BCC Minutes 04/20/1995 W (Naples Park Drainage Project)WORKSHOP MEETING OF APRIL 20, 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 7:15 p.m. in a workshop in the Naples Park Elementary
School Cafeteria, Naples, Florida, with the following members present:
CHAIRPERSON: Bettye J. Matthews
John C. Norris
Timothy L. Hancock
ALSO PRESENT:
W. Neil Dotrill, County Hanager
William C. Hargett, Asst. County Hanager
David Weigel, Asst. County Attorney
William Lorenz, Environmental Services
John H. Boldt, Stormwater Management
Item #2
WORKSHOP TO OBTAIN PUBLIC INPUT ON PROPOSED NAPLES PARK DRAINAGE
PROJECT
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Can we have your attention, please? Thank
you.
I want to call to order a workshop meeting on the Naples drainage
held for 7 p.m. on Thursday, April the 20th. And, Mr. Hargett, would
you lead us in an invocation and pledge.
MR. HARGETT: Can we all rise and bow our heads, please.
Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for another gorgeous
day in Collier County. We deeply appreciate the opportunity to meet
here this evening. And as we do so, we would pause and be ever
mindful of the tragedy in Oklahoma City. We ask your blessings upon
the families of those people who have lost their lives. We would pray
for a speedy recovery from -- for those who have been injured and for
the safe return of those missing to their families. Come be with us
now, Father. Bless this meeting and all that we do in thy name. In
Christ's name we pray. Amen.
(The pledge of allegiance was recited in unison.)
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. I want to try to set --
set the ground rules. Most of you have received a package like this.
We had 300 of them, I think, when we started out this evening. In
this package you have been asked to keep your remarks to pertinent
questions or comments. We're going to limit the comments to two
minutes because of the size of the numbers of people who want to
speak, and we do ask you to limit it to questions and comments and not
to speech making. We have a lot of people who have questions, and we
want to try to get through this in a reasonable period of time.
At the back of the packet is a form for those of you who
want to speak to fill out, and if you would pass it to the center
aisle and pass them forward. And Mr. Hargett has a pile of them on
the table here, and he'll simply add them to the pile.
Other rules of the game are -- it's not a game. I'm
sorry. We have a -- we have a court reporter rather than our
microphone recording device. The court reporter asks that, number
one, we speak clearly, we speak into the microphone in the center up
here, and that we -- we try very, very hard for the people in the
audience to not overtalk the person speaking. Give them the
opportunity to say what they have to say and to make the pertinent
comments, and the court reporter has to get those into the official
minutes of this meeting, so she has to be able to hear it.
When you come to the center microphone, please state
your name. Again, for the record we have to know who it is that did
the speaking.
What we're going to do tonight, Mr. Hargett is going to
give us a short synopsis. Then Mr. Boldt is going to give us a
presentation, and then we're going to open the discussion to the floor
for comments and questions. Okay? Fine. Mr. Hargett.
MR. HARGETT: Good evening, Commissioners, ladies and
gentlemen. Just a brief introduction. We did put together
approximately six different alternatives that we presented to the
board, and at their March 28th meeting they did narrow the number of
alternatives down to two. And basically the two alternatives involve
91st, 92nd Avenue, and the 8th Street ditches. And the alternatives
were basically to pipe those ditches or to line the ditches. The
costs vary significantly from 3.8 million for the piping and about
$900,000 for the bank treatment. And I think with -- with that brief
introduction, I'll let Mr. Boldt go ahead and discuss these
alternatives with you, and after that we'd certainly open it up for
any questions or comments that you might have.
MR. BOLDT: Good evening. The information package you
have has page numbers on it, and with your permission, I'm just going
to go through it page by number -- page by page and try to be brief.
I know a number of you have heard this presentation so often you could
probably do it better than I could. Others of you have just found out
about this project and are here really to find out details, so I'll
try to keep my remarks somewhere in between, give you enough
information. And then when you've got questions, we can get to
those.
Page 1 is an overall location map -- it's very
simplified -- of Naples Park. It also includes those areas down to
Vanderbilt Beach Road which includes Beachwalk, the Pavilion Shopping
Center, the Pavilion Club. It also shows the canals west of
Vanderbilt Drive that are no longer a part of the project. As you can
see, the -- the project was divided up into three basins; the westerly
basin, which is the Vanderbilt Lagoon from the center of the Naples
Park drains west and goes underneath a number of culverts into the
finger canals under Vanderbilt Drive. The north basin splits at
around 100, 101st and, generally speaking, goes north along the west
side of Eighth Street going north up to lllth and then going over on
the property on the north side in an open ditch and eventually ends up
in the wetlands area of the Cocohatchee River. You can see the pipe
sizes on that north basin run anywhere from 24 inches up near 101st.
They get increasingly large, 72 inch up to 84-inch pipe before it goes
into the open drain to the north area.
The south basin starts also the upper end near 100th.
Generally speaking, it's along the east side of Eighth Street. It's
flowing south down Eighth Street to a location halfway between 91st
and 92nd Avenue, and then it crosses underneath Eighth Street and goes
westerly on 7th, 5th, Vanderbilt Drive, and into the Vanderbilt
lagoon.
So that's the general proposal under -- particularly
what you see here is so-called plan A, and I'll explain that a little
more in detail here in a minute with these pipe sizes. But that's the
primary system, and the proposal we've had since the middle 1980s when
the preliminary engineering study was done by Agnoli, Barber, and
Brundage was to enclose these ditches along 8th Street and 91st and
92nd Avenue.
You'll note with interest the Pavilion basin in the
southeast corner there is a lake and a control structure at that
location that discharges water from those two projects underneath 91st
-- 36-inch pipe to the corner of 91st or -- and 92nd Avenue ditch and
the 8th Street. Also notice that the Beachwalk project has three
lakes. The most easterly lake has its own separate 24-inch pipe that
goes north, and it goes westerly along the south side of 91st Avenue
down to the northwest corner of Beachwalk. The other two lakes are
tied together and come out that same northwest corner of the Beachwalk
project and then go north and tie into the 91st, 92nd Avenue ditch
right at the culvert of Vanderbilt Drive. So that's how those
projects get into the system.
Now, if you'll bear with me, let's go to page 2, just a
very simple statement of a problem statement, what we're trying to
address. For those of you that are only winter residents and have
never lived through Collier County during a summer season, we do have
a rainy season here. We have some 40 inches of rainfall on a normal
season during June, July, August, and September. And a number of
times in the last ten years we had some severe flooding problems, both
in the north and south basins, particularly along Eighth Street in the
south basins. The canal is not adequate to handle the size, and the
culverts are not large enough, and there's a flooding problem. We've
had it severe enough that there's been water in people's homes on one
or two occasions in some of those locations.
There's also a serious bank erosion problem on the large
open ditch which is in the backyards of the home between 91st and 92nd
Avenue that over the years has gotten progressively worse. It's a
very fine, sandy material. It's very difficult to keep vegetation on
it, and because of the soil erosion it's adding to the sedimentation
of lower in and Vanderbilt lagoon. And just, generally speaking,
there are health, safety, and appearance conditions, particularly
along Eighth Street. It's an open ditch. It's very difficult to
maintain. It's very long. The bike pathway, there's children waiting
for buses, and the kids tend to play in those things, and it's really
not a very healthy situation.
So the improvement options have been natrowed down to
this at this point, and on page 3, so-called plan A would be the
implementation of the project that's presently designed by Agnoli,
Barber, and Brundage to enclose the 91st, 92nd Avenue, and the Eighth
Street ditches.
If you go to page four, the cost breakdown, just to give
you an idea what's involved to put the 84-inch pipe in the full length
of the 91st, 92nd Avenue ditch from Vanderbilt Drive to 6th, 7th, up
to 8th Streets, a million two hundred thousand dollars. And to
enclose the Eighth Street ditch on the south basin is a little over a
million. Likewise, the same for the north basin, although the 8th
Street ditch up to the north to improve the outfall north of lllth
Avenue, the original cost estimate said $115,000. Those eight culvert
locations under Vanderbilt Drive, those -- the map shows them as being
two 24s. Actually that's been updated since then. They're a
different size than what you see there, but that was estimated to be
in the neighborhood of $400,000 to do those. They're quite
complicated. They have a lot of interference with utilities and
seawalls and things of that nature.
So the total cost of plan A is approximately three
million eight hundred and thirty-two thousand dollars, and that's the
original cost estimated updated to 1995 costs. And recognize that's
an opinion of cost at this point. We won't know exactly how much it's
going to be until we actually receive bids from contractors that are
going to do the work. But at this point that's our best estimate, and
we feel that there's enough reserve in there that it should not go
higher than that.
Page 5 points out to you that this system, plan A we
just talked about, provides protection from a storm that's likely to
happen about once every ten years, and that's something in the
magnitude, as I remember, around an 8-inch rainfall, somewhere in that
area. So if the Eighth Street ditch is to be enclosed with that --
that type of a size pipe that will provide that kind of protection,
you need to know that the ditch between 91st and 92nd could not remain
as an open ditch. That's one of the options we looked at earlier was
putting a pipe in Eighth Street and then leaving the open ditch
between 91st and 92nd as an open ditch and just improving it. But
because of the fact of the hydraulics, the slope, the depth of the
pipe, it's not possible to do that. If you're going to enclose along
Eighth Street, you need to also enclose the pipe -- with a pipe 91st
and 92nd Avenue.
Now, plan B was offered as a -- more or less a
compromise to leave the ditches basically open only to riprap them.
