East of 951 Minutes 02/18/2025 (Draft)
MINUTES OF THE COLLIER COUNTY
EAST OF 951 ADVISORY COMMITTEE
(E951AC) Heritage Bay Gov’t Center
15450 Collier Blvd Naples, Florida February 18, 2025
LET IT BE REMEMBERED, the Collier County East of 951 Advisory Committee, in
and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date a 6:00PM. in
REGULAR SESSION at the Collier County Heritage Bay Government Center 15450 Collier
Blvd, Naples, Florida, with the following members present:
Mark Teaters Sr (Chairman)
Robert Raines (Vice Chair)
Michael Ramsey
Kimberly Ellis
ALSO Present:
Darren Burkett (Deputy superintendent of CCPS)
Mark Rouleau (Chief facilities officer of CCPS)
Any persons needing the verbatim record of the meeting may request a copy of the audio
recording from the Collier County Growth Management Division Department of Planning and
Zoning.
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
ROLL CALL
• Quorum established
APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES FROM PREVIOUS MEETING
• Mark Teaters Let’s go back to the old ones from November 19th. When we had our last
meeting Mr. Ramsey had some questions about remembers of the meeting. Everyone got
copies of the updated minutes? Since Mike was the one that made the changes, do you
want to really quick, a couple words about the changes in the minutes.
• Michael Ramsey what was said in the minutes of November was when what was said
about years ago, so I changed it to be what is the definition; so, whether it be used as a
historical reference in the process.
• Mark Teaters you basically only changed the comments that you made, which I’m okay
with that
Mark Teaters made a motion to approve the changes in the previous minutes
• Motion carried unanimously
Mark Teaters made a motion to approve the changes in the previous minutes of January 21st
• Motion carried unanimously
NORTH COLLIER FIRE PRESENTATION/ DISCUSSION
• ELOY RICARDO WAS ABSENT DUE TO A MEDICAL ISSUE AND THEREFORE
NO PRESENTATION WAS GIVEN
COLLIER COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRIC PRESENTATION/DISCUSSION
• Kim Ellis I’m curious what are your plans for the property you own at the end of 13th
Street Northwest and also you have another property off of 8th or 10th out in Bell Meade
area.
• Mark Rouleau yes, it’s also on another built, that’s the new Vanderbilt extension is
bisecting that primary, it’s jointly owned by Collier County government and Collier
County public schools. So, one half of it is an elementary site and a high school and the
other half, I think the county is going to be using the pro park, and when that will be built,
we don’t know yet.
• Kimberley Ellis And what about the site in North Bell Meade? You have 20 acres or
something or more.
• Mark Rouleau No plans for that, it is also an elementary and high school site
• Michael Ramsey, you describe how you decide whether you’re going to put a public
school (talking about Bear Creek Elementary school). You seem to have kind of spread out
your profits but then a couple of times you mentioned that once you get to 900 children,
we looked at them in the middle school. So, my question is, they have a way to survey the
number of children and ages or do you go by the number of houses? Do you have certain
threshold for a number of kids at certain age over the threshold to start linking the
building.
• Mark Rouleau There are a lot of factors that influence that. So, one of the things is we
have this office and they constantly monitor the demographics of the area, they’re
basically like data scientists, they are evaluating the growth and projections of a variety of
things like how people are moving and birth rates; you also have the growth of a school.
Sometimes you can’t expand an elementary school, so we end up placing portable
classrooms on the campus site; And so, one of the things you have to consider the tenor of
the parents and the board members. But conducting an attendance boundary adjustment to
shift a large body of students away from a neighborhood school to a brand-new school isa
a painful thing
• Darren Burkett Also once we get to a certain threshold, we don’t necessarily have to
build a school. We can potentially use a boundary modification and move some of the
students out into where we have some more space.
• Kimberley Ellis But did I understand you say though, that when you have an elementary
school that has about 900 students, then you’re thinking that you’re thinking you’re going
to need a middle school for them? Those students are going to matriculate into
somewhere, right?
• Mark Rouleau Right, so the staff and student projections office, they take a look at the
capacity of all of our middle schools to see if we do have the seats available. And if there
comes a time where we don’t, then they direct me to start putting in portable classrooms at
the middle school sites, then when you get to a certain saturation point of portables then
you start looking a building a new middle school
• Michael Ramsey your prior and method that you look at initially is permanent housing
for this issue?
• Mark Rouleau I’m not in that office, but I know that they look at a variety of variables,
they’re just simply basing it on home sales or permits for homes, got to also look at how
many or what types of families will be moving into those homes, and birth rates; they’re
all influencing factors
• Michaell Ramsey So switching gears, the school projects that have been built east of
Wilsonville, up everglades, the estates and over 10th and 12th. What kind of septic water
system do they have around?
