public. My name is Chris Fabian, and I'm here with my colleague, Jesse Muñiz from ResourceX, as we have completed your first implementation of priority-based budgeting as a county government. So I want to extend my sincerest gratitude and appreciation to this board, especially Commissioner Chris Hall, for bringing priority-based budgeting to the county. We will begin to infuse the impacts of priority-based budgeting in your very first year overall. As a recap, the organization has accomplished a great deal in a short amount of time in your first implementation of priority-based budgeting. You have scored over 600 individual programs and services across the county government, so that's the identification of every single program that you offer, the cost allocation of personnel and non-personnel. Your entire operating costs are allocated so you know the programs that you provide and the costs of providing those programs, and those programs have been scored relative to, as Chris mentioned, your strategic plan priorities to understand which programs have the greatest degree of alignment with your priorities June 20, 2024 Page 14 and which programs have a lesser degree of alignment overall. Programs were scored not only against your priorities but other key reasons that the county offers programs, including degree of mandate. Many of your programs are required by state law or the federal government, but some programs are not. Every program now has a score to it for a degree of mandate, cost recovery, population served, degree of reliance, and change in demand. That is no small undertaking, and the virtue of having this data is that we can bring it to bear in today's discussion as you go through and evaluate every budget proposal that comes before you and, secondly, not only are we able to frame budget proposals, which we'll get into how that has been used already in this year's budget process, but we have a program evaluation. So by virtue of scoring every single program as we will present at the end of today's presentation, we can cross-reference every program you offer based on its scoring criteria with every other organization that has gone through priority-based budgeting to offer resource reallocation opportunities and new revenue generation opportunities, some of which can be used throughout the process. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Can I ask you a question? MR. FABIAN: Yes. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: When you went through the list of priorities that you set for each individual area before you scored, are those priorities weighted differently so they have -- you know, within those priorities, they also have different weights as far as the importance and what you put on it. I don't want to oversimplify the process, but you ran through some really important things that you use for criteria, but they're weighted differently as far as importance? MR. FABIAN: You are correct to say that the priorities have a higher degree of meaning and influence on the final score of any June 20, 2024 Page 15 given program, so the Board priorities that you are trying to deliver to the residents of Collier County. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Right. MR. FABIAN: As opposed to those basic program attributes, degree of mandate, cost recovery, population served have a lesser weighting overall. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Okay. MR. FABIAN: So great question. You're exactly right. Oh, go ahead. CHAIRMAN HALL: Just for us. When you have a question, just go for it. I'd rather this be a conversation than me trying to watch this board and not focusing. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Pretty much is. MR. FABIAN: Sounds great. So throughout today's presentation, we will be jumping in. Commissioner Hall, as you mentioned, when we have anything to offer from a priority-based budgeting perspective, but most importantly, we will be the final presentation today to describe how priority-based budgeting has been infused into this process already and where you go next with the list of program-specific opportunities for each and every program throughout the county overall. As Chris has on the screen here, I do want to at least give you a prelude to many of the opportunities that have come up already for which priority-based budgeting has helped to identify opportunities for organizational adjustments, including a workforce prioritization pool, a way to utilize human resources in an optimal manner, process improvements and resource realignment from several of the departments, revenue opportunities and fee adjustments, program partnerships, as well, which is a key theme for all of the programs that we'll get into at the end, and level-of-service analysis. So you will hear these throughout the day today, specifically as June 20, 2024 Page 16 departments make their presentations. But these have already been acted upon in the proposed budget that you have before you. So with that, I'll thank you, and we'll get on with the day. CHAIRMAN HALL: All right. Mr. Johnson, could you explain, like you did with me yesterday, the workforce prioritization pool? MR. JOHNSON: Certainly, certainly. So what we've done here, what the County Manager has directed, is we have taken positions that have been vacant for an extended period of time, on hold, or are kind of no longer necessary in the programs where they reside, and we've put those into a cost center or a pool to be utilized strategically for initiatives from the County Manager and anything we need to kind of have a -- what did I use yesterday -- a "snipe team" to go out and deal with, when I was talking to Commissioner Kowal. So it allows us to take these human resources and prioritize them for the things that are important or urgent. And just to give you -- give you -- just kind of show you where these all came from, this slide here kind of depicts where we pulled a few of these positions. And in public services, there were Library positions that have been vacant, some Parks positions, and a few positions in Operations. Under the management office, we had a few positions in Facilities, one in Communications, and in Transportation -- there were three in Transportation and two in Stormwater. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: So, Chris, that means -- that doesn't mean that they can't be filled. It just means that we're sort of putting a cover over -- and pulling them all together and having a little bit more of a fluid system of how we can utilize them best, right? It doesn't mean that these positions couldn't be filled in the Library and the Park or what have you, correct? MR. JOHNSON: Precisely. June 20, 2024 Page 17 COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: We're not removing those. MR. JOHNSON: Precisely. It's a process improvement. In the past everyone -- you know, these were my positions. These are here. Now it becomes let's go through the pool. As positions vacate and are not filled, we can put them in the pool as -- if we need a librarian, it comes up, and it was one that has been removed from there to go to the pool, we would take one out of the pool and utilize it for that as well. So it's a new way of looking at it, new way of looking at things. CHAIRMAN HALL: Think of it like a day worker program where you need labor and you pull from the pool, and then when you're done, you put it back in the pool. MR. JOHNSON: Put it back in the pool. CHAIRMAN HALL: Okay. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Happy, happy, happy. MR. JOHNSON: All right. Any other questions on that? (No response.) COURTS AND THE COURT-RELATED AGENCIES MR. JOHNSON: If not, we'll jump into our first department, which is the courts and the court-related agencies. Don't mind me. I'm going to switch this. MS. FOX: Good morning, Commissioners. MR. RICE: Good morning. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Good morning. MR. RICE: All right. Good morning, Commissioners. My name's Chuck Rice. I'm the court administrator, for the record. Good morning. With me today is Amira Fox, the State Attorney. I'd like to, you know, thank you guys in the county and the June 20, 2024 Page 18 budget office, Chris and his staff with AJ and Maggie for their help and support with this budget this year. I'd also like to recognize a couple of our staff that makes the court system run. So if you'd just raise your hand and be recognized when I announce your name. I have with me today Kerri Hixson, our operations director. Beside her is Iler Rivera; she's our program coordinator. Beside her is Juan Ramos; he heads up our probation department. And to his left is Jeff Nichols, our director of our criminal division. So we're here today to submit a $7 million budget. That's 1 percent less than what our overall budget was last year for operating. We were able to do that through an assessment of all of our court business units and requirements in an effort to develop the most cost-effective budget possible. And in doing that -- I'm glad we did this -- we looked at your 2024 strategic plan, and at this point usually I highlight some of our programs and the successes the courts have, but I'd like to take a different avenue this year and show and just mention about five or six items of how the Court aligns with your strategic plan for 2024, if that's okay. One, under your vision, to be the best community in America. Well, that starts with public safety, strong families, and individuals. We try to accomplish that on a daily basis. Number two, you support health, wellness, and human services. We align with that through our drug court, veterans court, mental health courts, our domestic violence unit, our dependency court, and teen court. Three, under responsible governing, your strategic plan talks about promoting data-driven decision-making through performance, management, and measuring the results. We absolutely are on board with that, and we do that on a daily basis through our case management, the court stats, and court tools June 20, 2024 Page 19 we do, and our probation statistics. Not only do we track that, we measure it, and then we reevaluate it. We have a saying -- I like to say, "Train, try, measure, repeat." Four, encourage community engagement and participation. We certainly do that and run parallel with that in that we have small-claims mediator volunteers. We have a foster-care review board made up of the volunteers out of the community, our teen court volunteers, and we also provide courthouse tours to schools, civic associations, and basically anybody that requests a courthouse tour. Five, safeguard taxpayer money by fiscal stewardship and sound budget oversight. As you know, the last several years, we've always come in way below target. We're able to do that just by being good stewards of the money. Our budget is self-prioritized just by the nature of what we do. However, we have a unique position where we deal with some state funds, too, as the Clerk does. And I know the Clerk is a big champion of trying to get state money and being a great steward of the county funds, as we are. So we did realign our priority goals and was able to reduce or guardianship budget by nearly 200,000 this year. The other thing that you mentioned as a priority is cybersecurity, and I think that's an issue for everybody. We're dealing with that through threats of cyberattacks and ransomware and, obviously, we've got to continue to maintain and purchase hardware and software to combat that. So with that I think you see what the courts are doing aligns very well with your strategic plan. And with that, Amira. MS. FOX: Good morning, Commissioners. I'm Amira Fox, your state attorney for the 20th Circuit, and I have with me also Debbie Stanbro, our executive director, who actually handles the budget for me and does a wonderful job. So she is here in case I tell June 20, 2024 Page 20 you anything wrong, but I'm sure I won't. I wanted to come -- even though we have a decrease in our ask of you this year, we have actually been able to eliminate a position that you had funded for us by restructuring. Using technology, we've been very efficient at being able to eliminate certain positions, and one of them impacts Collier County, so you'll see that we actually have a decrease in our budget to the tune of $59,600. But I wanted to come to just personally thank you for your support of our office and for the court system throughout the circuit and particularly here in Collier County. I'm sure you-all already all know this, but Collier County has maintained, for over a decade, and the circuit has maintained the lowest crime rate in the state of Florida. And I always tell people that's no accident; that's because we have the most wonderful law enforcement and wonderful local government that supports us. And last year what you did for us was you increased the money that you gave us in order to allow me to start a specialized narcotics felony division, which we had already established in Lee County with that commission's help. You followed fast on their heels of allowing me to do the same thing here in Collier and giving me enough extra funding for an assistant state attorney, an investigator, and a member of our support team. Charlotte County then said, "Oh, we'll do the same." So I have been able to establish in this circuit a narcotics specialized felony unit that handles these high-end drug trafficking investigations. They work as part of our narcotics enforcement task force team, which has been immensely successful in taking out huge amounts of fentanyl and other drugs, arresting many, many people who are now serving lots of years in prison. So that's really thanks to all of you. I wanted to tell you your money has gone to very good use. We do have a specialized June 20, 2024 Page 21 attorney here now in narcotics that works hand in hand with our wonderful Sheriff's Office here and our two police agencies at bringing down these large-scale drug traffickers and also, I want to tell you, specializing in drug overdose and poisoning deaths. We've had our grand jury here in Collier recently indict somebody on a drug overdose death, and we will continue to do so using that money to fund our specialized prosecutor. So I just wanted to tell you thank you for all you do for the court system. It really does make a difference. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: I have a quick question. CHAIRMAN HALL: Go ahead. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: I just -- give me the short version. But a big delta savings that I saw -- and like you said, very impressive how -- you know, doing more things with less. But court-related technology, was that, like, sort of a one-time expense last year where you upgraded something and then you just didn't need it? Why was that -- MR. RICE: As far as unused funds in that? COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah. Well, I just noticed a big difference. You know, it was -- half a million was what was adopted in 2024, and then it's -- you know, it's much less for current. So I was just curious -- I was kind of setting the table for you to give you a chance to say, "Here's what we did," you know. Yeah, yeah, so here you go. I'm throwing you the softball. Give me the, you know, home run. MR. RICE: I appreciate that. But basically, you know, sometimes the timeliness of the hardware and the servers we buy -- COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Right. MR. RICE: -- it's all pretty much on a calendar basis whether it's two years, three years when they need refreshed and everything, and we're always trying to put off, as long as we can, any purchases June 20, 2024 Page 22 to conserve money just for that fact. So you can see that decrease in the budget. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Okay. Got it. That young lady in the back just raised her hand and said everything you said was untrue. So did you want to come -- no, I'm just kidding. Thank you, sir. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: One little thing, and this is something that you're going to be participatory in, is that we recently had an issue in Immokalee with our CRA and MSTU offices. And there's been some discussion, money appropriated for planning and design for the remodel of the government complex in Immokalee. And I just want you to have it on your radar that that lease extension did not come to fruition. We thought we had more time than what we have. The lease out there at the CareerSource center is over in July of next year. So we all need to be moving up on our priority list the remodel monies necessary for that old courtroom that's in Immokalee that hasn't been used in an excess of 20 years, and the Clerk of Court's office in the back and the Tax Collector's Office, as well as the County Commission offices. So keep that on your radar as you're going through for what we're going to need to do out there, please. MR. RICE: Yes, sir. And we're fully intending to -- that space is available for the county's use, as far as the courts are concerned. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Outstanding. Outstanding. Thank you. MR. RICE: Any other questions? CHAIRMAN HALL: Thank you. MR. RICE: Thank you. MS. FOX: Thank you, Commissioners. MR. JOHNSON: All right. Thank you very much. June 20, 2024 Page 23 SHERIFF Moving on, next is the Sheriff. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Good morning, everyone. Kevin Rambosk, Collier County Sheriff. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to be here with you this morning. And, you know, I know we still have some challenges in our community and a few for the future, but I believe we have had an amazing year as a community. And for our part, that is really due to the outstanding work of the men and women of the Collier County Sheriff's Office who are committed to service each and every day; and also to your leadership, and particularly for us, your support of law enforcement and all of public safety. I want to thank the County Manager and her staff for the day-to-day support that we need and the community for supporting law enforcement and professional law enforcement that allows us to do our job, and that is one large element on how we are so successful. I also want to thank our command staff. I didn't bring everybody with us today, but, you know, starting with Colonel Bloom, our chiefs, our executive-in-command staff, and certainly our great admin section and finance director, Stephanie, who does a great job. I also want to recognize the partnership we have with our fire rescue services in Collier County. I can tell you that around the state and around the nation, there are few organizations that have the partnership that we have, and that absolutely works towards the positive of responding to emergency situations in Collier County, both now and training for the potential of any event, and I'll touch a little bit on that as we go. But I want to talk a little bit this time about how we build our June 20, 2024 Page 24 budget because I think that's -- I know you're familiar with it, but I thought that for the public's perspective, I wanted them to get a sense of how we get to where we are when I submit my certification of need to you in accordance with Florida state statute. So our budget and the creation of it is always in line and supportive of our overall mission. And, of course, our mission is to preserve and protect the lives, property, and constitutional guarantees of all persons. So that's pretty straightforward. In order to do that, we have built a strategic plan much like you were talking about earlier with priority goals and objectives. And when we look at budget formulation, we make sure that everything that we're looking for is supportive of that strategic plan. We have all members of our leadership team involved in the process, and we're focused on our priorities as well. And just to give you a sense, if you think about one of our patrol districts, so you're -- not the same as your districts, but in our patrol district, we have a lieutenant that runs the operation; we have lieutenants throughout the organization. They're in charge of bureaus. They start from the bottom up to develop what needs they see for the coming year. They then submit that to their captain and director level, which is the division level. They will review each of those requests, and they actually have to make a presentation to a board or group consisting of the chief of admin, the director of finance, the colonel, and they actually go through and review each and every request, again, really to make sure that they align with the strategic plan and the reason that we're making the request. The other thing that I think is important to know is there are specific requirements under Florida State Statute 30 with regard to sheriff's duties and responsibilities, and everything that we submit to you has to be compliant with that as well. We're currently using the Tyler MUNIS system ERP, or June 20, 2024 Page 25 Enterprise Resource Planning software tool. That helps us with integrating our finance and accounting. It allows us to track everything that we're doing. And as I understand it, Tyler has now purchased ResourceX, which is what you're using. So we don't know what or how that may change what we do in the future, but we're certainly looking forward to see if there are any new and better ways that we can operate. You know, we just think of best practices for zero-based budgeting bottom to top, and that's how we formulate the budget. But there are a couple other things that we utilize, and it's not done every year. Some are every other year. But two important things. In preparation for where we're headed both annually and, in the future, we've commissioned a population and growth study from David Farmer; you have as well. He has helped us in the past to look toward the future. We're currently looking at updating that study today. So we take that information and projection when we're thinking about budgets not only today but in the future. The other thing that's really -- I believe is really very important is that, you know, we are a nationally accredited agency, and how that relates to budget is we do periodic workload and organizational reviews that are mandated under the accreditation process. That lets us know and rebuild, refocus, ensure that we're not only meeting our priorities both now and for the future, but also change things, because it really forces you to go look and review. So it's not only best practices nationally, but it helps us to build our system. So what are the results of all that? U.S. News and World Report, safest community out of 150 communities in the nation. That's what that gets us. Best place to retire. Along with everything that you're doing and your leadership in the county to what we do for public safety, absolutely the best place in the country to live. That is the overriding overall result. June 20, 2024 Page 26 But, you know, we've got some individual things that I think are important to highlight. One, your SWAT team here in Collier County, again -- and they've done this before, but this past year, their SWAT roundup competition ranked No. 1 nationally for their skills and abilities. That is fabulous. Your Corrections Emergency Response Team, which is a SWAT team for the jail, they ranked No. 2 in their competition nationally. So the -- and I say that to show the quality of the training, of the equipment, all of which you support to enable us to accomplish. We've had some legislative successes. We have the massage parlor bill, and that was -- that was requested by us, worked on by your Sheriff's Office, to help thwart human trafficking in our community. We do a lot with human trafficking, but we think that is going to be helping what we do for the future. A fentanyl enhancement bill for public safety, that was passed, and what that does is it enhances penalties. If you recklessly endanger the lives of first responder, fire rescue, EMS, and law enforcement, your penalties can be enhanced at the end of your sentence. So we thought that was critically important, because you know we've had two of our deputies historically that have been overcome by fentanyl. Both saved by Narcan, so we are thankful for all of that. We created a comprehensive Laced & Lethal drug program, antidrug program for fentanyl. It has four component parts: School, education for our kids; community awareness; enforcement, which we are doing a lot of. The State Attorney just mentioned it. We're not only a part of her teams, but I can tell you in the first year, and actually the first six months of that program, we had 57 arrests for the sale of fentanyl right here in Collier County. And then our exposure control element of that which really June 20, 2024 Page 27 helps to protect our law enforcement officers. And, by the way, we have had requests from across the nation for that part of our plan. We send them the whole plan because there was really no one comprehensive plan that dealt with this. And so we are very, very proud of that. A lot of technology advances. I won't get into that unless you want to, but we're also looking at the future. And I think with what's going on around the world, there are a lot of concerns out there. And, you know, we're looking at three main directions: Safety, self-reliance, and security. And, you know, we've always dealt with safety, but we are trying to become more self-reliant, because as we've known from the natural disasters that we've had, and who knows about the future of other disasters, we certainly will get help if people can get here or if they're not engaged in the same disaster. And there have been times when our help has had to leave because other parts of the state were hit as well. So we're looking at a variety of different ways to address that. We're looking at how to secure ourselves as a community. And there's a couple of ways that we're doing that. We have just implemented the start of a Community Emergency Response Team. We had our first training within the last two to three weeks. So we're going to build a cadre of residents/citizens who want to participate and help there in a variety of ways, from communications in Ham radio all the way to technical capabilities that they might bring to the organization. We're increasing our volunteer core overall. And then we are creating a new emergency volunteer capability. And, in fact, tomorrow night I'm going to be meeting and giving a presentation to the 1013 Club, which is retired law enforcement officers here in Collier County, and we're going to look to them -- we provide them the opportunity to certify to carry a firearm each year, so we meet and June 20, 2024 Page 28 greet and know them. And we've started to ask if they would be interested -- if we ever needed assistance for a particular event or incident, would they be interested in assisting. And, of course, cops are cops, and they said absolutely. So we're going to do a presentation tomorrow night. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Commissioner Kowal, did he say yes to that? You've got him on the list, Sheriff? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: I put his name on the list already, so... COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: I just want to make sure he's on there. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: He's coming, without a doubt. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: He's sitting over there quiet. Okay, Dan, they're looking for you. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: So we're also doing -- we are looking at Texas A&M University for providing some community awareness training, some preparation training, and that's a community-based training for those who are interested in doing that. We're also looking at connecting with an online university as well that we got referred to from them. So if you can't come into an actual training course, you can take it online. So it's really all about continuing what we do, keeping our community safe and then making sure our community, our residents are prepared for whatever comes. And I'll leave it open to questions. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: I've got some questions. I'll just jump in. Sheriff, thank you so much, you know, for coming. And I said this last year, we don't get -- we don't get separate reports from every department -- we get a few. I said this last year, yours is always phenomenal. It's -- I think I said to you the last time we spoke, you could hand it to a stranger, and after going through it, it's just so thorough. It's uncomplicated, very clear. June 20, 2024 Page 29 So whoever, you know -- and like you said at the beginning, sir, it's a team of people that put that together, but I'm so appreciative when it comes across my desk, because I don't have to have a -- you know, a Ph.D. in -- you know, in anything to take a look at it. A few attaboy things that, you know, you hadn't mentioned, but I think it's worthy of mentioning because it really jumped out in your package to us, your separate package, was how hard you work on grants. I mean, when you sit there and see half a million dollars and then you, you know, line item everything, I mean, that's money that has to be chased. And there's so many counties that miss out on opportunities. And, you know, I know from working, you know, in other, you know, jobs, it takes a lot to go after -- a lot of times people don't go after the grant money because it's like, oh, we had to turn in something this thick to maybe get $10,000. You know, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, as I always say. Well, you're squeezing the juice, because that was really impressive on grants. So, you know, hats off to you on that as well. The last two things I just wanted to mention is I like how you always invest in IT. And like you said, "I don't really want to get into it unless asked." I just wanted to have you hit some of the high points of the investment that you continue to make in IT. What are some of the new things that are coming into the county, without doing too deep of a dive? But like you say, you know, we're here, you know, to inform the public. Because you're really working hard to keep -- keeping the Sheriff's Office on the -- at the leading edge when it comes to technology. Share with us a couple of things of where that investment that you continue to make every year is going to go for this budget. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Yeah, thanks for that question. You know, we always try to be on the leading edge of anything June 20, 2024 Page 30 law enforcement and public safety related. Certainly, technology is one of them. The most recent technology advancements are in our real-time operations center, and that is an adjunct to the 911 center where, as a call comes in, they are listening to the call. We have analysts that start to evaluate the call. They bring up cameras, like traffic cameras if it's in an area of an event. We are one of six agencies in the country that have been authorized by the FAA to fly drones without line of sight up to three miles; that is a pilot program right now. We've used that several times now where a call comes in of a crime in progress -- this first one happened to be a burglary. We sent the drone out while they're still getting information on the event. The drone finds the location, sets up on top of it, videos to the operations center, operations center feeds all that to the deputies, and pinpointed the subject, the burglar, moving between houses, hiding in certain places, until finally he just threw his hands up and stood in the middle of the road and said, "I can't outrun a drone." So... COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Are you adding more drones to your inventory for the, you know, upcoming year or two? Is that something you're projecting? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: We are. We use them in the way that we're allowed in the field. Our supervisors have them. We can have a drone up and feed information at the point they get to a lost person or other type of emergency. But the telemetry between aircraft and drones has to advance before we can go any further with our pilot program. But we'll wait. But we are ready to do it. And, you know, all this reduces response time, gives more information to the responding deputy, and has more successful outcomes. So -- and there are many other things, communications technology, digital technologies, we're using AI for the right reasons, June 20, 2024 Page 31 again, to catch those few criminals that choose Collier County. They should have chosen another county. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Just from a personal view -- so I do a lot of work with Warrior Homes for Collier County, Dale Mullin. And, you know, once a year we go out into the woods to try to find homeless veterans or just citizens and give them a helping hand and point them in the right direction. I saw you have smaller drones that, instead of us trudging through the woods, the sheriff that I was teamed with said, "Oh, we don't actually have to go out in the woods. We're going to fly a drone and save us some time, because if we don't see anybody out there, then we can move on to the next stop." So we, like, quadrupled our efficiency from this tiny little drone being able to fly out to an area where commonly there were homeless people, but maybe not always. And then when we didn't see anybody, then we didn't have the need to spend the next 40 minutes to go through the brambles and whatnot. So it was a big help. Lastly, I just wanted to give you the opportunity to talk about retention and recruitment. You know, you come to the Board of County Commissioners meetings, you know, graciously, and give us a deep dive all the time as to how things are going, so I don't think any of us ever feel like we don't have a good handle on what the Sheriff's Office is doing. What's still your concern or the temperature in the water, lastly, when it comes to retention and recruitment? I know it's got to always be high on your list. Where is it now, and is there something we can do to help you with that? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: It's very high on our list. You know, it has been for some time. Unfortunately, there are some places in the country that do not support their law enforcement. New people do not want to become involved in law enforcement. We're very fortunate in that we use that as a recruitment tool, June 20, 2024 Page 32 that we have a community that supports professional law enforcement here and allows us to do our job. So, yes, it's an ongoing chore to recruit and retain people. Cost of housing, cost of living overall, and the biggest thing is that we just need to remain competitive with other law enforcement agencies surrounding us, with other sheriff's offices surrounding us. We have remained competitive, but I would say this: At a point where everyone's new budgets across the state come into play, I'm going to make sure that we remain competitive, and if I need to come back and make a request for us to remain competitive, I would like to do that. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple questions. I was going to tag on a little bit about the recruitment, because I notice you're down about 200 positions. And the question was, is that an issue of starting salaries, or is there something that we can do to assist you in reducing that number of open spaces? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: No. That is a quandary that I've had since I came from the City of Naples. The way that we submit to you with our budget, historically I've been told we always have to attach numbers to that. Those numbers don't actually equal the number of funded positions that we have in the budget. So there's another line item there that shows the number of funded positions versus vacant. We are pretty typical. We run about 20 positions throughout a year because of requirements, because of turnover. But we're -- just to make sure -- the community doesn't know -- we're not down 200 positions. We have worked through and taken over a lot of those responsibilities, but you'll also see that we're increasing the funding for the request each year. So with the budget we've presented, we June 20, 2024 Page 33 will be looking at probably a total of -- with the vacancies we currently have today and that which we would be authorized October, about 30 positions. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Okay. Obviously, this board has always prioritized public safety -- SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Yes. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: -- and made sure that you've always had the resources that you need. And your increase is about $20 million, I believe, is the overall increase. And this is kind of a question for the manager as well as for you. Our -- it looks like we're moving towards the rolled-back millage rate. That generates about 12 or $13 million in, I think, new revenue. And I want to make sure that we understand that that new revenue, plus some, would go to the Sheriff's Department. There won't be a whole lot left over for other county programs, and I just want to make sure that we fully understand this. Because this budget's based on a rolled-back millage rate budget which is, I think, the right way to go based on what we've been told. But I just want to make sure that we're careful about doing that, which leads me to a question concerning the radio system that we need to replace, because I don't know how that's incorporated in here at this point -- SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Right. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: -- and what the timing is. Can you kind of elaborate a little bit as to the timing of when we're going to need to pony up for the new radio system and what you think that may cost us? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: A couple of things. You know, based upon my certification of need to you, I'm not looking to where the funding that you're going to use comes from. I mean, obviously, I know it because I've come up through the system in the city and the county, but I think that's more a question for the manager. June 20, 2024 Page 34 The radio system, which is a responsibility of the county -- but we participate very closely. We have a great working relationship with them -- we've been trying to make enhancements together with them looking at the system, making sure that we have 95 percent coverage throughout the county. They have looked at different ways in which they can accomplish that. I think the dilemma is we are getting on in age with the 800 system, and with technology, as you all know, over the, what, about 20 years that the system's been in place, technology today is dramatically different than it was at that time. But I would refer to the Manager for some of the dollars and how that would be done. Believe me, if we thought we were in critical need for this, we would have been working together with the Manager right away -- she's very attentive, and her staff is very attentive -- and then we would come to you and make that recommendation. Do I think we need to have a plan to refurbish or replace the system? Yes, and before we get to that point that it becomes a problem. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Well, I want to, again, reiterate the priority of this board has always been public safety, and I want to congratulate you in your efforts to make Collier County the safest place -- really one of the safest places in the country to live. So that's kudos to you and to all the men and women in your agency, so thank you. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Thank you. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: First, I'd like to thank you, Sheriff, for the job you're doing, and especially the men and women that work alongside you every day out there to provide this umbrella of safety that we all live in. I just want to piggyback a little bit on the retention issue. Do June 20, 2024 Page 35 you see -- or maybe somebody else can answer this. Do you see a specific, let's say, time and grade or rank area or where we -- when we do see an attrition or a turnover of people coming, getting trained, and then working for a certain amount of time and then just kind of bailing out and, you know, after we spend the money to get them trained up with some of the best equipment, best things available. Do we have a pattern, or do we know where -- SHERIFF RAMBOSK: I don't know that we have so much a pattern. We'll ask the chief in a second, because he supervises HR. But what we find typically is we have an agency of a lot of new people, five- to 10-year people, and then we have a lot of senior people, because when we went through the economic downturn for 10 years, we were not adding new people. So our concern is we've got senior people with expertise who are retiring, just, you know, retiring out at the end of DROP or because they've met their 30-year opportunity to do that. The other side is we're not seeing the length of commitment for career, I think, that we've seen historically in law enforcement. There's all the more flexibility in "I want to do this for 10 years. I want to go do something else." But, again, we're facing immediately everybody wants to come -- not everybody. We have a lot of people that want to come here to work and live, till they find out how much it costs to live, and they can't find a house, and they're right out. So before we even get them into the system, we lose them. Those who are -- that do hire, we do a lot of recruitment. Locally, we have a great program with the Immokalee Foundation, which we have connected with to bring in people to be trained as dispatchers. We're looking at people with connections that have the ability for housing here. So I'm not sure that there's any one thing, but a variety of things. June 20, 2024 Page 36 And certainly, as I mentioned before, your support, the support of the community has a lot to do with why people would want to become involved in law enforcement here as opposed to other communities. But it goes right back to if we do not remain competitive -- as I watch other organizations, to your point specifically, we need to recognize and thank the deputies that have worked here that have made all these goals to be accomplished and to hold them -- because the hard part -- you know, becoming No. 1, it's not easy, but when you get there, you want to keep it, and I think that is our next challenge. And competitive everything is something we need to look at but in a very fiscally responsible way. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: Thank you, Sheriff. CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner Saunders. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And this is for you, Chief. I actually have a letter here from Donna McGinnis with regard -- you know, we met out at the rifle range -- or the gun range a few months ago, a couple months ago. And with the housing affordability issue, there's a lot of people that moved in just to the west of the gun range and then went, "Uh, there's a gun range over there," so -- and we're having a lot of issues. But I have a letter here from the Garden with regard to the plantings for the sound barrier there, and they're going to supply the plants to us for free. So the irrigation installation and things will be on us. So squirrel a little bit of money away over in here, get with Ed Finn. You and I, when we spoke, that we would collaborate together to ensure that that sound barrier's, in fact, planted. And on that same note, how are the conversations going with the potential relocation and an indoor facility with regard to our gun range? CHIEF SMITH: Thank you, Commissioner. For the record, Greg Smith, chief of administration for the June 20, 2024 Page 37 Sheriff's Office. First, let me say that planting the berm and doing those other things that might be necessary to make enhancements to the current range, that sounds like an excellent opportunity for inmate labor to assist with the county -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I love it. CHIEF SMITH: -- in getting a lot of that stuff done -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I love it. CHIEF SMITH: -- at a minimal cost. CHAIRMAN HALL: Amen. CHIEF SMITH: So I think that we can go in that direction. We're having ongoing discussions with the County Manager, Mr. Finn, and their staff to source some real estate somewhere that we might be able, you know, along the way to move that range. Certainly, everyone understands the need is there. And they're not making any more land in Collier County, so we need to, like, you know, find a parcel pretty quickly. One of the things that you'll have presented to you today is an acquisition on the Sheriff's behalf for a District 5 substation. So they are starting to act on the needs of the Sheriff with that regard. But I do think that the range is one that's a priority moving forward with the increased populations. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Outstanding. Very good. CHAIRMAN HALL: Thank you, Sheriff. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Thank you, sir. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Thank you. SUPERVISOR OF ELECTIONS MR. JOHNSON: All right, Commissioners. Brings us to the Supervisor of Elections. June 20, 2024 Page 38 CHAIRMAN HALL: Page 8 in the constitutionals. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Okay. Perfect. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Thank you. MS. BLAZIER: Good morning, Commissioners. For the record, my name is Melissa Blazier. I'm your Collier County Supervisor of Elections. This morning, our Fiscal Year 2025 budget request comes in at $5.5 million, which is a 9.8 percent decrease from our current budget, and that's primarily due to the fact that we are currently conducting two countywide elections, so the March presidential preference primary and the upcoming primary election, and then in this budget request we are only funding one countywide election, and that is the November general election. In addition to that request, we have requested an additional $1.5 million in 301 funding, and that is for voting equipment and voting system upgrades that would take place in Fiscal Year 2025 after the general election but before the 2026 election cycle. And with that, that concludes my comments. Any questions? It's a small budget request. CHAIRMAN HALL: We're good. Thank you. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Thank you. MS. BLAZIER: Thank you, gentlemen, ma'am. CLERK OF COURTS MR. JOHNSON: All right. And that brings us to the Clerk of Courts. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Here come the suits. CHAIRMAN HALL: Oh, geez. MS. KINZEL: Thank you. Good morning. It's hard to believe it's already another budget cycle, but here we are. June 20, 2024 Page 39 So good morning, Commissioners. I have with me Derek Johnssen, our finance director; Mike Smykowski, our director of administration; and Mike Netti, who's our director of recording and accounting. And all of these counterparts with the math and budget expertise work to bring our programs to completion. I do want to thank first -- it's kind of interesting wrapping up the constitutionals because they took all my thunder. But remember, the Clerk's Office is integrated with all of them. We do all of the assets. We do all the financial reporting. We work with each and every one of the people that spoke previously, whether it's the courts, the state's attorney, and the Sheriff, and Melissa in Supervisor of Elections. So we are very integrated to all of the operations. So we want to thank the Board, the County Manager and staff, and, of course, I want to thank the great staff of the Clerk's Office who support us every day and give great customer service to our constituents. Our 2025 budget request meets all the guidelines, as you prescribed. Our budget is less than 1 percent of the county's budget at .75 percent. We participated in the ResourceX program for budget responsive, and that implementation's reflected in the documents that you've received through the budget office. We meet all of the policy guidelines. We participate in the Board's insurance for employees, payroll plan, and follow pretty much the guidance that you give to the staff for the county. I would like to mention a couple of recent successes that we have on our books. Automation, that seems to be the word that you're hearing from everyone, and it has to continue. We have automated everything from our records and information to the first 100 years. All of the recording documents for Collier County are now automated and online for property and real records. That goes back to the late 1800s, so we're pretty proud of that. June 20, 2024 Page 40 Also in the recording department, I'll brag a little bit more about them, for any of you interested, you can now be married online or get your marriage license online. So we offer a lot of these services now, including a mobile app for recording. We found that with our contractors, this meets a significant need in the community, and so we are trying to continue to upgrade and update so that it provides convenient service and also streamlines what we do so that we're able to do more with the same individual staffing that we have right now. Our budget, we did reduce it by one FTE going in the right direction, but with all of the increases in population and activity, we were only able to reduce by one staff. The other major project that I want to bring to your attention -- because the Clerk of Courts often is the backroom component of what we do. We operate and manage the financial systems for the Clerk, the Supervisor of Elections, and the Board of County Commissioners. So we had a major upgrade this year with the incredible cooperation of county staff; the Supervisor of Elections will be going on with some of these things. We updated your platform. You've heard how important it is to update mobile data, upgrade mobile radios, upgrade the systems to make sure that you are on a platform that is sustainable in the current environment. Cybersecurity, obviously incredibly important. So we maintain all of those systems, but we specifically updated our SAP financial system at the latter part of last year to the latest platform. That enabled us this year to implement a more significant change in the time and attendance programs and technology that we have. This will not only add more transparency, but it will give us the ability to better track our labor, associate it with more projects, get a better handle on the total cost of everything that we do. And we've had great cooperation with all of the county June 20, 2024 Page 41 departments. The Clerk is the first guinea pig, so we will have that completed in the next couple months with all of our payroll and backup information, and then we will start implementing what we've been working on for the Board's side this year. Those are really the largest things that we've done. I don't want to belabor it. We do provide the Board our budget book on May 1 of each year with the details, and this is available to the public, if they have any questions, and it includes information about each and every one of our departments and our services. And with that, we'll just look for any questions you might have. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: No questions. Carry on. MS. KINZEL: Thank you. CHAIRMAN HALL: Thank you. MS. KINZEL: Appreciate it. And I appreciate the Board's continued support as we work through a lot of projects. It's been a great difference in working with the County Manager and the Commissioners in the past couple of years. So I look forward to continuing that. MR. JOHNSON: All right. I don't believe we have the Property Appraiser, the Tax Collector, so we'll move on to Public Safety. MS. PATTERSON: Troy, did you have any speakers for the constitutional officers? MR. MILLER: I do not. MS. PATTERSON: All right. We can move on to Public Safety, but we're up on a court reporter break as well. CHAIRMAN HALL: All right. Do you want to take a break now? MS. PATTERSON: If you believe we're going to have a longer conversation, maybe that would be best, and then we can go to Public Safety. June 20, 2024 Page 42 CHAIRMAN HALL: We'll go ahead and break, and we'll be back at 10:30. (A brief recess was had from 10:20 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.) MS. PATTERSON: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN HALL: All right. Chief Choate, bring it to us. CHIEF CHOATE: Good morning, Commissioners. Michael Choate, your executive director of Public Safety. It's an honor to be here this morning. You know, the thing I love about public workshops is this is a -- this is a planning tool as we describe our budget, and it gives us the opportunity to actually include you in our plan and to seek your input and to field your questions and so forth. So as your Public Safety director, I am charged with managing five internal district -- or slash areas and -- divisions/areas. Those include emergency management, emergency medical services, that includes our telecommunications area, that also includes a dependent fire district, which you have an MSTU for the Ochopee fire district and an MSTU for the Goodland fire district. And I'm also responsible for $94.8 million of Public Safety funds, and I do not take that lightly. So with that, I have surrounded myself with competent division directors which, therefore, makes my job easier. We've been -- we've been faced with a lot of challenges over the last -- since I was brought on as your Public Safety director. We've had turnover rates. We've had recruitment and retention issues. We've had two collective bargaining sessions where we've successfully been able to close two contracts within our EMS groups. And so we've had a lot of changes. I heard a term yesterday that Public Safety -- I think Mr. Barnwell actually said it in a meeting yesterday, that Public Safety was actually that aircraft carrier, and it took a long time to get us turned around, and I think we are turned around now, and we're June 20, 2024 Page 43 headed in a different direction. So questions, Commissioners? We can start with emergency management, EMS. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: You're driving the bus. CHIEF CHOATE: All right. Emergency Management, Director Summers. MR. SUMMERS: For the record, good morning. Dan Summers, your director of Emergency Management for Collier County. And as you know, we continue to be responsible for your disaster preparedness response, recovery, and mitigation. Our team has worked incredibly hard. We're still in recovery, if you will, and lessons learned from both Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Irma. I think we've had an incredibly successful period. We've almost completed that east bay renovation for our logistics supply warehouse. We do have a temporary certificate of occupancy. We're still waiting on the builder to punch list that facility, and we're going to start our soft move on Monday to get that logistics staging area in tiptop shape in order to get the first push of commodities to our community in the disaster. And I just want to thank you, and I want to thank the surtax committee. I think you're going to see that this is going to be a best practice. There are many, many communities that would just roll over to have an opportunity to have a staging area in order to be efficient in disaster response and save money by gaining commodity and using grant during blue sky periods as opposed to gray sky. So we're very excited. We feel a little bit behind the curve on timelines, but my staff has committed weekends and evenings to get that warehouse facility up and operational, so that's next on our list. We've continued to work across the board on standby June 20, 2024 Page 44 contracting. You know, when you're a disaster survivor, not only as a government public safety worker, you are not able to run at complete efficiency. And with our partners at Florida Division of Emergency Management, who also have a host of standby contracts now, certainly working with our state and federal partners, I feel very good about the readiness posture going into this season. The Sheriff mentioned his engagement with volunteers, and we have done likewise with our volunteer agency coordinator who is now working under the financial support of the Community Foundation of Collier County formally setting up a business unit called Volunteer Organization Assisting [sic] in Disaster. With close to 300 non-profit agencies in Collier County to be able to gather that group, put a business process together, leverage the horsepower of volunteer agencies, nongovernmental organizations and churches, we're going to bring that fold into the efficiency of the EOC mission tasking. That has been a tremendous partnership with Emergency Management and the Community Foundation of Collier County. Continuity of operations is big to me. We continue to work with what we call our emergency support functions, our different agencies to make sure that we've got staff depth in the EOC. We've got contract depth. We have resource identification within the EOC operations. And I think that continues to go well. We are paying very close attention to our shelter space. We're paying very close attention to our frail and elderly to make sure they -- what we refer to as lifeboat. Not the love boat, but the lifeboat of services during gray-sky events, and we work very carefully on that registry, and we have a good team that will kind of do what I refer to as disaster casework on steroids during times of EOC activation. And finally, just understand that our threats change all the time. You know, we are spending more and more time on mass violence June 20, 2024 Page 45 planning; mass casualty planning; obviously, our natural hazards planning; our engagement with nuclear power plant planning over in Miami; and then, of course, anything associated with terrorism. We have some dotted lines, if you will, in cyberterrorism and also continuing to look at anything else that might be a national threat. Our partnership and the horsepower at the Florida Division of Emergency Management is quite good. Our governor has supported emergency management in ways that I have not seen before in my 42-year career in Emergency Management, and our team and our interagency cooperation, our mutual aid engagement with surrounding partner agencies are good. And lastly, I have to thank the community. I have to thank the county employees, the municipal employees. One message, one effort, one team, and I feel very confident that, you know, we'll do the best that we can and do a pretty good job with whatever Mother Nature throws at us. Thank you. CHIEF CHOATE: Thank you, sir. Also, moving on to EMS, Commissioners -- CHAIRMAN HALL: Hang on one second, Chief. CHIEF CHOATE: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Hey, Chief. I just wanted to ask Dan a couple questions. First, thanks for what you did. You know, even before I was a commissioner, you know, working with you when I was at Physicians Regional, you know, you were just top notch. You know, literally -- we always say, no one's irreplaceable. You know, when it comes time for you to go fishing and play golf and not do this 25-hour-a-day job that you do, you'll be tough to replace. But a couple quick questions. MR. SUMMERS: Thank you. June 20, 2024 Page 46 COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: During Ian, when we were all, you know, coming and going in the EOC and, you know, watching just an incredible operation and your team being incredibly responsive, one thing that -- and we talked about it. This wasn't any big secret. There were a few little holes there. You know, it was disappointing to see a desk with a name of a very important agency and have them be missing in action, and then right next to them -- so I won't throw anybody under the bus that was missing. But then right next to them you may have LCEC, and they're there 24/7. It's a decision-maker. So it's not somebody that just had a phone book. It was somebody that we could get rapid response from. And it just seemed like there was -- there's a few agencies that didn't realize that by them having their cubicle empty or some of the cubicles that had somebody in there, but it was, okay, of no value because we'd go to them with a problem. They'd say, "Oh, I don't know. Let me make -- let me call," and, you know, I would say, "Oh, I already called that number and left three messages." So as we prepare for this hurricane season, you know -- and this isn't being directive. This is just -- you know, just brainstorming. You know, something from you out to the community to those key leaders who were present in saying, "Thank you. We look forward to seeing you again," but also to some of those agencies saying, "You know, we had a chair for you, and it was cold the entire time," and it would have been very helpful if somebody was there that could have been a conduit to either, you know, a medical facility or, you know, some other agency. Because you do an awesome job setting up that command center, but if they don't, you know, man the station -- and it was -- it was -- it was obvious the ones that were missing, because it was so obvious how helpful the ones were that were there and how they made our jobs easier. I mean, the minute I got a call that there was June 20, 2024 Page 47 something traumatic happening in the way of -- you know, I just use LCEC as an example. It was great to then be able to look at their key leader. And when she -- you know, sometimes she'd say, "I just got a call about it, we're on it," or she'd say, "I hadn't heard that. Thank you for passing that. I'm on it." You know, to see how quickly we were able to respond to things. But, you know, if that person wasn't in the seat, we sort of were moving in slow motion. You know, what's your thoughts on that, and is there anything we can do this year to maybe get a few more butts in the seats in some of those key, you know, cubicles where they were kind of missing in action? And some of those empty cubicles were really key, you know, partners in time of emergency, you know. MR. SUMMERS: Yes, sir. And thank you for that observation, and you're 100 percent spot on. As you know, I make sure that our house is welcoming. We offer training and engagement. Some of those agencies are on our mailing list for invites and engagements every day, including personal phone calls to come and participate. We do have a couple of private agencies in town that think that they can work in a silo or can work successfully in a disaster remotely. A hurricane is not a disaster environment that you can work virtually. As you explained, that interaction at -- one-on-one interaction is important for mission success. I think maybe we could have a conversation, and some of those agencies, maybe an invite by the Board would encourage their participation and to get, as you said, decision-makers in that room. And maybe -- COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: I really like that idea. MR. SUMMERS: I think an invitation, because even to -- we've seen reluctance to even engage in MOUs or other activities where, let's say, we need to place a special-needs client due June 20, 2024 Page 48 to medical frailty, and we continue to see some reluctance even though we offer to pay or offer to reimburse that entity. So maybe an invite from you-all to strengthen that partnership. And I think there are just one or two that you and I know are not engaging the way we'd like them to. Maybe an invite would nudge that along. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah. Maybe that's something you could work with the County Manager. MR. SUMMERS: Okay. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: And then it, you know, comes from either her or our chairman or whatever the -- and like you said, it's not a pile of 50 letters. It's a couple. And maybe even some thank you letters. I mean, I'm going to throw a shout out. Tricia Dorn from LCEC -- MR. SUMMERS: Absolutely. Rock star. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: -- I mean, that lady was a rock star during Ian, you know, and there were others. But I just mean -- you know, it was like, wow, we need -- we need 10 other people in these other seats. And it's actually, like you said, less than 10. But if she wouldn't have been there -- I mean, she was taking care of stuff at light speed and, also, she was a decision-maker. She was a senior person in that, and it made all the difference in the world. She wasn't there just answering the phone telling us what we already knew. And the other seats, Matt Holiday from NCH, I mean, you could tell that guy was sleeping in the EOC because he had, like, you know, a 5 o'clock, 10 o'clock, and a 12 o'clock shadow, and it was like he never went home. But it was so comforting to know that if we had something major, that we didn't have to hunt down somebody from NCH. I mean, he was there 24/7 basically, and that was so helpful. So, you know, as you were saying, anything we can do to assist, June 20, 2024 Page 49 you know, those one or two agencies. And then also, you know, some thank-yous to make sure that the ones that did it great do it again because, like you said, there was a few that were trying to dial it in remotely, and it was like, I mean, you know, I can do that. You know, we need something more robust. So, yeah, that sounds like a great idea to suggest, and it might be -- maybe it's two letters. Thank you. We look forward to seeing you again if in the unlikely event we have an emergency, but we might. And like you said, a hurricane's quite a bit different. MR. SUMMERS: And we work -- just to understand, too -- excuse me -- that, you know, we're engaged with these partners 365 days a year. Wildfire events, other severe weather events. So you know, people like Trish, as an example, you know, they know they're part of our team, we're part of their team, and that partnership and that discussion goes on year-round. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: And then, lastly -- and this could have been a question for the Sheriff as well, but I sort of know his answer. But when it comes to active shooter, we see so many, you know, tragedies all over the country. If we, you know, God forbid, had some sort of incident here, the EOC would be a big part of a response. You know, I just wanted to sort of set the table for you because I know you're already doing some things. But just give us the short version on what you're doing in that area to be prepared, you know, should that happen -- that unfortunate incident ever happened in the county. Because I know we are prepared, but I wanted to give you a -- MR. SUMMERS: Well, thank you, and as an old-timer EMS'er, too, you know, I take that patient concern seriously. We have done numerous -- first of all, using FEMA and DHS assets, we've put on several campus emergency classes just to help June 20, 2024 Page 50 teach school folks and private schools how to engage in that incident management. That's part of it. It's understanding the business process that you need to turn on just like that to manage an incident. Second, we're partnering with the school districts, private schools, the Sheriff. We continue to work together on what we call "reunification." It's very much a crisis situation when parents are unnerved, kids don't have that information. There's this gigantic -- there's this period in that fast-breaking event that does take some skill set to organize and put together, because we're all very concerned about our children. The third component that we have done is that -- in the next two to three weeks, I hope to take delivery on our second mass-casualty ambulance bus, and that was a partnership with Collier Area Transit, a grant opportunity with the Healthcare Coalition. We took a CAT bus, refurbed it. Prison Enterprises in Daytona has done a phenomenal job; will be taking delivery of that in a couple of weeks. And so now we'll have two of these vehicles for mass-casualty transport. We also use them for firefighter rehab during major fire events, and it also provides a safe place or a cool-down location even for a localized evacuation. So building that capability, which right now we continue to be the only folks in Region 6, with the exception of Okeechobee County, that has that type of capability. And we have done that, literally, for the cost of a radio. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Thanks, Dan. MR. SUMMERS: Thank you, and appreciate the support. CHIEF CHOATE: Commissioner LoCastro, I just want to touch back on your comment. You made a perfect point in terms of the decision-maker, you said, that should be in the seats when we're activated. And I think we've closed some of those gaps since Ian. I June 20, 2024 Page 51 think Director Summers would agree with that. And further, I would say that some of that was an educational piece. I can speak only to the emergency services aspect of that in terms of the fire chiefs and the Sheriff's Office, both local police departments, et cetera, and I can tell you that it's important to have -- that's the whole point of the ESF program, the emergency services function, right -- or the emergency support function, rather, in the EOC, so the decision-makers there. Because when we need something immediately, when something comes to the attention of the director, when we're under activation and we need that entity to make a decision, we don't need them to get a phone. We don't need them to have to call their boss and say, "We need. We need. Can we? Can we?" And so I think we've done a good job of that red carpet, so to speak, and, "Hey, come join us. Come be part of the team." And I think -- let's hope we don't have to use it, right? COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah. CHIEF CHOATE: But I think, should we activate again, for whatever reason, natural or manmade, I would tend to say -- I would like to say that I think you'll see a different -- a little different -- COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: I think the wording of any letter, if it went out to key agencies -- and like you say, in some that might need to be a phone call -- is really critical because we're not asking them to come into the EOC and man their seat, because that's when they send any Tom, Dick, or Harry. CHIEF CHOATE: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: It's like, no, you know, we need a senior leader from your organization to be part of the senior leadership team that the county has put together during time of extreme, you know, incident. And so, you know, there was even a couple seats that did have June 20, 2024 Page 52 somebody in it, but it was manned. It wasn't really covered, you know, with a person like, you know, Tricia or -- you know, Matt Holiday are two perfect examples of people that weren't manning anything they were -- they were engrained in your team, and it was so obvious and so helpful. MR. SUMMERS: And, quickly, I just want to mention to the Commission, I take this EOC activation very seriously in that -- and my team knows that my job is to be ready for a fast-breaking event. Yes, we have days to spool up in EOC for a hurricane. That EOC is ready, 24/7/365. And the only thing left to do is turn the coffee pot on, and that's it. And so, you know, we have the ability to re-call staff quickly. The faster that group can engage, the faster we can support our responders on the street and we can support those that are impacted by the event. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I have a question about the budget, not operations. You're doing a wonderful job. MR. SUMMERS: Thank you, sir. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: This budget is a huge increase. CHIEF CHOATE: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And so in going -- when I say "huge," public safety is imperative for our community. I'm not -- I'm not disavowing the necessity. But there's close to a $20 million increase year over year in this -- well, what I'm seeing. It might be more. But I'm saying 20- for today. I would like a little bit of discussion with regard to how we arrived at that, and is there -- because I saw there were -- there were large increases for reserves for capital, reserves for contingency, reserves for cash flow; increases, increases, increases. And so I'd like to know, were we direly deficient in our previous budget analysis June 20, 2024 Page 53 and estimations and how we were doing? And then, as a part of that, in my review, you know, most of the budgets of all of the departments that you have have breakdowns; personnel costs, this and that and the other. The Medical Examiner was, like, 2.4 million. Give me that. And it's up two -- it's up from 2.4 to 2.6 million, and there was no -- there was no -- there was no breakdown on that. Is there a reason -- and -- well, just talk about the Medical Examiner first, and then we'll go back to the big question. CHIEF CHOATE: Yes, sir. She's doing some upgrades there. She's in dire straits with her facility, so she's in the middle of some upgrades; things like coolers, adding to for more capability and more capacity and those types of things. That is the bulk of that, if not all of the increases that you'll see there in her -- in her budget. MR. SUMMERS: And her toxicology cost, by the way. So, you know, as we see more drug-related deaths, I might add. CHIEF CHOATE: Certainly. MR. SUMMERS: Then her toxicology studies go up by volume, and that's a very rare labor market, too. So not many folks in that field. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I saw the breakdown in the writeup over here, but in the line-item amount, it was an aggregate amount, 2.4, 2.3 million for operating and no breakdown as to where it was -- where it was divided up. In our other budgets, it is divided up. So, now you can talk about the -- CHIEF CHOATE: EMS. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well, a portion of it's EMS. I mean, Emergency Management was up close to a million, and fire districts are up a minute. So talk to me. CHIEF CHOATE: Yes, sir. So starting with EMS, we -- you know, we've had a host of challenges I alluded to earlier in an June 20, 2024 Page 54 opening statement, and some of those challenges include turnover, some of those challenges have -- include a restructuring or a reorganization, and some of those challenges have -- the bulk of that challenge has been recruitment of qualified personnel and then the retention of the qualified personnel, and there's been a host of problems for that. Some of it is not unique to Collier County. Some of that is nationwide shortages in terms of paramedics, but we need to remain competitive. You heard the Sheriff just stand at this same platform and give you that speech, and we need to remain competitive. And so through the collective bargaining process, we were able to do some of that. We were able to increase our salaries and do some things, like paying for experience and those types of things that, graciously, this board has adopted and ratified in contract for our collective bargaining units. But I'll tell you, there's still work to be done. We have successfully been filling positions. We have pushed out "open until filled," and we are -- HR is pulling in groups, pulling in groups. Right now I'm happy to say that our training staff is inundated with a paramedic academy trying to get folks credentialed to turn loose in the street. I'm happy to tell you that every single field training officer that we have has a student, a new hire with them today. And so things are -- you know, my battleship analogy where we are slowly turning things around. But that comes at a cost, Commissioner, as you're well aware, the additional folks that we're bringing on. You know, this board approved two growth units several years ago, and that was -- just post COVID you approved two growth units with EMS, and that predates me. That's BC, as I say. That's "before Choate." So once -- yes, so once I got here and we started doing our deep June 20, 2024 Page 55 dive into analysis and we started breaking everything down, we started -- you know, why are we short? Why are we not successful here? What's going on? You know, and we figured out those very things, that it's just a -- it's a recruitment issue. Now, I'm happy to say the state is starting to get more and more applicants. The academies are pumping out paramedic students, they're pumping out certified paramedics, and so -- but we're all behind. And, you know, COVID came also with -- in the pre-hospital world, COVID came also with, "Hey, I don't want to do this anymore," right? There were tenured employees. We lost a plethora of employees who -- day-to-day operations are here to run those calls. They're here, and they're willing, and they're very competent and able to take care of you. However, COVID was a whole different ball game for all of us, and we found some paramedics that were just -- the burnout. And as people would leave us -- or we would have those that were sick that were off work, and our employees would have to work double and triple time and quadruple time, that burnout took place, and folks would leave us. And we found ourselves -- when I got here, I inherited -- I inherited a mess, let's just be honest. We were short. We were understaffed. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: How many people you got empty in the boxes right now? CHIEF CHOATE: So we are -- happily, I can tell you that we are caught up to what you've previously approved. With the two growth units, we have caught -- we have filled those spots waiting to push them out into the field. They're all in training or -- either with a field training officer waiting to be credentialed by the Medical Director, and we are still asking -- as you see in the budget, we're asking for nine additional FTEs which equals one growth unit. Our metrics is nine for one unit. June 20, 2024 Page 56 And so -- and that's simply explained. Obviously, there's two -- it's a two-person unit. So it's two, four, six with the three shifts plus one, two, three for -- we're moving to that model so that we can eventually, as we staff up fully, have what we're going to consider float positions which will absolutely reduce our overtime. If we have a float position on each shift, and they -- based upon vacation times and call-outs, et cetera, et cetera, and they'll be able -- they'll get that notification 6:30 a.m., "Hey, report to station so and so today because there's a hole. Report to station so and so today. There's a hole." COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Did he answer my question? No. How many people short are you right now, plus/minus? CHIEF CHOATE: Chief Gastineau, are we -- are we full? CHIEF GASTINEAU: Correct. Well, we're -- COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Didn't we approve 25 FTEs the last time we changed, right? CHIEF CHOATE: Yes. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: It was 25. MS. PATTERSON: Commissioners, let me help. So a couple -- a couple of years ago, we came to you with what we believed to be a staffing plan. Now, understand that this is more art than science. I can't -- because we don't -- they've been so short-staffed that the methodology that we used to come up with that planning number involved going back to a point in time when we were fully staffed and then projecting forward the growth and the growth units that should have been -- and the people that should have been infused into the system to come to a number that we were going to plan to knowing that -- that number was around 72 positions short. However, we couldn't hire 72 people. You weren't going to give us 72 people. You shouldn't. And we didn't know, as we June 20, 2024 Page 57 started to add people, how the system was going to respond. So we've used that 72 as a planning number. So to get to your question, Commissioner McDaniel, you gave 24 positions, which has taken us over two years to fill. They're just at that point now where we're going to ask for another round, and this is what we had agreed to, is that we would continue to come and ask in small bites as we add people to the system. So if you take -- you're going to make me do math in my head. Take -- 72 minus 24 is what, Ed? Is 48. If we're asking for another nine, that gets us to 39. So let's call it we're plus or minus 40 people short. Now, that again is a planning number, and we're going to continue to understand this and ask for FTEs as we can hire them. It is a much better situation than it has been for the last couple of years. As Chief Choate alluded to, we have, generally speaking, enough people to fill the seats, and we're not, generally speaking, telling people that they can't go home -- because we have people willing to work the overtime -- but we aren't in this mandation situation which is a very dangerous situation to be in. But we are not fully staffed. So I just have to caution you, while we may say all of the allocated positions are full, fully staffed is a number that we are still targeting at somewhere between zero and 40. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: So my -- and thank you for that answer. MS. PATTERSON: You're welcome. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: You can thank her later for answering my question. CHIEF CHOATE: I plan to later, certainly. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: He sat next to me last night at a public hearing in Ave Maria, so conversations -- CHIEF CHOATE: We were up late, sir. June 20, 2024 Page 58 COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah, we were. Talk to me about the reserve contingencies for capital, for catastrophic events, so on and so forth. And what are those appropriations -- uh-oh. Here comes Chris. MR. JOHNSON: All right. I'll answer this one -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And are these -- MR. JOHNSON: -- if you don't mind, Chief Choate. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And while I have you there, are these blended in with the 301 that we already have established for all of the county assets that are out in the realm? MR. JOHNSON: Those are not. Those are separate reserves. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: 301 is a separate reserve? MR. JOHNSON: Correct, correct. So the reason you're seeing the reserve increase there is, as we speak -- as Chief and Amy have spoke about, the attrition savings in that fund, we've been putting in the reserve for future capital purchases. I'll let Bruce speak to this, or the chief in a minute. But they do have a large capital need coming up moving forward. If you look at the net cost there to the General Fund on that page with the revenue and the transfers, the transfers are compliant transfers. It's just the money that is -- that's been floating through that plan to be used on the capital expenditures. In addition -- you're looking at the main page, I'm assuming -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I am. MR. JOHNSON: -- so you see the reserves for catastrophe. That is a number that used to be in Dan's shop that now we're pushing over to our 1813 reserve, which is our FEMA fund, and that's money that will be set aside for initial response to disaster. MS. PATTERSON: So it's not new money, Chris? MR. JOHNSON: It's not new money, no. It's money that's in June 20, 2024 Page 59 the system. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: It's your -- it's your -- it's your fund accounting methodology that squirrels me all the time. MR. JOHNSON: Essentially, the carryforward being reappropriated in a reserve to be utilized at a future date, if that -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: That helps. MR. JOHNSON: -- simplifies it a little. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: We don't like fund accounting, just for the record; have that on the record. CHAIRMAN HALL: Well, this Aggie's lost. I need to catch up. So I'm looking at a $25 million increase, and I'm not really sure what's real money and what's extra money or what's transferred money or what's shifted money. So tell me, bottom line, what's required from the taxpayers from this year's budget to last year's budget. MS. PATTERSON: Chris will help you. MR. JOHNSON: Will do, will do. So I'm on Page No. -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Four. MR. JOHNSON: It's going to be Page No. 5 here, which will show your -- COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: I was on 4. MR. JOHNSON: -- your revenues. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: We were still on 4 trying to figure out what you wrote there. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: All the answers are on 5. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Oh, okay. Go to Page 5. CHAIRMAN HALL: No wonder. MR. JOHNSON: That's why. MR. FINN: Start with compliance maybe. MR. JOHNSON: I mean, we can do that. Let's do that. So turn back to 1A, if you don't mind. June 20, 2024 Page 60 COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: 1A? MR. JOHNSON: 1A, 1A. So on this page you'll see the -- do I want to put this on the overhead? MS. PATTERSON: Yes, please, because I don't think anybody can see it. CHAIRMAN HALL: The writing just got smaller. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes, I have new eyes so I can see it just fine. MR. FINN: That's how you can tell we're dealing with something important. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: You're hiding stuff. MR. JOHNSON: Okay. So on the top here, you're going to see your General Fund compliance page. Looking at the whole department there, you're going to see the General Fund net cost is -- in last year's budget was $31.6 million. I'm looking at the first section, the bottom. 31.6, that's your Emergency Management 800 megahertz, EMS, and Ochopee Fire Control added together for last year. This year the budgeted transfers and net costs total 32.6 million. It's a $1 million increase, which equates to 3.2 percent. So they're compliant. CHAIRMAN HALL: Ding. MR. JOHNSON: And then if you go down to the other section, that's the 111 portion of that. The only one who's in there is the Division of Forestry and Ochopee. So, again, it's money that's flowing through the system. We earmark it. We put it in the reserve for capital. Talking with the chiefs for -- they will be having future needs for replacement capital, and, of course, Dan's group as well, and Nate's with the radio maintenance. CHAIRMAN HALL: So when all the smoke settles, it's within budget policy? June 20, 2024 Page 61 MR. JOHNSON: Correct, it is. CHAIRMAN HALL: Okay. That's all I need to know. I was panicking at 35 percent increase. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: One of these days, we're going to move you over to a cash basis and see how you act. MR. JOHNSON: It may be a little different. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. All right. Let's hear from -- let's hear from Mr. Gastineau because he's been dutifully sitting there waiting to talk, and we haven't got to him yet. CHIEF GASTINEAU: That's fine. Good morning, Commissioner. Bruce Gastineau, chief of Collier County EMS. I'm fine just sitting here listening to you. I'm not as long-winded as my cohort next to me, Mr. Dan Summers. As you know, Collier County's no longer a sleepy town. We continue to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Our call volume has been increasing steadily every year. We're up almost a half a percent just from this year -- from last year from October 1. Our transports are up. And thank you -- with your support and your continued support, the biggest thing that we've been able to overcome is what Director Choate said, is our vacancies. And now we have a recruitment tool where we are paying for experience, up to five years. So now we're attracting people, paramedics from other areas of the state of Florida or nationally registered from out of the state coming down here to apply, whereas we didn't have that recruitment tool in the past. That has been very beneficial to us. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And that's part of the revenue increases that are over in here? CHIEF GASTINEAU: Uh-huh. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. June 20, 2024 Page 62 COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Dan, my colleagues call me long-winded all the time, but it's because we have a lot to talk about. We have a lot to say, right? We have a lot of detail. It's not long-winded. It's detail oriented. MR. SUMMERS: Give me the sign, and I'll put it up. CHIEF CHOATE: Commissioners, less, more, or no? COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: One correction I'll make as a military guy. It's not turn the battleship. It's turn the aircraft carrier. CHIEF CHOATE: Turn the -- COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Battleship is easy to turn. Aircraft carrier -- (Simultaneous crosstalk.) CHIEF CHOATE: In fact, I think I may have said aircraft carrier first -- COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: You switched boats. CHIEF CHOATE: -- and I think I went back to -- (Simultaneous crosstalk.) COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah. You switched boats. CHIEF CHOATE: Yeah, I did. I did, yes. Now that you say that, I realize I did that. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Anybody got anything? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: No, I'm good. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: So all the good stuff was on 1A, hidden on Page 1A. Oh, okay. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And then on Page 5. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Five. MS. PATTERSON: Small print. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: I agree, the small print. CHAIRMAN HALL: Finito? COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yep. MS. PATTERSON: Thank you. June 20, 2024 Page 63 CHAIRMAN HALL: Thank you. CHIEF CHOATE: Thank you. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Thank you. Thank you. MR. SUMMERS: My pleasure. Thank you. MR. JOHNSON: All right. Troy, do we have any public comment on that group? MR. MILLER: The only public comment I have registered at this point is for public services and then for Growth Management. I don't have anything else up until then. MR. JOHNSON: Thank you. CORPORATE BUSINESS OPERATIONS All right. Moving onto Corporate Business Operations. CHAIRMAN HALL: Just turn to 1A. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Everything's on 1A. This book could be a lot smaller if we just had 1A. MR. KOVENSKY: Good morning, Commissioners. For the record, Ken Kovensky, executive director of the Corporate Business Operations department. This department is comprised of four internal service divisions: Human Resources, Information Technology, Procurement Services, and Risk Management. The department has 112 employees and a total budget of $150 million. The Human Resources division provides a variety of services to county employees, including recruitment and retention, compensation, employee recognition, employee relations, performance management, development, and training. This division continues to undertake activities to align with the county's strategic plan specifically related to the Board's priority that recruitment and retention will position Collier County to be an June 20, 2024 Page 64 employer of choice. This HR budget includes a request for three expanded positions. The current staffing level of 19 is not adequate to effectively support a county staff of 2300 employees. The same number of HR employees supported between 3- and 400 fewer employees 15 years ago. An industry study conducted this year found that the average HR staff-to-employee ratio was 1.7 per 100 employees, which would translate here to 39 HR employees. We are looking to bolster support in the following areas: First adding an application's analyst to support the continuous upgrades and enhancements that are being applied to SAP, which has been increasing in complexity and scope, requiring extensive training, maintenance, trouble-shooting, and training. Second, adding a management analyst to the patrol function, overseeing timekeeping, and the management of leave programs. Currently, this function is administered by only one FTE who processes payroll for over 2,000 employees every two weeks. And, third, adding an HR business partner to handle increasing employee relations matters. This is another area lacking depth with only one FTE supporting the entire county. Notwithstanding the requested expanded positions, this General Fund budget meets budget guidance and includes a 1 percent decrease in operating expenses compared to FY '24. The Information Technology division provides efficient, reliable, and secure customer-oriented IT services which includes the agency's data network, telephone system, software applications, and data. There are two County Manager priorities in the strategic plan for the IT division: Cybersecurity initiatives and an IT master plan. Cybersecurity efforts include creating the capacity to allow for more than six months of immutable backups online, adding and upgrading June 20, 2024 Page 65 layers to the existing security infrastructure, implementing a security operations center, and continuing to work towards a zero trust networking environment. Some components of the IT master plan include adding and replacing outdated fiber, upgrading equipment, applying software patches, installing next-generation firewalls, and moving to cloud applications where it is deemed a good fit. The overall IT budget is programmed to increase by 11.6 percent primarily due to a $1.5 million investment in replacing old network storage devices that will increase capacity and speed. The Procurement Services division ensures proper safeguards are in place to maintain a procurement system of quality and integrity that protects taxpayer money by promoting fiscal stewardship and sound budget oversight. Current initiatives that are supporting this mission include updating the procurement ordinance and procurement and purchasing card manuals, continuing to enhance the recently implemented cloud-based bidding platform, continuing the vendor outreach program to encourage vendor engagement, and improving strategic sourcing involving contract oversight and agency procurement support. This General Fund budget meets budget guidance and is programmed to decrease by 3 percent compared to FY '24. The Risk Management division strives to continuously develop, manage, and improve the county's risk finance, group insurance, safety, and occupational health programs in order to provide quality cost-effective support to our customers, to protect the county's financial interest against catastrophic loss, and to serve as a resource for the health, safety, and well-being of our employees. The budget in the group health and life insurance fund is programmed to increase by 9.1 percent due to increasing payouts for June 20, 2024 Page 66 healthcare claims. This budget includes a 7 percent increase to health insurance premiums for both employer and employee. This follows an increase of 5 percent last year that was recommended by the county's actuarial firm in what may be a multiyear effort to stabilize reserves. Operating expenses are budgeted to increase in the Property and Casualty Insurance Fund due to continued increases and reinsurance premiums, although we are seeing signs of rate stabilization. The overall budget across the Risk Management's three funds is programmed to increase 7.2 percent. That concludes my remarks. I'm available for any questions, and my division directors are on standby as well. CHAIRMAN HALL: Ken, what's the bottom line? What's the -- is there an increase in budget or a decrease in the budget from last year? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Departmentally -- MR. KOVENSKY: Well, there's four different divisions. CHAIRMAN HALL: Overall? MR. KOVENSKY: Overall it's -- it will increase -- CHAIRMAN HALL: How much? MR. KOVENSKY: -- because of the IT -- IT costs. MR. JOHNSON: And if I may, Commissioner, from a -- from a compliance standpoint, I can run through the Page 1A if you'd like -- CHAIRMAN HALL: I can see that. MR. JOHNSON: -- to show you the overall. CHAIRMAN HALL: So it's like the actual change was 13.7 percent, but it was over the 3.5 percent of the guidance so, therefore, it's like my wife went shopping and spent money and told me how much she saved. So I see that. MR. JOHNSON: Right. June 20, 2024 Page 67 MR. KOVENSKY: One of the considerations is that the workforce utilization pool is included in the HR budget, so that was a $3 million addition. But it's not really part of the HR budget; it's just where it's been housed. CHAIRMAN HALL: Thank you. MR. JOHNSON: And if I may, a couple things that came out of our ResourceX prioritization. Obviously, we discussed the workforce prioritization pool. Another one that Ken touched on is we're looking at our procurement ordinance and looking at the thresholds we have established there to try to see if we can look at other counties, states, to provide more efficiencies by maybe making these more standard with the state and/or other counties. So that's something -- I'll turn it over to you, Chris. MR. FABIAN: Yeah. This is a good foreshadowing to the report that we'll discuss towards the end of today's presentation. But Chris is absolutely right, both on a process standpoint and perspective for changing procurement thresholds, to create program efficiencies and, as well, while our report tends to get less into specific processes, this was one key recommendation, as organizations like the City of Austin, Texas, the City of Denver, Colorado, they're included in your report as specific case studies for these types of recommendations, as well as some opportunities to consider some centralized procurement up for consideration. CHAIRMAN HALL: Okay. Thanks, Ken. MR. KOVENSKY: Thank you. TRANSPORTATION MR. JOHNSON: All right, Commissioners, that brings us on to Transportation. CHAIRMAN HALL: Hold onto your money. June 20, 2024 Page 68 COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah, here we go. Here we go. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Look at her 1A -- look at her 1A page. Did you see your 1A page? It's huge. With very small print. MS. SCOTT: Good morning, Commissioners. Trinity Scott, Transportation Management Services department head. This department encompasses six divisions: Capital Project Planning, inclusive of our Stormwater Management and Coastal Zone; Fiscal and Grant Services; Operations and Performance management, which includes the county's three airports; Public Transit and Neighborhood Enhancement, who oversees Municipal Services Taxing Units and both the fixed-route and paratransit systems; Road, Bridge, Stormwater Maintenance; and Transportation Engineering and Construction Management. With me at the table today I have Ellen Cheffy, who is our director of Fiscal and Grant Services, and also in the room are several department division directors. Transportation Management Services employs 310 full-time team members who dedicate their professional lives to optimize operations and efficiently plan our limited resource capacity to support the Board's strategic plan as Ms. Patterson directs. Our funding sources are very diverse. They include tourist development taxes, ad valorem, grants, gas taxes, impact fees, fares, and infrastructure sales surtax. Our operating and capital budgets are 100 million and $174 million respectively. This year we had the opportunity to work with the ResourceX team, during which we evaluated and prioritized our programs to ensure that each activity that's undertaken by this department supports the Board's strategic plan. June 20, 2024 Page 69 One of the themes with ResourceX was to be future-focused looking at opportunities to create revenue. Over the next year, the airports, Public Transit, and Pollution Control will be evaluating our various fee and rate structures and will come back to the Board with suggested modifications. Another key initiate of ResourceX is to use our data to drive our budget decisions. We have an amazing asset management system that promotes our decision-making, and we continue to improve the inputs into that system. Road, Bridge, and Stormwater Maintenance division is currently finishing a countywide assessment of our pavement conditions that we're going to use to build a proactive multiyear pavement program with a future assessment that will be utilized to assist in building our asset management system's degradation algorithm so that we can further refine that plan. We're going to continue prior years' efforts to carry forward our aggressive stormwater capital program which includes joining forces with the City of Naples and Collier County Public Utilities to leverage our funds for cohesive projects consistent with the infrastructure and asset management objective. As the County Manager has stated on multiple occasions, most residents do not drive by and say, "Wow, what an impressive stormwater system you have," but in situations like last week, we must remember that the underground infrastructure is crucial for our quality of life. And with the renewed focus on proactive maintenance and capital infrastructure, last week's events were manageable. I'm not saying that they were without issue, but this county performed much better than other surrounding communities. We will continue to prepare several other major capital projects for construction, which are identified in the Annual Update and Inventory Report as well as were mentioned in Mr. Johnson's June 20, 2024 Page 70 introductory remarks, while continuing a variety of bridge projects, intersection improvements, and roadway enhancements. We continue to anticipate challenges such as supply chain delays, project cost inflation, and a stressed labor force. We work very closely with our Human Resources division on hard-to-fill positions, attempting to -- attempting to ensure that we can remain competitive in the market. We're also attending hiring fairs and fostering our relationships with the higher education providers in our area to engage potential employees. As you are aware, we leverage state and federal funds to ensure efficient use of the county's local funding sources; however, even with these efforts, there are unfunded needs in the current program for both roads and stormwater. For many years, you've heard me come before you and say, "We're going to need money. We're going to need money. We're going to need money," and now we're finally to that point. For FY '25, roadway unfunded need is approximately $20 million. It's anticipated that the local option fuel tax will be reimposed effective December 2025 to cover a large portion of our anticipated needs; however, short-term borrowing opportunities may be necessary to bridge the gap. No pun intended. Strategic funding plans will be necessary to cover the anticipated stormwater capital shortfall which is estimated at $91 million for FY '25. This is, in large part, perpetuated by the need to keep up with our local utility providers whereby the stormwater infrastructure replacement is necessary and must be closely coordinated. On a brighter note, because I'm not all about the gloom and doom, I want to point out our cost of landscaping maintenance per mile. It has remained steady from prior years' budgets. The team has worked hard to contain the costs while our contractor labor has June 20, 2024 Page 71 increased in price tremendously. You have seen these contracts come before you with 30 and 40 percent increases, and the fact that we've been able to keep the price per mile the same is no unrecognized feat by the team. Our strategies have included reallocating maintenance efforts to our in-house forces versus the more expensive contracted services, modifying our mulch color from a very specific Collier County blend to cocoa brown -- and I would venture to guess that no one noticed -- and we're also reevaluating our irrigation to ensure that we're not overwatering. In addition, the team has developed a new cross-section for an inverted median that will be used in our upcoming capital projects and, as we are replacing plant material along existing corridors, we will work to incorporate that new design. We are actively implementing the initiatives identified through our exercise with ResourceX that will assist in developing new revenue sources and prioritization of our existing sources to achieve the goal to plan and build public infrastructure to efficiently, effectively, and sustainably meet the needs of the community. All divisions have met the budget compliance outlined by the County Manager's Office and your Board policy. And with that, I thank you for your consideration of the budget that we have presented to you today. CHAIRMAN HALL: Did ResourceX come up with cocoa brown? MS. SCOTT: No. Actually, that was our team, and it's an off-the-shelf color of mulch so... COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: So we're not paying extra for a special color? MS. SCOTT: Exactly, exactly. We're not paying extra for that special blend. June 20, 2024 Page 72 COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And since you brought up the landscape median, that makes me really -- the design is something that I've talked about for years. Have we -- I know we have some constructed already that are inverted. Are we able to do any kind of cost comparison with the ones that are already inverted in comparison to a similar length of median, similar plantings, and compare the cost yet? MS. SCOTT: We cannot yet -- and I will tell you, one of the reasons why -- I will do that for this upcoming year. We hired a new irrigation person, and they -- and we actually -- we stole them from the Botanical Gardens. But one of the things that they've been able to do is adjust our watering significantly. And so looking at last year's cost versus comparatively I don't think will give us a great comparison. But by doing that this year with our new watering protocols, I think that that will give us a more apples-to-apples comparison. So, yes, we will do that. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And then the -- you know, that was one of the things that Donna -- I don't know -- you might have been in here, but we were -- the Garden is contributing the plantings for the berm at the rifle range, the gun range out east, and I know that -- and she even mentions in this letter thanking us for the collaboration utilized in the Garden to make planting recommendations and so on and so forth. And have you found that to be -- is that what's actually leading up to some of these cost reductions is less -- more Florida-friendly planting, less irrigation, less fertilization? MS. SCOTT: That is definitely some of the way to be able to contain our costs as well as the significant reduction in watering. And we've been very dry -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Oh, yeah. MS. SCOTT: -- until last week. June 20, 2024 Page 73 So, yes, we've been able to go through and significantly change how we were running our irrigation from prior. We are utilizing partnerships with the Naples Botanical Garden for our beach berm. They were part of our stakeholder group but then we regularly meet with them with regard to our landscaping plant material that we're choosing and so on and so forth. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Stormwater swales. MS. SCOTT: All of those things -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Littoral shelves -- MS. SCOTT: -- yes. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- all those things. MS. SCOTT: We are definitely coordinating with them on those items. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Love it. Love it. CHAIRMAN HALL: Mr. Fabian. MR. FABIAN: I was simply going to add that while first and foremost we seek cost -- we work on the expense side in the recommendations for efficiencies, service-level questions, partnerships that could take place, equally important for resource optimization, especially for high-priority programs that have strong alignment with countywide priorities, we have to look at the business model overall. And so both -- just to reiterate, you'll find in your programmatic report examples from Grand Junction Regional Airport, Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, all the way to larger airports, including City of Atlanta, Hartsfield airport, some of the fee models, that these are among the best practices. We try to come in with an outside point of view just to help demonstrate for these types of business operations at the airport and also, for your stormwater operation, these are just areas of opportunity to consider for the revenue side of the house. June 20, 2024 Page 74 Good, thank you. MS. SCOTT: Thank you, Commissioners. MR. JOHNSON: All right. Thank you. PUBLIC SERVICES Moving on to Public Services. MR. FINN: Thank you, Chris. As staff files in, I'll come up with a couple of remarks. First of all, I want to -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Just for your information, you don't have any staff filing in, so you're the Lone Ranger now. CHAIRMAN HALL: You're flying solo there, Mr. Finn. MR. FINN: Commissioner McDaniel, I find that's usually where I am. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: You may need to call somebody. MR. FINN: Maybe I might have a lifeline phone call out there. CHAIRMAN HALL: Phone a friend. MR. FINN: Right. In any event, I want to thank the Board for their attention to the budget this year. I know it's been a pretty heavy lift. We started back very early doing workshops dealing with the strategic plan, the AUIR, and the budget, the concept of the budget policy, and we're down the path on a new process that I think is adding considerable value. In any event, I'm going to just lean into this one a little bit, see if we can get through it. The Public Service Department provides, really, our most front-facing -- front-facing services. They provide a wide range of public amenities, recreational opportunities, national resource management, and access to health, wellness, and human June 20, 2024 Page 75 services consistent with the strategic focus area of responsible governance, infrastructure, and asset management. The division includes Community Human Services, Domestic Animal Services, Library, Museums, Operations and Veterans Services, Parks and Recreation, and University Extension Services. Additionally, through contractual arrangements, the Public Services Department has oversight responsibilities for the Florida Department of Health, and Public Services is also responsible for managing mental health contracts with David Lawrence Center and NAMI of Collier County. The number of positions in the division is about 447. There is an expanded request for four additional DAS positions. Additionally, the DAS budget that you're looking at moves 11 animal control officers into the Code Enforcement section. That is one of the things that came up through our ResourceX evaluation, making sure that we're resourcing things right and achieving the benefit of same -- same over same where we have similar services that are working in one area that have systems in place. When we can coordinate those together, we're seeing it as a win. So having said that, this department is one of the most largely funded by the General Fund. There are revenue sources, certainly, in Parks, but the revenue primarily comes from the General Fund. Museums are funded by a portion -- a small portion of the General Fund, but principally a transfer from TDC, which introduces another factor that we're considering, which is the appropriate use potential changes to the way TDC monies are used to fund operations, and that would include the museum operations. Additionally, most recently we've discussed several aspects of the Public Services Department. One, the capital renewal and replacement shifted largely from Parks to Facilities Management except where it is specifically required to be done by the Parks June 20, 2024 Page 76 personnel. Privatization of the aquatics has been discussed. Similarly, we're looking at alternatives for how we can best achieve our goals with the Museum division. Parks fee policy is under review, and I've already mentioned the TDC utilization for Museum. The TDC utilization for our aquatics program, or perhaps more specifically for Sun-N-Fun, as it benefits the tourists and the tourism industry, is one that we're going to be considering going forward. Mr. Hanrahan is beside me. He is the interim Parks director, and he has been doing yeoman's duty given that the Parks is without a permanent director, and it is also shy its maintenance -- maintenance department head. So having said that, if there are any questions, we will -- we will respond to them. Is that my compliance view up there, Chris? MR. JOHNSON: Yes, it is. MR. FINN: Very nice. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Why the big dip in veteran services? I mean -- and sometimes, you know, a change is a savings or it's, you know, you're doing something more efficient, so it doesn't always mean a cut. But, you know, I'll just start there. And I had some other questions, but I might see what everybody else has, but that's one that sort of jumped out at me. You know, veterans services. It's not a huge, you know, operation, small team, but what are they doing different that they don't need as much money? MR. JOHNSON: Mr. Finn -- MR. FINN: Yes, sir. MR. JOHNSON: -- I can answer that question. The reduction there, sir, is part of that workforce prioritization pool. There was a position there that had remained vacant for a June 20, 2024 Page 77 period of time. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Oh, so it's the FTE movement? MR. JOHNSON: Exactly. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Okay. So -- but on their operating budget and the things that make them work, and perform, there's not a reduction? MR. JOHNSON: They're up the 3.5 percent that was allowed in compliance. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah, okay. MR. FINN: Chris, can you put up Slide 25 out of your initial show which provides for the -- there's actually 20 total positions coming out of the Public Services Department that's going into that pool. MR. JOHNSON: Let me pull that up. Give me one second. Let me get out of this one. MR. FINN: And, again, the concept of the pool is as the requirements for additional positions are demonstrated to the County Manager, the County Manager has -- always has the flexibility, but this provides a centralized budget so that these positions are not squirreled away where it's difficult for us to see them. It's certainly impossible for the Board to see them when they're spread across a $2 billion budget. So this is the concept, and you'll see that the -- if you look at the screen, the prioritization pool is made up of about 20 positions from the Public Services Department. Libraries, we've talked about at length. They're having -- have had historically considerable difficulty filling positions. Library services is one the Board has looked at at their last meeting, and staff will be presenting that, I believe, in the first meeting in July to wrap that service-level discussion up, at least for the moment. June 20, 2024 Page 78 Parks, Parks always has a large number of vacancies. That's the largest department here in excess of 200 positions. And then Operations and Veterans Services is both veterans services and the operations section, and they've had some vacancies. So as the needs come up, the County Manager will reallocate those positions as they're needed. MS. PATTERSON: Mr. Finn, also, just to mention, when you look at those numbers with both Libraries and Parks, they actually have positions that are out and open for recruitment. So as we get those vacancies filled and then we evaluate that, then we'll be able to look at the use of those positions. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: I was just going to add, the increase in Domestic Animal Services is -- you know, fully support that. We've gotten a lot of e-mails from folks, but it goes without saying, you know, we know the overhaul that you and the team are leading to turn some things around there and some concerns. I would leave you with the same thing that we always tell the Sheriff. You know, if you -- as you march down the next couple months, if you need more, you discover more, don't be shy about coming here. You know, some departments, you know, they're here once a year, they give us their budget, they're happy, and they're able to move forward. That's one that's very fluid obviously, DAS. So I think it's not lost on all of us up here that as you discover things or come up with better ideas or something that needs to be done, you know, don't be a stranger in these chambers here to talk to us about maybe some adjustments that may need to be even made further to help get DAS accelerated even more. MR. FINN: Yes. And I do appreciate that comment, and I'm going to quickly say that Mr. French is leading -- leading the charge on that, and he will be before the Board talking about GMD. The 11 animal control officers I mentioned are shifting over to his side of the June 20, 2024 Page 79 house through Code Enforcement, and with him taking the lead on DAS, the Board will have an opportunity to ask kind of more specific questions on DAS and the direction it's taken operationally. MS. PATTERSON: And if I may, part of -- we had this conversation with the advisory board last week. Part of the strategic ask of these four is they're known deficiencies in the staffing. We're spending time getting our arms around what it is that everybody is doing there, what their assigned job is, or what they were hired to do, and what they might actually be doing so that when we come to you, we're asking in a meaningful way versus sort of trying to throw something at the wall and see what sticks. And so we assured the advisory committee as well that when we have our arms around that need and an understanding what we might need to ask for, we will certainly come back at the appropriate time, be it midyear or at some time to the Board. So this is not tying our hands, this is four, and we're done. It's four because we know we for sure need these, and then we're going to evaluate any additional asks. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And that's a nice segue into what I was going to say. I would like for us, utilizing ResourceX, to be reviewing the job descriptions of everybody that works for us. There is no job that needs to get done that you don't do if you're a county employee. Everybody -- you know, and I think -- I think, and my rationale is, is everything flows with the pool of FTEs that are requisite. When we hire -- and the relocation of DAS officers over to Code, similarities in how they do and what they do. Same thing at Parks and Rec. I'm just pointing at you because you're sitting there. I'll point at Trinity. Same thing in Transportation. So if the broom needs to be pushed, somebody that's working there needs to push the broom, and that's a -- that's an -- that's a -- that's a maneuver in efficiencies that will actually allow us to aggregate how many people we really are short instead of having this June 20, 2024 Page 80 org chart that says we're 200 people shy. Maybe not. MS. PATTERSON: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN HALL: Commissioner Saunders. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Yeah, pardon me. A couple questions. Just -- I'm trying to get my arms around the number of personnel in Domestic Animal Services and the new hires, because you indicate that actual, we have 36 FTEs, but current, under 2025, it says 27. And I'm not sure why that number dropped. And then we have four expanded, which brings us to 31, which is still obviously less than the 36 that we currently have. MS. PATTERSON: We have temporary service -- staff services that fill -- that round out those numbers. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Okay. So we're not short? MS. PATTERSON: No. And that's part of the evaluation process as well is, you know, we do use our staff services to help augment our FTEs. But there are times, as you see, with the Immokalee CRA, where that position's actually now going to become an FTE. Part of this evaluation process for DAS is, is it time that we should be hardening those positions? Secondly is, it's nice to have the flexibility of the staff service positions for times like now we're in kitten season where we might need extra people, but a few months from now we may not, and so that gives us that type of flexibility not through FTE headcount. But that is part of this evaluation process. My personal belief is that we'll be coming to you at some point asking for some different or additional positions, but we want to be very thorough and meaningful. We know the four we're asking for are holes that aren't going to be reevaluated. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: We have approximately 200 volunteers -- MS. PATTERSON: Yes. June 20, 2024 Page 81 COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: -- at DAS. And from what I've been able to observe, a lot of those volunteers -- not all of them, but certainly a large number of them -- work very hard, long hours cleaning kennels and doing a lot of things that would be maybe less attractive for some people. Do we do anything to kind of honor them or reward them in any way? I know, obviously, they're volunteers, but do we have a small budget set aside for some types of recognition and -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Pizza once a week. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Pizza, yeah. Something that may sound a little silly, but just something to -- MS. PATTERSON: I'll look at Mr. French. I don't believe so, but -- MR. FRENCH: Thank you, Commissioners. Jamie French, for the record. I've been there for a month and three weeks now, so I'm up for the challenge as well as continuing to do my other responsibilities. I would tell you that we've appreciated all of your support, and I would tell -- and I'd also tell you is that I had no visibility or no knowledge, and I'm certainly cognizant of it now that the volunteer force that we have is second to none. These are amazing people of all different age groups that are willing -- quite honestly, they'll outwork me, and I'm up to about 73 hours a week now. But I will tell you that -- yes. So one of the things that we did is a collaborative space effort to clean the place up, to share break room areas, refrigeration areas, cool down areas, but there is an annual recognition of the volunteers, kind of a thank you. Clearly, we've not got to that yet. We're primarily focused on the site, to bring the site back up to both safe and effective means and methods for operations. We're looking at everything from site plans -- and that's what the June 20, 2024 Page 82 volunteers are asking for first and foremost, to come in and not leave a day with wet feet because the yards were flooded. And so through Jaime Cook, Lisa Blacklidge, Trinity's folks, Marshall Miller, we've been all hands on deck. And I appreciate what Commissioner McDaniel said, because I can tell you, I've been out in the middle of the night in the pipe off Burning Tree Drive. I've responded, as many of you know, with you, and that is what we do at Growth Management, no doubt, but that's also what our other colleagues are there to do as well. So there's no separation of duties. We're all in. We all do it, along with the volunteers, and we certainly recognize them and thank them every day. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Okay. Well, then I'll just plant the seed in terms of a budget or something for the volunteers, but then I want to raise another question that perhaps will just need some information generated. Obviously, we -- next Tuesday we're going to be waiving fees for certain types of services at DAS to promote more spay and neutering, that sort of thing. And I'm wondering if -- you know, we have a -- we charge for different services. We charge for adoptions. I'm wondering if we didn't -- if we just didn't charge for spay and neuter and adoptions and all of those things -- because we spend a lot of money collecting that money, and I'm wondering if we really collect enough to make it worth it. And if we had free service there, whether that would reduce the number of strays that we have to go chase down. Just some analysis as to how can we be really most efficient. Charging fees may be a way to. That's the way we've been doing it, but maybe not charging would be a more efficient way to save money on the other end. So I just want to plant that seed, because I have not been convinced that -- you know, we're waiving fees to promote June 20, 2024 Page 83 more adoptions and that sort of thing, but why have the fees in the first place? Because we need to have those adoptions all year long. MS. PATTERSON: Yes, sir. So we are evaluating those fee structures, but to your point, the longer-term goal, and even beginning in this budget, is to look at those community services that we provide to folks, including low-cost or no-cost spay/neuter and low-cost, no-cost veterinarian, because part of keeping -- trying to get ahold of the pet overpopulation centers around those things. And the problem is is that -- you've heard probably time after time that there's a shortage of veterinarians, which there is. It can be very difficult to get a veterinarian appointment even if you have the money to get those veterinary services. But sometimes people that are otherwise very good pet owners just don't have the 3- or 5- or $700 to have their animal fixed. And so we're looking -- now that we have a surgical vet on staff, we're looking at different programs that we can stand up to provide those veterinary services and the spay/neuter services to the community along with Community Cats and really growing that -- what is essentially a community veterinary program. That's really what we're there for, and it keeps animals from coming through our doors that then we are going to have to take care of and then try to find homes for. So it's a constant vicious circle. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: There was one thing that was raised at one of the advisory board meetings, and that was a pet pantry. MS. PATTERSON: Yes. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Because there are some folks that have a lot of pets, and they can't afford to feed them -- MS. PATTERSON: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: -- so they're mistreated. And so I'm wondering if we have any -- I know -- I think you've June 20, 2024 Page 84 mentioned that there was some effort in that regard, but is that something that we need to look at in terms of a more permanent type of a program? MS. PATTERSON: Yeah. Mr. French and I have been talking about this, so not only working with some of our local food banks, but also being able to have some of those resources on site. The Humane Society has a similar program, where if you have somebody that comes in, you know, sometimes we get people that need -- are asking to surrender their pet, but it's simply that they need assistance maybe, you know, just bridging that gap of being able to feed that pet or sometimes back to the veterinary is that their pet might have something wrong with them, and they need some veterinary assistance. So we're looking at those to be able to have those on-site services as well as partner agencies to help fairly deal with the volume of donations we get, things like pet food. And we have cat sanctuaries that are in need. One of their biggest needs that they have is food. If you're feeding 300 cats, that's a lot of cat food. And there are people that are very giving in the community, so we're getting our arms around that. We have a donation program currently. It's just not -- it's not maximized and efficient. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Thank you. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Amy, just one quick question -- well, really two. I like the idea of the no cost. We know that -- the advantage that would be, but then the flip side of that, has anybody done the math to see what the delta would be? Because I'm sure that revenue that we are getting now -- although, like you say, you know, it's six of one, half dozen of the other. But if we didn't get that revenue, then you'd be coming back to us probably saying, "Hey, now everything's June 20, 2024 Page 85 no cost, so we need another $400,000." So I guess in future updates, seeing if the juice is worth the squeeze there -- I love the idea as long as we can absorb it -- MS. PATTERSON: Yes. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: -- so that would be one thing. MS. PATTERSON: It may be a tiered system so -- similar to the way that we provide other incentives and other assistance through the county, there may be qualifications, and we can work -- Mr. French has been talking to our housing group about different ways where people may -- they qualify for certain types of assistance. They may qualify, then, for assistance with their pets -- COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Right. MS. PATTERSON: -- up to somebody that just might need a little bit of a break. They could afford to pay for the cost, but it's not the "cost plus." And so I think that's part of what we need to get our arms around and develop sort of that tiered program. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: And then, Dave [sic], you actually said what I was hoping to hear, that I'm not stealing pizza from volunteers, but if you really sit down and talk with the volunteers -- and obviously you have -- I'm sure they'd love free pizza. But like you put it perfectly, what they want to see is leadership action, the facility getting all the stuff they've been screaming for. So, obviously, you've already seen some of the things that are the meat and potatoes down at DAS that the volunteers see every day, and so I'm sure they'd love a free lunch. And I don't want to take it away from them, but the priority is exactly what you said: They don't want to go home with wet feet. They don't want to leave feeling disappointed about the facility that they work in. They don't want to feel like they're doing the heavy lifting of DAS, and their -- and the county positions, the county leadership, the County June 20, 2024 Page 86 Commissioners aren't there with them in the trenches supporting them. So it sounds like, you know, you've jumped in with both feet, and those are the kind of things that we're here to support are the action items, the heavy-lifting stuff that maybe has been missing for a while. MR. FRENCH: Yes, sir, I appreciate it. And so you know, Commissioners, we're looking at alternative sites with regard to some of our veterinarian care. There are some sites that we're aware of that may be available. We have evaluated the facility from both the health department standards as well, because this is a -- this is a true medical facility, so we're always maintaining and interested in maintaining that sterile field for our medical professionals that work within there, whether you're a vet tech or whether you're a veterinarian. End of the day, clearly it's a patient. We want to treat it as such. We also want to be able to provide the best and most reliable service to our community. And I think what the volunteers and the community is looking for is more so of a case management approach so we're reuniting pets where they belong, whether or not -- and then doing a full investigation. By moving your ACOs under Code Enforcement, we're finding that it may actually qualify the county for additional Community Development Block Grant dollars. We're investigating that now. And so there may be an offset to that, and we may be able to maximize that site by even -- by even considering putting a clinic off site versus actually making the investment into a 20-, 25-year-old, 30-year-old building that was never intended. And so when you go through this change of use for these types of structures, it's not that it can't be done, but when you start to look at metal buildings that are not sprinkled [sic], that were never intended to be sprinkled; that the demand has changed; the June 20, 2024 Page 87 community expectations have changed; your expectations and then the methods and approaches have changed with regards to veterinarian care and the science. We're cognizant of that, and so we're trying to keep this all in mind. But I will tell you is I'm a big Six Sigma guy. I think what gets measured gets done, and you can't manage it if you can't measure it. And so everything we're doing is measured, and automation is a key here. By incorporating some of the ACO activity into your Code Enforcement software -- you as a board, the industry as a community spends better than a million dollars a year in that software, and we self-support it. They've designed it. They support it. They love it, and hopefully your aides and you and your -- and your constituents are seeing that. Everything is in real time with us, and that's what we intend to bring them too. CHAIRMAN HALL: I will say that I have -- come on up, Chris. I will say that I've been out there, and you know, there was a lot of chatter when we were making some changes a couple months ago about, you know, board directors and, you know, some of the decisions that were made. But to Commissioner McDaniel's comment about, you know, somebody's got to -- if you work for the county, you've got to be willing to push the broom. And I can tell you that under Jamie's leadership out there, things have changed, and they've changed rapidly. And I want to say publicly, thank you for your leadership out there, thank you for your common sense, thank you for your creativity to come forth with a lot of ideas that you're coming forth with to make very positive changes within DAS. So I know you don't need to have your horn tooted, but I'm tooting it. MR. FRENCH: It's my colleagues, sir, and I'm so blessed and June 20, 2024 Page 88 so lucky to be able to work with such skilled people. And it's the Sheriff's Office, and it's you, and it's these community members. And I am not a keyboard warrior. I know the truth doesn't always get in the way of a good story, but I will tell you is that if anybody wants to meet with us, I am here. You'll see me there on a Saturday and Sunday. And I get it. I move fast, but that's okay. You expect that of me, and I'm going to deliver, as will our colleagues. MR. FABIAN: I'd simply reinforce -- I mean, this is definitely a tough business across all the organizations that we work in. So nothing new to that story. We were encouraged by at least some of the revenue that is coming in. Amy, to your point, we've seen, for some of the generous donations that come in, everything from Sponsor a Pet programs. We have documentation on -- Humane Society of Charlotte has initiated these. A tiered rate structure like you discussed, including premium services that you may already be implementing, but to consider ways to bring in new revenues for those who can afford it, such as training and grooming. So on the tiered rate structure, we've definitely seen that. Back to code enforcement and lost pets, we've seen -- he's bringing the data -- but a rising trend in microchipping of animals to properly return them to their owners, such as what we see in Austin, Texas, and Miami-Dade County doing some local partnerships with local veterinarians to have them participate as well, share the cost. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Quick question for him. CHAIRMAN HALL: Sure, go ahead. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Has any analysis been done with regard to the expense associated with spay and neutering and the incentivization for people to do that in relationship to the long term effects of more animals running around? Has that been done? June 20, 2024 Page 89 MR. FABIAN: Not -- that won't show up in our report, but I took note of -- that came up earlier in the discussion, and we'll go back to see who has been doing that sort of analysis. We took the perspective of what are all the ways to -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: To me, that's just common sense. I mean, if you're -- if people are disincentivized because of an expense associated with spray and neuter and they don't do the spray and neuter, we're going to end up with more animals that we have to then, in turn, care for, keep, medicate, da, da, da, da, adopt all of the other things that goes along. So -- and I know that he's an interesting fellow, but Tom Kemp over at Snips is a huge advocate of that, works a lot with me in Immokalee, and has -- and has a relationship with Gulf Coast Humane Society in Fort Myers. So there may be -- just to give you a little path, there may be some people to talk to there with regard to that. I don't want to -- I don't like calling it a cost-benefit ratio when you're talking about animals' lives, but at the end of the day, if there is a potential for that scaled system or no expense to incentivize participation, it just makes total sense. MR. FABIAN: Cost prevention in the future. MS. PATTERSON: I think you're going to have a couple speakers that are going to speak to something similar. We have a lot of community members that are very interested in this topic and have done a lot of research. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. Good. Good. MR. MILLER: We have three registered speakers with one additional speaker ceding time. Your first speaker is Jim Rich, who was ceded time from Charlotte Herbert, who is present in the back of the room, and he will be followed by Eva Front. MR. RICH: Thank you, and good morning, Commissioners. June 20, 2024 Page 90 Thank you for allowing me to speak today. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Jim Rich. I am cofounder of the non-profit cat rescue organization For the Love of Cats and recently resigned as chairman of the DAS advisory board after serving on that board for 11 years. I'm here today to speak about the thousands of stray and abandoned cats in our county and to request funding for a program that was approved and supported by previous commissioners but whose trapping, sterilizing, and financial responsibility has fallen primarily on the public or rescue groups such as mine. I'm speaking about our community cat program. This is my organization's 21st year with recorded numbers of over 5,000 cats and kittens we have trapped and sterilized, all with personal or donated funds. Until recently, we were able to work with the veterinary community with discounted surgical fees; however, with the extreme shortage of vets and vet techs in our county in comparison to our growing population, many of the vet practices are closed to new clientele, can barely accommodate their existing ones, and are reluctant to continue offering discounts to rescue groups versus full-paying customers. DAS has attempted to help when it has a vet but even then can barely keep up with its own inventory and must limit the number of ferals and strays it can surgically accommodate. Three months ago, my organization made the decision to stop relying on just DAS and the few weekly surgical appointments we could still get from one or two of the vet clinics. By DAS giving us permission to use their surgical room, we independently purchased our own medical equipment and supplies, hired our own vet and vet techs on their day off from their regular practice, purchased an additional 40 traps and carriers, and rented a large cargo van. The day before our actual surgical event, called CatNip Clinic, June 20, 2024 Page 91 we trapped 41 cats. These were all transported to DAS for sterilization, vaccinated, and ear notched. They were then held overnight at various locations and returned to their familiar surroundings to be cared for as community cats. This was such a successful event that we immediately contacted our county manager, Amy Patterson, who's been wonderful, by the way, working with, and requested permission to again use the facilities at DAS. Our second clinic is now scheduled just nine days from now on June 29th. Again, at DAS. We hope that Amy and this board will support future spay days at DAS as we can schedule them. We realize that the only way to ever make a difference in the enormous stray cat population is by going into a neighborhood and doing volume trapping. One or two cats at a time will never let us get ahead of the problem. In fact, we just purchased our own cargo van to help achieve such a goal. We currently have three full-time employees for marketing, trapping, and fundraising. Although we serve our community with programs other than T&R, this has been and will continue to be our top priority. Our success will never be limited by our effort but can be by insufficient funding. For over 20 years now I have listened to our politicians encourage our animal rescue organizations to form partnerships to address our ever-increasing stray and abandoned animal population. Today I'm asking you to fulfill your commitments toward the community cat program by being a participant in this partnership. I am not asking for direct funding to any organization. I am requesting financial support for any organization working in partnership with DAS in helping pay for supplies and veterinary expenses for sterilization programs such as ours. This can be funded directly through the DAS budget by having them provide the June 20, 2024 Page 92 necessary surgical supplies and paying the veterinarians and vet techs as independent contractors the same way the BISSELL Foundation was paid when they were hired last year. I know you all profess animal advocacy. There are reputed to be close to 50,000 stray and abandoned cats in our county alone. Please consider my request regarding financial partnering and the potential for what it could accomplish. And I'd like to thank Jamie and Amy again. Everything I've heard lately, you are doing a phenomenal job, and I -- I do support -- even though I'm not on the advisory board anymore, I fully support their efforts and will continue to support this county and the animals and the people in it. So thank you so much. MR. MILLER: Your next speaker is Eva Front. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Jim? Jim? I wanted to ask you something. MR. RICH: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: You know, first, thanks for what you do. You and I traded a couple of emails where I think we lost a little something in translation, so I think face to face is better. But I know one of your frustrations serving on the board so long -- and maybe I'm paraphrasing this incorrectly -- is a lot of times I think you felt like you had the voice but maybe not people listening or a person to go to. I really hope, regardless -- if you're on the board or not is immaterial. Your expertise and your eyes and ears of what you've seen down at DAS is critical and valuable. And I appreciate the shout-out to Ms. Patterson, but I hope also that you and Mr. French have opened up a dialogue or get a chance to at least talk once so he can get some valuable feedback from you as to what you've seen and heard and maybe some things than haven't been advertised as much, you know, to county the staff, but it was sort of in your own circle of June 20, 2024 Page 93 influence. I think it would be very valuable for him to, you know -- you know, talk with you if you haven't already. MR. RICH: I think there have been some miscommunications between Mr. French and myself lately. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Okay. MR. RICH: And I work very hard to resolve those things. The only way we're going to accomplish anything is by working together. And we don't by adversity and by not working together. So this -- DAS has my full 100 percent cooperation. I think Amy will tell you I've had three or four different meetings with her and one with Jamie also. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Okay. MR. RICH: And they are welcome to pick my brain anytime they want. And as far as we're concerned, we're good. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah. Okay. Thank you, sir. MR. RICH: Thank you all again. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: I'd like to ask a question also, sir. Where do you -- where do you -- where have you found the heaviest population of the -- you said about 50,000 stray cats. MR. RICH: They are -- and this is actually statistically. That's one of the low numbers that's given. That's from the University of Wisconsin, which breaks all these things down. Right now we're looking at areas, even like Immokalee, as part of our clinic we'll be doing, there's a woman there that has 100 stray cats that she's feeding, which are not fixed. So we're bringing our van into that area, and we'll be picking up as many of those as we can. That's going to take two or three different sessions. And then there are other pockets in Bayshore and some other communities which is a matter of communicating with people. We're putting up flyers and trying to enlist the public to help June 20, 2024 Page 94 us. And you're right, they can't -- they can't afford it. They don't have transportation. And so we're trying to provide that transportation with a van we have and do everything we can. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: Yeah. I remember the Gulf Gate Plaza area, behind there, between Weeks and the back of the plaza, at night you would see hundreds of cats underneath that building. MR. RICH: Right. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: And I was just curious. Do you think it's also a people training thing also? I think educate the public, you know, of these things, because if we're having a high, high concentration of 100 cats around one particular home, then that's -- you know, that's not fair to the other people in the neighborhood. MR. RICH: In the areas where we're finding those high concentrations, communication is a problem, and the people are afraid to come forward because they're afraid they'll be fined or they'll be arrested or, you know, whatever. So we're just -- we're trying to go from community to community and establish relationships with them, earn their trust, and then go into that area and set down 30, 40 traps at a time. So it will happen. It's just going to take time. And it's not going to happen unless we all work together. And, again, we only have so much funding. So we've spent privately just -- as much as we can, so that's why we're looking for help. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: And I remember reading your e-mail also. I don't think -- I didn't respond to it, but I did read it, and something did stick out. When I read it, you were talking about chain of command. I believe that was you who made that comment. MR. RICH: That is correct. June 20, 2024 Page 95 COMMISSIONER KOWAL: If I remember correctly, the Board's -- your job was to tell us things we might not be being told by our actual employees, and I think in your comment you said you didn't want to bother us, and you went to your chain -- you liked to hold to the chain of command, and you were going directly to the employees of DAS, which would not necessarily be the chain of a command. It would be the Board of County Commissioners. MR. RICH: I should have come to each of you individually. I did not want to speak here because, frankly, for as many years as I was involved with DAS, it had a very bad connotation to it. People didn't want to bring their animals in. They were afraid they were going to be killed. They were afraid they were going to be mistreated. It was a kill shelter for many, many years. When I started there, they were putting down 6,000 animals a year. You know, I'm going back several years. So I didn't want to speak in a public forum where everyone -- the public can hear us and tell you my grievances and stir up things when you may not be hearing -- they might not be getting the full picture of everything. But where I made a mistake, truthfully, is instead of going to you individually. I could have done that instead of not coming to you in this format. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: No, I encourage that to anyone out there that my -- at least me personally, my door's open to anyone that wants to come and have a one-on-one talk with me. MR. RICH: Well, I am grateful for that, and in the future, believe me, I will be. So I really respect all of you and appreciate your time, so thank you so very much. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: Thank you, sir. CHAIRMAN HALL: Who's next? MR. MILLER: Your next speaker is Eva Front. She'll be June 20, 2024 Page 96 followed on Zoom by Laurie Harris. MS. FRONT: So can I just say a quick remark to Mr. Rich's comment about the financing? I think if we start incentivizing the local rescues, and I mean all of them, by, say, paying maybe $75 for every cat that is brought in for sterilization, long term our county will benefit from that versus just picking and choosing a couple of the rescues that are preferable to the county, but work with everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Eva Front, and I'm a full-time Collier County resident. Today we all have been presented with proposed budgets for Domestic Animal Services. I know firsthand how hard our county leadership have been working the past few months to improve service quality at DAS, and the progress is truly remarkable. I'm here today to ask for your consideration in the budget for next year to address the influx of unwanted animals and support policy changes leading to long-term cost savings for our county. County statistics show that the majority, 90 percent, of animals are coming in as strays, and roughly only 10 percent of animals are being reclaimed. We need to address and act on a resolution pertaining to creating programs for the community with low-cost or no-cost spay and other initiatives for animals most commonly relinquished to DAS. Slide No. 2. We can double and triple DAS budget every year, but if true animal control and sterilization programs, especially for low-income families, are not being introduced, the taxpayer funding will never be enough. I hope you appreciate the five-year intake snapshot for the same month, the month of May. The cat intake to DAS doubled within only three years for the month of May. Going by what Mr. James French just said, each animal costs June 20, 2024 Page 97 between 25 and $30 a day to care for at the shelter. And the only way to reduce the expenses is by actively implementing County Commissioners resolution or Animal Care Sterilization Act listed in the budget on Pages 2 and 5, preventing the tsunami of unwanted pets, saving our money, and stopping animal cruelty. When it comes to pet overpopulation, currently Collier County's heavily or exclusively relying on small not-for-profit organizations with limited financing and resources. Average age of people running around our community in Florida weather attempting to stop senseless breeding, it's about 75 years young. As you can see by the numbers presented, we are all losing this battle. There are no new organizations entering the rescue field, and the existing ones are tired, broke, and aging out. Please, Commissioners, when considering DAS budget for next year, be generous in supporting introduction of robust spay and neuter programs. These programs will not only reduce pet overpopulation but also decrease the number of animals entering the shelter, lessen the burden on animal control dealing with stray animals. Carry on the concept of stewardship of our creation, including animals, as the core principle in Christianity. CHAIRMAN HALL: Thank you, Ms. Front. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Could somebody keep this chart around right there. This is a graphic of what we were talking about about the low- no-cost spay/neutering program. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Did you make this slide, or you found it somewhere? MS. FRONT: This is online, the previous ones. The first one is from online -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well, if it was online, it has to be true. June 20, 2024 Page 98 MS. FRONT: But the second one I kind of -- no, I kind of went through the statistics over the years and put the numbers together just to show you the increase basically doubled in -- COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: No you said "tsunami." I picked up on that. It's a great word. MS. FRONT: Yes. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: And then this slide popped up. I was like, "Yeah, it's a tsunami." MS. FRONT: Yes. So that basically -- because County Manager mentioned we are in the kitten season. Sadly, the kitten season in Florida in this weather, we are experiencing all year round, right? We don't have snow. We don't have severe weather that will stop that. It's all year round. And that directly translates -- and I'm speaking right now as a taxpayer, because we can put so many more millions into the budget, but if we don't act on prevention, nothing will happen. I can compare it to our public services maybe with libraries. If you have people stealing books, coming in, and you have loss of hundred thousand dollars a year in books, you don't just replace them. You go in and try to figure out what is causing that loss and try to stop it. So I'm asking for the same approach with our Domestic Animal Services. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Thank you. MS. FRONT: Thank you. MR. MILLER: Your final speaker under the Public Services section is Laurie Harris. Laurie, I see you've unmuted yourself. You have three minutes. Please begin. MS. HARRIS: Good morning -- good afternoon. I'm sorry. I'm on Central time right now. I have to begin by thanking you all for shedding a light on June 20, 2024 Page 99 Domestic Animal Services, to Ms. Patterson, Mr. French for their yeoman's work in turning it around. I also have to agree with Ms. Front and Mr. Rich. We must stop the overpopulation out in the field, or there will never be a budget large enough. The animals will just forever keep coming in. So enforcement -- as to Commissioner McDaniel, what he was saying with Tom Kemp, enforcement out in the field is so key to lowering the population in the shelter. The changes at the shelter are just tremendous. The facilities team, I cannot begin to thank everybody enough. It is infinitely better. We are still going home with wet feet, but we know that that is going to end shortly. So we are so optimistic in going there every day and just making a difference for the animals. So mostly, I have to thank you all for your work and your time and your commitment to making this all better. Thank you. MR. MILLER: And that was your final public speaker under this section. CHAIRMAN HALL: All right. Great. We are at 12:15. It's time for lunch. Let's be back here at 1 o'clock. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Ms. Hall, I wanted to make a mention. You weren't here. Your husband made a comment about your shopping. So while you're having lunch, you might want to -- I just wanted to arm you with that, you know. It was -- (A luncheon recess was had from 12:15 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.) MS. PATTERSON: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN HALL: All right. I hope everybody had a good lunch. Terri, since this is a budget workshop, we'll let you know that we have increased your budget, and we have a jar -- a money jar back there for you for brownies and cake, so thank you. PUBLIC UTILITIES June 20, 2024 Page 100 MR. JOHNSON: All right, Commissioners, we're on to Public Utilities. MR. BELLONE: Well, good afternoon, Commissioners. For the record, I am Dr. Yilmaz. And my financial team is -- my financial team is here to give you the highlights of the budget. Well, good afternoon, Commissioners. No, seriously, as you all know, the Public Utilities Department is comprised of two different enterprise businesses, those being the Collier County Water/Sewer District and Solid and Hazardous Waste Management. Both of them are demand-driven businesses, demand for services, and both receive funds for those services provided. But they're very different businesses, so if it's all right with you, I'll address each of them separately, and I'll start with the Water/Sewer District. Commissioners, this budget is revenue centric, meets all of your budget guidelines. The Water/Sewer District is an enterprise fund. It receives revenues from fees for services that are required to support compliant operations, provide for critical capital repair and rehabilitation programs, meet all debt obligations and bond covenants, and provide for adequate reserves. I'm just going to remind you, Commissioners, that last December you approved a user fee rate resolution based on adoption of the '23 user fee rate study that Raftelis provided for us. The resolution provided for rates that become effective on October 1st of '24 and will be in effect throughout '25. Those water rates will increase 4.5 percent; wastewater, 7.5; and IQ water, 9.5. And for those who are listening, that would represent for the average single-family homeowner about $8 a month or 27 cents a day. We established these rates to provide necessary revenues to sustain critical and compliant utility services. We wanted to continue to invest in the capital rehabilitation program, to replace June 20, 2024 Page 101 utility infrastructure that was reaching the end of its useful life, and to repair and rehabilitate the other aging infrastructure. As a result, the utility was able to fund the 2025 capital improvement program at $93.9 million. That's up from 61.6 million in the prior year for critical asset replacements in conjunction with our asset management program, according to the strategic plan. The operating budget, as I said, was demand driven, and so we anticipate customer demand for potable water that will allow us to produce 11 billion gallons of potable drinking water, treat 8.9 billion gallons of wastewater, and then distribute 6.12 billion gallons of reclaimed irrigation water. Expenses are pay as you go. And to achieve those goals, we've included an operating budget of $163.2 million with 478 FTEs. I'll just remind you we have not requested any new expanded FTEs in this budget, but we'll probably see you at a later date. Capital improvement program included in this budget, as I mentioned, is $93.9 billion. That's focused on renewal and replacement of $1.8 billion of gross asset and utility infrastructure in alignment with the asset management program, as I said, of your strategic plan. I'll mention a few of the significant capital projects that we're attempting to complete or start in FY '25. We actually will continue the north county water reclamation facility headworks project. I want to mention that with this budget we've added $24.9 million to the capital plan, and that will fully fund that program without having to touch our commercial paper that we established at the commencement of that program. We'll be making improvements at the Goodland pump station assets, piping, valves, electrical SCADA, et cetera, to the tune of about 3 million. At the south water reclamation facility, we'll be doing some June 20, 2024 Page 102 electrical service upgrades for about $7 million, and we'll be focusing some attention on the wellfield and raw water boosted pump station, make some improvements in that program to the tune of about $7.6 million. Finally, the last significant program I'll mention to you is wastewater pump station improvements. We're dedicating $4.5 million to that program. We expect to replace, for that money, about six lift stations. As I mentioned, part of the user fees are also utilized to establish reserves. Unrestricted reserves in this budget are $38.8 million. They represent 54 days of operating capital funds, and that's within your guidelines of 45 to 90 days, and we do have restricted reserves in the Water/Sewer District. They're totaling 45.3 million, include water impact fee and wastewater impact fee of about 20 million and debt reserves of 28.9 million. That's in compliance with bond covenants. And FY '25 we have a current outstanding debt of $307 million. Our debt service for the year is 24.6 million. And just as a reminder, the Water/Sewer District has held the highest bond rating from Fitch, AAA, since 2014, and similar for Moody's since 2019. That's really critical, because maintaining those investor grade ratings benefit our ratepayers by allowing the utility to borrow at the most favorable interest rates when that becomes necessary, and I'm sure Chris will cover that in his debt discussion this afternoon. Also and finally, for the Water/Sewer District, in line with the strategic plan, we are continuing with construction and planning for expansion related to infrastructure in Golden Gate City and the northeast service area. That completes the Water/Sewer District, Commissioners. If there are any -- no questions, I can continue with Solid and June 20, 2024 Page 103 Hazardous Waste. I'm getting some nods. Thank you, sir. So I'll address Solid and Hazardous Waste. Again, this budget is revenue centric. It, unlike the Water/Sewer District, has no external debt, and it meets all of your approved budget guidelines. Again, it's an enterprise fund. The revenues are for fees from services. Just within Solid Waste, we have a disposal fund, and we have a mandatory residential collection fund as well. The revenues were prepared using an average 2.5 percent tipping fee increase and a 2.5 percent non-ad valorem assessment on the tax bill, an increase for residential curbside collection, and that will equate to about 52 cents a month. Those revenues will enable us to do the following: We're set to provide 15.5 million curbside collections, manage a little over 342,000 tons of municipal solid waste, and we'll dispose of 2.9 million pounds of household hazardous waste. That assessment that I mentioned to you will provide twice-weekly collection of garbage, once-weekly collection of recycling and yard waste. And in 2025, we'll have over 150,000 of those residential accounts to service. As far as expenses go, we have an operating budget of 66.6 million that we're executing with 54 FTEs; 30 and a half million is on the disposal side, and 36.1 is on the mandatory residential collections side. Of their capital improvement program, $8.7 million, and I'll highlight some of the major projects. Their Resource Recovery Business Park for 3.4 million, allow relocation of landfill operating activities that are on the top of the landfill today. We'll do some landfill optimization. Critical is re-enhancing the hammerhead turnaround program, $3 million this year. That improves public safety by providing designated turnaround capabilities on public roads, those long stretch June 20, 2024 Page 104 dead-end roads that we'll use. Collection vehicles can turn around, but not only collection vehicles, also ambulances, fire trucks, school buses, whoever else needs to use those turnarounds. Improvements in the Immokalee solid waste facility is critical as that area grows. We're seeing significant growth there. Household hazardous waste facilities, scale house, and some general site upgrades. The Solid and Hazardous Waste also has established unrestricted reserves of $14.8 million, and they represent 63 days of operating capital funds, again, within your 45 to 90 days' guidance. And we're happy to report that we've been able to fund $7 million of disaster recovery for emergency debris removal, should that become necessary. And that, Commissioners, are the highlights for Solid and Hazardous Waste. We're here to answer any questions. Our directors are here. Dr. Yilmaz -- CHAIRMAN HALL: The way I see it, you're making money coming and going. MR. BELLONE: We provide the service; you pay the fee. CHAIRMAN HALL: Any questions, guys? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HALL: Good, thank you. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Carry on. MR. BELLONE: Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate it. MR. YILMAZ: Thank you. DEBT SERVICE MR. JOHNSON: All right, Commissioners, we'll move on to Debt Service. I'm just going to switch the slide deck here for a June 20, 2024 Page 105 second. All right. So Debt Service, overall we're in a good position for debt service. Looking at this slide here, you'll see in 2008, our debt service principal outstanding was $788 million. As of the end of FY '23, we were down to $649 million. Of that, 342 million is general governmental, and 307 is related to the utilities. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: On a quick question there -- MR. JOHNSON: Yeah. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- is it common practice to use debt to support the solid waste and utilities, common practice governmentally? MR. JOHNSON: Yes, it is. Typically, it allows for the financing of the improvements over the life of them, and what you're doing there is you're putting the cost out into the future taxpayers or ratepayers in the utility case. All right. For FY '25, the current debt service totals $66.5 million. Of that, 41.8 is general governmental debt service and, as Joe said, 24.67 is utilities. We're in a good position. Obviously, as we learned earlier, public safety is our No. 1 priority. I think paying our debt service, if I could, would be 1A to ensure we meet those obligations and those bond covenants. I don't really have anything else on the actual budget, but I did want to bring up the fact that moving into FY '25/'26 and beyond, we will be looking, through the Finance Committee, at these -- as you've heard from Mr. Bellone and Ms. Scott, going out for potential financing on roads, stormwater. We have Golden Gate utilities, and we have -- moving out to the east with the utilities. Potential for that this year, potentially, for transportation. Our gas tax bonds are maturing this year, so we have that opportunity come -- sorry -- next year in June, in FY '25. We have June 20, 2024 Page 106 that opportunity moving forward. That gives us a little more capacity moving forward with the gas tax bonding for the transportation system. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Is there any -- is there any discussions about moving forward on those debt instruments in advance with other instruments knowing that those renewals are coming up? MR. JOHNSON: And we've done that. That's a good question, Commissioner. On the roads side, there is currently a commercial paper loan for $30 million for Vanderbilt Beach Road. We have not drawn on that loan yet. It's a line of credit at this point. Talking with Trinity, it sounds like we may need to draw on that by the end of next year possibly to start making the payments on Vanderbilt. If need be, prior to -- prior -- you know, you've got to monitor the rates. So as we monitor the rates, if it -- if it behooves us to use a commercial paper line of credit to establish budget and move forward prior to doing a large-scale issue, that would be the way we would go. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well, and timing is critical as well. MR. JOHNSON: Correct. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: You know, we're direly shy on infrastructure, specifically on roads. I mean, we've been pretty good and fairly aggressive proactively for utilities as far as extending boundaries and doing the main loop and the things with regard to utilities. But as far as roads goes, I just want to make sure that we're communicating the need in relationship to the funding, because sometimes the funding gets to be the leading indicator as to whether or not we build a road. And if we know there is a large amount of -- I say "a large amount" -- there is renewable bonding money June 20, 2024 Page 107 that's available that we can utilize, I'd like to make sure that we explore that. MR. JOHNSON: And this slide here shows your debt service compliance with the debt management policy. Our self-imposed debt management policy allows us to bond 13 percent of our available revenues. As you can see here, we're currently, with the recommended budget, at about five. So there is capacity there. And to your point, we'll be looking -- taking a look at this with the Finance Committee with all these departments to ensure that our timing is right for their project plans and programs. CHAIRMAN HALL: Chris, what's the dollar amount that -- if we maxed it out at 13 percent, what's the dollar amount that that would to? MR. JOHNSON: Oh, you're going to make me do math on this? CHAIRMAN HALL: Ask Ed. MR. JOHNSON: If we're at -- if we're at 5 percent at -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Six hundred million. MR. JOHNSON: -- 600 million -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Push that up to over a billion. MR. JOHNSON: It looks like one point -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: 1.1. MR. JOHNSON: What do I have, 1.2, 1.3? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: In my brain, it was 1.1, 1.2. CHAIRMAN HALL: So we can fix Sun-N-Fun. MR. JOHNSON: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN HALL: Just teasing. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Quit. MR. JOHNSON: Sorry. I'm just checking my math. MR. FINN: I'm comfortable saying it's more. June 20, 2024 Page 108 MR. JOHNSON: I got 1.5. MR. FINN: It would be more. MR. JOHNSON: 1.5. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: It would be more. MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, sir. MR. FINN: Growth Management. MR. JOHNSON: Growth Management. Any other questions on the debt? Or we'll move on to Growth Management. CHAIRMAN HALL: We can move. GROWTH MANAGEMENT OPERATIONS MR. FRENCH: Commissioners, I will do my very best to be brief and brilliant. I know we're coming to the end of the meeting. So maybe they saved the best for last or last to get carted out of here. So, again, my name is Jamie French. I'm the department head for Growth Management and Community Development. Just very quickly, our budget is in with -- is within compliance. Understand that the Growth Management Department is predominantly made up of Enterprise Funds, and it's -- with that Enterprise Fund, as even Mr. Bellone stated earlier, it is based off of demand. I recognize we've not spent a whole lot of time with ResourceX, but unlike Texas and unlike Colorado, the state of Florida is very unique that they may follow a building code that is based off of ICC standards, but the State of Florida controls how development happens and how long it takes. It is remanded onto the local government, but it is under state authority, and we have no right of appeal. So when a building permit comes in, we literally have, by statute, 30 days to turn it June 20, 2024 Page 109 around, and I'm proud to say on residential, we're still maintaining somewhere between five and seven days, well below that 30 days, and on commercial, we're hovering right around 15 business days. We maintain probably about a 10 percent vacancy rate. We've experienced about a 20 percent cost [sic] in payroll predominantly because the cost of actually hiring a licensed provider -- I know, Commissioner LoCastro, we spoke about it yesterday, and you had an opportunity to speak with some of our licensed professionals. Bottom line is that when we recruit people, we're recruiting them out of the private sector or from other governments. They must demonstrate that they've got no less than five years of practical experience or licensing in order to qualify just to take the test for an inspector. So you're coming out of school, you've got a degree in architecture, you've still got to demonstrate at least a year of work, or you're a -- let's say you've got a degree in construction management. You've still got to demonstrate a year of work. A license for a contractor is much easier to achieve than a license for a building code official, much less a building inspector or a building plans reviewer. With that -- and I know you don't always get to see the ladies -- or lady and gentleman that -- these are my cabinet, so to speak, Commissioner LoCastro. These are the ladies and gentlemen that make this one-stop shop work for our county. We adopt private-sector approaches. As I mentioned earlier, I hold numerous certifications, not that they are to be measured, from the private sector, and Lean Six Sigma finance, as well as I take a very private-sector approach to making things right. You'll notice in our budget, we have spent most of our carryforward. As we've added staff based on the demand, we have reduced fees. Now, that seems counterintuitive to any other business. You increase the level of service, the quality of service, June 20, 2024 Page 110 you add more staff, but you reduce fee -- fees. We are the only group in the entire County Manager's agency that have done that since 2014, so better than 10 years. But unfortunately, we'll be bringing you an item that's to make that come to an end. I know, Commissioner Saunders, you've participated with us in front of the Productivity Committee, and we've had multiple conversations with the executive committee of the Collier Building Industry Association and your Development Services Advisory Committee. They do not want to see a degradation in service, and because we are Enterprise Funded -- in other words, the taxpayers do not pay for growth -- the applicants that actually pay the fee pay the staff. They pay the full operation outside of -- about 85 percent of that operation at Growth Management is paid for by the people that apply for permits. And so they are our client. They are our partners in this industry. We are part of that, and we have an obligation. It's well choreographed, and they have grown to depend on it -- depend on us. That industry represents about 10 percent of your gross domestic product and about 22 percent of your workforce in Collier County. So currently we have, just in Growth Management -- and that's not to -- I don't want to -- that number of 342, that's the number of full-time employees. That is significantly higher than last year, but we also assumed Conservation Collier, Economic Development, and Housing Policy as well as your resiliency efforts. I also serve as your floodplain administrator for Collier County, and we hold more than many communities with regards to certified floodplain managers and reviewers within our community. You kept off the news the 25 percent discount, and better than 97 percent of your community is considered a special flood hazard area, and our residents enjoy that 25 percent discount through the community rating service. That's all done through the enforcement June 20, 2024 Page 111 of the Florida Building Code. We also do all of your GIS; in other words, your street center lines, your address points for the entire county. Every map that you see is based off of the work we do no matter what the department is, including the Sheriff's Office. We are partnered with the Property Appraiser, and we share data probably more than anybody else within the county. These are both previous populations as well as a perspective on how growth might occur. Now again, it's always subject to market, to availability, and the fact of the matter is, is that you still have about 10 percent of your county that has not yet been entitled. So when that comes forward, then we'll start to see the eastern lands start develop to even more. Within the Growth Management Plan [sic], we manage your Growth Management Plan as well as your AUIR. We coordinate that throughout the county to include all the governmental agencies, the constitutionals, as well as all of your staff that falls under the County Manager's agency. Future Land Use Elements and maps, those as -- if you remember, we just updated that to go through 2050. Your FLUE was expiring in 2025, and it is dynamic; it's not static. It will constantly change until we reach maximum capacity or build-out. Building permits: As I said earlier, we are subject to demand. We have a staffing policy where we have core-level staff to maintain our licenses and accreditations, but also we use third-party staffing services to fill in the gaps. And although they are very hard to find, we've got five contractors on -- on contract with one dependable one where we might get two or three maybe a month or two if we order them in advance. There is a lot of demand out there. Also, as you can see, these building permits all get building inspections. Currently we're carrying close to 90,000 building June 20, 2024 Page 112 inspections that are due that have not yet been delivered. Average building inspections costs us $46.80. We charge 45-. So that's a little less than $2 million of liability that we're looking at on due-outs, and that's not -- that wouldn't come due tomorrow. But we recognize that a building, a construction site, if it's commercial, very large, a hotel, those can go two and three years, but those are all prepaid services up front that we are due. We do not get a second chance to go back and charge again. So once we take the obligation -- and take that very responsible [sic] because in the event that we fall short, it's the General Fund that's on the hook to provide those services, and we would never want to put you in that position. Within our growth model, you can see the development activity, how it has shifted from the coastline to the eastern lands, and we continue to see that from 2012 to 2023. Average building inspector drives somewhere between 85 and 90 miles per day. They're -- based off of ISO recommendations, we should be doing somewhere between eight and 13 inspections a day. Your inspectors do approximately 23 to 28 inspections per day. So this is just a little activity link that I've showed you in the past, and I believe I have it here. And this kind of just shows you the growth over time, how have we experienced it. It's almost in a heat map form, and this is available online. And it's almost like a weather pattern watching the growth occur by quarter each year. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And that's from 2019? MR. FRENCH: It starts -- it will reset. I believe it starts at 2012. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Oh, okay. MR. FRENCH: Now, once that activity is closed out, the dot goes away, but those are the surges that we've seen. So COVID was -- that COVID period when we had a mass infiltration or a mass June 20, 2024 Page 113 migration, our activity levels were off the chart, immeasurable. But now we're starting -- we're starting to see stabilization and, again, we're starting to see growth. Now, this is directly affected, as you can imagine. So a construction loan is probably about one point higher than market, and I'll rely on Commissioner Kowal to correct me because there's much more liability with a construction loan. So if your market is roughly, with good credit, at about 7 percent on a 30-year mortgage, it's hovering somewhere between eight and eight and a half on a construction loan. So that will slow the market down. It's directly tied back to commodities. And so we are a global competitor. So don't think about just lumber and concrete. You have to think about fasteners, doors, windows, and all those other components that are involved within -- within the construction of a facility, either single-family home or a business, coupled with some of the additional requirements that have come out of the state of Florida, like your milestone inspections and your new FEMA plan review, which we charge zero for, but every permit has to have one. That's coming back to you as well for consideration because that is the longest review period on our commercial side. It can take up to -- up to 10 days just to get that FEMA review done, and we are audited constantly simply because of the rating we have. It's very odd, we are the only ones in the country that maintain a Class 5 rating where 97 percent of your county is a flood -- is a special flood hazard area. Our audits come directly out of -- they were coming directly out of ISO out of Oregon, and it was not done by their Atlanta office because it's really -- we get looked at every three years. That's not me, not yet at least. Let me advance this. There we go. Building inspections activity. As I said, we're somewhere June 20, 2024 Page 114 between 22- and 24,000 inspections today, and you're talking, even with contract labor, no greater than about 55 to 58 inspectors. So as you've spoken with Mr. Bosi, as you've heard Mr. Giblin talk about, we know that -- we recognize that we have more than 50,000 people per day that are commuting to Collier County for work, that's just to work in Collier. We have taken the economic development and the housing initiative very seriously. We asked for that. We got it just about a year ago, and I will tell you is that your colleague and our chairman, Commissioner Hall, has spearheaded that effort, and so much so that it's less about ideas and more about solutions. And so we're so appreciative of Commissioner Hall spearheading that effort and being part of the solution for our community. With that, I have with us -- Elbert Hubbard, back in the late 1800s, said that "The hero is the man that does his job." I think what he'd be remiss in saying, that it's the woman that does everything else. So with that, I'd like to introduce Ms. Evelyn Trimino. She heads up all of our financial efforts, as well as next to her is Jaime Cook and Mike Stark, our chief of operations, and I'd also like to take the opportunity -- because I know that Conservation Collier has been quite a controversial item, Mr. Matt Dennison. Matt Dennison is your new Conversation Collier manager. That's a position that we created. Matt is actually -- he's from Collier County; grew up here. Matt was working for us over in the building side of the house for some time as a job bank associate. He left a large logistics company to come to work for the county. He got tired of dealing with unions, as he told me, but it does turn out that Matt's got advanced degrees in environmental science. He was your GIS manager, GIS professional for the county, trained by us, of course, and then stolen by Mark Gillis, but he came home. So Matt is heading up the efforts for -- so June 20, 2024 Page 115 say hello, Matt. MR. DENNISON: Hi. Matt Dennison. Nice to meet you. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: How do you do? MR. FRENCH: But any questions you have for us, for Conservation Collier, any of our budget numbers, level of service, customer service, please, this is -- this is our team, and we're here to answer any questions. CHAIRMAN HALL: We're good. MR. MILLER: Mr. Chair, we have registered public comment under this topic. CHAIRMAN HALL: Sure, go ahead. MR. MILLER: Your -- we have one speaker in the room and one on Zoom. Andy Wells-Bean will be followed by Brad Cornell. CHAIRMAN HALL: Imagine that. MR. WELLS-BEAN: Good afternoon. Hi, everyone. My name is Andy Wells-Bean. I'm the executive director of Audubon Western Everglades here talking about the Conservation Collier budget within the Growth Management Department. So we're coming off of a year of unprecedented transfers out of Conservation Collier's trust funds and also an unprecedented year of new acquisitions for Conservation Collier, which we are very excited about, very pleased about and to make sure that the program has the resources and staffing for new acquisitions and for all of the maintenance that will need to be done in perpetuity, including invasive removal as well as public-access provision. It's our position that the Conservation Collier millage should be set at the full 0.25 mills. We may have additional comments as this budget process continues but wanted to show up early and let you all know that we're paying attention and feel that that deserves full funding. Thank you. June 20, 2024 Page 116 MR. MILLER: Your next speaker and final speaker is Brad Cornell joining us on Zoom. Brad, you're being prompted to unmute yourself. MR. CORNELL: Thanks. MR. MILLER: There he is. MR. CORNELL: This is Brad Cornell. Can you hear me? MR. MILLER: Yes, sir, go ahead. MR. CORNELL: Thanks very much. Mr. Chair and Commissioners, this is Brad Cornell. I'm policy director for Audubon Western Everglades. And I want to second my colleague and my boss, Andy Wells-Bean's comments and also add to that we're very supportive in the budget of the aggressive replenishment of the maintenance or the management land -- excuse me -- the Land Management Trust Fund amounts. That's absolutely vital as we see a $1.9 million bill for the coming year, for Fiscal Year '25, for management. The interest won't be sufficient unless we put enough money in that principal trust fund. So that strategy we're very supportive of, and we're glad to see that proposal in the budget. I also want to just finally say, you know, we've been appreciative of the recent approvals for land acquisitions for Conservation Collier that the Board has made. We see coming up next week that you've got a Cycle 12B in front of you, which has over 800 acres of really important acquisition parcels. So we anticipate your support for those as well and look forward to continuing to work on this program collaboratively with you-all as the budget process moves forward. Thanks very much. MR. MILLER: And that's our final speaker. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: We're good. CHAIRMAN HALL: Finito. June 20, 2024 Page 117 MR. FRENCH: Thank you, sir. MANAGEMENT OFFICES AND PELICAN BAY MR. JOHNSON: All right. Next up is the management offices and Pelican Bay. MR. FINN: Very good. Thank you, Chris. Mr. Chairman, Commissioners, Edward Finn, Deputy County Manager. To my right is Mr. Dorrill representing Pelican Bay. A couple of other brief introductions: John king is behind me in the audience. I don't know if the Board knows him. John King runs the fleet operation. Does a great job. He probably raised his hand, if he's smart, behind me. Mr. Dunnuck. John Dunnuck, the new CRA director. I hope you've had an opportunity to meet him. John is actually -- years ago was here at the county, and we're glad to have him back. Mr. McCormick, who you know from Facilities. Mr. Tusa from the TDC are all a part of this, as is John Mullins; Chris Johnson, who has done an outstanding job on the budget and always does; and Megan Gaillard, our corporate compliance director. The executive management offices cover a wide range of functions that touch on every aspect of the strategic plan from vision, mission, and values to each strategic focus area. The divisions within the department include the County Manager's Office, corporate compliance and internal review, the Office of Management and Budget, the grants compliance section, and impact fee administration, as well as key internal service divisions, Fleet Management and Facilities Management. In addition, the group includes Pelican Bay Services, Tourism, and the Community Redevelopment agencies. Funding sources for the department include general tax revenue, June 20, 2024 Page 118 internal service charges, and dedicated revenue for Pelican Bay, Tourism, and the CRAs. The budgets for the management offices have been established consistent with the Board's strategic plan and are in compliance with budget guidance. Recommended service enhancements in this section include the addition of one operations support specialist for the Immokalee CRA, and consistent with infrastructure asset management strategic focus area, the Facilities Management budget includes a $1 million HVAC preventative maintenance funding enhancement. The objective, of course, is to provide resourcing to move away from a break-fix approach to our infrastructure maintenance and more towards a predictive -- predictive maintenance approach. Inventory on that is about 1800 A/C units across all our assets and, literally, 24 new chillers that need to be maintained on a regular basis. Speaking frankly, the resources to do that preventative maintenance does not exist at your staff level, which is why we're simply asking for that enhancement. So that being said, all of this is, of course, within the County Manager's recommended budget at the roll-back level, and, of course, as we go forward with the process, we'll be talking more about where we're going to be with that millage rate. With that, there's always a lot of -- a lot of interest in the Pelican Bay budget, and I appreciate Mr. Dorrill being here to talk to us. Perhaps I could turn it over to him. MR. DORRILL: Good afternoon, Commissioners. The level of complexity this morning was a little overwhelming. This is my 35th BCC budget workshop, but hopefully Pelican Bay Services will be a little ray of very simple and less complicated sort of budget work. Our budget this year is in total compliance with your policies. June 20, 2024 Page 119 There are no expanded service requests. Our actual real cash carryforward will decrease almost 8 percent, because this was a record year for us with respect to capital improvements, almost a $13 million capital improvement plan that included the complete rebuilding of all sidewalks and pathways in the community and the replacement of our 40-year-old operations facility that was destroyed as a result of Hurricane Ian. So the budget this year is very straightforward, not very complex, and comes to you with a unanimous recommendation of your advisory board. Having said that, our net operating budget will increase just two and a half percent next year. There is a -- about a $5 per month increase in the non-ad valorem assessment that will take us to $995 per equivalent residential unit next year or an increase of $60.73. We really do think there's a lot of value associated with that. Your current chairman has a corporate America background in finance, and he really drills down into the budget process there. I would also just want you to know that they actually look at a full set of financial statements every time we meet, to include both the balance sheet and a profit-and-loss sort of presentation that is customized to our management requirements by the Clerk, and we're very appreciative of the Clerk who goes the extra step to give the board that. The total ERUs remains unchanged at 5,659. There is no increase in the millage for our street-lighting program. There is a modest increase in assessed value as the community is approaching about $10 billion now in assessed value which, in and of itself, is really pretty impressive. Two really bright spots in terms of current events that I would want you to know on their behalf today. They, the community, have been outstanding stewards of Clam Bay. The Board of County June 20, 2024 Page 120 Commissioners are the single largest landowner in Pelican Bay. The number of acres that you own in the estuary and the conservation areas, you hold the deed, and you're the largest landowner in the community. That comes as a surprise to a lot of people. With regard to that, happy to tell you today that when the water-quality analysis comes out later this year, for the first time in almost 10 years, Clam Bay will not be impaired for dissolved oxygen or copper; that is a remarkable achievement in a world who is chronically worried about algal blooms and associated pollution problems. We remain high for nutrients, but they have not used copper sulfate in that community in almost 10 years to treat algae, and it is finally beginning to show some benefits, and that's great news. As we speak today, Clam Pass itself is undergoing a maintenance, excavation, and regrading in order to improve the hydraulic efficiency of the paths there in the inlet, and we're anticipating a full hydraulic dredge sometime this fall or this winter, after sea turtle nesting season; it will be the first one since 2018. So a lot of progress this year. Great budget that is in total compliance with your directives that were set off in the spring. Thank you. MR. FINN: Thank you, Neil. That's very nice. CHAIRMAN HALL: Hey, Neil, could you shoot me an e-mail with those stats about the nutrients and the first time in 10 years since it's been dredged or -- MR. DORRILL: Happy to. They are not published yet, so you just need to consider that they are preliminary, but they're independently obtained, and the analysis and the lab work is all third party, and so it's pretty remarkable information. CHAIRMAN HALL: Yeah. I have people that are over there that would benefit from that information, and I won't put it out till June 20, 2024 Page 121 you -- till it's published or -- MR. DORRILL: Understood. CHAIRMAN HALL: Thanks. MR. FINN: Very good. Happy to try to answer any questions. I think the whole team's behind me. And like you, I'm going to rely on Chris Johnson to actually do any real thinking or math, so... MR. JOHNSON: I'm not sure that's a good idea at the moment. MR. FINN: I'm happy to answer any questions, or I think -- what's up next, Chris? COUNTY ATTORNEY MR. JOHNSON: Next up will be the County Attorney. MR. FINN: Very good, thank you. MR. KLATZKOW: Good afternoon. Jeff Klatzkow, County Attorney. To my right is Colleen Greene, whom you all know. Colleen -- well, you might not know, manages my office, she supervises my support staff, and she also puts together the budget. Before I get into this, I'd like to thank Chris. Your people are outstanding in this process, as usual. MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate it. MR. KLATZKOW: We're below budget guidance. No asks on this. And I'm happy to answer any questions. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: We could have had you stay in your own seat. MR. KLATZKOW: I could, but then she couldn't sit there because of Troy. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: Troy, get up. MS. GREENE: Thanks, Troy. CHAIRMAN HALL: Good job, Colleen. MS. GREENE: Thank you. June 20, 2024 Page 122 MR. JOHNSON: Well done. MR. KLATZKOW: I supervised. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS MR. JOHNSON: All right. Now for the tough one. We're going to move on to the Board of County Commissioners budget. So looking at your guys' budget, year over year, you are up about 8.6 percent, which is a little out of compliance, but offset it with the other general admin side of things. The reason for that is because we were looking at your actual yearly expenses every year, and you guys are doing a lot of outreach, a lot of things that -- you had a very small budget. So the overall amount is not material, and it will better align the budgets with what you are spending. And then on the -- if you kind of look up on -- again, it's Page 1A, 1A. CHAIRMAN HALL: We're good on 1A. MR. JOHNSON: You are? All right. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: 1A looks great to me. MR. JOHNSON: All right. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: The font could be a little smaller, but... MR. JOHNSON: And just a quick explanation of the 111 side of that where you see a reduction in about $950,000. If you recall last year, we were negotiating with the city on the beach parking contract, so we had an allocation in there for that that we no longer need, because we came to a conclusion on that contract moving forward for now. Any questions on your own budgets at all? COMMISSIONER KOWAL: Looks good. MR. JOHNSON: All right. Any public comment? June 20, 2024 Page 123 CHAIRMAN HALL: We're out of compliance. RESOURCEX MR. JOHNSON: All right. Well, that brings us to the wrap-up at this point. So, Chris, if you want to come back up, we can have ResourceX do their presentation. Then after that we can have some other discussions on a few topics. Just point at me and I can do it, unless you want to come over here, Chris. MR. FABIAN: I'll come over your way. It may be easiest. MR. JOHNSON: All right. MR. FABIAN: Well, thank you all. I don't have any new budget requests, so this is an opportunity to bring you up to speed on where we are in priority-based budgeting and where it goes from here. I think throughout today's presentation, you've had the opportunity to hear from numerous departments where you're already taking action on the budget with program resource reallocations, new fees up for consideration, and really innovative ideas. Not all of these came from priority-based budgeting. I think we have heard several throughout the presentations today that reflect the type of culture that you have in this organization, and I think that prepares you very well for continuing your work in priority-based budgeting and evolving upon these recommendations, and that's where I want to come in. I thought I would, very quickly, start from where we last met, where we last left off when you embarked on this path of priority-based budgeting and reflect on some of your reasons why you wanted to do this in the first place, not the least of which is the fact that as a local government profession, as elected officials and June 20, 2024 Page 124 public servants, this is a national call for action to re-think the approach to budgeting. This particular white paper was what we introduced when we were just starting to get to know each other, and this comes from the International City and County Management Association as well as the Government Finance Officers Association who urge local governments to approach the budget much in the way that you are doing it this year and will continue to do so; that we're not doing things the way that they've always been done. And, again, I have heard evidence of this all throughout today, but not only today, over the last several months as we've been implementing from the Board level to administration, leadership, your department heads, and staff. This is a new day, and you're seeing things already changing. We're not just doing business as usual. As we presented, one of the probably -- in my opinion, what I heard from you-all, one of the more attractive appeals of priority-based budgeting was the thoughtful examination of every program you currently offer, the resources that are being allocated to those programs, and the opportunity for new resource reallocation. I mentioned other counties who had achieved great feats along these lines such as Washington County, Wisconsin, here who had, over time, reallocated nearly 15 percent of their budget, their operating budget that is, and have been written about extensively from professional associations to say that this is not unique. Other organizations are able to do this as well. And our approach to be able to understand where the resource reallocation concepts can come from is what I demonstrated in what is called the priority-based budgeting blueprint where this is a chart of the budget. On the left-hand side is where, just as you heard today, there are new needs in this community. There are new June 20, 2024 Page 125 programs, program enhancements that you are striving to fund, and the question is, where do these resources come from, and can we be as responsible as we possibly can? The follow-up question is, for all of the new needs that come forward, are they truly aligned with the priorities that you're striving to accomplish by way of your strategic plan results and outcomes? Over on the right-hand side are the two primary levers that help you-all just as they helped Washington County, Wisconsin, before you, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and others. We look at programs for the opportunity where freeing up and reallocating resources can take place, and we look at opportunities where the generation of new program revenue, fees, charges, where appropriate, could be a strategy that you took a look at. By way of freeing up and reallocating resources, we can consider partnerships. We can look at sourcing programs differently than what you've done before. We can look at program efficiencies by way of technology or reorganizations. We can look at service-level tradeoffs or reductions where those make sense in order to free up resources and reallocate them to fund your new needs overall. And, similarly, on the revenue side, we can look at partnerships, we can look at in-sourcing, we can look at business models where you are currently subsidizing programs today where new revenue coming into the equation would make the most sense. We can look at grant funding; we've heard a lot of grant-funding opportunities today. And, ultimately, last, but not least, at the end of the day, should we turn over every stone and look for all the resource allocation and new revenue generation opportunities we have? As a last resort, we can ask the residents what they think as well. So these are the -- these round out the strategies that we get into in the implementation of priority-based budgeting. June 20, 2024 Page 126 And our approach is to attempt to work collaboratively with your organization, build the data together that we use. And it turns out in our work that there are groups of programs that meet the criteria for being a perfect candidate for new revenue generation. There are groups of programs that meet the criteria for really thoughtfully questioning should you remain in this business at all, looking at service levels, and looking at, "Is this your role?" "Does this really meet what the county's in business to do?" And that is precisely how -- organizations that we tend to highlight in our work, this is how they achieve their level of resourcefulness is by way of scouring all the programs that they provide, identifying those implementation opportunities, and beginning to move forward and implement those. So here we are. This was the past. This was looking at other organizations who came before you. And I suspect that Collier County, Florida, has every reason -- now that we are through our first phase of the analysis, the county has every reason to continue that level of greatness. There are two primary value propositions that we talked about today. The first was having the opportunity to now frame all budget requests around priorities, not only line-item accounts. And I make mention of that because we'd, again, just remind everybody, we don't depart from the line-item information. We just bring it to life by way of the programs that you offer and their relationship to the priorities that you are striving to achieve. And the second item is indeed from the blueprint, program-specific opportunities for resource reallocation and revenue generation. So I just wanted to touch on where we are with these and where we head next. So the very first value proposition was how we are framing budget proposals by priorities. And I will say, for all of the budget June 20, 2024 Page 127 requests that have come before you today, we've continued to work with Ed and Chris and the staff to load those into your budgeting module. And as you continue to proceed through the rest of the budget process towards adoption, the continued debate and deliberations around these enhancements can be evaluated relative to the General Fund, relative to their funding source, and when you-all ultimately arrive at approval, denial, edits to any of the budget requests, those will be tracked in the budgeting software so we can continue to support the idea that new request -- program growth, that is, takes place where those programs have the greatest ultimate impact on the priorities that you're striving to accomplish. So this is exactly where you are right now, and this will continue throughout the rest of the budget deliberations all the way through adoption. The second value proposition is what you have heard every time that I've come to the podium today to talk to provide additional examples of new revenue concepts or resource reallocation concepts as well. These are opportunities where you're going -- where departments have programs that they're offering that meet the qualifications of the priority-based budgeting blueprint. Our first effort at this is to take every program that you have, we analyze them in terms of their impact on your priorities versus their cost. We take into consideration all of the other scoring criteria, like degree of mandate, whether or not they're highly mandated or whether or not there's less of a mandate overall, cross-referenced with the degree of reliance. Are there other potential partners who could provide the program or help shoulder some of the cost burden, or can you look at sourcing programs differently altogether? In our very first attempt, I want to show you a few pages of documentation from our report, but this is what I continue to reference, and this will be the first deliverable that exists within the tools for programmatic analysis. So what you see -- I'll just depict. June 20, 2024 Page 128 It's not intended to be read. It is a larger picture in the draft document. But if you can see, this is an axis where on the left-hand side, the Y axis, we separate programs in terms of high impact versus low impact, and on the horizontal axis, from left to right, we separate programs from lower cost in general to higher cost. And within those differentiations, we're also further separating programs on degree of mandate. Are the programs highly mandated? Why do we do that? We do that because it's harder to change a program that has a stringent or high degree of mandate from a higher level of government. They're more complex as you look for implementation solutions versus lower mandate, those programs are easier to address. So that it's basically trying to drill down to ease of implementation of any given budget recommendation that you come across, and degree of reliance is, is there any partner who can come into this discussion overall? So if you are following, we have 16 areas of analysis that, by analyzing your programs this way, we can quickly get to what is the type of recommendation that is most appropriate. So I'd just give you a quick example. CHAIRMAN HALL: Is there any way you can blow that up? MR. FABIAN: It is -- I apologize. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: It should be appropriately named 1A. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: 1A, yeah. I was thinking the same thing, yeah. MR. FABIAN: We could call this illustrative for now, and you'll have your draft report with a larger version of this. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: When do we get that? MR. FABIAN: What's that? COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: When do we get the draft June 20, 2024 Page 129 report? MR. FABIAN: I'll be attaching the draft report -- you'll have it by the end of the week. We're going to continue to edit it with some of the things that we learned today, including we just did some programmatic research on animal control versus -- yeah, that type of analysis you were looking for, spay-and-neuter cost versus what it -- subsequent outcomes in animal control costs overall. So that's going to be one of my other major points is that this is a living document. So one of the reasons, I think, that you brought in ResourceX is -- as opposed to other consultants is that we don't come with a one-time report, we drop it, and we're out. This is a report that will continue to evolve as we look at new program opportunities, and we house it in your software so you can take action on these opportunities as you continue to move forward. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Can I ask you a question about the software that you've provided? So different departments -- like everybody that briefed us today said, you know, positive things about ResourceX. So they're using a specific software that you've provided. Across the board, has -- and it's not throwing anybody under the bus, but it's giving us a report card -- have the departments been as receptive as they've been sounding? Because even when I've had one-on-ones, I've heard really positive things, and so you don't know if they're just sort of saying that because they think that's what we want to hear. You know, without getting too specific, have you been encouraged by, you know, the deeper dive you've done into the different deputies as far as -- because this is -- this is a big change and, you know, a lot of times counties or government, they don't like change. What's the short version of what you've found in the different departments? June 20, 2024 Page 130 MR. FABIAN: I would also welcome Jesse who -- this is Jesse Muñiz, who is from our team and leads all of our implementations. Jess was a former client from the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, as an implementer, so he's been working most closely with staff and would welcome your reaction. MR. MUÑIZ: Hello, Commissioners. Yes, so to answer your question, the departments have been very receptive and actually have been very -- it's been highly encouraging the questions they've been asking when they've been going through each phase of this process. The most recent phase that we went through was scoring of programs, and we had kind of a short time frame as we were to get that done because of just how the project moved along, and they were able to -- a total of, what, 600 programs? They turned it around in about a week, which is outstanding that they actually went through and were able to turn this around and give it to us. So to answer your questions, yes, the staff has been -- they've been great in all this. And, again, the nature of the way they've approached this, you can tell that they're really, really wanting to look at their budgets differently than they have in the past, and so it's highly encouraging that this is just kind of the first year we're doing this, so that only means from there just how much better we can get going forward. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: I mean, because our intention was, across the board we didn't want the staff to feel like this was some sort of force feed, you know, that it's a team approach, and we want their feedback and, you know, the staff that I've met with, when I've asked them about ResourceX, they've been very, very positive that it has shown them a lot of things that they didn't, you know, previously see. So it's sounding like multiple unrelated people are all saying very similar things, which is what I like to hear, so I was -- I wanted June 20, 2024 Page 131 to hear your perspective. I mean, I expected you to sort of say that. Like I always say, I sort of wanted to set the table to have somebody articulate in a positive way that this has been a positive experience and good things are coming out of it, obviously, so... MR. MUÑIZ: The toughest part, I think, when we implement, you know, priority-based budgeting is really the translation of line-item data, the way you prepare budgets in the past to this new programmatic lens of budgets. And so that's always a challenge for any organization. And, again, the staff here has just been tremendous in being able to kind of take a step back, think of a way -- their budgets a little differently and approach it in this programmatic approach. So I commend the staff for the approach that they've taken. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Thank you. MR. MUÑIZ: Excellent. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Good to hear. MR. FABIAN: My last comment on what -- to add onto what Jesse said is it is seldom the case that in the midst of implementing -- you're just building your dataset for the first time. There are opportunities that are emerging that your team is taking action on in the midst of it, without waiting for any sort of final guidance or any sort of final report to take place, and that's phenomenal. Usually we get to this moment, and usually what happens is this is the first time that we're talking about directions that you could head rather than talking about some of the wins that you have already achieved, so that's another good sign to know about. So let me give you an example, and I think this will make sense in your mind of why we divide up the programs with their scores this way. If you think about a program that ends up scoring pretty low on impact towards your priorities, so it's lower impact, it's also not mandated, so there's no real requirement that forces you to provide it, June 20, 2024 Page 132 it's low on reliance, meaning somebody else does this program as well, and it does not pay for itself, if you're following me, that is a program where, in our experience, the local government thinks about, "Are we sure that we should remain in this business? Should we be looking at allowing another entity to provide this program?" You certainly might not think through, "How do we increase the spending for this program?" That would not be your instinct for a program like that. Another type of program that's high impact, so very closely related to your priorities overall, might have a high degree of mandate. Reliance is such that you're the only possible provider, and it's not paying for themselves. You would not jump to the first question about, "How do we get out of providing this program for that type of service?" You might be thinking about, well, people -- it's really highly meaningful to us. "Is there a revenue option? Is there anything we could consider to help offset the cost? Is there any efficiency we could gain through a partnership?" So I'm trying to point out there's a different set of questions. So we take all of your programs, and we simply cross-reference it against every one we've ever worked with and other local governmental examples to come back to you purely with data and an objective outside point of view. So you may very well look at some of these recommendations and find them compelling, new ideas overall. You might look at some of these recommendations, and you decide not to implement them. That's 100 percent natural. When the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, got to their $41 million in resource reallocation, they first started with darn near 100 million in resource reallocation recommendations and whittled it down to the ones that they implemented the soonest to take action on them. And that's how it works. You start with this big bank, and June 20, 2024 Page 133 we continue to evolve it, and we're going to execute as they make sense and as we need them. So I'll bring you one example. This is a slide that we made up earlier today because it was a discussion that was taking place as we were talking with the Bureau of Emergency Services division and, in particular, special needs administration. If you remember, some of the dialogue centered around, "How do they ensure that these agencies with special needs are in compliance?" And some of the examples that we're bringing to bear in the report come from Orange County, Florida, and the City of San Diego. This is how the report is organized. So we look at the programs. We look at how it's scored. We see, "What is the trend in how other local governments are considering this type of challenge that you're facing?" And in Orange County, we saw compliance review fees for -- on an annual basis for facilities like nursing homes and rest homes to achieve full cost recovery. This is a program, at least with the data that we have today, does not have cost recovery coming into it. Perhaps there is some sort of cost share from federal grants, but the program specific revenue from fees is a true opportunity for you. The City of San Diego provides workshops and training for emergency preparedness, and that's become a steady stream of revenue within their consistent emergency services division. So this is the type of opportunity that we bring forward, and we'll be conducting additional work with the departments to find out, "Is this something you want to take action on? How did they actually implement it? What's the execution plan overall?" As you go deeper into the document, you see not only the opportunities identified program by program for what could take place but also some of the background implementation guidance. So this is a -- I picked this one on purpose because it's very small, and June 20, 2024 Page 134 it's in some ways, when you think about it, inconsequential. But in our experience, the more that we've been doing this work, the way that you get to massive resource reallocation opportunities is that we don't even overlook the small opportunities. You got it. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: One bite at a time. MR. FABIAN: Yep, one at a time. So some opportunities are big, and some opportunities we want to rack up our quick wins. And, again, you heard of some of those today. You have a Bayshore redevelopment holiday decorations style of program. It doesn't cost you but $25,000, but as we have seen as we scanned across our database, we see from Frisco, Texas, to Winter Park, Florida, other common ways where the trend is partnerships, corporate sponsorships, revenues from specific activities, non-profit partnerships and vendor fees that come together to help throw a wonderful event. So you're not talking about getting out of the business of it, but we're talking about ways to help offset the costs. And that's because this particular program landed in Category 1, which is, hey, low impact in the grand scheme of things, low cost. It's not mandated, and the reliance is quite low. So this is just an example. So you're going to see, for every program that you offer, this type of research that is brought back to you to take a look at. I've got another one in the slides here. Here's a million-dollar opportunity, taking a look at your program in Community and Human Services, mental health and substance abuse. So it's a serious program with actually a high impact on your outcomes, but we see organizations here in your implementation report, such as the mental health center of Denver, Colorado, taking a look at tiered structure for rates. County Manager Amy, you brought this structure up in other examples earlier today for animal care. So this shows up again and again with specific guidance on how some of others have June 20, 2024 Page 135 approached that. Again, not to say that you jump to this immediately, but here is specific actionable guidance for every program that you come across the organization, depending on its opportunity area. And we designed this intentionally. I was, as Jesse, a staff member in local government, in county government, and what we wanted was a playbook. We wanted a series of recommendations that we could turn to that grows and evolves as other local governments actually make these changes. So you're getting the benefit of all of the other implementers of priority-based budgeting who have come before you and all the types of recommendations that they have come up with and exactly how they achieved the new revenue opportunities or the resource reallocation opportunities overall. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Just real quick, how deep do you go throughout our organization? Do you -- you brought up an example in the Bayshore CRA. Have you gone into the Immokalee CRA and MSTU yet? MR. FABIAN: In research? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. MR. FABIAN: I believe so. I mean, I know we have a host of programs that are within Immokalee -- well, we can cross-reference the total program list. Chris Johnson is behind me somewhere. MR. JOHNSON: And if I may -- if I may, Commissioner, every department and section has taken -- has taken the steps of identifying their programs, scoring their programs. So I believe -- and I'll look back at Chris here -- that all of them -- all the departments will be included in this under the County Manager's agency. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. Very good. Very good. I just -- the example that you brought up there reminded me June 20, 2024 Page 136 of a couple of circumstances that happened to me personally. I attend the MSTU in Immokalee, and two different programs were brought forward that weren't mandated. One was a trash can initiative on Main Street, and the trash cans became so dilapidated that they were a health issue, so -- and then the other circumstance arose that when they became full, people just threw the trash outside of the trash can, which created an eyesore. Well, when the health issue arose, they removed the trash cans. And then what happened to the eyesore? It went away as well. Well, we'd always had trash cans. So the next thing I know, they were spending another $25,000 for new trash cans and hiring somebody to go pick up the extra trash that was put there. So we set it off and put it aside. So having this basis to -- because to me, that was -- again, that was just common-sense stuff. But you come at this from a -- from a programmatic standpoint that would -- based upon the impact as well as the cost associated with it. So I see this to be hugely beneficial as it filters through the organization. MR. FABIAN: Thank you. CHAIRMAN HALL: Hey, Chris, in your David Lawrence example, what was the cure? I can't read it because it's so small. Was it adding revenue, or was it -- where in the -- it was the next one, the one that was -- no, that was it. That was it right there. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: But it was in a different town. It's not David Lawrence. But like you said -- CHAIRMAN HALL: No, the David Lawrence is on the left. It's in the small -- (Simultaneous crosstalk.) MR. FABIAN: Exactly. So the opportunity here is a sliding-fee scale to ensure that the types of services that you're providing -- June 20, 2024 Page 137 CHAIRMAN HALL: Okay. MR. FABIAN: -- for mental health and abuse services are accessible no matter -- despite affordability, and that's a tough challenge to crack. And so when we came across this program, the mental health center of Denver was a good example where that's exactly what they're trying to deal with. CHAIRMAN HALL: Where was this program in the grid? MR. FABIAN: In the grid? I will find that for you here in just a moment. I'm going to write that down and come back. Well, actually, I bet I can bring it up. CHAIRMAN HALL: Jesse's got it. MR. FABIAN: Jesse's got it. Nice. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: That's why you stole him from, what, Albuquerque or what? Are you trying to get a job with these guys; is that why you're complimenting them so much? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: No. CHAIRMAN HALL: He was an implementer, too. MR. MUÑIZ: This program, particularly, was in kind of the category of low-impact priorities, high-cost. Low mandate but low reliance as well. So that's why this program kind of fell into that matrix. CHAIRMAN HALL: Thank you. Yeah, that helps. MR. FABIAN: Good deal. Awesome. I also want to impress upon you, I think, the example that the commissioner gave about the trash services and what you were thinking. Some of the recommendations are easier to implement than others. Some are immediately actionable, and others will still take time. They will take time to think through, okay, even in the example that we have up on the screen right now, we can think about a tiered rate structure, but rolling it out, having a good communication plan, talking with the agency, talking with the June 20, 2024 Page 138 director, those are -- they don't take forever, but what I want to prepare you for is that for every opportunity for resource reallocation, new revenue generation, we move from insights, which is the concept and the recommendation, to implementation, and that is exactly where you are right now. So scanning across the entirety of the 16 categories, I think you'll see in the -- these are categories 1 through 16 listed, and over on the right is the potential based on your costs for those programs and the opportunities that other entities have implemented. So that is summing up everything that you'll see in the report. And I mentioned earlier that when the City of Pittsburgh did this exact same analysis, they were closer to plus or minus $100 million for total opportunity, and they whittled that down closer to $41 million in their resource reallocation opportunities in their first foray into priority-based budgeting. Mentally, that's what we're imagining. So we start with a large range of opportunities. You know, there's still further analysis that could be done to take, for example, the programs that we talked about today, and that's why this is a living document overall. But I think it's a good start. It's a very good start to have here as a punch line a range from 86 million to 157 million in new resource allocation opportunities and new revenue generation opportunities as well. So pretty good for our first draft and, again, none of this can come to fruition without all of the work of staff on the analysis. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And, of course, we haven't seen your report yet, but will you split the resource allocation apart from the revenue generation opportunities? Will they be split when we see that report? MR. FABIAN: That's a good question. We -- so the way that the report is organized is around the 16 categories -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. June 20, 2024 Page 139 MR. FABIAN: -- which could include cost reduction and revenue generation within the same category. But I understand your point. And we do have -- for every opportunity that another organization has come up with, it's clear, is this revenue generating, or is this cost savings? So I think that's a good idea. We will -- although you'll have a first draft, we can reorganize it around cost savings versus revenue generating with a side reference to what category it fell into. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: That would help me. CHAIRMAN HALL: Yeah, that would help. What'd you call those? It was possibility No. 1 and what -- MR. FABIAN: Yeah, just categories. CHAIRMAN HALL: Number 1 and No. 2, the two strategies. MR. FABIAN: Yep. CHAIRMAN HALL: On that back page, would you say the smartest place to begin for us to focus would be Categories 5 through 8? MR. FABIAN: Yeah, they are the high-cost categories on the low-impact -- CHAIRMAN HALL: Okay. MR. FABIAN: -- side of things, and so for those, they can be -- you're going to see both revenue-generating and cost-savings concepts even within those categories overall. The benefit of starting with those categories is that they have the least impact on your strategic plan priorities. So even for communities that are going through a budget shortfall -- so we're working with a very large city right now who has a dramatic budget shortfall. That's not you. They want to start with those type of categories that you mentioned because it's the minimum impact on residents that you're talking about. So you're making changes while minimizing the impact on your priorities and therefore your community. June 20, 2024 Page 140 All right. Back to the software, just so you know how this works as well. So for each of those opportunities, they are loaded in as what we call program insights, so an insight is a change to a program that you could make. It could be cost-savings; it could be revenue-generating. And as you work at these over time -- when I was in local government, in the Great Recession, we would do a revenue committee, or we'd do a cost-cutting committee, and we'd come up with a list of things that we might do. And it exists in a report, and then time passes, and we forget that we had that report. It was a one-time committee affair, or it was a consultant report, and it sort of vanishes; it gathers dust. We wanted to make these recommendations in a way that are living, they can be changed as you go. Next year at this time when you're going through the budget discussions, you can turn back to these exact recommendations for what you have taken action on already, what you have not taken action on, what new opportunities have been developed. And, again, I think that's one of the reasons that you wanted to do priority-based budgeting is it's not a one-time report that exists for this moment, June 20th, 2024. It will stay with you as you think about different changes you can make to programs. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Chris, so if I'm in Growth Management, I've got -- I have this software, if I'm in the -- you know, in the -- does everybody have this software, or it's just the senior leadership of say -- I'm just using Growth Management as an example. Who has it? Like, Jamie French has it for Growth Management, and he's able to tap into it? I'm just trying to understand how it operates. MR. JOHNSON: Commissioner, good question. We have specific users currently. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Okay. June 20, 2024 Page 141 MR. JOHNSON: Yes, the department heads and -- COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: They can only see their departments, right? MR. JOHNSON: -- financial staff, yeah. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: But then there must be some overall master that, like, Amy Patterson has access to where she can pull up every single department if she wanted, right? MR. JOHNSON: Yep. In the budget office, we can see all of them, and also the County Manager. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: And I'm just talking out loud, and maybe the answer's a definite "no." But having, like, that overall access to all the departments, is that something that the commissioners would benefit from so that instead of -- you know, if we're curious -- I mean, not to go in and manipulate anything, but we're all very interested in this as well, and sort of waiting for that report quarterly or whatever, it would seem like it would be interesting to try to -- you know, not have access to change anything but to be able to visually look at something. You know, I don't want to make this more complicated. Amy might be sitting over there going, "Absolutely not. The last thing I need is five commissioners all dreaming up questions for me," right? But even to play around with it a little bit so we could educate ourselves. It seems like it's so user friendly that if we had a little bit -- and maybe not all the commissioners would like it. Maybe just a couple of the software nerds like me and maybe Chris and -- maybe all of us. But I'm just curious. MR. JOHNSON: You hit it on the head. If we have -- if we can do it "read only." COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. No, absolutely. But, you know, to just sort of -- so that when June 20, 2024 Page 142 we're being briefed on it, we're as -- we're as educated, and then we're having a -- it's not -- you know, it's not the department sort of talking to us and just -- you know, we under -- we maybe could do a deeper dive. And maybe it's just something we just get access to for a limited time. Just, hey, if you want to play around with it, great, and then it's going to be shut off after 60 days. And I'm not saying that this is a great idea. I'm just brainstorming that in -- you know, in the -- I can only relate to my military background, and when we did similar things like this, all the commanders had access, right, to every single squadron on the base, and it was "read only," but it allowed you to sort of see some things and then also to be part of the process and not just sort of be briefed on, you know, the final results that everybody else was dreaming up. We're able to see something. Like I said, maybe it's a bad idea. I'm just sort of throwing it out there. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: It's a bad idea. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah, I know. I figured. MR. JOHNSON: I'll have to look at Chris to see if there is a read-only option. I haven't found one yet, so... CHAIRMAN HALL: You know, the thing that's exciting about this is is this is not an event. It's a lifestyle. It's systematic [sic]. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well, you know, I was just sitting there thinking about it. You know, for an old accountant, I've -- how long have I been asking for some kind of a zero-based budget process? COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Never. I'm kidding. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Since -- since I became a commissioner, I started talking about zero-based budgeting process, and that is such an arduous process to go through. And it's so arduous you can't do it every year functionally. You end up spending more money finding a penny than you do fixing issues; June 20, 2024 Page 143 whereas, this system allows for an evolution over time. A living document, as you've called it, a continuous look-see by the leadership to see where things can be adjusted along the way. I think over time this is -- because I remember Amy and I were talking about zero-based budget, I don't know, four or five years ago, and then we were talking about an index process interimly, a zero-based budget maybe every 10 years with an indexing at five. This is ongoing forever. MR. FABIAN: Yes, that's the intent. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. MR. FABIAN: Because we've all been through when it doesn't hold up, and you're looking back for a 2008 report that may or may not be relevant, and you've shot down half the ideas you've implemented. So we wanted it to be as close to realtime for -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And did I hear you say before that there's going to be comparisons from the decisions that we end up making this year? And next year we're going to be able to say we decided to whack that $25,000 out of the -- out of that one particular department, and then we'll be able to see -- we'll be able to see the impacts of that both from the rating system as well as the expense slash revenue generation. Did I hear that? MR. FABIAN: Absolutely. So you have established a baseline. Well, you will when you adopt this upcoming budget. And as you make decisions that alter the baseline -- so you reduce spending in a lower priority area, you're going to see that spending in that category go down. And as you see growth in other areas that are more highly aligned, that's the mark of progress. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And then Johnson won't be able three BAs and cover up something that he did over here? MR. FABIAN: At the program level. CHAIRMAN HALL: He won't be able to tell us how much June 20, 2024 Page 144 money he saved by shopping? MR. FABIAN: But it's all -- I mean, every idea that came up earlier today where the departments are already taking action, we want to -- Jesse and I were talking. We want to make sure we're tracking -- we get those into the system because those are solutions you've already implemented for this year's budget, and you want to be able to see the credit for decisions that you're making now. Awesome. Okay. Almost done. Just a wrap-up here. So the next steps, back to those two key value propositions that you signed up for. One is finishing the budget process that you're in right now. So I think the last discussion is relevant here. We're going to get to that baseline level for data. So between Jesse and his team of implementers, we'll be doing the continued support of proposal evaluation to get to a total adopted budget. I mean, we'll be looking at any program cleanup that we can do in the system as well. It evolves, and you want to get better at that data and tracking, to your point. And then as far as the opportunities for resource reallocation and optimization, the opportunity to see the very first report is critical. So it's just the review to be able to see, are some of these insights good? Are they things that you have done before? Are they insights that don't -- they won't work here for some specific and practical reason? That's totally okay. But then we move from insights to action, which is helping the staff mobilize and approach to move from just the idea that this could be done, this is a good recommendation, there's money to be saved, there's new revenue to generate. Other cities have done it. Here's their case studies. Here's the implementation plan to actually doing it and moving forward and taking action and implementing these solutions. June 20, 2024 Page 145 So that is -- we are -- you know, we've been on board with your team. Your team's been working hard. We've been a part of the process just for a few months now. So this is very much an interim check-in for where we are, and we continue to make progress on these insights on your budget and keep going from here. That's my presentation. CHAIRMAN HALL: Well done. Excellent. I loved it. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. MR. FABIAN: Thank you. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I have to say I'm excited about the prospects of these opportunities. I'm excited. Now, I do have -- I do have one question, and I have not heard you mention anything about reserves anywhere in these -- in these allocations. It's all about -- and rightfully so, and how important reserves are -- in fact, are for any -- any organization. So are reserves brought into your equation anywhere? MR. FABIAN: What we would do, typically, is back to the blueprint. Let's say your reserves were not where you wanted them to be. First off, I should say, reserves in and of themselves are not a program in priority-based budgeting, so they don't -- they don't get scored or anything. It's a -- so it wouldn't show up in the opportunities report. As you look at the blueprint, some of our communities might say on the left-hand side of this blueprint, we have new needs, which might mean -- you know, I think we've all talked about here, "What is the right level of reserves?" We heard in Chris' presentation, where do you want to be for thoughtful risk management when it comes to reserves? And if you need more money there, then the question will be, where does that money come from? Do we reallocate resources? Do we generate new revenue to replenish those reserves? And that is a funding June 20, 2024 Page 146 choice to be prioritized, just like every other program enhancement overall. We can certainly offer any of our learnings along the way and work in collaboration with the GFOA. I would say that your staff has a really good handle on reserve policy and what's professional and strategic for the reserve levels that they're trying to get you to achieve, but in terms of the priority-based budgeting process, this is how we would address it. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. And so -- then, as we go forward, as we start to home in on the actual reallocations or revenue increases, then those priorities of what we do with those cost savings and the reallocation could come in as a Board decision with regard to prioritization on those revenues. MR. FABIAN: Got it. Funding and reserve is to be evaluated. It's a spending choice and prioritized against every other spending choice that you have. There is -- well, maybe I'll say that... COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I was smiling. I was smiling at them. MR. FINN: I'm reminded of the rule of wholes, yes. MR. JOHNSON: Any other questions for Chris? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: No. MR. JOHNSON: All right. Well, actually, I think that's a good segue into maybe one of our next conversations. Let me just pull up this -- let me pull up my PowerPoint here, find the right spot. All right. So I think the next thing we wanted to briefly talk about was, as we stated earlier in my original presentation a few hours ago, we did achieve the rolled-back rate for the recommended budget. To do that there were a few things we had to do, and this kind of hits on your reserve program question, Commissioner McDaniel. To do that, we went through this priority-based review of program revenue and expenses. As you've seen throughout the day, we've taken action on a few items already. We've also departed June 20, 2024 Page 147 from our historically conservative approach with revenue forecasting and budgeting. We have -- in this year's budget, we've done a more realistic approach to our revenues. We're utilizing state forecasts and state budgets for next year with our large state sales tax and revenue sharings in the General Fund. We also -- to get there, we also had to reduce our planned countywide capital program and our -- and a reduction in our planned countywide capital reserves. The planned countywide capital reserve for this year was going to be $27.6 million, and it's reduced to $7.6 million. Now, the reasoning for that is -- and I know we've talked to you all individually on this in your office, and we will have an item coming to you in July regarding budget amendments to realign this transfer. But the Conservation Collier transfer that we were -- that we adopted in the FY '24 budget, the actual transfer to be -- to be -- I'm sorry, to be -- the revised transfer amount that will actually be transferred is based on the ordinance -- money collected during the ordinance dates of October 10th and March 24th, I believe. CHAIRMAN HALL: What was the deficit? It was 23 million or -- MR. JOHNSON: 23.9. Down there in the right-hand corner, you'll see 23.9 million. To the General Fund, the deficit is $17 million. As we looked at this, we're going to transfer all the money into the General Fund that is available to be transferred, so we'll realign the budgets to do that. The Unincorporated General Fund will have -- will have a shortfall of 6.4 million, which we've kind of discussed today how we've addressed that through reserves and also a reduction in our other G&A, and then Water Pollution Control, that will be about a $395,000 reduction in the actual cash transfers that we expect to happen this year. June 20, 2024 Page 148 Now, that has been forecasted in this budget, so we've taken it into account. To do that, though, these were the steps that we had to take. So, specifically, what we had to do in the General Fund, you'll see here, we reduced the advanced funding for the 800 megahertz radio upgrade. We reduced -- and I guess I'll say we delayed some parking lot repairs, pushing them off to a future year. We cut our advance for the CCSO furniture and fixtures for the forensic building in half to two million, so we reduced it by two million, and then we had to cut that capital recovery reserve by about $16.8 million. So I wanted to bring that up in case there was any discussion on that, but that is how we got to the -- that is how we were able to get to the rolled-back rate in the recommended budget. CHAIRMAN HALL: I appreciate you bringing that up. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: So the -- forgive me. The adopted -- the adopted transfer was 53,5- -- MR. JOHNSON: Correct. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- but because of interpretation, we were only able to move 29; is that what I -- MR. JOHNSON: We will be able to move 29 based on the recommendations -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And then the other -- MR. JOHNSON: -- from the Clerk and bond counsel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: So the other monies are coming out of the General Fund. MR. JOHNSON: I'm sorry. Can you repeat that? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: The other money, the variances are -- MR. JOHNSON: Yes. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- coming out of the General Fund. June 20, 2024 Page 149 (Simultaneous crosstalk.) MR. JOHNSON: The General Fund will have a variance and the Unincorporated. And then in Water Pollution Control, that was pretty easy to absorb in what's running through that fund, so... COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Right. CHAIRMAN HALL: So I'm going to ask the question just because it's the workshop. We got basically stonewalled because of the time frame from October to April. And to quote Commissioner LoCastro, because of that, I hate this a whole lot less. But if we were to go back and change our policy like we had it the prior to April, would we be able to recoup those funds like we intended to and fund our reserves in this coming budget? MR. JOHNSON: I'm going to -- I'm going to look at Jeff over there. My understanding is the interpretation is it's the money collected under the ordinance as it is, so it would be going forward, but I'll look at the County Attorney. MR. KLATZKOW: It's a going-forward basis now. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: The monies that were collected under the old ordinance are under the old ordinance, and then till the amendment was effectuated, you can't -- you can't retroactively go back. CHAIRMAN HALL: That's my question. What if we change the ordinance back to the way it was? MR. KLATZKOW: You could. You've got accounting issues here that your Clerk is more versed in than I am, quite frankly. CHAIRMAN HALL: I'm just asking the question. Just -- I like to see the reserves funded, and if it was because of something that we did promising Conservation Collier something that was just fuzzy -- MR. KLATZKOW: You could always -- CHAIRMAN HALL: -- feel good -- June 20, 2024 Page 150 MR. KLATZKOW: You could always direct staff to put money into it as far as the trust funds go. That's not an issue. CHAIRMAN HALL: Okay. All right. Thanks. MR. JOHNSON: Any other discussion on this? I mean -- and another option would be -- if you wanted to refund this, obviously, we have that -- I guess, that range of rolled-back to millage rate. So if there was an idea to put money back into these reserves, we could do that. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Let's have that discussion right now. There is -- from me, there is an interest to put that money back, to refund that money over a period of time and develop a palatable plan. That was one of the things that I -- when we did those budget moves last year in our budget hearings, I specifically told Meredith and Brad that, that I had full intention of refunding the entire 53 million, so... MR. JOHNSON: So you're talking the Conservation Collier reserves? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Right now that's what's on the front screen here. There were other reserves that were utilized in order to make up the aggregate difference in what we passed as a budget and what -- or what had been proposed as a budget and what we passed as a budget. But I would like to specifically see Conservation Collier be repaid back, not just have the new unit rollback. I think I saw a slide go by that Conservation Collier's getting 30-, 31 million again this year -- MR. JOHNSON: Correct. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- at the rolled-back rate. That's new money. MR. JOHNSON: Correct. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And so we utilized 25 million or so -- 28 million or so out of the Conservation Collier. I'd June 20, 2024 Page 151 like -- I'd like an appropriation in this year's budget for the beginning process of the repayment of those monies. CHAIRMAN HALL: I disagree. I'd like to see that money go to our reserves, not go back to Conservation Collier money that wasn't being used for the last 10 years. That's why we used it. MR. JOHNSON: Now, with that said, I have two slides here. I have one for Conservation Collier repayment options, and I have another one for a countywide reserve reestablishment. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: There you go. MR. JOHNSON: So either way, to get down to the -- I guess the nitty-gritty of it is if we were to -- right now your millage rate is at rollback. If you were to adjust in one area or another area, we could utilize that additional ad valorem revenue to do either/or or combination of both over a period of time, all at once. You guys have the ability to make those decisions. CHAIRMAN HALL: I'm not interested in raising the taxes on the people to replace Conservation Collier money. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: That -- I can't buy into that statement. I mean, we're not -- we're not raising the taxes on the people to replace Conservation Collier money. CHAIRMAN HALL: If we do anything besides rollback, we are. It just sticks in my craw that we didn't get to do what we wanted to do, so that's why I -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I understand. CHAIRMAN HALL: I'm coming from an aggravated -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: It was never -- it was never the intent to utilize those funds to fund the budget last year and not replenish those funds that had been collected, paid for willfully by the taxpayers of Conservation Collier. It's not their fault. It's not the residents' fault that those funds were expended and utilized. And so I feel obligated -- and I'm just telling you how I feel -- June 20, 2024 Page 152 CHAIRMAN HALL: I understand. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- Chris. I feel obligated to replenish those funds over -- and I've said it multiple times, over a reasonable period of time with some kind of a reasonable plan. And so I'm not -- I'm not -- I'm not quite sure. I mean, there's discussions here of -- I mean, our budget currently that we're looking at is built around a rollback which holds us to a revenue neutral, from revenue collected last year to revenue collected this year. So there's -- we can and will have this -- not necessarily today because we're in a workshop, but we can and will have discussions about rate neutral, staying rate neutral. Rate neutral will generate 26-, $28 million, $29 million between the two funds, between the Unincorporated and not. And then -- I mean, are you going to get to this slide that you showed me yesterday? MR. JOHNSON: Certainly. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. MR. JOHNSON: I think I know which one you're talking about. Is this the one? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: That's the one. MR. JOHNSON: So I'll explain it real quick, if you don't mind, Commissioner. This is our annual renewal and replacement estimate. What we have on the top there is our current asset -- general governmental asset replacement value. Average life of the assets, we're assuming 25 years. That would give us a target annual allocation for renewal and replacement of $112 million. Currently this year, we're putting a good chunk of it into -- into PayGo R&R, about 76.3 million. With that said, if you're aiming for that 112-, you're about $35.6 million short this year. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And my question when I was June 20, 2024 Page 153 looking at this slide after you threw it at me -- this piece of paper after you threw it at me yesterday was this is based on an average life -- and by the way, I'm astounded at the $2.8 billion worth of assets that we're managing and we have to upkeep and we have to maintain and we ultimately have to budget to replace. I'm astounded that it's that much. I mean, when this whole process started back in when, 2018 or so, when 301 Fund became -- MR. JOHNSON: 2020, I believe, was the first year. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. So I had maybe -- nonetheless, it doesn't really matter. I'm just astounded that we have this much dollar value in assets, and this county had never been appropriating for our reserves for the ultimate maintenance and/or replacement of those assets. We'd never been -- never been reserving, ever, in our 100-year history. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Well, Bill, when you and I got elected, we were $1.5 billion in deficit. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: In deficit. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: In terms of -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Capital projects. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: -- this replacement value or taking care of our assets, and that's why we were -- I mean, we were able to replace a lot of that with the one-cent sales tax, but I think that still leaves us with about 500 million or more in -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: More. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: -- a deficit. Let me ask you a quick question on that -- back to Page 36. The 2.8 billion, does that include all of our roads as well, bridges and everything, or is that just -- MR. JOHNSON: That is roads and bridges. It does not include utilities. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Okay. Actually, when you June 20, 2024 Page 154 start talking about the roadways and all, that 3.8 billion doesn't sound like such a big number. MR. JOHNSON: Not these days, right? COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I mean, we're spending $150 million on -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Vanderbilt Beach. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: -- Vanderbilt Beach Road extension. So we have a lot of roads. That's -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well, as we're going forward, I would like for us to have an open, honest discussion on how we manage through this replacement -- because to me reserve funding is key to success. You have to snatch your belt during the good times, and you have to put money away for that inevitable rainy day. One of the questions that arose when I was looking at this yesterday is that annual target date is driven specifically by the average useful life. MR. JOHNSON: Correct. You have asset -- you have asset ranges from five years to 50 years. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well -- and so maybe a little more -- as Commissioner LoCastro likes to say, a little deeper dive into the actuality of the necessity of that annual target. Because that's a very -- that's a very voluminous annual target. So -- and it wouldn't -- it wouldn't be as much if the useful life was longer if you're amortizing your need over a longer period of time, so... But I would like for us, as we're moving through these budget hearings, to have a discussion on how we manage to get there from there, from where we're at now. I mean -- CHAIRMAN HALL: I agree. MR. JOHNSON: And just briefly, Commissioners, this is the history of that -- of that reserve. Just of note here, in FY '23, as you know, we had 35.8 million. Obviously, Hurricane Ian has moved June 20, 2024 Page 155 some of that funding into our Recovery Fund. Just keep in mind that -- it won't be next year, but down the road that funding will hopefully return, at least a percentage of it because we expect FEMA recovery and other grant funding recovery on some of those funds, so... CHAIRMAN HALL: Do you have any idea or any good guess of how much that money might be? MR. JOHNSON: I can tell you right now, just kind of swag numbers, it looks like we put about 130-, 131 million currently in the system. We've spent about 80-, and we've got about 40- back. Typically in these, it's anywhere -- and, again, I'm going to give you a wider range because I don't -- I don't know the exact answer, but it's between 75 and 90 percent of the money can be expected to come back. Now, that means we have to -- you know, everything's got to go the right way, and so far we're doing pretty good at 40- on 80- in a year and a half. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: This slide here, on this capital -- on this countywide capital reserve account, is -- can be an amazing tool for generations to come to be able to take care of natural disasters that come along and also provide for a planning tool to have replacement dollars in the event that your 50-year-old building that you're reserving for every year over here, you're not going to need that money for 50 years, so you have a natural disaster, you grab that money, and then you have a replacement plan put in place when that money is needed on a short term, and it's highly discretionary. We don't have to amend any ordinances to utilize those funds. Did you hear, Mr. Chair? CHAIRMAN HALL: I sure did, yes. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. CHAIRMAN HALL: I already -- I knew where you were June 20, 2024 Page 156 going, and I was already to another thought. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: When you didn't have reserves in 2017, what did you do for -- because I wasn't here. What did you do for Irma? MR. JOHNSON: That's a really good question. We had to basically collapse our capital programs. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Wow. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: We shut down -- MR. JOHNSON: Shut down Utilities, Roads, to pay for that, and that storm, if I remember correctly, $120 million range. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah. I was going to say, that was worse than Ian. MR. JOHNSON: Exactly. (Simultaneous crosstalk.) COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Ask Dr. George sometime. There were capital projects in Utilities' books that were set aside for two and three years that were deferred because they were -- they were pulling money out of the reserve accounts that were established for capital projects for utilities. CHAIRMAN HALL: You know, another thought is we just heard a presentation where we could pick up 88 million to 157 million with some implemented change, so there's -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. We have future discussions. CHAIRMAN HALL: Yes. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: And the sad part is the whole idea that we spent that marathon session till two in the morning was that the money we had -- I thought we were going to replenish this because we knew we spent it on Ian. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Right. COMMISSIONER KOWAL: And, you know, that's -- and June 20, 2024 Page 157 there was never, I don't think anywhere on this dais, there was a discussion of paying anything back. You know, we knew how crucial it was to have that money on hand in case the next hurricane came, and I think that was the discussion, and I think that pushed our decision that night. But somehow we still didn't replenish -- it was -- the idea was to get some money back into this fund. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well -- COMMISSIONER KOWAL: Because we all knew how important it is. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Absolutely, you know. And there again, I -- I remember what was swimming around in my brain that night, and Conservation Collier had 70 million in reserves. At the rolled-back rate, they were getting an extra 30 million. That took them to 100 million. To fund the budget that had been proposed to us that night on the last minute of that time was 62 million -- in my brain it was, I think, a $53 million ultimate spread is what transpired. So utilizing the money out of Conservation Collier allowed us to fund the budget as it was proposed, and -- COMMISSIONER KOWAL: And I think 17 million was supposed to go into this reserve fund. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. Well, then that was where -- that was where -- they pulled money away from these reserves in order to fund the others because there wasn't -- we weren't allowed to, by the ordinance, by law, by the interpretation of the Clerk and our legal staff, that the previous ordinance monies were collected under the old ordinance, and until we adjusted the ordinance, we weren't allowed to move it out of Conservation Collier, so... It's just -- as we're going forward -- we don't need to belabor the point anymore. I appreciate you indulging me and having this discussion, but 10,000-foot view, I would like to have a replacement June 20, 2024 Page 158 plan put back into place for the monies that were utilized out of Conservation Collier for Conservation Collier, whether it be maintenance and/or acquisitions, and I'd like to see -- I'd like to see this fund triaged a little bit more so that -- so that we have -- I -- so that we have a definition of the useful life of the assets from the 50-year-old replacement costs all the way to repaving the parking lot or resurfacing the parking lot every two years, so -- because with that -- with that information, we'll better be able to utilize -- utilize these funds for the benefit of our residents, I think, anyway. MR. JOHNSON: Any further discussion? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: If I may, I'd just like to thank the Board and also ResourceX and our staff at OMB and all the staff in all departments, because this was a really big lift in a short window. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Is that what those ladies have been doing all day long? I've been a little scared because they have not said a word, and they're all just sitting there. MR. JOHNSON: They're e-mailing me all the answers as I stand up here, just so you guys know, so... And again, thank you to the County Manager and Deputy County Manager as well. Appreciate it. CHAIRMAN HALL: Finished? We're adjourned. ******* June 20, 2024 Page 159 There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 2:53 p.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL ___________________________________ CHRIS HALL, CHAIRMAN ATTEST: CRYSTAL K. KINZEL, CLERK These minutes approved by the Board on ____________, as presented ______________ or as corrected _____________. TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF FORT MYERS COURT REPORTING BY TERRI L. LEWIS, REGISTERED PROFESSIONAL COURT REPORTER, FPR-C, AND NOTARY PUBLIC.