And here's my estimate of cost here. Page 5, the bottom we see that
we would use rock riprap to control bank erosion between 91st, 92nd
Avenue. It's about a quarter of a million dollars. In order to get
better flood protection along Eighth Street, we would replace a number
of culverts here, and you can see the different avenues and private
driveways that would be upgraded. They're basically now small twin
24-inch pipes. We would either put single 48s or double 48s in there
that would not give us a 10-year level of protection storm.
If we were to evaluate the existing system right now, we
get flooding almost on an annual basis. If we were to increase the
sizes of these pipes in these areas, we might get the protection from
the storm that's apt to happen once every two to three years, but you
get a larger storm like a 10-year storm, an 8-inch rainfall, this
system here with this plan B would still flood. You're buying more
protection, but you wouldn't be able to solve the whole situation.
The same could be said even for plan A. That's a
10-year storm, 8-inch rainfall. If we had a 25-year storm, once a
storm happens once every 25 years, that's more like 12 inches of
rainfall. You get 12 inches of rainfall, even the 3.8 million dollar
project is not going to be able to handle all that water. It would
have some flooding involved, so it's a matter of buying protection
with the size of the pipe.
Top of page 7, this completes my estimate of the cost
for replacing the culverts in -- under plan B. Also you need to know
under plan B we do not have plans for that. At this point that's just
a concept. If we were to choose plan B, we would have to have
detailed construction drawings prepared. We would have to go back to
all the environmental agencies, the Department of Environmental
Protection, the South Florida Water Management and have those permits
modified. There would be quite a bit of expense and time to do that.
The other -- top of page 8, the remainder of plan B
would be to riprap the Eighth Street ditches both in -- on one side in
the south basin on the east side and on the west side and the north
basin rock riprap to make it look a lot better. We would improve the
conditions. It would be easier to maintain. You can see the cost
estimate there. Also, if we were to replace some of the very critical
culverts under Vanderbilt Drive, I estimated that at two hundred
thousand dollars. To improve the open ditch north of lllth Avenue
North basin, another 75, just real round figures, we're saying plan B
then would be something like $900,000.
We're going to cover a couple more things I want to do
for you. I know a lot of you have concerns about the -- the drainage
facilities and the roadsides in front of your property. For a number
of years we've had a swale moratorium that was imposed upon us by the
Florida Department of Environmental Protection as a special condition
of a permit that they issued for plan A. Plan A is to enclose the
major ditches. When we do that, we lose volume of storage. We lose
water quality treatment in those ditches. And they said to offset
that we had to prohibit any further enclosure of the swales in front
of the homes and the rest of Naples Park. There are some 20 miles
approximately of streets and avenues in the Park. If you double that,
because we have swales on either side, that's 40 miles of swales.
Because this is a 1950s project, there are no modern retention lakes.
There are no control structures in Naples Park. They weren't required
back in those days, so the only water quality treatment we get in the
Park is what you have in your front yard swales. The grassy swales
are where the water is treated. It's temporarily stored. It
percolates into the ground. So in order to protect the environment,
the EPA said that we had to have a permanent prohibition against
enclosing those swales.
You notice I've been using the word swales. A swale is
by definition a man-made trench which has a top depth ratio of 6 to
1. It has side slopes that have a horizontal ratio of 3 foot to 1
foot. I'll kind of boil this down to you in layman terms here in a
minute. It also has a -- it contains continuous areas of standing or
flowing water only following a rainfall event, normally would dry up
in a swale. And it's planted with vegetation and some other
criteria. However, I think in Naples Park, and I -- in my
conversations with the young lady up in Fort Myers with DEP, and she
agreed that we have a lot of ditches in people's front yards in Naples
Park. And a ditch to me in its simple terms is something that's
deeper than a swale. It has very narrow top width. The slopes are
steep. You can't mow it with a hand mower, and in a lot of cases,
particularly in the summer, water stands in the bottom of the ditch
all the time. The grass will not grow. And she recognized then the
difference between the swale and a ditch and said that's working a
hardship on these people with -- with ditches. She still is basically
insisting that the swales would have to remain open. These are
shallow, flat slopes, nice and grassy. You can mow through them.
They don't have standing water in them, only after a rainfall.
She was particularly excited about the possibility of
enclosing these ditches with a product that -- I don't know if all of
you've seen it or not when we came in. We had a piece of it on the
table. This is called an infiltrator, and this is just a small sample
of it, and actually this comes in 75-inch lengths. It's 36 inches
wide at the bottom, 16 inches high. Can you see the slots in the side
of this? It's a very durable project -- or piece of material. It's
made out of very highly dense material. Properly installed, if you
have enough cover on it, it's capable of taking traffic over it. You
could park cars over it, so it's not going to crush. And it has the
advantages that are shown in this -- on the bottom of page 9, the
swale design, in that we could put it in the bottom of the ditches.
We could lay fabric, geotechnic fabric, that kind of filters the
waters that go through. We could cover it with gravel or pea stone
and wrap the whole fabric around it, so you'd end up with a square
area of stone and fabric and then continue up to the swale grade. You
still need to have a real shallow swale over even the ditches to get
the water off the property that comes off the road, be very shallow.
That water that would flow over, come down and go through the rock, go
through the fabric, would come in the sides of this infiltrator and
then either could be passed on like a pipe or could percolate into the
ground because this thing is open on the bottom, so it has all those
advantages.
Costwise it's very close in costs to what it would be to
enclose it with a pipe. If you're talking about a 15- to 18-inch
pipe, I think the cost of that is going to be around 8 to 10 dollars a
foot installed. This material is probably going to be somewhere I
think in the neighborhood of maybe ten to twelve dollars a foot
installed, because you're going to have more fabric and more stone
involved.
If you're talking then about -- you know, just a typical
example, if you have a house on two lots, a hundred-foot frontage, you
already have a driveway culvert that's 20 or 30 foot long. So you're
talking about maybe another 70 feet you want to enclose. At around
say ten dollars a foot, you're talking maybe seven hundred, a
thousand, twelve hundred dollars to use this material to enclose your
ditch, not your swale.
That's a real quick explanation. And if we get into
questions, you have more questions about that. I'd be glad to answer
them. But I was quite encouraged by my conversations with Lucy Blair,
Florida Department of Environmental Protection in Fort Myers. I
exchanged some correspondence with her. The only way to get absolute
information from her is to submit it as part of an application with
very specific information as to what features this can offer as far as
what kind of water quality treatment can we get. She wants to see
some very technical information, and then they would perhaps then
modify their stand, although she said that, you know, if -- fills out
this thing between ditches and swales.
So I've clearly defined for you what a ditch is. It's
deep. It's narrow. It's steep, and it has water in the bottom.
Swale is shallow. It's flat, sloped. It's grassed. These -- these
are easy to explain. This side and this side, it's in the middle that
we're going to have the problem between the exact definition, because
some are going to be borderline, and those will be the ones that are
going to be difficult to determine. But if we did a proper inventory
of Naples Park ditches and swales, I think we could come up with a
criteria that could do that.
Next, on the assumption that we proceed with either one
of these plans, we need to find a way to pay for it, and I'd like to
get into that topic now. On page 10, just some of the groundwork for
us, just on the -- on the concept of who should pay. And we're
proposing to use a special assessment-type methodology, and that
methodology is based on benefits received. And for those of you who
live on the higher ground who live up on areas where you normally
don't encounter flooding, you have your roadside swales all filled in,
this is the basic concept. And I have our county attorney staff
here. I don't know if he's reviewed this or not. I tried to put this
in laymen terms of what this concept of burdened responsibility is in
kind of laymen terms. It basically says that stormwater runoff from
property on the top of a hill causes a burden on the downstream or
downhill property because that's the way the water flows. And
drainage improvement projects, like we're proposing to do to eliminate
the flooding in the lower ground, creates a benefit by providing a
relief from this burden. So we're talking about a relief of burden of
responsibility. If you're contributing drainage runoff, rainfall
runoff to the system, you're a part of the burden. And the drainage
project relieves you of that burden. Therefore, you need to
participate in the cost.
Let's go to page 11. Mr. Hargett mentioned that we had
a number of options available. At one time we had six, and the
commissioners at their last meeting natrowed it down to two options,
one for plan A and one for plan B. And if you'll just follow me
through the table real quickly, you can see column one just lists the
various areas that are contributing: The Pavilion; the Club; the
commercial, those lots abutting 91st, 92nd, 8th Street; the balance of
the lots in Naples Park; Beachwalk; and the county road right of way,
recognizing that there's 20 miles of road right of ways. You can see
the total acreage. The next column shows the number of -- either the
number of lots or the condominium units that are involved in either
the Park or the Pavilion Club or Beachwalk.
And my recommendation to the commissioners would be that
the cost of this project will be assessed against the people based on
their contribution of runoff, which is a function of size of the
property and the runoff intensity, which is a function of land use.
If you have -- as a good example, you'll notice the Pavilion, we use a
runoff factor of nine-tenths. That says that piece of property is
somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 percent impervious in that it's
all your parking area, asphalt, roofs. Host of the rainfall that runs
-- hits that property is runoff. It doesn't percolate in. All the
way down to the bulk of the Park is at three-tenths. We're saying a
neighborhood suburban area like that, homes has a certain amount of
grassy areas around the home. 30 percent of the water that hits a
piece of property like that would run off. These are commonly used
engineering factors of runoff based upon land use depending whether
it's highly commercial or whether it be idle woodland or residential
or multifamily. So the contribution of runoff then would be a
multiplication of the size of the property. The acreage times that
runoff factor would be an approximation of the runoff contributed to
the system.
