DSAC Minutes 10/02/2024MINUTES OF THE COLLIER COUNTY
DEVELOPMENT SERVICES ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING
Naples, Florida, October 2, 2024
LET IT BE REMEMBERED, the Collier County Development Services Advisory Committee
Meeting and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at
3PM in REGULAR SESSION at the Collier County Growth Management Community
Department Building, Conference Room #609/610, 2800 N. Horseshoe Dr., Naples, Florida,
34102 with the following members present:
Chairman: William J. Varian
Vice Chairman: Blair Foley (absent)
Hannah Roberts- AHAC- non-voting
Mark McLean
Jeff Curl
Marco Espinar
Chris Mitchell
Jeremy Sterk
John English
James E. Boughton
Robert Mulhere
Laura Spurgeon-DeJohn
Dave Dunnavant
Clay Brooker
Norman Gentry (absent)
Mario Valle (absent)
Also present:
James French, Department Head, GMCD
Jaime Cook, Director, Development Review, GMCD
Thomas Iandimarino, Director, Code Enforcement, GMCD
Richard Long, Director, Building Review & Permitting Division, GMCD
Claudia Vargas, Project Manager I, PUD
Cormac Giblin, Director, Housing Policy & Economic Development
Jay Ahmad, Director, Transportation Management Services, Transportation Engineering
Captain Michael Cruz, Greater Naples Fire Review
Captain Bryan Horbal, North Collier Fire Review
Michael Stark, Director, Operations & Regulatory Management, GMCD
Mike Bosi, Director, Zoning, GMCD
Rey Torres Fuentes, Ops. Support Specialist I / Staff Liaison, GMCD
1. Call to Order
▪ Meeting called to order at 3:00 pm
2. Approval of Agenda
Marco Espinar made a motion to accept the agenda, motion was seconded.
The motion passed unanimously.
3. Approval of Minutes
a. DSAC Meeting- September 4, 2024
▪ Jeff Curl made a motion to approve minutes. Mark McLean seconded.
b. DSAC-LDR Meeting- May 21, 2024
▪ Jeff Curl Made a motion to approve minutes. Mark McLean seconded.
4. Public Speakers
▪ None
5. Staff Announcements / Updates
a. Development Review Division- [Jamie Cook]
LDC amendments for the subdivision plot process with the new state legislation were
passed by the board at their last meeting, it is officially in effect. Working on an updated
application that will be on the website shortly. Will be down one utility inspector.
b. Code Enforcement Division- [Thomas Iandimarino]
Contractor licensing, state-licensed contractors, and local licensed contractors are all
caught up. Interviewing, continuing to restaff.
c. Community Planning & Resiliency Division - [Christopher Mason]
N/A
d. Building Review & Permitting Division - [Richard Long]
Update on 3,359 permits. FEMA runs about 28 days, Structural runs about 14 days,
Residential 7 days. We’ve created a certificate of use permit for change of use or
occupancy.
The certificate of use, we're going to have an inspection involved in it. Both fire districts
already have their own system for this type of permit, so we'll need the fire compliance
certificate that they issue, not requiring signed and sealed drawings.
Permits run about $165 plus tax, $50 review, and $50 inspection. The current process is a
little clunky and then finding out it's not making any changes we then do an owner-
builder permit. All are now connected, building, fire, and tax.
e. Public Utilities Department- [Matt McLean or designee - Claudia Vargas]
We’ve been back to a 10-day business turnaround. We would also like to request a vote
to appoint a vice chair for our utility subcommittee.
Mario Valle was voted in to be Vice Chair of the Subcommittee for Utilities.
f. Housing Policy & Economic Development Division - [Cormac Giblin]
This month the Board of County Commissioners has approved 123 new affordable
housing units to be built through their zoning actions, which brings the total approved for
fiscal year 24 which just ended three days ago to 492 new affordable units zoned in that
year. I rarely talk about any economic development activities, but I'll give you this one
this month we paid our third payment to the Great Wolf Lodge of $4 million, they
completed their construction, and received their TCO, which was a trigger for that
payment, which brings our fiscal year to date total in economic development assistance
payments to about $7.2 million that we disbursed this fiscal year. This month 600 jobs
have been created and validated and fiscal year to date that's about 2,067 jobs, some
quick statistics on housing policy and economic development.
Robert Mulhere - “I saw an article recently that the number of apartments in Collier
County is increasing to the point where the supply may be either meeting demand or
exceeding demand. Do you have any insight on that?”
