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BCC Minutes 01/05/1995 W (Policies and Agenda Procedures)WORKSHOP MEETING OF JANUARY 5, 1995, OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COHMISSIONERS LET IT BE REHEHBERED, that the Board of County Commissioners in and for the County of Collier, and also acting as the Board of Zoning Appeals and as the governing board(s) of such special districts as have been created according to law and having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9:27 a.m. at the Collier County Museum, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: ALSO PRESENT: CHAIRPERSON: VICE CHAIRMAN: Bettye J. Hatthews John C. Norris Timothy J. Constantine Timothy L. Hancock Pamela S. Hac'Kie W. Neil Dotrill, County Manager Ken B. Cuyler, County Attorney CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Call to order the workshop of the Board of County Commissioners where we are workshopping our policies and agenda. So we'll call to order. And the first item is legal and operational limitations on expanding our consent agenda. I think my purpose in this is I wanted to know what are the current criteria for items being on the consent agenda, and are there legal restrictions, what are they, and operational restrictions on how we might put additional items on the consent agenda. MR. CUYLER: I think that the practical consideration to the consent agenda have always limited your agenda more than your legal considerations. For example, you could have an item on your consent agenda that may be a large financial item. The policy has been I think that primarily through public input -- Neil can probably address this more than I will. But I think that the public has indicated their desire that that type of thing be on the regular agenda as opposed to the consent agenda. It's not a legal consideration -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Financially because it's a big dollar amount? MR. CUYLER: Because it's a big ticket item. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Even if we've already discussed it three or four times to add it verbatim and we're all in agreement and have been? MR. CUYLER: No. But I think Tuesday was a good example, and I think Neil has sort of handled it where if it has been something that has been approved and just sort of fallen in line, he does put that on the consent agenda, but often it will be pulled off. I think Commissioner Constantine pulled one off on Tuesday because he just felt that that was too big an item regardless of whether it was in line with what he had been doing. I think Neil sort of handles it that way. He'll put it on there, and then if somebody wants to pull it off, they will put it off. With regard to legal restrictions, obviously you have to have your public hearings. No way to get around that. Beyond that, if after you discussed the practical side of it, if you want me to look into specifics, I'll be happy to do that. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Advertising is really -- Do we need to ask for permission to speak? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: No. This is a workshop. Be my guest. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: There's no like minimum dollar amount? There's no '- MR. CUYLER: Well, no. There are -- MR. DORRILL: There is a resolution that governs the consent agenda, and the rule of thumb is that anything from a procurement standpoint that is in excess of $50,000 needs to be part of the regular agenda at least for purposes of having a staff presentation, that there are those occasions when you know a motion may be made even before the staff person can get to the podium, but the rule of thumb has been anything greater than $50,000 is purely arbitrary. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: A resolution, we can change that. MR. DORRILL: Absolutely. But we do have a consent agenda policy, if you will. By and large, the real high volume of things that appear on the consent agenda currently have to do -- we discussed this once before -- with release of liens, and I think that there is a legal question there as whether -- for example, where we had somebody's lot -- we filed a lien on the property. The property subsequently is contracted to sell it. Title search discovers the lien, and they get into this vicious cycle of trying to get the lien released in order to change hands. We process hundreds and hundreds of lien-related instruments on the consent agenda. There is a lot of staff work. Everyone has an executive summary and backup and they're all reviewed by the attorney's office. Whether or not the recording and then releasing liens is something that can be made administrative; but, otherwise, about once a month, you will see at least two dozen lien-related instruments that are on the consent agenda coming from the community development. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That means a lot of tax money, a lot of staff time. MR. DORRILL: A lot of staff time associated with that. We've never, to my knowledge, discussed and pulled a lien-related item off the consent agenda. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Is there a specific sign-off procedure to release these liens? In other words, there's specific documentation that has to be followed? MR. CUYLER: Yes. There's a release -- an actual release of lien recorded in the public records. I guess one question I would ask the board is, are you talking about limiting the agenda in total or are you talking about limiting your time on the regular agenda as opposed to putting things on the consent agenda? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We're talking about all of that. We're talking about trying to free up some staff time so that they can do the other things that they've been hired to do, and we're talking about looking at items on the regular agenda that perhaps we can consolidate into a single hearing before the BCC, i.e., the numbers of times that we -- number one, first hear of a conceptual idea and we say, "Yeah. That's great. Develop it further and come back to us." And they -- and staff does that. They come back to us, and they say, "Well, we need to hire a consultant to help us design the RFP." And we say,"Okay." We do that. And then they come back to us to avoid the bid for the consultant, and then they come back to us with a budget amendment to pay the consultant, and then they come back to us with the RFP that the consultant developed, and eventually we get the job done 18 months down the road, and those are the kinds of things that I have in mind that we might be able -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: To consolidate. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- to consolidate them and over a series of motions at the same meeting, give direction to proceed and do those things in a consolidated effort. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I do have a concern that I would like to voice regarding that. Sitting on the private sector side, yeah, I saw a lot of things that went through a number of steps that seemed somewhat unnecessary. Now you flip-flop to this side and you realize that it doesn't take much. All it would take is one consent agenda item that ends up in a controversial situation to give this board a serious black eye. I understand the process. There may be some streamlining involved, but if we are looking at -- I personally don't think our regular agenda that we hear is really that lengthy. I mean, the public hearing items may last a while. But to put something on the regular agenda that, in essence, is a no-brainer should take a total of about ten seconds. It comes up. No one has questions. You zing it through. You know, so I guess I want to -- If we're going to talk about consolidating, I would like to target specific areas a little more because I'm not interested in putting more things on the consent agenda solely to make our meeting shorter. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: No. No. The idea, as I said, is to, number one, make our meetings shorter, make them more meaningful and free up some staff time because we've been through some significant staff cuts, and I would rather find ways to free up staff time than hire more people. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I agree, and I guess you mentioned one instance here where I think one or two of those could be combined to be brought to the board as a single step. I just wanted to issue a caution that we want to make sure we don't -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Oh, yeah. Yeah. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: You know. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'm not so much interested in taking that six- or seven-step process that I just went through and bring it to one step. I think it probably needs two, maybe three, but certainly not all six or seven. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. MR. DORRILL: I have a suggestion on that. There's a mechanism on your agenda currently called miscellaneous correspondence, a greatly misunderstood, seldom used for any purpose other than to acknowledge receipt of certain correspondence typically from the state, never discussed. We might be able to review what I would consider routine administrative authority-seeking-type executive summaries, and maybe we would prepare just a single executive summary, have it on the regular agenda. We would get our initial authorization, whether it's through a short list of consultants and then ask permission to go to negotiation, negotiate a contract, come back and ask for budget amendment authority to fund the project, the contract negotiated again. It's a lot of work. My suggestion would be that we have one executive summary presented for a complete project authority as part of the regular agenda. The subsequent steps could all be sort of provided for the record. I think it's good to have disclosure of business transactions and make it part of the board's permanent record but just include that under miscellaneous correspondence. It will improve the importance of miscellaneous correspondence. And then if somebody wants to talk about, "Oh, wait a minute. You're asking for $100,000 more for this engineering contract," then pull it off miscellaneous correspondence and discuss that; but, otherwise, for any one of those 54 different projects that Mr. Conrecode may be working on, you know, it would be -- the disclosure would all be under miscellaneous correspondence. We wouldn't have to have repeated executive summaries, the backup, and that type of thing, but we would need to give some thought -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I have a couple of comments on this. MR. DORRILL: Okay. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: I don't think we should get in as a board and start micromanaging, and sometimes some of this looks like that's what we're in the middle of doing. This is getting into too much detail as a board. On the other hand, it certainly wouldn't be healthy to give up control and let the staff start running the show. There would be a good chance for -- not intentional abuse. I'm trying to think of a better word but miscommunication, or the staff may not exactly follow what the board would like to have done, and that could be inadvertent or it could be -- at some point in time in the future, it could be intentional. So there has to be a balance between micromanaging and loss of control. Somewhere in there you've got to be aware of that. And the second aspect of it is, if you don't hear these items, you're -- in a lot of cases, you're removing the ability of the public to make their feelings known at some of these hearings that they would otherwise probably have some comments to make. So there's a couple of things that you need to think about before you can change your policies too much. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: My thought about it is that the board fails to do a lot of things that it should do, and staff fails to complete projects that it should be able to complete because we don't efficiently and effectively use the meeting time, and there has to be a way -- and I know you guys are telling me I'm going to quit saying this after a while. But there has to be a way that we can make policy -- we fire Neil if he doesn't get it done. It's their job. We tell him what to do and he does it, and we have to monitor to be sure that he gets it done as our policies are set, but I don't want to be the county manager and I think -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I don't want to be county manager either. One question that was coming to mind in listening to some of the comments, we have a section in the agenda right now where we've been very good in having a clean record on it and that's the contract monitoring sheet. I mean, when I first came on the board, that sheet was a couple of pages long of contracts that were pending, and now I see it every week that that's a clean sheet of paper most of the time. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: What is that? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, when the three of us first came on the board, there were a number of contracts that were in the negotiation phase or in the legal preparation phase and that some contracts would take six, seven months from the moment that we authorized it to the moment that they were signed and sealed and sent off, and we've gotten that down now to that's a clean sheet of paper now virtually every single week, and I'm wondering if for these major projects and so forth that we might use that concept to monitor these projects as to the steps that it's going through. MR. DORRILL: That's kind of what I'm suggesting as part of miscellaneous -- expanding on miscellaneous correspondence because I agree with Commissioner Norris. Rather than leave it up to the staff to assume certain things and over time incur some abuse of that where staff incurs whatever it wants to, that you would still have a full disclosure of the activity or the authorization that's being requested. You would just include it under miscellaneous correspondence or a pending contract or project authority-type section so that it be part of the record of the meeting and part of the documentation of the meeting, but you wouldn't necessarily have to have executive summaries and backup and presentation or either include it under the consent agenda. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: For instance, if we had a contract authority section where we had time-lines that the contract was designed to meet and as staff went through the different phases of the contract, the time-lines would be on a sheet of paper and there would be a dot or something saying that it had been met. And if going through this contract authority each week included in the agenda but not discussed, if we saw something that we thought was lagging behind or something like that, then we could initiate something to bring it forward and find out what the problem is. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I understand your concern of what you're trying to accomplish, but it seems to me that if we're not careful, we'd find ourselves in the position say -- for example, right now we might be out there installing a deep well. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We need to be careful, oh, yeah, but we've never given authority for a deep well. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: You've got to watch out. I mean, if we had preauthorized a lot of that back some time ago, you know, we have -- I can think of probably a couple of instances in the past where we've started in a direction and said, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. There's some new information that's come OUt." CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That's true. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: "Maybe we'd better rethink this." So to preauthorize a long series of steps I'm not sure -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, from a different perspective, if we had this on our -- some sort of contract management or miscellaneous correspondence -- you know, the whole estoppel argument could be set up if we preapprove too much. But if the mechanism -- if the format is such that this is recording for the purpose of the board being able to change direction and make changes, then people don't have a right to rely on it, so we could do what Commissioner Norris is -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We would have that control. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We would have that control all the way through the process. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I don't think there's an argument that there's some merit, that there are areas that could be combined. What I would suggest is that we do a minor pilot of this on one element. Let's not take a macro approach here and decide that we're going to make a big -- you know, we're going to shake the tree and make a big change. Let's find something that -- and whether, Commissioner Matthews, you want to work with Mr. Dotrill on this to pick an area you feel is an appropriate test area to find out what can and cannot be combined, to find out what we're giving and taking as a board by, you know, allowing staff to free up, whatever. The reason I suggest this for two -- is, one, to move this lengthy agenda along, and two is it's been a point of mind that at times in the past the board has not given the county manager's office sufficient parameters to operate within and then want to put his head on the chopping block when he goes anywhere outside of these unspoken parameters. If we're going to ask the county manager to do something, to do a streamlining, we need to be very specific, and I think the only way to do that is to start with a small test area, see how it goes, and then see what other areas of government we can apply it to. That would be my suggestion, and maybe it would be appropriate for someone to work with the county manager and what area that would be the best test to work with. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, one thing that we might be able to do if this board wants to do it is for the county manager and I to work toward breaking the various components down and look for easy consolidation areas and making two into one and see how that goes for a few months and then look at other easy consolidation areas and just beginning to consolidate but keep you advised as to what we're consolidating so it's such that if we approve a contract today at a specific meeting, that we may also approve the budget amendment at the same time instead of having the budget amendment come back two weeks later. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: mean, this isn't granite. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And we can always undo this. I Oh, yeah. We could always go back. Nothing's in stone. COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I agree and I think there's a lot of merit in what seems anyway like a pretty simple thing. If we approve something, it goes hand in hand that we'll approve the budget amendment. So we should be able to do those. I also agree with Commissioner Hac'Kie. I don't think we want to get into a situation where we are beating the county manager or acting in that capacity, but I do think it's a good idea just to perhaps take one on a pilot basis and kind of feel our way. As soon as we've got the right format, we can jump in with other things, but I think it would be great. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think maybe there's a consensus here that you pick an area, work with the county manager, and before actually implementing it maybe this board should at least understand what those changes are before we step into it just as a last chance for input in case someone feels that there -- there are potential potholes here that the board can get a black eye by letting things slip through. So I think it's going to take the five of us together to take a look at this pilot and make sure it's on the track we want it to be on and then proceed with it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Are you talking taking a specific area or taking one or two specific contracts at this point and putting them on the track? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I guess I'm going to leave that to the discretion of what you feel is going to give us the best result, what is going to show us what we can or can't do and provide us the least amount of risk of making a mistake. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: no greater contracts -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: and see how it goes. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: So kind of like take a couple of Exactly. -- and put them in this format The old "crawl before you walk" theory. You know, let's try it on something that is a process-oriented area. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Just for what it's worth, we'll probably balance each other out here, but I'm for not running but walking not crawling. I wish that we could authorize these two to go, you know, make an effort, and let's see how it works and not have to talk about it forever. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I think the written policy of the board does require that we crawl before we walk. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Government crawling. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I believe if we make a policy change in how we handle things on the agenda, it does -- does that have to be approved by the board, Mr. Cuyler? MR. CUYLER: If -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: If we make some form of policy change on how things are handled on the agenda, does that require a vote of the full commission? MR. CUYLER: If you reach a consensus and Neil understands what that consensus is and starts to handle the agenda, definitely no, you don't have to take a specific vote on it. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Let me clarify. I think this is closer to what Tim is saying but I think a hybrid of what both of you are saying, and that is I think Commissioner Matthews is on the right track. I do think it's appropriate that we all take a peek at that since we're all going to be dealing with it. We may find it's fine in that form, but I think it would be inappropriate just to dive in. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Why don't we do this. Why don't the county manager and I take a look at the entire contract procedure, and I would assume that that procedure applies to very simple contracts as well as very complicated ones, and we look at that procedure, look for areas that we can combine, consolidate, and we decide which way we're going to do it, put a memo to the board discussing what the agreement is. If any of the five of us have any questions or concerns about what we've decided to do with the overall procedure, you need to speak up, and then the county manager and I will take one or two of the less complicated contracts and really try to button it down into a real streamline and see how it works and do that for maybe six months and see how it works, see how it feels, and maybe expand that if it works. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think that's well worth the effort. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Sounds great. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Neil, we have a lot of work to do. MR. DORRILL: There may be some other ideas that we can propose to you as part of that to get some of the more Hickey Mouse items off the regular agenda. Some examples that come to mind are it would probably be good if we had a public purpose discretionary policy for -- and I hate to use the example of coffee and doughnuts, but, you know, for me to go through the staff of having to do all the paperwork and having executive summaries and a resolution prepared to buy, you know, $25 worth of coffee and doughnuts four times a year or something, it's just silly. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: When you think of how much tax money gets spent on the staff. MR. DORRILL: And, by the same token, I have change -- I have administrative change order authority up to 10 percent of a contract up to but not to exceed $150,000 without asking the board for any authorization at all. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: But you can't spend $30 worth of doughnuts? MR. DORRILL: I can't buy $30 worth of doughnuts or I can't, for that matter, you know, take sealed bids or proposals over $6,500. So we still do some sort of clumsy things. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Hancock brought doughnuts to the last one. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I was so unaware, that I brought a dozen doughnuts being a nice guy, and I show up and there's a bunch sitting there, but I think an administrative doughnut change order policy is in order. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Now we're on to the real important stuff. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Are we going to try to get through all of this today? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We may not. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: The way it's gone so far, we're not. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Why don't we try to move forward. We probably will not get through item "O" today. If there's anything on here that any of us feel is especially important, I think we should try to cover them today and I'm -- COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: "B" is especially important to me. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, I see "B .... I see"B" and "E" as especially important. I think they go hand in hand. And I think the outcome based budgeting, item "M", we should also discuss. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Great idea. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yes. MR. DORRILL: Go to "B" next? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. Let's look at "B" and "E" together because to me policies and whether we should put those policies in a code are -- they're kind of -- COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: There's this mysterious thing that is board policy. What the hell are they? Where do they come from? COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Before we get on to that question specifically, are we going to try to work through the agenda, or are we going to hit those items and see how much time we have left or '- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: (Nodded head.) COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Okay. Can we throw "C" into that as well? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: "C" too? Okay. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: All right. But if we can do "B" and "E" together, I think we can close on those at the same time. I have for two years had questions about what are the BCC policies. I know we talk about them, but if I wanted to go and pull a book that says BCC policy, there isn't any that I'm aware of. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: What are we talking about anyway? Are we talking about -- You know, there's two concepts here, and what I'm talking about is not that the board is the policy maker for the county. I'm not talking about that. That's something that is dynamic and changes. But what I'm talking about is -- you know, no offense taken but what the hell? You can't vote at a workshop. That's a policy that people knew about that I didn't know about. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: You know, that's twice you've used the word "hell" on the record today. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: I have a little anger. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: She'll be on to "damn" by the time we get to "F." COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Sorry. MR. DORRILL: In response, I would say that policies to me take two forms. One is an official ordinance that can only be considered as part of the advertised or emergency public hearing. You have ordinance policies for budget and fiscal matters, purchasing and procurement matters, human resource and insurance matters. You have ordinance policies that govern land development activities. Those are policies. We have certain -- I would also call board policies that are adopted by resolution, do not require advertised public hearings, but they do require a motion, second, and vote of the county commission, and sometimes they will be in actual written form when they're presented to the board. A good example are parks and recreation fees can only be amended by resolution, but it requires a specific legal instrument. On some occasions, Ken will ask the recorder to reserve a resolution number for me when he's asking you to take a specific vote on something and he'll come back then with a resolution. He's asking that a resolution number be reserved as part of your vote. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: He did that twice on Tuesday. MR. DORRILL: Tuesday. There's a third area that are not policies but they were what I would call administrative procedures which are the instructions to my staff as to how you will request annual leave, how you will request to be out of the county on business to get the authority needed to do that, what is expected in order for you to get an executive summary on the agenda. They're not board adopted, but they're administrative procedures that tell the staff how they're to do things. Then there are other things that I would just frankly call protocol. The issue of not voting or taking public comment at workshops probably is not an ordinance or resolution of the county commission, but it has been protocol for at least the 15 years that I've worked here and the 37 years that Ken has worked here. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Just to comment on that -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thirty-seven? No. No. MR. DORRILL: Were you listening? MR. CUYLER: It's 35. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Just to comment on that, while it is sometimes inconvenient for the five of us, I think it provides a consistency for the public that makes it easier, and particularly when we deal with this batch here. We may workshop on water issues or workshop on solid waste or on different things. And for meetings in which we either attempt to or are likely to take a vote, like it or not, there is some politicking involved maybe from us and maybe not. But from those making presentations and so on, different things go on. Whereas at workshops when no vote is anticipated, I find anyway over the last couple of years you get more of a square presentation. It's just for the purpose of learning and for getting an education on a particular topic, and I guess the public input part is those are at the public hearings where we take the votes, and I think the workshop just allows you to plow through more information. MR. DORRILL: I guess the bottom line and your question is, is it board policy that you must register to speak and that you be limited to five minutes to speak? I guess the honest legal answer to that is no, but it's more of a protocol or an established procedure that the board has used and is just followed. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: However, the chairman does have the right to control that meeting as he or she sees fit to keep order and maintain efficiency and so forth. So the fact is, there is a written policy as to how you can establish it, that the chairman, that person has the ability to do that. This is -- What commissioner MAc'Kie is talking about is something I went through. You walk in and you go from whatever your career was to all of a sudden you're a policy maker. You ask what the policy is, and the answer is whatever you decide. That's a little tough to handle at first. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I can take that part. The part that I don't like is, "These are policies that were already established. Didn't you know?" That's the part that I have a problem with. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: You forgot the word "dummy" on the end of that. "Didn't you know, dummy?" COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: "Didn't you know, dummy?" Yeah. That to me -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: There's kind of an information-finding thing, and there's not a single place to go, and I think that's where "B" and "E" were coming from because there's not a little manual that says, "This is the way it's done. This is how we've done it. If you want to change it, bring it up." COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: the rules. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: we do sometimes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And the public deserves to know Exactly. When I was on the outside -- I think they know it better than I think they do too. Can I suggest this, that over the next six or eight months -- and I don't know how much spare time anybody has in anybody's office-- but that we find some people who can gather together the resolutions and think about the meeting procedures, be they workshops, public meetings, or what have you, and begin to compile. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'll try to assemble that if you want and see where we're at. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. And then if we can get them in different form and we don't particularly like what we see or we want to expand them, then we're free to do that, but that way I think if we get them in some sort of written form, we can take a look at them. MR. DORRILL: Or that we would at least codify them that pertain to the board's powers and procedures and that type of thing. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Mac'Kie, I think your point is well taken. It was prior to when any of us were on the board but the -- a couple of years prior to that, there was no light, no timer. There was a general understanding, gee, shall I speak five minutes, but some chairs decided to pursue that and some didn't and were -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, and some topics were very interesting and they got 15 minutes instead of five minutes. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. There was no rhyme or reason. So I think over the years that it evolved, but you're right. I think it's just as well. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So you're going to take that on, Tim, to -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- try to gather all that into a single written form? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I found that appealing when you said six or eight months. I'll try to do it in a couple of months. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, I don't particularly see it as being a simple job. I mean, it may be something that you're going to have to set Chris or Sue to work on to go back through lengthy files. I don't know. Maybe Neil has some -- has a file folder in his file drawer that says "board policy." I don't know. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: If we have anything that takes 12 months, I'll volunteer for that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We might. Sit tight. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm on the four-year plan. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Does that pretty much handle "B" and "C", that we wanted those policies and we want to get them written? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: It does for me. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: "C", workshops. I put this on the agenda. I've got -- I have a couple of ideas that I'd like to more or less get on the table at this point. I don't think there's anything we can do in making drastic changes. I agree, we shouldn't make drastic changes. But I think there's some things that we can do to make ourselves better informed, and that's to have workshops generated by ourselves instead of by consultants coming to us and say, gee, we ought to have a workshop on this, that, and the other, and the consultant immediately has an agendaed workshop that just leads us right into a wired RFP. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: They just happened to be qualified for it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. Really. I mean, and it does happen. I'm not saying it's deliberate but it does happen. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: You aren't suggesting that consultants have hidden agendas, are you? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: My husband's a consultant. Yeah. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. I was just checking. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. Anyway, so I have put together a list of workshops, and I didn't get them copied. I should have but I didn't. Do we have a copy machine here? MR. DORRILL: I'll get it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I've got a list of workshops that I thought we might want to look at and a priority column over here that maybe if the five of us take some time over the next week or so, prioritize this list, add anything more to it, and we can get to it. There's subjects like under water, potable, tense, recharge, aquifer storage, surface storage, reservoirs or water tanks, beach renourishment -- you guys aren't indicated on that one yet -- solid waste disposal, recycle -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: We learned nothing in the campaign about it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Recycle, reclaim, or relocate. Our buildout study, what does it mean? You know? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: This sounds like what policy makers talk about. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. The land development code and its criteria, growth management. We'll be doing ERA this year. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: EAR, isn't it? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: EAR. I'm sorry. Yeah. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I've already actually started on that. year. Affordable housing, how much do we need? type? How about traffic patterns? Hmmm? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Nothing. where it should be. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. We'll be doing that this What are our choices? What's available? How do we do it? Where should it be? What I was just saying COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think that's an excellent start. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: But this is a starting point. We all have different ideas of things we should -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We're going to have things to add and so forth to that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Feel free to add to it. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We can probably just circulate that in the offices upstairs. We may not have to do it now. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: But I think that's a great idea, and eventually, you know, we may have in our little book of policies a policy on setting workshops. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, that's next on my agenda right now. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Good. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Could we have a workshop on COHHISSIONER NORRIS: Policies. COHHISSIONER HANCOCK: Workshop. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: On policies. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- on setting policies? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: idea first. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COHMISSIONER NORRIS: workshops? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We would have to workshop that I have a question. Yeah. Do we allow public input at Generally no. COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Generally not. COHHISSIONER MAC'KIE: But that's a policy -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That brings another question. Why does the -- On our agenda then, why do those first four paragraphs appear on this workshop agenda? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That's a good question. Generally we don't, and specifically this is advertised as a brain-storming workshop for the five of us or, actually, the seven of us. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Just curious. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But with regard to workshops -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think that needs to be fixed, Mr. Dorrill. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Like, for example, when we have something on water, I would hope that people other than staff and us can talk about it. I mean, can we at least invite speakers? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, what I envision our doing with potential workshops, if we are going to schedule a workshop, that we invite to that workshop people we want to hear from. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: For example, the workshop we had on water issues and the Conservancy, we had participants, a number of people involved speaking on that and I think -- you know, I don't want to limit it to these seven people because we're not going to learn anything new. We should invite -- You're right. If we're trying to learn on the idea, we should probably invite some specific people. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The other thing that I see with these workshops is that we probably will not have a single workshop on a single subject. Many of these items are very expensive and very time-consuming, and it may be something that we want to limit the workshops to 90-minute workshops. Then we take a chunk of information, we carry it home with us, so to speak, and we dwell on it, and 30 or 45 days later we have another workshop from a different perspective on the same subject only it's very high-dollar items so that we can take it in small chunks instead of trying to swallow this thing in four- or five- or six-hour workshops where we get so confused we can't figure it out. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And inasmuch as I was in favor of what we're doing right now, I think that those kinds of issues are items that should be discussed on regular agendas. I think that that is what we have to spend more time doing and budget amendment baloney -- stuff that we spend less time on. I don't -- I think -- I mean, my mission is less government and all that -- you know, good republican, less government. So policy makers should be doing -- having those 90-minute bites of discussion as a portion of our regular agenda. That ought to be the most important thing on our agenda, in my mind. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Now, the next idea is something that John and Tim and I have talked about in the past. We didn't do a lot with it. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Were you there? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: In a public hearing. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It isn't Sunshine? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: In a public hearing. We've talked about this before in a public hearing. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We talked about it last night over pizza. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And beer. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: A couple of years ago -- MR. HART: At his house. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: A couple of years ago, Commissioner Saunders brought forth the idea that perhaps we ought to change our entire meeting schedule, and there wasn't a lot of activity done on that. We weren't quite sure, change it to what, do what with it. Now, what I would like to entertain or like this board to entertain is to eventually carry us toward our goal, and I'm not saying that we can make immediate changes. It depends on how we can adjust these other things, but to move toward a goal where our Tuesday meetings probably will only occur two, maybe three times a month, and that these workshops where we're educating ourselves on the Tuesday meeting information would occur every other week, eight-hour days, four workshops in a day, each on a different subject. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So are we having more meetings or the same number of meetings? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: You'd probably have one more meeting a month than we're having right now. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Which may be would be better to spend our time instead of that strategic planning stuff. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: be done but -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Could be. But -- The strategic planning needs to Well, let's put that in. -- that's what this is. I have -- There's something that is very easily understandable about every Tuesday to the 200,000 people that live here, you know, year-round, more or less. The fact that they know every meeting is on Tuesday, that whatever the board is going to do that week occurs on that Tuesday is very easy for the public to understand. They know to show up. They know where it is. The second part of that is that I like the idea of getting business done on Tuesdays. It allows me the entire -- from Wednesday to the next Tuesday to gear up for that Tuesday. There's just something -- The way it sits right now I like. The one thing I would like to change that is part of what you're talking about is we get in there on Tuesday and there may be some history, there may be something that has happened with a certain item that I'm not aware of that the normal course of the public hearing may not bring to the surface, and there's no opportunity for the four of you to inform me about something that you're aware of that I would have no way of knowing that may have some impact on my decision. I like the idea of maybe workshopping the agenda just among the commissioners before we get to it on Tuesday to just see where things come from or where people are, and I'm not talking about getting together and making decisions. I'm just saying there may be some directions or feelings out there. I don't know. I just feel like we do walk in a little blind, and part of that is the Sunshine Law. I understand that. But as far as splitting up meeting schedules, I'm not in favor of that, but I do feel like there's got to be a way to get some more information. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Let me make a suggestion, and I understand particularly now early on, both you and Commissioner Hac'Kie can get frustrated with different issues that we may have had workshops on, may have had public hearings on in the past, and all of a sudden it comes back and everybody keeps referencing, "Well, gosh, in September, we said .... CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: On such and such. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Some of that will pass once you've been on the board three or four months just by the nature of it. I don't know that I like the idea of workshopping before we really get to it. The city does that, and they spend a day talking about things that they're going to talk about again on Wednesday. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's like a rehearsal. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And it's not proven very -- in my opinion, hasn't proven very effective. Some of them like it, and some of them don't like it. But I don't like sitting and talking about something with no expectation of coming to a result, and I think it may be reinforcing your comment. I think it can confuse the public and make it more difficult if there's a topic they're particularly interested in. But I do agree with you on -- I'd like to keep it on Tuesdays for a couple of reasons. One, and perhaps most importantly, is the public knows it's every Tuesday, and that's very simple to remember. But, also, to me, the most important part of being a commissioner isn't just the policies we set, there isn't just the budget amendments we do and those things on Tuesday. I answer every phone call that comes in, I respond to every letter that comes in, and that takes a lot of time, and I do research on all of those. And so to take another day out of the ability to do that -- and I'll use June as the example. You guys will know this. In June we have usually at least four budget meetings. We have -- last year -- actually the last two years, we had two -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: All day. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. Going all day. We had two Wednesday night hearings then. We had our MPO meeting. We had our regular Tuesday meetings. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Regional planning. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We had Regional Planning Council and so on and so on. We ended up with somewhere between 12 and 15 meetings in June, and June is my least favorite month because you can't get anything done as far as calls, letters, and just the basic service to constituents. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That's why we take off in July. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: To catch up. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Exactly. Recharge the batteries. But I don't want to get into a point where a couple of days a week we're doing that because I'm afraid we won't be able to serve the other ways, the other reason why we're there as well. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The goal that I have in mind or the goal that I would like us to consider working toward is to have our formal public meetings, say, on the first and third. Is that the land use days, first and third Tuesdays or second and fourth? MR. DORRILL: Second and fourth. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Second and fourth. We would have our formal Tuesday meetings on the second and the fourth Tuesdays and follow that Tuesday with probably the Thursday following the Tuesday meeting with an all-day workshop. The following week there would be no meetings. We would be catching up on all the other things. We would be delving into the other information we need to complete these things in deciding what we need to do and -- and with -- COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Can I throw in a comment? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Just a second. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Sorry. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- with trying to consolidate agenda items, I see the Tuesday meeting with land use on that same day, that that would be a full-day meeting with subsequent full-day workshops. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Let me throw in a thought that I think may accomplish what you have in mind but do it while maintaining our consistent Tuesdays. We -- Yesterday in the paper I read that, gosh, our meetings -- I don't know if this was a quote from you or if this is Steve's opinion -- but it said meetings often lasted ten hours. And in the last year, we only had two that went past five o'clock, and one of those was the Apac hearing that had 13 hours on that one topic. So realistically we had one meeting that went all day. So I don't think the length of Tuesday meetings are a problem right now. Format, some of the things we're doing need to be changed. But I -- like you, I heard you say maybe we can do something instead of current strategic planning, and I think that is by going on and moving with some of the things -- we spent the last year in strategic planning trying to prioritize and decide what those are, and I think we all think we've taken too long to get to that point. The bottom line is that finally I think that's the point where we have some priority items, and those may be I'm going to guess -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Similar to these workshops. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- very similar to what we talked about. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yes. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And I'm wondering if during those strategic -- what we've set aside as strategic planning days it might not be appropriate to do these workshops that you're suggesting and then we can hit those topics as necessary. And we may want them -- because it's only four a year -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: But there's only four a year. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- we may want to add in a couple of extra during the year, but that way we can maintain our Tuesday calendar and achieve this. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I would support maintaining our Tuesday calendar and setting aside a portion of every Tuesday's agenda for that 90-minute chunk of information. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So on -- well, we could do that supposedly in the afternoons of the first and the third Tuesday where we don't have land use. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We can do it however we want to do it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We could but I don't know -- and maybe we will, but I don't know if we're going to have -- off the top of my head, I can't think of 26 things I would workshop which is how many meetings if we did it every other week? And I don't want to get -- You said you wanted less meetings. I don't want to get to a point where we sit and talk for the sake of talking. There are some topics that we very clearly need to get a grasp on and need to spend some time on, but I'm not sure right now off the top of my head I can think of 26 -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I have a suggestion. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I have a suggestion. First of all, I'm not supportive of altering our Tuesday meeting schedule. This is not the City of Naples. I think we're too big for going two weeks between meetings. There's stuff that comes up too -- that needs to be taken care of in the interim. We have too much going on. I think we are obligated to have our Tuesday meetings. The fifth Tuesdays, though, I think it's a good idea to not do -- to delete our strategic planning sessions that we've been having and move more into this which is -- as you pointed out, is partly strategic planning anyway. I don't think we're getting anywhere at this strategic planning. I've said so all along. But, in addition to that, there are items that come up that need to be workshopped perhaps, and we can do those on demand rather than regularly scheduling and, like Commissioner Constantine said, well, you know, maybe we'll run out of topics too quick and -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I don't know that we will. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I don't think so. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I don't think so. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: But I think if we do it on demand, we'll find out. I mean, we may -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You know, this is a long list of starting demands and nobody -- again, it's not carved in stone. We can stop. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, my opinion is that, you know, our primary obligation here is to do the public's business. You know, whether our schedules are convenient to ourselves I don't think is important. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right. Absolutely. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: No. No. I agree with that. What I'm trying to find a way to do is if we can consolidate our issues on the public agenda on Tuesdays and we eventually move our Tuesday meetings to such a degree that some counties have been able to do and some very large counties have been able to do, their meetings are two hours long on Tuesdays, and there are counties whose meetings are two hours long, and I'm talking about populations of a million or more, and they only meet three Tuesdays a month. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That scares me. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: But they do these -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Motion to approve. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: They do these workshops on a regular basis so that when the Tuesday meeting occurs, they are all well versed. They're not seeking a lot of information at a Tuesday public meeting, and they continue almost nothing for lack of information. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'll tell you where my concern stems from is a corporation I worked for at one time had a tremendous habit of meeting, and they confused activity with productivity, and I don't want to get us to a point where we're having workshops every two weeks for the sake of it and we think, okay, geez, what haven't we covered yet instead of thinking, boy, solid waste or water or something that's on the top of our agenda we need to workshop. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think it's always going to be some item that one of us is foreseeing in the 90- to 120-day range that we need to know more about it. I think it's always going to be there. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'd just like to have the opportunity -- What I thought I was doing on the -- When I kept moving those water issues into a workshop, what I thought I was doing and what it would be my goal to be able to do is when there are related issues that require education of the board to be able to make intelligent decisions, that we consolidate those, have a presentation of information, and then take action, and that's what I had in mind as this whole workshop schedule, that we anticipate items that were going to come before the board and we get to learn about it. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We have traditionally done that to some extent, not in any formal two-week period. But when there are topics of import, then we have workshops and have done that, and we may find a number of things increase as the challenges increase. But I guess I'd like to set that -- I'm saying if we set that Tuesday -- there's four or five Tuesdays depending on the year that fall into that category and maybe a couple of other times but spend -- right now we spend two and a half hours at those meetings, and if we had a couple of 90-minutes in the morning and one or two 90-minutes in the afternoon, we can workshop two, three, four items. Even though we're only meeting six times, that still comes out to 24 topics. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I would still -- I would suggest that our workshops not be more than 90 minutes merely because if you get into something longer than that, you're getting information that you just can't comprehend and can't digest. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I guess that I'll throw a more structured format in, but like I said before is keep the regular Tuesday meetings. But for our strategic planning, Tuesdays, the fifth Tuesdays, maybe it would be a good day to delete those in their current form. And if we want to have workshops, use those and have maybe two or three topics each lasting no longer than 90 minutes on those days, and that way we can cover -- if you had, say, three topics on average on a day and you had maybe six of those a year, you still come out to 18 or 20 topics. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I support everything you just said, Tim. I'd like to add that when the agenda permits, that it's a priority in setting our agenda that we anticipate issues that are going to be coming before the board that need to be workshopped and work those into our regular Tuesday agendas. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: In the afternoon. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Did you hear that suggestion, Tim? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: No, but I'm all for it. No, just kidding. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: When you said in 90 minutes for a workshop, you meant per topic? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Per topic. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Per topic. So but we can expedite it like -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We can take four or five of them in a given day. When I say 90 minutes for a workshop, I mean on a given topic. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: On a given topic. What I had suggested, Tim, is we keep our regular Tuesday agendas. For our strategic planning meetings, right now they're held on those months that have five Tuesdays depending on the years four or five times and we have -- we delete the strategic planning in its current format but, in lieu of that, have maybe three topics, none of which will last longer than 90 minutes and workshop those topics on those days. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. And just on those four Tuesdays, we're not going to expand it to include at this point -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, I think we might want to include a couple other days. I think this year it's January and March. Then we don't have any for four or five months. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Till August. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: My suggestion was, in addition to that, that as we anticipate the issues that are going to require our education, we allow workshops to be added. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: that don't have the -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: On those every other Tuesdays -- Yeah. -- was it the first and third Land use. -- land use petitions? MR. DORRILL: A good example I think of that is I've been concerned about how to approach the board with our alternative solid waste processing RFP's that we just opened, and in the back of my mind I'm saying, gee, is this board really going to want to spend $8 million to build a compost facility. That makes for a very awkward regular agenda item. Executive summary, regular agenda, staff presentation, 13 different people representing everybody from let's burn the world to citizens opposed to virtually everything registering to speak and taking two hours and 45 minutes to discuss whether or not you want to have, you know, a clean -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, we may have to do that in two chunks only because we want to limit the workshops now to 90 minutes. It's just too much to try to absorb. MR. DORRILL: And it's way too much for me to try and cram it into a regular executive summary agenda item. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I want to -- Maybe you want to close on that particular format that I suggested, but I wanted to hit on something -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I've got one comment on the strategic planning, and that is that I'm not really in favor of dropping strategic planning. I'm not happy particularly with the way it has gone because I don't think we have accomplished what we should have accomplished on the time that we spent on it, mainly because we have a list of items that we feel are important to Collier County and we feel that we need to get accomplished but we don't have any time-lines -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I guess I see -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- on those, and that's what planning is supposed to accomplish, not only to identify these objectives and goals, but to say when you're going to finish them. Now, if we're going to incorporate time-lines into our workshop and build our strategic plan from there, I can support that. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. I guess I see the proposed workshops as changing the format of strategic planning not a ban on strategic planning. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I can support that then because we need the strategic planning. We need to know where we want to be five or ten years from now, but we need to put the time-lines in there of where we want -- when we want to be there. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: I agree. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: I'm all in favor of that. I think it's a terrific idea. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Can I hit on something now? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yes. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Neil mentioned the alternative technologies, and this is a tiny bit out of line I know, but if you'll please indulge me. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Do we have a choice? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: He's getting started. I guess not. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Let me get coffee. COHHISSIONER MAC'KIE: There's not any. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: None. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I've heard both Commissioner Hac'Kie and Commissioner Hancock say particularly in favor of the workshops that -- and you said in particular you hear reference to things that went on in the past but there's nothing tangible to hold onto, or you get to a Tuesday meeting and all of a sudden something comes up from the past that you weren't aware of. I have a proposal I want to give y'all in regards to our solid waste. Neil just mentioned the alternative technologies that are going to be coming to us. Those were due -- those came in December 8 and are due sometime in the next few weeks. What we decided to do with alternative technologies will impact our landfill and our -- regardless of whether we privatize or don't, it's going to impact the volume there and so on. It seems fairly logical to me that we should do two of those together like you were saying for the planning of the water. You should take all those together. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Absolutely. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It seems to me we ought to know what we're going to do and what impact -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The optimization and the alternative at the same time. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: The same time. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I've often wondered why we didn't do it together. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And so I want to suggest a couple of things. We're going to make the decision -- Hand one of those down to everybody. Let me hang on to one of them. We're going to make a decision on that landfill sometime fairly soon. It's going to have a financial impact, literally hundreds of millions of dollars, and it's going to have -- whatever we decide, it will have a long-term impact set forth from ten to 20 years. So I'd like to kind of set up -- On this little thing, I've put a little calendar together rather than -- It seems out of order to me. I'm not being very clear here. It seems out of order. I think the landfill is scheduled right now the 17th and then a week or two later take the optimization. That seems kind of goofy to me. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yes. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And, also, we've talked about all these things that are going to have all this huge impact for years to come, but the two new folks haven't had one minute of public hearing on that. So that doesn't seem very fair to you all to say, okay, what's your decision. And so I wondered if we might like to have instead of -- and I guess this would be the first 60- to 90-minute workshop -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- Is to have maybe on the 17th, instead of have the contract come forth, have this issue and have kind of an update to bring y'all up to speed and bring us up to speed on where everything is at, and then by the end of the month or the first of next month have the report on the alternative technologies, and then within a couple of or even the next day or the next week -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So you're saying on this workshop then, recycle, reclaim, relocation are all going to be one, one, one? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. I think they all go hand in hand. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: All are going to be one, one, one, do them first. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I have a historical question on this. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: There's really -- My understanding is there's no real push or time-line by which we have to make a decision on either privatization or what our options are. It's just something that the board initiated at one point and it's been following its course. Am I correct in that? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And my thought was simple. We've been working on this thing for two years, and if it takes an extra two or three weeks, if it makes us make a better decision, it's going to last for another 25 years so it's probably not -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: You mean, three weeks for 25 years' worth of good decision? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Sold. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE. Sold. That's exactly how we ought to do it then. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Off of that subject. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thank you very much. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Next item should take just a few minutes. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Pam strategically sent Neil out for coffee. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And the next item is resolutions brought forth by the board, what method should be used. I guess that's just for the convenience of especially Commissioner Mac'Kie and Commissioner Hancock, but I think we could all use a refresher on what is the method to be used to bring a resolution before the board. And, Ken, I'd like you to give us some idea on resolutions that we want to bring forward to the board, how far can we go in making our colleagues aware of what we're doing before Sunshine Law is violated. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Are you talking kind of like about, you know, sending a memo out saying this is what I'm going to propose, this is why I'm proposing it? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. A memo containing facts as opposed to opinion, does that violate the Sunshine Law? I know opinion does. But how far can we go? MR. CUYLER: To tell you the truth, that's not a clearly answered question under the case law. In terms of what I have generally accepted or what I've given in terms of advice for people that have asked, I'm always a little edgy about any memos between board members because, as you know, whether you verbally say something to another commissioner or whether you write it could then still -- could be considered violation of the Sunshine. But I have always -- If a commissioner had said to me, I have an attached form resolution that's been sent to me by "X" organization or the State of Florida or whatever or another county and they're suggesting we pass it, I'm going to send a memo to the other commissioner saying attached is a form resolution that I'm going to be putting on the agenda Tuesday. If I know it's coming up for a public meeting, I know it's going to be discussed and become public record, at that point then I usually don't have an objection to it. When you get beyond that into memos, it's not -- if you start getting into memos about I think this and I think we should proceed along these lines and those kind of things, you need to be very cautious of those. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: This is a great idea that Commissioner Constantine has brought us, is a memo with a proposal. MR. CUYLER: Correct. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: I can't imagine -- and the fact that he handed it out in a publically advertised meeting eliminates any question -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: It's part of the public record. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- of the Sunshine. MR. CUYLER: Correct. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: But to get this in my in-box on my desk would be Sunshine violation? No; right? I think no. MR. CUYLER: Arguably it could be, but if he were to put a memo in this saying this is something that I propose to bring up on Tuesday for a discussion or a vote of the board, then I would tell you that I'm not going to have an objection to that. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right. MR. CUYLER: So that gets it to you four or five days in advance. COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: So you can think about it before you get there. I mean, I think that's important. MR. CUYLER: But things of this nature that don't become public record, that don't get discussed for six months I start getting a little edgier about that. Then there's communications going on that nobody sees. More specifically, in terms of the resolutions, they come about all kinds of ways. I mean, I've gotten calls as late as -- speaking of getting calls -- as late as the day before a Tuesday meeting when a commissioner calls and has proposed drafts and a resolution, I want to hand it out tomorrow. And on occasion we'll even discuss something on Tuesday and says, Mr. Cuyler, can we put that in a resolution form. As long as there's no tax there for me to do that, I don't mind doing that. So it comes in all kinds of forms. I guess you're talking about how we notify the other commissioners in advance in between a Tuesday and the next Tuesday that you're going to bring something up. And, again, if it's something -- and you can -- I mean, you can always distribute them to the press. I mean, you can always go drop it in the press box and say, here's a memo that -- MR. DORRILL: That's what we did in Sarasota when I was there to get around the appearance of private communications. We just maintained a correspondence file and anybody and their brother could come in and look at the correspondence file. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Let's do that. But I wish that when Tim Constantine gets an idea such as this about the landfill, that he didn't -- you know, it's inefficient for him to -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: If we didn't have this today COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: -- we could have done this. Let's just tell these guys that here's a -- you know, copy to the press. I don't even care, you know, if it's a file that's available or if there's a box that says press box. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: They've got boxes downstairs. MR. DORRILL: He's entitled to see that. If you just maintain on Sue Filson's desk a correspondence file of routine correspondence that may be going through or in the board's office, then I think you've covered the anxiety that Ken would have. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: But the idea -- the idea -- MR. HART: It all needs to be in there. Everything needs to be in there. MR. CUYLER: Yeah. That's the point I was going to say. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Everything is what? MR. CUYLER: The day that you don't have the memo in the box that goes to the press, I mean, obviously -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Then you're dead, and we deserve to be dead for that. MR. DORRILL: I would prefer a correspondence file, that we maintain one in our office. Anything that is communicated goes in a chrono file by day. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Memo to the Board of County Commissioners, as far as boxes -- MR. DORRILL: I wouldn't leave it up to somebody that had to go slip copies in the box because you've incurred the obligation to make sure that they get a copy. You don't know who's going through those press boxes downstairs so -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: It may not be the right people going through those particular boxes. A question though, you feel, Mr. Cuyler, that if we were to exchange -- not really exchange but provide factual information to members of the board as to things that are going on and that you intend to bring this item for discussion on the subsequent Tuesday, that that's okay as long as we are not expressing opinion in that memo? MR. CUYLER: I would say that if you have a document attached to your distribution memo and you send it to the other commissioners saying attached is something that I'm bringing up on Tuesday and these are the facts, and you drop a memo in the press box or whatever you set up, yeah, I will -- you know, I'll tell you that that's okay. I tend to be conservative about this. The Sunshine Law is construed very conservatively. I tend to knit-pick about this, but, yeah, I would tell you that you can go ahead and do something like that. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It seems the key to me is simply making sure you all have access to everything at the same time or '- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: The secondary key being that it has to be something that you are notifying the other commissioners you are going to bring up on a set date. It can't just be open communication line on a particular subject. MR. CUYLER: That makes me feel a lot more comfortable. I know that it's going to be discussed. Everybody will have a chance. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Can that date be -- how far in the future would you be uncomfortable? MR. CUYLER: I'd like to see it within a reasonable period of time. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thirty days? MR. CUYLER: Thirty days would be fine with me. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: And everybody understands that we're -- that these aren't real rules? I mean, we're making this stuff up because, you know -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: It's all an interpretation of the Sunshine Law. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: How could we defend ourselves? What is the reasonable action to take that's defensible? MR. CUYLER: Correct. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: That I think that it's real important, you know, that we don't bow to the pressure of the press and worry so much about somebody saying we did something wrong that we become terribly inefficient which is what the Sunshine Law causes us to do. MR. CUYLER: I agree. It's not the press we're concerned about. It's the commission on ethics that I'm concerned about. And you're right. If you stand up there and say, "I did this in good faith, and here's all the precautions that we took," many cases you'll be all right, but I've seen opinions where people acted in complete good faith, did what they thought was correct and still got in trouble. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: And that's what's important for us to understand, that if I choose to take a risk that the commission on ethics is going to interpret my actions different from the way I intended it to be interpreted, that's my business. I can take that risk. Those are my ethics and I can -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: May I ask a question? If that communication comes to me, though, am I then potentially in violation of the Sunshine Law and could be standing before the commission on ethics as well? MR. CUYLER: Well, you don't know until after you read it what it is. So I'd say under those circumstances -- COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, I just think we all need to be careful when we're communicating. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: So if we get something from Pam, don't open it until Tuesday. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Is that -- MR. CUYLER: And let me tell you, as Pam has indicated, you have a right to make your own decisions. I mean, I just advise you, as Pam knows, as an attorney, and I advise you, and you either follow the direction -- COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. Well, thank God we've still got an attorney on the board because today I got to hear the word estoppel, and I got to hear legally defensible position. I suspect I wouldn't have heard that from anyone else. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Actually, I had estoppel. In case he wasn't here, I was going to cover that one. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Let me try to sum this up then. What I'm hearing then is that, Mr. Cuyler, you feel that we can communicate with one another on items coming before the board as far as transferring factual information as long as we are going to be bringing that issue before the board within roughly 30 days and if we also include that factual information in a correspondence folder available for the press, whoever wants to see it or the public -- MR. CUYLER: Yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- whoever wants to come and go through that folder at any time. MR. CUYLER: Yes. And obviously you don't ask for responses of any kind from anybody. I don't mind you saying if you have something that you do think is important, tell the county manager so he'll be prepared for it on that Tuesday or whatever, but obviously this is a one-way communication that is more a presentation item that will be coming up on the agenda more than anything else. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Now, is it safe to say that we can have a correspondence file for each month of the year instead of having an open revolving correspondence file? MR. CUYLER: That would be fine. I would leave that up to Neil to coordinate. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I mean, there has to be a way to keep this file only this thick instead of this thick. (indicating) MR. DORRILL: But easily accessible so that every day when Steve and Carl come through the office, they know right where it is and they go and they can see what's come in since yesterday. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: For the current month? MR. DORRILL: Yeah. But then you would keep it for the next month. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Claudia, you can look through it too. MS. FULLER: Thank you. Thank you. I was beginning to wonder. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's a boy thing. Only boys can look at the file. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Claudia, I'll personally make sure you get a copy of it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. So -- MR. DORRILL: Tim is going to caution you, though, for any of those land use-related things where you might send a memo to your fellow commissioners saying it's my understanding that the X, Y, Z Corporation is about to file a petition for this affordable housing project and I need you to know I have strong concerns -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That's an -- That's an opinion. MR. DORRILL: -- it's going to freak out if y'all start doing that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That's an opinion also, and that's not what we're talking about doing. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. I think we're all understanding that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think we're okay. Why don't we do item "F" and item "H" together, budget ideas from me, and Neil has brought in outcome based budgeting. Budget ideas from me or ideas from the board, my idea is outcome based budgeting. Do we need to know what outcome based budgeting is? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I do. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We'll talk about that. Is that what your question is? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: No. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Let me tell her what outcome based budgeting is. A real simple concept because this is the way you do your budget at home. You decide at home you want to set your thermostat to cool your house to 76 degrees and you say what is it going to cost me to do that. MR. DORRILL: 78. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Come on. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: 78. Okay. Anyway, you get your information from FP and L saying 76 degrees is going to cost you $375 a month, and you say, "I don't want to pay that." So they say, okay, 78 degrees, and you see the price go down. That's what outcome budgeting is. You decide what the outcome is going to be, set your budget to that outcome, and then decide if you like the price tag on it. You might not. I would think that from our perspective with our staff, they probably have a better idea right now of what the outcomes should be. We can talk about what the outcomes are, you know, what the outcomes are that we want them to look at the budget for. They can do a -- what in the accounting world we call a down and dirty budget -- COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: That I know. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- for roughly what that 76-degree temperature is going to cost without spending a lot of time on it, and you can see right away, "Oh, I don't want that. Raise the temperature." COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I like when I had my meeting with the budget people yesterday, and I think this holds a lot of promise and allows us to get a little more hands-on and what we're doing with this, quote, zero based, the priority budgeting now. I guess what I'd like -- One of the things I liked last year was parks and rec, Tom Olliff had for -- I think a lot of times and what you're saying, he had -- Okay. If we want to pick up the trash four days a week -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That's it. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- and so far it showed up X, Y, Z. And if you only want to do it twice a week, it would cost X, Y, Z. And out of all the budget items -- MR. DORRILL: The best example that -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- that was the best. MR. DORRILL: The best example that always comes to my mind is to take your program budget concept. Commissioners love dealing in programs because they're more tangible, just that line item-type budget where only the staff really knows what you can do, stay with the program format, but put service level outcomes associated with that. The easiest example for me to use is the summer rec program for kids at each of the five community parks. We would fund, say, summer rec at 1,500 children or, you know, 300 children per park, but then the problem that we sort of get into is that it's become such a popular program, that it has become a first-come first-serve. And at Golden Gate, we'll have 100 tearful mothers or single parents standing in a line at 6 a.m. In the morning making sure that little Johnny and little, you know, Romero, whoever, get into the county's program, and everybody would try to add more to it but we haven't funded more than 300. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: But the most tragic part, last year in that line, we've got like 150 people there, almost -- and he's right -- it's almost all mothers. About 75th in that line was a young guy about 18 and, boy, you should have seen him cry when he got to the front and he found out it wasn't a line for Rolling Stone tickets. He was crushed. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: But if you go to an outcome based budget like that, it may be that the outcome for each of the different parks is different. MR. DORRILL: Because you'll determine what the program outcome per park or per activity should be. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Golden Gate may be 500 spots. MR. DORRILL: Now, I'll tell you, having said that, in the real sophisticated governments, I've never seen an actual outcome based budget document. I only know what I've read in other professional literature. I think the City of Baltimore has become fairly adept at this, and metro Dade County has become fairly adept at this. Once the elected officials become comfortable with what the cost of the desired outcome is, they build in an incentive to the staff, is that if you can maintain the service level that we desire but lower the cost, we will share that money back in some form with the staff, that we'll either tie that into your merit bonus and we'll give you a portion of it and then we'll put the other 90 percent back in reserves, but you build a carrot and stick sort of relationship with the staff saying, "This is the service level that we want maintained for this program and the desired outcome. Now, if you can maintain the service outcome but lower the per-unit cost, we will share in the benefit of that with you." COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Just like in the real world. That's exactly how private enterprise works. MR. DORRILL: It would be very, very hard to do county-wide in your agency for the coming year, and my suggestion is if you want to know a little bit more about that, we'll prepare an item for you to evaluate, and my suggestion is let's take a division and let's take some -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Exactly. MR. DORRILL: -- departments and do it this year rather than come in here and try and have a tidal wave of new budget rules. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I don't think we can do it because this outcome based budgeting is zero based budgeting the first year. You have to go back to square one, and that's going to be a monumental task. MR. DORRILL: I'll tell you here today, I don't think we can do a good job of that agency-wide for this year. If you're interested at all, let us get some information on it, and then why don't y'all pick a division and let's key that division in. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Let's have a workshop. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I think what we can do-- We cannot go all the way to zero based, as you said, this year I don't think realistically. What we can do is probably spread what parks and rec did last year as far as -- MR. DORRILL: They're sort of out on the cutting edge in determining what their unit cost service levels are, and they're very program driven. They've got recs. They've got park maintenance, and they've got extracurricular. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I would think with them having done that one year in the past, they could probably take another step, and we might be able to get another department or two at the level they were at last year and kind of ease our way in. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think that's a strong suggestion because you're right. We're not going to be able to step in and do it this year, but I think we're all on the same page, that we want full accountability for the service level and the cost associated with it. So, you know, I -- if there's a way to do a couple of departments to iron out the wrinkles and set us up for doing the full scale the following year -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'd like to carry this even one step further so that we have full cooperation and compliance from the departments who do this and let's look at volunteers as opposed to delegating it because there are some departments that are going to be a lot more prone to it than others, and I'd like to try to -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: If nobody grabs that carrot, that's when the stick comes? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, if nobody grabs the carrot for volunteering, then we're going to have to delegate. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Military volunteer. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Military volunteer. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think we've got a couple of departments, even sections within departments, that are really prime for doing this, and we probably could get them to come forward and say, "Gee, this is a great way to get a merit increase next year, a merit bonus, and all I've done is -- do a good job." MR. DORRILL: Some departments are a little more in tune to this just given their very mission. Parks is a good one. EHS would be a good one. Road and bridges would be a good one. But I think if you really want it to be as successful as I think that you do, you need to have some built-in incentive to try and get the staff to lower the unit cost without affecting the service quality because it's easy to skimp and cheat just to lower cost to -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: To lower the -- MR. DORRILL: -- lower cost, but you don't want to do that at the expense of the service level. So we ought to try and have an incentive mechanism in here to make you work hard but you're going to share in some savings. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And that's the county manager's job as far as who does it and how it's done. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: There are actually two incentive levels that we can offer, and this is each year with the priority program budgeting that comes forward, divisions and departments are always coming forward and saying, "Geez, we want a new laser printer. We want a color copier. We want this. We want that," and all these things will help them do a better job. But when you say, "Ah, geez, we're in a budget crunch," the other half of the incentive is for them to have this list of equipment that will help them do a better job but we can't fund because we don't have the budget money, and some of the money that they save can go toward buying this equipment that they feel will help them do a better job which, in turn, the following year will help them cut cost even more. So it can lower and feed upon itself. Another side benefit of outcome budgeting is, in our strategic planning, we've all been hearing about this quality of life thing we can't identify. COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm sorry. Quality of what? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Quality of life we can't identify. We don't have any units to measure it. I can assure you that if we set the outcome at too low a level, we're going to hear about it. And certainly if we set it at too high a level, the budget is going to go up. So it will help us identify this quality of life that so far is like a water balloon. It squeezes every which way. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I have a simple definition for it. It's a general increasing of property values over the long term. That's when you know your quality of life is getting better. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah but -- MR. DORRILL: Kind of. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Kind of. MR. DORRILL: Remember the year he had to save money because state revenues were down? This was 1992, I think.'91 or '92. And one of the great ideas I came up with was that we would systematically cut street lights off. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, I remember this. MR. DORRILL: Remember the whipping I took for cutting the street lights off to save money? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I thought they'd lynch you. MR. DORRILL: Yeah. They want their street lights. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Speaking of bashing, the idea of outcome based budgeting and the incentive, if we as a board decide that by asking for volunteers we're going to get some of the more aggressive department heads within the county which I think is an excellent opportunity to recognize those people whose true interest is the taxpayer's dollar, and I think that's great. I think our ability to offer them an incentive is terrific but understand we're going to take a hit for it. Anytime that we begin trying to put merit increases into the government system that are not already there, I fully believe that there's going to be a minority, a very small vocal minority out there that is going to stand in direct opposition to it. And if we really believe in this, we're going to have to build a consensus on this board and the approach to it for the simple reason that there is going to be a vocal opposition. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I think there will, but I think there will be mixed messages out there. You'll get some support, but you will get some vocal opposition, but I think what Commissioner Matthews is suggesting is we will establish a percentage of whatever it is they're saving as the incentive so -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And some of that's reserves? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. The rest is going to be put away. So if we can save a million bucks and spend an extra 50 CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I have never -- I have never seen an outcome budget process yet where at -- at least a minimum of 50 percent of the saved money goes back into the government. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Oh, and I didn't misunderstand that. I understood that fully. I'm just saying anytime you start attaching merit increases or merit bonuses to performance in government, we're going to get a vocal minority that is really going to hit us hard on this. So I just want everyone to understand that so that we know so we don't get blind-sided. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: What might be helpful, Commissioner Matthews -- I know you've done some homework on this. There are -- This is not out of the ordinary to bribe a business, and if we can cite some specific examples of well-known businesses that are doing this, I think we can quiet some of that minority. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yes. Agreed. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We even have -- One of the departments in Tallahassee is currently doing this type of budget process. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's a bad -- it's a bad one. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: No. It was just started last year and it's been very successful. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I have two other budget ideas if we're done with that one. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Uh-huh. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: One, last year we took some hits for not having public input during the workshops in Hay or June or April, whenever that was. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And I wondered if this year when we do our little standard priority based thing, but prior to sending all that off, maybe we'll have two days or three days, whatever it is, but then have a day set aside specifically for public input on -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- what we've done. So if on Tuesday -- if on Wednesday we've done a list and put something that's discretionary and there's a large group of public that thinks, "I think that's essential," that would give them an opportunity that Thursday, maybe they come in -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yes. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- comment on that, and the board could have a final review before we sent staff off in a direction. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I agree. I think we have talented people in this community that spent a lot of time on the budget process that had some great suggestions, but by the time the public hearings occurred, it was too little too late. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The budget is done. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And we're under the gun to get it approved. COHHISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah. So I'm in full support of moving that up so we can increase our ability to act on the public's either support or cries of opposition, either one. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And my thought is to have a specific day for that purpose during that priority process because I think the way we do our staff coming up and doing their presentation and us prioritizing each one to stop after each of those for potential public input is not very productive, but I think we need to have that time because you're right. By the time we've had the input in the past -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Terrific idea. Terrific. MR. DORRILL: Your intention would be for me to build into your budget policy that it -- We have what's called a budget wrap-up. We may have some things -- If a commissioner says, "Well, gee, I need to think about this a little more. Put that on the wrap-up agenda," in advance of the wrap-up agenda, that you would then receive public testimony on any or all of the program designations. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Are you talking about a wrap-up, though, following the priority program or the June budget hearings? I think I'm hearing Commissioner Constantine say that we need to do this in March. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: In the priority. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Priority. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. MR. DORRILL: It is better to let them tell you what they want or what this little special interest wants as part of the program prioritization because then we're just dealing with line item numbers for programs that you said we're going to fund. For example, if I come in and I say, "I'm not recommending this .... and this happens repeatedly -- and I'll say "NR." The county manager is not recommending it. The chairman says, "Why aren't you recommending it this year?" Some little group out there that's affected by that, they want to petition you to have discretionary or essential. And if you don't make the determination then and it's not recommended, it doesn't get into the line item budget, and it's too late. So I think March is the ideal time to give them the opportunity to do it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. I like that idea. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Two more, Commissioner. I know I set out with two. Another one popped in my mind. One is Commissioner Matthews has been working on where and how we can privatize some of the operations we're doing, and I mentioned this once earlier, but I'd like to make this in whatever manner we need to do it but get a policy where when we bid these out, we can have our staff be one, but I think we should get into a regular process of -- and I don't know. Maybe we're not going to be able to do that in this budget hearing but I'd love to try on some items that have our staff bidding against others so we can -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Like the landfill -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: -- issue? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah. Yeah. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I think staff actually did bid against the outside firms. MR. DORRILL: We're batting 500 on that. We beat Ryder Truck Systems on our fleet management bid probably years ago, but we lost miserably to waste management on the landfill privatization. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: An upcoming one may be operation of utilities which is increasingly becoming a strong privatization area for all county and city governments. If someone comes in and handled the personnel and the operation end of it and they assimilate as much of the staff as they can into that operation, I think that's something that's going to be coming before us in the very near future, I would guess, and something that I would like to see a bidding process on. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: As a matter of fact, is this PSG COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yes. MR. DORRILL: And their agent. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Pardon. MR. DORRILL: Their agent has asked to appear. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: As their agent? MR. DORRILL: Yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: It's a company that operates water treatment plant. MR. DORRILL: Some former political -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, that one. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Some guy that aspires to higher political office. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I have a question on that PSG then. If we're going to be entertaining a public concept of where it is we're going -- and, again, this is a consultant bringing a workshop to us -- do we -- are they planning to come to us on a public petition where we only give them ten minutes? MR. DORRILL: Yeah. And let me -- I hate to always give advice, but I will give you a little bit here so that you don't hurt the feelings and insult the people who are on your privatization advisory board. If people start getting the idea that they can in-run the advisory board and come straight to the commission with a pitch, and this is for all practical purposes a pitch to privatize utilities, I think you should say, "Thank you very much. We've got a committee that is probably 75 percent through their process, and we would like for you to present your proposal to them," and sometime, you know, about MAy the task force is going to come and say these are the areas that we need to consider privatizing for fiscal year '95,'96. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: The only other one was the -- what we've done on priority based -- has anybody else had their meeting with the budget people? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: No. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: No. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: What we've done for the benefit of our two most recent additions -- COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Bettye and John? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. During priority budgeting, what we do is put those things that are mandated, put an "M" beside; those things that are essential, they're not mandated but absolute -- COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Probably an "E." COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- put an "E". Discretionary, those items like maybe parks and rec, those things that are -- we put a "D." COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Under manager's salary. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. That's where we get into the quality of life things we want to have but that's our discretion. If we were suddenly Orange County, those would probably be the first to go. And then we have -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Still short. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And then we have "not recommended" which we put "NR." But those are things that never appear before us again. One of the -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, there's another category, and that's the "NR" with the red flag. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. What I was -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: "NRRF"? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: With a red flag. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: What I was concerned about is last year -- two years ago when we did this for the first time, there was a growing fear during the process that the discretionary matter was going to be cut so we had little debates over whether it was really discretionary or essential. Last year we ended up having a lot of D/E's. There's been a suggestion this year that we put another category in, quality '- MS. GILVRA: Of life. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: QL. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- quality of something, essential or something, and I'd like to keep it and kind of force us to say, yes, it's essential or, no, it's discretionary. Discretionary doesn't mean we're going to cut it. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: How about "H" for maybe? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: But it just seems to me that's what we're here for, is to make those calls, whether, gosh, is the swim program essential or is it discretionary. And, again, it doesn't mean we're not going to fund it, but I hate to add another category. It seems like kind of a waving. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah. MR. DORRILL: I agree. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yes. I agree with that. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I say we should have a"G" for gutless. MS. FULLER: Or changing the "D" to desirable. MR. DORRILL: There is one other one that exists on the staff level, and it's a secret but I'll tell you. It's called in for now. In for now means that, okay, you can have it until I meet with Smykowski and he gives me the bad news on the revenue side because it's great to play this program game, yeah, we want to do that but it's -- then he tells me what the revenues are, and then say, okay, I need two million bucks. In for now means you had it but only for the briefest moment because I took it away. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: My concern on that program priority method that we've been using is that I don't know and we never see all the stuff that's in "H", and that's the big bulk of these programs, and I know that a lot of it is mandated, but there's also, you know, a lot of departments. It's what the department itself feels they have to have to operate. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: One of -- Sorry to interrupt. One of the things the -- I met with Jean Gansel and Hike Smykowski, and one of the things they brought up on their own was exactly that, was that there apparently have been complaints from all three of us on that in the past that we're assuming, can't have more detail, and they're recommending that perhaps mandated should have more details so that it will have kind of a breakdown, and then if we see something, we'll question it, and we can yank that out and say wait a minute. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Is that mandated by law? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: No. Not under this process. A lot of it is what the department itself feels like they need to operate. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's essential. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, yes, but they put it under __ COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Doesn't mandate mean by law, and essential means you need it to turn off electricity? I mean -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: We have our own definitions. The dictionary has theirs and we have ours. MR. DORRILL: My suggestion on that is to give the authority to the budget staff to make that call because the budget staff is really an extension of you, you know, through my executive office as opposed to every department director who's got his own pet deal going and let's make mandatory -- let's tighten the screws down on mandatory and let the budget office make the call as to Martha Skinner's Medicaid funding for this county is set by title, whatever, the Older Americans Act by Congress. She has absolutely no discretion at all. There's a formula, and she plugs that number in. But to give the budget office the authority to make the call as to whether it's mandatory or whether it is essential. COHHISSIONER NORRIS: Well, I would certainly appreciate that because I -- and I'm not going to call any names, name any names here, but some of these departments have like all of their money in the "H" and the little peanuts for us to us piddle with and to rank as essential or discretionary and that's just -- you know, we are left with almost no budgetary control with certain departments, and I don't think that's what we're wanting to do. MR. DORRILL: We've got some pretty bad dogs in the budget office. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: It's all those years of frustration built up in the accounting classes. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I think you'll be encouraged by your meeting with them, John. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: All right. The next item is -- We ' re at "G." COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. These are mine so I'm going to be real quick. You know, I linger -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Vacations, more of them. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. The question on this simply is, I understand -- is it basically three weeks a year or four __ CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Four. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: -- weeks a year? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Four weeks a year. One of those is the Tuesday between Christmas and New Years. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. So that's the one -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So there's only three that we're left with. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: We have three remaining. For planning purposes for the board, when does this board make a decision traditionally on what those three weeks will be? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Usually the last two years, we've done that in the next couple of weeks as part of the budget process in an effort to let them set what they need to set for their meetings. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. MR. DORRILL: We will bring you a proposed budget and fiscal policy and a suggested calendar, and Mike will do that near the end of January? Tim, do you recall? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. They're going to try to bring that back within two or three weeks. I know Commissioner Matthews sets hers ahead of time and I set mine ahead of time. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. I set my vacation schedule early. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah. That's what I'm trying to do, and I just want to know how the process goes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: In fact, we're mailing our U.S. Open ticket application off tomorrow. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Tim, just in reference to your first thing, a little tiny bit of history -- and Neil may be able to do this better than me, but the board used to take a month off and they would -- what was it? The month of July they usually took the full month off, and then as the demands became more and as the county grew, disappearing for that long isn't really feasible now. So for the last two years we've taken the first weeks in July and a week in August. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And a week in December. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. Christmas. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We have a little quirk in the July schedule this year, and that is that the fourth of July is a Tuesday so -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But that shouldn't count against the fourth. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, I guess that's my question. Are we going to take advantage of the holiday on a Tuesday and take two additional Tuesdays? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's an act of God I think. That's an act of God. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: If you're suggesting that, I will agree with that. I think that's a great idea. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah. He too. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I might finally get that trip out to the west then because that's a three-week trip. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Go. Go west. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And then we take our week at the end of August. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We could either take the last week of June or -- and the Tuesday after the fourth. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I like that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Or we could take the fourth. It's going to depend on what the budget office needs. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: By ordinance, can we put the fourth of July always on a Tuesday? No? Okay. I thought I'd just check. Okay. You've answered my question so -- and I like that idea also. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So we can talk about taking those, the last Tuesday in June. The first Tuesday in July is a holiday, and the second Tuesday we could take off which will give us three weeks off this year. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Also, it would not include the -- at the end of August. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. That would be our fourth. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: So we'd just take advantage of the holiday. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Take advantage of the holiday. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Okay. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Will that fit with the budget schedule, Mr. Dotrill? MR. DORRILL: I will check. When we propose the calendar to you, it will probably be either the 17th or the 24th. I don't know what Hike's thinking about. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: But I know we have to get the line item budget or whatever it is we do in June. MR. DORRILL: Right. I don't know whether it's the second week in July or the first week in August. That's when he needs to crunch some millage rates and all that, and he needs a week in there to be able to crunch numbers. As I understand it, last week in June, two weeks -- first two weeks in July and a week to be determined in August. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. Normally that's the last Tuesday. MR. DORRILL: In August. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: In August. MR. DORRILL: I'll give you those preferences and see if we can work with that. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. Next item on "H", it's something we briefly discussed at the board, and I'm going to -- the first question is basically should we appoint liaisons to constitutional officers. I'm not looking to dilute the responsibilities or powers of the chairperson. What I'm simply looking at is your plate over the next year is going to be extremely full. We have a number of constitutional officers. I don't know that we -- there's some that we may want to enjoy a better relationship with and others that are operating just fine. I don't think Mary Morgan really needs anything from us or will need anything from us. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: She lets us know quickly. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah. But there are things I propose. The school board is one. My question is, is there any interest in appointing a member of the board to be liaison with -- let's say Commissioner Hac'Kie would be the liaison with the clerk of courts, and Commissioner Norris would be the liaison with the tax collector. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I wonder if that may cause more communication confusion. The constitutional officers meet -- they say monthly, although about every other month at least they decide not to have a meeting, but they meet monthly as a group anyway. I think each of us meets with Dwight anyway. But I think either the chair, or if you're too busy, I'm sure someone will do it, but I think the chair has traditionally gone to that constitutional officer meeting, and I think Neil has attended a couple of those as well. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: The exception being the school board. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm speaking of the constitutional officers, but I think someone with the school board or, like, if you're going to work with the city council -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Uh-huh. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I would like to have this board formally have a liaison with the school board, a liaison with the city council whom I assume would be the representative from that district. I'd also like to see a liaison with the Big Cypress Basin Board because they do a lot of study work that will eventually affect the decisions we make and like we -- I -- we just discovered two weeks ago, or at least I did, about this lower west coast study that the basin board is currently doing that will be ready in 18 months. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Again, and the reason I put it on the table is I knew there was some interest on the board, and I wanted to see how deep or how expansive you wanted to go, and I think it's important for us to send the message to all other elected officials that we are not interested in an adversarial relationship but a compatible one, a complimentary one, and I think this is a real strong first step to take doing that. If there's a general consensus that those three entities would be served better with a liaison, then either I will be happy or if the chairperson would be happy to bring a resolution forward to do that. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'll be happy to be a liaison with the mayor of Pelican Bay. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Why don't we bring -- why don't we direct our -- Mr. Cuyler to bring forward three resolutions creating a liaison with the school board, the City of Naples, and the Big Cypress Basin Board. We've got two volunteers for two of them. We need a volunteer for the third one, and we don't know who that's going to be. We can certainly think about that. The meeting with the constitutional officers, I have in the past periodically met with them anyway. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Right. As do I at this point. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. So, I mean, I would look to continue meeting with them. We met yesterday morning, and I've asked Mr. Dotrill to attend all of those meetings also because I don't feel I need to run him down after the meeting to tell him what we discussed and what he needs to do. He can take his own notes and know what he needs to do. So those meetings are going to take place every month or six weeks. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. We'll leave those at the responsibility of the chairman and -- Good. The next one I had was regarding liaisons to advisory committees, and the reason this came on is twofold; one, by serving on the productivity committee there are many issues in which we sought some form of direction or feel and would have to request the audience, an audience with the county commission in order to get that, or we'd have to go meet with the commissioners individually and then put all five together and see what we came up with. Bettye has broached that with the privatization committee by being involved. Are you a non-voting member of that committee? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'm a non-voting -- a non-voting chairman of it. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. I feel there are committees such as the productivity committee who handle a load that would be appropriate for that level of involvement from the commission. That's my personal feeling, and what I'll do is dovetail into "I" on that same element. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: My favorite. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: In the past, everyone comes up -- this board will come up with a terrific idea that there are these committees that have not met but once in two years, have not produced a report in 24 months. You know, gee, why don't we go ahead and just take -- you know, delete that ordinance, move that committee, because it's not really doing anything anyway. Then you get a flood of people all of a sudden when you go to do it saying, "Wait a second." You know, I really think we could do something here if the downsizing doesn't occur. Somebody needs to take charge and, you know, I guess get the gumption to make the hard decision that we do have some advisory committees that are still functioning, that are still important, that will continue to be important, and we do have some that when I called didn't know who their chairman was because they hadn't met in almost a year. We need to differentiate and streamline, and I'm not sure how to do that. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Could I make a suggestion there? We tried this two years ago and -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I gave my list to Mr. Dotrill. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, the format which we tried two years ago was a gross miserable failure and I think for good reason. We would bring two or three of the boards -- the committees or boards to us on a Tuesday and, of course, the chairman or the numbers of that committee would come each week and say, "Gosh, we worked hard at this and we'd like to continue," or, "Boy, we've had to miss a few meetings but .... It's hard, very hard when you have one group and one committee standing there in front of you and saying, "No. You folks are not important," and wax them off. I think if we're going to approach this -- and I think you may be right that we should -- but we need to look at the whole pie, and this is what I had hoped we were going to do two years ago. But look at the whole pie; see every single committee; get an idea of what their responsibility is all at the same time -- COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Sue does that. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- get an idea of how many times they've met in the last year or two years and look at that all at the same time; get a look at, as you said, how many reports they've issued and so on. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Sounds like a workshop. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And then kind of prioritize those. You know, you've got obviously the planning commission or productivity committee, some of those that are going to be at the top of the priority list. But as you get down and have it in perspective of 40 different boards, you may see that the bottom ten are not necessary. We may see that they all are, but we may see that -- but it's hard when they come one at a time or two at a time -- COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Yes. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- To put that in perspective. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I agree. We need to take a comprehensive look at that, and the other part of that is maybe in the ordinances used to form these committees there needs to be a renewable clause, if you will, that says the function of this committee should be reviewed every two years so that it naturally comes back before the board without it being a huge deal, that we look at it every couple of years to say is this committee continuing to perform the function it was intended to perform. If not, you know, then -- COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Why I chuckle is because we were talking about the consent agenda at the beginning of the meeting and putting more things on there. There is a mechanism -- is it every fourth year? MR. CUYLER: Every four years. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- That -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- we review. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- we review it except it usually appears on the consent agenda or it is a very quick item of, okay, these eight committees are all due this year and we -- COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. So that currently -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: So we need to tweak what exists. But you're right. What we have right now doesn't work. MR. DORRILL: My second suggestion of the day would be to maybe you consider putting some of them into ad hoc status, the point being -- and I will pick them as an example. The homeless advisory board has been in existence for about three years. They meet every month. They talk. Certain people get their feelings hurt. The staff feels compelled to prepare minutes. They approve the minutes of the last meeting. They discuss old business, if there's any new business, and all go away until the next meeting. I don't believe they have ever produced a single proposal or any honest type work. That's a matter of opinion. But the issue is, there are other committees that if they were in an ad hoc status where the staff didn't have to meet with them every month, there's a lot of busy work going on just to give and feed, you know, stuff into these advisory boards where, you know, maybe they don't have to meet every month. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I agree in part, but the homeless committee has, however, issued two formal reports. Whether I agree with the content or not, they have put forth two formal reports. They worked hard. As a matter of fact, the last one which included no public funding we endorsed I think 5-0 because it did not include public funding, but it laid out a particular plan. So I agree in part, but I disagree with the suggestion homeless -- COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah. I didn't want this to degrade into a discussion of individual committees. You know, I think we need to -- Is this something that we need to decide one person on this board is going to get that list from Sue, is going to look at it, is going to summarize it for the balance of the board and present it at one time? COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I bet Sue could put together the description of each of them, how many times they've met, and all that stuff. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Distribute it? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Distribute it. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: And we discuss it as a board discussion item or possibly a workshop since we're going to have so many of these? COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'll tell you one other item I'd like discussed -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: It sounds like a 90-minute workshop. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: One other item I'd like discussed as part of that is the assignment of attorneys because he spends about $100,000 a year out of his budget on them working with the different committees or advisory. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: You're kidding. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Can we get an approximate staff cost assigned to -- What are we -- How much taxpayer dollars are we spending in maintenance? MR. CUYLER: We're working on that. Although to tell you the truth, if you cut out the bottom five or six of your advisory committees on the list, we don't attend -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: You're the one that brought that to my attention. It just seems we may be able to trim a little bit. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. Well, I guess then we'll ask -- I'll ask Bettye to direct Sue to put that information together for distribution, and then we'll place it on one of our up and coming workshops. And for workshop agendas, the top two and the bottom paragraph of this needs to be deleted from the agendas for workshops. MR. DORRILL: I made that note. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. And I think when we talk about the -- in the workshop we talk about the committees, we can also talk about whether or not we feel some are appropriate to have board presence at the meetings and I'll -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Some probably are. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah. And we'll deal with that at that time, but thank you for covering my topics. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'd like to back up to the liaison resolutions, Mr. Cuyler -- MR. CUYLER: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- and ask this board if they feel it's appropriate for the liaisons for these different areas to make a five-minute report to the BCC on a Tuesday probably every two months. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Oh, fully. I would anticipate that that would be a necessary element of the liaison; otherwise -- the idea is to communicate with the board and keep an open line. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Exactly. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: So, yes, I would agree with that fully. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Mr. Cuyler, will you put that in the resolution? MR. CUYLER: Yes. MR. DORRILL: And -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Next item -- Neil, did you have something? MR. DORRILL: I was just going to say I need to leave at 11:30 to go to a doctor's appointment and we can skip -- we've covered, in part, most of the things that I put there. If you don't mind, let's look at just the last two, and my only question is, am I supposed to be doing anything with these as they come up, that some of y'all will mention them to me from time to time either pursue this or, you know, especially on the phone survey thing. Is this something y'all want done this year? If so, do you want to participate -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I think "N" in this case stands for no. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Hey, wait a minute. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: It is followed by "O." COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I think it's a workshop item. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: There is -- Well, that's what we need to know. There is conversation out on the street, and I've made my opinion on it known, but I'm one of five. So perhaps we do need to discuss whether we want to even entertain the notion of supporting even a citizen group to investigate the five- versus seven-member commission. COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I know there's one commissioner that has expressed support. I don't support the idea. I don't support investigating the idea. I can't think of anybody that thinks more government is going to be better government, and so my vote is no, not to do anything. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: The folks in my district are not coming up to me asking for another representative. So, no, I don't support it at all. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I think it's something that should be community-driven. I mean, it's something that I support but if the community -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Oh, I agree, but my community -- the community I represent is not asking for it. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: What I'm saying, Tim, is people in my district are asking for it but -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Yours would be the district. Yours is the only district that will be asking for it, and I'll go into it in full detail if you'd like. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I understand why there -- but the whole point is, it's going to -- it has to get past the five of us. It's going to get past one of us at this point. So people are going to have to work on you some other way, going to have to come to you and work on you. It isn't something that the board ought to be talking about at this point. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, it was my constituents that put single-member districts in in a big way. Marco Island was responsible for passing single-member districts, and I'm certainly not supportive of going back to a partial county-wide system. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: And, besides, we all get along so well now. Would we want to add two more unknowns? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Enough said on item"N." MR. DORRILL: What about the phone survey? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I haven't seen last year's. I don't know anything about it, but I guess I'd want to take a look at it and find out how much it costs us in staff time to do it before I could tell you whether I think it's a good idea or not. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: What is it that you want to do? MR. DORRILL: Thirty-second history and then you give me some direction. For at least seven years -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: It's been seven years. MR. DORRILL: -- the commission has contracted with the Florida Institute of Government through the Edison Community College to do an unbiased telephone survey statistically validated of registered voters in the county. They historically have retained Frasier Hohlke to prepare the questions. There has been some discussion. The paper has said, you know, is the staff manipulating, are we wordsmithing the questions. The answer is no. And that's why we contracted with the Institute of Government. We give them some target areas or some conceptual areas that we are interested in getting public opinion on. Frasier Hohlke writes the questions. They do the statistical information. The League of Women Voters, a sort of objective third party, make the actual phone calls and record the responses. We have got about seven years of history in terms of eliciting opinions. It's budgeted annually. I want to say it's less than $50,000. Normally $25,000 is the total cost of the county. Last year, the year before that, the commission didn't seem terribly interested in terms of results, and if for no other reason, it may becoming old hat. I just received a proposal this week, but before I signed the purchase requisition, I wanted to know, do y'all want to do it; and, if so, do you want to participate in reviewing the question areas before we sign an agreement to the Institute of Government? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: To the contrary of your comment, I find it very helpful. I don't know if I expressed an interest to you about it, but I find it very helpful to leave -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I find it helpful. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I mean, it helps on a number of different things. The survey shows customer satisfaction on different things we do, whether that's solid waste, 91 percent approved, or it shows what areas we need to improve on. Another section shows what topics they think we need to be addressing right now, what we're not, what are the hot buttons for them. The one thing I didn't like this past year is some new questions were put in. Some old questions were dropped, and the commission was never addressed. Nobody asked us. I remember you were on Loveday and Lytle one week, and I was on Loveday and Lytle the next week and they asked us -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Neither one of us knew why they were added or dropped. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And the commission had no input as to anything that was added or dropped on the questionnaire. I think we need to if we're going to do it. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: I would defer to those of you that have used the survey and had it before to determine its effectiveness and, you know, maybe next year I might have an opinion on it. But at this point, if you folks feel that it's worthwhile, very worthwhile expenditure, I'll go with that. MR. DORRILL: Again, this would be my last suggestion of the day. I promise. I would like to extend that same courtesy to the constitutional officers because they have inquired through my offices, gee, why can't we come up with a question about do you like the effectiveness of satellite offices throughout the county whether they're tax collector or sheriff satellites. That's just an example. I think if you want to broaden participation, you ought to allow or consider allowing constitutional officers to propose a questionnaire. I'm cautioning you against actually trying to write or frame the question because the newspaper is going to beat you to death, and the Institute of Government is going to say that you're jeopardizing the integrity of the survey if you participate in forming the questions. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: But doesn't Frasier, Mohlke form the questions? MR. DORRILL: They always have. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I mean, if -- MR. DORRILL: The only one that I dropped last year was, "Do you know the name of your elected official," because it could become very insulting. The year before nobody knew. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Actually, the finding was we were higher than any other -- I think our state rep had 12 percent or something and our state senator had lower than that. So 40 and 35 percent, we were overwhelming. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I think it's a good idea to let the constitutional officers propose an area and let somebody else frame the question, and I think also we should allow them to participate in the funding of the survey. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: What a nice idea. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Excellent idea. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Whoo. He's good. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Two points for Norris. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. I think that concludes -- We did get through the entire -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think we're on to item number three now. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Are there spare copies of that memo? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I gave them all to Mr. Cuyler for the record. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Before we close this meeting, I wanted to pass out to each of us this program priority budgeting coming up and the fact that we had such an uprising, you might say, uproar over the contract agencies last year. What I did was to take those eight or ten or whatever they are -- I got the information from Mr. Olliff, and I did a spreadsheet on what each of those services do, where -- who their clients are. And to me the most important is where the clients come from, whether the courts allocate the clients or whether the sheriff takes those clients to the facility and drops them off and what have you, like that. And I'd like to share that with each of you so that when the program priority budgeting comes up, I think it's evident from this worksheet that there are some of these agencies that are performing a public service. There are some that are not. But that's my opinion. But, anyway, these are the facts as developed from the applications that were submitted last year. So if you want to pass those on down and take a look at them. I found it pretty enlightening as to what it showed. Adjourned. Let's go. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Good work everyone. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We're finished. There being no further business for the Good of the County, the workshop was adjourned by Order of the Chair at 11:32 a.m. These minutes approved by the Board on as presented or as corrected TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF DONOVAN COURT REPORTING BY: Christine E. Whitfield, RPR