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BCC Minutes 03/16/1995 B (Budget) BUDGET MEETING OF MARCH 16, 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 9:07 a.m. In SPECIAL SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following ALSO PRESENT: members present: CHAIRPERSON: VICE-CHAIRMAN: Bettye J. Hatthews John C. Norris Timothy Constantine Pam Hac'Kie Timothy Hancock Neil Dotrill, County Hanager Hichael Smkowski, Acting Budget Director CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Let's call to order the budget workshop meeting for March 16, 1995. MR. DORRILL: Good morning. I have a -- a one-minute confession. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Uh-oh. MR. SHYKOWSKI: True confessions. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: A confession, bring the lights up. MR. DORRILL: I read John Lunsford's column this morning. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah, I did too. MR. DORRILL: And John -- John -- I love John to death. And John told me one time that his best column is only 80 percent accurate. I swear I didn't find anything accurate in his column this morning. And I just wanted to make sure I'm on the right wave length here. John claims we haven't submitted any performance or outcome measures for any of the budgets. We sat here yesterday afternoon and pistol whipped Bill Lorenz for three hours over the performance and outcomes measures and you all's dissatisfaction with the cost associated with those. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Uh-huh. MR. DORRILL: And John seems to be under the delusionment that -- that we were directed to produce zero based budgets. And I don't recall us ever being directed to produce zero based budgets. And John also said that we had been directed or we're forcing the parks and the library budgets to cut 10 percent off their budgets. And I don't remember us directing the parks or library departments to cut 10 percent off their budgets. They were asked a hypothetical question as -- as though if they could. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Where would they do it. MR. DORRILL: And -- and I think the response was we'd begin to focus on -- on those programs. (Commissioner Hancock entered the proceedings.) MR. DORRILL: But I just -- my -- are we all headed down the right path here together because -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: As far as I know. I had the same -- same perception of the column. MR. DORRILL: John either ate some bad pizza before he went to bad last night or -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Are we discussing what I read this morning that we did that I didn't remember we did? MR. SHYKOWSKI: Exactly that, yes. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think one thing, too, that -- I think one other thing, too, that's happening right -- right now is -- is the concept that what -- what we're doing right now is program budgeting. And we're just going through and saying which programs we think need to be continued and which ones don't. And so we're not seeing a lot of changes because the programs we have are generally pretty good. In June we'll be looking at the dollars associated to the programs. MR. DORRILL: You have been giving me a sneak preview of some programs whose performance or outcome measures you were not satisfied with. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That's exactly right, but that doesn't mean the program is a bad program. MR. DORRILL: Right. But the point you were making to me was when you see the financial budgets, you wanted to see some different cost aspects for the performance measures that you were looking at -- in particularly at yesterday afternoon. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That's what I thought we were talking about too. MR. SHYKOWSKI: You gave us direction and specific programs to reduce cost or reduce FTEs. Obviously pollution control comes to mind. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: But -- but not -- not cut the program itself out. MR. SHYKOWSKI: That is correct. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Just find a better way to do the same thing. MR. SHYKOWSKI: For instance, the one to scale back from 180,000 to 150 or try to keep within the confines of what the state is reimbursing us for as the total cost for the program. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: If -- if I am a department manager and the board seriously questioned one element of my budget, I'm going to come back with exactly outcome budget measures when I bring that back. I'm going to build it from zero up. I'm going to remove the questions in the commission's mind, or I'm going to lose part of my budget. MR. DORRILL: That was very clear to me yesterday afternoon. MR. SHYKOWSKI: I think that was clear to the department directors. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: was clear. And I was. MR. DORRILL: I'm okay. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: we're -- I'm guess I'm just asking if I I'm okay, and you're okay. I'm okay, and you're okay, and COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Where is Barney this morning? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We know what we're doing. MR. DORRILL: And when Sid Hellenger (phonetic) calls my office -- she probably called ten minutes ago -- to pistol whip me over -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Over the 10 percent. MR. DORRILL: -- over the 10 percent forced cuts in John Lunsford's budget, I can tell her that's not true. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Anybody object if I turn the spotlights down just a little bit? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think they got turned up when Mr. Dotrill said he was going to make a confession. MR. DORRILL: Fine. FEMALE VOICE: Neil, there will be a letter to the editor about his article because I've sat here and listened. That's not fair. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Go get them, Fay. MR. DORRILL: Steve even agreed with me this morning. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Funny the people in the room all have the same recollection. MR. DORRILL: It's the other hundred and eighty-seven thousand that read Lunsford's column this morning that I'm worried about. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: If John's not sitting here, how does he know what we're doing? MR. SHYKOWSKI: He talks to Steve. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Because he -- he talks to you? MR. HART: No, he didn't talk to me. MR. SMYKOWSKI: No, I'm teasing. I do not know. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Oh, well. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We're making life hell on the court reporter so -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. Let's get started with the -- it's transportation services. Obviously Mr. Archibald is sitting in front of us. How are you doing, Mr. Archibald? MR. ARCHIBALD: Good morning. Fine. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Do you want to tell us about -- first on your organization chart, a question we've been asking all is are there any vacancies, and how long have they been vacant? MR. LORENZ: I think if you go to Exhibit C, that gives you an overview of the programs within transportation really. And with the exception of some equipment positions and operating positions in road and bridge, our skeleton crew is in tact. We're actually making use of the RECAP program as far as addressing some of the activity man hour needs. But basically that chart gives you a very quick overview. And for each of those areas, we have it broken down into activity, man hours, and unit cost relative to either miles or acres or some qualifiable item. MR. DORRILL: He does have approximately three slots that are maintenance workers at road and bridge that are anywhere from six months old. There is one that's a year old, but the maintenance worker 1 position is perhaps the lowest paid county position with an unbelievably high rate of turnover. I'm not particularly alarmed about problems in filling all maintenance worker 1 positions. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So I don't -- I don't see anything in here, though, that necessarily says what is vacant. It only gives us the positions. MR. DORRILL: Yeah, I'm looking at the vacant position report that we passed out on Monday. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think most of us have since misplaced it. MR. DORRILL: Okay. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I've got it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: You've got one? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Page 10-A you can identify which district -- MR. ARCHIBALD: I can give a very quick overview -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: If you would. MR. ARCHIBALD: -- of the personnel, the number of people, and currently whether those positions are filled or not. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: If you would. MR. ARCHIBALD: Within transportation administration, you've got six positions. They're all currently filled, and they're split between engineers and secretaries. In the area of landscape maintenance, we have one person handling that. That one position is filled. In the area of traffic operations we've got 14 people. Those positions are all filled. Again, most of these are operating positions. And in road and bridge we have 104 positions, and I believe that -- I don't have your report, but I believe that somewhere between three and four are vacant. And those, again, are operating positions, either equipment operators or maintenance workers. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I have eight vacancies in road and bridge. I have road and bridge district supervisor, crew leader, two maintenance worker is, an equipment operator 1, equipment operator 2, another maintenance worker 1, equipment operator 1, and maintenance worker -- I'm sorry. That's just seven. No, I read it correctly. It's eight. MR. ARCHIBALD: I don't think that's correct -- COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Up to date? MR. ARCHIBALD: -- for the simple reason that the district supervisor position which is a key position is being filled by a RECAP employee, and that's working out real well. The equipment positions are being filled by the transfer people from the solid waste department. And the real issue that Neil brought up, in Immokalee we have typically maintenance worker slots that stay open for some period of time. I think what occurs is that if you've got two slots that are vacant and you fill one, the one you didn't fill is being recorded as remaining open. So, again, keep in mind that in certain areas of the county it's difficult to fill those positions. But I think with the exception of equipment operator or maintenance worker, I think that there is one recent crew foreman position open. So recognize that those are operating positions. They change weekly. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: George, could you help us while we're going through this different little departments here, help us with the major funding source for each department? MR. ARCHIBALD: We can zero in on, again, Exhibit C. That gives us kind of an overview. And starting at the top, we have road operations. And road operations involves 104 people that are primarily operations people involved in all of the maintenance activities. And those activities are quantified in terms of man hours for easy comparison to unit costs and also to the private sector. The funding for that is primarily gasoline tax. And in the last few years, what we've been doing is taking our road MSTDs which are ad valorem taxes, and we've been gradually putting some of the material cost from the road budget which is fund 101 which is gasoline tax and putting those costs into the MSTDs which are ad valorem costs. So over the last three years, you'll see a general trend of the ad valorem MSTDs increasing and the road and bridge operation decreasing because we long recognize that need of transferring gasoline tax from operations to capital, the subsequent shortfall that that would create, and the need to be able to better utilize the MSTDs because we can quantify the materials we use by district. And where those districts are benefiting from the use of those materials, they, in fact, should pay the appropriate amount. So there's a allocation underway. I would expect it would continue to occur in the upcoming year that would allocate the materials we use by district to that particular district in terms of an ad valorem tax. Traffic operations below road operations is exactly the same. They're all out of the same fund. Right now traffic operations is more or less a county-wide function. Most of their activities involve programs and operations and maintenance that serve most everybody in the county because most of the maintenance items such as traffic signals are on the network of roadways we all use. Again, that's county-wide. That's funded from fund 101 which is, again, gasoline tax. The same thing holds true when it comes to the person we have that provides development review and liaison services between development services, between OCPH, and some of our operating activities. That's being funded out of fund 101, again, gasoline tax. The next item, street lighting operations, that's primarily funded out of HSTDs which are ad valorem driven. Again, as you all recognize, we consolidated those last year and then made the decision to break Marco out. So in the upcoming year we'll have basically a county-wide street lighting district and then a Marco Island street lighting district, again, ad valorem tax. The next item is median landscaping. That's currently also municipal service taxing district driven by ad valorem tax. But I think we're recognizing that as we do more and more landscape work on the keynote roadways out there that there's a need to fund the landscaping effort because that cost is growing both in terms of capital costs and in terms of operating costs. We need to fund that on a more broad-based district. And what your staff has previously submitted and is still working toward is a urban area taxing district that would encompass primarily the area within Collier's urban district, roughly one mile to the east of 951. That district is what we're looking at funding a county-wide tax for landscape improvements on those keynote roadways only. Some of the HSTDs will benefit from that, and that's one of the key result areas your staff has, and I believe that's scheduled to be presented to the board the mid-year, not only the impacts, the millage that may result. And I believe you'll be pleasantly surprised the millage will be relatively low. MR. DORRILL: That's -- this is a -- sort of a change for us this year. We're going to suggest that in the interim until we can have the board consider a new urban area beautification district and then we'd have a separate rural area district in Immokalee, we're going to propose since the cost to maintain the medians are and will be increasing that the applicable road resurfacing and maintenance district, that that piece of median beautification is then responsible for the cost of that. That's trying to build some equity in there because we've otherwise got preexisting districts in Golden Gate and on Marco who are paying costs to maintain their arterial road median beautification. So this is going to be a policy change for you when you see your line item budgets. We're trying to bring a little more equity into which part of town is paying to maintain the median from their arterial funds. MR. ARCHIBALD: Going on very quickly in summary form, opposite each item there in a parentheses represents the number of personnel that are currently assigned to that. For median landscape operations, you're talking about one employee in regards to all the HSTDs. The item below that, capital projects coordination -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I'm sorry, George. I'm going to interrupt you for just a second. When you have such as street lighting operation -- you have a zero inside the box and a three outside the box. What do those two numbers indicate? MR. ARCHIBALD: Okay. The number inside the box represents the number of people that are involved with that activity. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Uh-huh. MR. ARCHIBALD: The number outside the box reference the notes below. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. Thank you. When I saw the zero, I thought that's what it meant, but I didn't see it in the keys below, so thank you. MR. ARCHIBALD: As you go down, you'll have capital projects coordination, support services, GAC program. That's one I probably should mention. The GAC program historically has been funded through a GAC trust. And that trust is being spent down. This year we'll probably end up spending it down to somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to $75,000. And since that's activity primarily in the Golden Gate Estates, what we plan on doing again is to use the HSTD for that particular area that again supplies the materials, use the HSTD to supplement the GAC program. And I'll give you an example of what was accomplished this year. The board had approved two roadways in the estates to be the base constructed and then upgraded from a lime rock road status to a paved road status. Instead of contracting that out through a prolonged bidding process, your road and bridge department went out there, built the base using the lime rock account in the HSTD. Then they used the GAC account to do the priming and paving of the roadway. So we're trying to extend the use of that GAC trust account so that we can cover as many miles of roadway as possible recognizing that the number of miles of roadway to be upgraded from lime rock to paved in the Golden Gate Estates represents about a 20-year program, although we've done more than 120 already, 120 miles. So what I foresee here is that the materials that are used to build those roads up, to pave them would come from the combination HSTD and GAC and that, in fact, those people that would be paying into those districts out there would continue to receive that benefit in terms of road improvements. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: How many more miles of roadway are there out in Golden Gate Estates that need to be upgraded from lime rock to paved? MR. ARCHIBALD: I believe north of the Alley which is where we're concentrating, north of the Alley, I believe we have somewhere in the neighborhood of a little less than 100 miles. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Still remaining? MR. ARCHIBALD: Yes. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Making some progress. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We're making progress, though. MR. ARCHIBALD: Again, we've done 120. It hasn't been done overnight. It's been done over a period of ten years doing -- probably averaging a half a dozen each year. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Also in -- in driving out along those roads off of I guess Desoto and Everglades Boulevard more toward the Alley, there's a lot of roads that appear to have been paved back in the sixties when the roads were first laid out but are in really poor shape right now. What -- what -- how do they sit on your list? I know there's not a lot of houses there either so -- MR. ARCHIBALD: And I need to go back if I can because that's an awfully important question relative to the programs that are in place. Because the MSTD districts, these taxing districts that were created years ago, the primary purpose of those originally was to, in fact, resurface existing surface roadways. So now what we're doing is putting more dollars into those HSTDs to do maintenance work in addition to resurfacing. And what we're now seeing is that the resurfacing of existing paved roadways -- there's an ongoing resurfacing program based upon annual surveys -- that ongoing program is funded out of the HSTD. So we're not only doing resurfacing of existing paved roadways. But in the district that affects Golden Gate Estates and using the GAC trust fund, we're also buying materials to upgrade those county roadways in the Golden Gate Estates to paved road standards. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I guess my question is that there's some -- there are some paved roads out there that have been paved for 30 years. And the surface on them is to the point that it's actually crumbling. And I'm wondering how much longer they're going to be in a paved road status, or are they now? MR. SHYKOWSKI: How do you prioritize those, George? Just in terms of the annual survey? MR. ARCHIBALD: Yes. We had submitted to the board earlier in our year our inventory of roadways where we identified the surface life of each roadway. And part of that was to identify a number of roadways off of Everglades and Randall that were old what we call double surface treated roadways that because of the increased traffic and because of the increased growth, we're not only doing drainage work out there, but we're resurfacing those. So we have on one hand a resurfacing program ongoing through the HSTD program. And on the other hand, in the same area where we have lime rock roads, we're upgrading them. And the question and the complaint we always receive is that the number of homes on the roadways being resurfaced may be anywhere from 5 to 20. On the lime rock roadways being upgraded, we typically have a threshold of about ten homes per mile or per roadway. So there are, in fact, two different programs that are ongoing out there. Both programs are important. Both programs extend surface life, in so doing reduce operating and maintenance cost or maintain operating and maintenance cost. And again, we -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I understand that. I'm just questioning some of the roads that have not had any attention or very little attention for 30 years. And are we -- are we moving to protect the road beds that are underneath that asphalt? MR. ARCHIBALD: In many cases, no, we're not. And the reason we're not is that, one, there's no traffic there. And two, the condition of those roadways are such that there's very little base, and we would have to go in and reconstruct those at some future point in time. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. MR. ARCHIBALD: So what we're doing is letting both the condition and the amount of development and growth and traffic usage dictate our priorities. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Thank you. MR. ARCHIBALD: And I think that completes that outline we have there relative to the major sections, recognizing that transportation really doesn't have any departments. We don't have any department directors. So many of the liaison duties of the administrative section, the three people in my office do provide a great deal of supervisory and administrative support to all of the activities outlined here. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you. MR. ARCHIBALD: Ed, did you want to go through the documents? MR. FINN: George, you're doing such a good job. Why don't you just go right ahead. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Why don't you move on to page 1, George, on the transportation services administration. The board I think would be interested in seeing the breakdown of the programs at this point. MR. ARCHIBALD: Page 1 is fairly self explanatory. In base level we have a series of support functions, a series of activities that show up on page 5. And those activities are qualified in terms of man hours. And we reduced the man hours to number of FTEs. So as you look at page 5 and look through all the activities, you'll see what activities are qualified under base level. And the total number of hours equate to about four personnel or four FTEs. So base level that we're recommending, again, based upon the listing on page 5 is 4. In addition to those base level functions, there's a series of administrative functions that we've also qualified under that listing on page 5, and the hours equate to approximately 2 personnel. That totals to six. So basically in transportation administration you currently have six. And you can see, again, in referencing to page 5, many of the duties and also the number of hours that are allocated to each duty and then how we break that up between the three staff rankings -- MR. FINN: Excuse me one second, George. I'm not sure the board is following on page 5 how you've outlined which hours are associated with which program. MR. ARCHIBALD: If we make reference to page 5, again, we have all of the work load indicators. In that middle column where we have efficiency indicators, we're dealing with man hours that are being allocated to the activities. And typically those man hours relate to either lane miles or number of projects or signal systems. And below that there's typically three numbers in a parentheses. The first number are the hours that are allocated to base level. The second number would be the hours allocated to a administrative function. And the third hours is what staff would be requesting that the board consider to expand man hours to provide a better response within the performance indicators that are on the right-hand column of that page. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So your -- your third level over is what you want your three expanded service FTEs to do. MR. ARCHIBALD: Yes. In -- in most cases since we're talking about man hours, we're not necessarily talking about employee hours. We're talking about either contract hours or RECAP employee hours. To suggest alternatives -- MR. DORRILL: We don't -- we don't have a final proposal here. I feel the same way I do here about some of the program reviews you looked at yesterday. There is a growing need in transportation administration. They're falling behind on the various work tasks and then special projects that they get assigned throughout the course of the year. And George has done a real good job at his performance indicators that he attached there as an exhibit. And we're compounding that by increasing the amount of comp. time. And so we are exploring some alternatives to do some contract work and/or add some RECAP employees to transportation administration. And you'll see that a little more clear when you see their line item budget. We prepared this to show you the need and demonstrate a need based on what their annual work load is now that begins on page 5 there as part of Exhibit 1. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'm looking at page 6, Mr. Dotrill, and item 13, professional engineering duties. He's looking for an expanded service of 1,600 hours. And it seems to me that we took traffic engineers out of transportation and put them in -- put them in the OCPM. And I -- I would not favor rebuilding another engineering core somewhere else. The -- the purpose for the consolidation that you told us of was to crosstrain people and have them even out the flow of work. And now we're, according to this under the expanded service, looking for 1,600 hours of professional engineering duties. 1,600 hours is almost one FTE. And I'm -- I'm just wondering why we're seeing engineering services in transportation. I would rather see them in the OCPM if we need another engineer. MR. DORRILL: I think that we can quantify that. A good example, the one that comes immediately to mind, is the Airport Road six laning. That -- that is an OCPM project that was underway. After the project began, the board authorized some additional efforts for maintenance of traffic. It included the installation of traffic lights in front of Pinewoods, Naples Bath and Tennis, the addition of decel. and turn lanes. Those projects are being administered because of their smaller nature by the transportation administration department Mr. Archibald is for. So he -- he has some ongoing I'll say smaller capital improvement efforts that are not otherwise large enough to be or in this case they were not part of the original Airport six-laning project. And so they're going out and having to negotiate and acquire the right-of-way to build the decel. lanes. They're coordinating under change order agreements the installation or the construction of the decel. lanes and the traffic lights. And that's what I said. I think we need to quantify all that to make sure that, A, it can't be absorbed in OCPM but B, what are the number of special projects that -- that are being added to transportation during the course of the year that -- that they do need some engineering support with. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Commissioner Hancock? COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: You mentioned something, Neil, that -- that got my attention. You said that somebody in his department was handling a certain portion of decel. lanes or acceleration lanes because it was a small enough project. That was the same argument that was made for OCPM, was that OCPM's role was to handle those smaller projects that really didn't warrant the bidding out or that were not efficient to bid out. Now we're finding a division inside of that saying some projects are now too small for OCPM. I have a little difficulty with believing both cases hold true. So again, I express the same concern Commissioner MAtthews does. MR. DORRILL: The former -- I'll give you a partial response now, and you'll see the balance of it at the line item budget. The former is true from a design perspective. And the direction that we had was that the board wanted to do more in-house design. And we in the past -- I don't know whether we've shared it with you. We can show you all of the in-house design that OCPM is doing. The example for the smaller level of effort as it pertains to construction or capital improvements, yes, there may be a design element to that. But the transportation department continues to administer some smaller scope capital improvement projects. And the decel. lanes and the traffic signalization I think is a good example of that. MR. ARCHIBALD: Neil, could I -- could I give the board two good examples? Two very applicable examples that you're familiar with would be the signals for 1-75 on Pine Ridge Road. There is a project where we're doing some of the design work, the Florida Department of Transportation is doing some of the design work. But in essence the transportation operational people will actually end up installing all of the equipment. And there's a situation where an engineer in transportation can field two areas of activities, both operation and the interface with agencies such as the FDOT, and we feel come up with a cost effectiveness in reduced cost as exemplified by the 1-75 project. Another one as Neil mentioned on Airport Road where some of the signal design work because of conflicts, we actually ended up doing the work, not just the design but the work. And some of the as-builts and some of the changes in the field were done by our people to expedite that work. Not only was it expedited, but from a cost control standpoint, I think we ended up doing that less costly than had we gone to contract with it. So there's an area there -- and I'm working pretty closely with Tom Conrecode right now. There are a number of these small projects which I'm wanting his office to handle, and we have to develop the project accounting methodologies for that. But there's also small jobs that may be cost effective. Another good example is what your people are doing at Clam Pass right now. We can either contract that out and spend thousands of dollars in bidding and advertising and going through a whole series of approval processes, or we can have our people go out there and do that project immediately. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, Clam Pass, there's simply not time to go through that process. MR. DORRILL: Well, we do need to show you the other part of the equation because Mr. Hancock has asked -- the obvious question is what's OCPM doing. And I think we need to show you the project load by project manager or project engineer and show you all of the projects that they are responsible for either design and permitting and/or construction administration. Then we need to show you this -- all the other things that have been assigned. We have a similar issue in facilities management. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Let me suggest for today's purposes that we rank these E, D, D with the direction that we want to have a thorough presentation on the -- the rank number 3 there when we come back for our line item. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The -- I don't have any problem with E on the base level. Two is -- Mr. Archibald, that is -- is that you and your secretary, level two here? MR. ARCHIBALD: Primarily. And as you saw in Exhibit C, there's quite a number of programs out there where there's no man hours allocated. And we're spending more and more time in those activities. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I don't have any problem with the D, and but I'm not interested too much in cutting that either. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: The only reason I would see a D there is because if we're talking about two personnel but a total of $333,000, so I'd like to see a little more line item justification in that to understand it more. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. MR. DORRILL: We can do that. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I agree to E, D, D. MR. DORRILL: I think that takes us then -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: E, D, D. MR. DORRILL: -- over to page 11. This is your road and bridge section obviously where the majority of the maintenance operating accounts are almost identical to last year's program, the one exception being the new program 8, something that you asked us to do. I'll say it's about two months ago you wanted to see a little stepped-up bicycle path maintenance program, and so we've added a new number 8 here. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Excuse me, but I'm looking at page 7. Did we skip a little bit here? MR. DORRILL: I may have. MR. FINN: Yes. Yes, we did. MR. ARCHIBALD: On page 7 very quickly, that's the landscape maintenance activities through the taxing units. MR. DORRILL: I think he alluded to that in his -- his opening remarks. They do show it as a separate cost center there. MR. ARCHIBALD: And right now the -- we have one FTE allocated to that. And what we're looking at is either some contract assistance or we're looking at RECAP employee or a new position because of not only the contracting activities, but I think most of you are aware that we have a contractor that just walked off the job, left about a half a million worth of contract activities unfinished in regards to landscape maintenance. So we're having to reallocate and go through a process to make sure -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Wait, wait, wait. MR. DORRILL: Marco. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Really? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I was going to say Airport Road because the median looks like somebody walked off that job. MR. DORRILL: Different -- MR. ARCHIBALD: Let me explain if I can. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Do we have performance bonds and so forth to control? MR. ARCHIBALD: There's an agenda item that's on its way. But in essence what's happened is a major contractor that has the maintenance contract for both the medians on Marco Island and the medians in Golden Gate went into receivership, and we got a letter indicating that they did not want to participate in any additional work. And what's happened is, of course, your road and bridge force, seven people, now are spread out between the medians on Airport Road and the medians on Marco and the medians in Golden Gate. And I'll be the first one to admit that we're being hard pressed to keep up with the mowing much less the pruning and the landscape activities. MR. DORRILL: We have a separate problem on county-maintained medians to where we had a non-compliant or delay in receipt of our mulch material as part of our annual bid. And the -- the main problem with the Airport Road medians is that they need their -- I think twice a year George comes in and resupplements the cypress mulch in the medians and that we've had a delay in the receipt of that material. And as a result there is just no cypress mulch in the medians this year. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Commissioner Hancock? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I've noticed something, and I'm just going to ask this to help my understanding hopefully. When we did the Airport Road median and we all went crazy with Xeriscape and drought tolerant and all that kind of stuff, I have seen more county workers hunched over pulling weeds on Airport Road than I have anywhere else in Collier County. Now then I noticed on -- on Pine Ridge we started putting in some sod which is cheaper installation which is lower maintenance, may not be as drought tolerant. And I see a lot fewer people hunched over picking weeds in that area. So am I seeing a trend towards us going to a lower maintenance median with fewer per se plantings that are lower maintenance with more sod? Is that the trend we're going in? MR. ARCHIBALD: Yes. MR. DORRILL: Let me tell you and I'll -- I'll -- I'll -- I'm going to tease you a little bit. The original design for the Airport Road median project -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I know who did it, and I'm not happy about it. MR. DORRILL: -- and who's no longer with that local firm -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That's right. MR. DORRILL: Whose initials were -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: The firm will remain nameless. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I bet we can guess, though, now. MR. DORRILL: The design work on that from my perspective is good on the north end. If you look at the plantings just before you get to the intersection of Golden Gate, they have grown in and matured to the point where the beds look pretty nice. And the amount of hand work to weed those is not nearly as bad as it was a year ago. But it is very labor intensive to keep them good until they get grown in, the thought being once they get grown in, then you don't have to at least mow them and edge them on a weekly basis which is what you're otherwise getting into with a Floratam-type utilization. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Uh-huh. MR. DORRILL: We did play with the design some on Pine Ridge Road, and I think it's most people's impression that the appearance of that is much nicer and the grass looks nice. On Airport north of Golden Gate Parkway you're going to see a little bit of a combination of the two. You're going to see very small sod areas, but you are going to see some sod. But then what you're going to see again is more Xeri-plantings, and we're just going to have to be patient until they can get grown into the point where you don't have that very, very expensive hand work to get in there and weed. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I didn't want to drag this out. I just -- when I start looking at an additional 25 percent budget item for landscape expansion, I just want to make sure that we're factoring in the maintenance -- maintenance difficulties and intensities in looking at those expansions. MR. DORRILL: We -- we did in-house the design schemes for north Airport Road median beautification. And if you're interested, we can share those with you because we're going to do a combination of things there. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. MR. ARCHIBALD: If I could make reference to page 10, what the staff has done under work load indicators and efficiency indicators, given you the man hours involved in terms of the number of square feet for each area and also the cost that's associated with that recognizing that in some areas the activities are different. They may involve a great deal of litter pick-up. They may involve a great deal of street sweeping. But that will give you an overview of those activities in terms of man hours and costs and square footage, the work in each separate area. And also recognize that we have four committees that are meeting once a month, and there's agendas and a lot of items that are discussed at those meetings. And that alone consumes a large number of man hours. And it's an important necessity. MR. DORRILL: Mr. Norris is about to give us a ranking. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I'm -- I'm going to suggest that this falls under our definition that we don't actually have to do this, so I would suggest D and D on both of these. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Agreed. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I can -- I can support that. We'll move on to 11. MR. DORRILL: Page -- page 11, again, I think the focus here can be the expanded bicycle path maintenance program. This was to resurface paths that you already have. You'll see that program number 4, we've got some -- some resurfacing of new bicycle paths to the tune of $10,000. The new program, though, is $80,000 to resurface preexisting paths. And there is on page 22 an explanation of that. And then on 23 are a list of the various costs on the schedule that's there -- MR. ARCHIBALD: On page -- MR. DORRILL: -- for all the maintenance activities. MR. ARCHIBALD: On page 23 and 24 is a detailed breakdown again by unit, man hours, and activity the cost for each activity. And we can go down that list, and those activities that the board has concerns about can be scrutinized or deleted as the case may be. Most of them as you can recognize are essential from the standpoint of maintenance -- maintaining your infrastructure. But there's activities there that -- that I think are discretionary. An example may be the mobile sweeping. There may be a infrastructure-related improvement there or a environmental enhancement or a permit requirement to do that sweeping. But, in fact, the board may want to consider that particular activity discretionary. Again, keep in mind our roadways represent an asset, but they also represent a important asset that's subject to a lot of liability concerns in addition to maintenance and operating concerns. And what the staff has done in each one of these areas is to try and establish a minimum level from the standpoint of safety and infrastructure maintenance. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Board members, I would like to maybe see if there's some way that we can begin to focus a little bit more on bike paths. I think one of the things that I get more discussion and calls about than anything else is people would like to have bike paths in certain locations. If there's some operation that as we go through this particular section, if we find there's something that -- that may or may not be necessary, I'd just sort of like to shift this more funding into bike paths as we could. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: This here is for resurfacing existing. I get the same calls that you do as far as wanting new bike paths. MR. DORRILL: This will get you 10 to 15 miles a year of resurfaced existing bike paths. The other program which was number 4 -- MR. ARCHIBALD: The program 4 was primarily the administration of the contracting and administering the resurfacing activities, the inspection, the inventory, the ratings. Again, the -- the capital dollars for this are going to fall into your fund 313, the capital road fund. So you're looking at the man hours and the cost of doing the administration of those contract activities, and the actual dollars depending upon what level you establish that at -- MR. DORRILL: I think the question they're headed to, George, is you're not looking at capital budgets yet. But can you tell them what we had in capital budgets for new bike path construction this year and then try and get a sense of where they want to go? MR. ARCHIBALD: For new work you budgeted 100,000. The contract is underway. The actual contract amount is about $106,000 because of some developer commitments. So right now you're doing about $100,000 worth of new work a year. And, again, that's going to get you somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to ten miles. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'm -- I'm wondering if -- if -- it just strikes me that there has to be a way -- and only because I just intuitively feel there has to be a way that we -- we can ask some of our corporate sponsors in the area to help us with some of these bike trails and fitness trails and things like that. Corporations look for ways that they can help the public and yet at the same time have it be known that they're helping the public. So I'm -- why -- why can't we put together some programs either in our parks or along various highways that would put bike paths and fitness trails into place and have them sponsored either for the construction or the maintenance of them by our corporate entities? I mean, it just seems that we ought to be able to do that. We have an adopt-the-road program, an adopt-the-shore program. Why not an adopt the bike path? MR. ARCHIBALD: We've considered that in prior years not only in regards to bike paths and sidewalks but also such things as lighting, particularly where that lighting, in fact, benefits a commercial user of one kind or another. Again, candidly, we just haven't had the time to pursue those. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think we have a -- I mean, we have a pathways advisory committee that other than reviewing the county's current progress on pathways, I think that would be an area of extreme interest for them to maybe model a program, to develop a program to help us find a way to do that. I think the question here today is what do we as of right want to place in the budget to make sure something gets done in this regard for the community because what you're talking about is a terrific idea, but it may take some time to establish. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, I agree it's going to take some time, but we've been bashing this one back and forth now since I've been on the board every single year. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah, we've got a list of like 28. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And it's going to take us 200 years under the current progress to complete that list. And I'm looking for ways that we can -- COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: I'm young, but I'm not that young. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- do it -- I know I'm not that young. But I'd -- I'd like to try to find a way that we -- we can scrunch that time down into something really reasonable in terms of years. MR. DORRILL: I think we can pursue that through the -- I think the position that's there -- do we still have a bike path coordinator's position through MPO? MR. FINN: Yes, in MPO. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: In the MPO. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Anita Chapman. MR. DORRILL: And through Anita's efforts we can explore that. We -- unless directed otherwise, we've got -- $180,000 is what we're contemplating for bicycle paths for the coming year. You got $80,000 to resurface or reconstruct existing paths. And we're contemplating $100,000 of county money, sales tax money, to construct new paths. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I just -- you know, we have a lot of very wealthy corporations that have offices here in one way or another and CEOs for these places that live here. And I'm just toying with the idea that we ought to be able to get hold of some of that money. They have lots of corporate foundations that -- that fund these kinds of things. It would be nice to see if we can get some of it. And I know it takes time and grant applications are hard to write. MR. ARCHIBALD: And we have been successful. There's a series of state-funded bike paths on the county system that there will be a meeting about next week. So some of those grants have been applied for and have been successful. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. MR. DORRILL: That's the extent of the presentation on road and bridge unless you have other questions. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: I think we need to go ahead and rank these. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, okay. I don't have any problem with -- with number 1, base level maintenance and so forth, being -- I don't think it's mandatory, but it's certainly essential, I would think. I'm looking down at number 7, though, and we've got some more median maintenance there. And -- and while we have separately broken down from the MSTU median programs, I'm wondering if for an economy of scale purpose we as a board don't need to lump those together and say that, you know, there's not seven FTEs on this one and what is it? Three on the other one or four? MR. FINN: One, I believe. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Two. MR. ARCHIBALD: Again, keep in mind we're trying to represent the man hours involved in operations, the actual maintenance work, whereas under our landscape municipal service taxing and benefit units, we're looking at the administration of contracts, administration of activities within a specific district. So we separate those two. There's good communications and supervision between the two. But one's operation; one is strictly contract administration. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, I -- I guess that the dollars that are associated here, those are dollars that are associated to the administration of those contracts and the FTEs in the other program? MR. DORRILL: Not in -- not in number 7. Number 7 is Mr. Hancock's county employees pulling weeds on Airport Road. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. MR. DORRILL: Earlier in the administration are the administrative costs to review and maintain the contracts for Golden Gate, Lely, Marco Island, so we've got it in two different areas. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I -- okay. So the $307,000 here, is that only salaries and benefits, or is there -- MR. DORRILL: That also includes, I presume, his -- his operating costs to replace the mulch and buy the fertilizer and pay the water bill and those types of things. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. So between the MS -- MR. SHYKOWSKI: On page 21 it indicates material costs are approximately $102,000. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Between line 7 of road and bridge and the landscape median HSTU, we are -- we are dedicating more than two million dollars to median maintenance. MR. FINN: The HSTU maintenance is funded through taxes raised for those HSTUs. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I understand that. I understand that. And -- and -- and -- and I'm just saying that of the whatever it is -- MR. DORRILL: 1.7, that's correct. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- budget that we put together, three hundred and fifty, three hundred and sixty million -- I don't know; whatever it's going to be at the end -- two million dollars of it is for median maintenance in one form or another. MR. DORRILL: That's correct. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. I just -- it just seems like a big number to me. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Got a lot of medians. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I know there's a lot of medians. MR. ARCHIBALD: Back on page 24 under median maintenance, we do provide the breakdown of the man hours and the square footage maintained. And it gives you some idea of what our costs are. And we are in the process right now of completing some specifications, and we'll be going through a bidding process to obtain prices for the private sector to maintain medians. That information can be brought back to the board to compare the private sector with the public sector. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I suggest since we did the other ones D that we might as well go ahead and rank number 7 D. I didn't catch what we're ranking 2 through 6. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We haven't done that yet, but we did E for number 1. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Right. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And the -- the others are probably no more essential than anything else that we've yet looked at other than addressing the health -- health, safety, and welfare. So while we may in the end not want to do anything in adjusting it very much, I don't see them really greater than D either. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: through except for -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COHMISSIONER NORRIS: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So you're saying D all the way Pretty much. Except for 17 Except for 1. That's fine. That doesn't mean that we're going to do anything with them, though, other than to maybe trim a few dollars here -- here and there. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We'll make Steve do a little more adding. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: And number 87 CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Let's talk about it. These are the materials for resurfacing? MR. ARCHIBALD: Right. MR. DORRILL: Yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That we've previously discussed. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: How do we arrive at 80,0007 Just took a shot at it and that's how it came out or -- MR. ARCHIBALD: No, we -- what we're going to end up doing -- and you'll be seeing a inventory of all the sidewalks and bike paths, and there will be a service level associated with those. And right now it looks like we're trying to develop a program like we have in the road resurfacing program, roughly a five-year program, wherein we're trying to replace somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 to 5 percent of our system. Right now we've got a little over 300 miles of sidewalks and bike paths we maintain. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Basically -- and I'm sorry, George. You arrived at this through a needs analysis is what you're telling me. MR. DORRILL: Yes, yes, and the costs are very current because we've just done some work in Pelican Bay within the last 30 days. And so we've got a good per cubic yard or per lineal foot of bike path cost that's projected. MR. SMYKOWSKI: George indicates on page 22 there's approximately 14 miles that would be done, estimated cost between five and six thousand dollars per mile of bike path. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Does the board wish to put that as discretionary at this point? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Sure. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: At best. Thank you. What's next? MR. FINN: Page 24-A and 25, traffic operations section. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: There was only one vacancy in this area? It's a maintenance worker, is that correct, Mr. Archibald? MR. ARCHIBALD: I believe that's just been filled -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Just been filled? MR. ARCHIBALD: -- or in the process of being filled. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. MR. DORRILL: Same level of effort here again. I think in -- in order to protect your time, there is a new program I'll call your attention to. It's program number 5. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Enhancement of sign maintenance and installation, fabrication, et cetera, et cetera? Can you tell us a little bit about the justification for needing to do that? MR. ARCHIBALD: And again, I believe the activity measures are shown on page 31, but in essence what we have is not only a growing county in terms of the number of roadways and also in regards to the importance of such things as pavement markings and signing, but also we're growing in terms of traffic signal systems. And in addition, we're growing in the expansion of our signing programs in the estates. The board last year approved a program to go ahead and sign portions of the southern estates. That program alone is going to consume over $120,000 over a year's time. So not only are number of roads increasing. But what we're seeing in our traffic operations area is a fairly dramatic increase in work load. Also from a liability standpoint, we're having to go ahead and do quarterly inspections in lieu of annual inspections. you'll -- you're seeing not only requirements to sign larger areas within the county. You're also seeing an effort that's required to do inventories of the signs that are in place in addition to all the new traffic signals that are being added. We're hoping to be able to interconnect those based upon recent board actions. So we're going to be maintaining a different signal system on some of our roadways than we currently have. So not only are we dealing with more signals to maintain, but also we're dealing with a different type of system that's going to, in fact, take a lot more programming time. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Can you go into a more detailed description on page 31, item 1, sign maintenance, new installations? You've got some numbers in patens there, program 1, slash, 900, 4, slash, 8,800. What does that mean? MR. ARCHIBALD: Again, the total hours for that activity is over 14,000. And what we've attempted to do is allocate the hours, the total hours by the program activity. And the program activity would relate to page 25, the staff ranking 1 through 5. So where we have 1, it refers to base level. So we're saying about 900 hours of the 14,000 are forming the installation of regulatory signs that are required by law. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. So you've got 900 hours dedicated to base level. MR. ARCHIBALD: Yeah. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And then -- then you'd have 8,800 hours dedicated to level 4 number which is sign maintenance. And then you're asking for an expanded 4,400 hours to the enhancement of the sign maintenance program. MR. ARCHIBALD: Yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. That helps me. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Expanded would be in essence funded by sales tax from the general fund as we transition gas taxes from maintenance to capital as well just so you're clear on that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'm sorry? Come back with that again. MR. FINN: Every marginal program that's added to road and bridge will be funded essentially via sales tax which is really ad valorem tax. MR. SHYKOWSKI: It's a dollar for dollar out of the general fund and into road and bridge. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I understand that. On -- on an aside, like, for instance, when we consolidated two phases of 951, that contract came in about six million dollars under expectations. And -- and my understanding, we're going to save the money in two different fiscal years. I know this -- this board two years ago made a conscious decision to start moving something like 1.8 million dollars cumulative for three years in order to fund $178 (sic) road building project that we have to do in order to meet concurrency. At what point if we keep saving these dollars on these road -- road contracts will we be able to reexamine that because there's no point in -- MR. SHYKOWSKI: That will be reexamined annually -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Annually? MR. SHYKOWSKI: -- as you look at projects based on growth in different areas. Some projects will move into the plan -- that were in the out years will move into the five-year plan. And conversely, some that are in the five-year plan may move to the out year. So that would be adjusted on an annual basis. But obviously every time we save six million dollars, that is to our benefit. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Oh, oh, I don't have any problem recognizing it's to our benefit. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Thank you, Mr. Smykowski. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'm just wondering when -- when -- when will we have the opportunity to pull that six million dollars out of the construction program and put it back into the maintenance program if needed there? MR. FINN: There is no guarantee you will be able to do that because when the program is reevaluated, it's more likely that -- that road projects are going to enter into the five-year plan that were simply on the window last year and the five-year plan is going to increase overall. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: You take a stab at it. I think you know where I'm coming from, and I just -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah, I do. Let me -- let me put it to you -- MR. FINN: I'm sorry. The time period will be during essentially the line item budgets when the entire road plan is reevaluated again. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Let me -- let me put it in the form of a challenge instead of a question. The over six million dollars that we are saving on the 951 project, get it out of there and get it into somewhere else to augment another six million so we realize a six million dollar drop in dollars spent by this county. MR. DORRILL: We've already got a note to evaluate that. And my -- my suggestion to you is probably going to be to put as much of that savings in some type of restricted reserve account in anticipation of next year's big hit on general revenues. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That is exactly what I believe we wanted to do, and so make sure that that's flagged and it's done. MR. DORRILL: I understand that. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: In other words, if you take it away from us, we can't spend it. And we'd really like to see you do that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Because I mean, if -- you know, I think you know what we're talking about. We -- we -- we want -- COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: You want to change that quote before Steve writes it down? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We want to make that funding shortage next year as small as we can make it. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Right. You want to see the benefit of that windfall on the operating side to the extent -- COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: I just don't want that six million getting lost and getting filled with other projects. Is that better, Steve? MR. HART: Uh-huh. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. You'll use the first one anyway I know. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: So our rankings are -- COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: You're always getting back to business, aren't you, John? COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: He's good at that, thank heavens. Base -- base level in traffic operations I would assume is -- is essential if not mandated. Which is it, Mr. Archibald? Is anything in the base level mandated? MR. ARCHIBALD: That's all what staff would consider mandated because of the legal and safety issues that relate to such items as traffic signals. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. So 1, can we agree, should be M for mandated? COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Signal and street light maintenance, I think if that's not mandated I would think that's at least essential. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Essential to me. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Essential. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Traffic counts I think now are getting into discretionary unless we're doing that to meet growth management requirements. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Actually we're required on our annual updates to provide traffic counts to the state, so I would say that's essential. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: E? And then we're into sign maintenance, 4. How is that? MR. ARCHIBALD: I think the board can consider that discretionary recognizing that in base level we have what we consider what's legally required. But signing in this county is awfully important as you can see by the number of signs we installed. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: That's fine. And on number 5, I think we probably want to put this one discretionary with a flag to justify this one. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: George, what would happen if we just didn't fund number 57 What would the result be? MR. ARCHIBALD: We would end up unfortunately paying for it in other ways. Some of these programs are met to make our road system efficient. A bad example would be if we don't do a good job of maintaining a signal system, then we're causing delays to the general public. So those kinds of costs that we don't see here is what would result. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I.e., Bayshore and U.S. 417 CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, you know, other things too with the sign programs, while they're informative and they -- and they -- they tell our -- our traveling public what they can do on the roadways and what's available to them and things like that, I would think that anything we can do to enhance the driving public to move speedily along within the speed limits, of course, will -- will -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Would you like to start over? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- will keep our -- will keep our level of service as high as possible. So I -- I would be supportive of -- of this $81,000 so long as we're keeping our motoring public at a very high level of service so we don't get into concurrency difficulties. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, I would too. I'd just like to see a little more indepth justification when it comes back in June. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I have no -- no problem with wanting to know more about the $81,000 and making sure we're getting the most -- most efficient use of it. But certainly an enhanced program's going to help us all. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: That seems to have polished it off. MR. ARCHIBALD: We'll be -- we'll be showing you a whole list of programs, many of which are driven by legal requirements. MR. FINN: MAdam Chairman, I have -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Archibald. MR. FINN: -- program number 1 is M, 2 is E, 3 is D, 4 is -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Three is E. Four and five are D. MR. FINN: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Archibald. MR. ARCHIBALD: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Pelican Bay services we did yesterday. Utilities division has been withdrawn. Is this the one we're going to hear next? MR. SMYKOWSKI: MAnagement offices. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: MAnagement offices? MR. DORRILL: Blue tab, page 2. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Is this -- did we come up to break time here? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We can take a break now if we want, or we can get through OCPM and then take a break. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: You're the chairman. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Why don't we try to go through OCPM and then take a break in about 20 minutes. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Good enough. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Mr. Conrecode. MR. ARCHIBALD: Good morning, Commissioners. For the record, Tom Conrecode from your capital projects office. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Do you want to -- let's talk about -- first about vacancies in your department or division. MR. CONRECODE: Okay. Currently have two vacancies, and it's occurring on kind of a cyclical basis where I'm filling one. We're making a recommendation this week. I have another vacancy that occurs MArch 24. So it's kind of a dynamic process. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: You don't have any that have been vacant for any significant length of time? MR. CONRECODE: The longest one I have now is just over 60 days. That's the one we have a recommendation pending on. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: You've got three vacancies listed under clerical, under the clerical supervisor? MR. CONRECODE: Right. We had -- we just transferred one secretarial position to OHB as a promotion. We have a customer service rep. 2 that was promoted to fill a vacancy in a secretary 2 position, a secretary 2 position that was just transferred to the natural resources department. So we've had some turnover in that section rather recently. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: To natural resources department? MR. CONRECODE: Yeah. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: They only had one vacancy yesterday, and that's -- MR. CONRECODE: They filled it with -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: They filled it with your person. MR. CONRECODE: Right, secretarial position. MR. SHYKOWSKI: That's happened within the last month. MR. DORRILL: We just got notice of losing -- I won't say he's the best but he's certainly one of our best senior project managers to Lee County. And he single-handedly -- Adolfo Gonzalez -- did all of the county's environmental permitting work, and it's just like somebody stuck a dagger in my heart Monday when I got his letter of resignation. Very, very complimentary of the county commission, great place to work, but Lee County's paying me 20 percent more, see ya, one of those kind of things. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: And who might this have been? MR. DORRILL: I'm sorry? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Who was this? MR. DORRILL: Adolfo Gonzalez who was a real -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So this is the vacancy that's project manager 3, permitting, right-of-way? MR. CONRECODE: Right. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Now let's look over at the three vacancies that are under clerical -- under the clerical supervisor. How long have they been vacant? MR. CONRECODE: Most of those within 30 days, one within a week. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: All three of them? MR. CONRECODE: Yes. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: What are you doing to these people? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah, what's happening? MR. CONRECODE: I think I have a bit of a reputation as a slave driver. Actually they were promotional opportunities for people. One senior secretary was just promoted to work for Mike. Another secretary 2 who had been with the county for 14 years was promoted to a senior secretary position in natural resources department. Promotional opportunities like that just come up. We've promoted a customer service rep. within our own organization to fill the secretary 2 position, and we're recruiting the other 2. MR. DORRILL: The -- sort of a natural phenomenon. I think the balance of his support here are secretary or clerk 2 positions, and they're finding other career path opportunities to become senior secretaries or senior office assistants. And I don't think we had anybody quit us. But he's -- he's had a slew of transfers out, and I know that Mr. Smykowski benefitted by one of those. They're -- they're senior secretary position, budget technician. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'm pleased to see the growth that these people are undergoing is internal and that we're not losing their skills. I'm -- I'm pleased to see their -- MR. CONRECODE: Adolfo is the only external loss that we'll feel, and that's effective MArch 24. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Do you want to tell us about your base level? MR. CONRECODE: The way we've characterized our base level service is to essentially call it CIE and master planned projects and have broken that out over '94, '95, and '96 with '96 being a projection. I expect the number to possibly increase in '96 beyond this, but it's going to depend on the completion of the water master plan work that we're taking underway right now. In addition to that, in '97, that number may go up again as a result of the completion of sewer master plan work associated with next -- next fiscal year. The way we follow CIE versus non-CIE or project accountability is on a project count basis which if we look at it on a project numbers, CIE accounts for 52.8 percent of our project work load and quantities of projects and 77.6 percent of our total project value. Obviously CIE projects are larger in magnitude and carry a larger value to them. And as a result, we average those two to come up with our percent staffing and as a result of the time equivalent work load. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Any questions? Commissioner Hancock? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: My -- again, I'm going back to my understanding of the creation of OCPM was that it would, in fact, save the county dollars in the long run on the smaller scale design type projects that are cookie cutter type projects. We didn't have to let contracts. We didn't have to pay the consultant's fees and so forth. As a part of -- of this, until I see a comparative analysis of what it is we're saving based on previous contracts let and so forth, I don't have any confidence in -- in these numbers. MR. CONRECODE: Let -- let me share with you some of the data that we're tracking that wasn't a part of the program budget operation that I think is a good indicator of the success of the reorganization. MR. DORRILL: Let me -- let me help -- help you, too, because we had part A of this discussion before you got here. I've already promised to show him by project manager the capital improvement projects for each manager and whether we're doing in-house design or just construction administration for the whole department. And he wants to compare that against smaller type projects that are being kept at the department level. And the two examples that I gave him were transportation where George may be doing certain signalizing intersections, Skip Camp in facilities where they may be doing certain renovation-type projects that are outside of OCPM and differentiating between the two. And we talked about that earlier this morning. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: And -- and -- and now really isn't the time to go into that detail. What I'm doing is in essence flagging this saying that we created a department three years ago just as we're doing now with the DOR, and we're told it's going to save us money. But yet when we come back and look at it, we have no way of knowing after the first year if, in fact, we are continuing to save money or whether or not it's growing to a point that it's no longer performing the function it was intended to initially. MR. CONRECODE: And if I could -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: And that's a concern I have. MR. CONRECODE: If I could just give you some -- some rough indicators to show you the sort of productivity that we're getting out of this new organization, to answer -- or to comment on Neil's first suggestion, we are averaging 5.2 projects per project manager on my staff with their average value of work that they're currently handling is fourteen and a half million dollars worth of work per project manager. Our monthly fee basis is approximately one and a quarter percent of our total work in place for the month. And some of the other indicators, when the department was organized, internal design work accounted for about 14 percent of those fees as it related to external design, internal versus external. This year our average is 32 percent internal design work. And that is from a high in October of 41 percent to a low in December of 27 percent. So it gives you a pretty good indication. We have pretty dramatic fluctuations from month to month, but on average we're doing about 32 percent. The commission's goal at that point was to target 40 percent as the amount of internal design work that we had accomplished with county staff. I think we're well on our way to accomplishing that. One of the other indicators that I track I think is probably the best indicator of our performance is are we accomplishing those projects in the CIE and in master plans that we're required to by state? The fact of the matter is yes, we are, and we're accomplishing those ahead of schedule. And some of the most vivid examples I can give you are the closure of the landfill cells, the combination and acceleration of County Road 951 project. And in -- in pure dollar terms, if you look at the amount of work that we're accomplishing per month, it's going up by millions of dollars a month, pretty substantial. Our production in place from the performance indicators on your paperwork here was 19.8 million in '94. And we're going to, I think with the acceleration of 951, even exceed the 35 million dollars next year. My total work in place last year was just around 30.6 million dollars. This year I expect to hit 48 million dollars work in place with the exact same work crew, the same amount of staff, no expanded level of service. So those are some of the indicators that I'm tracking to show that we're being more productive. We're being more cost effective, and we're tracking all that data on a very regular basis. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: And I appreciate that, but what raises questions, as we formed the DOR this year and we're saving all this money this year, next year its budget is probably going to be a little bigger, the year after that a little bigger. And I'm starting to get concerned that every time we form a department, three years, four years down the road, we have no check and balance to look back and determine if we are, in fact, still achieving that initial purpose of saving taxpayer dollars. And since OCPM is in that three-, four-year category, I don't know if an external audit at some time is a better idea or what, but I just go back, and I -- I'm not sure we're still doing what we intended to do. And that's the reason for the question. MR. CONRECODE: The budget -- the budget was reduced -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: It's only eighteen months old. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Is it 18 months? MR. CONRECODE: The budget was reduced from the -- from the original split organization. It was reduced again when we went through the budget cycle last year. And I expect that it will be reduced again this year as a result of the process we're going through because we're -- we're trying to be as efficient as we can. MR. FINN: Could I respond just briefly? I'm the liaison to the productivity committee, and that is one of the items they have on their -- their brainstorming list is to evaluate the outcome of the OCPM reorganization and see if it has been effective, whether it's met its goals or not. So that may be an alternative for you. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: What a coincidence. That's great. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. One thing I -- I think, too, the OCPM is essentially an engineering company. MR. CONRECODE: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And Lord knows there are lots of engineering companies around the nation, and they put out journals and -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I personally don't know of any but -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: They talk about productivity, efficiencies, and -- and effectiveness and so forth like that. And I'm sure that somewhere there must be numbers of what the -- what the average engineering firm in this country looks like as far as what its billing rates are, what the productivity is, the percentage of billable hours versus non-billable hours, and all of that stuff. There must be somewhere because, you know, I know accounting firms bill their time like you do and we have those numbers. I'd like to see a comparison of your department against an average engineering firm, maybe not even an average engineering firm but an engineering firm that designs on the same scale in dollars, X numbers of millions of dollars of your projects, how that efficiency and productivity and effectiveness compares. MR. CONRECODE: Okay. I will tell that you we constantly shop that ourselves. We're doing some work right now comparing private sector services during County Road 951 project against our own services, what it's going to cost us in-house. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I understand. MR. CONRECODE: And we're sitting down and looking at every one of those. But I'd be happy to do that. MR. DORRILL: I don't know how easy it would be to do it on a national indices. I think at least the initial -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, there must be even a Florida Association of Engineers. MR. DORRILL: Or local because otherwise we're still contracting this out to, you know, local or regional engineering companies, the one exception being some of the specialty things that we said that we would never try and staff up to do. We just awarded a $30,000 contract for some structural engineering for the cracks at the south county water treatment plant in Golden Gate. I think if we take those things out -- but if we're just looking at civil engineering or project administration services and secretarial support and Cat operator support, I think that we can do a real good analysis of that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah, and -- and -- and I -- Neil, I don't think you have to do it even on a local level because these percentages are percentages. And -- and a percent is a percent, and they don't vary. And -- and I know most engineering firms are looking these days like -- like law firms and accounting firms to recover in their fees approximately three times the pay rate in order to meet their overhead and their -- their profit. There's even some law firms that are closer to four times now. But, you know, these numbers exist, and they all exhibit -- MR. CONRECODE: And I can get them through -- MR. DORRILL: As a percentage of total billings? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Uh-huh. MR. DORRILL: Okay. I didn't understand your first point. MR. CONRECODE: And I can get those through the Florida Institute of Consulting Engineers. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Right. MR. CONRECODE: That data is available. There's a couple things, though, I'll tell you right now before you even look at the data. There is -- a bias from our perspective is that we don't have an overhead charge for rent, and we don't have an overhead charge for profit. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I understand. MR. CONRECODE: And those are going to be -- those are going to be different. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So I would -- I would expect then your percentages -- MR. CONRECODE: To be lower. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- to be different and to be better -- MR. CONRECODE: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- because you're not having to influence your bill rates by overhead. MR. CONRECODE: That's correct. Our multiplier is lower. It's closer to two. Theirs is closer to three. But I think it reflects those two factors. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: But -- but still you have X numbers of people on staff producing X numbers of billable hours -- MR. CONRECODE: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- and so forth down the line. MR. CONRECODE: And our average productivity right now is about 75 percent. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'm trying to get our steak dinner. MR. CONRECODE: I thought they would have -- somebody would have bought somebody a steak dinner already. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We haven't gotten our steak dinner yet. No, there's -- there's been nothing that said that this has -- that this has been totally efficient so -- and I believe that's what it was on. MR. DORRILL: We won that bet six months ago. MR. CONRECODE: Yeah, I sent you a report last July I thought would -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I know. We were supposed to get it last summer, and we didn't. MR. CONRECODE: I asked Bill Barton if I could get a steak dinner out of it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Let's talk -- MR. DORRILL: I'll make a note. Number 7, call Bill about T-bones. MR. CONRECODE: But we'd be happy to do that in June, or would you like it separately, that sort of an analysis? Line item reviews or -- MR. DORRILL: Sure. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'd like it at least with line items so we're looking at what's going on with the dollars. MR. DORRILL: We can do that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: How do we want to rank these things? None of this is absolutely mandated, is it? MR. DORRILL: No. MR. CONRECODE: (Mr. Conrecode shook head.) COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I think you probably just answered your own question. They're all Ds. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Only to the extent that it's in the growth management plan. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, yeah. MR. CONRECODE: You could hire that out if you want to. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think the -- well, we could hire it out. We have to pay for it. MR. DORRILL: The initial function is -- is essential, and then the balance from my perception is discretionary. Somebody's got to do it whether we do it or we contract it out. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: E, D, D. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: E, D, D I would suggest. (Commissioner Hac'Kie entered the proceedings.) COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Are you guys ready for the break? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Are you ready for E, D, D? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. E, D, D. Does that finish OCPH? MR. CONRECODE: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Let's take a break for -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Perfect timing. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Great timing. Great timing, Commissioner Hac'Kie. Let's take a break and reconvene at quarter of. Thank you. (A short break was held.) CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Let's reconvene the budget workshop for March 16, 1995. Next on the list is the department of revenue. MR. DORRILL: Department of revenue functions the board has reviewed several occasions. Recently they're in really three areas. The main one is the core function on page 8. That is subject to change as a result of our proposal to allow our constitutional officers to bid on solid waste and special assessments billings. But this one otherwise includes the solid waste and special assessment functions. Our pre-bid meeting is -- MR. YONKOSKY: Next Wednesday. MR. DORRILL: three weeks ago? MR. YONKOSKY: MR. DORRILL: MR. YONKOSKY: MR. DORRILL: And the specifications were mailed out Yes. And we are anticipating bids on -- Hay 1. So -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So you'll be closing the bids Hay 17 MR. DORRILL: This will resolve itself one way or the other before you see the line item budgets. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. So we don't really need to go into too much depth today I guess. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: No, this is pretty much what we saw, isn't it, a couple weeks ago? MR. DORRILL: You probably got a E, D, D, E only because of the necessity of the -- of the function, the other two being discretionary. And John and Mary Jo are here if you've got any particular questions. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I don't have any problem with doing E, D, D even at this point as long as we're fairly in line with what we talked about a couple weeks ago and we're waiting for the bids to finish up. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: What I like, I like the -- the base. I like the personnel in there. I like the total dollars, and I think maybe we should run everything out of the base level of service. Can we do that? MR. DORRILL: I thought that you would. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We could even make the base level mandatory, couldn't we? MR. DORRILL: Yeah. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. I presume we've got agreement on E, D, and D. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: There's three of us here, and two of us are saying E, D, and D, so that's what it is. MR. DORRILL: We're on to page 15. This is the same as last year for the executive office of the county manager. There are no changes here. Base level is mandatory under the current statutes. Then the minimal level of service for program 2 for day-to-day operations and coordination with the county commission and the public I would have to say is absolutely essential. I believe that's what it was last year. The final program is very important. I'd have to say equally it's essential. I don't know how you could say that, you know, the entire board agenda preparation and distribution process to the public is discretionary. I -- I pretty much see that as an essential activity. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Mr. Dorrill, will you isolate for us on your chart the three people that make up the base level? MR. DORRILL: That would include -- let me find the right page number. My understanding -- and I didn't -- I didn't actually prepare this, but base level would include myself, the executive secretary, and I don't know Ed -- Ed's gone. I don't know whether that's the assistant county manager or the assistant to the county manager. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: But the -- the five people that are making up the total department are the two secretaries, yourself -- MR. DORRILL: One assistant county manager, one assistant to the county manager, Ms. Edwards, and two secretaries. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Two secretaries, okay. MR. DORRILL: Which is one position less than it was three years ago, two positions less. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: If we were to suggest that -- that you trim your budget by 10 percent, would you be able to do that and still maintain the current services? MR. DORRILL: Hypothetically? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Hypothetically, of course, like it was hypothetically yesterday. MR. DORRILL: Probably not 10 percent. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: If we wanted you to take $50,000 out of your budget, where would you do it? MR. DORRILL: Well, we'd probably do it through a combination of areas involving professional and development, and we would probably have to reevaluate the process that we use to prepare the board's agenda, that being the last program -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Could you -- could you do it more efficiently but still be as effective as -- as what you're doing now? MR. DORRILL: Not to 10 percent. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Not to the tune of 10 percent. MR. DORRILL: I don't believe so, not -- not without some wholesale changes to the current agenda preparation and distribution process, that -- that being the major other program function that is there is the weekly grind that it takes to get that advertised, printed, compiled, and then distributed to the public and the board and civic groups and that type of thing. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: What if we were to say we'd like to you take a real hard look at that distribution and agenda preparation package? You've indicated there may be room there to make it as efficient -- or I'm sorry, as effective as it is right now but maybe less cost. MR. DORRILL: One of the things that we had talked about was making it electronic. And one of the things that we had contemplated as part of -- you may have recently seen some correspondence about the phase 2 enhancements to the boardroom? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Uh-huh. MR. DORRILL: Would be to make the agenda electronic through the electronic -- having all electronic executive summaries and that we would have a paperless agenda. So I guess my answer would be yes, and there's some real intriguing sort of things that you could do to make the agenda process paperless. We would have to have terminals available and accessible for people that would want to read or access our all-in-one systems. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Why not put that on the Free Net? MR. DORRILL: I'm sure that you could. I don't know how difficult it would be logistically because you don't have the ability to incorporate the back-up material. You can scan that. We have a scanner mechanism here as part of our all-in-one system. I just don't honestly know enough about how that would work and the cost attendant to that. But the answer to your question is if you ask me to zero in on that -- the hundred thousand dollar cost to produce the paper agenda every week, the answer to that is yes, there are some alternatives. We can discuss those preliminarily, and they would be to have an electronic agenda process. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I -- I like the concept of -- of an electronic agenda and get rid of all this paper. And -- and if we were to investigate this -- and, I mean, the Free Net is going to access the public records in the clerk's office. It would seem to me that we ought to be able to electronically move our agenda each week over -- over to the Free Net and make it publicly accessible. MR. DORRILL: We already do for all of the executive summaries. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And the -- and the terminals that you're talking about, they're in the libraries right now. MR. DORRILL: Or would -- or could be available here or in the clerk's office. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So I mean, the -- the access to the public is there. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Are you suggesting that -- that even us here on the board won't have our paper packets? MR. DORRILL: I'm saying that's -- that could be a very real alternative or possibility. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, I'm not sure I'm ready for that. How are we going to scribble and make notes and everything on a terminal? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's easy. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: It's easy. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's easy. It's very easy, I promise. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: From a more practical standpoint, I mean, I read if I'm a passenger in a car. I read on an airplane. I read any number of places. And unless I go spend $2,000 and have one of Pam's computers, I don't have the ability to do that. I don't necessarily sit in my office -- MR. DORRILL: I understand. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- or a particular location to read this agenda. I read it in bed on Sunday night. I don't have a computer in my bed either. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I do. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I have one of them too. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's a sad, sad -- COMHISSIONER NORRIS: The other thing is -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The difference is, though -- I'm sorry. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: The other thing is that my relationship to the Information Superhighway is that I feel like I'm a rest stop with no facilities. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We can all learn. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I'm just kidding. MR. DORRILL: That is the quote of the day. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That needs to be in the paper. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The other thing, though, I mean -- I mean, let's not forget that if we -- if -- if we were to move in this direction, each of us has access through our secretaries to the all-in-one system. And if -- if we individually would want the agenda printed out, certainly it can be done. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I thought you were going to say Chris could read the agenda for me. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, maybe she could if you -- if you wanted her and she had the time to do that. But I mean, the -- the thing is that if you have a preference, youwre going to be traveling over the weekend or what have you and you donwt have access to a computer for what youwre doing, that particular weekend you print the thing out and you take it with you. COMMISSIONER MACIKIE: Hey, guys, it sounds like for the savings that the county could buy laptops for the commissioners. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I guess the other worry is my part I think of people -- and I apologize if anyone assumes this is discriminatory, but I think of like my dad who is intimidated. Hels seventy -- turns 74 years old in a couple of months. Hels intimidated by the thought of a computer. And do we, in effect, cut off the access, convenient access for those people? MR. DORRILL: That is a real concern. It is one that can be solved. But when we went to the -- the automated -- whatls -- whatls the name of the process to -- to list and catalog library books? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Dewey Decimal. MR. DORRILL: The Dewey Decimal system mechanism -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I feel like Iim on jeopardy. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Answer in the form of a question, please. MR. DORRILL: When we eliminated the card racks and our patrons came into the library and were confronted with terminals, there is a real learning curve thatls associated with that because of what Mr. Constantine said is -- COMMISSIONER MACIKIE: They dealt with it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: But they dealt with it, and they learned it. MR. DORRILL: I said you can work your way through it, but there is a real process that you -- COMMISSIONER MACIKIE: Gotta catch up. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And again, stretching it but combining my two comments, though, do they necessarily want to review that at the library or at some specific location where a terminal is provided for them? People in TAG take these things home and pour over them over the weekends. And are we making it less convenient for people to look at our agenda each week? MR. DORRILL: The question came up about the cost, the -- the hundred thousand dollars to -- to print the number of sets that -- that we current -- currently print and whether or not we had explored any electronic type of -- of preparation to reduce the overall cost. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Another interesting way that you can handle this for those people who have computers at home but may not be associated -- well, I mean, the idea also is to put it on the -- on the Free Net, but I mean for -- we can also talk about for -- for less than 25 cents a week putting the agenda on a diskette and -- and -- in a -- in a standard ASCII format and carry it home. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: What percentage of people have personal computers in this county -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: A lot. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- versus what percentage of people can read in this county? And I suspect that you have -- probably 5 or 10 percent have personal computers in their home. And I suspect that probably 95 percent can read in their home. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I bet the computers in the home are closer to 50 percent. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm going to doubt that. You look at all the retirement condos, all the retirement homes. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Look at my home. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Look at my home as well. I -- I just -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, I have three. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Well, sounds like you have one, the other two go to Commissioners Constantine and I, and this problem is solved. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: But any -- anyway, I think it's -- it's -- it's an intriguing component. MR. DORRILL: If you want to see some information on that, we -- we could certainly show you. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And it -- and it may be a phase-out situation where for a while we do both. MR. DORRILL: I don't know how many sets we send to the printer now, but if you -- if you want to see if we didn't do anything other than require the staff to electronically access the agenda, how much of that hundred thousand dollars could be reduced by not having to print those sets. Some of this is also the cost to advertise the agenda, and we have an annual debate about should we incur the expense in the classified section of the Sunday paper to pay as a -- at a classified rate the agenda. And it has come up each of the last three or four years, and we talk about it. But I think the public service to be able to read your agenda in the Sunday paper is -- is the other main expense there. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Commissioner Norris? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: What would be wrong with making the agenda packets available on disk at no charge but if somebody wanted a printed-out, hard copy they would be expected to pay the -- the cost involved for printing one out? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: There you go. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That's a good one. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: What would be wrong with that? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: There you go. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: And that way -- and also as you -- if you'll remember that we've gone to an abbreviated packet, a summary packet, and a full packet, then they can have their choice of either one of those. MR. DORRILL: I had a discussion with TAG on Tuesday. They had just received their invoice or notice of what next year's agenda subscription costs are going to be. And I said, why don't you consider doing executive summaries only and then if you want back-up on any item, you come to my office and you read it and/or get a copy of it. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Uh-huh. Well, it seems that we could do -- you know, we could phase into the process and still save a lot of money without just going one day we're -- we're all print and the next day we're all electronic. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Oh, yeah. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I mean, that's -- that's too severe. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I don't think it would be -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: And like Commissioner Constantine said is you're going to have a -- some culture shock with our older people, and we -- you know, we don't have to make it that severe of a change-over, and we can do it piece at a time. MR. DORRILL: I guess I would suggest to you at the level -- COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Do you feel insulted? MR. DORRILL: M, E, E or M, E, D, the last program question, the one where you're asking us to at least explore some of these alternatives. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: MED. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: MED? M, E, D? COMHISSIONER NORRIS: MED. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Let me just -- one -- one other little comment is it's environmentally correct because of the trees that don't die. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, the most important thing in my mind is that it is available to any member of the public conveniently who wants it. And as long as we can make sure that happens, then I don't care what way it's done. MR. DORRILL: I understand. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I would -- yeah, and I would suggest that if we find a way to put it on the Free Net when it becomes available, it will become even more available to -- to more people. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: My question is if I buy a laptop, how much can I write off at the end of the year? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'll send you a bill and tell you later. MR. DORRILL: Page 20. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Page 20 is the office of management and budget. There's an organization chart of the budget office on page 19. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Excuse me, Mr. Smykowski. Don't you have to sit out here for this? MR. SMYKOWSKI: I'd be happy to change chairs if you'd like. I'm not sure it's necessary. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Neil didn't have to change chairs so -- MR. SMYKOWSKI: That's true. I'm following his lead. There are no proposed enhancements to the budget -- to the budget office in FY '96. There are five programs. The base level, again, it just is mandated in that Florida Statute through Chapter 129 requires -- outlines the development of the annual budget process. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So you're saying 1 is -- 1 is mandatory. MR. SMYKOWSKI: That is correct. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Solves that one. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Two is the enhanced budget preparation and control. In this part one of the things you get is more of a full-blown presentation of both program and line item budgets, comprehensive budget documents in conjunction meeting the standards of the Government Finance Officers' Association, disclosure of full departmental -- departmental detail, review of executive summaries prior to their being placed on the board agenda so that the information you're receiving and acting upon is -- is indeed accurate, monitoring revenues and expenses, for instance, the quarterly revenue report, et cetera. I would consider that an essential function of this office. Third program is the administration of the quality improvement program within Collier County government. The fourth is special projects in management analysis. Typically and -- although with program budgets the -- what was an in-between or off -- off-season cycle has shrunk considerably due to, you know, the timing of this which began with distribution of paperwork to the departments in January. But typically these things involve user fee analyses, consideration of privatization options, departmental process studies. Recent examples, Mr. Finn assisted capital projects in developing a data base billing system over the past year. There was the comprehensive three-year analysis of ad valorem tax supported funds that was provided to the board this year. We obviously look each year in enhancing the -- the budget process, the budget module in terms of what the capabilities of the system are in an effort to enhance that for the operating departments. Finally the fifth program is research, public information committee staff support. OHB staff is responsible for providing support services to the Citizens' Productivity Committee, the Privatization Plus Task Force, the Tourist Development Council. I sit as a non-voting member on the finance committee. In addition, we receive a myriad number of various research tasks from either -- from the board office, the county manager, outside citizens' groups, members of the public, and from other state -- state and/or county agencies looking for survey information, et cetera. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: On your organization chart, do you have any -- any vacancies on your chart? MR. SHYKOWSKI: Yes, the budget management director is -- I am serving in an acting capacity. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: He's on loan, though; right? MR. DORRILL: Correct. MR. SHYKOWSKI: That is correct, and that's -- that's kind of been in a holding pattern. Obviously we've gone through some -- initially it was supposed to be short term. Then the utilities authority decision came up. In addition, now we're evaluating the privatization. And so the decision to hire an administrator has been -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Delayed. MR. SHYKOWSKI: -- on and off. At this point it is on hold, I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Dotrill. And a RECAP position is currently vacant as well. That's been more a function of -- we've had some turnover on the staff. The point at which budget office was relocated prior to our current facilities, we had no room to put anyone. And in the meantime, one of the full-time analyst positions as well as the budget technician position became vacant. And those being full-time positions, I focused on filling them in addition to obviously trying to develop the program budget packages for the board minus two out of four and a half FTEs. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Wait a minute now. You have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven positions approved in the current budget. And you've done all this work missing three of them? MR. SHYKOWSKI: The bulk of it. We've used temporary clericals due to the lack of a budget technician. Yes, the RECAP position has remained unfilled just because I haven't had time to complete the interviews in that regard. I focused obviously on filling the two full-time positions initially. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Which -- which position on here is the RECAP position? MR. SHYKOWSKI: There are -- the part-time budget analyst in the bottom right-hand corner. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Uh-huh. MR. SMYKOWSKI: It lists two positions. Miss Gansel works part time, and in addition there was a part-time position that was approved as of 10-1. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And that's a RECAP position? MR. SHYKOWSKI: Yes. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Approved 10-1 and never been filled? MR. SHYKOWSKI: That is correct. It was approved as of 10-1. At 10-1 we were in 400 square feet with 6 people and -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah, you couldn't fill it. I understand. MR. SHYKOWSKI: I could not fill it. And in the meantime, two of my full-time staff members, one received a promotion in the clerk's office. One, the budget technician, moved on to capital projects, so obviously I focused on filling the full time. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So you're also miss -- missing a budget analyst as well? MR. SHYKOWSKI: Part time. One of the RECAPs and the director. I have been wearing 2 hats for 13 months now and -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I guess, you know -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Not collecting two salaries, though. MR. SHYKOWSKI: No, I am not. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I guess, Mike, what's coming to -- coming to my mind -- and I don't know what the board is thinking in their minds obviously -- but you've -- you have put all this package together, and you've done a fine job, and you're short three people. You've done, you know -- I have to begin to question. MR. SHYKOWSKI: And I can tell you it was very demanding, and my staff routinely works during the week till seven o'clock, and I work most weekends. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That's where we need an -- MR. DORRILL: Here again, you need to take into account -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- explanation. MR. DORRILL: -- the -- the longer term comp. time hit that is going to accrue because you've got some positions where we are obligated to pay people for comp. time that has been accrued. In other instances, you get people in the management perspective who are not eligible for overtime who are stretched real thin here and in addition, trying to cover the productivity committee liaison, the privatization task force liaison functions, and it's going to be tough on them. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I understand. I'm just -- I'm just wondering if he's short three people how much comp. time has accrued in the process of doing what's been done? MR. SHYKOWSKI: I can tell you in the last three or four years I have not even counted any comp. time because I'm near the vacation maximum, and I can't -- can't take both. And I can also tell you in the past year I have not taken a vacation because -- because of work load demands, and we have managed to get -- we have managed to slide by, but we are treading water. MR. DORRILL: The short-term vacancy thing has been impacted since the holidays. So I -- I'm not necessarily concerned about the vacancy issue there. And I think the overall production out of this department is very good and -- and meets all of my expectations and I think yours as well. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I think they do too. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Commissioner Constantine. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: First I -- I want to compliment Hike. You've -- you've stepped up to the plate in kind of an awkward position and done a great job. In defense of the vacant positions, I am frequently in here after hours and on weekends. And I had a joke with Hike this past year asking if he lived here, if we were collecting rent for him for living here because he is always here. You're here nights. You're here weekends, and it didn't matter what time of day or night I was here. He was here, and often some of his people were here. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think that's the -- that's the point that's trying to be made is -- is with the vacancies they've prepared an excellent package, a better package than I feel we've seen in the past. I'm questioning what the -- what the comp. time and what the effectiveness will be over the long run because you can't continue to work at this pace. MR. DORRILL: We're not intending to, and that's why he's moving -- he's all -- in fact, this week filled the budget technician, the secretarial position that is there. That new person is -- is in that position just this week. MR. SHYKOWSKI: And that has made a difference already just in terms of copying, et cetera. MR. DORRILL: He has just two weeks ago replaced the budget analyst position who left us to go to work for the clerk in a promotion. So he's got that position resolved. And now that they've got larger office space, he can and is moving forward with Captain Dave's assistance to fill that RECAP part-time budget analyst position, and then he'll be back up to his -- his full staff contention. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. MR. DORRILL: My suggestion would be H, E, and a host of Ds. But those are very important Ds from my perspective. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I would like to discuss number 3, the quality improvement program. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Sure. Hiss Kocses is here. She is the quality improvement coordinator. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Have a seat. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: During my campaign I had quite a few county employees talk to me about what they felt was an absolute waste of their staff time in a lot of Q plus meetings that went nowhere where they were talking at that time about light bulbs and other things. I like the ideas where you encourage people in departments as they see necessary improvements to come forward with those improvements and a recognition system for that. But I question a $64,000 expenditure for the balance of -- of the benefit that we receive. I think it's -- it's incumbent upon any employee of -- of county staff when they see a better way to make a widget to bring it to the attention of their supervisor. And I'm not trying to remove all incentive for doing that. But again, I'm looking at a sixty -- almost a $65,000 line item for that particular program. And again, in today's climate, I have to question that. MR. DORRILL: I would -- I'll give you some introductory remarks. Ms. Kocses can help me and then answer questions. I -- I guess I come down on the other side of that. I think in today's market failure to have some type of total quality management program is just you're headed in the wrong direction. I will tell you that we run a comprehensive total quality management program with only one employee and with really zero secretarial support other than what she can beg off of the budget office to keep training and team consistency involved for several hundred employees who participate. There have been some real good success stories. There have been some -- some waste of time for those committee meetings. But I can tell you that -- and I can't recall what the dollar savings to the county commission was. The -- the team that selected the -- the light bulb project ultimately saved this county thousands and thousands of dollars in inventory, duplication and replacement, and the lighting bill. And we have proposed to make some changes so that the process is easier and quicker. The original concept that we used here was one that had been employed from Dimming who's one of the great thinkers of total quality management. And we bought a program that was developed through Florida Power and Light Corporation that was a multi-step program. But we were learning, and we didn't know anything about it, so we bought a subscription-type training program from a subsidiary of FP&L. We no longer subscribe to their training mechanism in order to save cost. Miss Kocses does all of our training in-house now. And we are looking to go to a little higher level of total quality management that is not so time intensive at the committee meeting process because on the other side of your concerns are concerns on the part of our old line department directors that this is a waste of time because they -- they don't really want the employees meeting to think of better ways to do their job or solving problems. There's a lot of reluctance in old line department thought or concepts that I want them to do what I tell them to do when I tell them to do it. And, you know, we don't necessarily want them meeting to -- to problem solve or problem identify ways of doing things better. So I'm -- I'm -- I'm sort of fighting either sides of that. I'm -- I'm still out there trying to cheerlead the program and tell the department directors that in 1995 you've got to empower these people at the very lowest levels of the organization, and you've got to train them and give them some techniques that they can apply. But at the same time, we need to move away from the FP&L model because it is a very time-intensive seven-step process. COHHISSIONER HANCOCK: Well, Neil, that characterization of the old line may be very well true, but that's not in any way the people that I talk to. And again, I'm expressing concerns that were expressed to me from employees of the county. These are people involved in the Q plus program. So if the rest of the board doesn't have any concerns in this, I'll just leave it at a D, and -- and -- and we'll move ahead. But again, it's one of those -- in essence, I know there are some savings there, but it's -- it's got a lot of the warm fuzzies attached to it. MR. DORRILL: That -- that may be one of your red flag sort of things then that you ought to see comprehensively what -- what the process has accomplished in terms of dollar savings and/or process improvements. And -- and we can show you some committee projects that just went wrong too. I mean, we -- we really stumbled in a couple of instances along the way. And we ought to show those as well. MS. KOCSES: Excuse me. As a general note, we've had teams work for a year on a project and even the team itself has said, you know, we worked a year on this. We said, now, wait a minute. You met for an hour each week for 52 weeks. That's 52 hours. Had we been able to pull these employees off their jobs and say, go to this room for one week, you could have solved that problem in a week. So this is a team over a long period of time that's meeting for an hour a week, so I think it's a perception problem sometimes for the employees themselves. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'm -- I'm a believer in employee empowerment because it's -- it's the people who do the actual work that really know the best way to do it. And -- and just because the boss says, do this, do that, or do the other thing, if the employee isn't thinking about better ways to do it and merely reacts to the boss saying, do this job, they'll do the job whatever way the boss wants it done and never -- and never begin to mention that there's a better way to do it. I think one of the examples I've shared with -- with Neil in the past is what I call the golden rake story of the guy who's trying to rake an acre full of leaves off the grass with a rake that's only got three tongs on it. And his excuse for using it is that's what they gave me to do the job with, so that's what I'll do the job, even though it's not the most efficient way to do it. Had he been empowered, he would go back to his boss and say, this rake is broken. Give me a better rake. But he wasn't -- was not empowered. And, therefore, he didn't do it. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Wasn't in the union contract. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Wasn't in the union contract. MS. KOCSES: We need to start them off right in new employee orientation. I have a Q plus segment on that, and that is, you know, you're -- you're new employees. You've been told this is where you sit, this is what you do. And we're getting all ready to think who is my customer here and what it is -- is there a better way I can do it instead of this is the way it's always been done. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The -- the one thing that I've looked at, though -- though, with the Q plus -- and -- and -- and I guess this is -- this is based on what the next level of training that Neil is talking about is -- is that the committees that I've looked at, the training teams, are all hierarchical lined up along the department levels. And there's very little interdepartment exchange except at the coordinator level which are pretty much department heads. And I'm -- I'm questioning when do -- when do the secretaries or the office workers from all the different departments form a committee and start exchanging interdepartment information? MR. DORRILL: Not -- not as -- to as great as an extent as what our -- what we'd call our sort of functional teams, that then we have crossfunctional teams. And in the -- and in the last year we -- we haven't had very many of those. But we go, and we pick people from different divisions. And one -- one of the projects or processes that we used was to improve for only customer efficiency trying to find a place to park and then find -- trying to find your way to the building where you need to go. We appointed a line level employee crossfunctional team from each division in county government that came back with the proposed new maps and the locational directions and -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The color coding? MR. DORRILL: -- the signs to park like as you come in, we now have directional signs that say courts parking here, administration parking, all others straight ahead. That's an example of a crossfunctional team. Now, did we save any money there? We didn't save any hard money. But did we improve a customer service process through that? But your observation is correct. We don't have nearly as many crossfunctional or special assignment teams as we do line level department teams. MS. KOCSES: A key note is also we learned from experience you get a bunch of people with different interests together in a room, and they spend a lot of time, well, what should we work on? I'll work on this. No, let's work on that. And so now we're assembling our crossfunctional teams. When we know of something that they need to work on like a computer issue or a customer service issue, then we handpick the people and say, here, go to it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. MS. KOCSES: So we've really strengthened our crossfunctional teams in the process. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Commissioner Norris. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I have to say that I've -- I've heard some of the same criticisms about the Q plus program that Commissioner Hancock mentioned. And I -- I wonder if it would be possible to bring back to us for our June session an analysis of -- of what you feel you have accomplished with the program. I'd like to see that. And the other question I have is -- probably the most dramatic turnaround in quality in American history at least has been the Ford Motor Company which was the dog of the world in the seventies and has turned around to be the highest quality American car for years now. We do have a -- we do have a Ford test track out here. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Do you own Ford stock? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: No, I don't. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: It's too expensive now. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: But they instituted a -- a program from the ground up where they did exactly what Commissioner MAtthews was talking about. They got all their information from the employees and built it into their processes and turned their company around completely. I don't know if we ever contacted them. MS. KOCSES: Not here. We've got a lot of literature that we've shared with teams and managers about Ford and several other organizations and then -- MR. DORRILL: We -- we have contacted The Ritz-Carlton Corporation because two years ago they won the MAlcolm Baldridge Award. And we have participated in their training program at The Ritz-Carlton here because The Ritz-Carlton Naples was the test location that they used to apply for the MAlcolm Baldridge Award when they won two years ago? MS. KOCSES: Last year. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We almost had a board member that was involved in that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Hmm? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Hmm? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Oh, well. See what happens, Fay? You get a computer in here, and they don't even pay attention. MR. DORRILL: So we're -- we're at H, E, D, D, D. But you want to receive some wholesale information on our quality improvement process. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That's about the size of it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That's about the size of it. MR. DORRILL: My suggestion might even be that we do that if we've got another board workshop -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We have one in Hay. MR. DORRILL: I don't think sharing with you that information during a regular county commission agenda's appropriate. But you might want to spend some time looking at that at a workshop but before June. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The workshop we're having at the end of -- end of Hay, last Tuesday in Hay, is -- looks like it's going to be primarily dedicated to growth management. If -- if we have a half hour, 45 minutes maybe at the end of that period that we might be able to do this -- MR. DORRILL: I'll look at that. I'm just saying that it might be better to do it there as opposed to a regular board meeting item. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Thank you. MR. DORRILL: All right? MR. SHYKOWSKI: That moves us to the county attorney on page 29. MR. DORRILL: I have -- I did not plan -- I've got another meeting that I need to run to, but I need to make sure -- you're going to look at your office budget, Mr. Cuyler, and then we'll be back here after lunch to look at community development. MR. SHYKOWSKI: The BCC was actually scheduled this afternoon, but I'm sure we can -- Hiss Filson could probably -- MR. DORRILL: Just because I've got some people waiting for me. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Neil, did you want to focus on tomorrow at all? MR. DORRILL: I'll mention that. I want to also have this afternoon a discussion about how you want to discuss the -- sort of the open public forum and what other arrangements you may want to make for tomorrow's session. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The open forum tomorrow? MR. DORRILL: Is scheduled, but I need a little direction as to how you want to accommodate that, and I also want to have a discussion so that I know what you're intending for wrap-up items. And we've got a little discussion we'll have with you after lunch concerning that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. MR. DORRILL: How we're going to format all of your wrap-up discretionary items and the ones specifically that you want to highlight to see cost alternatives for you when you receive the line item budgets, and we'll discuss that after lunch if that's okay with you. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Sounds fine. We'll talk about it after lunch because I'm not sure that we really thought about how we want to -- want to do wrap-up yet except that we have a lot of discretionary items. And I don't know that we're really going to be able to narrow it down. MR. DORRILL: I agree. And I've brainstormed this in advance with Mike. We've been keeping a electronic list of anything that you ranked discretionary. And I do want to spend some time tomorrow with you going through that list so that those items that you want to see specific cost alternatives at line item budget level, that I get all of that from you tomorrow so that we know where you want to see, you know, reduced cost alternatives. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Thank you. Mr. Cuyler, you're next on the agenda? (Hr. Dotrill exited the proceedings.) MR. CUYLER: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I've noted almost immediately that we don't have an organization chart. Do you have one? MS. ALLEN: I can go prep. one off the computer. MR. CUYLER: We -- we can get one for you real quick. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Our -- our questions for all departments at this point is based on your organization chart what vacancies do you have and how long have they been -- MR. CUYLER: I do have that information. And the organizational chart is basically chief assistant and then the attorneys and then legal secretaries and certified legal assistants. With regard to the vacancies, we have no attorney vacancies. We have no certified legal assistant vacancies. We have had a legal secretary vacancy since the middle of January that we've been interviewing for and are nearing the end of that process. We've been using a temporary. And we've just had another resignation that we're going to have to fill as well. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Secretary? MR. CUYLER: Secretarial. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Are they leaving -- are they leaving government completely or -- MR. CUYLER: One went into the private sector to become a legal assistant for a private attorney. And the other one has indicated to me she's leaving town. I'm not sure what she's going to be doing. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Any other questions regarding the vacancies? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I was just going to ask, last year you replaced -- you did not replace one of the attorneys. You replaced that with a legal assistant. And I was wondering how that worked out. MR. CUYLER: Correct. It has worked out all right. It's worked out -- it's worked out okay. We put that legal assistant primarily focused into the litigation section that we've tried to boost up and emphasize, and that has worked out very well. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Any other attorneys we can replace with legal assistants at this point? MR. CUYLER: We got rid of Rich so that's -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I thought Rich was a legal assistant. No? MR. CUYLER: Let me make, if you're through with the vacancy -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yes. MR. CUYLER: -- the -- let me indicate a couple things. First of all, my net increase to general revenue over the last three budget years has been very low, extremely low. I'm not sure what the numbers are going to be this year. You see that I've got an additional position down there for staff support that's basically going to be copying, filing, secretarial back-up, and that type of thing. I have been convinced to date that that will increase our productivity, but I haven't seen our numbers yet. And if I have to ask for more money, I'm not sure that that's where I want to be asking for it at. So that's not set with me. I know that you make the final decision as to whether that needs to be there or not. But I may even pull that depending on what my numbers are because I'm not sure what they are at this point. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Your -- your office runs similarly to a -- a law firm, I presume, that you get requests for services and then you bill the time to the various departments based on that service? MR. CUYLER: We keep time. We have never actually gotten into the billing of the departments because we are all general revenue. We don't really bill to outside. We have -- you'll see part of the budget when it's finalized. We do have the same administrative costs that are in -- they're not really in our budget, but there's an administrative charge to all the departments for certain functions. Mike can probably explain that better. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Right. There's an indirect service charge plan that allocates general fund costs to the non-general fund users, i.e., utilities, community development. So they are paying a pro rata share, but they are not being billed directly. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: But if -- if like utilities, if we -- well, let's -- let's go through what just happened with -- with solid waste and this -- this contract negotiation. I would presume that our solid waste department which is an enterprise fund used considerably more of the attorneys' time in the last eight or nine months than their general pro rata share or whatever they were billed in general. I guess I'm a little bit concerned that you're not billing especially enterprise funds back for the time that they actually consume. MR. CUYLER: We were billing utilities, for example, as an enterprise fund. And budget -- in general discussions, but part of them were with budget. And it was decide -- and I always kind of liked that, frankly, because that's a decrease to our -- you know, to our appropriation which results in a lower net cost to the general revenues which makes my budget look better. But we were doing that at one time and because of the indirect service charge -- and you're correct. It fluctuates. Some times -- some years we'll put a lot into solid waste. Some years we'll put less but usually still a lot. But the contract has cost a great deal of time. We're capable of doing that. We're capable of billing. I have the appropriate attorneys keeping time and the necessary legal assistants keeping time. I mean, we're capable of doing that, but we've -- we've never implemented it. It's just been a general discussion. If you want me to talk to budget again about perhaps doing that -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: How much more time would it entail on your department and your department's time to actually bill for the legal services given because it seems to me that two years ago we were talking about development services using a lot of legal time and -- and that development services was using that time and there was a -- a lot of developers in the community -- boy, what a twist of words -- who -- who felt that the legal department was being involved in different PUD agreements and so forth unnecessarily. MR. CUYLER: Right. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And -- and that had you been doing direct billing that these various departments who request for legal services might look at that a little closer if they really don't need the service. MR. CUYLER: And probably we would have been pushed into doing that as a result of that type of situation, but that has cured itself or has been cured. As a matter of fact, one of the two attorneys we had that focused on development services is the one that we replaced with -- with the legal assistant. So -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But even the legal assistant's time should be billed especially in a -- in a feed driven -- you know, in a self-supporting department, whatever those are called, so that the general revenues aren't paying for the legal services provided to developers on the development services department. MR. CUYLER: And again, we do keep time. We are prepared -- we've got a -- a system on the computer to bill out. We've just never taken that step -- COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: I think we should. MR. CUYLER: -- to see whether -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Commissioner Norris, you -- MR. SMYKOWSKI: Well, there is a two -- the indirect cost allocation plan generates in the '95 budget 2.7 million dollars. And I can tell you that utilities bears the largest brunt of that, and community development probably comes in a close second in terms of who are the biggest contributors in that regard. And when you start backing out only a few people out of the cost pool, it -- it kind of muddies up the water. MR. CUYLER: That's the discussion we've had with budget is how do we want to handle it. And I kind of pushed for the direct billing early on, and I was convinced that perhaps maybe it would be better not to bill directly and to have the indirect service charge, although I will tell you that the one current exception to that is -- MR. SMYKOWSKI: Risk. MR. CUYLER: -- that -- pardon me? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Well, risk management. MR. CUYLER: Is risk management, and that is because we have taken up so -- taken over so much of the litigation that would have been going out through an insurance program because our -- even if you have attorneys on the outside handling it, we've got a $50,000 deductible. So the county's still out for the first 50,000. We have taken those cases in-house. And risk management understands that that program is probably spending one dollar now for every three or four or five dollars it spent before. So they are contributing to the -- the litigation section. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I understand. MR. SMYKOWSKI: And that's approximately $60,000. That was a change instituted last year. Mr. Walker I can tell you is very happy with the arrangement. Through the county attorney's office we've taken a much more aggressive stance on pursuing worker's comp. claims and resolving them through Mr. Bryant and his efforts and Mr. Walker also. It's a significant savings to him to pay the county attorney's office directly than he was previously incurring probably triple the cost in terms of hiring outside counsel to do that. And we've also taken a much more aggressive stance. And there's continuity with whom we're working with, et cetera, so I think it's -- it's been a win-win for both the county attorney's office. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Fine. Commissioner Norris. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Sorry. MR. CUYLER: We like him to talk about the county attorney's office. He can take as much time as he wants. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, I -- I think I'm going to make a majority here from what I've heard this morning, but I -- I think we should start doing this immediately. I don't -- I don't necessarily mean that you should put your rates to the point where you're going to make a profit in your -- your department. But there's no reason in the world why the general ad valorem taxpayer should be paying for your office to review somebody's PUD, a localized or a fezone or anything which is very localized and -- and -- and only affects a very few people. That should come through development services. MR. CUYLER: I think Hike will tell you that from his perspective they don't because development services pays part of this indirect charge. We get credited for part of this indirect charge, or the general revenues get credited for part of the indirect charge. And then our appropriation is from the general revenue. I certainly don't mind looking at that. You may want Hike or one of Hike's people and I to sit down to -- to give you some figures. But I don't mind doing that. MR. SHYKOWSKI: We can take a look at how much of the indirect service charge is applicable to the county attorney's office to see how much the general fund is recouping before we put Mr. Cuyler in a position of implementing a wholesale billing system that, you know, he's already looking for additional support staff without the -- without the addition of a monthly billing system or a quarterly billing system to all users. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Commissioner Norris, are you finished? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: No, I got interrupted by several people. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I thought you did. I thought you did. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I just -- I want to make sure that we are charging the appropriate amount to enterprise funds and fee-based funds such as development services so that we -- we are not supporting the county attorney's strictly through general ad valorem tax money when it's for specific purposes like that. And it should be paid through these enterprise funds because I'm looking here at a budget of a million three. And I didn't -- you know, there's too much of this work that's being done that doesn't benefit the general taxpayer, so I think we should reinstitute that or institute it initially or whatever we have to do to -- I think you said you were doing some of that before in the past. MR. CUYLER: We were billing utilities. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: And once again, I don't think we need to bill them to the point where you're going to make a profit in your -- MR. CUYLER: Only if we have to. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: -- office, but the appropriate amount I think is what we need to focus on. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Just to give you an idea, utilities in the FY '95 adopted budget, of the 2.7 million coming from the indirect cost plan, utilities' contribution is almost $700,000 of that amount for general fund services provided to the utilities division. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That sounds like a lot of money. But suppose they're using $900,000 worth of services. We don't know that. And -- and if -- if we're contemplating a privatization of the utilities and the contract gets as convoluted and complicated as the solid waste contract, they may very well use two million dollars worth of services by themselves. Commissioner Hancock, you had some questions. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: What Commissioner Norris has said goes back to something that -- that I deal on the productivity committee, and that was we recognized both in development services and applies completely to the county attorney's office also that we had no reasonable accountability of how much time is being spent where and whether those costs are being recouped adequately through impact fees, adequately through billing the appropriate departments and so forth. I know we're talking about the county attorney's office right now, so I'll limit it to that. The bottom line is that there should be different rate codes for the work that the county attorney's office is doing. One rate code is for development services-related activities. And the cost of providing that person, that day, that hour should go to development services, and it should be recouped in the application and review fees that are charged there. And just like in development services, we don't know how -- how much it really takes for a planner to work on a PUD. We don't know how much it takes for an engineer to review it because we don't have the accountability there. I want the accountability set up so that when Miss Dooten (phonetic) is -- because everything that goes to development services, plats, PUDS, they all have to go through the county attorney's office before they show up to this board. Those costs must be recouped in the application fees at development services. So we have to have a -- if you will, a billing system or an accountability system that designates the time frames used in those different areas so that we can adequately cover them in the application fees. And we'll deal with it with the county attorney now, but as we get to development -- development services, I'm going to propose the exact same thing so we can make sure the general fund revenues are not paying for the specific reviews but are being used to keep the doors open and the seats warm but not for the actual work that the people are doing. So in this case I want to see an accountability system set up, and I want to see the appropriate departments charged for the cost of the employee. I'm not talking about bump it up to competitive rate for the outside. I'm simply talking about the cost of the employee and their benefits package. I -- I strongly feel that needs to be done. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: As well as your -- your in -- in-house services as -- as to the market value of the electricity and so forth that you're using to operate the office. So obviously you've got some overhead charge that you can factor to the salary rate. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Well, I actually don't -- don't necessarily agree with that because even if not -- sheet 1 comes into the county attorney's office, we have an obligation to have a county attorney up there. We have to staff it. We have to have the air conditioner on. We have to have the lights on. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah, but he'd have smaller offices if he didn't have as many attorneys. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: True. We're probably splitting hairs there. My point is that that may be almost too cumbersome, but I think we need to at least account for the time. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Just a moment. Commissioner Constantine was next. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Cuyler, did you say you already had this information but you do not do the billing? MR. CUYLER: The majority of our attorneys keep their time. If you go into a billing system, we're going to have to refine it, but we've got a jump on it if that's -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Where I'm going with that, are we going to end up having someone spending 20 hours a week compiling this information and in the long run end up spending more money? And I just want to make sure -- I don't think we're gonna, but I want to hear that as part of this process. MR. CUYLER: I would like the opportunity -- and apparently Commissioner Hac'Kie has something she's burning to say but -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I have an answer. MR. CUYLER: But there is a cost to that, and the attorneys will tell you there's a certain cost to keeping time. Now, you can bill your time keeping in the private sector out to your clients, and you can also do that with -- with what we're doing. But also if you -- you know, if you stay here till ten o'clock at night, you can bill that out to the client, too. And we can do that, but ultimately we're not going to get paid for that. You know, we all put in extra hours but -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: My point just being I understand and I think it's a well-intentioned idea, but I don't want us to end up spending an extra $30,000 a year to try to implement it. MR. CUYLER: I think what -- what I'm hearing from the board is -- leads me to believe that I need to at least put the figures together and give them to you and let you take a look at them before I actually jump into it. And then you can assess some of Hike's considerations, some of my considerations, and then your considerations and make a decision. I'll do whatever you want to do. But we do have a jump on it if that's the way we're going to go. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Just a second. Commissioner Hac'Kie. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I feel strongly that -- that the county attorney's office -- first of all, you guys know this better than me. But -- but there's not a county manager in charge of the county attorney's office. There -- there is no administration. Ken has to be an administrator and a lawyer, and those are not a natural mix. They don't go well together. They don't. MR. CUYLER: She's right. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Lawyers are not good administrators, and it's not about Ken. We are bad at -- business people. We're bad at running offices, but thank God -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: How are you at running counties? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We're great at running counties. But there are -- there's -- there's software out there that's just so, so, so blessed easy. Time Slips is a program. All you have to do is just -- every soul, everybody, including the staff, including the paralegals in the -- in the county attorney's office needs to account for their day. They need to account for every minute they spend from when they get there till when they leave. And then that time needs to be billed toward those enterprise funds. This is -- this is a big, big, big issue when we've got a million three in the county attorney's budget. MR. CUYLER: We, in fact -- so you'll know, Commissioner Hac'Kie, since we don't have PCs, we couldn't use the normal software. We, in fact, went to the HIS people and said, would you come please do us a program and here's what we'd like in it. We actually formulated our own and had it put on the all-in-one so -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: So it's there. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The information's there. MR. CUYLER: It's there, but I think it could be better. If we're going to go -- I don't know whether you've gotten to that point in your budget -- and this is far beyond me -- but if we go to the PCs, I mean, there are very good programs out there that you can get the software for. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And -- and -- and it's just -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I've got a couple of them myself. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We need to not even think about doing this any other way. It's the only way that we can do this. I don't care about this cost sharing and all that. I mean, that's a separate question from the time. They ought to also pay their share of the air conditioning bill, and they ought to also pay their share just like in the private sector. I feel real strongly that -- that the departments ought to be billed and that since we are the only overseers, we're the only managers of the attorney's office, we ought to have the reports that tell us -- we ought to know where the county attorney's lawyers are spending their time. We need to get that report. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It appears we all agree. Can we move on -- give him his direction and move on to the next one? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. I have another point to make, so I can move on past that one. But the other point I have to make is about the organizational chart. This to me is a -- is a report of how people are paid, you know. If you're an assistant county attorney 1, 2, 3, or 4 or if you're -- I mean, this is a payroll chart. This tells us what payroll levels people are at. But -- but we need some organization in the county attorney's office by legal specialties areas. I know we have -- David Bryant is the litigator. Who works with him? I want to see a flow chart that says, here's David. He does the litigation. Here are the paralegals that work with him. Here's the secretary that works with him. Here's -- here's Harjorie. She does development services or whatever else she does. Here's who works with her. A real organizational chart for office. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Based on function. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Based on function. I'd like to see that. MR. CUYLER: Sure, we can do that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Uh-huh. Okay. That's a good idea too. I like that. Any other discussion on -- I guess we're talking base level still. Mr. Cuyler, the base level in your budget, is that mandated, or is -- could we assume that that's essential? MR. CUYLER: I consider the base level mandated. You've got some statutes that -- some of this is nebulous. I mean, the second part of it is to represent and defend the Board of County Commissioners in litigation cases. I mean, you can go outside. So in that sense, it's not mandated. But in terms of cost effectiveness, we are the attorneys. If you get sued, we handle the case, and we have a mandated responsibility to handle the cases. So in my opinion, yes, the base level's mandated. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I think 2 of the 6 is mandated and 4 is essential. I mean -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I think they're all essential. There is no law that mandates that we do that. Like he said, we could go outside. We wouldn't, but they're all essential. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, we'd have -- whether we go outside or whether we stay inside, it's still mandated. MR. SMYKOWSKI: It's still mandated. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Excuse me. Isn't your office established by ordinance? MR. CUYLER: Our reviews are establish by ordinance, and the county attorney's position is established by ordinance, I believe. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Mr. Cuyler, on page 30 -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: If you're established by ordinance, then it's mandated. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Page 30 you've identified some cites from Florida Statutes in terms of providing legal advice to the board and defending the board in litigation cases. MR. CUYLER: We're basically required, as one of the commissioners said, that -- to -- to basically look at -- at -- most everything that the chairman signs is required to be looked at and approved by us as to -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But it could be by outside counsel. MR. CUYLER: It could be by outside counsel. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So it's essential. MR. CUYLER: But once we're in, we have an ethical obligation obviously to keep up a certain standard. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We were going to fund it, but it's essential so why don't -- I mean -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I would like, though, to look at item 5. I mean, if -- are we saying 1 through 4 -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm only saying 1 is essential. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Oh, okay. I can -- I can agree to essential. I -- I for one think it might be mandatory, but that's -- that's okay. The ordinances, resolutions, and legally binding documents, item 2, is that your review of those, or is that the preparation of them? MR. CUYLER: Staff rank 27 CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. MR. CUYLER: That would be both. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Both the review and the -- MR. CUYLER: Yeah, that would be both. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: If you're going to write them, we need you to review them. MR. CUYLER: We prepare a certain amount -- right. We prepare a certain amount of the ordinances and -- a good percentage of the ordinances and resolutions. Other times it's prepared by staff and sent to us. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So whether we do them in-house or do them out of house, they still have to be done. me. MR. CUYLER: Correct. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COHHISSIONER MAC'KIE: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Essential? Works for me. Essential? Uh-huh. Same with number 3 for CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Three, BCC and specific quasi-judicial and advisory board meetings, I see that as essential too. MR. CUYLER: Yeah. Let me mention just one quick thing about that. There is some -- we currently answer to or advise the Code Enforcement Board itself and the Contractors' Licensing Board. That may switch over to us representing staff in those proceedings, and those boards may have to get other attorneys. But we've -- that's on the way. You'll -- you'll hear more about that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Do we see that as essential? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Sure. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. Item 4, meet, coordinate with, and resolve legal issues raised by the public, constitutional officers, and so forth. Do we bill constitutional officers when they use your services? MR. CUYLER: We don't, and we handle the constitutional officers on basically an informal basis. They understand they may have a conflict with the Board of County Commissioners. Our dealings with them are primarily on Board of County Commissioners, constitutional officer liaison and problems as opposed to we don't represent Guy Carlton if he's got a -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: He's got his own. MR. CUYLER: -- pure tax collector problem. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So when you're working with the constitutional officers, are you in the attorney's office advocating for the Board of County Commissioners at that point? MR. CUYLER: Either advocating or trying to resolve a problem. But yes, we represent you in all of those instances. And they understand if a conflict comes up that they've got to go elsewhere. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I think that's a discretionary. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: It may be except for the advocating BCC, and we don't know how much of that exists because we don't have these time sheets. Do we have agreement, though, that it may be discretionary? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That's fine. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Sure. This next item, Mr. Cuyler, we had talked about last year, and we talked about during the current year lowering the number of hours you spend with the various advisory boards. MR. CUYLER: Yeah. Let me make a couple comments about that. First of all, you'll notice under the staff rank 5 that that is only a handful of the advisory boards that you have. That's probably the top 7 or 8 in terms of our time anyway. We have -- we have reduced our attendance at one advisory board -- or rather we've eliminated our attendance at one advisory board. Planning commission's probably out of the question. Tourist Development Council's probably out of the question. The remainder of those boards -- the airport authority's probably out of the question. The remainder of those boards -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Code enforcement's probably out of the question because they're doing quasi-judicial -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I thought they were -- MR. CUYLER: The Code Enforcement Board was the previous one. That's why we listed that under a separate category because that's quasi-judicial, and we can't not go to that one. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thank you. MR. CUYLER: The remainder of those boards, as far as I'm concerned, are discretionary, at your discretion. If you want to eliminate the board's or eliminate our attendance, either one, then that's fine. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, I just remember last year seeing a note from the then chairman of EPTAB requesting that a county attorney's rep. be present at every one of their meetings. And that seems like overkill. If they have a particular need, they should be contacting you but -- MR. CUYLER: Okay. We have been attending their meetings, but we can pull back off that. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I would say pull that. I don't think EPTAB needs a county attorney at every meeting. That's ridiculous. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, I think we need to know which -- which meetings county attorney is regularly attending and decide -- MR. CUYLER: The ones we are regularly attending are listed in the paragraph at the top. Now, we do handle items for the other boards from time to time. But primarily the time consumers are the planning commission, TDC. Hispanic Advisory Board, Mr. Manalich is both the staff liaison as well as counsel. We prepare the minutes. We send out all the notices. And that's a very time-consuming enterprise. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Why are we using an attorney to do that? MR. CUYLER: Because that was the board's direction in the past. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: It's not my -- again, HAAB and BAAB-- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Is there another logical department that could fill that? MR. CUYLER: Any other logical department would be fine with me. But I think Mr. Hanalich knew some of the organizers. He had just come on board, just moved to town. And I think he knew some of the people. And one of the members said, I think the county attorney's office -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That's an expensive resource. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah, that -- there may be a better way to -- to handle that one. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: One thing, I think HAAB meets at night, though, and he's probably not -- I assume we're not paying him extra for coming in at seven o'clock to meet with them. MR. CUYLER: No, but he is going to the meetings. We're not paying him, but he's going to the meetings. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Right. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: My point is, that's like -- I mean, if he went to his own civic meeting at 7 p.m., if he goes or not at 7 p.m., it's not costing us another penny. COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: But the appropriation -- COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Or are you billing -- you're -- you're counting that off. You're billing that off. MR. CUYLER: It's not an extra cost to the county. It's just time that an attorney uses. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: My question is if -- you know, code enforcement meets at 9 a.m., so between 9 and 12, I would expect you to figure the billing there. But at 7 p.m. when he sits, my question is, is it appropriate to be billing that? MR. CUYLER: If it's a private attorney, the answer's yes, it would be appropriate. Now, we're not actually -- yeah, yeah. He may -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Maybe between now and June we can get a list of which other boards -- it says here "and various others," so we can see which boards use it, how much, and try to give you some direction then. MR. CUYLER: I can do that. The other advisory boards are basically upon request, but I can get you a cleaner look at that if you want. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That's why we need those time records. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. I think 5 should be definitely a D. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Uh-huh. D here. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Now we're down to 6, the enhanced staff support. I'd like to see some justification as to how you feel it's going to make your office more efficient. MR. CUYLER: Again, if you will give me the opportunity to look at my numbers and if I don't feel that at that point that that's worth the money to me and to you, I'm not even going to propose it. It's only at this point because I think the concept is good. I'm not sure the money is -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'm going to be looking at efficiency and how another FTE is going to make you more efficient. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Speaking of efficiency, here we are at the end of this program and look at the time. Isn't this efficiency in action? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We -- we -- we planned it this way. We planned it this way. Is there more, Mr. Cuyler? MR. CUYLER: No, ma'am, that is it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So item 6 is at best a D, a D minus, a D flag, how ever it is we're doing it? MR. CUYLER: I will make special note of that. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think that concludes the morning. We're going to adjourn for lunch, and we'll be back -- MR. SHYKOWSKI: We're scheduled for one o'clock. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: One o'clock. (A lunch break was held.) CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Ready? Let's reconvene the Board of Commissioners budget workshop for March 16th, 1995. I'd like to -- to caution the people who are here this afternoon. The court reporter is having difficulty in tracking all the conversations because we're having the tendency to talk above one another, and we've got two, three conversations going on at one time. I'd like to, in all due respect to the court reporter and keeping accurate records, that we limit our conversations to waiting until somebody has finished before we start. Thank you. Mr. Dotrill. MR. DORRILL: Preliminarily what I said that I wanted to do was talk about tomorrow's public comment and wrap-up session. And Mr. Smykowski has kept a list of all the discretionary items. There may be a hundred at this point. What I'm anticipating in the morning is that you would receive public comment on any of the items that you have had thus far. I don't know a good way of gauging how long that would take, but I don't know that we're going to have a lot of public comment thus far. I could be wrong on that. And I was going to suggest that the balance of time be spent reviewing the list that Hike has compiled, but quickly, just so that you can give us some semblance which of the discretionary items that you did want specific cost alternatives prepared for rather than us trying to go back and re-debate the merits or have the staff make presentations because I think seriously there probably are a list of a hundred things that are discretionary. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Hopefully Mr. Smykowski has made and I assume you've made notes. Some of those were said discretionary but we don't have any intent to fit in. And others we've said we're not happy with them. MR. DORRILL: And my point being, I think that we could run through that whole list honestly in maybe 15 to 30 minutes, and then the board would -- would be free to go after that after you've received public comment. And then we'll be about our work trying to prepare the line item budgets. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I have a comment. You have this afternoon from 3:30 to four o'clock reserved for wrap-up. Are we still going to take that wrap-up time, or are we going to do that tomorrow? MR. DORRILL: I'd say we'd be better spent tomorrow since we've got to be here anyway. I don't know that we've got any true wrap-up time -- items other than to get you all to review these lists that we have. In fact, we may even make copies of those available this afternoon before you go home so that you can take them home and familiarize yourself with them. Did we keep them by division or by fund? MR. SHYKOWSKI: By division. MR. DORRILL: Okay. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think that's a good idea if we could have a list. When we go home then we could refresh ourselves on what we're talking about. MR. DORRILL: We'll do that. MR. SHYKOWSKI: We are to the point it's updated but for the things that have yet to be heard this afternoon. And as soon as we complete that, we'll endeavor to get that done for you. MR. DORRILL: Then are we scheduled to be here at nine tomorrow? MR. SHYKOWSKI: Yes, nine to twelve was the scheduled time. As for the wrap-up today, that was really just in case we had any things that spilled over, et cetera, so it was just available in case we needed it more so than anything. MR. DORRILL: Okay. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Hove on to community development services. Mr. Clark. MR. CLARK: Good afternoon, Commissioners. For the record, Dick Clark, acting administrator. We'd like to start off this afternoon session with the housing and urban improvement, and Greg will lead off with that. MR. MIHALIC: Good afternoon, Commissioners. I hope you're all in a good mood this afternoon. I must thank my colleagues for putting me up here first. I certainly appreciate that. But we've basically set up the budget within the department. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Can I interrupt? MR. MIHALIC: Yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And, Mr. Clark, if you'll ask each of your people when they start out their presentations, the question we're asking first off is about vacancies and how long have they been vacant in the department that you're in. Do you have any vacancies? MR. MIHALIC: No, no, Commissioners. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: All positions are filled? MR. MIHALIC: All positions are filled. My positions have been filled from persons that were available from the reorganization within the community development division, and both positions are filled. I have presently staffing of four positions. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay, thank you. MR. MIHALIC: And for the record I'm Greg Mihalic, director of the department. Our budget -- we tried to set it up, indeed, telling you what the base level budget is, even though we -- we do have a four-person department. In looking at what is actually mandated under the growth management plan and -- and 9-J-5 and chapter 163 of the Florida statutes, we believe we can meet those minimum service level standards with 1.5 persons within the department. If you move to that area you will not have SHIP funding. You will not have community development block grants. You will not have any economic development activities. But, indeed, none of those are mandated that we accept or have. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So your staff ranking number one you consider mandated -- MR. HIHALIC: Yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- under the administrative code and the Florida Statutes? MR. HIHALIC: Florida Statutes, and that's one and a half persons. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. So staff ranking number one is mandated. Number two? MR. HIHALIC: Staff ranking number two is the affordable housing commission and the citizens' advisory task force. Basically these are commissions, one that deals with affordable housing, and the other that deals with community block grants. If we wish to continue to receive those type of funding, we will have to maintain advisory commissions as well as the staffing of those advisory commissions. We basically say that's a half a person's time involved in those activities. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: You have a half a person involved in that, and dollars associated to that is $36,000. I presume that entails other than personnel costs? MR. HIHALIC: Yes. That's between several other bills, minimum bills. That's primarily secretarial costs, administrative costs. We're estimating part of my salary as well as a portion of the fixed costs that go into that for the operation of the department. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. MR. MIHALIC: Number three is the affordable housing programs, and that's primarily the SHIP affordable housing programs. Right now we receive $340,000 a year under that program. We have been informed by the state that as of this June that will increase to $1,035,000 a year in SHIP funding. So I -- I set up as staff ranked number three our existing one person who basically is handling the SHIP program and other housing programs. But it also should be related to number five, which is really an expanded -- a second person who is going to be necessary to run the SHIP programs when we receive the additional monies that the state is telling us we will receive starting as of July 1st. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Just a moment. Commissioner Hancock, you have a question. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Mr. Mihalic, I think I understand on staff ranking two. But particularly on three, four, on down the list, would you please let me know as to the funding source of each one such as number three, $51,800. Is that fully ad valorem? MR. MIHALIC: No. Let me say that my functions -- because of the interlocal agreement we have with the City of Naples, are funded under the county-wide general fund, fund 001. And the first two activities that I mentioned staff ranked number one and two are funded under fund 001, county-wide general fund. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. MR. MIHALIC: Staff ranked number three, the affordable housing program will be -- would be administratively handled totally within the administrative SHIP funds we have. We have 10 percent of the SHIP funds available for administrative functions, so it would be approximately $103,000 available. With our next year's allocation for administration, I believe that we will be able to totally administer those funds with the administrative allocation that we can use from that funding. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Are you finished? COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Yes. And if it -- just as we go down each one, you would let me know the funding source on each it would be helpful. MR. MIHALIC: Any other questions about number three? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think Commissioner Constantine has a question. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: On three specifically I was going to ask just in SHIP this year we had how many dollars? MR. MIHALIC: $340,000 were allocated for this year. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And how many different entities did we award that money to? MR. MIHALIC: We really -- we have a cumulative amount, which would be three years of funding that have sort of rolled together, because we essentially took a couple of years to get the program going. We have done about 60 impact fee waivers and deferrals over the history of the program. We have planned to do about 35 rehabitations over the program and about 40 down payment and closing cost assistances over the first three years' funding, if that answers your question. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Did most of that take place this year even though it was funded? More than the three hundred -- MR. MIHALIC: Yes, we have expended -- we probably will estimate expending a little over half a million dollars this year. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: How much will that increase when we have one point -- 1,035,000 or whatever the number was? MR. HIHALIC: Well, other than the lag time with the way that the bill was passed, and we didn't get money until the year after they passed it, they're going to be expecting us to expend a million dollars a year if we're receiving a million dollars a year minus administrative. So we'll be spending about 900,000 a year on activities. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: What I'm wondering, I guess, is a lot of that money has gone toward people who have developed affordable housing projects of some sort. MR. HIHALIC: No, no, none has gone toward that, Commissioner. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Okay. Will they be under the new '- MR. MIHALIC: We are developing a new housing assistance plan. That's the road plan of how we're going to spend the SHIP money over the next three years. It will be coming to you in probably about three weeks. I -- I expect to allocate the maximum amount possible for impact fee waivers or deferrals for very low income rental units. So I expect allocating approximately $235,000 a year for that particular strategy so that some of the money will be going toward that in the next three year -- I have to let the first three-year plan stand alone and the second three-year plan stand alone. So I have to run similar but not identical programs out of each of those funding sources. The other -- we'll have four or five different strategies in this new housing assistance plan. Some will be ownership impact fee waivers and deferrals. Some will be rehabilitation, and some will be down payment and closing cost assistance. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thank you. MR. MIHALIC: I expect to do about 150 units, functions, assistances a year with the SHIP money, although we really have to look at what -- how much inducement is necessary in each of the programs. But we expect to do approximately $5,000 in inducement in each of the affordable housing activities we do per unit. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Are there any further questions? Do you want to continue on? MR. MIHALIC: Let me go to staff rank number four, which is community development block grant funds. Collier County is not an entitlement county. We do not have a population of 200,000 yet, so we have to compete for the community development block grant funds through the State Department of Community Affairs. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: One more year. MR. MIHALIC: We have a difficult time competing at times because we are such a wealthy community, so we have to find projects that are in very poor areas of the county to be able to get enough points to get grants awarded to us. We presently have about $900,000 in two different grants awarded to us that were just completed. If things went in the best way possible, you should be able to get a grant one year, complete it in one year, and then be able to apply the next year for additional grants. It's really taken us much longer than that to be able to apply for the grants, get them, and close out the grants. We anticipate being able to close out the Copeland water/sewer treatment improvement this year by this summer. The emergency assistance grants that we had for hurricanes will be closed out. We are going to ship most of that money over to finish Copeland. So that means in the next funding cycle we will be able to apply for another $750,000 in community development block grants. This is generally used for neighborhood revitalization, commercial revitalization, or housing issues or -- that's generally what -- what we have to do, but we have to pick out poor areas that are desperately needed in Collier County so that we can have a reasonable anticipation of receiving a grant when we apply for it from the state. It's not mandated. We don't have to apply for the grants. We, again, are eligible for up to $750,000 a year in CVG funds through the department of community affairs. The legislature is talking about making many entitlements to smaller counties like Collier County. I've seen the numbers that are out right now that says if that happens, Collier County would receive an entitlement of 1.6 million dollars directly instead of having to compete through the state. I don't broach that issue here because the legislature hasn't acted on that, so -- but if it does, it will make life much easier because now we don't have to prepare these forms. We don't have to know whether we get the money or not get the money, and it will be much more likely that we do receive funding directly from the state so -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: If the legislature were to pass that, this $65,000 or a big chunk of it anyway, would disappear just because we wouldn't have all the paperwork? MR. HIHALIC: Well, then I would have the confidence that we're going to get the money, and I would then have 8 or 10 percent of that to be used for administration instead of -- I feel comfortable telling you we're going to apply for a grant. If we get the grant, we're going to have $50,000 of administrative costs that we can write off against that grant. But I feel uncomfortable telling you I'm getting that 50,000 until I get the grant. So I try not to do that because I don't feel comfortable. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So you're trying to tell us the worst case? MR. HIHALIC: I try to tell you the worst case scenario, and if we get a grant and we get $50,000 toward the admission, that's better. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: This is what it's going to cost to go after the grant -- MR. HIHALIC: Yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- assuming that we don't get any grants? MR. HIHALIC: With no assurance that we will get a grant. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. On the items two through four we've ranked item one as mandatory. How are we seeing two, three, and four? I see them as -- myself I see them as essential, though, I know that they probably fall into the discretionary area. But remembering our affordable housing programs is funded primarily with the 10 percent administrative fees from the SHIP funds, I don't see any need to revisit it. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'd like to make them all essential. I don't see any reason to revisit. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I just need something clarified, and I apologize, I missed Monday. But did we say everything that's discretionary we're definitely going to revisit and consider cutting? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Pretty much we're going to revisit it. I mean we're going to talk about it. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Okay. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: It doesn't mean we're going to cut it but -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I don't see this as essential, but I'm not going to argue it. I don't think we need to come back on most of it. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: COHMISSIONER NORRIS: want to see it back. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I'd agree with that. I would just flag it that we don't Yeah. two, three, and four are going to be ranked as E. Now, let's move on to five. You're already explained that, and this is expanded SHIP funds as well? MR. HIHALIC: Yes, the management and budget office wanted us to show number five, six, and seven as expanded services even though number five and three are directly tied together. And number five is essentially increased amount of activity within the SHIP fund because of the increased funding we're going to receive. I expect all the administrative costs for that position to be paid for from the administrative component of the SHIP funding. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Why should we look at it again? It's going to fund itself. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Does that anticipate hiring another person? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yes, it does. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yes, with those monies. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I know it's with those money, but it's still taxpayer money. And I'm wondering can we get by without another person, and if so, we can put that money toward the affordable housing or toward the waiver of fees and toward those things. It's not just a matter of getting free money. MR. HIHALIC: Well, it isn't free money. It's money that Collier County taxpayers have paid into their documented tax stamps, a portion of which is coming back to us. If I'm going to do 150 units of impact fee waivers and deferrals or rehabilitation or down payment closing cost assistance, I'm going to need two people to do that function, in my opinion. So I don't think it's possible to do that many units and be able to do it with one person. I don't think so that that's likely to be able to be done. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Perhaps between now and June we could see a breakdown. That's why I asked before how many units you had done with what we had so far. If you could have some of those numbers -- and I'd just like to flag that as discretionary -- MR. HIHALIC: Sure. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- because if there is some way we can get by with less than one or no additional FTs, that money can go toward actual waiver. That's my thought. MR. HIHALIC: If we don't want to do rehabilitation -- if we don't want to have a rehabilitation program, and if we don't want to do the more labor intensive down payment and closing costs with rehab programs that are mandated, we don't have to do those things. We can use the money any way we wish. Then I can cut back on the administration that's required on the SHIP funds. If we want to do those kind of programs, then we will have to have additional persons. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Commissioner Hancock. MR. MIHALIC: That will be reflected in the housing assistance plan that will come to you in about three weeks, and you'll see the programs that we're now proposing for the next three years. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I'll support a D on that. The question I had is if we don't get the grants, you don't anticipate hiring these people. MR. MIHALIC: No. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: In other words, if we approve this and the grants don't come in, I assume you will not proceed in any way with hiring? MR. MIHALIC: Absolutely not, because it -- say that we don't get the million dollars and we get another $340,000, that essentially leaves me with $34,000 for administrative costs. That does not cover my costs in operation right now. However, I would not hire a second person nor expand the administrative costs at all if we don't get additional monies. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: D is fine. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I have one more question on the SHIP funds, and that is if -- if we get these -- if we get the million dollars in and we do not have adequate staff to award all of the grants and so forth, what happens if we accumulate this money and fail to expend it? I don't want to have to give it back. MR. MIHALIC: If we don't use the money within two years of when we receive it, the state will pull it back from us -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We've got two years. MR. HIHALIC: -- and reallocate it to other communities that are more successful. Mr. Clark just mentioned that instead of having staff, we could contract out. And if we did have viable nonprofits, there is a way to contract out part of these services to other groups. If we had housing nonprofits that did rehabilitation within Collier County, we could contract out a rehabilitation portion to a nonprofit outside that could -- that would do that. And that's a possibility too which would cut down our internal staff, although ultimately the county is still responsible for how the money is spent to be sure that it's spent properly and audited properly and administered properly. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. The next item is ranked NR, and it's economic development. Mr. Dotrill, what -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We went through this debate last year on this. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think we did, but let's hear it again. MR. DORRILL: Same issue. The commission has otherwise directed a plan to be developed through the Council of Economic Advisors, and I thought that until such time that we see the plan and the specific recommendations about the role of the county in general, that this particular department should not be headed off trying to develop and add staff positions for economic -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I think that -- that we need to have Greg working with that Council of Economic Advisors. He's such a qualified person. That's what his expertise is. And, frankly, my goal for this department is for it to become the urban improvement department. Take the housing off the top. And let Greg be a liaison with this Council of Economic Advisors. I wish that we could have this -- I think that this ought to at least be discretionary so they could show us how it might -- it might positively affect this whole process. MR. DORRILL: I won't argue against that other than to tell you that prior to this board direction, and, in fact, when we went into the market and we were lucky enough to find Mr. Mihalic, it was to be the, quote, housing czar for Collier County, and the focus was to be housing initiatives and program priorities for first-time owner-occupied housing and incentives related to that. This is otherwise a very small department. He is of invaluable assistance to the EDC, but I'm very judicious in how I let him participate in that unless the board wants to give me some new policy direction, and then we'll chase the other. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Commissioner Hancock. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think it's important to recognize that the Council of Economic Advisors will at some point need a -- need staff assistance in the preparation of an economic plan. I don't think we can ask a volunteer committee to actually prepare an element of our growth management plan. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We have that -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Excuse me. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Just a moment. One at a time, please. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: But I think at this point we're putting in anticipation of in here, and I can't support it. I need to see the structure to see the dollars that go along with it. And this seems anticipation of, and for that reason I -- I would lean toward agreeing with Mr. Dorrill's recommendation. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Commissioner Mac'Kie. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Just that I -- I'd like for us just to leave this item discretionary. I'm not arguing for it today. I'm not saying that I think we have enough information to put this in the budget. I'm just saying that there is enough interest in the community that we should consider broadening the scope of this department from housing czar to urban improvement and that looking at this possibility of a position. All I'm saying is let's get the information. What would be wrong with allowing the information to be -- you know, we're going to talk about less relevant things. I'd like for us to talk about this one. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Commissioner Constantine. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'll disagree that we should find that out, but we have the community's best business leaders who have invested nine months' time into doing exactly that and who are putting together a plan for us, and to now start and do something -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Huh-uh. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- aside from that, we already have some staff liaison for that, and I think maybe we'll find the time will come where we need to do that, but it's premature. I don't disagree with what the end result should be, but to hire a person is premature -- can I finish my comment, please? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I thought you were finished. I'm sorry. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm sorry. I was still in mid-sentence. I didn't think I was finished. I was just going to say I can't face discretionary because I think it's premature at best, so NR. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Mr. Clark, you had something. MR. CLARK: If I might, I have two comments, one -- one being the -- the planning department is now doing an economic plan, and the second is just a general viewpoint. I'm -- I'm a little bit concerned perhaps cautiously, as the county manager has stated, and I'll tell you why. Particularly in these tight budgetary times Mr. Hihalic has a full plate. He has a very full plate. In fact, on the Copeland issue we're way behind on that one, and we're catching some heat. On the rehab program we've got people waiting two years for help. We're way behind on that one. And -- and I'm very concerned from a managerial standpoint to say let's put some more on the plate without additional resources, without -- without specific direction, and that's really my concern. Now, I've seen some of the results of some of these rehab houses where you have little old people, elderly in these houses where the roofs are falling in waiting for us to get to them. We're not completing the programs we have now, which are very, very deserving. I'm not saying obviously that's your -- your -- your role to say what policy should be. I'm just saying I'm very careful from a management standpoint to say, Mr. Hihalic, here is more to do, more to do when we're having a hard time with what we've got. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Commissioner Norris. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Mr. Clark, did I hear you say that our planning department is currently working on a economic element to our growth management plan? MR. CLARK: I'm not sure we're calling it an element, because I don't think that was your direction, economic plan. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Can we get an answer to that, because as I remember board directions are not to pursue that economic element of the growth management plan. MR. CLARK: That's correct. MR. DORRILL: The emphasis is on plan, and Ms. Cacchione and Mr. Yonkosky are currently staff liaison to the Council of Economic Advisors. MR. CLARK: We've been very conscious of that exact point, that an element may not and probably is not from your viewpoint -- and we agree with that -- not the best vehicle by which to -- to drive that, because then it becomes mandatory and subject to state direction. And from that viewpoint we have not been looking at it in that regard. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Commissioner Hac'Kie. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Why -- how -- why is Mr. Hihalic not the staff liaison to the Council of Economic Advisors? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think it's because he has to sleep. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, I'd like to ask the manager why. MR. DORRILL: The manager's original rationale was the -- the current work frame that was housing focused and the fact that Mr. Yonkosky had otherwise just come on to the Board of County Commissioners' payroll to pursue special projects that -- initially with the DOR and then this, and his being the former chief fiscal officer of the county and having a background in finance and economic development in the private sector, he seemed to me to be a logical person to assign, and there was no rationale other than that. COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: I -- the only other -- then I'll quit beating this horse so we can go on, but if, in fact, what this board wants to do is to support what our Council of Economic Advisors is attempting to do at our behest, why don't you want to let them come in -- I believe they are the ones who would make a case for this position to be funded. Why not let them come in and make that case? Why not allow it to be discussed? If they are the ones you're attempting to support, and they're the ones who want this position, why not let them make their case? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: My vote's for not recommended. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Mr. Hihalic, you wanted to say something. MR. HIHALIC: We have another complication here, Commissioners, and that's the enterprise in Immokalee. And we are now preparing a nomination application for a state designated enterprise zone in Immokalee. Along with that is a requirement to have an enterprise zoned development authority as one of the requirements for this -- for being designated an enterprise zone. It's going to take, in my estimation, a quarter to 40 percent of a person's time to implement and market the enterprize zone in Immokalee if that is granted on July 1st by the state. If -- if we don't want to move in this direction, then we shouldn't submit the application for the enterprise zone in Immokalee. And that came up last year in the discussion on this position, and the board knew it was coming. And I was supposed to somehow find a place to do it, and we did have -- we have a contract employee and kept it -- a temporary employee on line while we had the staff member prepare this enterprise zone application. But I think it's important that I know as a department head how you want to proceed on these issues. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's a broad urban improvement approach instead of housing czar, and our community needs a broader approach. MR. DORRILL: And I'm not arguing with the word, Commissioner, that you've said, and I don't doubt Mr. Hihalic's talent for that. I just want the board to understand the clear policy direction that I've had the last two years is housing. And to the extent -- and that's why we created this volunteer Council of Economic Advisors, and unless you all change my direction, that's what you've told me to do. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Clark, you've recommended against this petition, yes or no? MR. CLARK: Yes. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Just hang on. Mr. Dorrill, you have not recommended here? Yes or no? MR. DORRILL: Technically, Mr. Clark recommended it to me as his next-to-the-last priority. I'm the one not recommending it to you because of the policy implication. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Can we poll the board at this time? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Not recommended. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Not recommended. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Not recommend. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, that's three. Sorry, I disagree. I think it should stay in also and that the Economic Advisors Council should be given the opportunity, at least the opportunity, to argue for the position, but we're going to deny them that. MR. CLARK: I'd just like to make an additional comment that's it's been brought to my attention, obviously from a management viewpoint -- it's somewhat obviously considerably less comprehensive than your viewpoint, but the airport director also has a development direction, not only for the Immokalee airport, but for all of Immokalee. So what I'm a little bit concerned about is we have too much duplication taking place at too many -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's why it needs to be under one person. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Can we move on? We have a consensus. Can we move on to the next item? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think it is important to note that as much as we've talked about this, it just to me is backwards. We usually find a need. We tailor a position to it. To establish a position and then tailor the need is backwards, and I don't see it. I don't see the basis here to justify the position and so that -- I just wanted to make it clear why I'm saying not recommended. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We've polled the board, and the board has said NR. And, you know, the majority of the board has said that, so that's what it's going to be. MR. MIHALIC: Number seven, Commissioners, is using a contract employee to rewrite the housing element of the growth management plan. Under the interlocal agreement that we have with the City of Naples we have to develop an urban area housing plan. Our comprehensive plan in the housing area is sadly deficient. It doesn't deal with ownership at all, and that's one of the reasons you brought me on line three years ago. We do have to have that plan totally rewritten, and that's what the $25,000 is for staff ranked number 7 for a contract employee to rewrite the housing element and then to implement some of the requirements of the Immokalee housing plan that you passed last fall. That would be staff ranked number seven. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Will the city be sharing in that at all? MR. MIHALIC: Excuse me? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Will the city be sharing in that expense at all since that's part of the reason why we need to do it? MR. MIHALIC: We -- I have not discussed it with the city, but my funding again comes out of the county-wide general fund, which includes 27 percent funding from the City of Naples property taxpayers under 001, so they do share a portion of it. We are required to do this under the growth management plan, staff ranked number seven, rewrite the housing element. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: So that -- does that make it a mandatory then? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: No? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: What -- what happens if we don't write it? MR. LITSINGER: Stan Litsinger, growth management. Under the 1993 Elms legislation, one of the requirements is that all communities redraft their housing elements based on a new needs assessment be prepared by a state agency for us, which will essentially tell us what we have in the affordable housing area using current criteria and particularly concentrating on very low income criteria. There have been changes to the statute, growth management act relative to required contents of the housing element. And there's also a rule requirement which requires a redrafting and a readoption of a new housing element by January 1st of 1996. I guess '96 which would be the coming fiscal year, '96. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So to answer my question, what happens if we don't do it? MR. LITSINGER: We would be in technical violation. The consequences remain up to the enforcing authority, which the governor and the cabinet and the department of community affairs -- whether they could withhold other grant monies is an issue also. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: to rank this one? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: an E. Okay. Thank you. How do we want E. Two Es. Three Es. Three Es, that does it. It's got MR. MIHALIC: Thank you. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I do have one question, Mr. Mihalic. Item number six, if that position went out and obtained grants, because I know you said 500,000 to a million dollars per year, can any of those grants be used for the administration? MR. MIHALIC: Yes. I expect that out of $65,000 for the position, if we receive an economic development grant, there will be $50,000 available to offset the ad valorem costs of this position. So I think that -- I estimate the out-of-pocket expenditures by the county to be approximately $15,000 if we go out and receive a community development grant for economic development to help a business. Economic development is for job creation. We have to find businesses. We have to apply for grants or loans on their behalf, and we get an administrative cost, administrative fee for the administration of that grant. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I'd like to revisit that myself for the simple reason that when I read that, if most of it can be funded by grant monies that we would anticipate getting, it changes it from sixty-five thousand dollars to -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Fifteen. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: -- fifteen, maybe even less if we can get -- if we can find another source. MR. MIHALIC: Right. We can apply for one grant a year under the economic development programs. That's the maximum we can get, but I don't want to guarantee you that we will find a company that can meet the criteria to get the grants. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We'd have to hire the position before going after the grant? MR. MIHALIC: Yes, we would. I mean you do have to have a person on line. But, again, I think that the board should consider the implications of not applying for the enterprise in Immokalee. That is a tremendous economic development incentive for Immokalee, and to not do that I think will substantially harm the future economic development of Immokalee. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Let me ask something on this. The enterprise designation that the Immokalee airport had expired December 317 MR. MIHALIC: Yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And the application process that you're going through now is to reinstate that enterprize? MR. HIHALIC: It's to reinstate it. But it wasn't just the Immokalee airport. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And expand it. MR. HIHALIC: It's all of Immokalee now. We have 10 square miles designated as the state designated enterprize zone. It's essentially an empowerment process we went through last fall. And it provides job credits. It provides tax credits. It provides corporate rebates for building construction in Immokalee. There's a wide ranging number of incentives that private businesses will take advantage of within the Immokalee community. It also is advantageous to the airport because they get a preferential treatment on airport grants and loans because they're in an enterprise zone. John Drury and I were talking about it yesterday. And he finds the grants that his tenants on the airport industrial park can take advantage of, and they have to create a hundred jobs. But if they're within an enterprize zone, and if they are a recycling facility, those requirements are waived, so there is a resolution passed by the airport authority -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Hold it. One at a time, please. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Clark, didn't you say that Mr. Drury is working on that, though? MR. CLARK: Right. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Not only on the airport but MR. CLARK: Is part of the enterprise zone, which, as Mr. Hihalic -- incorporates Immokalee. MR. HIHALIC: Not to the best of my knowledge. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I want to hear more about this, so I -- my preference is to hear more in June on this particular position focusing on how it can be funded by grant monies to the greatest extent possible. I'm not comfortable just spending 65,000 up front. But if we're spending 15,000, I can see a real benefit. I'm more comfortable. So I want to see more about this. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So we're going to -- so now we have three for D. Commissioner Norris. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Are you changing yours? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I'm going to change mine. If it's NR, I guess we don't see it in June at all? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's right. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, let me ask a question then. Am I to understand that if we deny this position that your office is not going to pursue the -- the enterprise zone for Immokalee? Is that what you're telling us here today? MR. HIHALIC: I need your direction, but, yes, I mean if there's no staffing to do an enterprise development agency, and there's no staffing to implement the enterprize zone, I need your direction about whether you want me go ahead and apply for it. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. Well, the problem that I see here, Mr. Hihalic, is that you have been in the process of applying for this enterprise zone; is that correct? MR. HIHALIC: We have been developing the application, yes, Commissioner Norris. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. But this is a proposed position? MR. HIHALIC: Absolutely, absolutely. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, I'm having a real difficult time understanding how you're doing the work without the position, but yet you're saying to us it's mandatory that have you have to have the position. MR. HIHALIC: Because we have been developing the application since last fall. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Uh-huh. MR. HIHALIC: I carried an extra temporary employee, and we have essentially done it on a contractual basis to develop this application. Now, if we receive the enterprize zone designation, we have to implement the requirements of that, and that's what this position would do -- one of the things this position would do. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It's the implementation of is more complicated than the development of the plan I think is what we're hearing. MR. HIHALIC: Far more, far more complicated. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So do we have three for D? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I wanted to hear more about it. But I will encourage you, Mr. Hihalic, that the reason I would -- I'm changing that is because grant monies can be used to not just subsidize, but hopefully provide for the salary. I'd like for us to go to the greatest extent we can with existing staff in trying to get the enterprise zone. But, again, the only reason I want to revisit this is to find out how it can be funded through the grant monies. That's -- that's it. I'm not looking to spend 65,000 without it being reimbursed or whether a good potential for that happening. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Commissioner Constantine. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm not interested if it's just potential for that happening. Mr. Hihalic, does Mr. Drury work for you? MR. HIHALIC: No, he does not. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Then how would you have any idea whether he's done any work on this or not? I guess when Mr. Clark sits here, who is in a supervisory position above yours, says yes, he knows for a fact Mr. Drury has, I find it odd that Mr. Clark, who I think right now you're working for -- MR. HIHALIC: Yes, I do. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- you sit there and say, well, not to the best of my knowledge. MR. HIHALIC: And I say that, not to the best of my knowledge. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm going to believe if your supervisor tells me yes, that it's probably happening. MR. HIHALIC: Okay. MR. CLARK: Excuse me. I don't think we're necessarily at odds on the issue. I think the amount of involvement -- my -- my point I'd like to make is I think the effort is well worthwhile and certainly would be very productive if, and there's a big if, if we get that. The point is, does it have to be a full-time employee, or can it be contract. So if it's a contract employee or if it's a contract position and we don't get it, we're not laying anybody off. So, in other words, you have that option, if it's a contract employee or full time. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Can I -- can I make this comment? This is March. We're going to look at these numbers again in June. If it's a D, we'll look at these numbers again in June. The enterprize zone designation comes this summer. MR. MIHALIC: We have to make the application within the next month. And if I understand it right, we'll continue to proceed ahead and make that application. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Prior to September, the final judgment hearing, we will know whether this person is really necessary or not. MR. HIHALIC: Yes, we will know whether the enterprize zone has been adopted for Immokalee or not, accepted as an enterprize Zone. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And we can cut the position as late as September if needed? MR. MIHALIC: Yes, Commissioner. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Any further questions? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Further questions? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. Is that the sole purpose of this job is to handle the enterprise fund? MR. MIHALIC: No. I would say that's 25 to 35 percent. The other parts would be to apply for economic development grants to assist businesses to do job creation. I would say that's probably another 35 percent. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Is that what the Council of Economic Advisors has recommended? MR. MIHALIC: I -- I don't know what the Council of Economic Advisors has recommended. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Neither do we. They haven't made any recommendation yet. And the point is it's a little premature to create a position for something that we don't know which way we're headed yet. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Let's just let them make their case. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Do you have any other comments, Mr. Norris? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: My only comment is, once again, same thing that has bothered me, that the grant application has to be in in 30 days, and we're looking at a fiscal position for '96. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's the implementation. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Planning. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I understand. I understand. But, you know, it's -- we're being told here that we have to put this thing in to get the grant application through, otherwise we're not going to get the grant application through. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: To implement the grant -- to implement the program if it is granted if the designation is successful, then we'll need a person to implement the program I think is what we're hearing, which is different from -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Earlier we heard that Mr. Mihalic sat there and said that we're not going to be able to complete our application for the enterprize zone -- MR. HIHALIC: If I said that, I misstated, Commissioner, because I can complete the application. In fact, I went in front of the planning commission today with a completed application and have the recommendation. What I did is I questioned whether you wanted me to proceed with the application. If you don't want to fund the position, that's going to be required to implement the administration of it and set up the enterprise zone development authority. That was what I -- what I had wanted to state anyway, Commissioner. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: My preference on this -- because I anticipate the enterprize zone being granted and, heaven, with the airport development that we're putting a lot of money into, I surely hope that we get it -- I would like to send every signal to whoever it is that grants these zones that we have full intention of doing whatever it is we need to do to implement the plan that we've spent a great deal of time putting together. Now, if we have to later, because we don't get the enterprise zone designation, eliminate the position, then so be it. But for the time being I want every positive signal to whatever federal agency it is that we intend to do it. With that, I would like to see a D on it. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: You think that a federal agency is going to know that we left this in or out of our budget process? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: They -- they only have to get wind that we cut it out. And you'd be surprised how many phone calls get made that something gets cut out, that we're asking them to do something for us, and then somebody makes a phone call to them and says, oh, yeah, they've asked you to do this, but they have no way to implement it because they won't fund the -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: You know, you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. I would be surprised. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: and let's -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Can we just go on? Yeah. I mean I think we have the Ds, We have. I think I need to give one sense of direction. $50,000 to fund the position, I'd like to see the position cost $50,000, Greg. MR. HIHALIC: Okay. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. MR. HIHALIC: Thank you very much, Commissioners. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you. We'll see more about this one in June. MR. HIHALIC: Okay. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you. What's the next page number, Mr. Smykowski? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, Wayne, aren't you glad you didn't go first? MR. ARNOLD: Yes, I am. For the record, Wayne Arnold, planning services director. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: We're just getting warm, Wayne. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. The first question, as always, Mr. Arnold, vacancies and how long have they been vacant. MR. ARNOLD: I have one remaining vacancy from my current budget year that's been vacant since October 1. We have interviewed for the position, but we've yet to fill that position. is a planner two. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You have one vacancy? MR. ARNOLD: That is in long-range planning, yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And it's only been vacant since October you say? MR. ARNOLD: That's correct. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Do you want to talk about your base level? I'll be absolutely unemotional on this. If we can get It MR. ARNOLD: Base level we looked at as those items mandated by state statute which primarily is chapter 163 for us, which mandates growth management plan, as well as you'll find legislation dealing with what we need to do for managing rezoning and land development activity. So essentially our base level is considerably less than what we currently do. We're looking at 31 potential positions for a base level as opposed to the 49 current positions that we do have. And I think it's maybe easier to explain what we don't have included in our budget if we fund base level versus what you do get. What you do get is maintenance of our growth management plan. We do handle rezoning of lands, site development plan activity. We issue certificates of public facilities. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Let me interrupt and say that then based on what you've just said, base level staff ranking number one is mandatory? MR. ARNOLD: That's correct. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Do we agree to put an H on that? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I have one question, funding source for the 1.6 million. Do you have a breakdown of the funding source for that? How much is fee related? MR. ARNOLD: Approximately 600,000 of that is fund 111, which is tax fund. The balance of approximately one million dollars is the enterprise fund, 113. That breaks down to roughly a 60-40 split for us. 60 percent for the planning department is funded from development fees, and approximately 40 percent currently is funded from ad valorem taxes. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I'll let you in on something we got the county attorney's office involved in. And, Mr. Clark, you may remember from the productivity committee report we were bidding on accountability and some type of system in place to -- to make sure that whatever work is being done regarding project specific reviews, that all fees and application fees associated with were validated and so forth. I am going to request that -- that when we look at this in June that we have a plan in place for next fiscal year, a full accountability system so that we can account for the professionals' times over there; the engineers, the planners. We know specifically how much should be funded from general fund and how much should be funded from application fees so that we can make sure that the weight is appropriate. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Mr. Clark. MR. CLARK: If I may address that. Are -- the computer system that you were very helpful with in that regard will have all of that mechanism in place to help us do that. And there's -- from your engineering standpoint, you have far more knowledge than we do. But the methodology, would it be appropriate to say that we have the methodology in place to do that by then. In other words, we have some plan to do that, because to computerize that between now and then with the computer we have simply isn't capable of doing it. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think so. I just -- when we were discussing about the county attorney's department, there was some surprise up there that all of our county departments weren't functioning in a time accountability situation. And we're trying to determine application fees and so forth based on amount of review time, yet we don't have that specific review time nailed down. we're still playing the guessing game, and we need to end that. whatever stance we can take to pursue that in the most aggressive and least costly manner possible is what I would like to see done. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Mr. Arnold. MR. ARNOLD: If I might add, the Development Services Advisory Committee has also, as well as the county manager -- I believe it's on his work program -- has asked us to look at a fee cost analysis for development services. And I know that the Development Services Advisory Committee is very interested in looking at the fee structure. We gave them quite a substantial savings last year in their budget, and they're certainly asking if you have reduced costs, then maybe we can also have reduced fees, so we are looking very closely at that. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: mandatory? COMHISSIONER NORRIS: COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Okay. So we agree base level is Yes. That's fine with me. Let's look at option one. MR. ARNOLD: Option one begins to add back and adds nine and a half full-time equivalent positions, and with that we would end up with continuing graphic support. We would continue to do things like our annual update report for certification of private facilities. We're currently involved with giving staff support to five advisory boards from our department. We produce several publications that while not mandated by the state, are certainly information that's useful for the public, primarily things like our commercial industrial land use study and updates to that, a demographic profile, population projections, things of that nature that we believe are quite critical. Things in this that still will not be performed at the level one option are things like the special assistance to certain Immokalee programs, like the Immokalee housing study implementations and further implementation of those. We're currently involved in an economic plan as we previously discussed with Mr. Mihalic. We're in the data collection phase of that. That we indicated last year would probably be a two-year development phase currently getting data, then looking at implementation strategies. That is not included in our level one as well, nor is continuation of our research and work toward a MArco Island master plan. Those are things that are -- were essentially added as expanded services last year, and some of those with contractual dollars but, nonetheless, full-time equivalent monies. We also would not be performing right of way permitting functions that we're currently doing, which I think brought in about $158,000 to our department last year just because of the volume of those right of way permits, somewhere around twenty-five hundred right of way permits that we issued in conjunction with building permits or as well as people coming in for driveway improvements, et cetera. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you. Do we have a recommendation for ranking these? Well, I'm going to suggest that based on the growth that we've undergone and the amount of planning that needs to be done, I'd like to see both of these pretty much ranked essential because I truly believe that it's imperative that we continue at least to have Collier County progress the way it has gone and not lose any ground in controlling the growth. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Essential is fine with me. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: As well. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Mr. Arnold, does that finish your department? MR. ARNOLD: Yes. Unless you have some other questions. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think we're done. We'll -- we'll probably want to take a little better look at the dollars in June. MR. ARNOLD: Certainly. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Thank you. Next is building plans review, is that correct, 24? MR. SMITH: Good afternoon. Page 26. For the record my name is Bill Smith. I'm the director of permitting and plans in the inspection department. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. Vacancies and how long? MR. SMITH: I had two posted vacancies, approximately three, four weeks. One of the vacancies was a reclassification. It's been about a month and a half. That has been reclassified, and we have put in for the person to be hired. The other position we are still interviewing right now. We've had an employee who has resigned who is going back to Lee County. So it's about three, four weeks. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. But -- so you don't have any actual vacancies at this point? MR. SMITH: No, ma'am. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: All positions are filled. Excuse me, Commissioner Hancock. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Little name tags on here. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Mr. Smith, the funding for all the positions both existing and requesting. MR. SMITH: Sir, the funding comes out of 113. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: So it's paid for by fees -- MR. SMITH: Yes, sir. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: -- and all that good stuff? MR. SMITH: Yes, sir. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: So there's no ad valorem in this department whatsoever? MR. SMITH: No, sir, none whatsoever. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Typically you actually bring in a few more fees than you spend on the average, don't you? MR. SMITH: Historically, yes, sir, there has been a surplus. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COHMISSIONER NORRIS: MR. SMITH: Yes, sir. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I have a question. Commissioner Norris. Hr. Smith -- -- I periodically hear a minor amount of grumbling in the community that inspections are not done on a timely basis. Do you feel that you're understaffed or at the appropriate level, or do you feel that you're overstaffed? MR. SMITH: At the current level in my package I have requested an expanded service under staff ranked five, which would be three more positions. Currently we have three full-time temporary positions, and since the last probably six, seven weeks, we are on a mandatory six-day overtime. All the inspectors are working nine hours, and we are working six days to keep up with the demand. So my overtime budget is going to be probably a lot higher than we would like to see it, but in order to meet the demand -- I have some plan reviewers who are doing inspections. I have some supervisors, including myself and also the supervisor directly under me, who have been doing inspections along with the inspectors working a nine-hour day, which is why I have requested three more in the expanded service. My feeling is between three that I have requested through the expanded service -- and at the end of this month I will be coming back before the board with a proposed ordinance, and in that ordinance it will allow for some privatization of inspections. And I believe that that will meet the demands, and we will be back to a regular work scheduled week because obviously we can't stay at the mandatory overtime like we're at now. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Your funding proposed for your expansion, would it be a hundred thousand dollars? Tell me what -- what you turned back from your department last fiscal year. MR. SMITH: 2.2 million dollars. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: From your department. MR. CLARK: Yes. Commissioner Norris, as -- as you may recall that the 2.2 million dollars would come back in which the -- the development industry came in before the commission and supported that as a payoff as it were, on-paper payoff for their 70 percent of that building. And so there has been a substantial surplus that has, in fact, been reinvested back in. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Do you have any -- any eyeball guess at what you would think that this year's turnback might be? MR. SMITH: We're about a half a million right now. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. So my point is that you're easily going to cover the hundred thousand dollar increase that you're going have? MR. SMITH: Yes, sir. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think the point, though, that -- that -- I need to follow up on these hours that are being worked right now. You're working a mandatory nine-hour day right now? MR. SMITH: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Plus a nine-hour Saturday? MR. SMITH: Primarily, depending on workload on Saturday and what we've caught up through the week, but, yes, ma'am. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. That's 14 additional hours per inspector times 18 inspectors? MR. SMITH: But not all of them are working every Saturday. Like I said, the Saturday becomes depending on what the demand was and what the work week -- I'm trying to meet the demand of the 24-hour next day requested response for inspection. And currently I'm able to do that. There have been some Saturdays where I may have had eight or -- eight people work. There are some Saturdays where I may have had three. I have not yet had a Saturday where we have not had to have people work the mandatory overtime. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I guess my question is this; are you satisfied that asking for three inspectors is going to essentially rid your department of overtime? MR. SMITH: That in addition to the proposed ordinance that I'm bringing before you the end of this month that will allow me to also offer privatization of inspections, I believe we'll be able to meet the demands. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Privatization of it. Well, that's another discussion. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Madam Chairman, I -- the base on this I -- I didn't look at it, but I believe we're required by Florida administrative code on the base, so I would see that as mandatory. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Uh-huh. COHHISSIONER HANCOCK: Would that be correct, Mr. Smith? MR. SMITH: That's correct. The state statute 533 and also chapter 119 and 257, because in the department we're required to keep public records along with the permitting along with the inspections. So that's correct, Commissioner. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I'm willing to put on E 2 through 5. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Likewise. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. I have no problem at all. I mean if it's a self-funded program, the idea is that good service be given. You're obviously earning enough money through your permitting to justify the expenditures that you're making because you're turning money back. So my goal here would be to provide the service that the permittees and the payers are willing to pay for. HR. SHITH: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: MR. SMITH: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So I have no problem with E. Essential on the balance. Thank you. Next item is page number. MR. SMYKOWSKI: 31. I believe, code enforcement. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: 31, code enforcement. MR. CLARK: Commissioners, for the record Dick Clark. I'm kind of wearing two hats today. The -- the first question is do we have any vacancies. Yes, there's one vacancy that we've had for one week. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: For one week? MR. CLARK: One week, so very short term I hope. The -- the second question that you might be interested in, the funding source -- the funding source of the expenditures in this department is -- the total is, as you'll note, currently 1.658 million, and the source of that, 500,000 of that is 113 source. In other words, it's user fee based. For instance, a contractor licensing, as you'll see under number three when we get to it, is purely paid by licensing fees. There's no other source of funding. If I might start at the base, the 21 people that we are proposing to you would be the base would be -- part of it would be a 113 funding for engineering inspections, and those engineering inspections that -- that are funded from that and provided by this base are those kind of inspections that are nonvertical, that is, the utility inspections during construction, the right of way of inspections, the well inspections, the blasting inspections, those kinds of inspections that are -- that are funded by developers and contractors but are nonvertical -- nonvertical constructions of site prep. That's what that covers. The second area that we're looking at in the base is funding only enforcement of the mandated requirements or those requirements that are mandated by state statute and that those being the -- the kinds of things that are the land development code, the excavation blasting that we mentioned, the tree removal, sea turtle protection. It also enforces all the ordinances that control the land use such as zoning regulations, well construction, landscaping, and such things as derelict boat removal, enforcement of building codes, and there are 10 right of way ordinances, solid waste ordinance, and there are 12 of those ordinances. Of those 12 ordinances there were 32,910 investigations last year just on those ordinances, which equates to -- with the eight -- eight direct investigational-type people that we're speaking of in the base, that would equate to 3,700 investigations per year per investigator, which is obviously a sizable load. So if we're talking about the base level -- Now, as you'll see in option number two we're talking about local -- enforcement of local ordinances that are not specifically regulated by state statute. And those kinds of ordinances there were 15,295 of those for this past year, and they encompass such ordinances such as enforcement of the litter, exotic abatement ordinance, the unsafe structure ordinance, the mandatory numbering ordinance, occupational news rack ordinance, noise ordinance, convenience store ordinance, those kinds of ordinances obviously that have to deal with the quality of life. Not all of them have to do with life safety, but more -- more directly involved with the quality of life. And so if we're talking about 15,000 investigations by 4 investigators, we're talking approximately 3,800 investigations per investigator per year. And when we also look -- did we want to rate where we're at before I go further? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Go ahead. MR. CLARK: Okay. Number three is the contractor licensing. That is -- as you'll see, there are three funded positions there. And they are fully funded by licensing fees that are paid by contractor's license through Collier County. They pay for the investigations for the licensing obviously, the administrative functions of licensing, but they also provide for all the investigations that are conducted. And we also have an interlocal agreement with the City of Naples, so that encompasses all the investigations in the City of Naples and throughout the county and the prosecution of unlicensed contractors and the disciplinary actions before the various agencies of licensed contractors who perhaps create violations to the consumer. The next one, number 4, is the -- we would be returning the two additional -- not two additional, but return two investigators back to that. We would be returning the -- the enforcement at the current response time, which is 60 percent of the investigations are conducted within four work days of the origin of the complaint. The next one, number five, is the support services -- adding back the support services that will support number, two, three, and four. And that was the clerical -- the clerical-type positions. And the last one is we have experienced a 2 percent increase in demand for service in the last year. I think much of our community is -- is realizing, probably very fortunately, that the quality of our -- of our neighborhoods also involve more than aesthetics, but the attraction to criminal elements, such as Bayshore, Golden Gate, north Naples, and so forth. Many of the civic associations are getting directly involved in asking for increased enforcement for quality of life, which is an admirable thing. Oftentimes people complain and don't do anything, but there is a great deal of our citizenry getting involved in requiring and requesting additional enforcement to prevent the neighborhoods from going downhill. So we are saying that additional -- for support staff not an additional investigator, which next year if this -- if this increase keeps going, we'll probably be asking for that. But this is simply to track and send out the thousands of notices and violations and impose liens and fines and that sort of thing. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think that's one of my -- one of my concerns about the staffing that you're asking for, Mr. Clark. It seems like most of the neighborhoods in Collier County are taking after Golden Gate's plan. And it's worked well in Golden Gate. But we've got many other neighborhoods now looking to do the same thing. And I'm just questioning -- we've got to be careful, number one, that these citizens groups don't turn into essentially vigilante committees. So we've got to give them a lot of guidance, a lot of training of what to look for. MR. CLARK: Right. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And then as they put together their observed code violations, for your department to have this staffing to follow through on what they're doing is surely -- the one way to create a vigilante situation is not to follow through. And I'm questioning whether one additional enhanced support person is really enough with all that we're looking at doing. MR. CLARK: I've been extremely conservative, to be frank with you, been extremely conservative due to the budget constraints. But realistically I would say we need one more investigator. We're working a great deal of overtime right now. And to be frank with you, I'm working probably 50, 60 hours a week. And I agree with you that we -- we probably should take advantage of the citizens' goodwill to keep our community a good place to live in and support it as fully as possible. I agree with that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: How do we want to rank them? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, did we get an answer? Are we going to increase your staffing, or if so, where are we going to put it, local ordinance enforcement? MR. SMITH: If we're going to approve the ones I have listed, I would ask that we have one more investigator to do both so we can work on both of those, because they do encompass all the neighborhood associations. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: You'll bring that back to the June hearings? MR. CLARK: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. I would say that to make it easy I think we're all in agreement of what we're doing here. I would just put all Es on there, and let's go forward. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: This is one of those areas that has bred a lot of community support and that communities rely on. I don't want to reduce that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: What I would like to do, though, is -- what we're asking Mr. Clark to not only take a look at his enhanced support service, but also to take a look at another investigator. And I think in order to take a harder look at that in June, that we should take number six and our imputed number seven, whatever that is, and make them Ds so that we get the opportunity -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah, I'm fine with that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I like that idea. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So you're probably the first person that's walked out with more than what you wanted. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: So far. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: So far. MR. CLARK: We're all trying to do the same thing, provide what the citizens want. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you. What page are we on now? MR. LITSINGER: For the record, Stan Litsinger. Mr. Clark asked me to touch on this for him. This is your administrator's office which is funded 70 percent by fund 113 and 30 percent by fund 111. Your administrative position, as you know, is vacant at the time except for Mr. Clark dancing as fast as he can. The support services is the secretarial position without which the division administrator would be in a bind as far as his personal support. That's pretty much all I have to say about these two. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I'm assuming that we are not paying a secretary forty-four nine so there must be some -- MR. LITSINGER: That's salary and benefits and associated expenses -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Operating costs? MR. LITSINGER: -- with the office. Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Although, if that's Johnny, she should get the 84. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: She's also been there a long time. MR. LITSINGER: She is a senior executive secretary, so her salary is higher. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Her salary is high. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: E, E. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yup. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I can agree. MR. LITSINGER: I think the last item relative to the community development services budget is on page 44. That's your operating expenses cost center. That's the catchall where we accumulate all essentially fixed costs of operating the building, everything from condo fees to electricity and utilities, which are in turn allocated to the users of the building. And according to the formula that you see on page 45, fixed costs there, we don't expect any surprises or any increase, just the fixed cost of doing business at that location. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Maybe we could save this 500,000 if we move the operation into building G. MR. LITSINGER: Perhaps some of it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Do we own that building? COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Building G? MR. DORRILL: Building G is the small building where Mr. Archibald is currently. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: That's where this operation used to be? MR. DORRILL: Yes, surprisingly enough. MR. LITSINGER: Just a joke. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I was going to say -- I was going to say add a couple floors in Building G. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: We really don't have any control. These are fixed expenses that we have to pay, so let's put it E and forget it. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Let's put an E on and have it go. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. MR. LITSINGER: Oh, one last thing. Sorry, Madam Chairman. That would be the Southwest Regional Planning Council on page 46. That's their mandatory tithe to the RPC chair for services we receive from Mr. Daltry and his staff. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Did you say mandatory? MR. LITSINGER: Yes, sir. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: That settles that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That kind of settles that. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Because if we could withdraw -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Mr. Litsinger, for my own edification -- and you don't need to go into a lot of detail about this -- but it's my understanding that the Elms Three legislation, part of the goal of that is to disband the planning council. Could we ever -- could we ever begin in Collier County to pick up the DRI bill on $54,000? MR. LITSINGER: Absolutely not. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I didn't think so. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: I don't think the Elms Three said disband RPC. It said to disseminate from the DCA more power to the RPCs to allow for local control as opposed to it coming out of Tallahassee all the time. MR. LITSINGER: The actual scenario was that Elms required a new -- as I said we have to draft a new housing element. We also have to draft a new intergovernmental coordination element. And all counties over a hundred thousand as it stands now have to take over the DRI process, which then leads to the argument about why do we need the RPCs. But you can make a note that the legislature is going to change that this session. I don't think the DRI process as it now stands is going to be abandoned. I think it's going to be changed. There's a strong movement in the legislature to back off from that recent legislation. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah, that's -- that's my understanding too. I just wanted to verify for myself that at $54,000 Collier County could not begin to pick up that tab. MR. LITSINGER: I don't believe so, no, ma'am. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: own budget. Miss Filson. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: MR. CLARK: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you. Now we move on to our NR, NR, NR. Got it. Thank you, Mr. Clark. You're going to tell us -- MS. FILSON: The only thing I know to tell you is that I have no vacancies. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We know that. Okay. Let's talk about base level, Miss Filson. MS. FILSON: Okay. You want me to go through and -- on the first page I have listed all the advisory boards that are created by Florida statutes, which includes a base level, and base level also includes five commissioners and one FTE. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. And you're saying that's created -- pardon me. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: I was just saying we could get rid of a couple commissioner positions. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah, you volunteered this week specifically. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, I'm out of here. MS. FILSON: And I have noted on this one mandatory. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah. This is -- this is by Florida statute for the advisory committees and the commissioners' salaries. MS. FILSON: Yes, sir -- ma'am. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Mandatory. Next item, number two, community involvement. MS. FILSON: The community involvement I have as staff rank number two, and I have that marked as essential. And that is a total of three FTEs, and I have listed the outcome measures and the performance. Would you like me to go through each one? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: No. I don't need to do that. Anyone else need to -- we know you work very hard. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Essential? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Essential. MS. FILSON: I have that noted as essential. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Professional development, number three. MS. FILSON: That is staff ranked number three, and I have that noted as discretionary. That includes organize -- or travel for commissioners. It includes memberships and dues mainly for the Florida Association of Counties and professional development, which includes classes for the staff. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: What do we spend? What kind of associations besides FAC do we pay dues to? MS. FILSON: I believe that's the only one we pay dues to right now, and it's like over -- it's over $10,000 annually. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We had dropped NACO out. MS. FILSON: NACO and Chamber and EDC. There were like five or six that we had eliminated. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Discretionary? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, yeah, by -- by definition of what we do -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Uh-huh. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- it's discretionary. Do you have included in this $26,000 -- yeah, you do -- the lobbying? MS. FILSON: The lobbying coalition, yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: You already checked to make sure it was open next year. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I looked for that one. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I -- I have a question that I've kind of run into a little bit, and this deals with travel, I, I guess, as the board knows, do a lot of work with the FAC and the board of directors' meetings and so forth, so there's a tendency for me to use my travel budget up very, very quickly. I'm also intending to make application next year to the Leadership Florida, which normally comes out of the travel budget as well, and I'm asking my colleagues to help me. I don't have enough money in the $2,000 travel budget to cover the travel plus Leadership Florida. MS. FILSON: And I think that is like $2,500. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What is our -- we have budgets? We have travel budgets? We have -- I mean we have money we're supposed to -- MS. FILSON: It's in one object code, and it's a total of $10,000. And in the past the commissioners have allocated like 2,000 for each commissioner, and with a memo written from one commissioner to finance another commissioner is able to use that money. In the past -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What else is there? There's 10,000 for FAC, and there's 10,000 for travel, so there's 6,000 for something else? MS. FILSON: For professional development. MS. GANSEL: 5,000 for the lobbying effort. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. So there's 5,000 for lobbying, 10,000 for travel, 10,000 for FAC, and 1,000 for other. That adds up to 26; is that right? MS. FILSON: Okay. Well, actually the professional development, which is classes and miscellaneous items for the staff and commissioners, if they choose to take it, I have $5,000 -- $500 in that object code. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: So there's -- okay. So, okay. MR. SHYKOWSKI: There's a breakout on page 1 of that package of notes. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Of the 26,0007 MR. SHYKOWSKI: It has it at twenty-five seven, I believe, which has been rounded to the nearest thousand dollars, page 1 of the program outcome summary and then the notes. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Professional travel 10,000; dues and membership, 10,000; organizational development, 500; and lobbying, 5,000. Okay. So, first of all, I -- I don't see why the travel needs to be by commissioner. I appreciate that you guys are willing to be in FAC and that I'm not. And I want us to participate. I appreciate that you do that. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you. It takes a lot of time. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I certainly want you to see this as a board budget, and it's not my $2,000, okay, for what that's worth. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, that's a change in policy. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Let's take hers away from her then. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: And disburse it among the balance of the four. There are other things other than FAC. Mr. Dotrill and I had made application for basically an emergency management course that is -- is offered by national -- I think it's offered by FEHA which in the case of a crisis would come in handy that the county manager and at least one board member have attended that. So there are other opportunities that crop up. And I think the $2,000 for a commissioner is just to say if that opportunity arises, there's a set allocation for you to take advantage of if you so wish. If you, in this case Commissioner Matthews, is going to run short next year on the things she feels she needs to do to be well versed, and if you want to allocate some of that money to her, that's perfectly fine. I may do the same. If I end the fiscal year with something left over and she needs it and I don't, so be it. But I think it's just to make sure that there's some fund there to do those things that help you, so __ CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: -- I don't want to change that. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I don't believe I've used any of my travel money since I've been here, but I might this year. I can smell a couple of Tallahassee trips coming. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I was going to say, you're going to be headed to Tallahassee with this beach management program. there's -- there's plenty of opportunity there if -- if we're going to make ourselves known in Tallahassee that yes, indeed, we do exist and yes, indeed, our citizens have wants and needs, and the only way we can impress them sometimes is to be there hammering on the door ourselves. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Just take the level of taxes we contribute. That usually means something to them. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: This is a good opportunity, if I might -- are we through pretty much with Miss Filson here? I've got CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Just a minute. We have to finish ranking the professional development. Did we say D for that? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: We said D on that one. MS. FILSON: Okay. Could I ask one question in reference to that? COMHISSIONER NORRIS: No. MS. FILSON: Because last year it was essential. I believe that's what they rated it. MS. GANSEL: Could have been. MS. FILSON: Okay. Does discretionary mean that it may cut out? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: That's what it means. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: No. It means that it could be, but it's not likely. We're not going to cut our own budgets. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: You said that, not me. MR. DORRILL: Second quote of the day. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: The pages are flipping. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Obviously we're sitting here talking about all the things and the travel and so forth that we're already saying that we need to do. It's not likely we're going to cut that. MS. FILSON: Okay. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I want to bring up a subject that I bring up about this time every year is that with the workload that we have, we have three administrative assistants and a receptionist is essentially what we have. MS. FILSON: We have two executive secretaries, one secretary one, and one administrative assistant. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: That's the way -- that's the official titles? MS. FILSON: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. At some point in time, and I -- to me the time is getting pretty close, we're almost going to need an administrative aide for each commissioner to handle some of our citizen inquiries and our -- our correspondence response and all of that sort of thing, and I bring this up every year. We're probably the only county of this size that doesn't do that already, and there's -- there's -- if you get to a county that's much bigger than this, they'll have typically two aides per commissioner. I don't know how the rest of your workloads goes particularly, but I know mine's pretty heavy. I'm in here a lot of odd hours, and if I'm out of town for a day or two, there's -- it takes a long time to catch up. And -- and that's -- that's a bit of a problem for the citizens because if they call in here, they deserve a response in a timely manner. And if I'm -- like a couple of weeks ago I was gone for several days, and, you know, people needed answers to things. They didn't get it until I got back. So it's something that I would like to consider. I don't know if you want to put it in this year's budget or even consider it, but I certainly have no objection to doing that at some point time. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I've longed since coming to this office seeing -- seeing the need coming, as you say, that we were each going to need our own administrative assistant to help us do this work, especially since we're part time, ha, ha. But as we move on from that I -- I don't disagree with you. And if -- if we're going to bite that bullet in 1995, '96, I'm not opposed to it. At the same time -- and Miss Filson can bear this out, there are times that our administrative assistants will be able to call constituents back and satisfy their questions and their wants, but we've had a couple of experiences already this week, Miss Filson and I, of a particular group of constituents who just will not be satisfied by an administrative aide '- MS. FILSON: You always have several of those. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- even though the aide has the answers. They don't want to hear them. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, that's always going to be true -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We're always going to have that. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: -- and we need to recognize that. The point is I think we can serve the public better if we could give them more timely responses. And a lot of this stuff is really smaller items that can be handled at that level, and most people will be satisfied to get those kind of responses. But everybody recognizes, I think, there's going to be a lot of times when we're going to have to do it ourselves, and that's fine. That's fine. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Uh-huh. Easily accepted. I'm not opposed to it. Commissioner Hac'Kie. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm opposed to it. I think we're overpaid. I think that -- that we ought to be doing less government instead of more government. I think that we have way higher priorities until we have a work release center, until we have a -- I mean I could make a long list. I -- until our staff is paid better, until they can get raises -- I really don't mean this to be a political statement here. I truly, truly think that we should be doing less instead of more. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That's funny. My constituents want me to do more. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: They want me to do more. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: The only problem I'm having is the amount of time I spend on personal contact takes away from the big projects that I've talked about that I want to get done, and I haven't really been in the office long enough to say another assistant would make it happen for me. My -- my assistant happens to handle things just as I ask for them. Maybe I'm asking the wrong questions or taking too much on myself. But at this point I can't support it simply because I'm not sure enough myself of the need, and you veterans obviously have more experience than I do, and maybe if Commissioner Constantine was here, there would be three people saying we need it, but right now I just can't say yes. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: saying yes. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: COHMISSIONER NORRIS: CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Fine. By September you might be I might, but right now -- Let me suggest this. Let's see how it goes. Let me suggest this. We got two to two here. Why don't we have Miss Filson bring this back in June at least to look at what it would cost. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: What it would cost and what -- is there enough work in the office even now -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Yeah, make a little analysis. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- for another person. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: At least we can look at it. COHHISSIONER HANCOCK: I'll agree to looking at that, regardless of the knowledge of the headline this is creating. MR. DORRILL: The suggestion, just so budget staff will know, was five administrative assistants -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: One more. MR. DORRILL: -- or an additional executive secretary. There's a huge difference. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: There's a huge difference? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah, there is. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Huh. MS. FILSON: And one of the girls we have in the office now is a secretary one who serves as a receptionist, which is different from an executive secretary. MR. DORRILL: Five administrative assistants is a lot different than four executive secretaries and one administrative assistant. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. The people that in our office are capable of doing what we're asking to be done. It's just that we have three people now, and the proposal would be five of whatever we have now. I don't know what the classifications are. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm not -- I wouldn't have an assistant. I would refuse it. I don't want one. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, we may outvote you and make you have one. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'll give you the money to send on the work release program. MR. DORRILL: Tell him he may want to go back to his office. MR. SHYKOWSKI: The tie breaker has arrived. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: How proficous that you walk in right now. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Were you listening? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Was there some sort of question as to whether we can add a couple more people back there? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, I think the initial discussion, at least what I had taken it to be, was talk about adding one more person to our staff which would eventually or lead us toward each one of us having our own secretary, administrative aide, whatever it is. Now I guess the question is whether we should add two -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Oh, I have an answer for that One, no . CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- which means each one of us would have our own person plus a receptionist. Is that what I'm hearing? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Uh-huh. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: My thought is last year we added the fourth person -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah, we added one. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- because we were understaffed. However, I think particularly as we're asking everyone else to tighten the belt as much as we possibly can, we certainly should set the example by doing the same. I think the ladies are doing a great job. They work very hard, but they are carrying a load right now, and I think we can continue to hold that belt tight until we are busting at the seams, so to speak. I think we should stay where we are. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. I'll bring it up again next year. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Well, we can do that. We had asked -- Commissioner Norris and I had asked Miss Filson in June to bring us back an analysis of the work that's being done and if there is a justification even for one more person. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Fay just asked about a volunteer. And if you can ask my assistant if a volunteer would put up with that, the answer would be no. But, no, I agree with Commissioner Constantine. I'm currently not experiencing difficulties, so I can't support an addition at this point. If you want Miss Filson to bring the numbers back, fine, but I don't at this point see any support for it. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And I remember, it was -- I do remember last year when we did experience a problem when we only had three people, you all were going wild trying to keep up, and I think we're not in that position again now. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, I guess that settles that. Miss Filson, can we be excused today? MS. FILSON: Yes, but do I still need to do the work of the analysis? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: You got outvoted. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The answer to that is no. MS. FILSON: Good. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: All that writing for nothing, Steve. MR. SMYKOWSKI: New angle for the headline now. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I guess we're done. Are we going to have a minor wrap-up or be on our way? MR. DORRILL: No. We have a list through today of 80 discretionary items, and if -- if you're going to be in your offices for the next 30 minutes or so, we can update you so that when you leave today you will have everything that is ranked discretionary. And I am going to ask you to spend probably 30 minutes tomorrow telling me which of the discretionary items you specifically want lower cost proposals for. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We'll do that after we hear from the public? MR. DORRILL: Yes. And I'm thinking that should be less than an hour given the general level of attendance thus far. The only other thing I had to say was the sight of Sue Filson scares me absolutely to death. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: As well it should for someone who needs to check themselves regularly. MS. FILSON: That means I'm doing well. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We're adjourned. There being no further business for the Good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by Order of the Chair at 2:54 p.m. TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF DONOVAN COURT REPORTING BY: Shelly Semmler and Barbara A. Donovan