Loading...
BCC Minutes 07/31/1995 E (Hurricane Erin) EMERGENCY MEETING OF JULY 31, 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 7:30 p.m. in EMERGENCY SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the CHAIRPERSON: following members present: ALSO PRESENT: Bettye J. Hatthews Timothy J. Constantine John C. Norris Timothy L. Hancock Pamela S. Hac'Kie W. Neil Dotrill, County Hanager Kenneth B. Cuyler, County Attorney RESOLUTION 95-435 DECLARING A STATE OF EHERGENCY WITH REGARDS TO HURRICANE ERIN - ADOPTED CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We ready? We call -- we're going to call to order an emergency meeting of the Board of County Commission for Collier County, Florida, 7:30 p.m., July 31, 1995. Mr. Cuyler, would you tell us what we need to do to authorize this emergency meeting? MR. CUYLER: The code simply provides that you need to by proclamation, slash, resolution declare an emergency if you see fit to do that. You may want to discuss with your key personnel whatever is necessary for you to arrive at that conclusion. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: To have the -- meeting itself? MR. CUYLER: Well, the meeting's already been called. The press has been notified obviously; the press is here. It's an emergency meeting. We gave reasonable notice, so you can go ahead and start and conduct your meeting and determine whether you need to declare an emergency, what you're going to do, et cetera. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you. I think, as we do normally with all of our meetings, Mr. Dotrill, would you lead us in an invocation. MR. DORRILL: Heavenly father, we thank you this evening, and we come and pause to you under some different sort of circumstances. As always, it's our prayer that you guide the deliberations and that you protect both the county commission as well as the people of Collier County over the next 24 to 36 hours. We thank you for very capable staff and people like Ken Pineau and also Gary Arnold to be able to make our jobs a lot easier. We thank you for the support of a variety of other agencies throughout the community and the good graces of the people of Collier County. And we'd ask that you bless this time together, and we pray these things in your son's holy name, amen. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The next item on the agenda is a briefing of the Board of County Commissioners by the county manager and the emergency operations center staff. MR. DORRILL: Rather than have Ken reiterate the full briefing, one of the things that I -- I wanted to do is I'll -- I'll show you these two things because Gary has just pulled these off of the weather wire. This first one is an infrared satellite image from just about, I'll say, within the hour. And you can see that the -- here we are (indicated), but the storm has very good characteristics to it, and -- and while they do not anticipate it to strengthen a great deal, it's a legitimate storm. And I want to compare and contrast that to the latest radar image that shows just sporadic thunderstorms but that coincide very closely with just the sporadic cloud-type coverage that we see over the entire peninsula, and so we are in for some nasty weather during the course of tomorrow. With that, that's the extent of the briefing. The briefing is still the same as Ken had provided earlier. And since all of you are here, we'll just wait and see if we have some -- some questions. As part of the specific items, we have already prepared in advance the official briefing and statement that Leo Ochs has, and I'm going to have him just walk you through that. And then what I think we would like to do is have a single motion after we've had discussion and answered any questions that you have concerning what the commission's specific declaration is going to be going into tomorrow. So with that we'll have Leo, and then we'll have questions of either Ken or any of the other people who are here. MR. OCHS: Thank you, Neil. The draft press release contains basically four elements anticipating actions by the board this evening. The first would be obviously notification to the citizens of Collier County that a state of local emergency in both the incorporated and unincorporated areas of the county has been declared by the board. And the second item would be an authorization by the board to ask the American Red Cross local chapter to activate evacuation shelters. There's three shelters being anticipated to be opened at or around 10 a.m. tomorrow morning. I'll ask Ken Pineau to provide any additional information that I might not. But the three sites that have been selected at this stage have been Pine Ridge Middle School, Immokalee Middle School, and also the Lely Elementary School. Again, as we indicated earlier at the six o'clock briefing, we will also put in the press release a request that citizens not arrive earlier than the anticipated opening to allow our emergency operations staff and the staff from the Red Cross to go ahead and get that shelter secured and operational prior to 10 a.m. The third item will be a notification to Collier County employees that they are to report to duty tomorrow at their regularly scheduled time. There will be a determination somewhere in the mid-morning stage by the county manager on some type of early release, probably around the noonhour for nonessential county staff. Obviously essential county personnel will stay activated in the emergency operation center in their particular departmental area. And then also parenthetically on that note, I did get a communique just recently from the staff of the clerk of the circuit court for the employees of the -- of the clerk's agency who may be listening in. I was asked to notify those employees that the offices of the clerk will be closed all day tomorrow and then they will make a subsequent determination tomorrow about office hours on Wednesday. That came from Miss Welch representing the clerk of the court, Dwight Brock. And then finally, the board will obviously need to make a determination about whether or not they want to hold tomorrow morning's board meeting. We're assuming that the board may not want to proceed, but we can certainly modify that depending on how the board wants to decide this evening. MR. DORRILL: With -- with that in mind, the chairman had asked me to have the index here for tomorrow's meeting. It's a very short meeting. There are only -- it's not a public hearing day. There are 10 county manager items. The only one that potentially could take some time would be that item and the discussion concerning a unified fire protection system for Collier County that appears under emergency services. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That's been continued for four weeks. MR. DORRILL: And that's what I needed some clarification on. Other than that, there are nine fairly routine items under the county manager's report. The county attorney has two items as they pertain to a settlement issue and also a public petition concerning the mowing of power-line easements. You may recall that a week or two ago -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Uh-huh. MR. DORRILL: -- and an update on that. There were two items under the BCC concerning the appointment of representatives to advisory boards. So I think we're completely at your discretion. If -- if you all want to be here in the morning, I think that's fine. We can go ahead and dispense with some business. There's nothing here that needs your action tomorrow. And if you think both you and the community are going to be preoccupied with other matters, we can continue the entire or portions of the agenda at your discretion. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Dorrill. Commissioner Constantine. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Madam Chairman, we do have a fairly short agenda tomorrow. My suggestion would be I suspect we're all going to be here tomorrow anyway, so we might as well go on and do business. Obviously if we find ourselves in need of interrupting that business, we can. But until that time happens, why don't we go ahead and hold the meeting as regularly scheduled? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That was going to be my suggestion as well. I think in light of the fact that we probably have a fairly short meeting tomorrow. Let's go ahead and try to get it done. We don't really expect at this point the heavier weather to come in until later at night. I think we'd be long finished by then. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: In addition to that, I believe we're -- we've been asked to be back here at 8 a.m. for the next update which the last two have taken a half hour, 45 minutes, so we would be here possibly with the exception of Commissioner Hancock. I don't know, his -- his duties are pretty heavy right now. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That's what I was going to say. I -- I may have some responsibilities to take care of some of our shelter staff. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: I think our citizens would understand if -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I'll do my best. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- you're not there. With that then I think we're to the point of discussing whether we need to declare a state of local emergency. I believe that's what Mr. Ochs -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Does Ken have a recommendation on that? MR. PINEAU: I think that it's appropriate now to issue a state of local emergency. The governor issued an executive order at 1550 this afternoon. I don't have the text of that, but it primarily deals with the storm affecting south Florida. And he -- in fact, he should be back in Tallahassee from the governor's conference up in Vermont. He should have arrived at five o'clock this afternoon. I think it would be appropriate. As far as an evacuation, we would need something like that, as well as opening shelters. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Pineau. Commissioner Mac'Kie. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I just have a question being a -- the first time I've been through this. I mean what is the significance of the declaration of an emergency? MR. DORRILL: It provides an official position that will be contained within what we're calling bulletin or statement number 3. And it would provide the first official position of the county commission to the citizens, A, that we have declared a state of emergency which is an increased state of awareness and encourages the public to take certain actions. You need to decide whether or not you want the evacuation and for those specific areas that are targeted for evacuation to be voluntary or mandatory. And I think Ken's earlier comments are that they should be voluntary. They should be encouraged, especially for certain types of neighborhoods. And if so then your response to that would be to open public shelters and to encourage voluntary sheltering of those individuals with one little caveat being that anyone who is nonambulatory or handicapped and needs our assistance to be taken to the shelter at Pine Ridge would be taken through the coordination of the county. Those are the official positions and the other one remaining being your meeting for tomorrow, which Commissioner Constantine has already alluded to as well as concurring with the position of the county manager's office, which is to require all employees to report to work in the morning. We would release all nonessential employees or employees not subject to callback sometime around noon. MR. PINEAU: By ordering state of local emergency, the board also has the power to -- to -- we don't -- we eliminate the bid process, for example, once we're in the state of local emergency. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I see. MR. PINEAU: We can eliminate that. The board can establish curfews. It can ration. It can prohibit the sale of weapons and alcohol, anything that they see fit. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: It seems to me -- something else I read in there is that we can -- we can prohibit increased pricing beyond whatever the price level was for the previous 90 days for necessary items that people may -- may have to -- MR. PINEAU: Yeah, that's correct, Madam Chairman. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- to acquire, so there is reason to go ahead and do this. Commissioner Constantine. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Madam Chairman, I'll go ahead and make a motion that we declare a state of local emergency, that we do ask the Red Cross to activate the shelters, that we do that on a voluntary basis -- voluntary evacuation basis, and that we move ahead with our regularly scheduled tomorrow and leave the employees up to the manager. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Second. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We have a motion and a second. I have one question on the motion. And that is there's been some concern that I've heard a couple times today about the possibility of evacuees from the east coast coming in this direction and the possible need for additional sheltering. And I believe, Mr. Ochs, did the declaration say only three shelters? MR. OCHS: Those were the -- yes, three. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: And we -- I'm not sure we want to limit it to three if we start getting an evacuation problem from the east coast. MR. DORRILL: We'll be prepared first thing in the morning. We -- and some of you may have seen -- I think post hurricane Andrew the state has done a good job. We've got two young men here from the highway patrol. Ken was in contact with them at the very beginning of today and indicated that if we begin to see large-scale evacuation from lower Dade County, that we be advised of that through the state warning point system. Ken, why don't you go ahead and tell the commission if we go to what you call your second tier of shelters, we would probably wait and do that at eight o'clock tomorrow morning, but I can have him tell you in advance what shelters those would be. MR. PINEAU: Yes. We'll be able to open up additional shelters. In fact, we've put shutters on -- on five of our elementary school cafetoriums, result of last year's money that we got from the state. Those shelters will be Village Oaks, Golden Terrace Elementary, possibly Laurel Oaks up in North Naples. I think we could go with -- with six -- I think that should be the maximum that we -- we would need. I've also alerted the hotel association. They're going to give us a handle on how many rooms they have, so a lot of the folks that will be coming in from Dade County will be seeking rooms in local hotels or continuing north up into, you know, the Sarasota-Tampa area as well. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We have a -- we have a motion and a second to adopt a declaration of local emergency. If there's no further discussion -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: -- all those in favor, please say aye. Opposed? There being no opposition, motion carries 5 to 0. Next item on the agenda, I guess, is a decision of whether that evacuation should be voluntary. I think we've heard discussion that it should be. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That was part of the motion. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: That was part of your motion. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: As was the -- CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: The county employees. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I tried to incorporate all four of those items actually. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Madam Chairman, I do have some questions that we may need to make a decision at this time such as timing of opening the shelters tomorrow. And I would probably ask if it's your direction, Mr. Pineau, to let us know what areas have we missed in that motion that we need to discuss and make a decision on here today. MR. PINEAU: As far as the timing of the shelters, I think that ten o'clock tomorrow morning would give us sufficient time. I think that we have until about six o'clock tomorrow afternoon before we start getting these tropical storm-force winds. And by that time all of our evacuations should have been accomplished. So that gives us a good eight hours to start putting people into shelters, and we'll be staffing those shelters and getting them prepared a few hours earlier than that. Right now the area in the county that are going to be prone to flooding, I believe, will be Everglades City, Chokoloskee Island, Plantation Island, Goodland. And that's -- that's -- and portions of east Naples south of U.S. 41. Now, down on Marco Island some of the roads, of course, will be taking on water, and 951 and State Road 92 could also be taking on some water, will make travel impassable after say six or seven o'clock tomorrow evening until the storm passes. Homes, however, down on Marco Island, they're -- they're elevated well above the forecast flood. So what we will do -- what I would recommend is strongly encourage folks that if they want to leave Marco, specifically Marco and Isle of Capri, that they do so before six o'clock tomorrow evening. After that time, although they're going to be safe in their homes, travel on any of the roads off the island will be virtually impossible. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. Another question, Madam Chairman. If conditions should worsen or change, do you have the authority to authorize required or mandatory evacuations at some point without this board reconvening? MR. PINEAU: I think the decision has to be made by the board. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay, okay. MR. DORRILL: The answer to your question is -- and Ken has just handed me -- there are certain things that the chairman or the vice-chairman or the county manager in that succession could do, but as a matter of course we would not want to take any action beyond the authority that we have without your full knowledge and consent. And only in the event that we need to contact you after eleven o'clock this evening, which will be Ken's next major briefing, would we even consider anything like that, and we wouldn't do it until tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay, thank you. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Okay. I believe that covers everything on the agenda except E, other business, if there's any other business. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm sorry. I just have one other question. I wanted to be perfectly clear, Mr. Pineau, in the list you just went down; Everglades, Chokoloskee, Plantation, Goodland, east Naples south of 41; even though you anticipate those are our high-water areas, you still are recommending only voluntary evacuation? MR. PINEAU: Right, at this time. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I just wanted to be sure that was clear. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Worsening situation subject to change. MR. PINEAU: With a category 2 we could anticipate another foot to 2 feet of water as far as storm surge is concerned. We're looking at in the neighborhood of five to five and a half feet above mean low water. Down on Marco Island the average street elevation is pretty close to 5 feet, and it's a little bit lower, of course, between the bridge and U.S. 41. It's probably three and a half to four feet, so that's our problem, is going to be that stretch between the Jolly Bridge and 41. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: If there's no other business before the commission -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Madam Chairman, motion to adjourn. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: Motion to adjourn. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Second. CHAIRPERSON MATTHEWS: We're adjourned. Thank you. There being no further business for the Good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by Order of the Chair at 7:50 p.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL ATTEST: DWIGHT E. BROCK, CLERK BETTYE J. MATTHEWS, CHAIRPERSON These minutes approved by the Board on as presented or as corrected TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF DONOVAN COURT REPORTING BY: Barbara A. Donovan