“I can tell you that anecdotally, the number of multi-family approvals has increased over
the past several years, couple few years. A lot of them have been including a portion of
affordable units within them. So, you have a luxury apartment complex that has normal
market-rate apartments of $3,000 to $4,000 a unit. will include a certain percentage of
affordable units within that, which would go for maybe 2,000 or 1,700. The statistics,
though, from the University of Florida Schoenberg Center still show a very deep need for
more affordability in our multifamily apartment sector.”
g. Transportation Engineering Division - [Jay Ahmad or designee]
Project 1-Vanderbilt Beach Road Extension Phase 1, doing really well and moving ahead
about on schedule. Roadway that starts at Collier, goes east for about seven miles, three
lanes in each direction, up to Wilson, and goes two lanes to 16th, one lane in each
direction. We are on track for completion in March 2026.
Project 2-Vanderbilt Beach Road Extension Phase 2, starts where we end at 16th, and it
goes for approximately two miles to Everglades Boulevard. It's one lane in each
direction, similar to the section just to the west.
Project 3-Goodland Bridge, we were hoping to start in December and start repairing this
bridge.
William Varian - “Did I see a sign on Green ‘Blvd’ about something going up? Is that
under transportation? So, no new lanes or anything like that?”
Yes, it is. We are doing shoulder improvements, long green from Collier to Santa
Barbara, roughly, and includes about, you know, it's a grant project to do shoulder
improvements. No lanes, yeah, it's just... I think about a six-foot shoulder inside.
h. Collier County Fire Review- [Michael Cruz, Captain]
Chief Wolf has now been appointed our chief.
Deputy Chief Bauer now been with us for a couple months.
Chief McLaughlin just retired a couple days ago. So, Chief's Stirns is taking his role as an
Assistant Chief for facilities.
We’re hiring for additional inspectors
Our inspection is going according to plan, and we had a great meeting with Costco.
Going to go into the corner right now, prospectively on Rattlesnake and Collier.
We have apartments going up everywhere from Santa Barbara on. And now we're
reaching out into the East Trail by 7-Eleven. So, there's some future projects going out
there.
William Varian - From an inspection point of view, next day or are you still a couple of
days out?
We're about 48 hours out now for our inspections.
Prevention Day October 12th at Coastland Mall
i. North Collier Fire Review - [Cpt. Bryan Horbal]
We had 733 reviews in the month of September just for reconstruction. Slow month for
inspections, 1,077 inspections.
Next day inspections
Regular new construction is 4 days out
Planning permits are 7 days out and had 62 this month.
j. Operations & Regulatory Mgmt. Division - [Michael Stark]
The department receives 3,717 permit applications with a year-to-date total of 49,703
This is the end of our fiscal year, so we're actually only down about 1.8% from last year.
186 of these permits were for Hurricane Ian.
The average turnaround time for intake staff is 1.5 days.
We welcomed 1,221 customers to our business center and satellite offices and staff has
answered 5,993 calls in our call center.
Growth Management currently employs 341 employees with 32 vacancies.
Our newly formed human resources team led by Stephanie and Sandra continues their
efforts to recruit for multiple job classifications, and this includes 10 new positions for
code enforcement.
The team continues to focus on any possibilities for finding staff at this point.
We do have an update really quick on the text message deployment, which is set for
October 18th and 19th, we do have a sprint and our technology team is in the works for
Trying to recruit from all over the building to make sure that it's a successful deployment
as well. Staff has also been working with a consultant, so Mike Losey as well as Jamie
Cook and myself have been working with a consultant to take a look at internal processes
as well as developing efficiencies through zoning and planning and develop a review
process. That has to do with making sure we have consistency internally and then taking
a look at opportunities with the pre-application meetings, looking at any delays that were
caused in the past, documenting those, taking a look at new forms, some other things that
are kind of happening as a part of that. We've updated some of these internal forms.
As of October 1st, we do have a change to the EPR form.
Chris Mason wasn't here today but I just want to give a quick update for the community
planning and resiliency team with last week's storm events our rapid response teams
including Chris Mason, William Lang, Jason Regular, and Kevin Summers as well as
many others throughout the building ended up responding to the event to make sure that
we were doing the rapid assessment throughout the county for any flooding events and
damage assessment as well.
That really is about all the different updates that I have for you as well. We have started
the new fiscal year. So, we've been, our financial team has really been working diligently.
They had 91 purchase requisitions in yesterday with about $8.3 million already allocated
throughout the building. So, purchase orders are moving forward. That's about all the
updates I have for you.
Jeff Curl- “In your study among, I guess, the three of you, how are you going to flush
out delays that may not be direct through those departments?”