Column 5 is my attempt to introduce another factor,
which this is going to be new to some of you, because I just tried to
refine this in the last few days to take some of the confusion out of
it. I call it a location benefit factor. I tried to recognize the
fact, in my own mind anyways, that the lots that abut 91st, 92nd
Avenue that have the large open ditch in the backyards are going to
benefit more from this project than those lots up in the middle of the
Park or on the higher ground. You can see the factor that was
recommended here by the commissioners is a factor of three, so they're
saying that basically three times the benefit from everybody else in
Naples Park.
I also tried to recognize the fact that in Beachwalk
they have a modern state-of-the-art project. They have retention
lakes. They have a control structure at the northwest corner that
limits the discharge on that project to a predevelopment discharge
rate. The engineer when he designed that project looked at the piece
of property before it was developed. It was a raw piece of land,
woods and sand. And he said -- he calculated the amount of runoff
that was going to come off of that property, and then he had to limit
his discharge after he developed the property and put all the roofs
and parking area into it to limit the discharge to that same factor.
So I gave Beachwalk credit for that and give them a two-tenths
factor.
So now to come up with the whole thing, you get column 6
by multiplying acreage times this runoff factor times the benefit
factor, and the rest of it is just a matter of figuring out what
percentage each of these areas would contribute to the system. You
can see column 7 totals down at the bottom a hundred percent. Notice
the county right of way was circled at 10.4 percent. That was a
figure, again, the commissioners at their last meeting chose to select
as their contribution to this project based upon fair share
computation and also some precedent that was set in another project
similar which was Willoughby Acres. It was about 10.4 percent, so
that would be the county's contribution, which in this case you can
see is almost $400,000.
So column 8 shows the amount of money everybody would
contribute to the 3.8 million dollars.
Column 9 just gives you an average of the average per
acre. That's not real meaningful to most of it. The real meaningful
column is column 10. That's the average cost per typical lot, and you
need to know the lot in Naples Park is a 50-foot lot. It's almost
typically 50 foot by about 135. Some of them are very different than
that, but the -- that's -- when we say per lot, that's what we're
talking about, a 50-foot lot. If you have a home on a 50-foot lot,
that's one lot. If your home is on two lots, then this would be the
cost per lot. You'd have to double that figure. If your home was on
three lots, you'd have to triple the figures you see here because this
is per lot.
You can see that for the Pavilion Club per unit that
works down to be $558. The commercial properties along U.S. 41 would
be $1,086. Those lots abutting would be almost eighteen hundred
dollars per lot. And the one I put this little hexagon around is the
balance of lots, of $660 per lot total, and then Beachwalk is 90.
Now, column 11 is cost per year. If you were to spread
the cost of this out 7 years at 7 percent, that gives you an idea in
column number 11 what that would be per year. You can see for the
balance of the lots in Naples Park, that would be $122 a year or even
further boiled down, that would be like $10 a month.
The next page, page 12, is a similar computation. This
is a scenario, so-called, 2-B. It's basically the same philosophy
only we're looking to assess $900,000 instead of the 3.8 million
dollars. And everything else is the same as far as the benefit
factors, the county contribution. The only thing that's changed was
the total cost of the project. You can see then the balance of the
lots in Naples Park would only be $155 in column 10.
Page 13 is a kind of a summary. This is kind of
summarizing what we just said. We're offering at this point plan A,
which is a 3.8 -- $3,832,000 project; that's to enclose the ditches
along Eighth Street on the east side on the south basin, on the west
side on the north basin, and also the large ditch between 91st and
92nd. That's plan A. It provides a ten-year level of protection from
storm, have to happen once every ten years. The county contribution
would be almost $400,000.
Plan B is the $900,000 project. That's to leave the
ditches that I just spoke about as open ditches. We would rock riprap
the side slopes to stabilize them and give them a better look, and
then we would increase the pipe sizes along Eighth Street as is
appropriate to give us a better flood protection, but it would still
be less than -- actually much less than the ten-year storm, probably
something in the neighborhood of a two-, three-, five-year -- probably
more like a two- or three-year storm protection. And, again, the
county contribution would be about $94,000.
And just summarizing those two very complicated tables,
plan A and B was with scenarios i-B, the benefit factor for those lots
abutting was 3.0; county share, 10.4. The lots, the average lots in
the Park, would be $660 total. And you can see for plan B the
difference there, what it would change.
Next is sheet 14. I think we'll skip over that for a
little bit. The last thing we want to do after you've answered all
your questions, we want to give you instructions on how you can state
your preference for the plans. And at this point I'll turn it back.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you, John.
MR. HARGETT: Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to remind
you again if you would like to speak or have a question, if you would
fill out page 15, pass it to the center and then up to the front. I
do have 25 speakers already registered. And what I'd like to do is I
would try to call out two names, and if you would, first name would
certainly come to the microphone. If the second speaker would start
making their way to the microphone, and we possibly could get through
this a little quicker in a little more orderly fashion.
First speaker, Janet MAiale, followed by Anthony. If I
mispronounce that, I'm sorry, M-a-i-a-l-e.
MS. MAIALE: That's correct. I want to ask you about --
where is Mr. Boldt?
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Please state your name.
MS. MAIALE: Jeannette MAiale. I live on 92nd Avenue.
So I want to talk about that ditch. And that was a stream, a very
small trickle stream, for thousands of years, a natural outfall. So
the last 20 years the county has been making it what it is today. And
my question is, you said that we could not have riprap on that and
have the Eighth Street cover.
Now, Willoughby Acres has an outfall from all of their
ditches going right onto Immokalee Road into that big ditch, and that
worked. So why won't it work on 91st and 92nd on that ditch?
MR. BOLDT: We were asked by the commissioners to
reevaluate that. I went back to the consultant, Agnoli, Barber, and
Brundage. We looked at the profiles, the engineering plans. We
looked at the cover of the pipe along Eighth Street and the depth of
pipe that has to be to provide the protection up in that area. And
when that pipe then in the south basin crossed underneath Eighth
Street, you're talking about an 84-inch pipe. The top of that pipe
would be right where the existing ditch bottom is right now. The
bottom of that pipe would be 7 foot below the bottom of the ditch. So
you talk about digging the ditch 7 foot deeper in order to provide an
outlet for the area up along Eighth Street. You know, with the wet
sandy soils, obviously that's not practical. You can't make that
ditch deeper, and right now it's too shallow to put any pipe in along
Eighth Street.
You know, the Eighth Street ditch -- basically if you
get in the ditch and look over in the side yards, is only, you know,
4, 4-1/2, 5 foot deep, and if you're going to put pipe in it and get
-- make a swale over the top of that and have cover on the pipe, the
pipe has to be so deep in the ground that it wouldn't be practical to
MS. MAIALE: Is that the way it is on Immokalee Road
when it's coming out of Willoughby Acres? It does.
MR. BOLDT: Well, it's quite a bit different in that
they're outletting into a major canal, the Cocohatchee River, along
there. They're only talking about 48-inch pipes. It's much smaller,
and it doesn't really compare to the Naples Park situation.
MS. MAIALE: Well, I really would like to see Eighth
Street covered over, and I'd like to see that ditch on 91st and 92nd
open because I like the wildlife, and I like -- I would like not to
have the poison put in it.
MR. BOLDT: See, we looked at that alternative, and it's
kind of either one or the other. Either we pipe the whole thing, or
we leave the whole thing open and riprap both situations.
MS. MAIALE: Then why do you think that we will reap
three times the benefit of anyone else? We do not flood. I do not
want -- want it covered, and Iwm not going to reap three times the
benefit.
MR. BOLDT: How do I answer that one? I made a
recommendation to the commissioners that there ought to be more than
everybody else. I recommended one and a half times. I know -- MS. MAIALE: That Iill go along with.
MR. BOLDT: One of -- the individual Iive been working
real closely with in one of your associations, though it was 2.2, the
commissioners evaluated the whole thing and thought 3 was a better
factor, and thatls the decision they made at the last meeting.
MS. MAIALE: I think you better go back to the
commissioners and change that because we do not -- you think my house
is going to be worth three times as much when I do this?
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: No, malam, thatls not what the
3.0 means. It doesnlt mean you can turn around and sell your house
for $240,000 when you could have sold it for 80. What the three means
is that you back up to right now what is a ditch that has an erosion
problem, that has weeds in it -- MS. MAIALE: That you made.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: No, malam, I didnlt make it. You
back up to a ditch that is open that has no erosion control on it,
that has weeds growing in it, that has to be sprayed with herbicides
regularly. By riprapping that what that does is you put down a cover
material. You put rock on top of the cover material. The weed growth
is prohibited significantly, and the rock -- and Iive lived on a lake
that has been riprapped. Believe me, the rock looks tenfold better
than an open-soil bank.
MS. MAILALE: Oh, I would prefer --
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Excuse me, Miss Maiale. We have
to speak one at a time. Iim sorry.
So the difference is whether your home is worth another
$600 or -- Iim sorry. Under that plan itls what? 155, Mr. Boldt?
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: No, shels -- shels on the ditch.
MS. MAILALE: I was talking about plan A.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. On plan A, well that --
itls closed. There the difference is is your home worth $600 more
when you look out your backyard and see a -- a 50-foot grassed area or
whether you see an open ditch? Iim a layman, but Iim going to guess
yes. So thatls -- thatls the reason. As you benefit more
aesthetically from treatment to that ditch than does someone who
doesnlt even look at it, thatls why the benefit factor is higher. MS. MAIALE: Okay.
MR. HARGETT: Anthony Maiale followed by Jack Dolfinger,
then George Pacanovsky.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Iim sorry. I guess we just
assumed that since we talked so much on TV these days everybody knows
us. To my extreme right is Commissioner John Norris from District 1,
east Naples, and Marco Island. To my immediate right I think you know
Mr. Hancock. He represents District 2. And I represent District 5,
and I am Bettye Matthews.
