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BCC Minutes 06/20/2008 B (Budget Workshop) June 20, 2008 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE COLLIER COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS Naples, Florida, June 20, 2008 BUDGET HEARINGS LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Collier County Board of Commissioners, in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9:00 a.m. in BUDGET SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRMAN: Tom Henning Fred Coyle Jim Coletta Donna Fiala Frank Halas ALSO PRESENT: Jim Mudd, County Manager Sue Filson, BCC Executive Manager Leo Ochs, Deputy County Manager Jeffrey Klatzkow, County Attorney John Yonkosky, Director, Office of Management & Budget Page 1 NOTICE OF PUBLIC MEETING Notice is hereby given that the Board of County Commissioners of Collier County will conduct Budget Workshops on Thursday, June 19,2008 and Friday June 20, 2008 at 9:00 a.m. Workshops will be held in the Boardroom, 3rd Floor, W. Harmon Turner Building, Collier County Government Center, 3301 East Tamiami Trail, Naples, Florida to hear the following: COLLIER COUNTY GOVERNMENT BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS FY 2009 BUDGET WORKSHOP SCHEDULE Thursday, June 19,2008 - 9:00 a.m. General Overview Courts and Related Agencies (State Attorney and Public Defender) Airport Authority Community Development Transportation Services Public Services Administrative Services Public Utilities Debt Service Management Offices (Pelican Bay) County Attorney BCC Friday, June 20, 2008 - 9:00 a.m. Constitutional Officers: Elections Sheriff Other Constitutional Officers requesting to address the BCC Preliminary UFR Discussion 1:00 p.m. Public Comment Page I June 19-20,2008 June 20, 2008 MR. MUDD: Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd please take your seats. Mr. Chairman, Commissioners, you have a hot mic. ELECTIONS CHAIRMAN HENNING: Thank you. We're continuing the 2009 -- or 2008-2009 budget workshop. And I believe the first one on the agenda is the supervisor of elections. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Good morning, Mrs. Edwards. MS. EDWARDS: Good morning. Good morning, Commissioners. I'm presenting to you today a 16 percent -- or 17 percent decrease in our budget for next year. I also want to remind you as well as our voters that may be listening, that the voting system has changed. When we begin voting on August 11 th, for early voting, the voters will be voting paper ballots. And at early voting sites we will have printers and will be printing the ballots as the voters arrive. We also would like to remind you that last year we deferred some purchases. And we're able to defer one of those purchases again from this year to 2010. And that is the electronic poll books. And at today's price, we estimate those will cost one million dollars. Those would be funded in 301. And we'll need them for the 20 I 0 election cycle. And also, we are required by federal law to replace our, what we call our ADA electronic machines or touch screens. Those are the ones that are used -- and we're required to have for the visually impaired. We're required by federal law to replace those by 2012. And at today's prices, that is approximately $680,000. We're going to push this in this next legislative session to try to get some state or federal funds, but that's not real hopeful at this point. And that concludes my presentation. Are there any questions? Page 2 June 20, 2008 CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Fiala has a question. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes, how much do we still owe on the old machines? MS. EDWARDS: Approximately $3.2 million. COMMISSIONER FIALA: How are we paying that down? MR. MUDD: 301, ma'am. It's coming out of the .33 mills you have. Remember, I told you about it, 27 million, and 18 million was in debt. Eight was standard debt, that's part of those machines. And there was another $10 million that we're basically paying the principal and interest payments on the shortages on the impact fees for their debt. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay, fine, thank you. MR. MUDD: That's where it comes from, ma'am. And that's what she's talking about, 301. Now that I know that they're there, I'll start setting some stuff aside, if I can. MS. EDWARDS: And you may recall that the way the Governor and the Legislature prepared the law, they stated that the Secretary of State was required to procure and dispose of our touch screen machines for all 15 counties. And so about a month ago a recycling company from Tampa picked up our equipment. It was a sad thing to see go out of our driveway, believe me. But we haven't heard anything on the return of our money, because those of us -- the law states that those of us that have debt on that equipment will receive back whatever the state negotiated and receives through their contract. So that recycling company is either going to remanufacture our touch screens, which means sell them to a foreign country, or if they can't do that, they're just going to take them apart and salvage what they can. And we -- the equipment is tracked by serial number, so we will receive back whatever they get for the equipment that we have. Page 3 June 20, 2008 CHAIRMAN HENNING: Do they vote in foreign countries? Commissioner Coyle, do you have a question? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes, they vote in larger numbers than we do in many cases in foreign countries. MS. EDWARDS: Some of the voters in foreign countries are fined if they don't vote. So I like our way better. COMMISSIONER COYLE: I'm beginning to wonder. But in any event, when you ask a question where does this money come from, and the answer is 301, that means nothing to anybody who is listening or observing this proceeding. Where does the money come from? MR. MUDD: Sir, it comes from the general fund. COMMISSIONER COYLE: And where does that money come from? MR. MUDD: It comes from the taxpayers that they payout of property taxes, sir. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Right, right, okay. It comes out of the pockets of the taxpayers. So the wonderful electronic voting system that you've been using for years and has proven to be so effective is now going to be replaced with a totally paper process __ MS. EDWARDS: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER COYLE: -- that will cost you tens of thousands of dollars in additional paper supplies, and in storage costs MS. EDWARDS: Correct. COMMISSIONER COYLE: -- and in labor. And probably increase the probability that there will be errors. So -- and taxpayers are going to pay for that. MS. EDWARDS: That's correct. COMMISSIONER COYLE: And the money that we had spent on procuring these very well functioning automated voting systems __ MS. EDWARDS: That were used in 15 other countries. Page 4 June 20, 2008 COMMISSIONER FIALA: And only four years ago. We haven't even finished paying for them yet. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes, that's right, didn't even finish paying for them yet. And we're going to lose a lot of money on that, too. But yet we've got budget problems. MS . EDWARDS: The 15 counties that went total touch screen voted over half the voters in the state. So that means that those 15 counties are going through what we're going through, which is implementing a new system in the biggest election year we've ever, ever had. And that was one of my requests when I met with some of the legislative committees in 2007 session, was, hey, if you want us to change, let's please wait until 2009, 2010. But we're changing now. And the final software for this new system was received on June the tenth. So that's an extremely compressed time frame. And that's not only for Collier County, but for a number of the other counties also. COMMISSIONER COYLE: And do you expect delays for people voting, as compared to your past experiences? MS. EDWARDS: I do. And not necessarily because of the system, but because it's change. But keeping in mind, when the voter goes in now to vote, they will assign their precinct register or an early voting, the signature pad. And then as with the punch cards in the past, the voter will be handed a ballot and they'll walk to a booth that has a flat surface. We converted the touch screen booths to use for this event. So they'll walk to that flat surface and fill in an oval beside their choices in the races, and then walk to another station, which is the scanner, and they'll insert the ballot in the scanner. So there may be some delays. It will depend on how long it takes the voters in completing their ballot. We will be mailing individualized sample ballots to all the voters, and we encourage them Page 5 June 20, 2008 to mark those and bring them with them to help them speed the process. But we also, for early voting we will be having things that __ available for the voters to read or perhaps view. We're going to put some, like, videos, continually looping while people are standing in line so they -- that will be telling the voter and training the voter on how important it is to completely fill in the oval to try to avoid those voter intent issues that we experienced in the past in 2000. COMMISSIONER COYLE: So you would encourage people to vote early using the absentee type process which you're now calling something else, right? MS. EDWARDS: Well, we encourage people to vote early, yes. We also -- since you're going to vote a paper ballot anyway, please let us mail one to the house. Those are absentee ballots, but we are moving away from the term absentee to just mail ballots. If you're gong to vote paper, just vote a paper ballot in the convenience of your own home and mail it back to us. We sent out notices a few weeks ago that identify the dates of the upcoming elections as well as early voting, and had a form on them in which the voter could use that to request an absentee or mail ballot. We already have about 15,000 requests for mail ballots for the primary. And we also are receiving of course requests for the general. And so, yes, we do encourage. The voter could also call our office or go to our website to request that ballot. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Can you pick one up at the supervisor of elections office? MS. EDWARDS: We encourage that if they want -- if the voter wants to pick one up that they call us ahead of time. They can do that. But if they call us ahead of time, they don't have to wait in our lobby while we're organizing their ballot for them, because it is a process that needs to be recorded and then the correct ballot prepared for them. Page 6 June 20, 2008 COMMISSIONER COYLE: Thank you. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Coletta, Commission Halas, Commissioner Fiala. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Jennifer, going to your budget. This year from -- how much have you cut compared to last year? What's the difference? MS. EDWARDS: Well, I've got a percentage number here, which was 17 percent. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And how does that stack up with the year before? Is there -- was there a cut from the year before also? MS. EDWARDS: No, there was an increase last year with our expanded because we had to budget -- the presidential preference primary was budgeted as an expanded budget. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: It's amazing what you're doing with so little money with the circumstances that you have prevailing against you, especially with the mandate that came down from Tallahassee. My question is, this commission is looking at the possibilities, we're exercising due diligence to see all the possibilities we can with this budget. And there's a possibility that we may cut another $11 million across the board on this budget, if that's the way I understand it. There was some discussion that took place the other day. Ifwe did, I don't know what the proportion would be for you, but how would you absorb that? MS. EDWARDS: Well, we would certainly dig deep, and since we -- we have in this budget most of our expense budgeted for the fall elections. That would have to be cut possibly from our operating expense and perhaps the temporary help that we hire through the election process. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I mean, how would you be able Page 7 June 20, 2008 to run the elections, would you be able to keep all the polling places open? MS. EDWARDS: Yes. Yes, we would. We would have to do that. Going forward for this year I'd hate to make the change, but if we continued going forward, look at these kinds of cuts, I would recommend rather than looking at polling places, I would recommend eliminating early voting sites. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: To be able to make your budget balance if we had to do further cuts that's what you would recommended, to do away with early voting? MS. EDWARDS: Not in this year -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Not in this year, but in future years? MS. EDWARDS: -- this is the biggest election year we've ever had. I would not recommend making those kinds of changes in this year. But I'm saying is going forward in 2010 and the future, that may be something we would look at is to reduce the number of early voting sites. But then we have to decide, okay, where are we going to cut one? Are we going to eliminate one in Naples, are we going to eliminate one on Marco, are we going to eliminate one in Immokalee or Orange Blossom? We would have to decide which one we would need to eliminate. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: To start with, I'm not for jeopardizing anybody having the ability to vote. So I don't think we're going to look at in your area for cutting. I think that we have areas under the county manager's area that we can probably take financing from to address this. Page 8 June 20, 2008 But getting back to one of the concerns that popped into my mind here as you were discussing just receiving the latest update in software, my prior experience tells me that when you receive new software, there's a debugging process, and my concern is will we be able to debug it in a manner in which that it will be 100 percent failsafe as far as when the people start to vote? MS. EDWARDS: I am -- I think the term I've been using is cautiously optimistic that everything will run well. This equipment has been used in 52 other counties. Not this latest version. Their equipment doesn't look just like ours. But the scanner process, the concept has been used in other counties for rnany, many years. We have traveled to some of those counties, we have observed mock elections in those counties. And just yesterday we were on the phone to a few of those counties. We're constantly, if we have questions, we're reaching out and getting answers to that. As far as the debugging of the equipment, the final version that we received had minor changes to it, but they were important changes for Collier County. And for -- and that's because it was a language __ had to do with language issues on the screen. But yes, I believe that we will be fine with the software. COMMISSIONER HALAS: A lot of times no matter how much you test the software, the real test comes when the people get their hands on it to see if there's any problems with the software, and I hope that everything goes smoothly. We sure don't need to have the State of Florida as another lightning rod. And anything that you need in the line of making sure that the citizens have the ability to vote, I'm sure that my fellow commissioners will make sure that whatever needs you need to have to address this issue we'll be here to try to stand behind you. MS. EDWARDS: I appreciate that __ CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Fiala. Page 9 June 20, 2008 MS. EDWARDS: -- keep in mind, please, that we test everything over and over again. And we also have the public test, which is the logic and accuracy test that those of you who have served on the canvassing board have participated in. And that will -- this time it will be different. It will be longer. The logic and accuracy test will last about three hours now with this change in equipment. And we will be testing publicly ten of the touch screen machines and ten of the DS 200 scanners. And that's why it will take longer. But we test -- we select, as you will recall, we select those pieces of equipment that we test publicly are selected by the canvassing board members randomly. But we test every piece of equipment in our warehouse, are staff tested. And we have trained technicians that are available -- will be available at each early voting site, as well as will be available on election day to travel to different -- the different polling sites to help, if there is any problem. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Fiala, then Commissioner Coyle. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Thanks. I hope Ilene Stackel from the Naples Daily News is watching now, because I'm going to ask her to please write this in her column while she's talking about that. And that is as we encourage people to use the mail ballots, we have to encourage them to address the envelopes right. I'm on this bandwagon, they've heard this over and over, how much people print their names on the ballots rather than sign them, and so their ballots are discarded. Or they don't print their addresses or they do not follow directions. If you don't sign your ballot and if your signature doesn't match what the supervisor of elections has on file, your ballot is discarded. It does not count. So if your signature has changed, go into the supervisor of elections office now and get it updated on her system. Page 10 June 20, 2008 If you're going to request a mail ballot, make sure you follow all of the directions on the envelope, because they'll never even open the envelope if you don't follow the directions. Thank you. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Can you get a female ballot? Commissioner Coyle? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, I think we need to set the record straight here. Commissioner Coletta told you that we were thinking about a further across the board budget reduction. That is not true. There has been no discussion whatsoever on this board during our budget hearings about an across the board reduction. We have talked about very specific issues. And I have listed the six issues that have been brought up for discussion so far. There probably are others. We're not considering any across-the-board reductions, nor have we even suggested it. So don't be fearful that we're going to cut your budget so that people can't vote. Okay? MS. EDWARDS: Thank you. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Any other questions? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HENNING: Great. Okay, thank you very much. MS. EDWARDS: Thank you. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Good luck. CHAIRMAN HENNING: The two Constitutional officers, the property appraiser and the tax collector are fee officers. And we have no choice but to approve their budget. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN HENNING: And the clerk has yet to be determined whether he's a fee officer or budget __ MR. MUDD: No, for this year, sir, he is a fee officer. CHAIRMAN HENNING: He is a fee officer? MR. MUDD: For his year he is a fee officer, and we're treating Page 11 June 20, 2008 him based on his claim, sir. CHAIRMAN HENNING: So we don't have to -- we don't have any corrections on his budget. MR. MUDD: No, sir. SHERIFF CHAIRMAN HENNING: All we have is the Sheriff. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. And the Sheriff came in and followed your guidance and came in at two percent. Ah, the Sheriff just walked in. You were in the front table. Timing is everything. Commissioner, it doesn't get much better than that. CHIEF SMITH: Good morning, Board. I'm waiting on the Sheriff. He was in the hall, but he should be here in just a second. Chief Greg Smith. Chief of Administration for the Sheriffs Office. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Did you want to start, Chief? CHIEF SMITH: Well, perhaps if we could wait just a second. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Why don't we take a break then. CHIEF SMITH: Okay. CHAIRMAN HENNING: A five minute break? CHIEF SMITH: I think he'd be fine with a break. SHERIFF HUNTER: Good morning. CHAIRMAN HENNING: You're just in time for a break. SHERIFF HUNTER: Perfect. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Do you want to continue? COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Good morning, Sheriff. SHERIFF HUNTER: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners. CHAIRMAN HENNING: It's a pleasure to have you. I don't Page 12 June 20, 2008 know -- probably won't see you next year. SHERIFF HUNTER: That will be a relief, won't it, for all of us? For rne -- socially far more, but-- CHAIRMAN HENNING: Sheriff, you met our budget guidelines. I don't know if you want to give us a brief -- SHERIFF HUNTER: Yes, may I. Give you a quick overview of the state of the agency, if you will. Let me say that as an opening, though, that we certainly recognize that as a partner agency that we're all in this together and we have to do what we need to do in order to arrive at the numbers that the state has imposed on us. That's making it very difficult for us the last couple of years. Next year appears to be even more difficult. But I wanted to caution the board that we are beginning to see some of the consequences of the economic conditions that all areas appear to be suffering under with increased shoplifting and fuel drive-offs, fuel thefts. We're seeing it not only here in this county but in the surrounding counties. And I think when times are desperate, people become desperate, or more so. And we're going to see more of that, I believe, in the next year. Who knows when the economy will improve to the extent necessary to relieve people of these concerns and causing that desperation on the streets. So, unhappily, in law enforcement when we see desperate times, we see typically more work, not less work. And we believe, I believe as a 20-year Sheriff and my 29 years or so of experience that we probably will see some of that this next year. As I say, we're already beginning to see some early signs of that now. I believe if you pick up the paper or simply listen to the radio or look at TV, you could see in our sister counties to the north and east, they have long been under some of these desperate times, and you can read the bad news as I can of what's occurring in those sister counties. We've been fortunate here not to have suffered through much of what Page 13 June 20, 2008 those sister counties have evolved through over the course of the last five or six years. I think that is all good news for us, not so much for them. But in terms ofa state of the agency, I want to give you some of what our accomplishments have been. And I'm not sure how we're set up here, if we're going to go through -- do we have visualizer, if you say, or are we going to do that? MR. MUDD: I can do whatever you like. SHERIFF HUNTER: We'll share with this. And I apologize, we don't have a handout per se, but I'll be happy to give you my copy as soon as I'm finished reading off of it. This first slide is a history of our crime reductions. We've actually had crime rate reductions over the course of the last 11 years, and crime incident reductions also correlating with that. As you all know, the incident is the actual raw number of crimes that occur, park one crimes, the most serious crimes that occur in your jurisdiction as measured by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We report that information to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement each year. That information is correlated with other information coming in from around the state and sent on to the FBI. Ultimately we will receive a report back usually in late spring from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement telling us what our crime circumstance has been for the last calendar year. This is a recording, if you will, a reflection of our crime numbers over the course of the last many years, since 1996, where we started out with 6007 crimes per 100,000 population, and we're now at 2156. If we can go to the next slide, I'll show you how that works out. You can see on that first slide, I should have pointed out, but most of our prime is property crime. Eighty percent of our crime is property crime, property crime being the largest category, larceny, the theft of any value, literally, pens, rods and reels, a golf club, or something more substantial. Could be anything. But larceny, that would be our Page 14 June 20, 2008 largest category. Burglaries are also a property crime and auto theft is a property crime. Eighty percent of our local crime, 80 percent, I'll generalize, of all crime occurring in the United States is property crime. And then about 20 percent would be violent crime. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: What would people who drive off without paying for gas, is that under burglary or larceny? SHERIFF HUNTER: It's larceny, yes, sir. And a good question. And you'd be surprised how many ofthose aren't reported. But as times become more difficult and our fuel distributors become more desperate as well, we'll see those reports coming in more frequently. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Would that be the same when they take gasoline out of people's boats? They're having that problem over on Isles of Capri, where they siphon it out of the __ SHERIFF HUNTER: That's a direct theft. That would also be a theft. And depending upon the quantity, it could be a grand theft. We're seeing this diesel theft, red diesel, which is commercial grade. People are not permitted to operate vehicles on the roadway with the red diesel in it. That's saved for farm operations. As soon as I go sideways, the Chiefwill straighten me out, okay. But we have seen red diesel thefts, people trying to cut corners. And when you see reports of diesel thefts, that's what you're seeing. You're seeing red diesel being stolen from farm implements and farm applications. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Thank you. SHERIFF HUNTER: This next slide gives you -- it's not that clear. Unfortunately the colors didn't come out as well as I thought they would. But if you will look, we're the lone jurisdiction in South Florida, and actually, you have to go all the way up to Sumpter County in the middle part of the state to find another county as well Page 15 June 20, 2008 situated as we are. The color code reflects crime rates in a comparative analysis, if you will, in this chart of the counties of the State of Florida. The only unusual county being Liberty County, which doesn't bother, apparently, to report its crime stats, so they were unavailable. Liberty county way up in the panhandle is a white county, it's not on the chart because it doesn't have a crime rate registered for it. But if you look at this chart, what is notable is that Collier County is remarkable, and from the middle part of the state all the way down, as being a low crime rate jurisdiction. No one else can report that in South Florida. So therefore, the point is we are a relatively safe place, even with all of the desperation on the streets, even with the issues that are accompanying a growth county, which we have been long -- for a long time the growth county of note in South Florida, and sometimes the nation, as you know. So this is remarkable, and something that we should be very proud of and preserve. Because I believe with those low crime rates we bring commerce, tourism and just a good healthy sense of who we are. There's no question -- I'm a parent, there's no hesitation on the part of most people to send their children out to run errands for them or send them out to the movies or wherever they wish to go and be concerned about their safety. Not in Collier County. And we want to preserve that as a county, I believe, because that does create health, a healthy economy and greater wealth. Are you showing this next one? If I may run through just a couple things. I wanted to give you some of our accomplishments, if I may. Again, this is very difficult to read, but I'll highlight it. This is under the heading of accreditation. Most of you know accredited institutions have a tendency to be better positioned relative Page 16 June 20, 2008 to liability exposures. They have a tendency to accrue greater respect in a given industry. I go to accredited hospitals, I go to accredited educational facilities, and when I come out of those facilities with a degree, it means going to more than a non-accredited school. We have for years been an accredited agency. And one way we followed my colleague, my now partner here, he was accredited before we were down at the City of Naples. Fred, you can be proud of that, and Donna. But we did follow along behind them, nonetheless. We have maintained international accreditation as well as state accreditation now for many, many years. We believe that's pretty significant. We were nominated as a flagship agency in our last cycle, 2005. That means that you are being held out as an exemplary agency. We didn't participate, because it also would have cost us a few extra dollars during that accreditation cycle to be represented at the conference. But we were nominated and did qualify as a flagship agency in the United States of America as an exemplary agency. Again, something that I think we can be proud of, something that I believe is accruing to Collier County. The next one down is the National Academies of Emergency Dispatch long ago, and one of the first agencies in the nation. We were the second agency in the nation to receive emergency medical dispatch certification for our members in the dispatch center, 9-1-1. One of our sister counties to the north separated by one is struggling right now because of a 9-1-1 call that came in that resulted, it's alleged, ultimately in the death of a mother. Not that long ago now. They're being subject to a great deal of scrutiny. Our emergency medical dispatch function provides that we will run through various protocols, depending upon the type of call coming into the center, and we will know what exactly to do and what questions to ask of the person on the other end of the line, many times hysterical, in order to get the information necessary to respond Page 17 June 20, 2008 appropriately to that particular call. We have been emergency medical accredited as one of the first agencies in the nation. The Florida Law Enforcement Accreditation is very similar to the National Accreditation, but it is specific to the State of Florida. It pertains to high liability areas, particular pursuit driving, use of weapons within the law enforcement discipline, use of force, those things that are the highest exposures for any law enforcement agency. Same with Florida Corrections accreditation, we're an accredited institution. Both of our facilities are accredited in the State of Florida, meaning that we reflect best practices in our correctional servIces. In fact, we've just been nominated by the National Police Foundation to participate as one of a few agencies in the United States of America as an exemplary correctional facility to generate policies that will be adopted nationally and used as an exemplary. We will be participating in this project for the next year with the police foundation. The rest of that is grant awards. Of course you know how successful we've been in grant awards. That has been significant in helping us to defray general operating to some extent, because we have purchased staffing over the course of years, patrol, staffing, as well as others, and help to layoff some of the costs associated with doing business in a growth county. This is listed as a success. And we've had to have your support, of course, in order to perform within the grant arena. And we thank you for what you've done to support that. Other agency awards, we just received again for the second year in a row the best place to work from the Economic Development Council as a large organization and only qualifier. We're pretty happy about that. We believe that that speaks pretty well of our efforts to retain Page 18 June 20, 2008 members and recruit new members. You recall just two -- actually goes back a little bit longer than that -- two and three years ago we were suffering some pretty serious problems because of the market as it was. People were selling out, moving to other locations, going home to family in the north with a pocket of money. That was a trying time. I recall one month where we lost 30 members in 28 days. That was a very bad month. But we were losing on average something on the order of five and ten a month. We finally turned that around and we have people coming to us under the recruitment scheme. And we're retaining more people. That's a good thing. Some of that is due to economic downturn, we believe, of course. But we certainly don't want to suffer any turnaround and have to go back to where we were two to three years ago. That was becoming a very dangerous time for us. Officer safety was one of the concerns we had. When you lose staff and the ability to back up and respond appropriately with seasoned people, and instead you have newer people many times who will work for less, that becomes an officer safety concern. We are a family-friendly work place, according to the Naples Alliance for Children. What that means is of course we try our best to help our employees with flexible hours and arrangements that will assist them in raising their families and doing what's necessary as parents to -- while at the same time performing their duties in a fashion that meets our standards. The traffic safety and law enforcement challenge, which is where the member with the vest is. Each year that we've qualified -- you cannot qualify every year to participate in this challenge -- but each year that we have been eligible to participate in the national law enforcement challenge, which is a traffic safety innovation challenge, we have won first place for our size agency, which is the large agency category. Each year we win first place, meaning that Collier County has Page 19 June 20, 2008 demonstrated its capacity not only to enforce traffic law, but to reduce fatalities on the roadways and to keep whole our families. And when you lose a family member in a crash, it destroys the family. Weare pretty proud of that. And we won again this year. Again, we were eligible, and we've won again this year, 2007, I should say, calendar year. And I think again it's a demonstration of the capacity of the agency and our willingness to innovate in this very difficult arena. And as you know, the public is very concerned about roadway safety, traffic safety, red light running. I thank you for the support we've received from the board on the issue of trying to make those signals safe, and the intersections that go with them. The Youth Relations Bureau just celebrated one of their milestones. We have deputies in every school. We rotate through the elementary schools. Our school resource officer program I think is second to none. It has maintained a safe environment for youth. And I don't want to overstimulate the board, but I think you are all aware that schools are a target. They're a target for drug activity, gang activity, terror. It's considered a soft target by Al Qaeda and other terror groups. But we try to maintain a presence. We've also worked very closely with the school board to maintain security plans that will ensure the safety of our youth. We just celebrated 30 years of 9-1-1. I can remember, unfortunately, I think, being here when we went through the very difficult and somewhat brutal process of acquiring 9-1-1 for the very first time, trying to make some decisions about where the public safety answering points would be located, whether they would be a central point or whether it would be bifurcated into the City of Naples and Collier County. But we just celebrated 30 years, very successful. Again, that goes hand and glove with the emergency medical dispatch protocols that we operate under, and those are the receipt of the emergency calls as they come up in, either for fire, ambulance or Page 20 June 20, 2008 law enforcement. Law enforcement being historically about 80 percent of the type of emergency calls coming into the public safety answering device. And the next slide is simply a demonstration of our website. We have realtime traffic recording in the sense of you see a problem on the roadways, you can call it in, tell us what that problem is. You can also subscribe to our service and be informed where we have traffic problems, to help you navigate the roadways a little bit easier, perhaps. Seems to be very popular. We're getting plenty of calls in terms of trying to keep the roadway safe: Sheriff, we have a reckless driver. Sheriff, we have apparently a driver impaired, I'm behind him now, here's his tag number, et cetera, et cetera. All good things, all things that I think are necessary to keep us safe. We've just been reviewed by the Department of Homeland Security for our 287G program, which is where we enforce immigration law. They have given us verbal information that we are the exemplary program in the United States of America and they want to use our program as the model for the nation. We believe that's a very important program to keep Collier safe. It's targeting illegally-present foreign nationals who have committed crimes in our county and should not have been permitted to commit crimes because they shouldn't be here. And through this program we're able to remove them from the United States of America and ensure that Collier County residents and visitors will no longer be exposed to criminal activity from that element. So far we've removed over, I believe, it's 300, and we have another 150 or so who are subject to removal. And as you recall, I reported to you that the mere presence of the illegally-present foreign national population within our jails costs us, Page 21 June 20, 2008 we believe, in excess of $9 million per annum. So the more that we remove and the more that we ensure that they do not return, the better our circumstance when I come before you for budgets. Commissioner Halas, did you have -- CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Halas, Commissioner Coletta and then Commissioner Coyle. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Sheriff, start off with, you did an exemplary job here in Collier County. And I like the mode of operation that you're doing in regards to trying to remove illegal aliens. And the question I have for you is what's the time line from the time that you pick someone up that's involved in a crime and they're here illegally, how long does it take to get them back across to where they belong? SHERIFF HUNTER: The ultimate removal of course is subject to control by the Department of Homeland Security and immigration judges. But it can be from a couple of days, if it's a -- more of an automatic removal without review, or it could be many weeks, ifnot years. What we do locally is when we take a person in under some criminal violation, we look to see whether they are lawfully present, are they employed. We have a whole series of questions that are asked and answered for every inmate. Once it's determined that the person is illegally present, we try to determine whether they have entered without inspection, meaning they did not cross into -- cross a border at a border post. They entered without inspection, meaning they came here illegally, probably by way of some person who facilitated that, a smuggler. Those persons, the -- what's referred to as an EWI, is more subject to automatic removal. They have a couple of ways they can do that. I don't want to get bogged down in the law, because it's quite large, unfortunately. Another issue of dispute. Page 22 June 20, 2008 But the EWIs are subject to more rapid removal. And depending upon the nature of the crime that had been committed and their past record -- and we have people who have been arrested 15 times, 20 times, they're using 15,20 different names and monikers on the street -- very difficult to identify them. Fortunately the State of Florida has fixed some of that with fingerprinting systems that talk to the federal systems. We're getting better at identifying people who are using fictitious names. But depending on the name of their crime, they may be subject to more immediate removal. They may be subject though to prosecution and serving a period of sentence, depending on what were the judges wish to do, and then immediately upon having served that sentence, they will be removed from the country. Because what we have done at Naples, which you will not find in other areas of the nation, we're told, is we have an office set up for the Executive Office of Immigration Review. That's the actual judges. So what will happen in Collier County that's not happening in other countries with this program is that we actually have an immigration judge review the case of the individual inmate while the inmate's serving time. They don't have to wait till they finish, then go over to Miami, have their case reviewed, maybe it takes a couple of years, and finally upon exhausting all appeals, they're subject to removal. We can review the case ahead of time while they're serving time, and when they are subject to release they are removed from the country. So the answer is that it can be a very short period of time or it might be an extended period of time. The fact that we've removed, I believe it's well over 300, might be 340, 350, and it could be higher today, I didn't check my numbers this morning. But the fact that we've removed that many since October of 2007 means we've got an expedited removal process underway and we've got another 150 or so Page 23 .._'~"'--~"'--".'._-- June 20, 2008 subject to removal in different and varying stages of review or removal circumstance. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I have one other question. Since you deal with this on a daily basis, what kind of direction can you give us as elected officials in trying to get the attention of the federal government to realize that we have a huge problem and that -- a huge burden to every state in the union and the cost that's involved in all of this? Do you have any suggestions that we could send as a letter up to our elected representatives in Washington? Because obviously they're not getting the message. SHERIFF HUNTER: It's interesting, because you've done that previously. We've resolved through your action, the board has resolved to support greater immigration enforcement. It seems to be falling unfortunately on deaf ears. I've made several trips myself punctuating your support. I will make a presentation again to the National Sheriffs Association within two weeks. My colleagues again. I'm on a committee for the National Sheriffs Association pertaining to this issue. And we will again beat that issue up and try to make progress through the Congress on this matter. The police foundation has invited us to participate in its national forum in August on this very issue. It seems to be heating up. I think the resolutions have an impact ultimately, but we must convince our colleagues in other counties to get -- to sit up, take notice, take action. And by the way, there are a number of counties in the state who now seem to be pushing ahead with 287G authority acquisition. There are six of them that I know of, and I believe ten have expressed an interest. So we're beginning to get some traction. The six I can get to you, Commissioner Halas, so that you know who to contact as far as colleagues within the board's -- the legislative Page 24 June 20, 2008 group. And maybe we can make some -- get some traction. The Attorney General of the State of Florida, I don't believe it's intended to be confidential or secret at this point, has expressed an interest in creating a 287G program statewide with the enforcement of immigration law for all jurisdictions that are interested. It will not be mandatory, but he's trying to encourage everyone. Attorney General McCollum is trying to encourage all law enforcement to become involved in immigration enforcement. He understands, as you do, that there's much more to this than simple presence, mere presence. There is the daily violation of rights of our visitors and residents. There's drugs trafficking, very violent gangs embedded here who are illegally present. And by the way, another great success there for Collier County, we have disrupted our gangs and the leadership, which tends to be illegally-present foreign nationals in our transnational gangs. MS-13 and some of the Latin Kings and others have a tendency to be composed of illegally-present foreign nationals. We have been able to disrupt them because we've taken the leadership out and removed them from the country under operations Community Shield with the Department of Homeland Security, River Chase and Razor. So we are making progress, and the horizon looks pretty bright. But I do believe a good push right now wouldn't hurt. And support for the Attorney General's idea of trying to organize around the 287G concept and use that as a vehicle to attack gangs and attack organized crime. Because clearly organized crime is involved with illegally-present foreign nationals, otherwise we wouldn't have the drug smuggling and the human smuggling and human trafficking that's gomg on. So I'd like to see us push, as you suggested. I can get some of that information to you and maybe we can make progress this next year. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Thank you very much. Page 25 June 20, 2008 CHAIRMAN HENNING: Thank you, sir. Commissioner Fiala? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes, get the information to all of us. We're all in strong support of that. I have a number of questions. I'll try and get them all in just a couple of questions. One of your unfunded requests was for ten people to work, I think, in Homeland Security to help stave off more illegal -- I would have to find it. One million $1,164,000 for ten immigration custom enforcement deputies. Well, anyway, I just wanted to know, the ones that you have on board, I remember when you had first graduated the first set. Is this the reason that we're making so many more requests -- arrests, excuse me, because you have those there? And do you think another ten will even help to curb that more? I know that that's a loaded question, and naturally you would say absolutely. And while I'm asking these questions, I'm going to load a couple more on there. Do we have more illegals in Collier County than -- I heard this is a rumor, I don't know that it's true, than in most other counties other than Miami-Dade? Also, then also, when Cubans -- you explained to us one time at the Republican Executive Committee that when Cubans come over and they step foot on dry land, they automatically are here legally, wet foot, dry foot, and they get, I don't know, $10,000 each or something when they land on our soil. What prevents other people from coming in and claiming they're Cuban even though they're not, but coming over on a boat and putting foot and saying I'm a Cuban? So those are a few of these -- and the last question is, after deportation, how many -- SHERIFF HUNTER: Objection, compound question. Where's Page 26 June 20, 2008 the attorneys? COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- how many of them come right back again? SHERIFF HUNTER: No, I'm sorry. Go ahead. COMMISSIONER FIALA: That's all right. After deportation, how many come right back again? SHERIFF HUNTER: The first question was -- we graduated 17 members of the agency from the first ICE academy in Collier County. And there were also five elements, five members from a South Carolina county, and I can't recall the county name, it's escaping me at the moment. But 17 members. And first, you need to know how we have those split up perhaps for me to answer the question. The answer is yes, we're able to make more arrests, more targeted arrests of illegally-present foreign nationals in certain arenas. But most of the illegally-present foreign nationals that are coming into the jail are simply accruing to us from common traffic stops and from encounters on the street. They're not being targeted. But there are certain elements in the agency that we can target. Organized criminal activity, such as gangs. We document our gang members. That means taking a name, a picture, if we can get one, documenting where they live, that sort of thing, what they drive, who they associate with, where they're currently meeting up to plan their activities. And once we have names and dates of birth and some identifying information, we can run those names in the database. If we discover they're illegally present, then there's no reason why we would not proceed, with a documented gang member, against that gang member to make the Department of Homeland Security aware that we have an undocumented alien in Collier County who's participating in gang-type activities. That's what Operation Community Shield, under the Department Page 27 June 20, 2008 of Homeland Security, is actually designed to do: target them, remove them from the country. Those transnational gang members can no longer commit crimes in our jurisdiction. But that's just one element. We have the jail element, that's composed often people, ten members ofthe agency. That's roughly, as you all know, two people around the clock, because it takes five and a half to staff a post, 24-hour post, seven days a week. That's about two posts. That's for booking purposes, to book people in, documenting their arrest, documenting who they are, and helping to prepare the paperwork necessary to file a detainer on those people. The remainder of our 17 are on the street. We have members in gang enforcement, we have members -- we have gang members __ gang enforcement members. We have a member at the driver's license office. The idea being that people present fictitious identity packets all the time in order to acquire Florida driver's licenses which permit them to travel about Florida, get on a commercial aircraft. Presidential visits, Secret Service looks at your driver's license to make sure that you're okay to come in. They run that, they scan that to make sure you're not in the database. But if you have a driver's license, you have an identity. So we discover large numbers of people attempting to acquire false identities through the driver's license offices. We have gang enforcement, driver's license, organized crime. We have members assigned to organized crime task forces who are 287G authorized. We have marine patrol elements that are 287G authorized because we have smuggling coming across the wet borders, mostly from Cuba. But we've also discovered Chinese nationals on board boats with Cubans, and they are not subject to the foot dry policies found within the Cuban Adjustment Act. So what we have in Collier County, which makes us an Page 28 June 20, 2008 exemplar, we think, for the country is that we tried to get our arms around the whole big picture of illegal immigration, not just processing those people who we happen to arrest to determine whether they're illegally present. We believe that this is a tool that law enforcement ought to use in the nation to rid their jurisdiction of people who are committing crimes, their mere presence is a crime. But if the illegally-present foreign national is not here committing crimes, we know we have a safer place. And we've already given testimony to this board over the course of the last couple of years that we believe about 25 to 30 percent of our criminal population is illegally-present foreign nationals. If you can drive that number down, you've got a very, very safe condition. COMMISSIONER FIALA: After deportation -- SHERIFF HUNTER: That's the first part of the question. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Right. I'll try to get to this -- after deportation, how many come back? SHERIFF HUNTER: What we discovered -- we've deported, again, I think it's over 340. It might be 390 now. We've only found three who have returned. That's not the circumstance in every county that is currently 287G authorized. But we have found, I believe, three is the number who have returned. Now, they're subject to felony violation of federal law, 15 year sentences. So that -- that will incapacitate them. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. And Cubans can come over on the boat, but if other groups, I don't know, Mexicans or whatever come over and they say they're Cubans, how can you tell if they are or aren't if they don't have identification? SHERIFF HUNTER: That's the problem. And that's why we've become -- that's part of the reason why we've become involved in the immigration arena. When you encounter an undocumented alien on the street, they Page 29 June 20, 2008 literally have no identification. That's why they're called undocumented. So therefore you have no way of identifying them except by virtue of them giving you a name. There are problems with that, obviously. But you run that name and alleged date of birth through the federal data bases. If you get no hit that this person isn't in our data base, meaning they didn't cross into the United States of America through a port of entry, they are not here legally, they don't have a visa, they don't have a passport, they have nothing, then they're illegally present. The next question and the difficult part of the question to answer is from which Latin Country are you? And of course there are questions you can ask to determine whether the person is from where they say they are. So if they say they're from Colombia, okay, well, tell me about the capital of Colombia. Tell me about Mr. Uribe. Tell me about the president there. Tell me, where did you go to school, who were your classmates. We do have contacts you can make through the embassies to determine whether any of those questions are right. If they say they're from Cuba and they give us answers to those questions, and we make contact with our embassies and they verify, yeah, that person seems to be Cuban, then the supposition will have to stick that that person is Cuban. They get their $9,000 and they are adjusted into the United States of America. COMMISSIONER FIALA: And the last question was do we seem to have more illegals in Collier, thank Heavens, you're doing such a great job we probably won't, than most of the other counties in Florida other than the Miami-Dade County? SHERIFF HUNTER: Interesting. First of all, the Cuban nationals who are here and subject to the Cuban Adjustment Act aren't considered to be illegals. So the only statistics that we have -- there are two sets of Page 30 June 20, 2008 statIstICS. One is published by the Pugh Hispanic Center. And all that they can tell us is that there are about a million illegally-present foreign nationals in the State of Florida. If you draw a line across the state at mid-Ievel-- midline roughly from Citrus County to Volusia County, you'd find that 80 percent of the population of the State of Florida falls below that line. So if you can make a few simple assumptions that 80 percent of that million probably are from that line south, then you can make some general assumptions about how many people live in South Florida that are illegally present. But there is no study that I'm aware that says that here's your county breakdown in terms of the total number of undocumented people living there, because they're undocumented, and nobody knows that they're illegal until you make the encounter and run them through the data bases, and therefore, nobody's counting them. The only other study out there -- it's not really a study, it's an annual statistical publication, it's from the Department of Homeland Security -- and they can tell you how many people they've encountered on the streets that are subject to removal that are from countries, from foreign countries and they're foreign nationals who are here illegally, so they're subject to removal. But those are only the people they encounter. There are far more people here than are actually encountered by the -- I think it's, the new number is something like 6700 investigators for the nation. So 6700 investigators in the nation encountering, I forget what the numbers are now, they're in the neighborhood of maybe 150,000 people subject to removal annually that are encountered by these investigators -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: Thank you so much. SHERIFF HUNTER: -- that's as close as I can come. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I think Commissioner Coyle was next and then Commissioner Coletta. Page 3 1 June 20, 2008 COMMISSIONER COYLE: I thought I was never going to get a chance. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I was trying to play Commissioner Coyle for a minute. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes. You did a very good job. By the way, those were excellent questions, thank you. Sheriff, is there any way we can get reports listing the current status of all the people you have apprehended and turned over to ICE, to understand what ICE is doing and how quickly they're doing it? Is that possible? Do you get those reports, and if so, can you give them to us or not? SHERIFF HUNTER: You may certainly get them as soon as we get them. We've asked the same questions. That's an excellent question as well. And I will echo, those were very good questions, Commissioner Fiala. We have attempted to determine what is exactly happening with these folks once we release them to your custody. How many have been removed, how many are subject to removal still pending? Once we file a detainer on them we know that they are subject to removal. But in terms of answering the earlier question, when exactly were they removed? Was it the next day, was it two weeks from the day we turned them over to you, when was it, we're having difficulty with that. Because what -- I don't want to bog you down in this, and I'm not sure I understand it exactly myself, but apparently the Department of Homeland Security is broken into so many different groups that are not really associated with one another by function that the enforcement group out of Tampa doesn't necessarily know what the detention and removal group is doing in Miami. So we deal with both. And when we send a person out for removal, that person goes into the detention and removal group in Page 32 June 20, 2008 Miami. So our requests have been to the detention and removal, how many people have been removed? Well, we can tell you the total number, but we can't tell you when they were removed or -- if you ask me a particular inmate's name, if that person has been removed, I can't tell you. I'd have to go through -- they say -- I'd have to go through a whole list of everybody that was removed over the course of the last month and try to match that name with the name coming out of Collier County. Because remember, Sheriff, this DRO office, this detention and removal office is serving all of South Florida. This is not just Collier County. This is anybody coming through our office that gets removed, we have to match that name back to our whole list. So that would take me a lot of time, Sheriff. We've encouraged them to do that. And we told them that, you know, automation is there for that purpose. And we think we can help them out. We just need to know where to start and how our automation would fit with their automation so that we can get some closure on this. As soon as we receive that -- and we're working on it now -- as soon as we receive that we'll make those kinds of reports available to the commission. We are in the process right now, we have a sharp individual, Keith Harmon, in the jail, who is beginning to create the statistical reports necessary to keep us apprised of what our status is. And I'm confident that we will have some accurate, timely reports coming to us in the near future. Right now I can give you an overview. I'll do a whole session with the board, if you wish, on where we stand today. Because we have our numbers, and we know who was subject to removal, who was removed from the Collier County jail, what that would constitute in terms of total cost, how many people we've removed. We're only removing about one in five. We can't convince the Page 33 June 20, 2008 Department of Homeland Security that everybody that's illegally present should be removed, because they have no detention space, they tell us, at Chrome Avenue and the new facility in, I think it's Okeechobee County -- or Glades County, rather, Glades County. They don!t have sufficient detention space. I think there's -- for the nation, the total is something like 37,000 beds. So they're saying we can only take the worst of the worst offender who is illegally present right now. We're going to document everybody else, we want to know who they are, where they're residing so we know how to, in the future, lay hands on them for removal purposes, but right now we're going to focus on the worst of the worst. I can give you those kind of statistics today. But what we want is a bigger picture, what exactly is happening, how rapidly does it happen, is there anything we need to be reporting to Senator Martinez that we need to fix some things here. Let's see where we stand. Obviously we need more detention beds. And I think Commissioner Halas's suggestion earlier, we need to encapsulate that in that resolution, that detention beds are critical for the ultimate outcomes here if because we're having to hold people longer or let them go back into the general population to commit more crimes, even at the lower level until they rise to a level sufficient to have themselves removed, then that's just additional crimes being committed in Collier County. And that's unacceptable to us, just as it is to you. COMMISSIONER COYLE: When you talk about removal, you're really talking about removing people from the Collier County jails, not necessarily removal from the country. Isn't that true? SHERIFF HUNTER: I'm talking about deportation. They like to use the term removal. COMMISSIONER COYLE: So when you say removal, you know that those 350 or 390 people have actually left the country. SHERIFF HUNTER: They are -- what I know is they are Page 34 June 20, 2008 actually subject to deportation and just a matter of their circumstances, hooking up the ride or which county they're going to -- certain countries don't want their nationals back. So we run into some circumstances there, but nonetheless, they've had the removal documents filed and they're subject to deportation. Removal equals deportation. COMMISSIONER COYLE: I'm going to ask you to put up that state map on crime rates again, please. So that no one gets confused about whether we're in budget negotiations here or something else -- that one, yes --I'd like to refresh everyone's memory. Yesterday during our budget hearings, we were talking with the court officials and the public defender and state's attorney, and it was reported that a minimum of 22 percent of the people in our legal system are self-admitted illegal aliens. And that the number could easily be as high as 60 percent. This has a huge impact upon our budget. SHERIFF HUNTER: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER COYLE: And we know already that you can confirm that you've got at least 22 percent of the beds in your jail occupied by people who are here illegally who have been arrested for crimes. And so we think that's a fairly good minimum figure. If we can do anything to reduce that figure, we're talking about not just $9 million a year for incarcerating these people, we're talking about maybe 70 to $90 million a year in all phases, from schools to medical facilities to the court system for the investigation, apprehension, trial and, if appropriate, probation supervision. So there are a lot of things that are impacted by this illegal alien question, criminal illegal aliens. Now, this map is a testament, I think, to the work of your agency over the past six years. I can remember when you first started the effort with ICE, and the Board of County Commissioners at your request fully endorsed it and sent resolutions to the President and to Page 35 June 20, 2008 the Governor to support you on this. And I think it has paid off. And I think your agency is an example nationally of what can be done to resolve what many people would prefer to say is a federal responsibility . I believe most of us now understand that the federal government is not going to do anything. And if we don't start doing something locally, it's not likely to get done at all. And you have started doing something locally. And I think you and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina are probably the only two counties in the -- well, they were the only two countries in the nation who were doing this. I don't know if others have joined you. But in any event, I'm sure you can give us some insight as to why Collier County has such a low crime rate when it is surrounded by others that have such a high crime rate. We generally look at higher populations as populations that are likely to have higher crime rates. And certainly we can see that in Jacksonville and Miami-Dade. But there are a lot of rural or semi-rural counties here who have a bad crime rate in the State of Florida. It's not just that. It's not just the urbanized areas. I have to believe that much of this problem is an illegal alien problem. Now, you mayor may not agree with me. But I think the fact that your agency has been aggressive in identifying illegal aliens who are criminals and getting them out of here. So I would just like to commend you, all of you, for the fine job you've been doing. And if there is something that we can do to help you, I think that this board would be anxious to do that. Because anything we can do to help you solve that problem will reduce the cost to the taxpayers of this county. And that's what we're all interested in doing. SHERIFF HUNTER: I appreciate your comments. And I do again ask that the board take an assertive, somewhat aggressive Page 36 June 20, 2008 position on this and make our national legislative delegation a bit more sensitive to the issues. We know -- you hit right on the point that I would make, this isn't just a federal issue. Immigration is not a federal issue, because there's too much embedded crime in the illegally-present foreign national population. Not only do they possess illegal social security numbers, drivers' licenses -- all felonies, by the way -- they're accruing welfare benefits illegally, applying for those benefits and receiving them. That's felonies. They're doing this on a regular basis. That aside, I can demonstrate to the board again that anywhere from 24 to maybe 30 percent of our local crime problem in this county, the most prosperous county in the State of Florida, can be attributed to illegally-present foreign nationals. Those that were caught. How many more are contributing further to our local crime circumstance? If you can reduce in any county in the State of Florida your crime rate by another 25 percent, you can fall off the end of the chart. There should be no agency head of a law enforcement agency in this state who would not support this kind of an effort. And that's why the attorney general is now involved, I believe. Again, focused primarily on gangs. Because we can take proactive positions on gangs due to the nature of the state statutes identifying persons as active gang members and associates. But I think there's a great public safety issue embedded in the illegally-present foreign national population, and that's how we've become involved and why we're become involved, and we can use it for targeting certain active elements. If you discover a career criminal is an illegally-present foreign national, why would you not target that person if they're illegally present and remove them from the county, thereby saving yourself, according to all the literature, literally hundreds of crimes over the course of a year. Two-hundred and forty-three crimes per annum the Page 37 June 20, 2008 average reported number of crimes we're -- I look at Chief Smith, because we're in dispute sometimes about the literature. But self reporting, the average number of crimes committed by the person sitting in a prison right now is 243 crimes per year. Per year. If you've got a career criminal out on the street and happens to be an illegally-present foreign national, have you saved yourself 243 victimizations of your local resident population or visitors? Yes, is the answer. Why wouldn't you do that as an agency head of a law enforcement agency. Because to do less would be, in my view, a feasance violation. You're ignoring a significant public safety issue. So get involved with immigration enforcement and you get the same outcome here. You just make us work harder to keep that yellow while everything around it is going some other color. Highlands County, we reported to them, I chair -- I'm a vice chair for the statewide Sheriffs Task Force. We reported to them that we were seeing grow houses here and they were being operated by a certain former alien population who no longer is alien because of their status within the law. And that they ought to be looking themselves __ and they reported, yes, we're seeing the same thing. We formed task forces with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Now it's become a statewide issue, at least from midline again south, so that we can attack that organized criminal group. Turns out they're involved in more than just grow houses, dirt theft and vehicle conversions of heavy equipment and everything you can make money at. Credit card theft, identity theft, fuel theft. Literally everything you can make money at. Theft of boats, running smuggling operations. Huge issue. And again, the Attorney General understands that although we can attack that to some extent with 287G authority, you're going to be limited in terms of what you can do with that alien -- former alien population once they have been arrested. Page 38 June 20, 2008 But I think there's a great deal more the State of Florida can do. There's a great deal more we can do that we're working on now. And with your partnership, I think, as a nation, when we energize the State of Florida through this board, we'll get it done. CHAIRMAN HENNING: We're getting very close to a break, but Commissioner Coletta has a question. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you very much. I know everyone up here has commented about your service, and I'd just like to tell you that Collier County is a great place to live because of what you've done for us, and you will be remembered forever, I'm sure. One of the issues, and you brought it up earlier, about the ongoing situation of the economy out there and how it could have future implications of where we're going, especially as far as crime goes. There's a great concern now through the rural area of Collier County regarding the foreclosed houses and the -- trying to come up with some way to be able to protect that particular property and also making sure it doesn't degrade to the point that it becomes a place for vandals and people of unsavory character to take residence in. I know the Sheriffs department has an ongoing program in place, and I think it would be a good time to share it not only with this commission but with the public at large. SHERIFF HUNTER: I'm glad you brought that up. First of all, we have a biweekly meeting we call Comstat, and in yesterday's meeting we had the unfortunate report that we had lost property from about, I think it turned out to be something like 12 foreclosed upon or currently vacant condominium units. This is an issue, is the answer, and one that we think we're well out in front of. But we're going to continue to see an occasional blip. We're very fortunate to have the man seated on my left, who has law enforcement experience as an agency head, who came up with the idea that, long before I thought of it, that the foreclosed homes particularly are going to need some special care and some special protection, and Page 39 June 20, 2008 they're going to need a lived-in look. Otherwise, they become an easy target for air conditioning units to be removed, refrigerators, microwaves, stoves, the whole -- anything that's removable will be removed. You want to talk about that real quick on what we're doing. MR. RAMBOSK: Yes, what Commissioner Coletta has brought up is our most recent community caretaking initiative where we have empowered each of our districts to work together with residents in each of the districts, banks, who have usually the ultimate authority and become the owner of foreclosures. More or most importantly, the residents that live in particular neighborhoods, district or community who more readily can identify for us which houses they believe have the potential to become more of a problem. Weare working with the fire districts, we're working with code enforcement and county offices all to identify what we believe has a significant potential for the coming year. As you already know, in 2007 there were more than 3450 foreclosures in Collier County. We are well on our way to see that same number, if not exceed that. Our estimate right now is somewhere between seven and 10,000 foreclosures. We know for a fact that foreclosures have the tendency to turn into a vacant or abandoned home. In years past it might have only been a nuisance relative to our children in the neighborhood that might use a $500,000 home as a fort to meet in. However, today we're looking at all of the things that, Commissioner, you've described. Not only the nuisance element, but more importantly people moving into these homes. They're either living there, and if they can't afford to live anywhere and they have utilized this property in a neighborhood, how are they going to get food for -- food, how are they going to get fuel, how are they going to get those other things to sustain living, and that means the cause of potential crime in a neighborhood. Page 40 June 20, 2008 And it's all neighborhoods throughout the entire county of Collier. Not one has not seen foreclosures in their neighborhoods. And from talking with real estate agents, one of the things that we're trying not to have occur is that degradation of a particular home where they become boarded up, where they become, you know, unsightly, unkept, broken windows, which degrade the value of the property. But more so it puts a neighborhood into a position where it could become blighted ifmore and more homes become that way. So what we're asking for is that as we're working together with our volunteer deputies, our community observers, our residents, our full-time community policing deputies is we are identifying as many homes as we possibly can in each district, prioritizing the top five to ten of those that are the worst, make the connection with the homeowners, particularly -- or whoever owns the home, particularly if it's a bank, homeowners associations who are now investing in making sure property is kept, making sure that we don't degrade the neighborhood, and keep that property so that we don't incur additional thefts or problems, not only from the residents but from those inside. So we would encourage all residents to work together with us, contact us by our tips line, go onto our website and let us know where you think a property might be. And also understand that we're talking about thousands and thousands and thousands of homes, and we are going to do what we're able to do, but we are way out in front because most communities often give that role and responsible (sic) solely to code enforcement, which we believe would be unfair. They do a terrific job, but we need to work together as a community to make sure the rest of our residents are safe. So anyone that has as concern about that, please let us know, we'll add it to the list, and we're going to continue to work forward. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Kevin, I applaud your effort. And I'm looking very much forward to being more active on your Page 41 June 20, 2008 committee in the future. I'd like to see if maybe you might be able to find time in your busy schedule to arrange to meet with the different associations through the rural part of Collier County to be able to explain the program that's in place and what the residents can do to be able to protect their neighborhoods better in conjunction with the Sheriffs Department. MR. RAMBOSK: Absolutely. We will. We have begun that but we have many neighborhood associations and we'd be happy to meet with each and every one of them. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay. It's close to break. . Sheriff, I want to thank you -- personally want to thank you for the great experience working up here with you and your agency, and as a citizen, working with you prior to this. And you definitely left a great foundation to build upon and continue to provide just excellent service to all of us. SHERIFF HUNTER: Well, thanks for the kind words. Of course it takes the whole agency. You know how that works. COMMISSIONER FIALA: How different it is than maybe 10 years ago when you were looking for budgets and stuff, huh. Wow, here we are all praising you guys for all you've done. And before they used to duke it out, right. Well, anyway, enough said. SHERIFF HUNTER: It could go either way, you know. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Wait till next year. SHERIFF HUNTER: This is detente at its best. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: It's not over yet, correct? SHERIFF HUNTER: No, I want to commend the board. It has been -- we've all kind of grown up in the experience and tried to feel our way along. Nobody gives you a manual when you become an elected official that says here's how you run meetings, here's -- these are the outcomes you ought to shoot for. Page 42 June 20, 2008 I think you've been very attentive to the constituents who are here -- I'm not leaving anyone out. I consider you all friends, you've been true professionals. You've been very supportive of law enforcement. And we definitely appreciate all that you've done for this county because, you know, we can talk about the numbers, but without resource, you don't get this done. You've been more than resource providers, you've been also partners through resolutions and board actions and board activity, working with not only the legislative delegation but our Governor to try to make things right. And that's not happening throughout the State of Florida. So I'd like to see us stay as we are and keep this partnership going. Keep up the good work. CHAIRMAN HENNING: I think it will happen. What do we want to do here? Public comments is set for 1 :00. And did we want to wait until after the public comments to deal with the rate? Or do you want to take a break and come back and deal with the rate? What's the pleasure of the board? COMMISSIONER COYLE: I think we really should listen to the public before we make the final decisions. Otherwise their comments won't have much bearing on our business. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Why don't we just come back at 1 :00. All right? We're adjourned till 1 :00, thank you. (A recess was taken.) MR. MUDD: Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd please take your seats. Mr. Chairman, Commissioners, you have a hot mic. PUBLIC COMMENTS CHAIRMAN HENNING: Welcome back to the board's '08-'09 Page 43 June 20, 2008 budget workshop. And back from recess. We're going to wrap this up, starting off with public speakers. MR. OCHS: You have two public speakers registered, Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Ladies before gentlemen. MR. OCHS: Tammie Nemecek. Even I can figure that out. Tammie and Dave. MS. NEMECEK: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners. Tammie Nemecek, President of the Economic Development Council of Collier County. I did get a chance to speak to you yesterday but wanted to come back up have a chance to address any questions you might have and talk to you a little bit about the budget itself and the ability for us to be able to continue to fund economic development here in Collier County . As it is one of your six strategic items on your strategic plan, I think it is important not only for you but it's important for the community. We have about 250,000 of the $1.6 million that's obligated to next year. My suggestion is if at the end of the day we talk about a millage neutral position for the community and we need to cut an additional $11 million, that we talk about a percentage of the incentive fund that we cut. My suggestion would be probably an overall 20 percent cut, which would leave it down to about $1.2 million. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Questions? (No response.) CHAIRMAN HENNING: Thank you. That's good. MR. OCHS: Next speaker, Dave Schimmel. MR. SCHIMMEL: Good afternoon, Commissioners, Dave Schimmel, CEO, David Lawrence Center. I appreciate the tough times that you're in. David Lawrence Centers just implemented about a million dollars' worth of reductions Page 44 June 20, 2008 from losses of state revenue. We anticipate it will be as bad this commg year. I'm here basically to remind you that the need for additional Baker Act beds in Collier County has not gone away, even with the decrease in population. The increase for people who are in danger of hurting themselves or in danger of hurting others has continued to increase and grow. Last year I asked for support in order to expand Baker Act services. I've lobbied the state five years in a row to try to expand Baker Act services. So I'm basically here to let you know that that need has not gone away. I understand your budget dilemmas. We work very well with Marla Ramsey, who by the way is just an outstanding county administrator. We appreciate working with Marla. But this Baker Act service is an essential safety service in this community. When someone's in danger of hurting someone else in the community, I would assume you would prefer that they be in a safe place where they can be treated. And we can no longer guarantee that in this community because we're overcrowded on a daily basis. So the responsible thing for us to do is to try to plan to expand those services. And really, the only way we can expand those services is with county and Department of Children's and Families support. So we understand the economic climate, but we need you to be aware that this issue won't go away. It's far more cost effective for us to treat people for three or four days and keep them out of the criminal justice system, because the burden's going to fall on your law enforcement if they don't have a place to take people. The Baker Act is a Florida statute. To be a public receiving facility, there are rules and regulations and mandates that we have to follow. And we can't be overcrowded. That's one of those rules. Page 45 June 20, 2008 And so that means people won't get served. And my concern is that more and more citizens as time goes on will have complaints about us, concerns about being able to access care. One of my primary concerns right now is not only for the people who need this service but for the safety of the community. Your area hospitals are bearing part of this burden because they frequently have people in their emergency rooms that they cannot transfer to us. So please keep us on your agenda and keep us in your thoughts when the money starts to roll in. Because as I say, I believe we are as important as law enforcement and fire protection. I'd be happy to answer any questions. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Questions? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'll follow Commissioner Halas. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. Obviously we have some real concerns here. And again, this borders on health, safety and welfare of the community and citizens here. I hear what you're saying. We're going to try to work through the budget. We've got some trying times ahead of us in the next couple of hours to figure out what we're going to do. But if there's a way that we can address your concerns in addressing the Baker Act, we'll see what we can do. MR. SCHIMMEL: Thank you, Commissioner Halas. And we've set our budget for this year. It's really the future that we're concerned about, the ability to go forward with a major construction project and then have the ability to operate those additional beds. So I'll be seeing you every year, because it's fun seeing you, actually. So -- and thanks for the opportunity to speak. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Thank you. I think Commissioner Coletta has something, a question? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: More ofa statement, if! may. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Then Commissioner Coyle. Page 46 June 20, 2008 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you. I just wanted to comment the fact that you're absolutely correct. This is as essential as any other emergency service out there, be it the ambulance or the Sheriffs Department or the fire department. This is a safety net that we have to maintain. And if we don't maintain it, we're just going to have to pay the consequences down the road. Thank you for being here. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Coyle. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, I'm just wondering where the funding request for David Lawrence -- CHAIRMAN HENNING: It's public services. COMMISSIONER COYLE: But is there an unfunded request? MR. SCHIMMEL: I did not ask for an increase. COMMISSIONER COYLE: You did not ask for an increase. So it's already in the budget -- MR. MUDD: Not what he just talked about. He has a million dollars that's in -- around a million dollars that's in our budget in public services, and that's budgeted, sir. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay, so that's already budgeted. MR. MUDD: And that's your requirement from the State of Florida. State of Florida says that you have to have a mental health facility or capability within a particular county, and the David Lawrence Center provides that to this county. And they've done an exceptional job for as long as I've been a county manager and probably before that. COMMISSIONER COYLE: But there has been no request for an unfunded requirement? MR. SCHIMMEL: No, I did not request. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Thank you very much, sir. CHAIRMAN HENNING: It's actually $899,300. It's not on the UFR, but the total request. Sheriff Hunter, did you -- do you have any words of wisdom for Page 47 June 20, 2008 the board? I didn't know if you wanted to speak or -- you're more than welcome to. SHERIFF HUNTER: On this issue? CHAIRMAN HENNING: Any issue you want. SHERIFF HUNTER: I'm standing by. I only caught part of -- excuse me. I only caught part of the presentation, unfortunately. I'm back there now. But I will say that there is a documented need for additional mental health beds. Weare acting as a mental health facility now at the jail. So it is a bit of a conundrum, and we have been finding it for years and years and years. Of course, it's growing larger and larger and larger. Who knows where the breaking point is. But I have to agree with the statements I did hear. There will be complaints, I'm sure. There will be issues pertaining to proper care, because you probably don't get the same care in a jail that you would at a facility similar to our receiving facility at David Lawrence. But other than that, nothing on that topic. I'm available to answer any questions. And that's my attendance here. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Thank you. Okay, did you want to go to board discussion? County manager, do you have something? PRELIMINARY UFR DISCUSSION MR. MUDD: Yes, sir, could I just try to get done for a second. I want to make sure that the board understands that I understood their guidance in February as far as what I was to bring forward. And what I basically heard and the board agreed to was that I was going to go out and squeeze everyone for at least two percent and then we were going to come forward today with whatever potential cuts the board wants to make. And if it meant admin. services, it meant admin. services. Page 48 June 20, 2008 Well, we went out and we squeezed everyone. Admin. services had a reduction of four percent. Public services -- and I'm on Page 2 under the general overview -- and public services had a reduction from $48.8 million to 47 -- just a little over $47 million. So that's about a $1.8 million cut in public services. And that is basically your face to the public as a board. I've kept your budget guidance as far as rollback minus Amendment One. It happens to be a rollup. But that's the way the rules are for rollback when you have depreciation in values. If you look at your UFR list, you will notice that in the general fund you have $3.1 million that hasn't been earmarked for anything. And you also have $2.6 million in 111 that hasn't been earmarked for anything. You have just a little over $5.5 million in unearmarked funds that have -- that are not in this budget, and your planning services have been cut $1.8 million. You have money there in order to totally fill public services to a zero percent -- or a neutral position in this budget as you speak. And that's, I believe, what the board asked me to do during their guidance. And so that piece is done. The next piece I want to make sure that the board -- there was a statement that was made yesterday when the board had a discussion when we talked about -- when we talked about economic incentives. And there was a comment that was talked about on the dais yesterday about Lee County providing $23 million or $25 million, and it was a news article here the other day. There is a significant difference between the millage rate in Lee County and the millage rate in Collier County. There is a significant difference in utility franchise fees in Lee County and Collier County. And the reason I'm showing this is I don't want the viewing audience to basically say that this board is pro-economic development and not pro-business or anything like that. Page 49 June 20, 2008 This board has decided that it wanted to have the lowest taxes that you could possibly have for the community in which it serves, okay. And they've done that by keeping the millage rates low, not only in the general fund but in the unincorporated general fund, and they've chose, and I've come to the board three times on the utility franchise fee and lost all three times. So there is none, you're not having a franchise fee on the electric bill of anybody in unincorporated Collier County. And in Lee County they have a three percent utility fee that brings in that annual amount into their coffers. So I would say to you is if Collier County had the same millage rate and the same utility fee as Lee County did, then this board would have no problem coming up with at least twice this amount of money that Lee County is putting in for their economic development. You could bring in almost close to $46 million based on those particular numbers. So I didn't want that to go out there and have the board be accused that they're not pro-business or whatever. This board has taken a different approach over the years. It has basically decided to reduce taxes versus taxing people in order to do the economic development fees. And they've wanted that reduction in their taxes to be an incentive, so to speak, for the businesses to basically come to Collier County, because over the years it will be cheaper to operate here than it would be in Lee County. And that's all I have to say. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Well, I'm sorry my comments were taken out of context. I was just making an observation of what I've seen in the news of what Lee County did. If I said that Collier County is not doing enough, then I apologize. But I don't think I said that. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I think what was said, Chairman, Page 50 June 20, 2008 is that Lee County can come up with $23 million. And you know, more power to them, I'm glad they can. We got, I think, some huge concerns here. We've got a new library that's sitting out there. How much have we lost from the state in revenue sharing and in sales tax in the last couple of years? Does anybody have anything on that? MR. MUDD: Yes, sir, we do. It's on the general -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: That's taken right out of the budget automatically. I mean, we don't have any control over that. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir, your budget this year in the general fund on 01 is on the 01 sheet on Page 5 again, first tab, which is General Overview. If you go down the fifth line where it says state revenue sharing, you'll see our projection is -- and it's been running dead on it. We're at what, 200-plus thousand less for May, and it's been like that, then we were last year -- MR. YONKOSKY: And the sales tax is $231,000 less. MR. MUDD: So we've got it down as a minus 18 percent. So on the state sharing, revenue sharing on that page we went from adopted 9.4 and we're recommending that your budget in '09 be 7.7 million. So that basically is a $1.6 million cut over what was in the budget from last year for sales -- for this state revenue sharing. Then I want you to go down a little bit farther, and it's the fourth line from pretty much before you get some kind of a subtotal. It says state sales tax. Your adopted '07-'08 is 35.7 million. You'll notice we caried the same minus 18 percent cut, and it's 29.2. So you've had a cut there of some six point -- some $6.5 million. So between the two it's been a significant cut. The budget we presented to you had those cuts in it. So as you look at the reductions and you also look at what we're being reduced as far as those revenues and state sales tax from the state, it is a big impact. And I mentioned yesterday that we're using ad valorem dollars to Page 51 June 20, 2008 basically loan the principal and interest rate for the impact fee debt of some $10 million. So if you take a look at 10 million there, another seven or eight million dollars here from the state that's been cut, and then you take a look at the Amendment One piece, this budget is very lean as far as those cuts are concerned. And so we have looked at those impacts. And if you didn't know about those, we're basically looking at a minus 18 percent. I'm hoping it's not a minus 20 percent, the way things are going. MR. YONKOSKY: Right. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Coyle? COMMISSIONER COYLE: You know, I cannot argue with the positions of other commissioners who have a different take on this. I think we each have to reach a conclusion to determine how we can best serve the people of Collier County. So I'll only attempt to explain my thoughts on this. CHAIRMAN HENNING: If we're getting into the guidance to the manager, I would like to see if the manager is complete and then have that conversation. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay, that would be fine, sure. CHAIRMAN HENNING: You okay with that? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, I'm fine, no problem. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I just had a fast question on something Commissioner Halas asked. Do we have any record of -- with these state revenues that are coming in, do we have any record someplace of how much we put in as a county and how much we get back, so that we can -- you know, when we see this stuff, we see how -- you know, I think that everybody needs to see how much we donate to the state. MR. YONKOSKY: There are two types of counties in relationship to state sales tax. There are contributors and there are receivers. Collier County is a major contributor. We do not receive Page 52 June 20, 2008 the same dollars back that we put in. MR. MUDD: Yeah, Commissioner, I have to go back to -- we'd have to get the data, but I provided that data to Commissioner Coyle before in the past, as he's asked for it. And we don't get anywhere near -- nowhere near -- and I'm saying if we get a fifth back, we're lucky. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I think it would be interesting if however often we do it, quarterly, or whatever, you pass those figures to us and maybe to the newspaper. MR. MUDD: Ma'am, we have to get those -- those numbers come from the state, so we've got to get them from them. And whenever they post them, we'll get them and we'll get you that information. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Thank you. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Coyle. And I guess from -- I guess we'll just go down the line and see if we could get a consensus. Is that okay to everybody? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. And with respect to getting it to the Naples Daily News, I don't have much confidence that the Naples Daily News is going to report that the state has done anything wrong here. I see that they were able to listen to our entire debate yesterday and didn't even bother to point out that Amendment One isn't going to result in a tax decrease for anybody. They made it sound like we were just whining about Amendment One and that it really was a very beneficial amendment. But in any event, I'm not going to revisit that argument. But here is my position on this. Number one, for whatever reason, the people in Collier County overwhelmingly voted for Amendment One. And they essentially told us that they wanted a tax decrease. They're not going to get it from Amendment One, but that doesn't change their message. Page 53 June 20, 2008 So from my personal standpoint, I feel it is my obligation to do everything we can to give the people a tax decrease. And we draw the line when it begins to adversely impact the health, safety and welfare of our residents. There are many things in this budget that have absolutely nothing to do with health, safety and welfare. And I can't argue for a higher tax rate when there are these kinds of costs in this budget. And I will continue to try to eliminate those costs to the extent that I can do so. But if we get to the point where we are not addressing issues of health, safety and welfare, I will join all the other commissioners in raising taxes. But we're not there. The county manager and his staff has done a good job of getting us partway there, but it's not as low as we can get. And I think we need to bite the bullet and get to as low as we can get or else we're not paying attention to what the taxpayers told us they wanted to do. So I would still like to remain at the same millage rate that we had last year and give the tax -- the taxpayers the best deal we can give them under these very difficult circumstances. And anything more than that, I am afraid if we still leave a lot of the things in the budget that we've asked questions about, if we still leave them in the budget, then we're not really doing our best. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: This is going to be a very difficult time for all of us that are on this board. We gave the budget guidance to the county manager. He worked very diligently in regards to bringing forth this budget. Yes, I'll have to agree with Commissioner Coyle, I think there are some areas that we need to look at. I'm not in favor of subsidizing when it comes to health, safety and welfare. That's the most important thing that I think that we as commissioners is bestowed upon us in serving the public. I also think it's our duty to make sure that the citizens have the Page 54 June 20, 2008 opportunity to visit libraries and so on. But they all cost money. There's other areas that we maybe need to look at as user fees as we go through this process. So if you want to go revenue neutral, there are going to be some real pains, I believe, as we go through this process. One of the areas that I've been looking at at lunchtime in trying to go through this budget. I didn't eat very well, I'll tell you that, is, is there anything that can be done with maybe Fund 111 to come in so that we can get the revenue or the millage down without causing undue pain for the citizens. I know they want a tax cut, but we're going to work on it, but I don't know if we can get there. I think, as John Barlow brought forth yesterday, was that when you look at what Janet brought -- Janet Vasey brought to the board and you look at a home that costs -- if you go by the budget guidance and somebody's got a $600,000 home, they're going to have an increase of $146 in taxes. I'm sure that that wasn't going to break the bank. But I understand where the 81 percent of the people here in Collier County felt that they were going to get a big bang for their buck, $250 or $275 decrease in their property taxes, and obviously it's not going to happen because of all the other cuts that have been put upon us. So I'll just ask the county manager, is there something we can do after we get all done here, maybe looking at some other areas and seeing what can be cut? CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay, we need to give the county manager some guidance. COMMISSIONER HALAS: The guidance was, I said ask -- look into Fund 111 to see where we can go there, if it's possible. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Well, I think what we're looking for is keep it at millage neutral, rollback or somewhere in between. Because we have to have consensus from three. If you want to think Page 55 June 20, 2008 about it. Commissioner Fiala nudged me and reminded me that -- didn't know if we were complete in what you had to say. MR. MUDD: Sir, I just answered the question that Commissioner Halas asked. Yes, sir, I'm done. This is negotiation. I just want to make sure everybody understood I followed the guidance as hard as I could on this one and brought home as much as you could. To answer Commissioner Halas's question, if you wanted to go 111 millage neutral, the difference there is around $800,000. You have $800,000 in your UFR list in order to do that. So you just reduce the UFR list by $800,000 and you're millage neutral in 111 right now. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Not in 01? MR. MUDD: No. CHAIRMAN HENNING: So that's -- MR. MUDD: I talked about 111, that's the question he asked, SIr. CHAIRMAN HENNING: That's half of what you're looking for on guidance on what to do with the budget? MR. MUDD: (Nods.) COMMISSIONER FIALA: You were going to go down the line of all of us? CHAIRMAN HENNING: Yeah. And I guess I'll come back to you, then, if that's okay. COMMISSIONER HALAS: In regards to what? I think that -- I think -- well, I think I've put my say in, in regards to where I'm at on this. And I think that the other three commissioners need to put their input in and then we'll figure out what we're going to do. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay, great. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Let's hear from all sides. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Millage neutral on 01, 111. COMMISSIONER HALAS: On only 111. Page 56 June 20, 2008 CHAIRMAN HENNING: 01 and 111. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I'm sorry. CHAIRMAN HENNING: And keep the customer services whole. Look at things like travel, dues, administration, things of that nature. Commissioner Fiala? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Thank you. MR. MUDD: So I want to make sure I understand. You basically said millage neutral on 001, 111, and then basically take PSD back to zero percent? You're looking for another $1.8 million. CHAIRMAN HENNING: PSD? MR. MUDD: Public services division. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay. MR. MUDD: That's what you said. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Well, the problem is in the budget, there wasn't anything to bring the libraries back up to service. So even at what is being presented, you're still going to have to cut the libraries; correct? MR. MUDD: They have -- as Marla presented her budget, it was 3.6 percent, I believe, was the cut across PSD, public services division in that particular case. If you're talking about bringing the libraries back to service, remember last year's guidance, you basically asked me to cut $6.6 million -- you remember we were cutting the 45 or whatever it was at the time? Let me see if I can find that page. You basically -- as we were looking to try to find the $13 million __ excuse me, the $15 million, this is last year when we were getting to how do we go get $35 million in the general fund. Oh, we replaced out 10 million of Norman's 001 dollars with non-reoccurring. Same thing in stormwater at five, and the clerk as a fee officer was $5 million. So that gave you 20 million of the 15. Then the remaining general fund budget cuts to get to 15 were Page 57 June 20, 2008 basically laid out in that column as you see right there. And the county manager's agency, along with the Sheriff had to go find some $6 million worth of cuts. And that's the reduced service that we have right now based on the cuts from last year. If you want to reinstate those particular library hours, as I mentioned yesterday, to where they were before we -- that guidance at some $450,000. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Yeah, I would like to keep it whole. Commissioner Fiala? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes, thank you. I looked carefully at everything you did. And you did just as we asked you to do, by the way. I saw Janet's report. I was very pleased with her report because she said that she found very few places she could even make comments, because the budget was so tight. And that says a lot, especially coming from Janet Vasey. She, to me, is the outside guru of the budget. And I felt that that was a great compliment. As I look at this budget and I see what kind of savings that we can offer people if we go millage neutral, they don't even save a tank of gas. If we go to rollback rate, maybe they didn't save one tank of gas, but all year long they will then get to enjoy the public services such as the parks and the roads and -- I'm sorry, parks and libraries and museums and so forth. So I think -- well, museums now are paid for by TDC funds. But still, these are all things that public services, that's the only thing we can offer our taxpayers in return for their taxes. So I would go along with everybody in trying to adjust somehow, but I would hate to see us losing any of the public services. I agree with Commissioner Henning when he said that those are the one thing that we can have. And I'd love to see the libraries reinstated, if we could ever do that. CHAIRMAN HENNING: So you want to go to rollback instead Page 58 June 20, 2008 of millage neutral. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yeah, it seems -- CHAIRMAN HENNING: Or somewhere in between? Commissioner Coletta? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes, I mean, not yeah. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Mr. Mudd, would you be so kind as to put up on the screen again the financial year 2009 tax analysis sheet. If you can't find it right there, I've got a copy here, sir. MR. MUDD: This one? COMMISSIONER HALAS: No, the one that Janet had? MR. MUDD: Oh, Janet Vasey had? Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Where it breaks it down to according to what the savings is, that Commissioner Fiala was referring to. And once again, too, I enjoy eating out, maybe taking trips here and there. But the savings is almost insignificant. I know people are looking for something. The vote last fall for the tax rollback with people, what they understood. In fact, I discussed this with my wife the other night. And I asked her, do you know what you're going to be saving in taxes on our home? And she said, well, quite a bite bit. I said no. I said, we're looking at maybe about, oh, $60. COMMISSIONER FIALA: $43. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yeah, it's a small savings. And she looked at me and she said, no, you're wrong, it can't be that, it's got to be considerably more. And I said, no, it's not. And I explained to her about the tax situation, how it's laid out. But if we had a non-homesteaded piece of property, which we do, we've got a commercial property, we'll probably see a savings on there that will be quite significant. So I'm getting mixed messages here. I'm listening to everything that's being said. But there's one thing I totally agree with. And I think everybody has said it so far, is that health, safety and welfare are Page 59 June 20, 2008 the most important. Now, where does health, safety and welfare take us? It takes us across a number of different subjects. Mr. Mudd, if we were to do a rollback, or go revenue neutral and we had to fall someplace in between, what would happen to the UFR list? Because there are some items on there that fall under health, safety and welfare. I'll tell you which ones I'm talking about, and you tell me. You can tell me if you don't agree with me or not. But there are several different items on here to me definitely fall under health, safety and welfare. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. And I just want to make sure that you understand most things on that UFR list, outside of the PUD monitoring piece, the best I can remember, are all expanded services. They're not sustaining current service. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I understand. But still, just to touch on it. The sheriffs -- Sheriff, ten immigration custom enforcement deputies on the UFR list. Everybody here keeps saying about -- and it's true, the problems we're having with illegal immigrants in our country and the fact that the Sheriffs done a wonderful job in reducing the crime rate and the fact that he's got a special office that deals with this problem. Here he's making a plea to be able to increase that office by ten officers. Now I don't say it's necessary to do ten, but I mean to just dismiss it out of hand because it's on the UFR list, it's kind of scary. Going back through it, too. Transportation: Health, safety and welfare. We've got an expanded route for Golden Gate City, $110,000 would be able to meet the needs for Golden Gate City. They can't get everybody on the buses now. It's a real problem. Do they need a full $11O,000? I really don't know. We haven't gotten to that point. But I want to keep these things in mind as we go forward. I Page 60 June 20, 2008 don't know what the end result is going to be. And here's some items that are extremely concerning to me. It's under the 111 fund. Transportation, roads and bridges, road resurfacing program. We've already heard about the failing roads, and at some point in time we're going to have a massive catch-up on the whole program. They're looking for another million and a half dollars. I can't quite understand why it's all the way on the UFR list, but it is. And then of course, one of my favorite subjects just below that is the limerock road program for Golden Gate Estates, another two million dollars. People have been living without this and they're living in conditions that are beyond their control that definitely need to be addressed sometime in the near future. Another one for only $43,000, the Port of the Isles would be able to have a temporary station to be able to meet the needs of the residents there. They've been asking for this now for close to 10 years. So we're getting into this once again, can't agree with you more. Health, safety and welfare is the primary function of government, especially this government. So when we're going forward, I want to know how all these items are going to be able to fit into the matrix. And when we talk about rollbacks, I want to make sure we're not going to go back and do something to the David C. Lawrence Center. We're not going to go back and do something to some of the other programs that are out there. If we're really sincere what we're talking about, health, safety and welfare, we're going to be able to get to where we need to be. Mr. Mudd, can you tell me where I'm wrong on this, or if I'm right, or is my perspective on this within the bounds of what I see in front of me, or am I way off base? MR. MUDD: All right. The only part that I would say that you might be a little off base on is road resurfacing. Mr. Feder described yesterday that he had about five million, Norman, five million in road Page 61 June 20, 2008 resurfacing -- MR. FEDER: It's over five million, that's correct. MR. MUDD: Right. And limerock roads he has 2.6. So he has money in his budget for those particular projects. He just wishes it was more. And so that's the only two items that you might __ COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay, so that has nothing to do with health, safety and welfare, we don't need those items? MR. MUDD: You're putting me in a precarious __ COMMISSIONER COLETTA: No, what I'm saying is if this commission is telling you and they keep repeating the words health, safety and welfare -- and I agree, I love libraries, I hate to see us ever have to cut back on it -- but now we're talking about trying to find additional money someplace else in the budget to be able to get back to this. I don't want to get to the point where today would be the day that it would be final, where we draw the line in the sand and we say, okay, everything at this point is out of the question, we're not going to even talk about it and this is the direction we're going to go, and then have to live with some decisions that we mayor may not make today and have to live with them the next time. That's where I am. I'm sure that's a tremendous help to my fellow commissioners. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Yes, but let me just clarify it, if you don't mind. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Sure. I'd love that, Commissioner Henning. CHAIRMAN HENNING: The rollback, if we do rollback, we're going to increase the millage and stay with the same tax levy, correct? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yeah, but we're talking between a rollback and a reduction. CHAIRMAN HENNING: So you want to be in between rollback and-- Page 62 June 20, 2008 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That's the suggestion I'm hearing. CHAIRMAN HENNING: No, what -- Commissioner Henning, Coyle and Halas want millage neutral on Fund 111. Commissioner Henning and Commissioner Coyle want millage neutral on 01. Commissioner Fiala wants rollback. That would be at -- the tax levy would be the same. So I'm asking you -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Then I'm with Commissioner Fiala. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay. Commissioner Fiala, you wanted to say something? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes, Commissioner Coletta mentioned this transportation system. And I wanted to mention -- the CAT system. I wanted to mention, I just wanted to make sure that we don't reduce our CAT system. I know Norm was taking money out of there, but I'm just adamant about not reducing that in any way because that service is essential. And I feel that's part of health, safety and welfare. And also, I agree totally about the customs. Maybe we don't need ten, as you said, but I think we definitely need to have customs officials here. They're doing a great job. We need to have them continue that and even expand it. So maybe we need six or something along that line. Naturally I hate to even mention that I'm so in favor of the library opening, but that will sure keep a lot of people busy and off the roads and off the streets if we can open the library in East Naples as well. I didn't mean to -- CHAIRMAN HENNING: Yeah, we need to correct something here. We have more than two choices, right? MR. MUDD: You have many choices here, Commissioners. Page 63 June 20, 2008 CHAIRMAN HENNING: So I think what you're hearing from Commissioner Fiala and Commissioner Coletta is the legislation adopted allowment (sic) for 2009 with the increase of personal services income, is that what you're saying -- is that what you hear, too? MR. MUDD: I'm hearing a lot of things. And I --let me try to clarify so that there's no misunderstanding. And let's just say the budget as written is a millage rate that I expressed yesterday to this board. And then there's another discussion right now about millage neutral, which is about 11 and a half million dollar cut in the 001 budget and around $800,000 cut out of this budget -- about $800,000 on 111. And instead of trying to work the millage issue, I understand what millage neutral is and we know what the impact is as far as dollars are concerned. So I've heard that. Commissioner Henning, Mr. Chairman, Commissioners, if you would just indulge me one time and I'll go through -- I sat there last night and said, okay, I don't want to be -- I'm not trying to play king, but if I had to try to start finding cuts and how it would all work, maybe if I show it to you what I went through, it would help you as you start to go down this road. Because you haven't talked about what to cut and what not to cut yet, except in a very preliminary manner -- except for yesterday, yesterday you were getting into the nitty-gritty, so to speak. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Mr. Chairman, can I make a suggestion in that respect? CHAIRMAN HENNING: Sure. COMMISSIONER COYLE: We're getting mixed up in terminology that we don't all understand, okay? People have talked about the rollback millage, which is a millage rate of 3.38, which is not the amount that you recommended, okay? Page 64 June 20, 2008 So we have to talk about millage rates. Let's forget about the terminology. You recommended a millage rate of 3.901, okay? MR. MUDD: I did what, sir? CHAIRMAN HENNING: 3.9? COMMISSIONER COYLE: 3.2901. And millage neutral is 3.1469, okay? That's really all we're talking about right now. And if there is any disagreement between us, it is how far between those two numbers do we go, okay? CHAIRMAN HENNING: That's a good suggestion. COMMISSIONER COYLE: That's it. Those are the only two numbers we're to be looking at. And forget about all this terminology about rollbacks and Amendment Ones and all that sort -- MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. My confusion was people were talking about it -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, that's right. MR. MUDD: And all we're doing is talking about that number right there and how much it would bring in as far as taxes are concerned and go into millage neutral, which was the value that you put last year on the tax bill and how much it would bring in. Your budget is based on that particular number and it has money left over on your UFR list. That's it. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Now, how much money -- when you say money left over on your UFR list, what you're really saying is that's money that is outside the budgets that have been presented to us today that we have discretionary authority for. And you said there was $5.5 million there; is that correct? MR. MUDD: Yes, sir, that gets you about halfway __ COMMISSIONER COYLE: That's halfway there. Okay. Now, that's what we really should be talking about, in my opinion, and __ just to make it simple. We've got those two numbers to argue about, and if there's compromise and you decide how far you want to go toward one or the other. Page 65 June 20, 2008 CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay, can you leave that up there for us, too. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I know where I stand right now. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay, and you want to say something? MR. MUDD: Can I take you through a scenario? CHAIRMAN HENNING: Sure. MR. MUDD: Try to get you through it. And then you can say I don't like that, I do like this. Here we go. And I tried last night to try to work something out to get you as a board from what I was hearing where you were going with some of the items that you discussed. You might not like something that I say, and I have no problem, I have no authorship in this. I was just trying to lay something out so that you would get an idea. Okay. And I'm going to start at the top of the page. And if you don't mind, I'll just read this while you're reading it on your viewgraph and we'll talk through it and I'll count down by lines. The first line, FY'09, this is 111. The MSTD general fund tax revenue in your budget is .7065 mills. Now, if you wanted to go to millage neutral, that's that bottom line number that's double-underlined in that column of $35,436 -- and $200, excuse me. Okay, so in your budget you have 36 million -- I'm back at the top -- $218,800. Last night -- yesterday I heard guidance that we want to get -- in community and customer relations, we want to get that part of service that's provided to the municipalities to be separated from 111 because it was all at 111. Calculation we went through based on population, it comes out to be $154,900. Okay, next line, third line, reduce the MSTD general Fund 111 unfunded request. Your UFR, on your UFR list for this, on your Page 66 June 20, 2008 sheet, on sheet 11 under the first tab, it's $2,696,200. And that's the exact same number that you have on the third line. Now, I'm going to say some things about reduced landscape capital 112. There was some talk yesterday about reducing a program which Norman had in his budget of $1.4 million. I put it in there. It doesn't mean that it's not going to be in the budget for next year. You have turnback that you get at the end of October. And the turnback that you've received is all -- from the constitutionals has always been more than what we've projected in the budget. And I believe this year will also be the same. So stay with me. At the end of October when we get those numbers, I bring it back to you, say here's what the turnback we had in the budget, here's what we got, okay, this is the extra, we can reinstate. Reduce the fuel reserves. And you're going to say what are you talking about, Mudd? From October till now our fuel costs have __ regular fuel, what I call mogas, an Army term, and diesel is -- see, Commissioner Coyle is laughing because he can still remember it. I haven't talked about JP-8 yet, but no, we don't have any of that -- but has gone up 48 percent. I don't believe -- in your budget for gas and diesel, we have a number of$4.50. I don't believe that's enough, nor does Dan Croft. I asked Dan Croft how much would he be comfortable with, and he said, boss, the way things are going and the projections that everybody is talking about, it could be just shy of six bucks. And I said, okay, well, give me what you're comfortable with. He said, well, it would be, 5.75. So in your budget under fuel reserves, under 001 and 111, okay, I've got a million dollars in each one of those funds. That is for 5.75. If you wanted to take some risk and you wanted to go to 5.25 per gallon, and right now diesel is over 4.50 now for us, then you can reduce 111 by $400,000. And that is what you have on that particular item. Page 67 June 20, 2008 There was also an expression on the dais, at least the conversation that talked about increasing the PUD monitoring to get it back up to speed because it's a public service piece, and that's $157,700, and that's on your UFR list. Now, you're going to see a number underneath here and you're going to go, what the heck is that? Increased transportation support 101. If there is a department that can use either general fund money and 111 money and pretty much do it interchangeably, it's transportation. Every road they work on in Collier County is in the unincorporated area. So you could have the whole transportation budget in 111. I don't suggest you do that, because you can't get out of the City of Naples, the City of Marco, the City of Everglades City to go any place unless you go on a county road. So all those municipalities have a benefit of county roads. But it's a line and you can move around with it. Landscaping used to all be in 001 on the major arterials, the major collectors, and now, as you heard yesterday, the 112 account is all in the 111 account. So there is some room to move. And what I'm suggesting in this particular case, we transfer $3.7 million of this UFR money that's left over with these cuts and you're still at millage neutral at $35,436,200. You move 3.713800 to transportation. So I'm saying you take some 111 money and you move it into 001. And we can do that. Is everybody clear with that box on III? And right now you're at millage neutral. Now, let's go down to the general fund. Same kind of analysis, same kind of thing, and I'll talk you through the numbers. FY'09 general fund tax revenue is 3.2901 mills, and that's what's in the budget guidance, and came across, and that's just so happens what it turns out to be, and that's $260 million. Your increased revenue, CAT fare increase, you talked about it Page 68 June 20, 2008 yesterday, going from a buck-and-a-quarter to a buck-50. Now, there's some advertisement things that Norman needs to do in order to get that done. And that $80,000 is based on a three percent reduction in ridership. If there is no reduction in ridership, it's $120,000, okay? But I kept it down at 80, just said, okay, best guess, three percent, that's what Norman saw and Diane saw when we increased the revenue before, they saw about three percent then it rebounded later with growth. All right, this might not be popular, but I threw it in there as an idea. Right now fees at your park service basically cover 34.8 percent of your park budget. So that means your subsidy from the general fund 111 is above, way above 50 percent. And this increase, take it 5.2 percent, would bring you to a 40 percent fee-based budget and a 60 percent subsidy budget. What does that mean? That means that that increase in fees would bring 1.2 million --$1,271,400. Next item, reduce the general fund 001 unfunded request. Your unfunded total in here for general fund is $3,125,000. We take that off the top. Reduce the transportation support 101. If you remember, this number, $7.3 million dollars, $7.3 million, it's the same number. You moved it from 111, you moved it into the general fund. Excuse me, $3,713,800. It's the same number from top to bottom. We're just making sure we're following the balance. Reducing EDC incentive funding. $891,800. And I know, Tammie, you don't like that idea, but again, you have turnback money at the end of October, and your incentives have always been based on revenue availability. If your turnback is there, you can reinstate the $891,000 and you haven't cut a thing and you're still good to go. I believe that will happen along with the $1.4 million for that landscape cut that I had before. So I believe that's there. Page 69 June 20, 2008 All right, reduce expenses, eliminate CAT Sunday service. And I put it up and Commissioner Fiala just said, man, I want to shoot you, okay. But I would tell you, that's just the number for CAT for Sunday servIce. If you remember, the productivity committee sent the board a letter that said something about CAT service, and they said about the 393, and then they said, well, if you don't do that, there's at least four routes that don't have many passengers. I will tell you in my conversations with Norman, you have one route during regular service that doesn't have more on average than ten riders in it. And if you wanted to just go -- if you don't have an average ridership on a bus line of ten or over, then you might want to reduce those services. If you did that, without taking out Sunday, and you used that as a basis, you're around 393, 415, okay? But for this we'll just say 393. But I had this conversation with Norman prior. If you just want to do it from an effectiveness standpoint and not zero out Sunday service, but take out those routes that don't have the ridership on them. Including the one during the week, the six-day week Monday through Saturday. Next item, reduce the fuel reserve. Fuel reserve in 001, it has the same issue. Take it down to five-and-a-quarter, that's another $400,000. Reduce two EMS units. You heard Janet yesterday -- now we don't have MSAC blessing, or at least they haven't voted on it yet to provide the recommendation, but the productivity committee has. If you reduce those two units, your net benefit is 250,000 less than the budget. You increased the transfer for communications and customer relations, okay . You took it out of 111, you've got to bring it to 001. And that's exactly what that happens. So it's pretty much a zero sum game in that particular case. Page 70 June 20, 2008 Next, and this isn't exactly what the UFR has to say, but you've got a south regional library coming on. The board made the decision to bring it on. Good, bad, poor decision, whatever, it was made at the time and it was a good decision based on the economy that we had at the time. And so no one should fault the board for that particular decision at all. The problem is you're going to have a building that might not open, okay. And that's going to -- that's going to get the board some criticism, I believe, just because they're going to see a building that's there, it's ready to go and it isn't open in order to do business. But let's talk about it. In the UFR list it talked about $1.6 million, and it had a total of $941,100 as the reoccurring costs and a $750,000 one time cost to bring in 30,000 books into that particular facility. If this board was so inclined, knowing that it's probably only going to be open seven months, maybe six, depending on how fast it's finished and how fast we move in, and if it's not seven months and it's six, you can move another $80,000 over into the book account, because that $941,000 says it costs us $80,000 a month in costs for personnel and operational costs in that library. So you could have a reoccurring cost of 555,400 for seven months. The difference between that and 941,100, it's on your far column, is $395,700 for books. You lay it out there in reoccurring because it will be a reoccurring cost when you have a full year of operation. Now, you need $750,000 to get the 30,000 books, we're right at 400,000. We're looking for 350. And I believe the turnback at 1 October will bring you that difference and we'll be able to order those books before the library is open. So where does that bring us? With everything that I've just taken you through, it brings us to a total of251,430 -- $251,430,200. I'll get it right. Page 71 June 20, 2008 Okay, I'm still off, okay, between that and 249 -- the millage rate would be 3.1770 mills. But I give you an idea of some things that you could move. You could move 111 money through transportation into the general fund to help alleviate the pain. And that's what I was trying to bring across in this process and lay it out, and to basically take you through my thought pattern last night. Thank you, Commissioners, for the time that I just went through this vignette, and I hope it was useful. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Let's start down at this end to the left. Commissioner Coletta. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you. Mr. Mudd, I appreciate you going through all this trouble, but I've got to ask some pointed questions to make sure I know how the world is really put together. We've got to arrive at a balanced budget in the end. If we went ahead with this in going to the UFR list -- and forgive me for using the UFR list, but I just want to make sure I fully understand where we are. This would eliminate the possibilities of even considering a couple of immigration custom enforcement deputies; is that correct? MR. MUDD: Yes, sir, that is not in that scenario that I just laid out. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Also, two, it would also eliminate the possibility of expanding the CAT system in Golden Gate City area to meet the need. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir, that's not there either. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay. Over in the general fund 111, there's nothing extra for a road resurfacing or limerock roads. MR. MUDD: No, sir, not -- just what's in the budget. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And, yeah, one extremely big thing, too. What about the $43,000 for the Ochopee Fire Control for the temporary station at Port of the Isles? Page 72 June 20, 2008 MR. MUDD: Comes out of the Ochopee budget, doesn't come out of 111 nor 001. It's a different fund. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: 146, excuse me. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Is that still available? MR. MUDD: Oh, that's available. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Now, what about the EDC, what would be left for them under this? MR. MUDD: What Tammie basically gets in her operation, which is $415,000 and a pledge from this board that basically says at turnback, if the dollars are there above the budget that you'll reinstate that $800,000 plus, okay, for the incentive money for the year. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you, Mr. Mudd. I do appreciate your efforts in this direction. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: Mr. Mudd, I think you did an outstanding job in I don't know how many hours you might have put into this thing, but I make a recommendation that our board look at this very carefully and come up with the -- what Jim Mudd came up with -- what was the bottom line? COMMISSIONER FIALA: 3.17, I think. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yeah, 3.17. Or the amount of money. There you go. With a budget of $251,430,200. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. Commissioner Coyle? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Make it quick. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, I'm not sure, Jim, but I think there might be some minor double accounting in eliminating the UFRs and then also including the reduction of two EMS units for a savings of $250,000. I don't know if you included that in the 5.5 or six million of elimination. MR. MUDD: It's there. It's in brackets, sir, reduce the two EMS units at $250,000 -- Page 73 June 20, 2008 COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, I know. But there was $576,000 for purchase of three replacement ambulances. MR. MUDD: But I didn't have those there because you're going to get rid of two ambulances with this cut. You've got four now brand new units, you're going to cut two of them, okay. Those two units will replace and two of the bad ones and you'll salvage two, and whatever monies we get back if we can do the third one and -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: What was the total amount of unfunded requests for fund 001? It was 3 .125 million? If you took all the entire UFR list and added it up, it was 3.125 million? MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. That includes the $576,000 for the ambulances that were requested. So if you're going to MR. MUDD: No, it doesn't, sir. COMMISSIONER COYLE: It does not? You didn't include that in that part? MR. MUDD: No, sir. Those ambulances are on the UFR list. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Well, so is the 3.125 million-- MR. MUDD: No, that's money that you have to do to cover what's on the UFR list. That is money --that $3.125 million are monies that haven't been dedicated in the budget that you can dedicate for something else -- and something else might be buy those three ambulances that are getting old. My recommendation is you don't, because based on the recommendations from the joint productivity MSAC, and we've got the productivity recommendation but we don't have the MSAC one yet, is to cut two units off line. If you do that, those are two brand new ambulances, there's no sense going out there and buying three more, you've got two. Take the salvage money and try to come up with the third one that you need. So that's not in the calculations, sir. Page 74 June 20, 2008 COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay, so the unfunded request amount of $3,125,000 is not a summation of everything on that UFR list? MR. MUDD: Oh, no, the UFR list is $8,649,270, sir. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. Now, the problem I have with this is it does not address the issue of what is directly related to health, safety and welfare and what is not. There are things that have been eliminated, like the ten immigration customs enforcement deputies that are clearly important for health, safety and welfare, but yet we have retained items such as limerock road resurfacing, which is not an urgent issue. You can take part of that money and schedule it out a little bit longer, do part of the limerock road work, but use some of that for really, really important health, safety and welfare issues like the immigration customs enforcement deputies or the youth relation deputies. The issue with respect to the Ochopee Fire Department should not even be on an unfunded request anyway. They've got $760,000 in reserve for capital outlays. If they want to take $43,000 or so to do that, why don't they just ask for it to be done. It's in their reserves, it's not an additional amount of money we have to appropriate. So I don't see that we've made the tough decisions. We have said that landscaping is not a health, safety and welfare issue, yet we still have a considerable amount of money allocated for that purpose. Limerock road resurfacing is good to have and it's nice and the people want it, but it is not absolutely essential right now. We haven't talked about the transportation debt service issue that was brought up yesterday. And I think there was a conclusion that there was a substantial amount of money that might be able to be used there. MR. MUDD: Well, sir, I -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: Wait a minute, the stormwater utility, there was some discussion about it being reduced, but I can Page 75 June 20, 2008 also argue that stormwater utility is a lot closer to a health, safety and welfare issue than surfacing limerock roads. So I just don't think we've dealt with the tough questions. And I want somebody to explain to me why it is so important that we landscape our medians rather than hiring immigration customs enforcement deputies. Why is it necessary that we continue limerock road resurfacing at $2.6 million a year and we cannot do those things like assuring that illegal immigrant criminals are captured and deported. And as far as opening the south regional library is concerned, I don't understand the logic of trying to maintain a level of service if you don't have the money to do it. I see nothing wrong with reducing the hours of operation of a library. You're still maintaining the library, people still have the opportunity to go to it and use its facilities. It doesn't have to be as open as long as it has been in the past when we had plenty of staff and plenty of money. I think we need to bite the bullet and quit playing games here. We're trying to pacify everybody, make everybody happy, and we don't have the money to do that. So let's get serious and decide what is important and what isn't important. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Please. MR. MUDD: I just need to make one correction to the statement that Commissioner Coyle made. Because Janet said it yesterday and I corrected it later, okay. The difference in the road program for debt service, you used the $10 million that you had last year and you exchanged it for one time money, okay. You still have the one time money because the interest is still coming in from the clerk. When that money goes below $15 million because you've changed out stormwater five million and ten for transportation, those funds will get cut based on that one time money no longer being here, because you made that decision last year. Page 76 June 20, 2008 Now, we're not in that predicament right now. So I guess what I'm saying to you is please don't balance the budget on one time monies that you've already taken reoccurring money out of to balance the budget last year because we're going to double count and we're going to get ourselves in trouble later on. But I understand your issues, sir. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Halas, and I want to go. COMMISSIONER HALAS: What's it cost us -- obviously I think you hit on an item, and that is in regards to the amount of money that we spent on expanding the library in Golden Gate City and also the building of the library near Lely. What would be the cost savings if we shut down two of the branch libraries and just had the regional libraries? MR. MUDD: Marla, you're going to have to help me here. COMMISSIONER HALAS: I mean, let's -- and had those libraries opened at regular hours, all the regional libraries, is that possible? MS. RAMSEY: For the record, Marla Ramsey, public services administrator. Was the question -- well, a single branch library, Vanderbilt, East Naples, the Estates, they're running somewhere around $400,000, $450,000 a year for those facilities, each facility. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay. You done? Marla, we have two regional libraries, right? MS. RAMSEY: Yes. Well, we have two that are open. You have one up on Orange Blossom and you have one in the City of Naples. CHAIRMAN HENNING: In the City of Naples? MS. RAMSEY: Yes, the one in the City of Naples -- MR. MUDD: The old headquarters library in Naples we call a regional library because it's -- CHAIRMAN HENNING: So we want everybody to come to Page 77 June 20, 2008 the coast. Close them all down and have everybody come to the coast COMMISSIONER HALAS: No, what I'm suggesting is you shut down two of the branch libraries. The one that's out there in Golden Gate Estates needs to stay open. And then you've got a regional library at -- MS. RAMSEY: Orange Blossom. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Well, and you also have -- isn't that considered a regional library out there at Golden Gate City? MS. RAMSEY: No, we still consider that a branch because of the size, but -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: Then I'm just looking at two branches. Because everybody else -- or the other two -- me and another Commissioner have a branch library also. So that's a possibility of saving $800,000, $900,000 a year. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Let me ask Commissioner Coyle on the reducing that two EMS units, was that in the AUIR and the board's guidance earlier this year, or is that above and beyond that? COMMISSIONER COYLE: I can't recall, honestly. I do know that there was some discussion about the location of those units and the funding for those units. And I do believe that they were never ultimately relocated where they were supposed to be and we've maintained the level of service anyway. And it seems logical that we can reduce those. The productivity committee seems to agree with that. CHAIRMAN HENNING: One of those is on Logan Boulevard, Logan and Vanderbilt Beach Road, which is -- they demonstrated there was a response time problem. And that's one of those units, county manager? MR. MUDD: Commissioner, I don't -- I haven't seen the study that they did. All I know is the four expansion units that they had that we just added on and we were looking for the locations, one was Page 78 June 20, 2008 Logan, Pine Ridge, that was one of them. Then there was another one that was over by U.S. 41. There was going to be another one that was going to be by Heritage Bay. And I can't remember the other position, sir. CHAIRMAN HENNING: So how would -- I mean, would it be fair to put that on the list, not knowing the details of the cuts? I appreciate the recommendations, but there's really not a lot of information there. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. It's something that I put up because it was a conversation piece that was there yesterday. That's all I was trying to -- I just ran through just to kind of try to bring it together the best you can now. Let's get back to where Commissioner Coyle was just a second ago, if! may, just to help out a little bit. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay, but I have one more question. But go ahead. MR. MUDD: Go ahead, sir. If you have a question, let's get after it. CHAIRMAN HENNING: What happened to the -- did you ever figure out the -- there's a man with the answer. Did you ever figure out the -- get the figures for the carry forwards and which ones were not allocated or unaccounted for? MR. MUDD: John, did you get at that one, which ones were appropriated, which ones weren't? MR. YONKOSKY: John Yonkosky, budget director. Commissioner, there is a $110 million dollar increase in carry forward. $109 million of that increase is in your capital programs. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay, but it's in the capital programs. But just like the fire station, Ochopee, it's not allocated. Which one are dedicated to actually do something? MR. YONKOSKY: Commissioner, all of the $109 million increase is allocated for capital projects. Page 79 June 20, 2008 CHAIRMAN HENNING: So you just found a million dollars. You said $110 million of that was increase. MR. YONKOSKY: No, sir, that's not what I said. I said there's a $110 million increase. The one million dollar increase is in your operating budgets. And if you go back to -- remember what Commissioner Coyle said last year was that one of the problems that you have is that money is spread out in a variety of funds and you cannot use that money for a specific purpose that it's not related to. So one million dollars of that increase is related to the total of all your operating funds, and 110 -- $109 million is in capital projects and it's appropriated. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay, thank you. County manager wanted to say something, then Commissioner Coletta. MR. MUDD: Let me try to help you out a little bit to get you a little bit farther, based on the comments that I heard from Commissioner Coyle and Commissioner Henning. You saw my chart that was here. You saw my chart that was sitting here before. And we're offby two and a quarter million dollars. If -- and I also heard some comments about -- and I'm back on the UFR list again -- I also heard some comments about the ten ICE deputies -- the ten ICE deputies and the two youth relations, I guess it was, as I'm trying to look for it. Youth relations deputies. It's not only two youth relations deputies, it's ten Estate area substation deputies also. If the board decided in this particular case to take both of those requests and basically provide 50 percent, a $1.3 million increase and tell the sheriff to increase in those particular areas and he could come back with a memo and tell them where he's going to do that, you could take your one-and-a-quarter million dollars plus the $1.3 million, and we're now talking about $3.5 million. Page 80 June 20, 2008 You can take a look at the $1.4 million on the landscape proj ect. You can take a look at the $891,000 in the economic development on your incentive program and bring those numbers down. And when your turnback comes in, okay, you could get at issues. For instance, if you decided to go from reoccurring to non-reoccurring in the limerock road, and say you wanted to go from 2.6 or 2.7 to one million dollars on reoccurring and go to non-reoccurring at turnback for the other amount to make them whole. If you wanted to reduce Norman's $5 million for resurfacing down to $3 million and you wanted to bring the $2 million back on the -- on the turnback in October as a one-time cost for resurfacing, yeah you're going to resurface the project. You're going to limerock, pave it and you're not going to repave that road again hopefully for a number of years. You have that opportunity. And I believe your turnback is understated. Remember what the clerk told us we were going to get, $15.5 million or something like that last year. And I told Mr. Y onkosky to bring that up to $17.6 million. And you just received a court order that basically told the clerk that he can't spend your interest anymore. So I'm pretty much going to tell you that ifhe abides by that court order, you're going to have $5 million extra on turnback to get at this particular issue. So you can get a millage neutral in 001, give the Sheriff $1.3 million for those deputies that he's asking for -- it's half the request, it's not the full request. You can still get at your library based on my cut sheet here, right here. You can reinstate Tammie. You can reinstate that landscape project, because, again, it's not necessarily reoccurring, it's a one time cost. And then we can deal with the landscape projects capital on a year to year based on the non-reoccurring dollars that you have. I'm just trying to give you an out. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Yeah. Commissioner Coletta, Commissioner Fiala, Commissioner Coyle, Commissioner Halas. Page 81 June 20, 2008 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I hear where we're going, and I think we're trying to come up some solution that's going to meet everybody's needs. However, there were some comments made that I just can't let go unchallenged, and that's limerock roads not being something that would be considered health, safety and welfare. If you ever lived on one for any period of time and you've been promised for over 30 years that it was going to be paved. It was a contract that the county entered into with the homeowners that were out there. These roads become unpassable when weather conditions get to be less than favorable. It's happened before. They cost a lot to maintain. People bought in good faith that within a reasonable period of time these roads would be paved. It's not something that we're doing out of the goodness of our hearts. We made that promise, previous commissions way back when. There was funds set up that were spent in other directions for other roads that were originally dedicated to those limerock roads. So to say to cut the two and a half million and put it into something else -- I can't agree with you more the fact that we do need to have these immigration officers. I support that. And I do want to find the money for it. I don't know if we can afford to have all of them. But, you know, I just want to correct the terminology that we're saying that limerock roads are nothing more than beautification of the medians. There's no comparison between the two. Even though you didn't say that, there's the indication when we put them in the same categories it's one in the same. There are people out there that are desperate for this to be done. Now, if we're going to roll it back, what Mr. Mudd suggested, if we do roll it back to be able to make this come out to a revenue neutral budget, and he's relatively certain that we'll have the turnbacks coming in so that we could make up the differences, I'm willing to do Page 82 June 20, 2008 that, you know, as long as this commission is not going to get to the point where it's going to be a delay in action so that when it comes back one more time we can go ahead and say okay, we're not going to do it. This time we'll look at it next year. And this is just a small little bit of money to be able to try to make people in my area whole. And also, too, I'd like to address the issue of the $43,000. You brought up a good point, Commissioner Coyle. I don't have the answer. Mr. Summers or someone? MR. MUDD: I have the answer, sir. The budget guidance was to everybody cut it by two percent. And that particular fire department didn't cut their budget by two percent. You asked those questions. They are above the budget guidance in any new expanded position Issue. I believe the board needed to see and make a decision on it. That's why it's there, sir. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: So that's why the 43,000 is there. MR. MUDD: That's why it's on that UFR list, because I didn't have the authority to bring it on as an expanded, because they didn't exceed your budget guidance -- they exceeded your budget guidance of minus two percent. So you needed to see it and you needed to address it as a particular issue of this board. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay, and that 43,000 also accompanies the other money that's already there to be able to make it whole; is that what it is? MR. MUDD: It's in that account, sir. It's basically in that reserve. They'd reduce their reserve by $43,000 and they'd be able to bring that to bear. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Because it was a good question that Commissioner Coyle answered (sic) and I appreciate you answering it. Page 83 June 20, 2008 MR. MUDD: It was a great question. Anybody -- it's like that one mechanic, the one mechanic that fleet needed. They were going to reduce their overtime by $1,900 more than that one mechanic would cost fully burdened, i.e. with all its burdens and whatnot. But it's above your guidance that said no new people. So you need to know about that one person and understand the particular thing. So I felt obliged that I needed to bring that to your attention also. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay, but the 43 is in direct lines with the Port of Isles. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir, and it's in their fund. And it's -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And I hope that my fellow commissioners will agree that we include that small amount of money in there, we can make these people whole. CHAIRMAN HENNING: I've got to go to Commissioner Fiala. I hope that we can wrap this up. It seems like we just keep on adding things and we're not getting anywhere. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That was very important, Commissioner Henning. I didn't mean to burden this commission in any way. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I think the money's already there for your Port of the Islands. The money's just there, we just have to approve it. It's not like we're taking that out of the budget or out of any of the other taxpayers' pockets. And same with the limerock roads. I think we've already got limerock roads in the budget, they were just talking about extra ones and when the UFR -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: No, they were talking about going back into the budget and reducing the two point something down to one million dollars and then trying to get the balance of it from rollback to be able to make up the shortage. MR. MUDD: Turnback. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Tumback. There was no Page 84 June 20, 2008 money coming from UFR funds that were going to go for additional limerock roads. COMMISSIONER FIALA: And I really appreciated Commissioner Halas. He was actually -- it was a very noble gesture on his part to try and solve this problem of the libraries. And we've all stated that we want to have the public services there for the taxpayers. That's the only thing that they can enjoy from their taxpayer dollars. So we want to see that. You know, Mr. Mudd, I think you gave us an outstanding recommendation here. I like your recommendation, 3.17. It's hardly a smidgeon over what we had before, yet it will still provide the services that we need. And then we even have the rollback -- when the turnback comes back in, do we make decisions as to how it's distributed? MR. MUDD: No, ma'am. I answered too fast. You can't distribute that back to the taxpayers was my answer when I said no. But how it's distributed to projects or to keep it into reserve, yes, you can do that, ma'am, no problem -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: That's good. So we have another bite at that apple. MR. MUDD: But the option of giving it back to the taxpayers isn't an option at that time. COMMISSIONER FIALA: And let me finish by saying this 3.17 can always be lowered at some future time; is that correct? We have to just go for the highest millage rate that we're willing to accept, and it can always be reduced later in the budget process if for some reason we feel that needs to be done? MR. MUDD: On the 22nd of July you will set the maximum millage rate that you can levy for the '09 tax roll. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay, fine. So in closing I will say that I think that the proposal -- the alternate proposal you offered was a proposal that we can all live with. It's still cutting things to the bone Page 85 June 20, 2008 and yet we still can provide services to those who pay into the taxpayer coffers. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Coyle? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, two things. With respect to the money for Ochopee, it's not an additional cost. It's already in their budget. It's just a request to spend it. And there should be no problem whatsoever with that. They've got $761,000 in reserve for capital improvements. They can take $43,000 out of that and do what they want to do with it. So it does not represent an expenditure for us. MR. MUDD: Commissioner, while you're on that, just so we can kill that, do I have three nods on that particular item? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: This is to be able to allow the 43? MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay, yes. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Now, your proposal here does come close, but here is my only remaining problem with it. It does not deal with priorities. You're essentially saying in some cases that we continue to spend money on landscaping and limerock roads, and customs enforcement deputies will have to get whatever might come out of some turnback. I'm suggesting we flip that around, okay, and we ask ourselves the question, what's more important, landscaping or customs enforcement? I come down on the side of customs enforcement. Now I don't say -- I am not saying we have to approve all ten, okay. I have not ever said that. And I have not said that we need to approve the ten Estates deputies or the two youth relation deputies. But we can agree on some number there which makes sense. But clearly those things are more important than landscaping. Page 86 June 20, 2008 And in my opinion, business development by the EDC is more important than landscaping. It's more important that limerock roads. So if we would say that we will allocate a certain amount of money to those programs, and we could agree upon what that would be, and we would reduce the limerock roads and the landscaping but we would make up that reduction whenever there's a turnback, I'm perfectly happy with that. Okay? CHAIRMAN HENNING: Well, we still need -- now, here's what we need to do. We need to get at a number. If you don't want to do a millage rates, give the county manager a number so we can move on. And the bottom line, he has to get there. And we can argue in September and even in October where it's going to go. MR. MUDD: Commissioner, I did get a recommendation, okay, about taking half of the $2.8 million request for the Sheriff on ten immigration customs enforcement, two youth relations and ten Estates subdivision deputies and provide the Sheriff with -- I said 1.3, my math was bad, $1.4 million, and basically tell him to satisfy the requirements now the best he can with half of the requests on the UFR list. You add that to the 2.25 million that we're short on the rollback, okay, you with me? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes. MR. MUDD: Okay. You're two-and-a-quarter million dollars short to get to the rollback rate on the general fund on my particular slide. So we add the youth relations. So that's an extra cost. So you're not two-and-a-quarter anymore, okay, you're 2.65 off -- or excuse me, 3.65 off. You let me go out there with the limerock roads, and I'm not trying to gut it, Commissioner Coletta, I won't do that, and you let me work the landscaping and the maintenance and you let me work the road paving issues, and I will find that money in there in order to make that happen so that you can be millage neutral. Page 87 June 20, 2008 At turnback time I'm going to look for $3.6 million dollars. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Don't look at him, look at me, because we want to make that decision, not him. MR. MUDD: I'm sorry. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yeah, exactly. MR. MUDD: I lost that number, I just was looking at Tammie for a second, I'm sorry. We get that $891,000 also, okay, that we're reducing the incentive. I'm not talking about her operation, we're not cutting that at all. We're talking about the incentive money that you have that you don't have obligations for. You'll reenergize that fund, okay, not on 1 October, but at around 10 November, your first meeting in November based on turnback monies. So you'll get at that particular item. And you'll also be able to reenergize, I believe, the $1.4 million capital project, that $1.4 million cut in landscaping. And we'll add all those things up. I'll look at the turnback monies. First meeting in November, I'm coming right back at you to talk about those particular issues. At that particular juncture you've got rollback in 111 and you've got rollback in 001. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Well, is it-- MR. MUDD: Excuse me, millage neutral, I didn't mean to say that. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Is that the consensus that we're going now? MR. MUDD: That's a recommendation to get at Commissioner Coyle's suggestion where he was talking about, and I think I can get there for you. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: We keep talking about rollback-- MR. MUDD: Millage neutral, sorry. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Okay. We're talking, excuse me, Page 88 June 20, 2008 tumback, excuse me. Talking about turnback, okay? From what I can see on a daily basis of what's taking place up on Wall Street, are we getting overconfident that we're going to have a lot of money coming back in? Because it looks to me as if this economy is still eroding nationwide. MR. MUDD: All I can tell you is what his interest turnback was last year and it was $34 million, okay. I think you'll have -- out of that money, we've only -- and if we get anywhere close, we've only budgeted the turnback in '08 for $17.6 million. I think you'll find that six or seven in the turnback to do one time expenditures and then we'll address it next year on a non-reoccurring basis. So you've got the reoccurring piece out there. Now look, I'm not telling the board we don't have a little risk out there, because I don't know what the turnback is going to be. But I can tell you what I know in the past case. And then we know where we -- we'll come back in November, and if it's not where we think it's going to be or where my guess was going to be, I'll bring it out and tell you about it and we'll get it resolved. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Right. Commissioner, can I ask you a question so we can move on. Are you okay with the county manager's -- COMMISSIONER HALAS: To raise $51 million right there. That's what I'm comfortable with. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Me, too. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay, that's not -- MR. MUDD: That's not what I just suggested. CHAIRMAN HENNING: That's not what he just suggested. MR. MUDD: I just suggested 249,119 and a way to get there. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay, so you want to increase the millage? COMMISSIONER FIALA: How come Commissioner Coyle always gets his way and we don't? Page 89 June 20, 2008 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yeah, exactly. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Wait a minute, I'm trying to get down to a consensus here -- and I'm getting to the left but trying to get back over to the right -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: Way left. CHAIRMAN HENNING: I have to go way to the left, so -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: There we go. CHAIRMAN HENNING: We know where we're here and I'm trying to move it down here. And we're still not anywhere. We're still at a millage neutral, that's what the county manager, his suggestion. Now I hear an increase of the rates. So Commissioner Coletta? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you, sir, I appreciate it. And I just want to remind you that even though we may be to your left, to the audience, we're at the right -- CHAIRMAN HENNING: Let's go to -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: We are, please, don't interrupt me. Mr. Mudd, the first proposal you made is the one that I thought was what we were working on. Now another Commissioner Coyle made another suggestion and then now another commissioner endorsed it. What you said originally about limerock roads was to cut it in half, if I remember correctly -- and to wait for the rest of the money to come from UFR. MR. MUDD: I said about --let's use half if you want to. Right now it's at $2.6 million. Commissioner, I believe you'll have $2.6 million to spend, if not more, in '09. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay. Now, let's go back. Your suggestion was to take half of it and then make up the balance of it when we got in the turnback money. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. Right now you're $2.6 million in the Page 90 June 20, 2008 budget is reoccurring. What I just described was taking half of that out of reoccurring, making it one time money and leaving 1.3 in there as reoccurring. So it will be there for nine and it will be there for ten. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And of course it puts me in a bad position coming future years, but at this point in time I'm willing to go for that. As far as taking the whole thing out and waiting for it to come back, I'm not going to accept that. MR. MUDD: Sir, I never made that recommendation. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: No, I know you didn't. But it was being made here and I want to make sure that we understand exactly what we're moving forward on. I'm willing to compromise, knowing the fact that I can be made relatively whole down the road a little bit. But I'm not give up the whole pot. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. I knew that's where you'd go -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay, fine. Sorry if I sound over defensive on it. MR. MUDD: -- you have to look out for your district, I believe that. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Coletta, can I ask you a question? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Sure, please do. CHAIRMAN HENNING: We can move this forward. In the 01 budget you have two bottom lines there. We need to give direction to the county manager. Which line do you want to give that direction? Door number one or door number two? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Millage neutral. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'll be honest with you, Commissioner Henning -- CHAIRMAN HENNING: Let me go to Commissioner Fiala, you think about it. Go ahead, you wanted to say something, Commissioner Fiala? COMMISSIONER FIALA: I just don't want to give Page 91 June 20, 2008 Commissioner Coyle his way. So I -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: Why not? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Because you always have your way. I would go millage neutral as long as we know that when the tumback comes back in that we then have a second bite at this apple and that it isn't going to affect the services to our constituents, to our community. I don't want to get even with anybody, I just want to make sure that everybody gets the services these taxpayers are paying for -- CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay, you have -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- if we can do that-- CHAIRMAN HENNING: You have three. So you have a number to come back in July with. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN HENNING: And I want to go back to Commissioner Coletta so he doesn't feel slighted on choosing door number one or door number -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, to be honest with you, what I'd like to do is I'd like to defer to my colleague at the far right, the audience's far left, and hear what he has to say. CHAIRMAN HENNING: The only one, number one, right? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, that's exactly what I've proposed, is millage neutral. We establish priorities and we allocate the money based on priorities. I never said at any point in time we should completely eliminate limerock roads, I just said reduce the landscape budget, reduce the limerock road budget. Let's allocate top priority to the important things, health, safety. We pick up the others whenever there's a turnback. So what commissioners Halas and -- I'm sorry, Commissioner Coletta and Commissioner -- what's her name, Fiala, said is exactly what I have suggested. And if I could just make an editorial note at the Page 92 June 20, 2008 same time. That is a wise decision because if you didn't go with millage neutral now and you wind up with a big turnback, what you wound up doing under those circumstances was you taxed the people too much and now you've got excess money here and you're going to throw it around because you can't give it back to them. So it is a smart thing to do to go with millage neutral now, you know you're going to get a turnback, then you'll be able to use that on top priority unfunded requirements. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Is there anything else you need? MR. MUDD: Yes, I need one other clarification. $1.4 million off the general fund UFR list for the Sheriff, for the deputies, you gave them half of the two items. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Yes. MR. MUDD: Okay, square. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Could I ask a question on that, please? CHAIRMAN HENNING: Yes, please. COMMISSIONER FIALA: The Sheriff usually gives some turnback to us as well. Can he just keep his tumback and use it for these things? MR. MUDD: No, no, ma'am, he has to turn it back. But his estimate of turnback this year is like 200 -- what is it, $17,000. It's really tidy, ma'am. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay, thank you. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Well, the -- I think the point about millage neutral is what was said a long time ago. The voters and the taxpayers anticipated monies back. And they are going to be disappointed because they're not going to get the money back, but we're committed to trying to reach that goal for them. And the only thing that I want to say, I researched the Estate road issue, and I don't have that information that you have about the county Page 93 June 20, 2008 making a commitment. So if you can provide that to me, I would appreciate it -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Sure. CHAIRMAN HENNING: -- because all I've seen is something in newsletters and stuff like that. County Manager? MR. MUDD: I'm sorry, I missed one thing, sir, and I know we want to get done with this. I had an item, the black line, third line down, I had an item on there, and we didn't talk about it, about increasing the park fees across the board by five percent. And that's in that calculation, okay. And I've got to get some clarification on that too, because that one's there and right now and you're just kind of glossing over it a little bit. And I want to make sure that's okay. CHAIRMAN HENNING: I'd rather you try to personally see about travel and association dues. Cut that out. I mean, I think there's other stuff that could be cut out in here. Increasing the fees, boy, at the end of the day, I don't think you're going to see that. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I agree. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes, I agree. Maybe we could look at turnback for that, too, right? CHAIRMAN HENNING: Or find it. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes, or find it. Because I agree with you, that's -- if the kids can't afford to go there, then the parks are worth nothing. So I'd like to find the money someplace to pay that. MR. MUDD: Okay, ifI'm -- I got it, I'll try to find it. But I'm going to tell you, that's a tough nut. And I'm going to have to probably adjust some things. If we get the turnback, then we roll it in there based on shortages or whatever. At that particular juncture, we really are getting kind of tight. But I understand the direction of the board. Page 94 June 20, 2008 CHAIRMAN HENNING: It's only two. So we have to get others. Commissioner Coletta and then Commissioner Coyle and then Commissioner Halas. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'm fine. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay, I disagree with refusing to permit the staff to increase the park fee. I don't think a 5.2 percent increase is going to stop anybody from using anything. It is the purest form of getting reimbursement, because it's the people who are using it that are paying for it, and that's exactly the way it should be. The water park, if it's having an $82,000 deficit, it's having an $82,000 deficit because people aren't paying enough for what they're enjoying out there. So you increase it to cover the deficit. We don't want to make a profit, but we shouldn't be taking deficits on things. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Let me just jump in, because I think maybe I misunderstood then. I think Marla had said she wanted to increase, and I thought that was just a done deal, the increase at the water park from $10 to $12, except for families, they would stay at $10 if they show their registration here. Is that what you're talking about here? I thought this was something different. CHAIRMAN HENNING: I think it is different. MS. RAMSEY: I did suggest yesterday -- Marla Ramsey for the record. I did suggest yesterday that we do at the water park a $12 fee for residents and then give anyone with a driver's license, a Collier County driver's license, to give them the current rate, which is $10. That was so that I could get into the black at the water park, which is probably going to be about 200-$250,000. MR. MUDD: But that's not in your budget, correct? MS. RAMSEY: That is not in my budget. I did not bring a Page 95 June 20, 2008 budget that way -- MR. MUDD: So there is no increases, okay, in her budget at all. And my recommendation is a 5.2 percent to bring it up to -- 40 percent are the fees, 60 percent is the subsidy for the park service. COMMISSIONER COYLE: And the way she explained it is it's not going to impact residents substantially; is that correct? MS. RAMSEY: Just the water park. We're talking about Sun and Fun. My goal, again, is to charge $12 to get into the water park. But if you have a Collier County driver's license, you would get the $10 fee, which is the current rate. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Let's clarify this some more, this 5.2 percent park fee increase. You're not only talking about water park there, are you? MR. MUDD: No, ma'am, I'm talking about all fees. COMMISSIONER COYLE: If you're going to raise it for one and it costs more money to operate the others and provide the services, why not raise it to what it costs? That's what parks are about. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, aren't parks for -- I'm sorry. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Halas. COMMISSIONER HALAS: Yes, obviously fuel costs are going up, lighting at these parks, a lot of these parks is going to go up. It's going to be a cost to the county. So I feel that 5.2 is only there to offset the operating expense. And we anticipate that FP&L is going to get some type of a rate increase, whether they get the full 16 percent or not. I feel that we have to make sure that we have our bases covered, so I'm in favor of it. CHAIRMAN HENNING: The FP&L increase is in the budget already. But, you know, why don't we be like the City of Naples and their fees, is what they charge? COMMISSIONER COYLE: City of Naples had to raise their tax rate this year to cover their costs. I don't want to be in that position. Page 96 June 20, 2008 CHAIRMAN HENNING: That was their choice. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, and it was a bad choice. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Right, that was their choice. But why should we be a lot more than Naples and then give Naples money for their parks? It just don't make sense. And to raise these fees for the parks, you know, when it comes down for the board to do it, we're not going to do it, we haven't done it in the past. Go do -- go further into the budget and find it. Commissioner Coletta? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yes, thank you, Commissioner Henning. Yes, getting back to the parks issue. One of the things that's been my concern, and I'm sure my fellow commissioners also share that concern, has been the youth programs that they have, and the lack of funding for that. And one of the things I'm going to be working on starting in -- CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay, can we get to the topic. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Please, Commissioner Henning, I would appreciate it very much if you wouldn't interrupt me. I'm just going to take a moment. Everybody else gets that same length of time. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Let's stick to the budget if we can. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Okay, then I have no comments to make. I appreciate you giving me the time to do that. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay. You don't have consensus on that. I think you're going to -- we know where we're at on the budget, the millage rate for July. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN HENNING: And if you can come back with some other recommendations on the park fees, maybe look at someplace else or just tell us you can't do it and we'll make that decision at that time? Page 97 June 20, 2008 MR. MUDD: Okay. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay? Is there anything else? MR. MUDD: No, sir. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Commissioner Halas? COMMISSIONER HALAS: I think we did a great job here, but hopefully the taxpayers aren't going to tear down the doors saying we didn't come up with a big enough cut. But there's no such thing as a free lunch. So I hope that people realize that in the upcoming years as we have to go through this process again next year. COMMISSIONER FIALA: One last question, about the fees, I could see Marla being, you know, a little bit upset about that, so maybe, not now, but maybe you can talk to us and, you know, and help us to understand. And then maybe we can bring it up on an agenda item or something. We don't have to do it now. MR. MUDD: Ma'am, I'm going to have Marla take a look at what makes sense, okay, and make sure the residents aren't penalized. We're providing services that are outside of Collier County to other county people coming that are coming in, i.e., using our parking areas or whatever it is. We'll come back with that and figure out what that delta is and then I'll go look for someplace else. MS. RAMSEY: Commissioners, in order to do that, you have to do a resolution on the fees anyway, so you would see them on an independent basis when we went to that point. MR. MUDD: We'll give you an idea of what it is in general. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Could I ask a question. Can we not as a board right now give you direction to bring back to us a proposal to increase the fees for non-residents of Collier County while remaining, keeping the fees fixed for the residents of Collier County? Can we just reach consensus on that so you don't waste your time and come back and find that we're not going to agree on it? MS. RAMSEY: We can do that -- in most cases if I have a grant Page 98 June 20, 2008 on a facility, I'm going to have to look at that, I may not be able to do it at certain facilities, and I cannot do that on beach parking. MR. MUDD: That's right. You're absolutely correct. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Is there consensus on that? CHAIRMAN HENNING: There isn't -- on non-residents? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes, to the extent it's possible. MR. MUDD: Commissioner, just let me go out there and try to figure out where we're at in this one, figure out what the difference is between the two, and I'll try to get through -- we'll come back with the dollar amounts that you want in this particular budget and I'll let you know where I'm getting it from. And if there's any risk that's out there, we'll express it and we'll talk about it. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Are you okay with that? COMMISSIONER COYLE: I'm okay. CHAIRMAN HENNING: Okay. Everybody okay? We're adjourned. ***** There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 2:50 p.m. Page 99 June 20, 2008 BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPEClrIST CTS ~DER ITS CONTROL. f~ TOM HENNING, Chairman ATTEST: DWIGHT E. BROCK, CLERK ~uk<1\Wo&~_ .Attest Hto Ch.l,...,. , ... s j 9114 turtO(ll . T,hese minut~s approvedj1y the Board on 1- J1..2..{ oe , as presente,d ~ - or as corrected TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC. BY CHERIE' NOTTINGHAM. Page 100