• Mark Rouleau Some of our schools have their own wastewater treatment plants, we
collect the waste and treat it. These plants are licensed at the Florida DEP. I have contract
with Ave Maria Utility Company. They provide licensed plant operators to operate those
plants. And some of the sites have water treatment plants. Big Cypress Elementary School
is the only school that has just a wastewater treatment plant. But other schools also have a
water treatment plant. I get unannounced visits from the FDEP, they make sure that those
plants are operating according to our permits and law.
• Michael Ramsey You have to be aware that collier county was built in the Northeast
water utilities and it will be running on Everglades and down Everglades as it goes out.
• Mark Rouleau They actually finished the line from oil well road out to Immokalee along
Everglades Toward Bright Shore. There’s a new development at the intersection of
Everglades and Immokalee Road called Bright shores to be Hogans Village but they
changed the name to Bright Shores
• Michael Ramsey Do you have future plans to come off the package plant and move to
Collier County water utilities?
• Mark Rouleau Yes, I have about a million dollars set aside in the Estates Elementary
school budget to decommission the wastewater treatment plant and the water treatment
plant and conduct that school to the public water lines, sanitary sewer line, and reclaim
lines that will be charged in November of 2026
• Michael Ramsey When you decommission that operation, will the plant come down? And
what would be the future plans for space?
• Mark Rouleau Not sure yet, we have a water tank that stores the potable water. We’ll
probably demolish that because it’s a steel tank probably won’t last indefinitely. I don’t
want this to be a problem for somebody else but decommissioning the plant will probably
require some demolition. And how to reuse that property, I don’t know at this point.
• Michael Ramsey That question raises the issue, how does the school system interface
with the fire district? If we have a wildfire in that area and they needed water, can they get
water supplies for their operation?
• Mark Rouleau Some of those sites have two tanks. One tank is a potable water tank and
the other tank is a firefighting water tank. There are multiple tanks, extra tanks on our
campuses that can be used for firefighting work.
• Michael Ramsey So all schools east and west of Wilson have clarify on anything?
• Mark Rouleau Yes, they have both a potable water tank and a firefighting water tank.
Estates Elementary, Sarah Palm Elementary, and Palmetto.
• Michael Ramsey And that’s all from pumping out of the ground?
• Mark Rouleau Yes, they pull water out of the aquifer and it’s treated in a water treatment
plant. It meets state water quality standard and we have a permit that says you must meet
the standards of drinking quality
• Michael Ramsey Besides the water tank on site, do you have fire hydrants or do you just
use the water tank?
• Mark Rouleau There are firefighting connections, but they are not through fire hydrants.
So, on those campuses with these water tanks, they have a connection for a fire hose
• Michael Ramsey This is an addition to you Sprinkler system?
• Mark Rouleau Our newer schools have the sprinkler System
• Michael Ramsey Switching subjects again, they’re pausing on cell phone towers, sodium
photons, do you have them? Are you allowed?
• Mark Rouleau Currently we have three cellular cell phone towers sites on three of our
schools at this time, Bear Creek Elementary Naples High School, and Poinciana
Elementary School
• Michael Ramsey I’m also president of the Golden Gate Social Service Association and
we have been discussing about pushing to improve cell talk service because it lacks. We
have been looking for places that would consider allowing that a third party to build a
tower and lease it out to help our cell phone coverage. In the presentation from the fire
department, they were having problems out there too.
• Darren Burkett In the past three months we have been in conversations and negotiations
for the potential development of three different sites. One of which is at Cypress Palm
Middle school, Palmetto Ridge High School, and on the East Trail
• Michael Ramsey So we have been watching the palmetto Ridge Highschool area for a
while. There are 4o acres of land in the Northwest quadrant of the Palmetto Ridge
Highschool complex. We know that you are going to the bus barn facility at the
Immokalee site. We would like to put forward to the school system that 4o acres of land in
the Northwest quadrant that we donate it to be part Big Corkscrew Regional.
• Darren Burkett Actually the school district has a partnership with the fields in
Immokalee where the school fields can be used when the schools not using them. I think
that’s very important, we can have those discussions
PUBLIC COMMENT
• Michael Ramsey from our previous conversation, one of the things we like about charter
schools, is that they are doing a wraparound drive thru waiting parking lot, it takes the
traffic off of the rut. They get a lot of complaints about Everglades South of 10th. I don’t
know what schools take into account how to take the traffic off the road and wrap it
around the school during peak hours. That’s a huge issue with us
• Darren Burkett It is an issue, we’re trying to get as many cars off of the road as possible,
you can see that on our website, it’s a safety issue.
COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATION UPDATE
• Update on William’s farm everything is on hold due to arsenic being found on the
property
• Sheriff Department has given information to look at two substations in Golden Gate
Estates and a training site
• In terms with landfill concerns, Lee County is not interested in working with Collier
County
• The interlocal agreement that Collier County has with the school system has expired
AJOURNMENT
• Time adjourned 7:55pm
COLLIER COUNTY
East of 951 Advisory Committee
These minutes were approved by the Board/Chairman on , as presented
(choose one) , or as amended .
Mark Teaters, Chairman