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BCC Minutes 02/17/2026 WFebruary 17, 2026 Page 1 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Naples, Florida, February 17, 2026 STRATEGIC PLANNING BUDGET POLICY WORKSHOP 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: Dan Kowal Burt L. Saunders Chris Hall Rick LoCastro William L. McDaniel, Jr. ALSO PRESENT: Amy Patterson, County Manager Ed Finn, Deputy County Manager Scott Teach, Deputy County Attorney Crystal K. Kinzel, Clerk of the Circuit Court & Comptroller Troy Miller, Communications & Customer Relations Page 1 February 17, 2026 COLLIER COUNTY Board of County Commissioners Community Redevelopment Agency Board (CRAB) Airport Authority STRATEGIC PLANNING & BUDGET POLICY WORKSHOP AGENDA Board of County Commission Chambers Collier County Government Center 3299 Tamiami Trail East, 3rd Floor Naples, FL 34112 February 17, 2026 9:00 AM Commissioner Dan Kowal, District 4 – Chair Commissioner William L. McDaniel, Jr., District 5 – Vice Chair Commissioner Rick LoCastro, District 1 Commissioner Chris Hall, District 2 Commissioner Burt Saunders, District 3 NOTICE: ALL PERSONS WISHING TO SPEAK ON AGENDA ITEMS MUST REGISTER PRIOR TO PRESENTATION OF THE AGENDA ITEM TO BE ADDRESSED. ALL REGISTERED SPEAKERS WILL RECEIVE UP TO THREE MINUTES UNLESS THE TIME IS ADJUSTED BY THE CHAIR. ADDITIONAL MINUTES MAY BE CEDED TO AN IN-PERSON SPEAKER BY OTHER REGISTERED SPEAKERS WHO MUST BE PRESENT AT THE TIME THE SPEAKER IS HEARD. COLLIER COUNTY ORDINANCE NO. 2003- 53 AS AMENDED BY ORDINANCE 2004-05 AND 2007-24, REQUIRES THAT ALL LOBBYISTS SHALL, BEFORE ENGAGING IN ANY LOBBYING ACTIVITIES (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ADDRESSING THE Page 2 February 17, 2026 BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS), REGISTER WITH THE CLERK TO THE BOARD AT THE BOARD MINUTES AND RECORDS DEPARTMENT ALL DIGITAL AUDIO AND VISUAL MATERIALS SUBMITTED BY THE PUBLIC VIA EMAIL LINK OR ATTACHMENT, OR TRANSPORTED ON EXTERNAL DEVICES FOR BROADCASTING AT THE BOARD MEETING, MUST BE IN A COMPATIBLE FORMAT AND RECEIVED BY THE COUNTY MANAGER’S OFFICE BY NOON ON THE DAY PRECEDING THE BOARD MEETING TO BE SCANNED FOR NETWORK SECURITY THREATS. DIGITAL MATERIALS SUBMITTED AFTER THE DEADLINE WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED. IF YOU ARE A PERSON WITH A DISABILITY WHO NEEDS ANY ACCOMMODATION IN ORDER TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS PROCEEDING, YOU ARE ENTITLED, AT NO COST TO YOU, THE PROVISION OF CERTAIN ASSISTANCE. PLEASE CONTACT THE COLLIER COUNTY FACILITIES MANAGEMENT DIVISION LOCATED AT 3335 EAST TAMIAMI TRAIL, SUITE 1, NAPLES, FLORIDA, 34112-5356, (239) 252-8380 1. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE (Public Comments will be heard for each topic) 2. WORKSHOP TOPICS A. STRATEGIC PLANNING B. BUDGET POLICY C. RESORCE X 3. PUBLIC COMMENTS 4. ADJOURN INQUIRIES CONCERNING CHANGES TO THE BOARD’S AGENDA SHOULD BE MADE TO THE COUNTY MANAGER’S OFFICE AT 252-8383. February 17, 2026 Page 2 MS. PATTERSON: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Well, good morning. MS. PATTERSON: Good morning. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: I guess we'll get started with our strategic planning budget policy workshop agenda meeting today. MS. PATTERSON: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: We'll do the Pledge to start this thing off right. Colonel, would you like to lead us? COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yes, sir. (The Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.) CHAIRMAN KOWAL: All righty. MS. PATTERSON: Commissioners, if I may -- and I have to apologize, I'm double-booked starting at 10:30 on a speaking engagement that was scheduled before the workshop. So at 10:30 I'm going to leave my seat, and Trinity will take my seat when she gets here. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Okay. Item #2A STRATEGIC PLANNING MS. PATTERSON: With that, I'm going to hand it over to Mr. Johnson. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Good morning. MR. JOHNSON: Good morning. Good morning, Commissioners. For the record, Christopher Johnson, your director of Corporate and Financial Management Services. I'd like to welcome you here today to the FY '27 Strategic Planning and Budget Policy Workshop. February 17, 2026 Page 3 I'm just going to briefly go over what we're going to be doing today before I turn it over to Mr. Neiman from Strategic Initiatives. Today we're going to discuss the strategic plan. We're going to look at some of the strategic priority projects and updates, we're going to go through a budget policy discussion, we're going to talk about ResourceX insights updates from the past year, and we're going to have a ResourceX presentation from Mr. Fabian, who is sitting up here next to Mr. Neiman at the table. And with that, I will send it over to Mr. Neiman here to start us off with the strategic plan. MR. NEIMAN: Thank you, Chris. MR. JOHNSON: One second here, Mike. I'll pull up your presentation. MR. NEIMAN: Good morning, Commissioners. Mike Neiman, Strategic Initiatives director. I have the pleasure to open up the workshop to discuss this strategic plan. And let's see what the first slide is. Okay. I believe it should be a roadmap of what I intend to cover this morning. We'll begin with the discussion of the strategic plan itself and what it is and where we're at in that strategic plan. Next we'll go over the strategic priority projects and answer some basic questions, what they are and what they are not. We'll have some good-news items of the completed projects this year. And then this year something new that we added. We'll have some updates on some of these projects from our department heads and executive directors. And then we will propose a list of new projects that we asked you guys to consider to add to the list for this year. We met as a group, and the County Manager approved a particular list, but we'll open that up for discussion. And then we'll discuss briefly the next steps that we intend to accomplish this year. February 17, 2026 Page 4 Okay. So these are just an example of the focus areas that we have in our strategic plan: Quality of place, infrastructure and asset management, community development, and responsible governance. These are some basic broad areas of goals and objectives that we seek to achieve each year. And under those you'll see in the next couple slides the objectives. Again, this is just a review that we have under these focus areas. This is just a list of the categories of the strategic priority projects. All the projects will fit under one of these categories; you'll see in a minute. Next. This is the first page of the strategic plan. This is the main strategic plan. This hasn't changed in several years. This, I believe, I asked Chris, I think it's the fourth iteration of this particular version. When we recreated this four years ago, it was meant to be a three- to five-year living document. And so I believe we're starting our fourth year. So we met as a group and with the County Manager's Office, and we believe, after reviewing the values, vision, mission, and the focus areas, that it's still relevant, current, and it aligns with what we and you as a Board have as priorities for this year. You'll see under the focus areas we have these bullet points called objectives. They're meant to be broad-based areas in which all things we do as a county should fit under one of those bullet points. Whether it be projects, policies, anything should relate in some way to those bullet points. Okay. Next page. This is the second page we created a few years ago. This is the priority page that we track on a quarterly and annual basis. Up top you'll see the strategic planning process cycle. And then for last year, after valuable input from the Board, we created this -- two sets of February 17, 2026 Page 5 categories, Category A and Category B. Category A are projects that we anticipate updates on a quarterly basis. It's meaningful; and Category B is a list that we track annually. So every December now we update Category B projects. And they're still very important projects for the County. It's just that some of those updates were more on an annual basis, not quarterly. So we added a second category. Okay. This is our new website, and this is how you find us. Hover over Collier County. You'll see strategic plan as a -- as a tab. Click on that, and you'll see every quarterly update that we have, which includes the plan itself, a table you'll see in a second of the updates of the projects, following into the backup slides that the -- that the leadership submits with their updates. You'll see that, again, on our website every quarter. Okay. And it's hard to see, but this is an example of the update that we publish each quarter. It will have the department that's responsible for the project; it will have the alignment with the strategic plan, one of the focus areas; it will state the priority; and it will briefly describe said priority and, of course, on the far right you'll see the update each quarter. That would be for our Category A projects, and the next slide should be an example of our Category B. Again, that is done every December now. Okay. These are some completed projects that we have to report, all but the one on the right side, that is up for discussion, and I believe -- is Trinity here. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Just walked in. MR. NEIMAN: Just walked in. Trinity has a rationale for putting that on the completed project list, because, obviously, that has not begun. I believe when she gets situated, she'll explain as to why she is asking for that to fall off the list this year. But we have the four. Caxambas, the TIGER grant, the February 17, 2026 Page 6 berm, and the dune restoration planting have all been completed, so those are good-news items, and so those will naturally fall off the list. These are some completed projects for categories that are ongoing, meaning these utility partnerships will be a priority each year. The particular project that falls under those will change year to year potentially. Same goes for the beach renourishment. Again, Parkshore is completed, and we'll have another engagement this year. Now I'd like to ask the department heads and the executive directors to come up to briefly update some of their big projects that they've completed or want to talk about. We'll take them out of order. Okay. They're on their way. We'll go with Mr. DeLony first, Mr. DeLony. MR. DeLONY: Good morning. Brian DeLony, Facilities director. I'm here to give you a brief on the main campus chiller plant and emergency power project. This project was funded through surtax, and it completed design in 2023. It started construction in February 2024 and just completed here in December 2025. The scope of the project was really to modernize our cooling system here on campus and also increase the emergency power and the resilience of this -- of this facility. Within this facility we also have, you know, some of the main FPL power feeds to the campus here as well. The fiscal responsibility, we were able to complete the project 50,000 under the -- underneath the grant guaranteed maximum price from the construction manager, and we were able to save approximately $430,000 by direct purchasing materials. In addition to that, we installed the big tank that you saw, the thermal energy tank, and we got a rebate from FPL of $1.3 million from them. The 1.6 million-gallon thermal energy expansion tank provides chilled water to campus. We chill that thing during the evening when February 17, 2026 Page 7 we're on off-peak hours, and then we run that chilled water through the buildings during the day to cool off the buildings. During the summer, the operations are typically going to be from 9 to 10. And the tank is linked to the exterior lights so you can see the thermal line change in the tank throughout the day. COMMISSIONER HALL: I just thought that was a cool red, white, and blue gesture. MR. DeLONY: We do -- we do typically, on holidays, try to color it toward the holiday as well. Especially like, you know, 4th of July or something like that, we try to color it. There's four -- we installed four chillers on top of the -- on top of the plant. These chillers are new high-efficiency chillers. They're, you know, air-to-water chillers, and they're approximately 500 tons apiece. There's two generators. The two generators are each 2.5 megawatts. And the generators have approximately 26,000 gallons of fuel capacity, which at full bore will allow them to run for three days. So we'll be able to run the plant for a minimum of three days, more than likely four days. Just to kind of put that in perspective, the chillers themselves are enough to chill 700 to 800 homes -- newly-built homes here in South Florida. In addition to that, you know, to make the building a lot more resilient, we also installed two and a half feet of flood-proofing on the building to keep the components and electrical systems within the buildings safe in case there is a flood back here on campus. Any questions? (No response.) MR. DeLONY: The next project is the Sheriff's forensic and evidence building. This project is still under construction. It was initially approved by surtax in 2019 with design completing in 2024 and construction starting in February 2025. It's an approximately 29.4-acre site and consists of three main facilities: The main February 17, 2026 Page 8 forensics evidence facility, a vehicle storage building, and a generator enclosure. The main facility is approximately 95,000 square feet, and it's partially two stories, as you can see from the picture here. It's tilt wall construction. The vehicle storage building, which hasn't been started in this photo yet, is 19,000 square feet, and it's a pre-engineered metal building. And the generator enclosure is tilt wall as well. You can see it to the left in this picture where it's -- the tilt wall's been put up on it. These are some historical pictures from the site. As you can see, the site clearing and grubbing is complete. Underground utilities have been installed partially, the foundation for the main building in the next picture going up, and then you can see on the bottom left the tilt walls going up, and then on the bottom right you can see that the structural steel's going into the building. The building envelope has been mostly completed. The exterior wall waterproofing and insulation's in. The second-floor concrete slab is in. The roof system is in. And now they're really starting on putting in the casing for the windows and doors and doing the interior frame-out and mechanical installations on the interior of the building. Still have substantial amount of work ongoing on the site. We have, you know, a pretty massive lake that's still being excavated. Site paving has been started, and we still have a bevy of site utilities that need to be installed. The main building mechanical and electrical and plumbing is still ongoing, and the interior drywalling will get started in earnest once the building gets dried in. The vehicle storage building foundation is soon to be starting, and the main building glass is going to be -- has been started to be installed, but it will continue to be installed. The project is approximately 45 percent complete. We're February 17, 2026 Page 9 expecting substantial completion in Q1 2027. After the substantial completion, we got a pretty large amount of fixtures and equipment to install in that, and we don't expect to be completed with that until the second quarter in 2027. Any questions? (No response.) MR. McLEAN: Good morning, Commissioners. Matt McLean, your division director for Public Utilities. Happy to be here this morning to give you a quick, brief update on two of our major capital programs. First off, the NESA utility program. Since briefing the Board last summer in July, significant progress continues within the northeast interim facilities program both inside the plant site and outside the plant. There are over 20 current acquisition packages affiliated with this first increment of change, which will provide a six-million-gallon-a-day membrane bioreactor filtration treatment water reclamation facility, a 10 million-gallon-a-day nanofiltration and reverse osmosis water treatment plants, 29 new production wells that are affiliated with this particular project both for raw water supply as well as supplement irrigation quality supply; and over 30 miles of transmission pipelines for water, wastewater, irrigation, and fiber network systems that will be constructed as part of this initial phase. Plant preliminary design reports have been completed. The next year is going to continue along with significant design efforts to complete the plans, the permitting, specifications, and design packages, which are scheduled to bid in the third quarter of Fiscal Year '27. Wellfield plant production is also running parallel with the plant design efforts, both the plant and wellfield construction completion February 17, 2026 Page 10 converge with a planned delivery by the end of Fiscal Year '31 as has been previously reported in the AUIR. The Board can expect presentation for award of additional contract acquisition packages throughout the year, including the program management services, construction engineering and inspections services, the design-build pipeline and offsite utility project which will be running infrastructure along Oil Well Road from Rivergrass to Horse Trials. Supplemental raw water and deep injection well equipping packages. Significant efforts by our financial division, the County's finance team, and our rate consultants have outlined an effective financing strategy to deliver these critical infrastructure projects. Positioning our team to deliver the design, construction, commissioning, and integration of operation in the northeast interim facility program. Our next project that we would like to report on is our central county water reclamation facility project consistent with our prior Board actions, again, the Annual Update and Inventory Report, the efforts of the Golden Gate City master planning and strategic plan infrastructure and asset management focus areas. Give you a quick update on our central county water reclamation facility project. This project is the construction of a four-million-gallon-a-day membrane bioreactor filtration water reclamation facility at our existing plant site within Golden Gate City. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Do you have a slide on that? MR. McLEAN: Next slide. Thank you. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: There we go. MR. McLEAN: Thank you. We will also be retaining one MGD of the existing plant and decommissioning a half MGD of the other plant to make room for the new four MGD membrane bioreactor treatment system. February 17, 2026 Page 11 The construction award, the CEI contract, and our engineering services award will be presented to the Board upcoming this March. And in April, we're expecting to hit notice to proceed, and this particular project is expected to take three years to construct. In parallel with this project at the plant site, we have a second deep injection well which will also be included in the overall program. The construction bids for the deep injection well were just recently opened in February, and it will also be presented to the Board upon the contract assembly later this year. And with that, I'll turn it over to our next presenter, Jay. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Or Trinity. MS. SCOTT: Good morning, Commissioners. Trinity Scott, Transportation Management Services Department head, joined this morning with Jay Ahmad, as well as Marshal Miller. And the first project I'm going to talk about is Vanderbilt Beach Road extension. And while we've talked about a lot of exciting things this morning, I think Vanderbilt Beach Road extension Phase 1 is going to be the most exciting project that we're going to talk about today, not that I'm biased. This project has been in planning for decades, and this board helped push it over the edge to get it -- to get the construction moving on it. We are expecting a late spring opening of the project which I think will be celebrated by many who drive Golden Gate Boulevard and Immokalee Road today. We are finishing the installation of our traffic signals, our signal heads and cabinets, at Wilson, 16th, and 8th, and also working on our water main and force main connections, and we'll be applying that asphalt friction course and finishing Massey Street intersection at Vanderbilt Beach Road. So these are just some aerials of the project today -- actually last week, so... And then we will be quickly going right into Phase 2 of February 17, 2026 Page 12 Vanderbilt Beach Road extension which will extend the project from its current terminus at 16th out to Everglades Boulevard. That project is -- we've received our environmental resource permit from the South Florida Water Management District. We have also received our Big Cypress Basin right-of-way occupancy permit, and our right-of-way acquisition is complete. And right now all we are waiting for is our Army Corps of Engineer permit, our 404 permit. And once we get that, we will finalize our plans and be able to go out to bid for this project as well. This will be two lanes continuing from 16th out to Everglades Boulevard. We'll also be doing a major intersection improvement at Everglades Boulevard as well. And the final project that I want to present on today is one that we talked about two years ago during budget where Mr. Miller and I were talking to the Board about an expanded program, which was our Estates swale maintenance program. And now we're in the second year of that program, the first full year of having all of our equipment in as well as our crews fully staffed. This program allowed us to become more proactive instead of reactive with our maintenance, particularly out in the Golden Gate Estates area that has nearly 700 miles of swales. So this program allows us to go in. Our crews inspect the swales, they clear out any overhanging vegetation, then we identify those deficiencies, get that work scheduled, get the swales re-shaped, re-dug, resodded, and move to the next. So last year in Fiscal Year '24/'25 we were able to have nearly 28 miles of swales inspected and re-shaped, and this was as we were getting new equipment -- our new equipment in, hiring those teams. If you remember back to the budget meeting, we were talking about previously we did two to three miles a year. So in Fiscal Year '24/'25, we did nearly 28 miles. February 17, 2026 Page 13 In '25/'26, to date we have completed 14 miles with an additional 23.5 miles projected before rainy season. The other thing that these crews do is they become our -- what we call our emergency strike force. So when we have heavy rains, instead of taking our crews off of their typical tasks, we utilize these two crews out to that. And I can look at every one of the commissioners sitting up here. We have had these crews in your districts, whether it be off Logan Boulevard, Pine Ridge Estates, Bayshore area, Isles of Capri, and in the Immokalee area, those all just come to mind, where, when we have significant rainfall, we deploy these folks out. So in Fiscal Year '24, they participated in 42 reactive storm-related response tasks, and in this year we had 44, to date, reactive storm tasks. So this program is certainly paying dividends for us. We are hearing back from the community as well in Golden Gate Estates that they are seeing improvements in their overall stormwater. Now, we had a light rainy season last year, but being proactive is certainly -- the residents are certainly seeing that. So with that, unless you have any questions, I'll turn it over to the next presenter. COMMISSIONER HALL: What was the orange? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: To be determined. COMMISSIONER HALL: To be determined? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: There was no -- there was no key for that one. MS. SCOTT: Orange is -- this is an ongoing process where these folks are -- they started in -- this is what we call Area 1 within Golden Gate Estates. We had it broken into four areas. So we have their work projected. What they've done in green is '24/'25, what we anticipate them completing in '25/'26, and then '26 will be the yellow, February 17, 2026 Page 14 and then the orange will come on as we continue to build the program out. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Did you want to you talk about the Immokalee interchange or -- MS. SCOTT: I can talk about the Immokalee interchange. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: I know that was brought up before you walked in. MS. SCOTT: It's as I was walking in, but yes. The Immokalee interchange, as the Commissioners know, the Florida Department of Transportation has assumed that project. It is funded within their work program. We are working very closely with them on the project, but it is their project. At this time, they anticipate it being completed in coordination with the improvements to mainline I-75. So while we are continuing to be coordinating with the Florida Department of Transportation, it is no longer our project. They have -- they have taken it over. And we are receiving regular updates -- we will be receiving regular updates through the MPO board process on that. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Thank you. Troy, I saw on here this says public comment between segments. Do we have any? MR. MILLER: At this point we have no one registered, sir. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: All right. I figured I had a little downtime; I'd check with you. MR. HANRAHAN: Good morning, Commissioners. James Hanrahan, division director for Parks and Recreation. It's just this slide? MR. NEIMAN: Yeah. MR. HANRAHAN: All right. So I just wanted to provide an update for the Immokalee Sports Complex project. We are working very hand in hand with Facilities on this. Parks is overseeing the February 17, 2026 Page 15 light project component of it. We have confirmed with Simmons & Musco that the lights are being manufactured as we speak and will be delivered in April where we will then, at the end of April, begin the light project. We have coordinated that time frame to match up with Brian DeLony and his team, and I'll let him talk about the field update. But we have coordinated it to where the light project will be first. That way we're out of the way, and then the field project can continue. As of right now, the field -- the field project solicitation is currently with Procurement. There have been a lot of Q&A that has gone on with that project. So we're excited about that. There's a lot of interest there. The bids, I believe, close on February 26th. MR. DeLONY: Yep. MR. HANRAHAN: And now I'll let Brian give an update as far as the fields. MR. DeLONY: Brian DeLony, Facilities director. I don't think I have much more of an update than that. We got the field -- we've got the bids due on the 26th, and when we get those, we'll process them and get it before you-all so we can get construction started out there. MR. HANRAHAN: And I do want to provide one last update. We are giving the community on our website as well as posting it at all the parks in Immokalee on the 15th of every month where we are with the project. That way we're making sure that the community is aware, and we're working with all of our sports partners on that, so thank you. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: When are you planning on starting the construction? I heard about lights, but when's the fields going to be done? MR. DeLONY: Yeah. So right now the plan is to start the field construction in mid-August. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: This year? February 17, 2026 Page 16 MR. DeLONY: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. Qualify which year. MR. DeLONY: I understand. MR. FRENCH: Commissioners, one last thing, on -- Jamie French, for the record, your department head for Community Development and Growth Management -- or Growth Management and Community Development. Domestic Animal Services, which we've had a great deal of conversation on in the last year, I'm certain that most of are you aware, we're finishing up -- that would be the Building 3. MR. DeLONY: Yep. MR. FRENCH: And that's scheduled to be reopened. That's your last of the three dog kennels, and then we'll be moving on into both the general administration building. We're looking to relocate the veterinarian lab, and then we would go into the sallyport area as we look at more isolation for both cats and dogs as they come in for recovery as well as for disease control. So you've had quite a few advancements there over the last few years. And we're happy to answer any questions with regards to that. But again, this could not have happened without your continued support and interest of the community, so thank you for that, and certainly upon -- upon completion, we'll certainly have you back out there. And I know you've gotten some invites to the expansion, and I know Commissioner McDaniel and I spoke last week with regards to our purr and play, and it's been getting some positive attention. So look forward to having you there as well. Feel free to stop by any time. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Poor cats. MR. FRENCH: They're living their best life, sir. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Oh, yes, sir, yes, sir. February 17, 2026 Page 17 MR. NEIMAN: While Chris is finding that slide, I just want to go back to the project list and talk about what our intent was when we created this three years ago. You'll see some of the projects on there we talked about this morning, but we also have the aquatics program, the mental health facility, the state veterans' nursing home, and other more internal programs on our Category B list. What it's supposed to be is a cross-section of our divisions. So we didn't want to make it a capital projects list or a Public Utilities list, although they dominate some of the projects. We wanted to kind of share it with the entire county. So you'll see some things that may not pop out as a project that we've talked about a lot here at the Board, but they are important to our internal services divisions. But if you want to go to the proposed new slide or -- and talk about those real quick. Yeah, that's it. Perfect. Thanks, Chris. MR. JOHNSON: No problem. MR. NEIMAN: And this is the list we came up with and Ms. Patterson approved. And you can see we have -- we've come up with, Mike, nine of those, finally. Nine proposed projects; two have two components within it. First you'll see the Facilities Management master and space allocation plan, then next the Parks and Recreation master plan, then fee schedule update. We also had a Tigertail Beach concession repair and enhancements, a broad category of stormwater projects that can include all things related to stormwater. We also put in for the first time our community redevelopment area planning, for Mr. McNees and his group. Next you'll see the Senior Center hardening and the expansion project. And Mr. DeLony suggested the South County Reclamation Facility as well as the integrated Solid Waste Management strategy, and finally, Trinity recommended the Everglades Boulevard project. And I believe that's the list. February 17, 2026 Page 18 So at this point, you know, I think we want to have some input from you-all as the Board as to what you feel about the proposed list, and perhaps if you have any additional projects that you may wish us to add that we can track throughout the year, and we're open for suggestions. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner LoCastro. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Thank you, Chairman. I just wanted to make one clarification on Tigertail. We all know it, but if somebody saw these slides here, they might say, "What happened to the restroom repair?" I mean, a local TV station a couple days ago did a haphazard half-assed report on Tigertail that we've done nothing out there. There's no bathrooms. The beaches are closed. And, you know, that's a whole 'nother argument. But, you know, if somebody saw this slide, they'd be like, concessions repair? Where really the big repair is the -- there's some repairs to the concessions. But just to make this slide maybe the most correct it can be, it should really be Tigertail Beach concession/restroom repair. And really, it's restroom and lift stations. It's a much bigger project. And we've all talked about it. It's just I like when these slides can stand on their own. So if somebody happened to catch one of these, they'd say, you know, "What happened to the restrooms?" And that's exactly what the news media reported, that we don't have it anywhere, we're not doing anything, you know, and all that, and that's -- that was irresponsible reporting. But to make this slide the most correct, concession, restroom, lift station, something. Maybe there's one word that can encapsulate it all. But we've got a multi-million-dollar issue out there that we do have -- we are focused on. So I don't have anything to add. That was just the one thing that jumped out at me for clarity. MR. NEIMAN: Noted. February 17, 2026 Page 19 CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner Saunders. COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: As everybody knows, the federal government, in their budget, has $9 million for the veterans community center, and the Commission, a couple weeks ago, a couple meetings back, indicated that this was a priority. I know Ms. Patterson is working on that in terms of bringing the correct professionals on to finish the design work. So I'd like for that project to be added to the list. The urgency there is that there is $9 million in federal money that I believe will be available to the Board, to the County, this spring, and there are a lot of requirements in terms of utilizing those funds and finishing this completion -- the completion of this project. So if you could add that to the list. MR. NEIMAN: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes, Mr. Chair, thank you. And I guess my question is, are there going to be updates on these heads of project priorities, subcategories, under the stormwater sub -- I mean, Everglades Boulevard's the only road in here that gets any loving, and there's a lot of roads that need loving. And so I was looking at our old strategic plan, or the strategic plan that we have, and we still have quality of place over here which seems to be more -- a little bit more prioritized on quality of place and not necessarily infrastructure. And I'm just -- I just want to have -- maybe at some point get an update, have some discussions with regard to the prioritization. The way I -- the way I looked at it, everything seemed to be alphabetically put on those slides. It went from affordable housing, affordable housing, affordable housing to transportation, which was necessarily way over here. And so I guess my question is, are we going to get further February 17, 2026 Page 20 updates on this as far as specific projects under these headings? MR. NEIMAN: Yeah. That's what the updates are, sir. The updates -- the broad heading of transportation is the category, and in our updates that we publish each quarter or an annual basis, the project will be -- is titled. So the partnership projects will have their project, and that particular project will be updated. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: When will they be -- when will those subcategories be updated? I noticed -- again, I'm hinging on Transportation because you want to have an impact on quality of life. Ask anybody about the traffic. And so I saw the TIGER grant still on the list. I saw several what I perceived to be projects, another one in an earlier slide that was already done. MR. NEIMAN: Right. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: That TIGER grant is already -- it's been completed for, jiminy Christmas, almost a year, and it's still on the list. So when will these things be updated? MR. NEIMAN: Yeah. That is on the proposed list of completion that will fall off. It was completed officially after last year's workshop. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. MR. NEIMAN: Because that's why -- you know, we only update this list after your annual workshop here today. And as far as the categories of alphabetical, it's -- the order we try to make it, it is not hierarchical. We don't have No. 1 priority, No. 2 priority. At your direction a few years ago, we wanted to make sure that we had it to where there's no numbers, there's no -- we're not ranking these in order. These -- as far as transportation, we -- our group -- it's is a very small group. Our group leaves it up to the departments who have that to highlight those projects they wish to add to the list, because we don't get in the weeds with the particular project. But we leave it to Trinity to add the update and the projects February 17, 2026 Page 21 she wishes to add. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: So the Category A and Category B is -- one isn't more important than the other? MR. NEIMAN: No, absolutely not, sir. It's only that -- after doing this for two years, we found out some projects that we put on the list, the quarterly updates weren't as meaningful because there wasn't as much going on each quarter. And so instead of having updates that really were no updates, we thought we'd just have one update for the year, which is in December. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Got it. Thank you. MR. NEIMAN: You're welcome. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: I see no further questions. MR. NEIMAN: So next steps, wrapping that up, our group will continue our ongoing marketing efforts. We're trying to get eyeballs onto these updates. Again, you can find it our website. We are also beginning the process of potentially mapping all these projects for the JIS mapping system. That may be done this calendar year. And next month we will ask the Board to approve the updates that we made today and what we presented. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: I have a technical question. I don't know if anybody's noticed, I mean, our website has changed recently. I don't know if it's just me, because I'm not that great on computers, but has anybody else noticed it's a little harder to navigate than it was before? Because I think this going out to the public is something that, you know, you want to have easy access to when this time comes to navigate these things. But I just -- maybe it's just me, I don't know. I'm just asking, you know, for a friend. I mean, looking for some things that typically were easy to find before, now I'm having little issues with it, so... MS. PATTERSON: We have been going through some website updates, but if there's -- if you have -- if you have some particular February 17, 2026 Page 22 areas, Mr. Mullins, in the back, certainly, he's been in charge of those efforts and can give you some assistance or at least take your feedback for sure. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: All right. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: I'll add something. There's a couple pages that I frequent, you know, just to get information -- and these already -- might have already been resolved, so it's not like yesterday this happened. But those pages then pop up and say, you know, "Page no longer exists" or whatever the thing. It would be great if because it's been put somewhere else, people were just re -- automatically redirected or maybe there was a link or something, because it sort of stops you in your tracks, you know. We know how to then go backwards or whatever. But if I was a citizen, I'd be like, "Why did they take that page down?" And I did get a couple of emails, although I think either John or somebody responded to those citizens -- or actually, it was Mike Bosi. It was a page that citizens frequent to see different projects and stuff, and it's been moved somewhere else, but they still had that sort of link, you know, for the last five years. So something that's more user friendly that maybe invisibly moves them over or just says "Here's the new link," you know -- MS. PATTERSON: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: -- something like that as we make those improvements. MS. PATTERSON: Absolutely. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: All right. MR. JOHNSON: All right, Commissioners. That brings us on to the next item on today's agenda, which is our budget policy discussion. Let me just start with kind of what we'll be going through today in the discussion. And again, this is meant to be a discussion, so anytime we're going through the -- I'm going through the slides, February 17, 2026 Page 23 feel free to stop me, cut me off, ask me questions, whatever you need. We're going to start off with the FY '27 budget timeline followed by a budget funding overview, then economic indicators and the ad valorem history. We're going to go over briefly the priority-based budgeting approach followed by some budget policy discussion, and then finally the next steps before we move onto our final item of the day, which will be ResourceX. So I will get started with this with everybody's favorite slide. So here is your FY '26/'27 Collier County budget timeline. If you see there, it's supposed to be orange. It looks kind of pink on this screen. On the 27th of January, the Board adopted Resolution 2026-37 setting the limits of up to 3 percent for operating increases and up to 5 percent for capital increases. Today, in yellow there, we're doing our strategic plan budget policy workshop. That will be followed by -- once we go through today's workshop and have the discussion, we'll put together our about-50-page document that will be adopted by the Board on March 10th as part of our regular board meeting. That will be your budget policy to kick off FY '27's budget process. That will be followed by June, we will have a workshop where the County Manager will present her budget to the Board. That will be June 18th and 19th, if necessary. Then we receive our certified taxable value on the 1st of July. And then from there, the Board will receive their tentative budget after they adopt the proposed maximum millage rates on -- this year it will be July 14th, 2026. From there, the Property Appraiser will -- will provide property owners within the county with their certified TRIM notices. That will be in August. Typically, it's around August 24th. And then we have our two budget hearings. The tentative schedule for these -- again, this will be -- this will be put in a resolution in March. February 17, 2026 Page 24 But the tentative dates for that are going to be 9/3/2026 for the first hearing and 9/17/2026 for the final public hearing. Any questions on that before I move on? (No response.) Item #2B BUDGET POLICY MR. JOHNSON: All right. We'll start with the budget overview. This slide here depicts the FY 2026 net adopted budget, which is $2.2 billion. The pie here splits it up into different areas. You have your physical environment, which includes your Water/Sewer District, solid waste, stormwater, beach renourishment, and dredging at about 23 percent of the overall budget with about $495 million; followed by your public safety, which you see there, Sheriff, EMS, Code Enforcement, Permitting, and Zoning at 18 percent at $405 million. And then you have a couple of the other large ones; our general governmental services, which includes the other constitutional officers, Facilities, et cetera, at 219-, and Transportation at $154 million. We also have a reserve balance of $728 million, and that's across all funds. Any questions on that one before I move on? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: All right. So sources of the current county government operating revenues for all funds. You can see here ad valorem is our No. 1 revenue source, followed by charges for services. The total revenue is about $1.4 billion for FY '26. This slide kind of further breaks down your ad valorem into the general use. As you can see, the General Fund is by far the majority of ad valorem collected at $496 million, followed by the February 17, 2026 Page 25 Unincorporated Area General Fund at 71.7, Conservation Collier at 34.5, and then the MSTUs -- all of the MSTUs combined at $14.4 million. Where does that money go? If you look here, this slide depicts the General Fund property tax dollars by category. You can see there health, safety, welfare at $292.8 million, followed by discretionary, which, again, if you look at discretionary, is it really discretionary? You do have discretion, but if you look at that category there, you have roads, stormwater, County Attorney, County Manager, budget office, veterans services, parks, et cetera. That's at 134.8 million, and you have mandates at 62 million. Some of the mandates include the BCC, Medicaid payments, Supervisor of Elections, Property Appraiser, Clerk, and Tax Collector, and then we have our debt service at $6.8 million from the General Fund. Again, this is General Fund only. Kind of the same idea here with your Unincorporated Area General Fund. You'll see discretionary funding of 50.5 million; health, safety, welfare at 12.8; and mandates at 8.3. Question on that, Commissioner? COMMISSIONER HALL: I've got a question. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner Hall. COMMISSIONER HALL: Back two or three slides. MR. JOHNSON: Certainly. COMMISSIONER HALL: You say the overall budget's 2.2 billion. MR. JOHNSON: Correct. COMMISSIONER HALL: And then right there the slide you just passed, the total revenue in the source you only say is 1.4 billion. Where's the other come from? MR. JOHNSON: Carryforward. So money already in the till. COMMISSIONER HALL: Okay. February 17, 2026 Page 26 MR. JOHNSON: Does that answer your question? COMMISSIONER HALL: Yes. MR. JOHNSON: Perfect. Any other questions on this slide at all before I move on? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: All right. Seeing none, I'll get into some economic indicators and ad valorem history. This chart here depicts the trend of the CPI. You'll see a little break there because the government was closed down, but we did end up getting December's CPI for the Miami/Fort Lauderdale/West Palm Beach area. It's about 2.6 percent year over year from December '24 to December '25. This slide here is the Florida Price Level Index from 2024. It's the most recent one. What you're seeing here is you're kind of getting an average cost per county. And you can see here that Collier County at 105.54 is the most expensive county in the state. This is another map that just kind of shows it. The dark green is kind of where it's up over 102, and you can see there that kind of the tip of Florida is where cost is the most. Questions on that before I move? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: This is your historical changes in Collier County General Fund taxable value from '07 to '27. As you can see there, we've kind of been on a downward swing since FY '23. Your planning number that's being utilized for this year is 4 percent taxable value increase. The State has an estimate at about 4.1 percent currently. They do those estimating conferences every so often. That's the recent one from January. It's about 4.1 percent is what they're expecting, and that includes your appreciation and net new taxable value. Any questions on that? (No response.) February 17, 2026 Page 27 MR. JOHNSON: All right. Here's your property rate history, tax rate history for the General Fund. As you can see, we had the historic rate of 3.5645 all the way til '24 when we went to rollback at 3.2043, and then FY '25 again at 3.0107, and then last year we adopted the millage-neutral rate at 3.0107. And I will say this is the lowest rate Collier County has had this century. Unincorporated Area General Fund, same kind of flow here. You see the historical rate of 0.8069, reduced in '24 to 0.7280, again in '25 to 0.6844, and then the millage-neutral rate was adopted last year 0.6844. This slide here indicates the taxpayer savings from those historic rates for both the General Fund and the Unincorporated Area General Fund. You'll see Tax Year '23, '24, '25 totaled $256.7 million for the General Fund and the Unincorporated General Fund combined. Based on what we're looking at for budget policy with a 4 percent taxable value increase at millage rate, this year would be an additional $108 million in taxpayer savings over that historic rate -- those historic rates that were in Tax Year 2022. Any questions on that before I move on? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: All right. The priority-based budgeting approach. What is priority-based budgeting? And this is the third year you guys have seen this slide so you're probably well aware. But a strategic approach to budgeting that aligns our financial resources with the strategic priorities of our organization. Today we obviously went through our strategic plan; we identified projects that are our strategic priorities. So what we're doing here is now putting the financial component into the plan by connecting these budget decisions to these strategic goals and objectives. So here's kind of our annual process. We're here kind of at Step 1 today, as I stated, defining the strategic goals and priorities. Then February 17, 2026 Page 28 we'll establish our prioritization criteria, gather budget data from the departments, align the data with our priorities, allocate the budget based on these priorities, and then finally evaluate the effectiveness, which we've seen some of that today as well with the presentations of projects that we've gotten across the finish line. Moving on to my favorite slide that Chris provided me, the priority-based lasagna, if you will. Essentially, here you can see we create our program inventory, which we redo -- every single year we look at our programs and identify important programs and update them. Then we layer in line-item data, again, line-item costs or budgets, layer in the basic program attributes, the impact on the outcomes, and then finally budget proposals. Any questions on the multi-colored lasagna? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: All right. Moving on to our budget policy discussion. Today I just want to briefly talk about control lines, employee compensation, health insurance rates, millage policy, and policy reserves. So we'll start out with the control lines. Establishing budget control lines is a critical step in preparation of a priority-based budget. It establishes the total resources available, prioritization and tradeoffs, and accountability -- provides for accountability and transparency. BCC Resolution 2026-37 establishes a 3 percent operating control line and a 5 percent -- sorry -- capital control line. This means that department operations for FY '27 will be restricted to up to 3 percent increase for current program services and operating transfers, and department capital transfers will be restricted to up to 5 percent increase -- COMMISSIONER HALL: Stop right there if you would, Chris. MR. JOHNSON: -- for FY '27. February 17, 2026 Page 29 Yes, Commissioner. COMMISSIONER HALL: If I remember right, this whole resolution came about just in case the State did something with our revenue -- messing with our revenue with property tax income. Then we wanted just to be safe and limit the 3 percent to 5 percent in case that happened. And I remember saying in that meeting, don't establish that as budget policy. So I don't like that at all, and I'll go on record as saying that. That's -- to me, that is not what policy -- and that is not what we were saying. We were saying we were going to limit that growth to that amount if we needed to with that -- with the State discussion on property tax removal. MR. JOHNSON: Okay. I guess, then, if we want to discuss -- COMMISSIONER HALL: If I'm wrong, chip in. MR. JOHNSON: -- what we would like it to be -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Blatant. MR. JOHNSON: -- because now is the time to talk about this because typically -- CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner McDaniel, would you like to chip in? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. The premise, Commissioner Hall, was the advent of what's going on in Tallahassee. COMMISSIONER HALL: Yeah. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: The rationale that I had -- I can't see you. The rationale -- the rationale that I had was this had never been done before, any direction from this Board. This has always been, since time immemorial, staff driven coming to this Board with their recommendations as to budget policies going forward. So the establishment of these limits was based upon what's going on in Tallahassee. You listen to those folks that are talking February 17, 2026 Page 30 about the elimination of ad valorem on homesteaded properties, and it all sounds fluffy, but when we were in Tallahassee, there's no replacement revenue suggestions coming. So my rationale here with bringing that resolution forward was to establish these as the limits. It doesn't mean everybody goes out and runs and spends the 3 and 5 percent. It establishes, by Board direction, the limits for the upcoming budget policies that we're going to review next month. I think we're going to see these budgetary priorities or the budget initiatives, as it's called by our staff, reflecting our direction that came in in the first part of January. COMMISSIONER HALL: I just -- I agree, and that's the way that I understood it. I just don't want that to be misconstrued as we have permission now establish our budget policy based on that. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well -- and it's important that, I think -- Chris did a pretty good job here -- under the BCC resolution, it says up to, highlighted, 3 percent, up to 5 percent, highlighted, as our direction to our staff to develop the oncoming budgets. Did I miss anything there? MR. JOHNSON: That's correct. That's what the resolution established, so... COMMISSIONER HALL: I agree "up to," but it seems like "up to" usually happens. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well, time will tell. Now the good news, sir, in my perception is we're on top of this. We're going to be -- we have the budget initiatives coming to us next month. That will then be turned back around to them to be then made the budget policy, then we'll have our workshops coming up in Chris' -- MR. JOHNSON: June. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- slide that we all hate that February 17, 2026 Page 31 talks about what we're going to do through September. We'll have plenty of bites at this apple to be able to -- COMMISSIONER HALL: Okay. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- to be able to come in specifically, and with the other Chris' suggestion from ResourceX as to how we can reprioritize some of these revenues and/or expenses. COMMISSIONER HALL: Okay, good. I'm a step and a half away from the cliff now. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Don't jump. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Can I put a rope on him and pull him back a little? MR. JOHNSON: I was going to say, right? Need to get a bungee cord at least. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Can I move back to my position now? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: You can do what you need to, sir. Forgive me. I just like to look at him when I'm talking to him, so... MR. JOHNSON: Any other questions on this slide before I move on? CHAIRMAN KOWAL: I don't see any. MR. JOHNSON: All right. Capital allocations, again, up to 5 percent adjustment to capital maintenance transfers. In the planning model, I've added an additional five million to the maintenance reserve for next year, at least five million. I know, Commissioner McDaniel, at the last meeting you had -- you had kind of discussed if there was, depending on where taxable value hits, potentially increasing that five million. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: That's correct. And, Commissioner Hall, just as a second point to that same resolution -- thank you, Mr. Chair -- as important as establishing February 17, 2026 Page 32 these caps, if you will, there was a -- there was direction from this Board to have staff be working on our capital asset replacement and maintenance. The -- I like "actuarial," but you don't. So the timeline for the useful life of our assets is direly underestimated. We don't have a good idea as to necessarily where we're at. We have a decent idea, but not specifically when things are going to be requisite for repairs and maintenance and so on. So that was the second portion of that resolution, to begin that data input or at least continue on with the data input that was already being -- already being accomplished. COMMISSIONER HALL: Sure. MR. JOHNSON: All right. And speaking of that reserve, here's kind of the history of the reserve. It was established in 2020. You can see in 2024 it was drawn down, and in 2025, to deal with hurricane responses. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Things that we needed to fix. MR. JOHNSON: Exactly, exactly. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Am I seeing a 27, $28 million proposed funding this year? MR. JOHNSON: Correct. If you look at '26, we're at 22.8 currently. What you're seeing there for recommended '27 is adding at least an additional $5 million to pull that reserve, barring any use this year, to $27.8 million. Any questions on this one? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: All right. Employee compensation. Again, earlier you saw the December CPI was 2.6 for the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area, and the Florida Price Level Index indicated Collier County is the highest of all 67 counties within the State. With that -- with that, the pay plan recommendation is a general wage adjustment of 2.5 percent and then a half a percent to be February 17, 2026 Page 33 utilized for pay plan maintenance targeting specific classifications that we may be having trouble hiring and/or retaining. This, again, will have to fall within the overall resolution of 3 percent for operating. So that -- CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And are health benefits included in this compensation slide, or is it a separate slide? MR. JOHNSON: That's the next slide. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. I'll wait. MR. JOHNSON: That's the next one. Any questions on the employee compensation? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: So this slide here shows the County healthcare trend from 2008 to 2025. In green there you'll see our reserve balance, in the darker purple is our revenue, and the kind of light magenta is the plan expense. So as you know, we went years and years without any -- any increases on employee and/or -- I'm sorry, employee and employer healthcare costs. The last three years we have had minor increases to that. And you can see we're getting to a point where we're kind of closing that gap between our total revenue and our plan expense. With that said, I'm going to flip onto this slide which kind of talks about our health insurance reserve. We're required to maintain a reserve of -- looking at next year, it will be about 16.8 million based on our consultant, which is incurred but not reported claims which were 6.9 million last year, plus 60 days, which is 9.9. We tend to be a little more conservative with that. So you'll see a number there that says "recommended minimum reserve, 24 million." And the chart to the -- to the right there is a Monte Carlo simulation which kind of predicts out of -- out of the 10,000 occurrences they put through this model, what we're 99 percent -- what's the 99 percentile? Which is February 17, 2026 Page 34 63 million or an additional 7.2 million. So by increasing that reserve from 16.8 to 24, based on the statistical model, we have 99 percent certainty that we will be able to cover our health insurance costs for next year. So that's why we use the 24 million as a reserve instead of the 16.8, and we've been doing that for years. So with that said, the healthcare cost increase for 2026 is expected, excuse me, to be 6 to 7 percent. So those recommended reserves at 24 million will require approximately a 4.5 million combined increase for the healthcare plan contribution across the board. When you -- this doesn't rule out the potential for a one-time fund-level contribution to stabilize, if necessary, but when you put that contribution and split it between the employer and employee, these are the -- these are the health plan increases you can expect. That bimonthly range is the paycheck for single -- for a single participant, it would be $5.73 to $9.23, and for family, it would be $14.73 to $22.72 per pay period. And you can see the monthly rate there and the annual. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. Well, I would like -- as we're going through this process -- and I've lobbied for this for years, as a potential for an increase for -- to our employees. The County has always been -- not always. The County has been, for a long time, low in its percentage of pickup of the expenses for our employees. And I've never understood that rationale. It cost us FICA, MICA [sic], federal taxation when we pay our people more money, which is nice, but on the same token, we have the capacity at no FICA, MICA, and federal withholdings contribution to offset expenses that are associated with our employees, at least two. I think our -- I think our Tax Collector and our Tax Assessor are closer to the 90 percent of February 17, 2026 Page 35 the capture of the expenses associated with healthcare. So as you're moving through here, I would like to see something in the future giving us a little bit of a rationale as to why we're at 80 percent -- MR. JOHNSON: Okay. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- and what are the benefits associated with the expenses and why are we -- why are we doing that. MR. JOHNSON: And we can put together potentially for the policy meeting or the workshop in June some comparisons so we can discuss it further. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And, again, this -- it's something that I've talked about for quite some time but haven't received an enormous amount of traction on, so... MR. JOHNSON: I can make that happen. I appreciate the comments. Any other questions on healthcare at all before I move on to millages? CHAIRMAN KOWAL: I've kind of got a question or just maybe -- I remember I've spoken to the County Manager and a few other individuals reference to -- I know we were trying to find out if the Sheriff's association was going to start accepting other public-safety workers into their umbrella to maybe lower some of that healthcare cost. Did we ever find out if that is true, or is that a rumor? MS. PATTERSON: Sorry. I'm looking to the back to -- here comes Ian to tell us about that. MR. BARNELL: Good morning. Ian Barnell, chief of staff. I know our HR Department has met with the State sheriff association on that, and I don't have any additional details, but I will get those for you. February 17, 2026 Page 36 CHAIRMAN KOWAL: All right. Thank you. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Let's get him a microphone in the back so we don't have to wait for him to walk up. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: And the idea behind that was that if they do start accepting all public safety within the state of Florida, that gives them a lot more buying power, and it will lower our insurance costs for our public-safety workers that are in that category. MS. PATTERSON: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: So overall I think it will save us some money, if it's possible. MR. JOHNSON: All right. Onto millage rate policy. The millage rate will be calculated with the preliminary taxable value based on the budget requirements within the Board established control lines. Again, those established control lines were set by the Resolution 2026-37. Program adjustment or funding alignment may result in changes to the millage rate. And then program enhancement or expanded request proposals will include the funding source and the incremental millage if supported by ad valorem taxes. So when we bring those expanded requests in June, they will be accompanied with a millage rate associated with it. Any questions on that at all? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: MSTU millage for FY '27, it is recommended that the MSTUs be limited to a millage rate sufficient to cover current budget year operations and any planned capital. A lot of times they're saving for projects that are in out years. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah, just -- and that -- that rate is a historical rate suggestion based upon previous years' expenses, not just the last year. February 17, 2026 Page 37 MR. JOHNSON: You're talking about when they're analyzing it? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. MR. JOHNSON: It's kind of back and forward, depending on what they're doing. A lot of -- a lot of these -- I'll give you an example. Some of the roadway MSTUs, they know every five years they need to do something, so they try to set up and establish the budget over five years so the rate doesn't swing up and down. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: So it's a combination of historical to establish a rate -- MR. JOHNSON: With a plan. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- with a known plan for what, in fact, they have coming forward? MR. JOHNSON: Correct. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And there again, the rationale there is so that we don't just accumulate these huge reserves for excessive -- relatively speaking, excessively high rate for a particular MSTU, and then it's a pot of money that somebody's hunting around looking to spend. MR. JOHNSON: Precisely. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. MR. JOHNSON: Precisely. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Did you write that down, Terri? Precisely. MR. JOHNSON: I said it twice, I think. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes, he did. MR. JOHNSON: All right. General governmental reserves, for the General Fund, the policy that we typically said is 8 percent of operating revenues to 16 percent of operating revenues, that's between 50.8 and $101.6 million for FY '27. The FY '26 budgeted reserve was 79.6 million. So kind of in the middle of that. February 17, 2026 Page 38 Unincorporated General Fund, we target 8 percent of operating expenses, or one month of expenses, which for '27 will be about 7.3 million. For '26, it was 7.1. Other general governmental funds that receive transfers from the General Fund or Unincorporated General Fund will be sized to cover the first month of operations or until that transfer is scheduled from the General Fund. As you know, property taxes don't start coming until November, and we don't really see them until December. So we have two months there where we're waiting on cash flow. Enterprise Funds Reserves, the Collier County Water/Sewer District user fee reserve is established minimally between 5 and 15 percent of revenue with working capital resources set between 45 and 90 days. Solid waste reserves are set between 45 and 90 days based on FY '26 operating expenses. Solid waste is also going to continue to reestablish the solid waste restricted reserve for disaster response. Targeted reserves for GM -- Growth Management and Community Development Building Permit Fee Fund 1013 and Planning Fund 1014, are set to three months and nine months respectively of total budget appropriations. Any questions on reserves? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: With that, I'll get to our next steps. As I stated earlier, what I'll take back from this discussion I will put into that 53-page budget policy document. And from there, I'll be back in front of you on March 10th at your regular scheduled board meeting to adopt the formal budget policy. With that, I'll take any additional questions before we move on. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: I don't see any at this time. Thank you. February 17, 2026 Page 39 Item #2C ResourseX MR. JOHNSON: Okay. Well, the next step will be to go to ResourceX. We have kind of two parts to this. There's a part where I'll be presenting some insight updates and then Mr. Fabian will be -- will have a presentation as well. Do we want to take a break before that? CHAIRMAN KOWAL: All right. Let's take 10 minutes. So be back here at 21. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: 10:21 or 11:21? CHAIRMAN KOWAL: 10:21. Ten-minute break. (A recess was had from 10:11 a.m. to 10:21 a.m.) (Trinity Scott is now filling in for Amy Patterson.) MS. SCOTT: Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Thank you, Trinity. Before we get started, I think there's an individual from Leadership Collier that wanted to do a photo with the Commissioners. COMMISSIONER HALL: Yes, come on up. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: So come on up. Do you have somebody to take the photo? MS. KINZEL: I'll take it. This is part of the leadership engagement with the Chamber, and so Michelle is visiting today to see how government works. So, thank you, Commissioners. This will go down in history. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: All right. Thank you. All right. Back to business at hand. MR. JOHNSON: All right, Commissioners, that brings us on to our ResourceX insights, that will be followed by a presentation from February 17, 2026 Page 40 Mr. Fabian. I did throw a packet up on your -- on your -- front of your computers there. I have about 40-some slides. I'm not going to go through them all, but I wanted to give them to you guys so you can take a look at them. And if there's anything you want me to discuss further, I can go ahead and do that. So just starting off, I just wanted to kind of remind everyone what types of insights we have that we're looking at, so I'll just go through this list real quick. We have in-sourcing insights, which are consolidating services; we have revenue generating insights, which are implementing or increasing fees for service to ensure full cost recovery; we have grant opportunity insights which leverage state, federal, and local programs to offset costs; we have efficiency insights which utilize technology, reorganize service delivery to reduce costs; and we have partnership insights which partner with public non-profit or private sectors to share or transfer service responsibility. This slide here is -- my kind of the first -- the first summary of insights. Now, what you're going to see on here are insights that have been implemented and that I can -- or we can see a dollar amount to. We do have some insights that we're not able to put a direct dollar amount to, and you'll see those later on in the presentation. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: It's okay for you to refer to this in a singular. We like the fact that you own this. So "I" is an okay thing. MR. JOHNSON: All right. All right. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Carry on. MR. JOHNSON: Thank you, Commissioner. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: So, I mean, you're telling us there basically we saved 23 million? MR. JOHNSON: $23 million. And again, some of this is also February 17, 2026 Page 41 not just a one-time savings. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah. MR. JOHNSON: And we can go through some of those as well. So here's the list here. You see everything from what Mr. DeLony had talked about earlier, thermal energy storage, all the way down to new revenues for affordable housing monitoring. I'm going to go through about four or five of these, if that's all right, and if there's any other ones you guys want me to talk about, feel free to chime in. The first one here, again, is our Facilities and Redevelopment, Facilities Management division; centralized utilities program. And this is the thermal energy storage tank which was installed to produce and store chilled water during off-peak hours and supply the campus HVAC. As Mr. DeLony stated, we received $1.3 million in FPL rebates for this. What he didn't say was that this also is going to have estimated savings of $360,000 a year on our electric bills moving forward. And I know we talked about this briefly as well. This is kind in-sourcing efficiency. The consolidation of 10 individual website service contracts under one service package, and this started in FY '25. The approximate savings of this is about $150,000 a year. Another efficiency here coming from our Solid and Hazardous Waste department is they renegotiated a contract -- or resolicited a contract for hazardous material disposal to provide better pricing. In FY '25, this saved $376,000, and it's expected to do that again this year. Another in-sourcing, this is from our libraries division. They looked at consolidating services to reduce digital contact e-book resource vendors. So by consolidating vendors, they were able to eliminate one of the vendors and still provide the services, saving the February 17, 2026 Page 42 libraries about $300,000 per year. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: One of the things I'll just say we didn't do a great job advertising this. I think all of us got a few emails from some citizens who -- you know, the way it sort of came across, maybe even from employees in the library, is, "Oh, yeah, we don't have that anymore," where if you look at it here, a deep dive was done into use. So it's great if Mary Johnson used it every single day and now she can't anymore, but we have to look at the greater good. And then also, there was some -- it was more of some consolidation. So, you know -- and I guess that's a good warning sort of across the board that some of these things that changed or save -- and it's really for Mr. Fabian to work with the staff to make sure that we actually capture the good-news story and not that we're slicing and dicing, as we always get accused of when not -- you know, not the case. So this is one that -- you know, when I got the details from the library, because I was trying to speak eloquently to citizens and separate rumor from fact, it made perfect sense. It just didn't seem like the selling of it or the explanation, is probably a better word, was spot on. So just some feedback. MR. JOHNSON: No. Appreciate the feedback, appreciate the feedback. Here you have, again, our Facilities Redevelopment department, a grant opportunity to purchase five lots on Bay Street. That was a CDBG grant of $1.4 million. Emergency Medical Services, Station 74, we received appropriation of $3.6 million for that project. EMS equipment and maintenance, we purchased new fleet equipment for ambulances for EMS. The grant was about $2.7 million for that. And then here we have landscape beautification. Again, these February 17, 2026 Page 43 grants and also partnerships with Naples Botanical Gardens to save valuable resources, along with FDOT grants, in FY '25 resulted in a savings or a grant, if you will, of $1.4 million, about, and we're expecting 3.9 million in FY '26. Any questions on any of those before I move on to the other insights? And, again, there's a whole bunch more in there. If you guys want to go through them, I can -- I can touch on any of them if anyone's interested. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: You brought it up, and I'm just going to ask. I was pinged the other day at a town hall with regard to the delay in the opening of Station 74. Is there any news on that as to why it's the third quarter this year? MR. JOHNSON: I am going to look behind me and phone a friend. It looks like Mr. DeLony's on his way up. MR. DeLONY: Brian DeLony, Facilities Management. We have various amount of issues out there. One of the main things is the control panel for the fire pump out there. Also, we're working through some permit closeout as well and getting the repeater there for Verizon for cell phone service. But there's a -- there's a variety of reasons why that's been delayed in opening. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Who was in charge of that construction? MR. DeLONY: Facilities is in charge of that construction, sir. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. MR. JOHNSON: Any further questions on any of these, Commissioners, before I move on to the others? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: All right. So here's a list of additional implemented and in-process insights. I'm going to go over a couple of these as well, and again, if we have any other -- any others you February 17, 2026 Page 44 want to take a look at, I can go through them individually. First off, I wanted to start with the AAA bond rating. Maintaining the highest possible credit rating without compromising the delivery of services, this allows the County to borrow at lower interest rates, saving millions in financing costs. And kind of on this note, at your next board meeting you're going to be seeing a user rate study from Utilities that was -- that was endorsed by the Finance Committee. I just wanted to give you a heads-up on that because, obviously, having -- having rates supporting our utilities, obviously helps with our bond rating. So maintaining those AAA ratings there, and again, our AA1 rating with tourist development bonds is very valuable to the County and the County's residents. Another one here -- and Trinity might have briefly talked about this. But grant opportunities for transportation. We're -- they're always applying for state and federal grants to help with our transportation network. The County is looking to save 2.9 million on Pine Ridge Road if awarded and up to 3.1 for Santa Barbara. The County's also applying for a $40 million or 50 percent of the anticipated $80 million cost for the Immokalee/Livingston flyover. It is anticipated that the actual award would be consistent with historical award levels, though, and likely not exceed $20 million. But those are -- those are big-dollar potential grants for our transportation network. And here is a minor one. True to my heart, though, the Board adopted a budget amendment policy, updated the budget amendment policy with Florida statutes, designating a budget officer to provide administrative authority, and we included a new reporting mechanism. So now all the budget amendments we do come before the Board. Finally, I have another one from Facilities here. Facilities February 17, 2026 Page 45 working on converting existing LED light fixtures, using in-house maintenance staff. These -- they've done 15 buildings last year, and these fixtures save an average of $50 per fixture per year. So you can see exponential savings there as we go through and kind of convert our -- I guess it would be our fluorescents to LEDs. Any questions on any of these insights? Anything else you guys want to see before I turn it over to Mr. Fabian? CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner Hall. COMMISSIONER HALL: What do you think the percentage is -- when I think about these insights, I'm looking at alternative ways of -- you know, it's focusing on the income side of the statement. But some of them is efficiencies and doing things smarter, like this one right here. What is the percentage of things that we've saved doing things more efficient versus grants, alternate ways of income? MR. JOHNSON: I don't have that number in front of me, but if I had -- COMMISSIONER HALL: Go to that little chart there. MR. JOHNSON: If I had to guess, if we go to here, I mean -- I mean, there's -- it looks like it's 25, 33 percent of those are efficiencies on this chart. I can go to the first chart if you'd like as well. COMMISSIONER HALL: No. I mean, I love the efficiency part, and I love the other things, you know, that we've looked for alternate ways of funding, you know, counting grants, counting public-private partnerships, you know, increasing fees and stuff. But I've been seeing the income side for three years. I'm ready to see the other side. MR. JOHNSON: And I will say that was a large focus of last year. That's why you see a lot of those that are efficiencies. And it's kind of a -- it's a cultural change that we've taken to have people looking at these, looking at them, bringing them forward to you guys February 17, 2026 Page 46 on a regular basis. So I think -- I'm just looking at it moving forward. I think we're going to see -- see this effort to continue. It's become part of our culture, so... COMMISSIONER HALL: I like it. MR. JOHNSON: Any other questions on this before I turn it over to Chris? (No response.) MR. JOHNSON: All right. Mr. Fabian. MR. FABIAN: Okay. Well, hello, everyone. Thanks for having me. Chris Fabian from Tyler Technologies/ResourceX. This is my third year being in front of you, and it is a tremendous privilege to be here talking about priority-based budgeting, the progress you've made, and what you are going to be working on for the year ahead. I wanted to tack onto something that Chris Johnson just said about the culture shift. We get a chance to work with large organizations across this country, state government these days as well as local governments, and the culture change aspect is probably not talked about enough. So we talk about the data. We put the data together. We can put together recommendations all day long, but at the end of the day this organization needs to be able to adopt this mentality and this framework of constantly aligning resources with priorities, always looking for entrepreneurial opportunistic ways to save money and/or offset costs. And you start to see this evidence, just like Chris Johnson has been mentioning, and that is critical before I even get into some of the fun tools that we'll be working with this year. So just some opening comments. This year what we'll be working on -- I have a few things to show you. I have three tools that I want to demonstrate. Some pull together the work that you've done and illustrate it in new ways and visualize. Others -- others of the tools will show new ways to February 17, 2026 Page 47 analyze and take action on the recommendations from our ResourceX efforts thus far. The very first tool is called present PBB. And as Mike started off our presentation today talking about strategic plan goals and objectivities, one of the keys to priority-based budgeting is this alignment with the priorities that we're striving to achieve. I'll go a little bit -- so we can see this a little bit clearer here. So the idea is you have a budget. Commissioner Hall, you were asking questions earlier about what is the size of that budget? Can we go back four slides. We're trying to keep these numbers in our minds of what is the overall spend and investment in this county. And that's what's difficult about the budget is it's hard enough to keep the numbers in your mind let alone what programs you're funding, the departments they belong to and, ultimately, the outcomes that you're keeping front and center, the priorities that you're striving to achieve. Well, this particular tool allows us to see the overall county budget, that is to say the departments and programs and spend that has been evaluated in priority-based budgeting. This is the budget overall. We can see departments, as I'm hovering over from Solid and Hazard Waste Management to Parks and Recreation the programs within those department budgets, the larger the box, the larger the budget. The darker the color the more that that department offers programs that impact your priorities to a greater degree. So this is one of the key visualizations to be able to understand that at any given time what are we funding that aligns with the priorities that we're striving to achieve? I'll dive into a few of these just to be able to show. Here, if we look at our Parks and Recreation division, we can start to see all of the programs, the individual services that you are funding within the Parks and Recreation division and their alignment with strategic plan February 17, 2026 Page 48 objectives. We have parks maintenance; we have our sports and events complex, management operations; we have recreation programming. And if I dive into any of these in particular, we can see the detail on what that program is all about. So what are we offering? What is that cost breakdown, personnel versus non-personnel, any cost recovery, any fees for service or charges for service that help offset the costs of delivering that service overall and, ultimately, how did this program score relative to countywide priorities as well as those specific attributes, other reasons why we provide programs in government such as degree of mandate, change in demand, population served, and so on and so forth? So this is a nice capability to be able to see that budget perhaps in a different way than what we've been able to see before across departments, across priorities, and we can dive as well into the internal governance functions that help you provide and deliver fiscal stewardship and responsible government overall. So these are those internal programs that help with governance functions. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Sir? CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Yes. THE WITNESS: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Who's the keeper of this secret? Does our staff have this divisionally across the board, or are you the keeper of this secret? MR. FABIAN: Yes. MR. JOHNSON: This is -- this is new at the moment, so we have not implemented it yet. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. MR. JOHNSON: Chris is kind of giving us the overview of it at this point. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. Because this is important. This is important on a -- on a departmental level, on the February 17, 2026 Page 49 divisional level for our staff to be able to -- actually, you know, you talk about a culture shift. This is -- this is the beginning -- this is the -- this is the way this happens. MR. FABIAN: Thank you for your comments, Commissioner. So this is intended to be the kickoff to this third year together, and so this is the introduction of the new analytics that are coming to Collier County for your work in priority-based budgeting. This is the first of three that I'll show. We'll get -- sometimes when we've been in the middle of discussions -- and I've been in this boardroom listening to presentations perhaps from animal services -- I just want to know what programs do we offer if I type in something around animal services? And we can start to see a highlight, oh, of everything we do. Here we go. It's in Domestic Animal Services division, and if I click into that department, I can actually start to see what are some of those programs that have a specific call-out to our care of animals overall. So there are some nice advanced search features to quickly sleuth your way through the lasagna, as Chris Johnson talked about, to get to the meat of what you're offering overall. I'll demonstrate one other item here, and that is in the strategic overview before we go into the next tool. You'll remember in some of my slides from years past we used to demonstrate a cost versus impact graphic, and it had 16 categories. And the reason we scored all these programs is because as we evaluate alignment across the County you want to know what are the programs that have the greatest degree of alignment with your strategic plan priorities, and you also want to know what programs have less alignment overall. And why you want to know that is because we want to start to understand where you want to look at opportunities for optimization, for partnerships, for revenue offset. You want to be as precise as February 17, 2026 Page 50 possible with your use of the scarce general government resources that you have and ensure that those are always going to fund those programs that are of the highest alignment. So this is a different more interactive portrayal of that chart. Same idea. We have our high-impact programs and -- divided by low cost and high cost, and we have our lower impact programs by high cost and low cost. And we can look at these across the entire County. We can drill into any of the departments. We can look at any of the departments with a subset of any particular fund. Just to look at building plan inspection and review programs here, we start to see their inspection plan review programs that are scoring really highly. That means they're aligned with the scoring criteria. They deliver on the priorities you're striving to accomplish; therefore, high impact, high alignment. Building permit processing. We have contractor licensing. And on the high impact/lower cost some of our basic administrative overhead. As you move down, we see financial and systems management. We see records management, the information desk, digital conversions. Again, these are not irrelevant programs. They are just, all things considered, less aligned compared to everything else that you have to be able to do. And the reason this was really important to be able to categorize these programs is because that's how we pattern-matched your database of programs with our library of case studies to develop the first insights. If you remember the first insights, that was that first report that we came back with in Year 1 to say, according to everything that we've just seen, we've now compared your jurisdiction to other organizations to come back with, "Here are potential cost savings and revenue-generating options to be able to look at." And so that brings me to the next dashboard. Commissioner February 17, 2026 Page 51 Hall, Commissioner McDaniel, Commissioner LoCastro, all commissioners, Commissioner Saunders, Commissioner Kowal, you've all asked for a way to track these insights. Chris Johnson just demonstrated a moment ago all of the current insights that you've either executed or are still on the table for implementation. Our report had this large target number. This number continues to get updated. Currently, approximately 82 million to 120 million worth of insights. If you add up all of the conservative estimates on every single insight in that report, this is the overall value. We've heard about what how does that break down from a cost-savings perspective and a revenue-generating perspective? So we've heard you: That is one of the things that really matters. And I would say thanks to the work in Collier County, other jurisdictions are benefiting from seeing this breakdown of cost recovery versus alternative revenue generation. And I'll get into this program process overlap here in just a moment as well, because that was some of the culmination of last year's work, which was a program process mapping for every program across the county government. As I do start to scroll down into overall savings targets, commitments, what has been achieved, what's still on the table, we are offering, and you'll have at your disposal in these tools, a way to see which departments are these coming from? So we can start to understand the insights that have been implemented and those that are still on the table. What of the insights are more upcoming? They have a target date that has been identified for implementation and execution. Here as we see some of the library division opportunities that we were just talking about or some in the Tourism Development Council or some in the County Manager's operation, we have your upcoming February 17, 2026 Page 52 implementations of those insights overall. And as I toggle over one more into this insight inventory, if you will, these are the insights that Chris just walked us through in addition to those that have been presented in the past that have been implemented. So we can see Transportation operations, county sewer -- Water and Sewer district, Parks and Recreation, our landscaping opportunities. I had a couple that, as we were just talking through, I just wanted to check. So if you wanted to look for what was Chris talking about in that insight that had something to do with Facilities Management and that thermal concept, if we click in, we can start to see what was that insight? What were some of the key dates that we had on the table? This is definitely going to be important to keep -- to keep track of. You don't want to lose track of these ideas. I would say another reason we created this dashboard and this insight management system -- you might all remember; I certainly do. I was working in local government in the Great Recession in 2008, and we went through a lot of work in the county government where I worked to identify savings opportunities to balance the budget in the middle of the Great Recession. Well, you fast forward 20 years, and who has that report? Are you fishing for an old PowerPoint of great ideas that we had in 2008? How can we track that was implemented, maybe what didn't get implemented, why an insight didn't get implemented, what were some of the reasons, and perhaps those ideas are still valid two, three, five years from now, so you'll always have this inventory of insights that you've generated. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner LoCastro has a question. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah. I've got just a couple questions, statements, what have you. So this is awesome. This is great for us and staff to really drill February 17, 2026 Page 53 down, but I can -- and maybe it's, like, your final slide, and maybe I haven't seen it yet, but when I have town hall meetings, I always make this a topic to talk about, you know, the reason we all felt comfortable keeping the millage rate neutral is because we know -- we're not stupid. We know we have unfunded expenses and things like that, but, you know, we felt that there's a real cost savings that would help balance that out and justify us being millage neutral rather than just continuing to dump tax on top of citizens and just spending more money, you know, haphazardly. But I guess what would help me in a nutshell -- and maybe the other commissioners as well who have town hall meetings and whatnot, that one slide that -- it seemed to imply we've saved about 23 million so far, give or take. And like you say, there's some wiggle room in there because some of it is continued savings over time, so that number gets bigger. But some summary slide at the end that says we've identified 124 million, or whatever, 80 -- between 86 and 124, we've identified that. We pulled the trigger on 23 million. We're about to pull the trigger on another 46 million, you know, with Commissioner approval. Something that really summarizes all of this that is a one -- a one-page snapshot that just -- and realize -- you know, I realize at times the numbers can be a bit fluid, but just some -- you know, when I have a town hall meeting this is one of a dozen different things I talk about. I'm not going to do a 45-minute deep dive on ResourceX, but I'd like to give some really quick takeaways or even in my newsletter to educate people that we're really trying hard here. We're trying to keep taxes low because we're trying to find the savings. We brought you-all in. We've got Chris Johnson and the rest of the team working hard. I'd love to just see that scorecard or that report card that can be, February 17, 2026 Page 54 you know, updated on a continual basis that's a one-page snapshot saying, you know, what we've done, what we are definitely about to do, not projected or whatever, but we are about to implement, and then future possibilities, or whatever the right terminology is that would be valuable. Like, you know, you look at this and you say, achievable savings, okay, but -- you know, so what have we achieved? And I'm sure -- what I think is all the numbers are here, but something that was -- would be sort of like a one-page snapshot that we could all help advertise, because we've been talking about sort of the ResourceX potential and all that to, sort of, our outside citizens. But I'd like to put a little bit of meat on the bone now that we actually have some numbers, we've done some things, we've implemented some things. So anything that you could put together that either Chris could send us that would just be something basic, I bet we would all cut and paste it in our newsletters and then write a little story. And it's good education for citizens because when we left the millage rate neutral, sometimes we got beat up by citizens that said, "Stupid commissioners. I mean, that's why our roads never get fixed and nothing ever gets done." False, fake news, you know, or, "Oh, they're supposed to save all this money. They haven't done a thing, blah, blah, blah." False, fake news, you know, but we need to be able to back it up with things, more than just words. And so these kind of -- I just had a huge town hall meeting where I talked about this, but I didn't really have the numbers at my fingertips. I knew it was more than 10 bucks that we saved, but, you know, I was a little more cryptic. Trinity was there, but we got -- we got the message across. But, you know, as you develop -- this is awesome for us, you know. But to be able to summarize all this into something would be helpful. February 17, 2026 Page 55 MR. FABIAN: Very much appreciate your comments. And what I'm pointing us to -- I need to clean these -- make sure these are clean and precise and do reflect the most updated information on the insights. But this is your savings commitments as we move from what's possible, the overall big tally, to what's on the table, what's been realized, and what's still committed in the pipeline. Again, I need to make sure that these are precise, so let's not hang our hats explicitly on these numbers but -- we were just updating these as of last week -- and the ability to say, "What do we have on the table this fiscal year?" if we were at October 1st, fiscal start. What about year to date? What about the last 90 days? What have you done for me lately? What about all time in the PBB effort? COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Right. MR. FABIAN: So that -- and the opportunity to slice and dice to Commissioner Hall's point, if we want to look into these in further detail and say, you know, the revenue -- alternative revenue solutions are great. What about any of the cost savings that we've been working on as well? So we can ensure that when we're targeting any of these insights we know the difference between the cost savings and the alternative revenue, because that's important to be able to communicate. So point, I hear you, Commissioner, and as we work with your staff and your team, we'll talk about ways to ensure that you have the screenshot, the story behind it, the update, because we're just tracking right along with the insights as Chris presented and giving you an insight management tool. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: I mean, you can tell the numbers are all here. Maybe just something that's simplified, you know, for us a bit more rather than just a bunch of screenshots that have to be sort of pieced together -- February 17, 2026 Page 56 MR. FABIAN: Yeah. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: -- would help us get the word out a little easier and for citizens to digest it a bit better and appreciate all that's being done, you know, at the County that, you know, we're not just sort of guessing. MR. FABIAN: It's enormous. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner McDaniel, you had a question? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I do. And I'm assuming that this is cumulative. MR. FABIAN: Yes, that's correct. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: So it's going back, grabbing what's already been effectuated, and then it carries forward to ultimate savings in cost-cutting that we've effectuated. MR. FABIAN: That's true. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: It's important, too, for us to know and -- because I'm an old accountant. I'm a zero-based budget guy, been that way. Priority-based budgeting is a similar term but different. I mean, we've done well on establishing our priorities. Now, this is the impact of the -- of the establishment of those priorities. MR. FABIAN: Amen, yeah. As I listen to your reflections, both of you commissioners, the need to be accountable and specific to not just say, "Hey, we believe in zero-based budgeting, we believe in priority-based budgeting, but look what we've done." These are the receipts, if you will, to be able to bring back to the table. Just to show you a few more items here. I know of late we've had discussions around the tourism development council. As I click into any of these, we see some of those insights that are on the table. And you can jump to any of those programs specifically to see what February 17, 2026 Page 57 do we know about these programs? What were the total costs? Any of the FTE support? How did it score? And as we scroll down, we start to see some important information. Here are some of those program insights that we brought back in that Year 1 report. So there's many insights on the table. And this illustrates a key point. And, Commissioner Hall, you just brought this up just a moment ago. For any given program, in order to optimize resources, you could fund it differently, which would bring in different revenue allowing you to offset the General Fund subsidization of that program. You could partner. You could share the cost. If not, offload the cost to somebody else and ensure that the job gets done, but it's just not a part of the County funds. You can reduce the program. You can find a program efficiency. Chris Johnson had a slide around the program insights of all the different ways that lead to the optimization of resources, and that's what you have for every specific program. If I dive into any of these in particular, I can see here for the North Carolina Visitors Bureau, what was the insight that was successfully implemented? What was the financial impact for that organization? Again, this was in that original report, but it wasn't actionable in a way that we believe that this is going to help the organization. And furthermore, we can move to commit an insight to your savings plan, augment it, give it an implementation date, talk about some of those milestones, who's going to be responsible, as well as create -- I mean, this is the era where we have these tools at our fingertips. It's all well and good that this was implemented in North Carolina. What would it look like in Collier County? So we can develop an AI reinterpretation of the implementation of this particular insight and be able to understand, give us a report. What do they actually do if there was detail on that case study? How February 17, 2026 Page 58 would Collier County actually replicate these steps to be able to implement it? What were some of the potential challenges they faced? And resources needed. Sometimes you need to spend money to save money. So this is complete with the implementation plan. Also, success metrics. How do we get a report back this actually worked? And some realism on the implementation plan. Some are short order. Some are in this case a 12- to 18-month turnaround. And I know as Chris Johnson and I have talked, as we brought insights to the table, there are quicker hitters, if you will, for insights that can be implemented versus others that might take some time, and we also want to be clear about that. I'm going to come back to this here in just a -- just a moment. But I also want to show