(Applause)
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I do want to ask you -- the first
speaker took considerably longer than 2 minutes, and with what -- we
have 30 or 35 speakers now, at -- at 2 minutes each. 35 speakers is
going to be about 200 minutes, and that's 3 hours, so let's really
shorten it up.
MR. MAIALE: When I reach past 2 minutes blow the gong
or something.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I don't have a timer, but when my
sense tells me you're there, I'm going to let you know. Okay?
MR. MAIALE: Anthony J. Maiale. I live on 92nd Avenue.
This is an ancient stream, and a day doesn't pass that I don't get a
lot of pleasure out of watching purple martins feeding off the
mosquitoes of that ditch and occasionally seeing blue and white herons
there. At night we have the music of the frogs. You're going to
destroy all this. I just want you to be aware of that. I don't like
it.
Now, I wish the choice that -- we had the choice of an
open ditch between 92nd and 91st and pipe everything else. But you've
-- you've answered that question, so I won't ask it again.
I do take exception to the benefits. The purpose of
this project is to remove water from Naples Park. And when you remove
the water from my 50-foot lot, I get just as much benefit out of this
project as somebody that lives on 98th Avenue and no more benefit.
Now, I'll have a little bit of real estate. I will no longer have the
advantage of a barricade behind my house that a -- somebody thinking
of perpetrating something evil would have a rough time crossing. So I
have disadvantages. I lose the birds. I lose the barricade. I gain
no more. No more water is going to be removed from my property than
anywhere else in the land. Thank you.
MR. HARGETT: Jack Dolfinger, George Pacanovsky, Flo
Mortensen.
MR. DOLFINGER: Good evening, Commissioners. Good
evening, Mr. Boldt. My name is Jack Dolfinger. I'm a resident of
Pavilion Club. My question also concerns benefit. We have the same
benefit as the rest of Naples. We are not really near Naples Park.
We are like the other community. We are like Beachwalk. We are a
walled community. We are a gated community. We don't even see the
Park. We want to be good neighbors. We want to contribute, but
having a 1 percent and having a 2 percent for Beachwalk doesn't make
any sense to me. I don't think it makes any sense to Commissioner
Hancock either because he wrote in the Naples Park Community News,
each property owner is assigned a benefit amount that corresponds to
the benefit they initially receive from the property improvements.
We -- I don't really see we receive any benefit, but I'm
willing to go along because I think it's a real problem over there,
and I'd not like to see the area just deteriorate. But I think being
equal with the rest of Naples Park makes no sense. We should be
treated just like the other community. And if you talk about this
location thing and the burden, that's -- that's runoff. And when I --
when Mr. Boldt visited us, he talked about runoff, and I tried to
change the subject to benefits, and I got runoff. I'm confused. I
don't know. That's my question. I think there has to be a difference
or just put one factor in there. It just doesn't make any sense.
Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: John, you want to handle the
difference between the location benefit and the runoff benefit?
MR. BOLDT: Well, again, on the table on page 11, column
4 is the estimation of the runoff that's going to be derived from a
property based upon its land use, how much roof, paving, grass areas
it has. The higher the number, the more runoff, the more contribution
of runoff to the system. So I think that's explanatory. I can show
you tables in engineering manuals that give those factors.
Column 5 was my attempt to introduce a location-type
benefit based upon my concept of the lots between 91st and 92nd and
along 8th Street would have no ditches in their backyards. They're
going to receive more benefit than everybody else. And then at
Beachwalk, because their location is such that their outlet comes in
directly at the very lower end of the project and doesn't contribute
that much to the system, it was two-tenths. My way of looking,
everybody else's is the same. Everybody else is 1. It averages out
whether they're at the top of the hill, the bottom of the hill, along
Vanderbilt Drive, or anywhere else. Just for those two exceptions I
tried to get -- I modified them.
MR. DOLFINGER: Okay. If I can -- we talked --
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We're going -- excuse me, sir.
MR. DOLFINGER: Can I get a chance?
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We're going to have to wrap it
up, though, because --
MR. DOLFINGER: I will. Just -- I want to make the
comment because Mr. Boldt gave me the same explanation. I hope
somebody understands, because what he's saying is runoff. I'm not an
engineer. Mr. Boldt's a good engineer. He talked about runoff
factor, talked about the five-year, the ten-year plan, floods, and I
conceded that I don't know what runs off. I think our cypress pond
gets a lot of the water. I think our grassy area -- we have more
grassy area than some of the other condos, soaks it up. We use the
water from our lake to water our grass. We were -- the Pavilion
Shopping Center was there before us, and Naples Park was there before
us, and the water ran through the same way it does now. We might even
take some of it off. I don't know. I'm not an engineer. But I know
I don't benefit, and I know I don't understand location benefit.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Quiet. Quiet, please.
MR. HARGETT: George Pacanovsky, Flo Mortensen, Richard
Wood.
MR. PACANOVSKY: George Pacanovsky, Pavilion Club.
Gentlemen -- ladies and gentlemen, I have two questions. First of
all, has the county applied for funding via state and federal grants
for this project? If not, why not?
MR. BOLDT: Well, to our knowledge, there's almost
absolutely no money available for storm water. There's cost-sharing
grants available from the federal government for wastewater, you know,
for sewage, for things of that nature. But I, not to my knowledge,
ever heard of any grants from the federal or state. This just doesn't
exist in storm water.
However, the South Florida Water Management District
does have a brand new cost-sharing program, and I don't want to give
you much hope for this at all, because I'm not sure this project
qualifies, but I put in an application for a 50-50 cost sharing for
some money they have available for all 16 counties in south Florida
under South Florida Water Management District. They'll evaluate that,
and if it's a -- we meet the qualifications, then we'll go to the
board, and we'll explain to them what's been offered because it's a
matching grant. And if it would fit into here, the county is going to
have to contribute the $400,000, and the district would -- would match
it up to a certain dollar. So it's an opportunity to get some money,
but I even hate to bring it up because I don't give it much of a
chance. Those type of funds are not going to be used for ditch
enclosure projects. They want to spend the money on demonstration
projects, for water quality treatment, for conservation, for all sorts
of other projects that meet the district's goals. But we have made an
application.
MR. PACANOVSKY: Thank you. My next question is, why
are we selectively being charged for the cost of this project? Why is
it not taken from the regular tax base just like any other funding for
any other project in Collier County?
(Applause)
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I would presume the best answer
for that is that the drainage problem in Naples Park affects Naples
Park. Naples Park, Beachwalk, Pavilion, Pavilion Club, and the
neighborhoods in that immediate environment will benefit from any
repairs or improvements made to your drainage system. It's -- it's
not fair to ask the other residences in Collier County to pay
additional money for drainage problems in Naples Park, i.e., the newer
subdivisions that have been built since -- what is it -- '87 or '88,
South Florida Water Management District requires them to handle their
10- or 25-year storm water. And the newer subdivisions have all paid
that money in the price of their lots and roads and retention ponds.
They've taken care of their problem. They're required to. When yours
was built, it wasn't required, and the problem is there.
MR. PACANOVSKY: Well, in regard to that, let me ask
this question. If 951 is -- if they construct another lane on 951 --
I never use 951, but I have to pay for that additional construction of
that lane; right? And another -- another example is if they build
another school, I don't benefit. I don't have any school-aged
children, so why should I pay for a school? That's the same parallel
what you're doing here. I think it's totally unfair.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That's fine. We -- we all have
differing opinions. That's all I can say to that. 951 is part of our
road network. All of us benefit from all of the roads, and what we do
with 951 takes traffic off of other roads. We're not going to discuss
the road network tonight. We're here to discuss Naples Park.
MR. PACANOVSKY: I just gave that as an example. That's
all.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Okay.
MR. PACANOVSKY: Okay. Thank you very much.
MR. HARGETT: Flo Mortensen, Richard Wood, Redmond
Jones. If it's not inconvenient, those who are on deck may want to
line up at the -- behind the speaker.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Yeah, if the people who are
speaking next would be right behind the speaker, we could pick up
another 15 or 20 seconds each turn.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Go ahead, Flo.
MS. MORTENSEN: My name is Flo Mortensen. If -- if plan
B is adopted -- if plan B is adopted, how do you propose to solve the
various health and safety problems, which I won't reiterate here, but
all of you have heard me say? Mr. Norris and Ms. Matthews have heard
it several times. What can be done about that, if you use the riprap
plan, because it's still an open ditch?
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yes, Flo, it is. And we have
open ditches all over Collier County, and the idea that we have to go
in and enclose every single one because there is a potential health
hazard isn't reasonable. What we're saying here is that plan A is
extremely expensive. Everyone may not be able to afford it. We're
looking for an option to try and alleviate some of the flooding in
Naples Park that may be less costly. When you do that, there are
sacrifices made in other areas. The sacrifice may be that, yes,
there's going to be some standing water on Eighth Street. But on the
other hand, you generally don't get kids playing in these riprap-type
ditches as you do in the open ones. They don't ride their bikes in
and out of riprap ditches because you don't make it very far.
there is some benefit there. We can argue all night long on that, but
I believe that there is.
MS. HORTENSEN: No. I don't want to argue, but I think
you're focusing on Eighth Street, but you're forgetting about the big
ditch. I happen to live on Sixth, on the ditch at Sixth Street. Now
I pointed out all of these things. The kids go in. There s some
riprap there that was put in by the people who enlarged the water
pipes. It's all gone because the kids simply rip it out.
COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That wasn't done in the manner in
which we're talking about here, nowhere near correct, in my opinion.