I think it really comes down to what were some of the highest priorities. I know that from
our perspective, it was talking to many of our customers, including you as well, to hear
back. Pre-apps were taking anywhere around... sometimes up to 60 days, 30 to 60 days to
even get scheduled. And so, we're working with the consultant on the beginning part of
the process and then moving through as far as standardization of forms, training
opportunities. I think a big part to this is making sure that we and we take a look at the
internal processes, how it moves forward as you were talking through with Rich as well,
that is this truly needed? And so maybe it's the consultant that we had, they were really
good about 121-page document of everything that we were walking through. So, you're
right, not everything is going to get flushed out of this, but maybe it is an opportunity for
us to share some of those findings with the team here as well. just to see if these are the
same things that you're seeing as a customer.
A lot of these vacancies were caused by internal promotions
So, it's something where we've got some repeat high school interns that are coming back
as graduate interns as well. Mike and I and Jamie, we talked about this. Sometimes
there's not a degree program that exists, whether it's Florida Gulf Coast University or
others that, you know, it says the planning degree, I think, was one of the ones that's
really not offered in our local. I mean, and so some of those same functions, though, from
maybe a project manager side, you know, that we need to take a look at, and train
internally is an important part of this. They are looking at those opportunities but you're
right I mean it's a small talent pool that already exists government pays what it does so
we have to figure out a better way that we're going to be some other recruiting tools that
we can utilize you know benefits maybe not high on the list of things but if we could take
a look at leveraging the housing where you know maybe all teenagers you know even my
own, they want to get out of the house. Can we create that type of environment? I think
Arthrex is looking at a similar situation where they're already creating housing for their
employees. So is that something also that we have to look at for something else in the HR
world as a tour of duty. We're recruiting from across the nation that maybe it's a one year
where we can guarantee them some housing and a part of this. Just some ideas.
k. Zoning Division - [Mike Bosi]
Costco is a prime example of what we're trying to do. Trying to do short trip lanes. We're
trying to shorten the trip length by placing neat facilities that households exert on a
regular basis in closer proximity to where those households are. When you have one
Costco and it's in the north side of town, all these folks have to drive from all these other
places to go there. So yeah, at that one localized intersection, which is an activity center,
so those activity centers are the most intense areas designed by our growth management
plan within our transportation network. Land use arrangement, it would expect the
highest intensity of density and the highest intensity of commercial use or non-
commercial use. So that is the location. I do agree, it creates some operational issues.
That's why we have operational analysis, trying to do turn lanes, things like that. I think
once it's in, everyone's going to love it. It's going to create some more activity. It's going
to shorten trip lengths.
On the 24th of September, the Board of County Commissioners approved another project,
a multi-family project, a unique project, a vertical apartment complex, Duplexes, single
stories, all in a single parcel of land, all managed by a single entity, but the rentals. And
the 30% were dedicated to affordable housing, so we're going to have 62 additional
income restrictions. A total of 310 that's going to add to your supply and hopefully we
start seeing these projects continue to come out of the ground and the supply and demand
factor starts to work and starts putting more of a downward pressure in terms of what the
rents we're getting.
We've got three vacancies right now within our department.
Planning Commission on the 17th, the Board of County Commissioners on the first
meeting in December, the only meeting in December, the meeting in November.
outlook for the Planning Commission, we've got one meeting, or we've got one, we just
canceled the third, which is tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow. And the 17th, we only have one
petition. We have five petitions on the first meeting of November, and then we have zero
petitions all the way out right now until January. We've got a little lag that's going on. I'm
not sure why that is, but we have this tendency that February, March, and April tend to
stack up pretty heavy for our seasonal residents.
Chair Bill Varian asked to go back to item 3b. DSAC-LDR Meeting minutes for May 21, 2024.
DSAC-LDR Chair Clay Brooker asked for a vote to approve the minutes.
Jeff Curl Made a motion to approve the minutes. Mark McLean seconded.
Motion passed unanimously.
6. New Business
▪ N/A
7. 01d Business
・ N/A
3. Committee Member Comments
There are five ofus, we talked last month about they're up for renewal. Four ofus
have already submitted.
Marco Espinar
Two Updates: Everything's back to the Corps.
New bond at that consultation protocol, consultation stayed the same. Collier
County added two new layers: Ad HOC and Assume Habitat basically all of
Florida Counties covered. Nonh, Lee County, Charlotte County. But that's halfof
it right there, but basically, the bottom line is everybody's going to be paying
money. $4,800 per acre, could be as high as $7,800 per acre for the plant.
Physically surveying, with 3D survey, as ofnow it's more ofan acoustic survey.
Pick-ups sonar detection, and basically, it's like a reporter. It records it, and then
the program, every batch has its own batch frequency, and it deciphers every
batch.
9.Adjourn
There being no further business for the good ofthe County, the meeting was adjourned by
the order of the chairman at 4: 13 p.m.
COLLIER COUNTY
DEVELOPMENT SERVICES ADVISORY COMMITTEE
William Varian. Chairman
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