we also have the ability to analysis. So in this case, I think you all are aware there was a request made to ResourceX to take a look at some of the opportunities for the tourism development council. We wrote a memo on the subject to talk about from a textbook priority-based budgeting perspective, here's what we would consider, and here's part of the recommendation that we would have in mind. In just a moment, in the third tool, I'm going to show you how we are developing those. That has been a great way to use us is as an advisor for these various resource optimizations concepts that do come up. So that's an example of where those memos are housed as well within your insights and analytics dashboard. One more item I want to show here. I did mention last year we did work on program process overlaps, program process mapping. So the idea for any given program is that to deliver that service or program to your community or internally within your local government, any program has process steps that are -- that staff take to deliver the service overall. Examples could include data collection reporting. It could February 17, 2026 Page 59 include regulatory compliance. It could include stakeholder engagement. It could include records management. I'll click into this here in just a moment. And what becomes really enticing as an opportunity for local government is when you look at those program process steps across all departments, you start to see where there is the potential, at least, for redundancy or overlap. So that was a key part of last year's work. As I click into Records Management, just as an example, here's a program where if you look at Medicaid, county billing, building permit processing, Immokalee CRA administration, operations support in the County Manager's Office, and on and on, it's not a surprise that there's records management tasks taking place in all of these particular programs, but to be able to pinpoint it and say these are the programs that have some aspect of records management, do when we a technology that we can look at? Does it make sense to look at centralization? Is it just fine to be decentralized? Is it just as effective and efficient? So it's not to cast this as right or wrong. It's to shed light on this is a big opportunity. And we could start to move forward and track a potential consolidation. Again, this tool is meant to lead from potential to execution. So for any of the opportunities identified, what type of opportunity is this: A consolidation candidate? Is it not feasible? What programs are we going to take a look at? What department will take the lead? What are some of those implementation steps that we can have on the table? So we want to accelerate the movement from insights and program process overlaps to actual savings that are fulfilled and reaped in the budget. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner LoCastro has a question. February 17, 2026 Page 60 COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Thank you, Chairman. So you just talked about how you can help with tourism analysis assistance recommendations. This is a little bit of a side note. But a couple of months ago, maybe even more, unanimously all the commissioners agreed that we wanted to do a deep dive into the sports complex and have what we called an operational review, customer service analysis, you know. I mean, if we're going to be investing more money in the sports complex, and we just finished very successful FC Naples season, it's probably a good idea to take a look at, "Hey, how did we do? Where could we do better?" and that sort of thing. We weren't directive saying, "Oh, ResourceX should do it," but you're sort of in that business. You've got plenty on your plate already. I just talked with -- I wish Amy was still here. But I talked with her last week about it and said, you know, maybe it starts with just the County staff doing a preliminary peel-back, and then, you know, at some point pulling you forward. Has than gotten to you yet, anything with the sports complex or not? And if you say no, it's not a slam on anybody because we're just -- we're adding more things in as we're getting more excited about the savings and some of the customer service things that we're analyzing. I was just curious, with you at the podium, if it's something that has been talked with you about yet. MR. FABIAN: Not at the sports complex. Numerous other examples have come forth. And please do -- I'll take it as an action item to follow up with staff. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: And it might be -- you know, Mr. French and his team have already done kind of a deep dive. But, you know, I had made the motion that I would just like to see something with some meat on the bone, more formal. You know, we're about to get into a new soccer season here in a month, and it February 17, 2026 Page 61 doesn't mean we need a report, you know, in the next 10 days, but simultaneously, while we're continuing to do big things at the sports complex, you know, getting a similar report card as you're giving us on the library and tourism and transportation and all that, it sort of is that -- it's that same flavor. So I was just curious if you'd been pulled in yet. Maybe it's still with the County staff and their -- Amy said that they were starting to organize themselves and then maybe make at some point see if you could be helpful, or maybe you wouldn't be needed maybe. They're going to dovetail on similar things you're doing, but we're going to keep it in-house. So I just -- I think we all agree that we wanted some sort of report card feedback of, you know, how we did this past year with revenue generation and customer service. And those customers are -- FC Naples is a big customer, a lot of other people who use the complex. You know, did we schedule things properly? Did we do safety and security properly? And if we did, is there room for improvement? Are there cost savings? Is there more money that, you know, could be invested to make a better experience for our fans? It was all those things. So we'll wait to hear progress from our County Manager and see who she's energized to get that rolling. MR. FABIAN: Sounds great. Here, I was just pulling up some of the sports complex programs. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah. See, you've got a lot of stuff and maybe -- I don't want to do the staff's homework for them, but maybe they're going to be diving into this and doing sort of a spin-off of what you're doing in some other areas. MR. FABIAN: Awesome. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Did you have something to add, Jamie? I see you sort of -- February 17, 2026 Page 62 CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Hovering. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: -- walking to the podium. You can give us a short version, but just wanted to see if -- you know... MR. FRENCH: Just a very short version. The recipe is still in the pot. We do have a QR code posted. We are assessing customer service data. We have selected a management vendor, and we're currently going back and looking at that annual commitment from Sports Facilities Management. Mr. Finn and I actually were in the office yesterday, and we were going through that just to make sure that we bring back a good narrative and a good place to go forward for staff and for this Board to review and consider and give us direction. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. My question -- it's for you. My question is a little more global, not specifically about any one particular program. But you've been pretty good about talking about effectuated savings, cumulative savings. I want to know where those savings are being reappropriated. Is that going to be part of this? No? COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: You didn't see his new Ferrari? MR. JOHNSON: Commissioner, that's something we can put together on our end. But just, typically, and in fund accounting, it becomes the carryforward. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Say that again. You faded. MR. JOHNSON: Typically in fund accounting it becomes the carryforward and your start point next year. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. So that accounting February 17, 2026 Page 63 terminology that I don't like in fund accounting. And what I would like to see at some stage are specific appropriations. We saved 500 -- 360,000 in libraries because we did some things. I want to see -- I want to see that that money has been directed to X, Y, and Z so that there is a -- not just a perceived savings but also a public benefit that is associated with it. MR. JOHNSON: And we can show that, especially in a year-over-year kind of look. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. I understand we're in the infancy stages of turning our ship, but that's -- that, I think, is going to be imperative. We can -- we can all sit around and talk about 350 million in savings theoretically. Where is that being appropriated for the betterment of our community? MS. OENICK: Well, is it all being appropriated, or that's what's allowing you to reduce taxes? Come on. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: We're not asking for public comment at this particular time, I don't think. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: No. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: So it's important that I do, in fact -- that I see where these appropriations for the effectuated savings are, in fact, done. MR. JOHNSON: Appreciate it. Heard that, and we'll get something to you. And if you kind of remember the slide I had that started the process at the strategic plan, the No. 6, I believe, was the "evaluate," and then when we get to that point, that's where we can -- we can do that and determine where savings have gone. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: But just to piggyback on that, the slide that we've been -- that's been shown regularly that shows, you know, $800 million worth of -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Eighty to 120. February 17, 2026 Page 64 COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah -- of requirements that -- no, not of the savings -- of requirements that we still have out in the county that we don't currently have money for, you know, and I'm oversimplifying this. But to the point that's being made here, one of the things we were looking for is that the savings would maybe cherry-pick off some of those projects that have been sort of stagnant a little bit but aren't getting any newer, right? I mean, are we eventually marching towards some of that or -- MR. JOHNSON: And that is -- that is what you're going to end up seeing is when you're saving over here, funding can go towards a higher priority over here. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Or just goes back -- or goes into the General Fund, and it gives us some more money to play with to -- MR. JOHNSON: Which then is targeted towards the priority projects and the other priorities that the Board has -- COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: I mean, to Commissioner McDaniel's point, I'd really like to see that, you know. Like you said, it's one thing to just say, "Well, it just sort of carries forward." Well, no, I want to see it being, like, utilized, and it would be. But like you said, as we get closer down the budget process, that's another valuable slide. "Hey, we saved this, and here's what we did with it, you know, or what we had projected for it." And that was -- that made up the delta for the taxes that we could have increased but we didn't, because we took the savings and we rolled it into some things that -- that a higher millage rate would have paid for, but we didn't do it because we knew that this money was coming -- you know, like, connecting that in the end is the goal here, you know, obviously. MR. JOHNSON: Heard you loud and clear, and that's precisely what's happening, you know. It becomes the beginning balance, and February 17, 2026 Page 65 we appropriate it into other priorities as we move forward. But we'll work on connecting those dots that it's clear as can be. MR. FABIAN: All right. Two quick notes before I forget. As the topic of this discussion, what happens to savings that do get reallocated? Chris Johnson just mentioned that in the budget process, as the consideration of these budget requests come forward, you want to see that the resources are tied to community priorities, that what becomes back on the table to reallocate those resources is, in fact, a high priority. I don't have demo of those tools, but come budget process, when those requests are on the table for review, there is a textbook priority-based budgeting lens on budget request to ensure that what comes forward, the savings resources has been filtered through priority-based budgeting. And then Point No. 2, to Commissioner LoCastro's point out on the sports complex, but not just sports complex, it's TDC among others, as we've put together the memos for County staff and the Board, that's my segue into the next point. What we've realized is the data is very helpful. It illuminates where these opportunities are that we didn't know existed before, and now we can take action in some cases on insights and program process overlap and optimizations because we have program data to evaluate, and that's -- that's a huge breakthrough; however, sometimes you have a deeper question. You just want to ask about the sports complex or you just want to ask about what's the take, given all of this information, on tourism development council, as an example. And so this -- the last tool that I wanted to introduce you to is called priority-based budgeting analyst, PBB analyst, and the design of this tool is to be conversational. The design of this tool is given all of the data that you've put together, you might want to query -- just like using a large language model or an AI assistant, you want to ask February 17, 2026 Page 66 your own questions. So as an example, I say, "What are the departments available in my data?" And this PBB analyst tool, which will not be named Chris Fabian forever, but right now is as if it -- metaphorically you are calling me, and you don't have to wait for me to call you back. You will have the ability to get your analysis on the fly. Our tool analyzes the data that you've put together in order to come back and say, you know, "Here's what we've seen. Here's some scoring perspective on these programs and the departments you provide. This is our basic understanding." I ran something called savings analysis, which says, "Hey, taking into consideration all of the insights, all of the program process overlap, how these programs scored, how they're funded with General Fund resources, what might we do to -- what would priority-based budgeting suggest?" And so this -- you know, we just ran this before the presentation to say, "All right. We're going to go through an eight-step analysis. This is what I would do to come up with an understanding of all the programs being provided, how did they score, how do they compare with others from a benchmarking perspective?" So we're getting all the basics on the table. Then we say, what are the top high-cost programs in this particular department? So that we're clear, there might be some bigger avenues to look at versus smaller departments, and how did they score? So here we're looking at a cross-section of the tourism programs. Again, not to go into the deep dive. I wanted to show the capabilities here. Next question: What are all the cost savings and revenue, optimization insights and opportunities from TDC, so it's going to walk us through here, ultimately, to land on a series of recommendations. We can publish this. We can make it into a report. February 17, 2026 Page 67 And I'll say when I was receiving questions around TDC in particular, I ran it through this analyst to bounce off some dialogue. I'm working in other organizations where they're talking about different functions that they're looking at non-profits. They're looking at in-sourcing operations that aren't working as well in their organization. They want to know how do other organizations do this. So this is specifically an analyst capability. As you've seen those memos, we're bouncing it back and forth on all the data and all the PBB experiences so you're not limited by human potential. We're taking advantage of the best that is available from a technology perspective. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Can I? CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Yes. Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I was quicker than Commissioner Hall. COMMISSIONER HALL: Go ahead. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: But does this pull from other municipalities as to what has worked and what hasn't worked? MR. FABIAN: Well, it does by virtue of the fact that your insights did that. So this is a -- so your program insights were a comparison of your programs relative to others that we've worked with, and that's loaded into your data lake. It has a brain that is every article we've written, all of the PBB philosophy to be able to use that to say what's the experience drawing from to craft an answer for this tool. But I want to take advantage of the opportunity related but not exactly with what you just asked. This is a closed system so your data is protected. So your data -- it's not as if you put your data into ChatGPT or another large language model tool and said, "Hey, world, here you go." This is a closed system to protect your data. And as you ask questions, that's very important. Until you decide otherwise, February 17, 2026 Page 68 it's your data. It's a valuable asset. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner Hall. COMMISSIONER HALL: Thank you, Chairman. So that's -- that was kind of where I was getting at. So it's Collier County specific but it's AI principled. So we can ask a question, and then when that question creates more questions, we don't have to repeat the other. We just keep drilling down. MR. FABIAN: Exactly. It has memory. COMMISSIONER HALL: That's a great tool. Is it going to be real information, or is it going to be fake information? CHAIRMAN KOWAL: I would hope real. COMMISSIONER HALL: You know, that's a question you have to ask me with ChatGPT. MR. FABIAN: Is it -- well, I would say the training is to -- you have opportunities to change in the settings the level of creative, innovation, risk tolerance, citation strictness, and detail level. So I think when you do hear about these instances it's because the creative allowance is high, but we can ratchet it down to be only precise and to verify the information. COMMISSIONER HALL: That's great. MR. FABIAN: All right. Well, so -- just to reiterate, I'm using those tools to serve you as questions come in. We want to be faster. We want to be more timely with our analysis. We want to innovate. So as the sports complex question comes up, among others, not only will I be using these tools, but your staff are -- this is the plan for this year is to train the staff and further refine the use of these tools for this year's process to continue to build this into your culture and succeed with priority-based budgeting. So that's the end of my presentation. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Thank you, Chris. Any other questions for Chris? February 17, 2026 Page 69 COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Not of him. MR. JOHNSON: All right. Commissioners, that was the last item for today. I think I saw a -- CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Yeah, I think we have -- MR. JOHNSON: -- speaker slip head that way. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: We're in line with 3, public comments now. MR. MILLER: Yes, sir. We have one registered -- CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Hold on. I just got a bunch of people lit up here. Do you want to go first? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Well, I don't know if my -- am I still lit up, or is somebody ahead of me? CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Well, no, you're lit up. He had a public comment up there. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Chris Johnson. MR. JOHNSON: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I haven't heard anything about the -- we talked about the cultural shift that's being effectuated. I haven't heard anything about the merit base pay bonus program. MR. JOHNSON: We're working on that, actually, with Chris, so do you want to say anything about that, where we're at. MR. FABIAN: I mean, good example. We're pulling other comparables to be able to show, but work in progress. Probably another week. So I'll be working with Chris on this. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And just as a furtherance of that thought, who above anyone, including us, knows what can be done to be more efficient? Our staff. And so when those efficiencies are effectuated, it's important that they are -- that they are rewarded for effectuating those efficiencies, so that's key. MR. JOHNSON: Understood. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner Hall. February 17, 2026 Page 70 COMMISSIONER HALL: I just want to summarize before we hear Ms. Oenick speak. In my little pragmatic problem-solving brain, I've got major information overload. And I realize that with these tools, that are brilliant by the way, I think they are, we're going to have to utilize the cultural shift with our staff, our directors. And since this is a workshop, this is what I would really like to see within our government. I'd like to see that every division director or maybe senior staff take their department -- their subdivision and use those tools and drill down with where they can actually save and do things smarter. Even go as far as to the people that, you know, are the daily -- you know, the daily workers and get information, get ideas from them with these tools, and then bring it back to us with the progress and, ultimately, where we can use it for budget implementation and direction. I think that's really the only way that us five are going to get anything meaningful accomplished in this process. And it's really going to rely on our leadership out there to drive that cultural shift and to drive that passion and to really do something meaningful within Collier County and make a difference for years to come, because once we get this established, I think that we'll see a way of life from this. And we are already leading -- according to Chris Fabian, we are already leading the nation, actually, in this process governmentally. And he's written many -- you know, several major articles, and I read them, and he's bragging on Collier County to the nation. So it's not like we're just willy-nilly trying to do this. But I think that what -- with what Mr. Fabian has presented this morning, we can implement that within our leadership and really make a difference for the taxpayer. February 17, 2026 Page 71 CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Commissioner LoCastro. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Chris, the timeline that you have, you know, all the boxes that show all the dates that are coming up and whatnot, very valuable. You never have to apologize for that. It shows, like, how much attention we're putting into this. We're not having -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I think he needs to apologize for it. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Yeah, I know. But just to Mr. French in the back. And, Jamie, I don't need you to come forward. Jamie, can you hear me? I'd like to see that kind of definitive timeline about the sports complex, you know, rather than just sort of, "Hey, we're working on it and whatnot," when you get to that point. You know, like you say, you're pulling parts and pieces together. Once it starts to take on some structure, those kind of timelines so we know we're actually marching towards something. The same way we do projects. "Hey, when are we getting fuel at Caxambas?" "Well, we put in for the permits on this date and this date," and then we at least have something. And sometimes it's a little bit of a sliding scale. But just so that we're -- we've got some tacks, you know, on the board. And then a little tongue and cheek for Mr. Fabian. Mr. Fabian, is that your slide with the lasagna or that's Chris'? MR. FABIAN: That's his. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: Okay. So I'm Italian. I take great insult into -- if you're going to go with the lasagna thing, make the colors match. So it's red, it's green for the basil, it's off-white for the pasta. You know, I mean, purple lasagna, you're killing me over here. MR. FABIAN: We can agree. February 17, 2026 Page 72 COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Hey, make it a taco slide. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: But actually -- you know, I say that tongue in cheek, but I just want to make one final comment, and I've said it before. Really great, I can see why, you know, Chris Hall led the charge to find you guys. We heard from even some other people, but we clearly have a great partnership with you-all. And very detailed, but that's what I think all of us want. We're not stupid. We can drill down. But my final point of, then give us, you know, some of those quick summary slides at the end, because then it allows us to incorporate it into our message to the public so they know what's going on. You know, we don't have to peel back the whole onion, you know. We always used to say in the military, "Don't build me a watch. Just tell me the time," you know. And that's what our town hall meetings and our newsletters are really about. "Hey, we're doing all the heavy lifting, and we want to give you confidence that we've got unbelievable amounts of data and everything. Here's the main summary." And I think citizens really appreciate that. So anything you can do to sort of put all this together so we don't have to do screenshots and drill down and everything and try to -- and then we're also telling a similar message. You know, John Mullins -- I don't know if he's back there, but he does a great job sometimes -- I say "sometimes" -- at times when we have something about a particular topic, and we say, "Listen, we all want to pass it to our constituents, but we all want to do it with the same message and details," you know, so that we're not oversummarizing it in our own particular way and it tells five different stories. So that would be helpful. But thank you so much. It was very valuable. MR. FABIAN: Thank you, Commissioner. COMMISSIONER LoCASTRO: We're making a lot of February 17, 2026 Page 73 progress, it's obvious. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: And I would like to comment that, you know, we've been talking about this, you know, property tax thing up in Tallahassee and the governor, and everybody's been throwing that around. And I think at the infant stage what kicked a lot of that off was was they were going around -- the State was going around auditing these other counties, and they're finding 300-, 200-and-some-hundred million dollars in waste or overlap or things of that nature. You know, and then we got from here, and, Commissioner Hall, you know -- you know, we looked into it, and we found you guys to help us out here. And we were already kind of in a way trying to move that way but then having you here to help us nudge it along and -- really the technical side of it here and to bring it all to light and, especially, this is the third year, you know, it does -- it does make a difference. It makes a difference to your local government and who's there, you're really looking at what's going on, because that subject probably never would have been brought up if the other 66 counties took the same initiative that we did three years ago that -- you know, this probably wouldn't even be a conversation right now with this property tax thing. But I really appreciate what you guys are doing and what Chris and Chris -- and a lot of Chrises in this room. I can't keep track of them all. But I do appreciate it. So we have another -- oh, Commissioner McDaniel snuck in on me. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah, I did. And just -- this is a global perspective. Early on in my tenure as County Commissioner, it was explained to me to think about Collier County as a big ship, and the ship, in my opinion, was heading south, and I wanted it to go east. And in my private life, in my dictatorships that I rule with an February 17, 2026 Page 74 iron first, I make my decisions, and I suffer the consequences immediately of those decisions. You sometimes -- you turn the slip too steeply, cargo containers and people go flying off on -- depending on which way you turn, they go flying off on the starboard side. And as you so eloquently said, Mr. Chair, we're three years into this. This is a three- to five-year plan of turning Collier County's ship so we don't lose too many cargo containers and we don't lose too many people but we ultimately, with the culmination of this, have real consequences as to the action we're, in fact, taking and how we're doing what we're doing and why we're doing what we're doing, not just doing it. And I want to say thank you, and we're heading in the right direction. MR. FABIAN: Thank you. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: I see no more comments. Well, thank you, guys. Are you done, Chris? MR. JOHNSON: That's it for me, so I think you just have the public comment. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: All right. We'll go to Line 3, public comments. Troy, I believe we have a -- MR. MILLER: We do. Marsha Oenick. MS. OENICK: Please don't limit me to three minutes, because I didn't have a chance to prepare something and pare it down, okay? So can you hear me, okay? MR. MILLER: Yes. MS. OENICK: My name is Marsha Oenick. I live in Naples Park. You're getting to know me. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about me so you understand where my inappropriate comment in the middle of your conversation came from. I apologize for that. I worked for -- I spent 29 years in corporate America. I worked for a company that was part of Johnson & Johnson that demanded February 17, 2026 Page 75 double-digit increases in net income to them every year, and this was for a company whose market was increasing 3 to 4 percent. So how can you possibly do that? You certainly want to come out with new products. And I was in the product development organization all of that time, and we were in -- always after how can we develop products faster, cheaper? That was the mantra always. Operations, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, constant focus on cutting waste. So I'm coming from an organization that that was the mindset all the time. And I appreciate that that's where you want your county employees to be. And they're getting there. When they're limited to a 3 percent increase in operating costs but a 2-and-a-half-percent increase in salary and increase in medical costs and so on, that doesn't leave a whole lot for all the other costs. And guess what? We all know that inflation is more than a half a percent. So my comment was we definitely want to be able to fund these things that we've dug a hole in in terms of roads and infrastructure, and I'm very conscious of that, living in Naples Park where we have flooding all the time. But a lot of the savings that people are coming forward with are just so you can meet this year's budget. So don't lose sight of that. You cut $300,000 out of something. Well, now I can actually -- I've got enough money to pay everybody. So you have to first fund what you said you're going to do, and then you can fund things that you want to do, too. That's where my point was in terms of you've got -- I very much appreciate the work that ResourceX is doing, and the tools they have are fantastic. You have 100 -- and you have 80 to $124 million of savings coming. That's not a lot of money in the scope of your budget, right? So that's why we have to keep looking for more and more and more. And, Chris, your comment about we've got to get the whole February 17, 2026 Page 76 organization really involved in this is absolutely on board. And, Chris, I know we talked a little bit about going after Procurement and all the process steps. That's going to be extremely helpful, but it's also going to be very challenging in figuring out what do we consolidate, what do we centralize versus what do we keep separate? What are the pluses and minuses on all that? So it takes quite a while to work through that stuff. I appreciate that you're committed to making that happen. So when I burst out saying, "You just want to fund this year's budget," that's where I'm coming from. You need to be able to fund this year's budget, because as we go into next year's budget, you know, you need to pay people so that you're going to keep them. That doesn't leave a whole lot for all the expenses that are going up at more than 3 percent. You can ask me questions. You can give me comments. That's what I developed today. I'm not too far over, anyway. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: Well, thank you for your comments. MS. OENICK: Thank you very much. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: All right. I see nothing else. Chris, you done? MR. JOHNSON: Nope. That would be it, sir. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: All right. We're going to adjourn this meeting. Do we have another scheduled on -- because we talked about the changes and that. At what point is that going to come back? MR. JOHNSON: So the next steps will be your strategic plan will come back to you for adoption, and then on March 10th, your budget policy will come back for adoption, and then we'll have the workshops in June, which will be where we have further discussion once we get the budget data from the departments and divisions. CHAIRMAN KOWAL: All right. This meeting's adjourned. February 17, 2026 Page 77 Thank you. ***** February 17, 2026 There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 11 :30 a.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL DAN KOWAL, CHAIRMA ATTEST ,,CIlY'STAL K. KINZEL, CLERK 0,7 RA, N. ,yeti ``'�"" . uu1/41A. ‘,LV TIhese minutes approv "by the Board on 5 /° 0c)-h as presented or as corrected TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF VERITEXT BY TERRI L. LEWIS, REGISTERED PROFESSIONAL COURT REPORTER, FPR-C, AND NOTARY PUBLIC. Page 78