MS. HORTENSEN: Also, I think there would have to be
some protection from the kids who dangle off the road -- the roadway.
COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That protection is called
parental control, Flo.
(Applause.)
COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I'm sorry. I don't mean to get
up your time, but the truth is I can't prohibit every kid in the world
from doing something they're not supposed to do, nor is closing a
swale going to keep a kid from getting hurt.
MS. HORTENSEN: The county could have some plans, a
sign, or something. These kids aren't from my neighborhood anyhow.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Can you wrap it up, ma'am? Your
two minutes has expired.
MS. HORTENSEN: Yeah, I do have one more question which
I had asked Mr. Boldt at another meeting and he couldn't answer, and
that is will the soil that has eroded from the properties that abut
the big ditch, will that be restored, or will the riprap simply be put
on what I call as is? I mean we've all lost 4 or 5 feet of soil.
MR. BOLDT: We haven't done any engineering studies or
surveys for plan B. But my proposal would be if we were to do a plan
B that we would make the slopes more uniform, we would bring some sand
in. We would try to build them up uniformly and get them back in the
drainage easements where they belong and then put the riprap on it if
that's practical to do so.
MS. HORTENSEN: Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you.
MR. WOOD: My name is Richard Wood. I drove all the way
from Palm Beach here in a hurry to get here just for two minutes so I
got to hurry up.
Eight years about seven us who are in this room started
a project we thought would last two years. Here it's eight years
later, and we hope it's reached its pinnacle tonight or this month
sometime. When you send your children to a public school or your
grandchildren, those teachers are experienced, and they have a
degree. They have a state license, which you have confidence in their
work that they do with your children. So this project, this drainage
project, is so important to this community, I think we should let the
professional engineers that are licensed by the State of Florida -- we
ought to believe them. And there is a state statute that states that
the judgment of professional engineers must be considered over the
judgment of nonengineers or politicians. So I believe we started this
eight years ago. We -- we paid $60,000 for the study. We now have
all the blueprints ready for construction on plan A. Plan A is the
only one that will solve flooding in Naples Park. Don't let them fool
you on this riprap. I wish I never heard of riprap.
(Applause.)
Riprapping will not solve the problem. There has been
no modeling done, no -- any kind of engineering work done on this, so
we don't know. It's a blank as far as I'm concerned. The only thing
we have tonight are the facts of the engineers that have worked hard
on this, and they know what they're talking about. And they have done
so many models and studies on this that plan A will work, and it will
keep you from flooding. Who can answer this tonight in this room?
MR. HILAND: I can. I'm a --
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Wait.
MR. WOOD: Just a minute.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Just a moment. Just a moment,
sir.
MR. WOOD: Let me finish. Then you'll have your turn.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: You're back there. The
microphone is there, so you'll have to wait your turn.
MR. WOOD: I've got 30 seconds more. Is there anyone
here that could answer this -- that could answer? On page 13 it says
on page -- up there that plan B under level of protection, less than
ten years. Well, that's a pretty broad statement. What's less than
ten years mean? Does that mean two years? Does that mean five-year
storm? Less, what's less mean? Who can answer that?
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Mr. Boldt when he made the
presentation said two to three years.
MR. WOOD: All right. Do we want -- that's what we have
now, and we still flood. We have a two year. So this riprapping is
not going to solve the problem.
COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Excuse me, Mr. Wood. That's your
time plus 30 seconds.
MR. WOOD: Hay I have another minute to ask another
question?
COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,
please. Ladies and gentlemen, please. Mr. Wood, we've got to try and
be fair here. We're going to be here all night if this continues.
MR. WOOD: Well, there are some professional engineers
in here --
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: No, we don't do that.
MR. WOOD: There are some professional engineers in
here, and I hope that we get a chance to hear from them later. Thank
you very much.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: You're quite welcome.
MR. HARGETT: Redmond Jones, Larry Pistori, Hathew
Ferrantino.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Just a moment, sir.
I'm going to ask you once again to please while someone
is talking to keep it quiet so that we can hear him. All it does is
delay the entire process, and we're going to be here much, much longer
than any of you care to be. Do you want to go ahead?
MR. JONES: Can you hear me? I think you can hear me
without a mike. My name is Red Jones. I live on 102nd Avenue, and I
want no applause for that from my friends. Thank you.
I have a question for John Boldt. On the Agnoli,
Barber, and Dennis funk plan, how deep do they say we have to put that
pipe in the 91st canal?
MR. BOLDT: Starts out about 3 foot below sea level, and
the top of the pipe is at about the bottom of the existing ditch all
the way up through there.
MR. REDMOND: That's what they recommend?
MR. BOLDT: That's what their plans show in order to get
the slope of the pipe, the flow of the pipe to keep it to an 84 inch,
have proper cover on it. And you have to recognize also that we still
need to put a swale over top of it to collect the backyard. When you
start there and get cover and then you get the depth of the pipe, the
top of the pipe is at about the ditch bottoms. So you're talking
about 6 or 7 foot deeper than it is right now.
MR. REDMOND: So you mean the top of the pipe will match
with that outflow then at Vanderbilt Drive?
MR. BOLDT: No, sir. There is a conflict at that
point. There's going to be a large structure catch basin put in
there, and DEP loved that idea because that's where all the sediment
is going to collect, and we're going to have to sign an agreement to
do regular maintenance to remove all those sediments.
MR. JONES: Quite a problem, huh?
MR. BOLDT: Yes, sir.
MR. JONES: Right off the bat I want to say that the
91st Avenue people on the canal don't get the same course as we do
otherwise in the Park. I'm against it. And, secondly, I -- if we
don't get it done properly, I would like to see the place left alone
rather than riprapped.
(Applause)
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you.
MR. HARGETT: Larry Pistori, Hathew Ferrantino, James
Pyle.
MR. FERRANTINO: I'm Hathew Ferrantino. I live at 101st
Avenue, 789. I've been here 23 years, never had a problem. I -- the
only reason we have a problem, the county does not clean the ditches,
does not clean the main ditches. I see it right down there in heavy
rain, flows over the road where they put the Wal-mart there, that
ditch over there. I see it on 91st the same way, and it backs up from
the lagoon. They did something down there. I don't know what they
did. They did something down there when they were building the
building down in the lagoon when the water backs up into that ditch
coming up on 91st, whatever it is. I've done a lot of work in the
Park here. I've been a contractor for years over here, and I've
worked in a lot of houses. Nobody had any problem with water around
their yards or nothing.
Then they throw the sewers down our throat. They say
that's going to take care of anything. The commissioners promised us
that they would not raise the road after the sewers were in. They
raised them up 4 inches. Now the water runs off the roads and in our
yards. They said they were going to scarify (phonetic) the roads and
redo them over. And they gave us permission; every property owner
could hook up their own pipes to the sewer.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Sir, excuse me. Can -- can you
confine your comments to plan A or plan B?
MR. FERRANTINO: Well, I'm just telling you I've been
here 23 years, and I know what the Park looked like. I know what all
of Collier County looked like.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We're trying to resolve whether
we're going to do plan A or plan B or nothing.
MR. FERRANTINO: Nothing.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Fine.
MR. FERRANTINO: It's not going to solve anything. You
put in a pipe. The water's going to go into that pipe. It's going to
go down into the lagoon. The people down there are going to holler
like heck.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. We're not using this time
for speech making. Thank you.
MR. HARGETT: Mathew Ferrantino, James Pyle, Charles
Youngblood.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Go ahead, Mr. Pistori. Just give
your name, please.
MR. PISTORI: My name is Larry Pistori. I live on 95th
Avenue North. My question is if you decide to go with the riprap,
would you be able to put some type of a cover on top of the ditch to
keep all the junk from going in there as it is being done,
unfortunately, but is being done now? You find lawnmowers in there
and shopping carts, everything. Will you be able -- do you have some
kind of a system where you can put a heavy wire mesh on top of that or
grading?
MR. BOLDT: No.
MR. PISTORI: Okay. Another question is where is the
water from the swales that will go to the Eighth Street ditch? And if
you put a pipe in there, the water that generates from the east that
goes to the Eighth Street ditch, where will that water from the swales
go?
MR. BOLDT: The plans call for under plan A at each
intersection of the avenues along Eighth Street there be new catch
basins put in, almost three corners. There would be new pipes put
under Eighth Street from west side to east side into the new pipe in
the south basin. That will all be tied in so the swales will drain
into the new pipes with the new configuration.
MR. PISTORI: Thank you. That's all I have to ask.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you.
MR. HARGETT: Mr. Pyle.
MR. PYLE: James Pyle, 564 103rd Avenue. As I
understand on plan A, all the rest of the lots inside the Park are
supposed to have open ditches. We can't put culverts through them.
Question one, what happens to the hundreds of people that already have
culverts? Is the county going to come through and dig them up and
make open ditches? Question two, two doors below me the -- my
neighbor has a double lot. He has culvert all the way through. The
problem is his inlet is higher than my outlet. What are you going to
do about that?
MR. BOLDT: Well, there's some -- to address the first
question -- I forgot what the first question was.
COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: The answer is no. The county is
not going to rip up existing culverts.
MR. BOLDT: That's right. We're assuming all those
culverts were put in with permits. If they're put in with permits,
there's no problem. There's no plan at this point in time to go in
and search out those that were without it. If that was asked to be
done by the commissioners, that would have to be a decision on their
part, but there's no plans to change the ones that are already in
there at this point. If they're in there at the wrong elevation or
the wrong size -- the transportation department started at the south
end of the Park, and they were making the improvements on each of the
avenues going their way north, and they were addressing those
individual situations where the pipes were too high and they had to do
some regrading. That was very difficult for them to do. They ran
into all sorts of obstacles, but it's their intention over a long
period of time to address those problems.
MR. HARGETT: Mr. Ferrantino, Mr. Youngblood, Mr. Besson
or Bessor (phonetic).
MR. YOUNGBLOOD: Charles Youngblood. I live on 100th
Avenue, 635. Excuse me. I have a ditch there 4 feet deep in front of
my house and never been any water, and I don't understand why they
would dig a ditch like that on top of the hill. I had a swale there,
and there's never been any water. I was here in Hurricane Donna, and
we didn't have any water up there. So why do I have a big ditch
there? Am I going to be left with it?
MR. BOLDT: Are you talking about something happened
just recently as part of the transportation improvements? MR. YOUNGBLOOD: Yes, just recently.
MR. BOLDT: I guess that gentleman's not here, but they
went -- I thought they surveyed those culverts and the ditches, and
they made the improvements to line up all the grades to get the water
to flow. I'm really not knowledgeable. I'm sorry.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Excuse me, Mr. Boldt. I've had
that discussion with Mr. Archibald because I've been out in people's
front yards in Naples Park. You can't mow them. They're deep. I
mean I don't know if it's a cemetery or a swale. I mean it's deep and
it's nasty. According to Mr. Archibald, some of those were dug
incorrectly. We're going to get back in there and rework them so that
you can at least maintain them. He's given me that much, and I guess
it's up to me to make sure it gets done.
MR. YOUNGBLOOD: All right. I appreciate it. Thank
you.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you.
MR. HARGETT: Larry Bessor or Besson, Keith Nagy,
Charles Bond.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: It was Larry's front yard I was
in.
MR. HARGETT: Charles Bond.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: If we could please have the
people who are on deck behind him. MR. HARGETT: A1 Krupa.
MR. BOND: I'm Chuck Bond from 91st Avenue. I've lived
there for 23 years, and we've had no problems on 91st whatsoever. And
I noticed that the flooding usually is 94th, 95th, 96th, and 97th on
8th Street, and that's because of the blockage in the culverts. And
if the blockage wasn't there, you wouldn't have the flooding. And I
don't understand about the price for charging us seventeen hundred --
what is it -- $1,792 when we -- we do -- don't get all the benefits,
because the topographical map --
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Sir, you have to talk into the
mike.
MR. BOND: The topographical map shows that the drainage
goes from ninety to top -- the highest point is 98th and 7th Avenue,
and the drainage runs north, west, and east from there and some --
some southeast which is -- would be going into ninety -- 91st ditch.
So I mean we don't drain all of Naples Park, so why in the world do we
get charged $1,7007 That's all.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: If I could, do you live directly
on 8th or directly on the 91st, 92nd Avenue North?
MR. BOND: I live in the 600 block on 91st.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I'm asking, is the Eighth Street
ditch in your yard?
MR. BOND: No.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. Then you would not be
charged $1,800.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: He's on 91st. He would.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Oh, you're on 91st? Okay. In
that case it would.
MR. BOND: Yeah. Why would we get charged that much
when the benefits aren't -- we don't need the benefits because the
drainage isn't there? We -- the water isn't there. We never are
flooded, never have been in 23 years.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Well, the benefit -- the benefit
is not related solely to water moving. It's also related to the
aesthetics and the fact that that particular ditch is not exactly what
you would call pretty, nor can it be without some type of aesthetic
treatment, whether it be riprap or closure. So part of the benefits
is aesthetic, not just drainage.
MR. BOND: Well, I don't know the benefits we have is --
just like you said, because we have all the trees and bushes that we
planted along the ditch, and we have raccoons, and we have squirrels,
and we have all the birds and the blue -- the herons, so I don't know
what the problem is. Thank you.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: You're welcome.
MR. KRUPA: My name's A1 Krupa. I lived on 92nd for
about ten, ten and a half years now. Now I'm living at the Pavilion
Club. I think we're all here to talk about flooding. And the big
cost of this flooding program seems to be 91st Avenue. I've lived
there for ten years. I've seen heavy rains. I've never seen water
come out of the swale, out of the drain ditch. I've never seen water
in anyone's yard on Ninety-first and second Avenue. So I say slope
the banks, riprap them, and let them the way they are. And then on
top of this just recently I think the rules have been that we're not
allowed to put any kind of pipe in front of the house because this is
not going to allow the water to run back through the earth and back
into the water source. If this is the case, why are we putting about
a mile and a half of 8- and 10-foot pipe in there that's going to be
-- never leave nothing drain back down into the water source?
And then on top of all this, you're going to have a
problem of pollution. Pollution, if it drains through an open ditch,
a certain amount of it will seep through the ground and purify as it's
going through. If you put that into a solid pipe, you're going to get
the solid flow of all kind of chlorines and whatever there may be
flowing into the lagoon, which they're already complaining about now.
I say leave the ditch open, let it as it is, put riprap.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you. I'd like to take a
couple minutes before the next speaker to talk about page 14 in the
package you've received. This is a questionnaire. It's nonbinding,
but what we're looking for is general information on which of the
three preferences each of you --
MALE VOICE: I haven't had a chance to speak, and I put
my name in first tonight, if you'll excuse me. And I want a chance to
speak.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Sir, we're going to hear
everybody. It's just that some people are leaving, and I want to go
over this.
HALE VOICE: And I think I have a valid question they're
interested in.
COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. Excuse me, folks. Again,
one person at a time at the microphone as you're called. If you've
submitted your name, you will be called. I'm sorry if the order gets
confused if you ran up first. You're going to get called. We're all
here till this is over.
Commissioner Matthews would like to explain because some
people are leaving early how to correctly fill out page 14 so that if
you do express your opinion, it counts for something. So let's please
get through that, and then we'll get to the speakers right away.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. On page 14 you have three
choices. You can pick plan A, plan B, or nothing. And the lower part
of that we'd like you to print your name. Tell us where you live;
Naples Park, Beachwalk, Pavilion, or Pavilion Club, and then your
address. You can write your phone number on it if you choose to. The
thing that we want -- that is important in this is the ownership of
the lot that you're representing. If your ownership of that lot is a
single person, meaning an individual, you get one vote. If your
property is jointly owned with another individual, you get two votes.
If you own multiple lots, you may only vote one of those lots. Now,
this is per the Florida Statutes as the attorney has told us. The
statute says property owners, plural, not by the lot, but by the
number of owners. So you only get to vote one lot if you own more
than one. If it's jointly owned, you get two votes. If it's
singularly owned, you get one vote. And we'll be glad to collect
these up front here for those who choose to leave early. Other than
that, we're here to listen to the speakers.
MR. HARGETT: Kenneth Dunne, Bill Cary, Don Hyer.
MR. DUNNE: Hello. Thank you very much. My name is Ken
Dunne.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Mr. Dunne, can you hold on a
moment? We have a lot of background noise. I'm going to ask you once
again, please keep it down.
MR. DUNNE: Okay, thank you very much. My name is Ken
Dunne. I live at 608 108th Avenue North in Naples Park. I recently
wrote to Commissioner Hancock a letter concerning my -- about my
concerns about this project, and I have a couple of engineering
questions I'd like to have answered particularly regarding the
engineer's estimate for this project.
I also spoke to Mr. Boldt, and I wasn't able to make to
it your office, but it appears to me from the drawings -- and I looked
at your sketch on the board up here -- that in the Pavilion basin you
show a relatively small lake using a 36-inch diameter line connecting
to a 72-inch and the 84-inch line that travels west to a double 3-by-7
box culvert. I'd like to know how much water in the engineering study
-- what the flow gradient is from the property that feeds the
Pavilion basin, number one. The other question I have, and these are
all generally technical questions where you may have to --
MR. BOLDT: I don't even have my technical file with me
this evening to answer those questions. You realize --
MR. DUNNE: Please let me finish my question. I'm a
registered professional engineer in the State of Florida. I worked
for a consultant, and I work for the Department of Transportation on
different projects in a different county. The engineering estimate
seems to be fairly high. Since you don't want to address the other
question about where the water comes, the engineering estimate is very
high for this size pipe as shown on the Florida Department of
Transportation historical cost summary that's available to the general
public. 84-inch pipe, including the riprap and the ballast, is $264 a
lineal foot. Does that agree with your estimate?
MR. BOLDT: I don't even have it in front of me, sir.
You've got to recognize -- MR. DUNNE: Will the residents of Naples Park have a
chance to look at the engineering drawings when they're finished --
MR. BOLDT: Absolutely.
MR. DUNNE: -- and the preliminary design and
engineering study that was done in order to come up with this
engineer's estimate?
MR. BOLDT: The final engineering plans are done,
completed. I have them right here with me. All that information is
available to anybody that wants to come in and inspect it.
MR. DUNNE: You mentioned earlier that there are several
critical culverts in Vanderbilt Drive, but I didn't see them
delineated on the drawing. Can you tell us which critical culverts
are at Vanderbilt?
MR. BOLDT: Well, plan A calls for replacing all eight
of them. Under plan B, which I was trying to scale back the cost, I
just merely said were we can replace the more critical ones, and I
have not evaluated that.
MR. DUNNE: Okay. So they need to be evaluated before
you can come up with a final engineer's estimate for the cost of this
project?
MR. BOLDT: The $900,000 cost was a real quick cost I
came up with based on my best engineering judgement for a plan B type
project.
MR. DUNNE: Did this come from Agnoli, Barber, and
Brundage?
MR. BOLDT: No, sir. It did not.
MR. DUNNE: Okay. Have they done a preliminary design
and environment study on this project?
MR. BOLDT: They were never asked to do so.
MR. DUNNE: Will that be in their scope of work?
MR. BOLDT: If the commissioners would ask us to proceed
with plan B, that would be the next step is to actually prepare plans
for B, go through the whole evaluation and permitting and the whole
process.
MR. DUNNE: Okay. Well, I'm not finished yet, please.
Please indulge me.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Mr. Dunne, I'm sorry. I know you
have technical questions, but again we're trying to be fair to
everyone and including Mr. Boldt's answers you have exceeded your time
limit.
MR. DUNNE: If I write a letter again, will I get a
response, Commissioner Hancock? I faxed you a letter -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Mr. Dunne, I will be glad to talk
to you afterwards. But your time is up here, sir. Don't think I've
ignored your letter. Ask me about it first. I'll give you the
answer.
MR. DUNNE: Okay.
MR. HARGETT: Bill Cary, Don Hyer, Paul Bute.
MR. CARY: Can you hear me? Bill Cary, Pavilion Club.
First I'd like to thank the commissioners for coming tonight. I just
don't understand how they can keep up the pace that that job
requires. Now, this is --
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We don't either.
MR. CARY: I had a thousand questions when this first
hit us like a bolt out of the blue. We've suddenly discovered out of
the clear blue sky that we're going to be assessed for $140,000, so
naturally we started to explore this over and over, and it's still a
mishmash. But let me call attention to one or two things, please.
This county is nearing the size -- it's the same size as Delaware and
Rhode Island, almost, and its population by the year of 2010 is going
to be comparable -- it's going to be catching up with Vermont, Alaska,
North Dakota, and Delaware. Now let's be honest, five people, five
commissioners, cannot run a county of this size. We've got to have a
different form of government because the county is to blame.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Excuse me, sir. We're here --
MR. CARY: The county is to blame.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We're here to talk about --
MR. CARY: Okay. All right. Listen, my question is
don't you think that the county needs a new form of government?
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Sir, that is not our question
tonight.
MR. CARY: My other question is don't you think that
Naples Park should have a homeowner's association the same as all the
surrounding communities.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Mr. Cary, I'm sorry. I'm going
to have interrupt you, but you're welcomed to incorporate. MR. HARGETT: Don Hyer, Paul Bute, MArtin Stewart.
MR. BUTE: Okay. Don Hyer is going to pass, but I will
still stay within the 2 minutes that you've asked us all to be
allocated to. I'm Paul Bute for the Pavilion Club, president of the
condo association there. I would just pick up on the comment that I
heard at the table earlier that the -- since I believe it was 1987 or
1988 that most of the condo associations or developments have their
own retention ponds to handle the water.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Whenever South Florida Water
MAnagement put that into effect.
MR. BUTE: All right. We were permitted in 1987 and
built out in 1988 and 1989. The Pavilion basin consists of a shopping
mall which preceded the development of the Pavilion condominiums. All
the water is diverted. All the surface water goes into our lake and
into our cypress preserve, and from there when the heavy rains come in
the summers, Mr. Boldt has pointed out there is an overflow that goes
into the Naples Park district. Until that time the water is retained
there. It has to rise 8 to 9 inches before it goes into Naples Park,
so there is a retention pond of certain capacity there. And our
concern has been, as -- as some of the other speakers have mentioned,
are the factors that were used. And certainly John has given of his
time to us to come out and explain it on the runoff and benefit. And
runoff -- we have worked with him and are satisfied that he has
answered our questions. We still have a problem with benefit, and I'm
still trying to clear it up, whether it is runoff, whether it is
property appreciation. I guess it's made up of a lot of different
things, and it's hard to judge it from a textbook. It has to be
addressed on an individual basis, and I would ask once more -- and,
Mr. Hancock, I heard you; you didn't answer somebody's letter. But
let me tell you you answered ours pretty darned quick, and we
appreciate it. And John Boldt responded to us very, very fast. So
the cooperation of both parts has been there. We would ask that you
review the benefit factor one more time, and we will pay our share,
but let's be sure it's an equitable amount. That's all we ask. Thank
you.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you.
MR. HARGETT: MArtin Stewart, Delores Klein, MArie
Sourbeer.
MS. SOURBEER: I might be out of turn. My name is MArie
Sourbeer. I thought I heard somebody say Sourbeer. We do have a
property owners' association in Naples Park. We have two of them, so
that gentleman needs to know that.
I have a question I'd like to ask the commissioners or
whoever, Mr. Boldt. I spoke with Mr. Boldt on the phone the other day
and asked him if we agree, and we ought to, to cover Eighth Street
with a viable ditch, you know, covering, pipes, whatever it takes, are
we doing both sides of the road. Are we doing 1/2 down to 100th
Avenue and the west side from about 101st down to lllth? And he said
to me, yes, the original plan calls for -- what did I say? It will be
done on the east side from about 91st down to around 99th. And where
it's already done, they're not going to bother with that. Then
they'll cross over and go up to lllth. That would have been fine nine
years ago, but today the both sides of Eighth Street are about as
bad. Now are we going to put up with half a job?
This riprapping, you'd have to do it on both sides of
the road. No matter what you do, you're going to have to work both
sides of Eighth Street to get anything done there that looks decent,
that will provide us with what we're trying to do with flooding or
whatever you call it. Has anybody realized that here tonight? No one
has addressed that point yet. There's only 1/2 of the street being
covered down to a certain point, and then we're going over to the
other side. Is that -- am I correct in that?
MR. BOLDT: You're correct. We're only going to make
the major improvement on one side. The other side, because it no
longer will carry quite the amount of water, we're going to be able to
reduce the size of it. They're going to be regraded. The catch
basins will be higher, and they'll be able to be resloped so it won't
be as large and deep as it is right now on the opposite side where the
pipes are going to go in.
MS. SOURBEER: Yeah. That's because the people along
Eighth Street are all going to be assessed alike. Now if I was on the
east side of the street and the west -- and I had to pay and the west
side got all the benefit with a new front lawn and whatever, which
will happen, I'd be quite upset.
MR. BOLDT: You're not quite correct there in that we're
talking about this benefit factor of three. Like in the south basin,
that will only be for people on the east side of Eighth Street. The
people on the west side, they would pay like everybody else in the
Park.
MS. SOURBEER: I think they'd be happy to if they could
get it taken care of. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: You're welcome.
MR. HARGETT: Vera Fitz-Gerald, Stephen Cosgrove, Page
Hiland.
MS. FITZ-GERALD: I'm Vera Fitz-Gerald, and I live on
107th Avenue North. I've been listening to the people who live on the
ditch for many, many years, and I would ask them to give me the
courtesy of listening to the opposite position. The ditch --
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Excuse me, Vera. I need to ask
everyone, please, keep the noise down so that our reporter can hear
the speaker. Thank you very much.
MS. FITZ-GERALD: Only three and a half of the 3,400
homes and lots in Naples Park back on 91st and 92nd. If you throw in
the 7 feet, I think it's 75 homes and lots that abut Eighth Street.
We're now talking about five and a half percent of all homes in Naples
Park, so the rest of the 95 percent are paying for these
improvements. There's about 50 percent impact on 91st, 92nd, and on
8th Street. The other 50 percent of which I belong do not impact any
of these systems, and yet we're going to have to pay for it.
Now after we pay for it, then we have the privilege of
being penalized by never being able to improve our own homes. I've
got a ditch in front of my house that you all know about it. I've
talked about it, big, deep, dirty, slimy, green thing. And I'm going
to have to live -- if you go with enclosing the ditches, I'm going to
have to live with my dirty, deep, green, slimy ditch. Meanwhile I
paid for everybody else's improvements, and so that upsets me.
What really upsets me is that we are the only community
that I know of in south Florida that can -- that has a moratorium on
swales. I don't know. I phoned DEP. I have talked to the South
Florida Water Management people. We are the only community, and I do
not understand that. And don't tell me maybe I'll be able to do that,
because I don't want maybe. I want yes or I want no. But I -- I
support the riprap, and I -- I support the riprap.
Tony and Jeannette Maiale who live on 92nd put it
right. There's an awful lot of wildlife in there. And I feel that if
we go with the riprap, we're into a win-win situation. I can win.
The people on the ditches win. And the wildlife, the birds and the
otters and the turtles and the frogs all win. We all win. Thank
you.
MR. HARGETT: Stephen Cosgrove, Page Hiland, James
Charles.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Ladies and gentlemen, your boos,
your hisses, your clapping, all it's going to do is prolong the
evening. I would like you to hold it down, please.
MR. COSGROVE: Yes, my name is Steve Cosgrove. I live
at 104th Avenue. First, I have some information for you, and then I
have four questions, and they're pretty much rhetorical. You don't
really need to answer them. They're just for your own to think about
because some of my other questions have been addressed.
I'm a student at USF in Fort Myers, and I'm taking a
statistics course right now. And I happened to see one day on the
Collier County Commissioners that some misrepresentation is going out
to you, and I want -- I did a survey through Naples Park in a
scientific manner and -- because I saw the PMOP up there stating to
you guys that 65 percent of the people prefer option A, and that isn't
true. That's 65 percent of their people.
I don't know if the commissioners are listening. I'll
take back 15 seconds of my time. But -- you were chatting with the
people on the way out.
I don't know if you took those results as official or
not, but they're not, and I want to give you the truth. My results --
I got the information from Mr. Boldt, and he was very informative on
giving it to me. I give him three options which they preferred;
option A, which is the expensive one, enclose the ditch, only 16
percent of the people wanted; Option B, riprap, 16 percent of the
property owners; and option C, which is do nothing. 68 of the
property owners of Naples Park prefer that. And I think that that
information is known to you, but if -- youwve chosen to ignore it,
because theywve done population surveys in the Naples Park in the late
wS0s that have tended to give these results.
So some of the questions that I had are just rhetorical,
like I said. How can you say that 10.4 percent is a fair share for
the county when the county designed the drainage plan? They forced us
to abide by it. They allowed different pipe sizes to be put in at
different elevations. Theywve even allowed, by not enforcing the
restrictions, people to fill in their swales with no pipes as all.
Basically it is your system, and I donwt mean you. You
werenwt in charge of the whole years. You demanded it. You demanded
it that we live by it. And then when it doesnwt work, you blame us.
Donwt you have any accountability? And, like I said, how can a fair
share be 10.4 percent when youwre 100 percent responsible? And, also
I think how can you waste -- how can you waste 4 million dollars of
our money to alleviate a problem? If youwre going to do something,
fix it. I like the word alleviate because you have no
accountability. If it doesnwt work in five years, our money is spent,
and the lots could still be flooding. You donlt know. Nobody knows.
Iive even asked Mr. Boldt directly -- I donlt know if any of you
have. Itls a simple question -- will this plan after we spend 4
million dollars stop the flooding in Naples Park. And the answer I
got a year ago, and the answer I got this year was no. And he is a
respectable engineer, and I know that he knows his job. I think if
welre going to waste 4 million dollars, we need -- if welre going to
spend it, we need to fix it and do it right, and these are comments
that I got through my survey. And -- and also I think youlre spending
4 million dollars on something that -- that is not even a problem. We
donlt have severe flooding. We have isolated seasonal flooding in
Naples Park, and the drainage is gone in two days after the rains.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Can you wrap it up, sir?
MR. COSGROVE: Yes, thatls all I have. Thank you for
coming. And, like I said, those are just rhetorical questions for you
to think about.
MR. HARGETT: Page Hiland, James Charles, Lon Gerould.
MR. HILAND: My name is Page Hiland. I live in the 400
-- 500 block on 106th Avenue. I have one question. The eastern
boundary of Naples Park is a state highway, number 41. I donlt see
any factor figured in for the drainage from that highway in this
computation that youlye given us tonight. How do you account for
that?
MR. BOLDT: Well, the Florida Department of
Transportation is in the process of six laning that road. Theylye got
the plans underway, and their proposal is to take all of the water
from the western right of way line from U.S. 41, run it east under 41
and dispose of it easterly through the Pelican Marsh project over into
the Pine Ridge canal.
MR. HILAND: When does that take place?
MR. BOLDT: Iim not sure. In the next two years when --
MR. HILAND: When are you going to do our drainage?
MR. BOLDT: Probably in the same time period hopefully.
MR. HILAND: Iid like to leave you a thought. Iive been
talking with people in this county and commissioners. For the 18
years Iive lived here -- and we havenlt gotten any further down the
road. I think probably it would be better if we do nothing for the
time being until they do get a long-range plan in this county that
really puts this thing all together.
MR. HARGETT: James Charles, Lon Gerould, Louis Wiener.
MR. GEROULD: I'm Lon Gerald. I live at 635 107th
Avenue. I had a very nonemotional, technical question which I'm
pleased to say was answered earlier, so I'm not going to -- to take
any time on it in that regard. But my question had to do with how
water flowing down the swales and ditches was to enter into those huge
pipes, and that question was answered, and I appreciate it. Thank
you.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you.
MR. HARGETT: Louis Wiener.
MR. WIENER: I'm going to leave it to 2 minutes. Who
can I trust with my watch here? Shut me up in 2 minutes. I've got
two questions. The first one is --
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Can you come closer to the mike?
MR. WIENER: I have -- I have two questions. The first
one is we have here on page -- they represent a swale here. I think
it's on page -- page 97 All right. At any rate, they have the swales
here represented with gravel over top of them, and then later on
there's gravel down below underneath. True? Then why were all the
catch basins they put in next to the culverts put in with concrete
bottoms? Doesn't that defeat the very purpose of those catch basins
if we're trying to run water straight down into the ground, which is
logical? That's the first question.
The second question is, I see here on page 1 that we
have Beachwalk basin draining into the south side of 91st Avenue and
from there going across into a double box culvert and emptying into
Vanderbilt Beach -- rather, Vanderbilt Drive. Now, it's been my --
sorry, I'll shut up. Can I go ahead with my question? CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Quickly. Quickly.
MR. WIENER: All right. My second question is --
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: No, you already asked your second
question. You're at the tail end of asking that question.
MR. WIENER: I'm trying to ask the second question.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Quickly.
MR. WIENER: It's been my experience that there always
was a wetlands behind the Pavilion Club facing along Vanderbilt Drive
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I'm sorry, sir. I'm going to
interrupt you there because whatever was where Pavilion Club is now
has nothing to do with the Naples Park drainage system because --
MR. WIENER: Well, why isn't it --
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Sir, it was never designed to go
in that direction. It was never used --MR. WIENER: It was going in that direction because that
wetlands drained through a culvert on Vanderbilt Drive and went down
into a natural drainage and eventually wound up in Clam Pass. Now we
have a situation where there's --
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Your time is more than expired.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Mr. Wiener, if you go over your 2
minutes, that man gets to keep your watch, doesn't he?
MR. WIENER: Okay. Okay. Let's get an answer.
MR. HARGETT: Madam Chairman --
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I'm sorry, Mr. Hargett. Mr.
Wiener had a first question as to the concrete bottoms in the catch
basins asking whether that was counterproductive to drainage.
MR. BOLDT: Which concrete catch basins are you talking
about?
MR. WIENER: I'm talking of the ones that exist on 99th
Avenue and along on others. All through the Park I haven't seen a
single catch basin put in between the culverts that doesn't have a
concrete base.
MR. BOLDT: Then it's really not a catch basin. I guess
that's more of a manhole, and that must be a county requirement when
you close the swales. They need to put those in, but that's not my
requirement.
MR. WIENER: Why?
MR. BOLDT: I can't answer that.
MR. WIENER: That's what I'm asking. Why?
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: He just said he didn't know.
MR. WIENER: Well, then don't you think we ought to
investigate that?
MR. HARGETT: Madam Chairman, unfortunately, I'm out of
speaker slips.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: You're out of speaker slips? Is
there -- is there anyone here who has put in a speaker slip that has
not been called to speak? Then I guess we have exhausted the speaker
slips, and I would imagine that we're looking for either comments from
the commissioners of what we're going to be doing and what the future
is on this.
Mr. Dotrill, do you know if this is on the Tuesday
agenda, this coming Tuesday? MR. DORRILL: No.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: It is not? It's in May? It's
due up in May? Okay.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: What I'd like to do -- did you
want to speak, sir, or do you have your seat? MR. MICKLEY: Well, I didn't intend to.
COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. Please give your name at
the mike known.
CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Sir, talk into the microphone,
and identify yourself.
MR. MICKLEY: Vern Mickley (phonetic), 98th Avenue. I
have lived here going on 20 years, owned property in the Park, and I'm
very proud of it. We've had a wonderful time and all that, but the
one thing I haven't heard mention here tonight is the -- when I talk
about Naples Park, the first thing I hear from an outsider is what
about those ditches up on Eighth Street. Why are they there? They're
full of junk. They're full of crap, can't understand it. You got a
nice home down here. Get rid of the ditches.
MALE VOICE: Can I answer that guy's question?
COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: With that -- I'm sorry, sir.
Each person is allotted one time to speak. Then you'll have to talk
to him afterwards, okay.
The board is scheduled to make a decision on this item
on Hay 16th. It will be a regular agenda item. The meetings begin at
9 a.m. on the third floor of building F, the administration building
at the county complex.
The whole reason that I wanted to have this meeting, for
those of you that have been doing this since the beginning of time,
have been trying work to work toward a solution, is that I don't want
myself or my fellow commissioners to sit in a vacuum and try and make
a decision. We're here tonight not because we have some strange
desire to go out and spend your money, but because that a significant
number of voices have asked this to be brought forward. We are
responding to that and bringing it forward, and your input is
critical.
I ask each of you to make sure you fill out page 14 in
your packet. Choose either plan A, plan B, or status quo, which is do
nothing. Please print your name and address. We have to verify that
you are, in fact, a property owner on the tax rolls and other -- in
order to look at your vote and to count it. This is nonbinding. If
we get one-third for everything, that tells us we've got a split. If
we get 50 percent, that says do something, whether it's A or B, and 50
percent that says do nothing, well then we've got at least a
direction.
I can't tell you right now that anyone has their mind
made up, and I appreciate everyone's comments tonight. I can tell you
no matter what we do, whether the board goes with plan A, plan B, or
nothing, we're not going to make everyone happy. I accept that. I
understand that. Three and a half years from now you can pitch me out
on my butt and tell me you didn't like it. I understand that. And I
understand your feelings and your sentiments.
And the whole reason that there is a plan B on here is
because the sticker shock of plan A to me personally if I were living
in Naples Park. By the same token, I ask you to focus on the fact
that there is, in fact, a drainage problem and that each resident in
Naples Park and including Beachwalk and Pavilion Club contribute to
that drainage problem. With those two bases, I ask you to please make
sure you fill out page 14 accurately and fully. Leave it either with
one of our county folks up here or at this table. Oh, actually we
have folks on the way out the door that are going to force you to fill
one out. And with that, unless the staff has something else -- Mr.
Hargett? With that, please, fill them out, pass them out on the way
out, and I -- I thank you all for being here very, very much.
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 8:55 p.m.
TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF DONOVAN COURT REPORTING
BY: Barbara A. Donovan