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BCC Minutes 05/30/1996 W (Goals) WORKSHOP MEETING OF HAY 30, 1996, OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COHMISSIONERS LET IT BE REHEHBERED, that the Board of County Commissioners in and for the County of Collier, and also acting as the Board of Zoning Appeals and as the governing board(s) of such special districts as have been created according to law and having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9:19 a.m. at a WORKSHOP held at the Collier County Library at 650 Central Avenue, Naples, Florida, with the following members present: Bettye J. Matthews Timothy J. Constantine John C. Norris Timothy L. Hancock, Absent Pamela S. Hac'Kie ALSO PRESENT: W. Neil Dorrill, County HAnager Hike HcNees, Assistant County HAnager Sam Saadeh, Assistant to County Manager David Weigel, County Attorney Leo Ochs, Administrative Services Administrator Tom Olliff, Public Services Administrator Tom Conrecode, Director of Public Works Division Vince Cautero, Community Development and Environmental Services Administrator MR. SUMEK: Well, it's nice seeing you again. It's been about a half year, and so it's time to catch up and -- and look at where it's going. Let me review what -- in talking with Neil today and getting ready for today what the agenda is and specifics. The first part of this morning we're going to take a few minutes and do a performance report: Where are you, because if you set goals, there's an expectation you're going to follow through on those goals. And we're going to do a couple of things that are a little different than what we've done in the past, is -- first of all, we're going to take the goals that you identified as destination points, five-year goals, and we're going to take a few minutes and -- Commissioners and staff, what are some of the things that we've done during the last six months to move us close to those goals? And the second part of this is what are some opportunities we see out on the horizon of things that need to be addressed to bring us closer to the goals, the opportunities, particularly looking at next year's budget and over the next six months. A second thing in terms of the performance report is looking at our targets: Where are we? Do we need to make some adjustments there? And you've put together some work programs, and what adjustments need to be made there from the commission's perspective. That's the first part, because if you set goals and are a team, you need to periodically evaluate and make an adjustment. Don't just follow them blindly. The second part of the morning is taking a couple of major issues. One is economic development. Where are you going with that? Where do you want to go with that? And the second one is you've just completed FOCUS, and there's a visioning process. Where do you go with that? And I'll share with you my perspective. This is a trap for a lot of elected officials, because it ends up building up expectations about what can be done about time frames, about resources. And as a result, I think it's a significant challenge, so I'll -- I'll share a few perspectives on that because I've found as I traveled around, this one can get a lot of elected officials in trouble, because you assume that there's a consensus there, and you go out on an issue thinking you've got folks behind and you go -- COHHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Where are they? MR. SUHEK: That's right. Where in the hell did they go? They're not around. And I think on a lot of issues, particularly through conditioning processes, there's a false sense of community consensus and direction. And when it comes to the reality of the issue and -- and what needs to be done, it may break down. And the final thing is you've got -- the rest of the year -- what are some things that are challenges for you. So that's our intent this morning is to go through, look at where you are, and make some fine-tuning adjustments. So that's our agenda. Are you ready to roll? Let me go to the top five. Last time we were together you set some goals. And what I would like to do is take a few moments and trek through those looking at what have you accomplished in turn to achieve those goals. Last time when we got into the goal-setting process, we talked about it as a three-pronged process. One is where are you today; where is Collier County in 19957 We looked at that, and then we went out and set some outcome base goals, which are your destination points. What I just handed out listed the ones that you identified are your important ones. And then you targeted specific actions that needed to be taken to get us closer, those actions for '96 and even stretching into '97. So today I'd like to start off by looking at the -- what goals you set and what accomplishments have been achieved and what opportunities. Pam. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I've got a comment on that. I think -- I think one thing that we did, we set those goals, and then we handed them to Neil, and Neil did some of the targets. But we did never talk about the implementation strategies. MR. DORRILL: And I talked to Lyle about that briefly. We didn't actually have Lyle down here until -- was it December? When -- when did you -- MS. MATTHEWS: October. MR. DORRILL: Was it October? And I brought some of our old-styled goals, and I might refer to those in a minute. But we had to totally redo -- we already had our adopted budget. We already had the staff work plan for the year, and then Lyle -- we got out of sync. And part of what we wanted to do today was try and get us back in sync to see what your goals still are for next year before you go to the budgets so that at least you would have that as a framework. MR. SUMEK: As well as targeting what are some opportunities that are -- need to be addressed short term. MR. DORRILL: Yeah. MR. SUMEK: So our intent today would be to go back and look at those -- these five goals. Are these still valid today? What have we done to achieve them, and what are some opportunities for the future? So that's our intent during the next few minutes, to go through that. The first one is effective drainage and storm water. What's been done to move closer to that goal? What are some of your achievements on storm water during the last six months? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We bought some piece of equipment. MR. SUMEK: Pardon me? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We bought some -- MR. CONRECODE: Actually a whole series of things, Lyle. We've expanded -- expanded our staffing in that area by adding three staff, completed the acquisition of a long-range excavator. MR. SUMEK: So that's the equipment that Pam was talking about? MR. CONRECODE: That's the equipment she spoke of. And the board provided an additional million dollars in funding outside of the budget process. And as a result of all that, we've taken really the first big step in overcoming what I'll call a few years of neglect in maintaining the drainage -- the major drainage systems in the county. MR. SUMEK: What steps have you taken? Have you started some projects then or -- MR. CONRECODE: Well, completed projects. MR. SUMEK: Okay. What would be -- MR. CONRECODE: The bypass ditch around Immokalee has been completed. MR. SUMEK: Bypass ditch? MR. CONRECODE: Yup. MR. SUMEK: Okay. MR. CONRECODE: The -- the Lely canal has been cleaned. MR. SUMEK: I remember how to spell that one. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah. MR. CONRECODE: And there's a whole series of them in the action agenda that we'll go through here in a minute that talk about more specific little projects that have been done, but those are two very significant efforts there. MR. SUMEK: What else has been done? Bettye? COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Out in the eastern part of the county in eastern Golden Gate Estates, there's been significant swale cleaning and deepening and culverts replaced. That -- that was an area last year that was flooding. MR. SUMEK: What's the area, Bettye? COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Eastern Golden Gate Estates. MR. SUMEK: So there's some major improvements there in terms of drainage improvements; is that right? COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Well, they're not really improvements. It's just -- it appears to me like we've just picked up on the maintenance that was neglected over -- over a long time. MR. SUMEK: Okay. So -- so improved maintenance. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Swale -- yeah, and -- and culverts replaced. Many of them failed, or lots of them failed. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: And, Tom, out of -- out of -- if you had to say like linear miles of -- of maintenance that -- that was past due or -- you know, a percentage like if -- if -- of all the -- of all the past-due maintenance that we hadn't done because we hadn't funded it, didn't have the equipment and all that kind of stuff, we're halfway done? MR. OLLIFF: I would say in this first year we've done about 40 percent of what had been neglected. We've got a number of projects identified in the coming budget cycle that will take us into that next step. So I think in three years we can probably catch up with all the neglect. I think we're well prepared to deal with a storm like we had last year in August, or we're better prepared for that. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, 40 percent better prepared than we were last year. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: I have a question. MR. SUMEK: Fire away. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Yeah. Last year we closed some culverts under Immokalee Road -- MR. OLLIFF: Uh-huh. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: -- east of 951, and I understand they've been totally plugged now? MR. OLLIFF: Yes. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Can we have an estimate on what impact that's going to have to the property to the north of that? MR. OLLIFF: Comment on -- COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Mainly the Corkscrew area. MR. OLLIFF: Well, in all likelihood, it's -- it's not going to have a major impact on Corkscrew, but it will on those segments that are west of that. There's actually a ridge where at some point along Immokalee Road the water flows to the east into Corkscrew. At another point it flows to the west in the Cocohatchee River. A lot of the water that came south from Bonita Springs, Bonita area, came down and was attempting to go west. Some of it, because the flood stage was so high, it actually backed up through Corkscrew and came down through. That will stop the flows into the Golden Gate Estates area there where we had so many problems. Long term, though, there are some additional things that we need to work on with the Basin because they've actually got some permitted outfalls of discharge that are supposed to flow to the north. They've now established weir heights that are in excess of those discharge points, which means that those -- the control level for those weirs is going to be flooding out like the elementary and new high school site that are there on Immokalee Road. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That's a huge issue. That -- that was my -- MR. SUHEK: Is that an opportunity for the future that needs to be addressed? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Oh, yes. MR. SUHEK: So ought to put that on with the red pen; right? COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Control levels. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Coordination with the Basin. I mean, there's '- MR. CONRECODE: We've identified a 4-square-mile area up there. We're calling it the Harvey Basin where we've actually begun survey work to take that water from the school -- Dove Point, I think, is the development up there -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, it is. MR. CONRECODE: -- as well as there's a DRI that will be coming forward in the near future called -- MR. SUHEK: So we ought to -- is that -- MR. CONRECODE: And it will -- it will kind of solve that and start to convey that water south of there. MR. SUHEK: Is that a good way of capturing it then, coordination with the Basin? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It will remind us of that. I mean, that's good enough for me to remember to come back to the discussion. There's a lot more detail than that. MR. SUHEK: Okay. Other accomplishments during the past six months? We're going to get, again, this typed up for you all. This -- and for those who are out there on the horizon with an election, you can go back and say these are things we said we'd do, and here's what we've done and -- and point to some successes as well. MR. CONRECODE: There's a lot more detail in the action agenda. MR. SUHEK: Right. But I sort of just hit the highlights on this. What are some other opportunities as it relates to this issue of storm water for the future that's important to you all? Pam? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, I'm worried about -- we had just started to get a decent relationship with the Basin administrator, and now he's gone. And I'm confused about all the politics of why they can't keep -- you know, what's going on. I don't know who's in charge of that and who it is they can't get along with internally so that they keep rolling over after six months. MR. DORRILL: A little history, Lyle, so that you'll know. We -- we are unique in that we have our own subbasin -- MR. SUHEK: Right. MR. DORRILL: -- of the Florida Water Management District. MR. SUHEK: Right. MR. DORRILL: And it's had a lot of staff turnover in the last two or three years and had a little perceived and probably actual continuity problem there. They don't know -- ever know who's in charge or whether it's somebody here or somebody in West Palm Beach and -- but they have major drainage responsibilities here that especially affect Bettye's district and the North Naples and Golden Gate districts. MR. SUHEK: Oh, I understand that. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And, frankly, it sort of -- it -- you know, I'm sure that this isn't, you know, why they have the problem, but the -- but the problem for us is we had -- I -- I've spent a lot of time, and I know people on Neil's staff have spent a lot of time and probably others in developing -- all of us have had problems in a relationship with this new head of the Basin to try to get some control on this side of the state instead of everything happening over in West Palm, and now he's gone. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: For the same reason that -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- the guy before him was gone. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: -- the guy before him left, and that was being answerable to two masters. It's very difficult when that happens. MR. SUHEK: So that's another issue that's out there. This is a relationship, and this is coordination of activities. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And they have all the power. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We can't control that either. We have to work with it. MR. SUHEK: Right. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: They have all the -- all the big responsibilities. We have little ditches we can clean out, and we're doing stuff that, you know, we should have been doing. But we can't -- we can't accomplish that storm water management goal without the Basin. MR. SUHEK: Without these two. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And those guys are appointed and not elected. They have taxing power, blah, blah, blah. I mean -- MR. SUHEK: Good points. MR. DORRILL: Lyle, Tom's got a couple of big projects that are about to launch. In fact, we're awarding a bid for a major drainage project Tuesday during the commission meeting. MR. SUHEK: Okay. What are those? MR. CONRECODE: There's a subdivision in North Naples called Naples Park that would be a municipal service district project. In other words, the landowners up there pay for the improvements. That's going to the board on Tuesday to -- to talk about going forward with that for the construction of that. We've actually accepted bids. The other project that will be presented to the board on Tuesday is the Lely -- the Lely drainage basin improvements. We've cleaned the outfall this year which provides an interim relief, but there's a number of things that we need to do throughout that basin. That report's going to be to the board this Tuesday as well, and we're asking them to give us direction on how to proceed. MR. SUHEK: So there's some real key decisions from the board on directions on several major projects? MR. CONRECODE: Yes, sir. Highly. MR. SUHEK: Any other ones, Board, that you can identify things that are out there on the horizon, opportunities that you see needing to be addressed? Are those the three major things? MS. MATTHEWS: There's another project that we've done and are currently doing, and that's the replacement of culverts on 29 now. That's on -- that's ongoing right now. MR. CONRECODE: That -- that comes back, though, and points out the important tie between the Basin, the water management staff. We're going out there to fix a major drainage problem on -- along State Road 29, and we're running into log jams with the water management district saying, well, you've got to have proper permits. It's so obvious that you have a collapsed culvert, you need to take it out, replace it, and just coordination, cooperation that comes back to that same thing. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Tell them to listen to Karen. MR. SUHEK: Other comments on that one? MR. DORRILL: We have one more that we'd like to start before the end of the year. MR. SUHEK: A project? MR. DORRILL: A project that's in Golden Gate City. It involves the creation and completion of alleyways that is important to that community, but it has a drainage element to it that's important. And we don't need to forget about that, but that's something we'd like to try and start before the end of the year. MR. SUHEK: I'm going to leave this up, because as we discuss things, we can add to it. Sam, do you want to help? MR. SAADEH: Sure. MR. SUHEK: You have always been a help. Tape and wall. MR. CONRECODE: Tape right over the paintings. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No, they're pretty. MR. SUHEK: Okay. A second goal that you set was a small-town feeling with quality urban services being provided by the county. What's been done there to achieve this goal during the last year? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I don't know what that goal is myself. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Small-town feeling. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What division head -- MR. DORRILL: That's Tom Olliff. Everything they do makes people feel good -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. MR. DORRILL: -- and pie festivals and things. He's got hundreds of them. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Small-town feeling, sounds like MR. SUMEK: What -- do you want me to define what you said last time? COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, I guess. MR. SUMEK: Several things. Define the area that we're going to provide urban services to, make sure the county hasn't -- COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: We did that because we talked about urban land uses. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Yeah. I mean, we -- we -- we elected not to expand our urban boundary but -- MR. SUMEK: So one of the big ones would be a decision on the urban boundary. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Yeah. I don't know how that did anything to maintain small town. It seemed to be even more divisive. It set some segments of our population against other segments. MR. SUHEK: Because that was one area that you said you wanted to define. Make sure that you have an ability to provide cost-effective responsive services to our citizens, manage our growth, no small cities popping up, enhance the feeling of safety and security, require landscaping in neighborhood developments, expand neighborhood commercial developments limiting massive notes, and buyable unpaid development were the things that you all identified and talked about last time. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Okay. One of the things we've done is a couple -- about a month ago we asked staff to take -- to take a look at these neighborhood activity centers concept and come back and give us reasons why -- why it should or should not continue. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The accomplishment there would be talking more about neighborhood commercial -- COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Well, we've asked them to give us -- we've asked them to explain why it should or should not continue. We're just lay people. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So we're going to get that any day now, right, Vince? MR. CAUTERO: Well, in all seriousness, most of the stuff that you just talked about, Lyle, deals with amendments to the comprehensive plan, which the board has discussed through its evaluation and appraisal report, which came under another major goal, which could have easily gone under this one, and I don't know if that's really important. But a lot of these types of things that we talked about in October that were mentioned are going to come out of our amendment process to the comprehensive plan, which is a yearlong process, which started when we were writing the evaluation appraisal report which culminated a few months ago. So while -- MR. SUHEK: So that -- that report was completed a couple months ago? MR. CAUTERO: Yeah, it's under another goal. I think it's the citizen oriented -- responsive to neighborhoods. But the reason I bring it up is because that report is -- it's a major report because then it will -- it's going to yield what the comprehensive plan -- what direction the comprehensive plan will take and what amendments are going to come forward over the next year. MR. SUHEK: So that has been completed then? MR. CAUTERO: Yes. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Maybe what we have done -- maybe what we've done toward that goal is turn down some stuff. We turned down a bus system. I mean, I voted for it, but I was the only one. You guys think that was a -- you know, a step toward maintaining a small town -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: There was another part of the discussion where we talked about public transportation; is that a step towards losing the small-town feeling. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We were going to have a double-decker bus. It was just going to be -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It would be six -- MR. DORRILL: -- diesels spewing. You know, the way we interpreted that from a staff perspective were a lot of those sort of hard to define tangible quality aligned things. MR. SUMEK: Uh-huh. MR. DORRILL: Tom, if we had sponsored or cosponsored more festivals, cultural, racial, and otherwise more lecture series, you know, to try and do those little quality-of-life things -- here again, I don't know whether we misinterpreted the category, but if you look at the action agenda, the work plan for this year, we -- we've devoted more individual staff projects to this area than anything else that we did. MR. SUMEK: Community events and -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah. There is a ton of stuff, adult lecture series and story telling and hmm. MR. OLLIFF: And we did sort of specifically pump up a lot of the program efforts to try and do things that you might ordinarily find in a city -- a small city doing some of those things, and to try to do them more with a neighborhood-type focus to where each of the branch libraries was advertising in the area in the neighborhood where it -- where that branch library lies. One of the things that we found -- and we thought that this was trying to address -- is there is a lack of sense of community a lot of times in this area just because it is so transient and everything. We try to create friends of libraries of individual branch libraries, friends of parks to try to get those people in the community to kind of feel like that library and that park sort of belongs to them and their neighborhoods, and all of these programs are sort of designed to try and do that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And I -- you know, all BS aside, I think Tom's division does a better job of that than anybody else's. You do a wonderful job. Tom does a wonderful job of that, of the neighborhood parks, the neighborhood libraries, and all of that works really, really well. So if that's what that goal is -- MR. SUMEK: And it really brings that greater sense of unity. And, again, it's a little soft, but you know when it's not there. You don't know when it's there, but when it's not there, boy, you can tell it, and it's very visible, and you don't need to be much in the neighborhood to find that. Boom, it's there. And so this one here, you -- the actions that you've taken as a county to -- to increase that sense of unity. What other accomplishments would you highlight? MR. McNEES: There's two things that -- in Tom's area that affect both the process of services you talked about and the defining of the urban area that are sort of more in the background, but the board will see one probably very soon and one not much farther down the road. Those are the water and sewer master plans that the board funded at the end of last year that are the major five-, ten-year updates of where the water and sewer systems will be and all that. And those are -- you know, they're not very high profile, but they're -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Critical. MR. McNEES: -- as key as any document the board will see this year. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: When might we see those, Mike? MR. CONRECODE: The water plan you'll probably see in July. MR. SUMEK: This one will be July? MR. CONRECODE: July. And waste water will be October. MR. SUMEK: Yeah, one of the communities I work with is Virginia Beach, and they're running 2 to 3 million gallons a day light because they've been trying to get water supply out of North Carolina, and they haven't been able to do it. And citizens assume this. They're going to turn the faucet on. They're going to assume that they flush, it's gone. And if you go to some areas, those assumptions aren't necessarily valid. This past weekend where I live, there was a water system problem, and you -- last weekend, Memorial Day weekend, when you couldn't drink your water, we had to boil it. This is in the Orlando metro area, whew. We take it for granted. All you wanted was a glass of water, and you had to go to the store to get bottled water to drink. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Well, we hope to learn from their mistakes. MR. SUHEK: Good. What other things have been accomplished? MR. DORRILL: One final one that Ed just mentioned to me -- at this time last year we had no fewer than two incorporation discussions that were ongoing in a massive annexation area, and here we are a year later, and all three of them are totally dead in the water, not that -- not that we've done an extraordinary job, but I think when people were given the choice -- you know, incorporation of Golden Gate and Marco is totally nonexistent at this point. And the -- the city's effort to annex the Pelican Bay community has just sort of totally disappeared, too. MR. SUHEK: So the -- MR. DORRILL: People do not seem to be seeking alternatives, at least to the extent that they were a year ago. MR. SUHEK: Okay. Other comments on that one? What are some opportunities looking out on the horizon? What's out there from your board -- point of view, Board? Do you see issues out there related to this one? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, I think the challenge is going to be in the budget cycle. We cut back on some like park maintenance last year that we're all hearing a lot of complaints about. So we're going to have to come up with more creative ways to do maintenance and -- and operations -- MR. SUHEK: Park maintenance is a current and horizon issue that can't be neglected; is that right? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, absolutely, but we're going to have to be more creative about how we do it. I mean -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Part of the discussion in our early budget conversation this year was -- which one of us -- I don't know who, but somebody raised the question, gee, can you cut that another notch, and I think we all heard overwhelmingly, no, you can't do that. So as we look at ways to save a dollar, that -- MR. SUHEK: This is maybe not -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It's ruled out. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We've got to find another way to do it. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Unless we can -- we can do stuff like turn over some of the responsibility to the users. Maybe the soccer teams would be willing to do some maintenance if they could have the opportunity to do that. I think little leagues might also be willing to drag fields, blah, blah, blah. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Little league might accept -- their participation fee last year went up five to eight bucks. This year we're talking about going from 8 to 12 or 11. If you charge them more, then make them do the work themselves, they're not going to do the work. MR. DORRILL: There's a broader issue. I've got three or four different commissioners that have all been trying to talk about the same thing. We're trying to define what base-level county government guarantees. MR. SUHEK: Hmm. What your base service level is? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Exactly. MR. DORRILL: Yeah. You know, this is what we give you for your general fund dollar or your gas tax dollar or your sales tax dollar. And if you want anything other than this huge definition by division, then that gets back into that thing Pam and Tim were talking about which are these creative alternatives, because we ain't got the money to do that kind of stuff anymore. And the board authorized a very innovative project at the beginning of the year with the sheriff where we had a community that wanted to increase their road patrol, and the board didn't want to fund it as part of the sheriff's general fund budget because it was sort of disproportionate service, so they created their own taxing district, and they have their own guaranteed deputy 24 hours a day. MR. SUHEK: Right. MR. DORRILL: They're paying in addition to the general fund this extra ad valorem tax for that level of service. And I think the board wants to broaden that concept. We're struggling with that. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Broaden it maybe into different areas. I'm not sure I'm too hot on buying extra cops, but if you want lighting and beautification, if you want parks and, you know, what do you want extra -- first we've got to tell them what they get for their plain old tax dollar. Then they can decide if they want something extra. MR. SUHEK: Hi, John. (Chairman Norris entered the room.) COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Early tee time? Just played nine, huh? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: No, we got in 18. MR. SUHEK: John, you've already played this morning? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: No. I was just -- that was just for the gullible people in the room. MR. SUHEK: Oh, I was wondering. I drove down last night in some rather hellacious thunderstorms to the point that they stopped us on the interstate coming down 75, so -- What we're doing, John, is looking at the goals you set, where are you, what's been accomplished, and what are issues needing to be addressed for the future. So a key here is defining what that baseline is for the community and then looking at if they want enhancements, how are those enhancements going to be paid for; is that right? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I think that's the most important thing we've got to get done. MR. OLLIFF: And we had a discussion at a staff meeting level where we -- we felt like we had almost gone through that process when we did program budgets, and the board established what they felt were essential services. And when we went back and looked at those essential services, it seemed to us that the board actually said to us that's pretty much what is base level. What is essential is what you are getting for your tax. Everything else that became discretionary on top of that is do we still want to at the level that we are. And so maybe we can modify some of that that's already there. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: You know, the park maintenance, the -- I mean, that's -- that's a big issue, and it's a big, big piece of our budget for public services. But I think the problems that we're experiencing with park maintenance spilling over to libraries and museums and all the other areas, too, because as our -- as our population grows, the need for those services is going to grow. MR. SUHEK: Right. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: And I think we -- we all should know by now that if densely-populated areas where the cheapest place to be, New York and Los Angeles, would have very low taxes, and they don't. So as our population grows, we're -- we're going to see a greater and greater need and greater and greater costs for citizens to provide that service. So that's going to be a challenge in order to maintain that small-town feeling and still provide these services economically. (Commissioner Hac'Kie left the room.) MR. CONRECODE: If I can carry that one step further -- MR. SUHEK: Sure. MR. CONRECODE: -- I think there's an important point or link that needs to be made here in terms of level of service, base level of service. There's some things -- last year the best example was the problems we had with storm water where we had neglected to do the level of service that we should have in some of the drainage areas. And then we came back, and we funded it, and we're going to fund additional work next year. The same way with parks, the same way with roads maintenance in my division. We can cut and cut and cut, but in some cases what we're doing in cutting is really deferring the problem if we're not providing the level, the quantity, the extent of service that we should. Sometimes that's what the end result is, and we'll end up paying more for it. If you don't paint a building, then you're going to have windows leaking and stucco falling off and some of those sort of things. So there's really that definition as well. Okay, what's the appropriate level of service; how much do we maintain? And I think we need to understand that when we work through the budget process year after year. MR. SUHEK: And as Bettye's talking about, when population goes up, the use goes up, maintenance goes up and not necessarily the revenues to cover that increased use. That's what I heard part of what you're talking about, too. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Absolutely. MR. SUHEK: And you say how did we get into this situation. And I'm working with Sarasota right now, and they've got a major decision that -- coming up on their purple building there. They've done basically limited maintenance to just get that up to speed now, basic maintenance, 23 million dollars. And they're -- COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Well, to give you a good picture of what's happening, I just -- in the parks area -- and Tom, I think, can answer this very, very quickly -- our parks acreage since 1992 has gone from roughly four hundred acres to roughly eleven hundred acres. That's almost three times. Has your budget gone up three times? No. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Of course not. MR. OLLIFF: That to me is one of the underlying problems that we have. MR. SUHEK: That is some rather impressive figures from COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: -- four hundred acres to eleven hundred acres in -- MR. SUMEK: -- four years? COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Yeah, in four years it seems like. MR. OLLIFF: What you see in terms of facilities is almost since the inception of impact fees. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right. MR. OLLIFF: You've seen all this new construction occur, but the maintenance dollars to try and support that just doesn't come in nearly as quickly as the impact fee revenue does. And now what we're starting to see is because when we actually started the process, our maintenance costs are increasing annually because these facilities are getting older and older and older, and some of those parks out there now are about ten years old, and your maintenance costs increase. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: In need of major rehab. MR. SUMEK: Good points. Others on this one in terms of the small-town feel? Other opportunities out there, issues on the horizon? Okay. A financially sound and stable county government. What are some accomplishments there? Hello? COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We -- we are all entering the budget cycle -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Neil, what's the statistic on the bond? MR. DORRILL: Well, I -- I think that -- two-part answer. You know, this is something that -- that we don't promote enough. We went through a bond rating at the beginning of the year. And we're one of only -- I think we're now the fourth community, city, county, town in the state that has a uninsured double A bond rating. And I'm told we're one of only 20 in the entire southeastern United States that has a double A rating. That's an outstanding achievement from my perspective. And that -- that includes not only the board and their fiscal policies but it, frankly, also includes the finance arm of the clerk's department, because I think there's some shared credit. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: So we can borrow money very, very independently. MR. DORRILL: Likewise, we have one of the lowest general obligation bond indebtedness in the state for G.O. bonds. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Do we know where we rank? MR. DORRILL: I don't know if we are the lowest. I know that we have the lowest county commission ad valorem rate in the state for millage. So we have -- we can't say absolutely we're the lowest bonded indebtedness. I'd be willing to say that we're one of the lowest. We do have the lowest millage rate of the state. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Of course we have some high property values, so while we're patting ourselves on the back -- MR. DORRILL: Well, what I say in response to that, though, is that, yeah, but so does Indian River County and so does Sarasota County and finally so does Lee County. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Palm Beach. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Palm Beach. MR. DORRILL: Palm Beach is the same way. And, frankly, the only one that is even close to us is Sarasota. We have almost a full mill over everybody else, and there are other coastal urban counties whose per-capita valuation is just as good as ours. MR. SUMEK: Good. What other county achievements have there been during the last six months on that? These are maybe not necessarily visible to the citizenry but, boy, it makes a difference in terms of their taxes as well as your future, too. What are some opportunities out there? MR. DORRILL: I've got two more quick achievements. MR. SUMEK: Okay. MR. DORRILL: We seem to be leading the state at this point in exploring what we're calling a first-year service fee. Now, it's going to be awkward because there's some conflicting legal opinions, but there are several municipalities that have just done it. And we are also leading the state at this point in pursuing electric utility franchise fees for nonchartered counties. And, in addition, we have done all types of customer-oriented financial enhancements that include utility lockbox concepts to enhanced EMS billing practices to mandatory solid waste collection as part of the tax bill. So we've got a whole series of staff efficiency achievements for just, you know, billing and collection activity. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Let me ask also while we're on this one, how does the number of county employees relate to the number that we had in 1992, say, four years ago? MR. DORRILL: Ed, we had that in the annual report. MR. DAY: It's now stable, Mr. Chairman, but down per thousand population. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It was five three, and it's down to four point nine four. MR. DAY: Four point ninety-four. It's declined every year for the past five years, number of employees -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: But the raw number -- so while the population of our county has grown probably in four years 20 percent anyway, right, the -- the actual raw number of county employees has remained stable. MR. OLLIFF: They're a little more schizophrenic at this point. MR. McNEES: You get two for one that way. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, at least. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: How many more times -- I mean, we've got our administrators here and the manager here. How many more times can we go to the well and ask for more for less? MR. CONRECODE: How honest should we be? MR. CAUTERO: It depends what you want to do. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: That's true. MR. CAUTERO: I think we talked about that -- if I may digress for a moment, the core service conference and planning when it came up on the Marco Island plan, what do you really want to do with the comprehensive planning section? What should they be doing? Should they be in a community, or should they be doing general comprehensive plan amendments, things like that? You know, I hate to answer your question with a question but -- COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: But my question was really a rhetorical question. MR. SUMEK: But you're saying that's a key issue that's out there is how many more times -- you know, where are we in the well? COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I believe we're in there already. Our employees may be ready to just say this is impossible and -- MR. McNEES: In a nice way I'm also saying when it comes to something like parks maintenance that well is dry. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah. MR. OLLIFF: To hit the -- just, for example, to hit the board's budget target, and I know you haven't even seen the budget as yet, but to try and hit that target, I can't get there without having some basic service reductions and, I mean, things that you would consider, I think, basic essential-type services. I -- I can't get there without reducing those, so I'm at that -- at that point. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, one of the things we've done over the last three budget years that I've been associated with is to cannibalize the county manager's agency to fund the sheriff's office. The -- we've done that through the help of our staff and making the cuts in the services and the -- they've got some personnel necessary to accomplish that, but I -- at this point I think we have done our job, and we have trimmed the fat, and we have made these economies. And I'm not willing -- I know this is not a budget hearing today, but I'm not willing to cannibalize our budget for the sheriff's office budget anymore. I think we've done our part. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We may have to raise taxes if that's what it takes to get decent law enforcement if there's no fat there. I have no idea. I haven't seen this budget. MR. DORRILL: That's why we're intrigued by the cost concept of core services or base services and seeing whether or not we can't define what those ought to be and then fund them, and then for all these other nice to have, want to haves, got to haves, say these are your alternatives. MR. SUMEK: Which goes back to this one here. Put a couple of stars by that sucker because that one links back to this one here. What other issues or opportunities are out there on the horizon? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: This is on the fiscally sound thing? MR. SUMEK: Right. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, we've had some nastiness discovered in the clerk's office with arbitrage issues and investing bad -- bad county investments and that kind of stuff that we need to find out if there -- if those are real problems or political. MR. SUMEK: So the county investments then is -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: County investments. MR. DORRILL: We got caught up, Lyle, in some of that derivatives bogey mania that so many people did. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And that -- what I'm saying -- what I think is the issue there is that we have to find out if there's anything real, and if it's not, restore some public confidence. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Yes. MR. SUMEK: Yeah. Where are we and where do we need to go with it is what I'm hearing, Pam; is that right? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah. Do we have a problem? And if so, fix it. If not, tell people, because we looked like buffoons. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We aren't addressing what people are concerned about. MR. SUMEK: And a lot of the, you know, people turn on the nightly news and see it other places and say, oh, my God, it must be happening here. And if they have any inclination that it's happening, there's a reality there that gets created. Other opportunities or issues on this one? MR. DORRILL: We -- we need to redefine under the administration the role of our citizens' privatization task force. They have been somewhat frustrated, and we just sunsetted them as a -- an arm of county commission advisory boards, but we're going to try and reconstitute them under the administration and redirect some -- MR. SUHEK: Citizen privatization -- MR. DORRILL: -- task force. MR. SUHEK: -- task force. MR. DORRILL: And that's something I kind of need to do. MR. SUHEK: So that needs redirection? MR. DORRILL: I think so. MR. SUHEK: Other issues or opportunities here? Okay. All sound. MR. SAADEH: I can't keep up with you. MR. SUHEK: Next one is -- COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Mr. Sumek, one other thing we might be able to add on there along with privatization task force, productivity committee. It seems -- it seems to me like we as a board could use the citizen effort on the productivity committee to make more valuable reports known to the citizenry of how good a job we are doing, how good a job the various departments are doing. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: A report card. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Yeah, a report card, exactly. And, I mean, we get updates -- what is it? Semiannual -- from the productivity committee. MR. SUHEK: So letting the community know, Bettye? COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I don't think the committee -- the community knows when they give these reports, and I don't think we make them well-known enough. MR. DORRILL: You told us something -- COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We aren't tooting our horn. MR. DORRILL: You told us something last fall, and Commissioner Constantine has reminded me of this throughout the year. I think you called it celebrating our success. MR. SUHEK: Yeah. MR. DORRILL: We have done a lot more of that, but I think Bettye is right. We need to continue to, because if we don't toot it, it ain't going to get tooted. MR. OLLIFF: I get frustrated because I think as an organization we do it better, cheaper, faster, smarter than about anybody we ever compare ourselves to. And every time we do these comparisons, it shows that. But the only difference we have between us and the Scottsdales or the Phoenixes of this world is how much horn tooting is being done. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We're not doing it. MR. OLLIFF: And we don't have the time, frankly, to go out and blow that horn. And I think, you know, if we were to try and focus a little more on that -- I keep telling you; I'm so sick and tired of hearing of Scottsdale and Phoenix. MR. SUHEK: Well, there's another part to this, too, having worked in Phoenix. There's reality and there's myth. And sometimes what's written in journals and folks get awards for, you go out there and you look and say we're doing a heck of a better job here in our county, and we're not even publicizing it. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's to the point where they don't have time to talk about it, near too busy doing it. And I agree with what John said about there has been a significant amount of just scraping and cutting and trimming in the county manager's agency that -- that the public just doesn't know about. MR. SUHEK: The other one I didn't capture is a relation to the sheriff's budget, too, that John was bringing up right off the bat, and that's a major policy decision -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Uh-huh. MR. SUHEK: -- on how that gets balanced out. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: So one thing that we as a board and administrators and managers as well might -- might want to consider as -- as -- as a goal to tackle some of this, is to make use of the public service announcements on the radio and television to get these little bits of information out that, you know, we -- we do these things, and we provide services and so forth and begin to make our public aware -- MR. SUHEK: Well, last time -- COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: -- that we're doing it better than -- better than all the others. MR. SUHEK: Last time I talked about the government attitude of citizens, and they wanted this fast-food approach; simple, quick, and easy. And we don't utilize TV enough, public access TV. And one of these, Coast Communities, Wellington, which just incorporated, used to be Acme Improvement District, and they have a guy who has a TV show comes on. He's a public works supervisor. It's Acme Gus, and it -- and he comes on -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Tom, I can see you now! MR. SUHEK: It's like Tool Time. It's like Tool Time, and there's a guy -- the mayor's on the other side of the fence, and they -- they carry -- do you think citizens watch this? They watch it big time. And at the Christmas parade who got the standing ovation; Acme Gus. Here's a public works supervisor has his hat bill turned down like this, and everybody knows who Acme Gus is. And they watch that, Bettye, and it gets the word out in a creative way, because people don't read as much as they have in the past, but they surf. And I think that's an underutilized opportunity. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Along those lines we have for the last year had complete access to Channel 54 to air whatever our little heart desires, and we have not utilized that. MR. SUHEK: That's like a home-run pitch, Tim. And, you know, surprise people surfing. If you put something of five to seven minutes in duration, my experience working with cities and counties, they'll come up to you, Tim, as you're out shopping, "That was really neat." And you didn't even realize it was on TV. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You mean -- I was shocked by this. People wouldn't -- I would be mad if I saw some fancy production on TV -- MR. SUHEK: This doesn't need to be fancy. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- that, Neil Dorrill, get your work done. MR. SUHEK: Let me give you an ex -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Hokey. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Hokey is better than fancy. MR. SUHEK: Well, this is not real slick. We're talking about low cost, because this is a maintenance guy over in Wellington. He's just your maintenance supervisor, but he's got a ham side to him, and he loves it. He does it for no additional compensation. My favorite episode, I thought, is the search -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Oh, God, not him. MR. SUHEK: What? They have the one called the Search for Willard, and they talked about enhancements to their sewers. And they called it the Search for Willard and, folks -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Okay. MR. SUHEK: -- Willard had died because people had put bad stuff down like oil and other chemicals, and they showed Willard dead. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: If you watch the movie Willard, you want him dead. MR. SUHEK: They did it in a creative way. And I think sometimes staff can find energy in just doing that, and -- and it's not for dollars. They're saying this is sort of cool. I like to see myself on TV. Anyway, they've done one of the better jobs at that that I have seen. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I just want to discuss a different approach, plug an idea that somebody else suggested to me, that when we start talking about cable access and all that junk, that we ought to have that. This Channel 54 ought to be 10 or 11 so people would actually find it when they would be surfing and not just put our cute little selves on TV but all these, you know, town-hall series if we could tape delay show. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Collier's SPAN? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I don't know, something like that, don't you thing? MR. DORRILL: Little C-SPAN. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Little C-SPAN, Little C-SPAN. MR. SUHEK: That has happened in a number of communities that -- Bellview, they've even taken it to the next step. Bellview, Washington, they've got a lot of computer hackers, so they have On-line Bellview, and people can -- they're hacking around. They can access -- what? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Don't tell our new computer guy. MR. SUHEK: That will give him a new horizon; is that it? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Sim City, Sim Collier. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Another half -- MR. SUHEK: Fortunately, Tim, they have a -- Bellview has a nice corporate community partner. MR. DORRILL: -- in Microsoft. MR. SUHEK: Yeah. That -- that -- that sort of helps. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: That goes a long way. MR. SUHEK: No kidding. Another goal that you set was diversified economy. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: My personal favorite. MR. DORRILL: Let's take a break, Lyle. MR. SUHEK: No, no, we're going to get these done before we break. What's been done there? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We had a workshop. MR. DORRILL: Hey. Hey. MR. CONRECODE: Tom left. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Putting a goal and having Neil, you know, create this flow chart of what was in the works on that. Is that -- absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing. MR. CAUTERO: I don't agree. I don't agree that there's nothing -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Foraging the beach, by God. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: No, neither did our Council of Economic Advisors. I don't know if you all sat down with them. I assume you're going to in the next few days. We've just met -- they've been working for a year, year and a half -- and have some very specific things that the county needs to be doing and the private sector needs to be doing -- MR. SUHEK: And we're going to talk about that in a few moments, economic development. MR. CAUTERO: They jointly prepared with the Economic Development Council, the private sector entity, an economic prosperity proposal or plan Commissioner Hac'Kie has in her hands there. And we have selected a consultant and were in contract negotiations for the economic plan. There's some small specific things that -- our housing and urban improvement director is here. He can discuss some grant programs he's worked on that -- that would answer your question. MR. SUHEK: We'll talk about successes and then come back in a few moments and talk about where you want to go. MR. CAUTERO: But I think he can adjust that for some programs that he has worked on that are in the action agenda that might fall into that category. MR. SUHEK: Fire away. MR. HIHALIC: We have small business loans offered through Certified Development -- MR. SUHEK: Is that new? MR. HIHALIC: That's new. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: What is that we have? MR. HIHALIC: Certified Development Company offers SBA loans through our local banks on a regional basis. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And that money comes from where? MR. HIHALIC: From the Small Business Administration and Regional Planning Council. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Okay. And have we made any of those loans or just made the program? MR. HIHALIC: Some banks are making the loans, but they have to place them for processing through Coral Gables right now, and we'll be able to place them locally when this gets up and fully running. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Greg, I have a question on the SBA loans. MR. MIHALIC: Yes. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: I have worked through those in the past, and SBA wants your firstborn son. MR. MIHALIC: Yes. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Is it still that way? MR. MIHALIC: Yes, it is. MR. SUMEK: It's your life and a half. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: So don't get excited about it. MR. MIHALIC: They also guarantee 40 percent of the loans, so financial institutions like to do that to buffer the risk they have on the loan and let the SBA take 40. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: I sent that list around to everybody I could find. I'll show you, if you ever want to know, how many people in this community I sent this agenda to that -- that Neil had put together in response to how to implement our goals, sent to CBIA and the EDC and the Chamber, you know, everybody in the world, and got back three responses on, you know, some ideas, lots of go for it, lots of, you know, we should be working on this more. But I don't -- I -- my conclusion was this community, but for the EDC, Chamber of Commerce, which is just starting to -- you know, has done some significant work, hadn't really thought about this yet. What worries me most on this is to the extent which we have an education curve to overcome in a community about why we need to diversify our economy. MR. SUMEK: John? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, let's not forget when we're talking about this subject that we do have a -- a film office in -- jointly with Lee County -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's another thing. MR. DORRILL: Film commission. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: -- and that one outcome of that is that there's an effort -- I -- I'm not sure exactly where we are in the effort, but there's an effort to actually build and operate a sound studio, a large sound studio here in Collier County. Does anybody know exactly where they are? I thought they had acquired a piece of property over in -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No, they had identified a piece of property. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: They were to the identification of a piece of property. So that is actually moving along, and I think last year's figures were estimated to be somewhere in the 7 or 8, 9 million dollar range that they brought to the economy. MR. DORRILL: We had two major films done here. Disney's just completed one, comes out this summer, I think. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Gone Fishing. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Gone Fishing. MR. DORRILL: And we had another one that Warner Brothers did -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Just Cause. MR. DORRILL: -- last year, which Sean Connery did. I've just forgotten all about that, but I would have to say that's an achievement. MR. SUMEK: Oh, I know the one, a murder mystery. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Just Cause. MR. SUMEK: Yeah. When he put his hand in that pipe -- there's no way I was going to put my hand in that pipe. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I think we all thought he was going to lose his hand. MR. SUMEK: When he did that, I thought holy cow. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: You know, also Commissioner Constantine is working with the Lee County Port Authority, and hopefully -- it hasn't happened yet. It's real close -- we'll have a free trade zone. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, that's the next thing, too. We've got that designation for the Immokalee airport. We're trying to do some things with -- through our airports to -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It's a foreign trade zone in cooperation with Lee and Southwest Florida International Airport. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Plus do some industrial development on the airport sites or site anyway of the Immokalee airport. And so that is one little element or one piece of the puzzle that's coming together fairly well. COHHISSIONER MATTHEWS: And we were also able to get Immokalee reinstituted as an enterprize zone, which will provide some tax advantages from the state level. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I think probably to most people and to me it's getting this particular element moving is like watching glacier races, but there is some movement. MR. SUHEK: The other thing is as you're pointing out, John, the time from the initial movement to seeing results, that takes time. And it can take three or four years of just laying a foundation, and it may be beyond your political careers. But then you say we laid the foundation to make this happen. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: But the point is that we have taken some action. We do have some progress. As minimal as it may be, we do have the progress. But from experience that -- not being personally involved, but -- but observations from other communities -- it builds on itself and begins to feed on itself. The more you do, the more it attracts, which does more, which attracts more. It does more; it attracts more. MR. SUHEK: And I'm going to hold off on the opportunities to us. I'm going to go through more. Then we're going to come back and talk about where do you want to go with this one, because this one in talking with Neil deserves some more in-depth discussion than some of the others where there's movement and there's clear direction. This one there's some things out on the horizon saying what do you really want to get done short term. Bettye? COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: If we can do some things with opportunities in this area, it will solve -- MR. SUHEK: Oh, yeah. It contributes to 3, the financial soundness of the county, because you're expanding that tax base. It can also support a lot of the quality over under 2, because then you've got a way of funding that, and it isn't coming out of your citizens' pockets, too. Good points. So I'm going to hold off on the opportunities for a moment. Let me go to the final one, and then we'll take a short break. And that is citizen-oriented county government responsive to neighborhoods. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Wow. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Going to take back their parks. MR. DORRILL: We're going to call this section chickees and cheeseheads. I'll explain it to you during the break. MR. SUHEK: Okay. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Chickees and cheeseheads, I think that should be the theme for this year. MR. SUHEK: What are some of the achievements for the last six months on this one? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm not sure what that one was either. MR. SUHEK: Would you like me to define it for you? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right. MR. SUHEK: I have it here. Several things. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Oh, we're on the Freenet. That's one achievement. We're on the Freenet now. MR. SUHEK: You said greater citizen involvement, reaching out to the 80 percent, not just playing off the 20 percent that we talked about last time. Greater credibility of -- of Collier County government with its citizens. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Two zeros so far. MR. SUMEK: Not doing good, huh? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, when you ask every one of these folks sitting at the table how many times they've been at community meetings or civic meetings or having public workshops on various issues, I mean those are all things. I think we're cutting our staff short if you say no, we haven't done anything. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I mean, improved over past. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, that was going to be my comment. We -- we have in the past as a policy been very citizen oriented in the first place. It can always improve, but it's not like we were totally disoriented from the citizens. MR. SUMEK: Right. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Unoriented, I guess. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm sorry. MR. SUMEK: This was expanding and building off that, John, the last time as we talked. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Can I tell you what is a real improvement in that -- in that area, is that Neil has invited members, you know, public -- not invited members, but has opened up the budget discussions that he has on a staff level to some community people who had -- had always sort of criticized the budget at a point when it was too late. MR. DORRILL: Yeah. The board took the first step on that by changing the entire calendar to require that all the budgets be available for public scrutiny at least two weeks in advance of their being workshopped by the county commission. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: And that is -- that is purely for the public's benefit, Lyle. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Both of those are -- I take back my zero, because both of those are real positive. MR. OLLIFF: What we've done in here is we always for a long time sat in our offices and thought, well, we know what the public wants. And, you know, now we're surveying the heck out of the public. I mean, at the libraries we've got surveys going all the time. At every park we're surveying them to find out what do you want, where do you want us to spend your money, what do you want us to do so that hopefully when we present budgets to you, now it's as a result of the feedback saying the community wants us to do this as opposed to what we think they want. COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: And you're going to tell us, you know, and here are the survey results that back up our belief to that? MR. OLLIFF: Exactly. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That '- MR. SUMEK: Good. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: The surveying, by the way, is a very valuable tool to try to reach the 80 percent -- MR. SUMEK: That's correct. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: The 80 percent don't really care to get involved by choice to the extent of going down to the courthouse and digging through records or haranguing the commissioners at a meeting. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: They have lives. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: They have actual lives and jobs. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: A job. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: But they will in a lot of cases participate in the surveys if they happen to have the opportunity. So that at least gives us some mechanism, limited as it is, to reach those 80 percent. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: On -- on the neighborhood responsiveness side, sometimes these things, we brush over them. But we accelerated a major project this year to drill and capture and flare all of the landfill gas, and I guarantee the number of landfill odor complaints that I've had in my office this year compared to this time last year when we were trying to privatize the landfill -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: You didn't get up at my house last Thursday morning. MR. DORRILL: It may not be solved, but -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It's got to be better. MR. DORRILL: The board was very responsive to accelerate that project. MR. DORRILL: And, likewise, I'll tell you one that we've dealt with recently. This whole traffic calming thing is -- sounds real good, but it's very frustrating from the staff. The board has tried to create these neighborhood traffic calming process -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Uh-huh. MR. DORRILL: I'll tell you we've got a lot more applications than what we would have ever thought of to include the -- MR. SUHEK: Traffic calming. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That's what we call it. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Slow the traffic down. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: In their neighborhood. MR. DORRILL: It's like force the traffic through someone's neighborhood other than mine. MR. SUHEK: I understand. It's sort of like what I was talking about earlier today. You have your own unique variation on -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Is this a positive, that the petition process -- I mean, that is that -- that we've defined how somebody can get a question on the ballot and -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Sure. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That's a mockery, because we ignored it three weeks later or three months later or whatever it was. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, but -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Pat ourselves on the back for something we ignored. MR. SUHEK: The other point that was in here that we listed, expand the use of cable television which didn't -- that's maybe an opportunity for the future. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: That happened. MR. DORRILL: We have just created an office of cable franchise which certainly now has the resources to begin to do some of our own sort of amateur-level broadcasting. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Who's doing that now? MR. DORRILL: We've hired -- is it Katie Arnold? MR. DAY: Yes, it is. MR. DORRILL: Do you know Katie Arnold? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, sure. MR. DORRILL: And then she was staff to the FOCUS group. She's just started. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: What -- what happened to that -- that film take that your office made a couple years ago? It was a good tape. Has that ever been shown on -- on any stations? MR. DORRILL: Yeah. We -- we did a pilot county government -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Jennifer -- MR. DORRILL: -- TV show through Jennifer and Russ Mullet. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I thought it was great. MR. SAADEH: And they ran it on TV. MR. DORRILL: We ran it on Channel 54. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So, Jennifer, what do you think about -- that's Neil. MR. SUHEK: Is that him? MR. DORRILL: It was -- MR. SUHEK: We'll call him Regis; right? Other accomplishments here or achievements? What are some opportunities for the -- that are on the horizon? You talked about expanded use of cables, one, Tim, that you were talking about. What are some others? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: This is for citizen-oriented government? MR. SUHEK: Yeah, reaching out and working with the citizens. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Reach out and pull them into the process. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, we've got about 40 committees. We could double that, I guess, but we always talk about COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Same people on them. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: We have advisory committees that we have but somehow never get around to it. MR. SUHEK: Well, that's a good point, John. As I travel around working with counties and cities, the trend, I find, is less and less permanent commissions and greater use of task forces where folks come together on a specific issue for 6, 9, or 12 weeks. You declare a victory and say thank you very much. And citizens are more willing because they feel they can see results from their efforts versus creating an ongoing thing that then starts to have their own life and go off in ways that you as county commissioners are going. They're going on the same way we're doing. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: We're doing some of that as well, ad hoc committees that look into a specific issue, and then they're done. We will do that as well. MR. SUHEK: Because that's where I see the success as I travel around rather than creating another permanent board or commission. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, we have about 40 permanent boards, but we also do some of these ad hoc study groups or task forces. MR. SUHEK: Uh-huh. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: And I -- my initial comment when we started on this element was that we already by policy for years have been very citizen oriented and -- and if we can think of some way to expand it, I'm certainly willing to do that, too. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: But you know one thing we may be able to do with the boards that we have is -- is to, again, use the PSA's for the board -- board chairmans and so forth to explain what it is they do. And -- and that would -- that could invite citizen input into the committee work that they're doing and -- and finally get some of this -- COMHISSIONER NORRIS: That's a good idea. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's a great idea. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: That's a good idea. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. That sheriff one was a great idea. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: That was a great idea. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: The sheriff was a great idea. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: I thought it was a good idea until I ran into them. MR. SUMEK: Good. MR. DORRILL: We need a little better strategy on what's being referred to -- I guess the concept that I -- that I hear is called neighborhood planning, and that seems to manifest itself here in this traffic calming thing. We're in way over our head in terms of what the expectations are with these. I think we need to recognize the importance of these little parochial neighborhood plans and what people are expecting us to do to calm traffic and, you know, restore neighborhood areas, because we -- we don't have a strategy there at all, and these people are going to get real frustrated. They filled out the applications. They're waiting, and they had a preliminary staff meeting, and nothing's happening, and there's no money to build whatever, you know, device or whatever it is they want to do, and somebody told me -- Jeff Perry told me we've got like 23 applications. MR. CONRECODE: Twenty-seven. MR. DORRILL: How many? MR. CONRECODE: Twenty-seven neighborhood applications pending -- COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: For calming? MR. DORRILL: Calming and/or neighborhood revitalization and, you know, all kinds of things. We've got to have a better strategy next year. These people are going to end up being very, very frustrated with us or -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Then we get back to that base level. If they want more -- MR. DORRILL: We underestimated the desire of the little parochial let's-take-care-of-our-neighborhood thing, and we don't have a process now to deal with them. MR. SUHEK: Let me make two comments based upon my experiences working with a variety of communities nationally. One is you can get into warfare between neighborhoods where if you give to one neighborhood, another neighborhood says, well, if you're giving it to them, we need it here. And they want it now. And the second thing is a lot of times neighborhoods are willing to accept no if -- there's a big if -- they know when they're likely to get addressed. If it's within a year or two and that that's certain, they'll back off a bit because they know they're in the cue to get there. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah. MR. SUHEK: But then you have to deliver on it; you're right. Then they have it. So those are two sort of contrary systems. I work with the City of Cincinnati right now, and they have 52 defined neighborhood groups and associations. Talk about very active and council being pulled in different directions. Other comments on this one? MR. OLLIFF: Just -- just one. MR. SUMEK: That's all right. MR. OLLIFF: And I'll throw this one. Just lob my head off if you need to. There's a fear on our part, on staff's part, that you can go too far this way where you get so responsive to anything that government is going to do, any new facility you build, even if it's a park, is going to have a negative impact on traffic or something that's there. And there is a fear that sometimes you can get so responsive to the neighborhood where you are going to do an improvement that you're not going to not do something or amend it so much that it's not in -- the rest of the community may suffer. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, I think that's a very important point, and it's that business about, you know, the ten people who show up at the meeting who control because they complain so much, that kind of stuff. I think that's huge. And, frankly, I'll only say this really quickly because I know you guys will yell at me, that's the problem with single-member districts. CHAIRMAN NORRIS: What do you mean by that? MR. DORRILL: That like went right over the top of my head. Can you give us a generic example on that without -- MR. SUMEK: I'll give you one in Lakewood, Colorado. They had a very loud group come in, and they thought it was a consensus, so they changed a traffic pattern. And the first hearing went fine. The second hearing was packed. And folks are saying where in the heck did this come from. These folks aren't representing us. We want this. And, whew, it blew up and of the seven council members, seven got unelected at the next election over that very issue. And it wasn't necessarily even in their district, but if it can happen there, it can happen to us as well. MR. DORRILL: I've got one last quick deal there on the opportunities. Our board has just taken utility rate regulation away from the Florida Public Service Commission MR. SUMEK: Yeah. MR. DORRILL: And we have yet to come out of the blocks really good on that. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Yeah, we have to. MR. DORRILL: We've already got that -- these people are shrewd enough and sophisticated enough; we already have four rate petitions pending. MR. DAY: Yes, sir. MR. DORRILL: We don't even have everybody hired, and the paint's not even dry on the offices. MR. SUMEK: They're ready -- MR. DORRILL: You got to be good on that. MR. SUMEK: Others on this one? Let's take a short break, and then we're going to come back, and I'd like to focus in on the economic development discussion, where you want to go with that and put together an action plan there, and then talk about FOCUS and visioning and where you go with that. So let's take a short break, and we'll get back at it. (A short break was held.) MR. SUMEK: You all ready to go? Let's talk about economic development. It really gets out that one of your goals up here is diversify economy. I'd like you to pull a sheet of paper out just for a moment before we turn to some of the specifics. You need something to write with, John? MR. DORRILL: We got him covered. MR. SUHEK: You got him covered? What I'd like you to do is give me two or three outcomes that you would like to see from -- realistic things you would like to see accomplished in the area of economic development, what would you like to see have happen here, outcomes, and the more specific the better. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Teach your cows how to eat is the best I can -- MR. DORRILL: It's actually on our work plan this year. But we didn't have anything on our work plan, so his agricultural department does these workshops about how to get more pounds per acre on your beef cattle, and that was one of our economic development strategies. MR. SUHEK: What did that one -- MR. DORRILL: Tom, we bragged on you about it all year long. MR. SUHEK: Oh, is that why you were hanging your head as soon as you started talking about it. Did you learn a lot, Tom? MR. OLLIFF: Oh, I think I have. MR. CONRECODE: He skipped that class. MR. SUHEK: Well, let's talk about it. What are the outcomes you'd like to see? Who wants to fire away? Tim. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Some sort of specific county policy to enhance existing business ability to grow and prosper. We always talk about, gee, let's attract new businesses. I'm sure a few thousand other communities are doing that, too. We ought to focus on those that are here. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And we have more than you might think of actual manufacturing businesses because they're not real joiners. You know, they have -- come to meetings too much but -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And I don't suggest we do that to the exclusion of trying to encourage new business, but I think realistically and statistically you will see that the existing business growth is going to far outweigh anything we can apply -- in any community is going to far outweigh -- MR. SUHEK: Did you do a national study? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I personally did. MR. SUHEK: That will happen. No, I'm serious. You can get hard data on what you're talking about that it comes from helping folks expand. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. MR. SUHEK: Because out there you're competing with everybody else to try to attract and -- COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We already got them. Let's make them better. MR. SUHEK: That's what I hear Tim's outcome is. Let's help them expand. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We've taken a first step with our Council of Economic Advisors, and we need to follow through. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That's on the top of my list. MR. SUHEK: Is helping the existing businesses? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Same, top of my list. MR. SUHEK: You put an arrow up? Pam, what was one of yours? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: This is on top. Actually I didn't write it down. MR. SUHEK: Give me another one then. I was making a different list but -- give me another one then. MR. DORRILL: I've got a subpoint to Tim's and Pam's and probably Bettye's. It kind of shocked me last year when Defense Research announced they were leaving town because they had a better deal in Huntsville, Alabama, and nobody did anything. And my question is should we have a strategy to try and keep them if they announce that they're ready to -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We should. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Sure we should. MR. DORRILL: -- leave, or should we let them go? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, the interesting thing is by the time they announced, it was too late, because I did initiate conversation with them, and they had absolutely no interest. Their mind was made up. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: They had already made their decision. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Just for once I had a breakfast -- somebody made a list of the existing manufacturing entities in this town and had a breakfast meeting with them and asked them, you know, what are -- what kind of -- what business are they in, how many employees, what kind of salaries. And they're all these, you know, $15-an-hour jobs, which is what I'm interested in seeing some value-added kind of jobs in this community, and asked them what their biggest complaint is. And I thought I was going to hear you don't have good industrial-zoned property and you don't have infrastructure and blah, blah, blah. They said their two biggest problems were a work ethic -- MR. SUHEK: Yes. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- and a trained work force. And, frankly, since then I've talked to the Vo-Tech, Charlotte Gore, and she's responded with if you give me six people, you give me a program where you're going to produce six jobs, if I will train them, and she'll -- Vo-Tech will create the program. I mean, it's pretty danged easy to get some results. MR. DORRILL: What do you mean by work ethic? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, unfortunately -- MR. DORRILL: Sorry attitudes. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I hate to say this, but maybe it's because we're in Florida and, you know, everybody wants to go to the beach, but we have trouble getting people who come to work and in manufacturing where they have -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: John, this morning we had trouble getting him here. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I not only personally demonstrated, but I can personally testify having operated a business here in town that it is difficult. You can have some very -- seemingly very dedicated employees and a real nice sunny day, especially after a long winter, and they're gone to the beach. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The Monday morning flu is really bad they said and -- and also what they talked about, too, was that in manufacturing, you know, they're doing 24 hours, and you have -- somebody has got to work the midnight shift and that when high school kids come in and apply for jobs, they are shocked that they don't get a corner office and talking about working, you know, 12 to 8 or something. So these problems -- MR. SUHEK: That's not just here or in the south. I work with citizen -- as I mentioned earlier, work force preparation in the community and in the council came out number one, and it was not only skills, but the attitude that you're talking about there. It's a national phenomenon, but it's -- one is -- is that dialogue you talked about with the community college and addressing that. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Our beginning work force people need a more realistic idea of what to expect when they go in the work force. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Well, unfortunately -- COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Whose job that is, I don't know. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Unfortunately, by the time they're ready to enter the work force, if they haven't learned a work ethic, it's too late. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I'm not talking about the ethic itself. I'm just talking about a more realistic expectation that they're not going to get the corner office or -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Same comment. I mean, if they don't know that by the time they're in the work force, it's too late. I mean, they're going to be deadbeats for all their life, and you can't change them by that point. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And county commissioners can't do much about that in a governmental capacity, but we can encourage through this -- I hate to say like -- and all that crap, but through that stuff you can get -- you can get people encouraged to do some interning programs and that kind of stuff. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I don't know if you should be using the word crap. MR. CONRECODE: Commissioner, there are some programs that have been undertaken, and I'll give you one good example, CBIA. They found a shortage of skilled craft labor; electricians, plumbers, carpenters. They instituted a program where they will pull kids out of high school, get them going through the Vo-Tech. The Vo-Tech is working with them in developing carpenters and electricians. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: And they have jobs waiting for them. MR. CONRECODE: Well, part of the program is they're coming to work for these companies because they're footing the bill to get them in training. So that's part of the deal, and it's -- it's a decent thing. It seems to be working for them. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And the state funding mechanisms for Vo-Tech have changed so significantly that used to -- you got incentive programs, you know, you could get funded if you were going to create a new program. Now you only get funding for Vo-Tech with -- it's based on how many people get jobs. Anyway -- MR. SUMEK: It's a -- again, it's starting to focus where -- where do you want to focus your time and energy on, too. And some of it may not necessarily be the county's role, but you may end up working like on that last one with the school districts saying, gee, folks, you're a partner in this economic development effort. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Huge effort. MR. SUMEK: In Carrollton, Texas, their school district pitched in a half a million dollars to the economic development effort COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Well, that won't happen here. MR. SUMEK: -- because they realize that there's -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Get Carrollton, Texas, on the phone. MR. SUMEK: It took them five years to get there, but they never participated, and all of a sudden they're saying, hey, our -- our viability in the future, our ability to fund schools, is the link to this economic expansion activity and expanding our tax base. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: As far as -- it ties into expanding -- expanding existing businesses, but also the -- the type of industry that I'd like to see us target here is high-tech software. I mean, frankly, that's what we have for manufacturing. that's -- that's pretty much expanding, but also we could do -- we could do some incentive plans to attract some of those. MR. OLLIFF: I think it may not have been a top priority with those people who may already have manufacturing locations in town, but I think industrially-zoned property is an issue. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Probably. MR. SUHEK: What is, Tom? I couldn't hear. MR. OLLIFF: Industrially-zoned property and the ability to get property zoned for industrial uses. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And even if it is industrial -- who knows this? Is this true? Does our industrially-zoned property have water, sewer, utilities? MR. OLLIFF: Yeah. MR. CONRECODE: Some does; some doesn't. Pine Ridge and the Naples Production Parks both do as a result of their own HSTUs that installed that. Collier Park of Commerce does. They're served by both the city and the county. The ag center or the White Lake center that was converted from ag to industrial now has or is in the process of installing a sewer force main. They don't have potable water. So the answer to that is some do, some don't. Host do. MR. SUHEK: So is available land an issue here in your county? COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Industrially zoned in -- in good locations. MR. CAUTERO: But I don't know if industrially-zoned property is the answer. Some of the types of issues you're talking about don't need industrial zoned, or they shouldn't have to have industrial-type zoning. There's other creative ways to mix land uses so you don't have to worry about zoning changes to industrial -- that type of use. The average person out there, in my opinion, still thinks of industrial-zoned property as noxious uses, the smokestack. They don't look at Commerce Park of Naples or Collier Commerce Park, things like that. You know, you might be able to change zoning districts to be able to accommodate businesses. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: One of the -- a real specific thing that I'd like to see, and I don't know if there is a majority support for this, but is for -- for us to have as a county a targeted person that when new industry -- if somebody is looking at our county right now, they don't have anywhere to go. You know, maybe it ought to be Vince, Neil, or Greg or somebody. But we need a person that we Can '- MR. CAUTERO: That came out of the recommendation. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I would agree. We have the -- maybe two years ago, was it, Greg, when Starter Corporation, who makes athletic wear, was looking to come down here. And I met -- I was chairman at the time, and I met with them and with some of the folks with the EDC. And while it was a well-intentioned effort, we really didn't do a very impressive presentation at all. And there was nothing -- no preparation other than, gosh, a week ahead of time EDC found they were coming and interested, put together what they could, but you're right. There is no focal point. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We need a concerted effort -- MR. SUHEK: So one action -- we'll get to that in a moment -- would be to have a designated contact person that becomes the point person. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: To lead them through what is the process in Collier County. MR. SUHEK: Do you have that now? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We don't have anything like that now. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We don't have anything like that now. MR. SUMEK: Well, it depends on where I entered the system where I could find myself being. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: And who you would talk to. MR. SUHEK: That is correct. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And you're going to have to talk to a lot of different people along the way. I think we ought to have a person who sort of shepherds you through if it's something we're really targeting. MR. CONRECODE: What does the chamber and EDC have in this consortium? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: They have Susan Paregeis. She's really good and just as sharp as anybody could be, but you have to have a government person because, I mean, other communities have whole departments, whole staffs, you know, huge programs with software and blah, blah, blah. And I like -- I'd like to get one person. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I get back to I don't know what they do, and I'm out there -- I mean, I just got done saying we didn't handle it well a couple years back. But I don't know what they'd Do 40 hours a week every week 52 weeks a year if you assign a body to that. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, oh, I didn't mean full time. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: You take someone like Greg who does other things as well but who has specific things that he needs to be doing, if someone works for him, he could be doing as part of -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No. I wasn't envisioning a full-time person but just a designated person who has time to give to it -- COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Even at that there are a lot of businesses, I think, in Collier County and in south Florida who -- who are, for lack of a better word, looking to get one but don't know how to do it. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's for sure. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: And somebody like this could help them through that process and get them into a business a lot quicker. MR. SUHEK: A lot of government -- or a lot of people do not know how to access government today, particularly some folks that are younger. Many of them have never had a class in civics. They don't know what in the hell -- how to access it and work it. And what you're talking about is having a contact person for economic development that can shepherd folks through the process. And you're also talking about, as I listen, somebody that's going to give that person personal attention and give a message, "We really care about your business." COHHISSIONER MATTHEWS: A we-care attitude. It's -- it's one of those age-old sales jobs. You don't get -- you don't get the business unless you ask for it. MR. SUHEK: Right. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: You got to ask for it. A few things that I had written down are more outcomes but -- MR. SUHEK: Okay. Let's go back to the outcomes for a moment. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I guess they're goal-oriented rather than concept, but I kind of had increased available jobs in the 12-to-14-dollar range by 10 percent in 18 months. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's value-added jobs. That's what I meant. MR. SUHEK: So what did you say, Bettye? COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Increase available jobs in 12-to-14-dollar-an-hour range by 10 percent in 18 months. MR. SUHEK: So what's 10 percent? COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I have no idea, whatever it is, 10 percent more. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It ain't a lot of jobs. MR. SUHEK: Anything else? COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: It's probably not a lot of jobs. MR. HIHALIC: There are 8,000 jobs here that 70 percent are sort of low-wage jobs, so I'd say you're talking 10 percent of 30 percent. MR. SUHEK: So you're talking about 250 jobs. MR. HIHALIC: You can quantitatively do that off of your labor records. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: So 10 percent sounds really doable? COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Because it's 250 jobs. MR. HIHALIC: You have a land and measurement, but it's a rule. MR. SUHEK: I think you're bringing up a good point. When you start looking at outcomes, the more specific that outcome is -- say we want to get 250 new jobs in this range; that's something you can check on a year from now, how'd we do on it. Let me give you an example. Dinuba, California, set a two-year goal of a thousand new jobs in this community of fifteen, sixteen thousand. Say that was not possible. They did it. They actually got twenty-three hundred new jobs. They had Reese Foods relocate their corporate headquarters to this community. Reese Food makes frozen burritos, Marie Callender burritos and stuff like that. And another one, Oddwala Juice (phonetic), moved from Marin County. They had two major efforts. Why, they had it very well-focused. They shepherded them through the process. They made that easy for them. And they have two quality corporate citizens now that they didn't have. And they set that specific number, so I'd urge you to keep some number. I don't even care what the heck it is. Having a number there is a more specific target that you can hit. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: One other thing that I wrote down. Again, it's probably goal oriented but -- MR. SUHEK: That's okay. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: -- but for us to provide incentives to bring new business in or to expand existing business, and to do that in the form of not giving it away, but deferring impact fees or tax base ad valorem or what have you until the business is up and running and profitable. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm willing to consider stuff like that for major value added. And, in fact, I think, frankly, I can -- I can -- reeducate me, Greg, if I'm off on this. But I can see incentives for 20-dollar-an-hour jobs. I can see incentives for new -- new industries or maybe getting the FTZ off the ground at Immokalee and that kind of stuff. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: That's -- that's kind of what I'm thinking of. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Not for new jobs. MR. SUMEK: Going back, if you take this outcome, this is what you're really aiming at trying to -- to achieve through these incentives. And the other part of it you're talking about, this is not we're forgiving you. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: No. MR. SUMEK: We are deferring. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I just want to defer the tax or the fees. I don't want to forgive it. MR. SUMEK: You want to defer it to the point when they have the capacity to pay for it. That's what I'm hearing you say. COHHISSIONER MATTHEWS: And -- and, quite frankly, with -- in the eastern part of the county, especially with the impacts of NAFTA on -- on the ag business -- MR. SUHEK: Good point. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: -- if we don't do something in this area to create even some low-paying jobs, we're going to have an increasing social problem. MR. SUHEK: Which then detracts from -- COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: And more crime problems with it. MR. SUHEK: Which then detracts like from that small-town feeling and the safety feeling there that has a significant impact potentially there. Okay. What -- MR. DORRILL: And then I've got a question, because I'm sure -- and we always talk about the regional initiative and regional corporate relocation partnerships that we want to do with Lee County. What is it that they are doing that is so much better than us? And the only reason I mention it is they've had three major announcements in the last year. They had Sony Corporation, American Express, and Carnival Airlines, which is like a special charter airline reservation that feeds business into their cruise ships. They have all announced relocations and have actually happened. But they all seem to go to Lee County. Now, the CEO may live here in Bay Colony or Port Royal. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I wish '- MR. MIHALIC: They pay them 5,000 bucks a day (sic). Pay them. They furnish a free building. They let them -- MR. DORRILL: Who is they? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Lee County. Lee County government. MR. MIHALIC: And then they essentially gave them a substantial sustained -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What's the $5,000 -- MR. MIHALIC: County government handled all the hiring and all the interviews and produced qualified job candidates for them and did custom training to their specifications. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And they did that with a staff of how many in Lee County in their economic development department? MR. HIHALIC: They have eight people within the county staff, but they also brought in port authority staff. They brought in people from the job placement and training area, and they brought together other areas of Lee County schools to produce a consolidated effort. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Did they -- did they defer or waive the taxes and fees? MR. MIHALIC: They paid cash. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: They actually wrote them a check? MR. MIHALIC: Wrote them a check. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Out of the county coffers, here's your hundred thousand bucks, or how much? MR. MIHALIC: They put two and a half million dollars aside for incentives this year, ad valorem. MR. SUMEK: For administration. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. MR. MIHALIC: Eight hundred fifty thousand. MR. SUMEK: For one business or all of those? MR. MIHALIC: Well, they didn't actually pay out that much. I don't know what the dollar amounts paid to each business. I know they were 5,000 a job. Part of it is promotion, too. I mean, we have new businesses start all the time, but they are proactively promoting that and getting news on those -- Carnival Airlines is not a lot of jobs. It's just an office with about 20 people. We have those kinds of businesses that come here, but we are not promoting it. We are not economic diverse oriented to get that word around. MR. McNEES: That's one of the things I was going to mention. I don't know whether it's an outcome or what, but listening to you yesterday evening on the radio and some of the callers, and you mentioned that for you to find out who the leading manufacturers were you had to have breakfast with them. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, find them. MR. McNEES: Here one of our overall problems in selling any of these kinds of things is if you listened to local news radio, if it didn't happen in the courthouse, it's not news. And somehow for those people to either help promote or gain some understanding of what happens in business is also important, that not the most important thing that happens every day is in county or city government. And there is just no focus on that at all. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Frankly -- I mean, I'm going to say this to Mike Cody -- what the newspaper does as far as business reporting is, you know, report what deeds were recorded this month. You know, and that -- there's just more activity. That's a beat that's not covered adequately by the newspaper or the radio. MR. LOVEDAY: What? MR. SUMEK: Bettye. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: This is another case where we can, again, use Channel 54 and offer some -- some free space to the manufacturers and businesses we have here to talk about what they do, to talk about the fact that they're looking for employees, that they want to expand. They want to do this, they want to do that. I mean, we -- we've got free air time that we can give away. MR. SUMEK: Which could be part of that incentive that you were talking about, too. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We'll get it when we start redoing -- as Neil has said, we're better than Lee County, so we don't have to write checks like they do. Our sunshine is better than their sunshine, so -- sheesh, that kind of takes my breath away. MR. MIHALIC: Lee County also has spec buildings, because they have buildings that have been built that either are vacant -- that's a very attracting thing to people to start a business. It doesn't take two years to get your building up and running and built, and that's what it takes in Collier County. And that's -- MR. DORRILL: They actively build, own, and operate industrial buildings. MR. MIHALIC: Private speculators have done that, not the county government. The county government shepherds the list, but those empty buildings are available to move into within two or three months. MR. SUMEK: In some communities I worked in the city or county has actually built that spec building and said here, it's available, folks. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Come on. MR. SUMEK: That's right. We've got a building here. It's a shell. We'll adapt it to your needs. Sign the line here, and we'll put together an agreement with you, and it can take a variety of forms. But that's not an uncommon -- because folks in the private sector want it easy. They want to be able to come here and say I want to open my door with minimal hassle, and if you've got a building here and it's all ready to go, I don't need to deal with the permit process or delays there or annoying-- into neighborhoods. Here I am. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Greg, are they able to have these spec buildings built by the private sector, because the government has embraced a proactive plan? MR. MIHALIC: I think so. I think that the government also shepherds this list and shows clients the different buildings and -- and that attitude has made people more confident to put up the money to build those spec buildings. I hear that building is about half as expensive in Lee County than in Collier County. Land costs are about half as much, which is a factor, but not an overwhelming factor. MR. CONRECODE: It's important to note, though, that we have a lot of spec building in the industrial parks here, and they're vacant buildings. What you said may be most important is the government shepherds the list. MR. SUMEK: And knows where it is. MR. CONRECODE: I will tell you when Mike and I walked Trade Center Way, construction activity was phenomenal, and it's all spec building. They don't have tenancy in there. MR. SUMEK: Maybe that's on the action side. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: That's on the action side. MR. SUMEK: There needs to be an inventory done of available building and office space. Does anybody have that? MR. MIHALIC: Each broker maintains their own -- MR. SUMEK: Like if I came in to your office and knocked on your door today and said -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- Hi, I'm Sony. MR. SUMEK: Right. Where is your list? You go -- COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We'll have to pick which real estate agent we want to send them to. MR. SUMEK: I then I say, well, I can go somewhere else and get it a hell of a lot easier so -- MR. CAUTERO: But the reason they're not coming to county government to do that is because there's a private Economic Development Council, and that's great. But what the council wants to do is force this partnership with county government. And a lot of things you've talked about, if not all, are in that document. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Not that I was cheating by looking at it and suggesting things but -- MR. CAUTERO: Have they formally presented it to you? MR. DORRILL: No, they haven't. And we're about to begin the budget deliberations, and if they are, they need to go back that up a little bit, or they're going to miss the boat. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Our budgets are what; two weeks away, two and a half weeks? MR. SUHEK: So one of the action items potentially is doing a comprehensive inventory of what's available here so that if somebody does knock on your door, you can say here's what's available. It's not just doing that inventory, but it's also, as I'm listening, establishing an ongoing process, because that's going to need to be updated, and it's going to have to be clear what role the county government plays, what role the private sector plays in making this -- keeping this current, that that could assist you in, again, going to the outcomes you're trying to achieve here. MR. CONRECODE: Can I suggest one more thing along those lines? MR. SUHEK: Sure. MR. CONRECODE: I think the board conducted an experiment this year through tourist development funds and promoting Collier County, for instance, their tourism through the Intellinet Challenge. I mean, advertising was associated with that. Perhaps an opportunity to expand that advertising to say not just it was a great golf destination, come down, stay in our hotels. It's also a great community, a great business environment, and you're going to reach some of those same people who are golfers who are leading business officials around the country. They can say, gees, you know, that's not a bad idea. MR. SUHEK: Don't come here just to recreate, but say come here to live. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Come here to live. MR. HIHALIC: Sarasota has done a good job to tie all their recreational and business advertising. If you think this is a great place to visit, you should listen to our business opportunities. They've done that very well. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Huh, in Sarasota? MR. HIHALIC: Yes. MR. SUHEK: So I think that, again, focusing if those are the outcomes you're wanting to achieve, what do we need to do short term to start to move in that direction? What -- the outcomes that I hear from you all -- let me just summarize for a moment -- are: One, getting a specific policy and strategy for the county government, assisting existing businesses to stay here and to expand. Another one is focusing on value-added jobs, expanding those in the 12-to-14-dollar range, looking at let's see if we can in a year try to get 250 more of those. MS. MATTHEWS: Let me ask a question on the hourly wage. MR. SUHEK: Sure. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Greg, is that too short-sighted an hourly wage to go after now? MR. HIHALIC: No. The state requires us to get 150 percent a year; that's about $12 an hour. So that is the minimum that we have access to those state programs. MR. SUHEK: Twelve to fourteen is realistic. MR. HIHALIC: And I think 18 months is a reasonable time frame to see where we stand. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What's median? MR. MIHALIC: Median is $11. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I'm just wondering if maybe we might want to also consider earmarking that 15-to-18-dollar-an-hour job maybe by 5 percent. MR. SUMEK: Ahh, so -- COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: If we have that many here. MR. MIHALIC: Yeah, well, the average wages in that area are difficult to -- to quantify unless you're professionals or -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: You have median at 11, but you don't have average? MR. MIHALIC: Median, average, I use the same terms. Median range is about $11 an hour. Actually 10.53 is the average. COHHISSIONER NORRIS: Well, median and average are two different -- COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: The median's down around 7, 7.50. MR. SUHEK: So you're really -- if I'm hearing you correctly, you're doing it at two levels. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Yeah. MR. SUHEK: Sort of the 12 to 14 range. Let's see if we can get to 250 and the 16 to 18 range. About 125 is what you're talking about? COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: That's what I'm asking Greg, if it's reasonable to -- MR. HIHALIC: I'm not sure about the second one. We can certainly target it and see what we're doing. MR. SUHEK: See where you're going. MR. HIHALIC: We've surveyed some manufacturers, existing manufacturers, and their averages with the owners in that pool is in the 13 to 14 dollar range. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: So that's reasonable? MR. HIHALIC: Yes. MR. SUHEK: Good. MR. DORRILL: I got another question, if I can, just pick your brain because you work all over the country. Is -- is government still a -- a growth and economic jobs prospect at the tail end of the 1990s? MR. SUHEK: No. MR. DORRILL: Well, for example, if there are plans to build a new federal courthouse, why does it have to be downtown Fort Myers that is dead as a doornail? MR. SUHEK: That type, yeah. MR. DORRILL: There are plans to build a park headquarters for Everglades National Park. Should we be out promoting that or the V. A. hospital that Connie Mack is -- should we be a little more proactive? MR. SUHEK: Those type of -- yes, I think that is significant. I happen -- recently in the City of Aurora had a base closure. At Fitzsimmons Army Hospital they closed the base. The city said we're not -- Aurora said what do we do with twelve hundred acres of an old Army base, an old hospital. Two weeks ago they announced the relocation of the C.U. University of Colorado Medical Center to that acreage employing 12,000 people. That's a heck of a growth industry there. They had an opportunity. They had land available. They went to the C.U. system and said, hey, you can't -- you're having difficulties expanding because you're landlocked. We've got -- we'll give you twelve hundred acres here, an old building that's in pretty good shape, and let's see what we can do. And within a three-month period of time, they pulled it off. And it's been to the board of regents and has been approved, so -- MR. DORRILL: That's just a -- question -- MR. SUMEK: You need to look at what those opportunities are, Neil. And part of that -- you know, Aurora identified it, and they had a point person. What do you think the point person did? Knocked on the door at C.U. and said, hey, folks, you're landlocked; you've been in the paper for two years complaining. We've got an opportunity for you. And in three months they pulled it off because they saw that as an opportunity, and they jumped on it right away. So I think they are there, but you need to look for them, and then when you spot them, don't be passive. Be -- mobilize the city's resources or county's resources and go for it. I think the likelihood is great because others will be more passive about it. Neil, does that respond to your question? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Yes. MR. SUMEK: Too much. Another outcome is worker preparation. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I was just thinking about part of our worker preparation problem. Our employers are telling us that it's worker ethic and skilled labor. And, you know, I'm -- I'm just thinking, we -- we don't have -- at least I'm not aware of it -- a lot of adult education going on in the schools in the evening. And it seems to me the schools are putting in what; a 30 million dollar computer system over the next five years. That seems to me a great way to train more of our adults in computer skills and other skills as well with those computers that sit idle after four o'clock. MR. SUMEK: So one of the things would be to initiate some contact and discussion with -- COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: With the school board. MR. SUMEK: -- the school board and others here saying, hey, folks, we've got a, quote, joint problem here. We need to work together on this. Is that -- COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: That's what I'm saying. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, along those lines, one that is painfully obvious, we've got a new university opening up in a year, and we're going to have a different product available to us in the way of a student in the next several years. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Yes, indeed. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We ought to be proactive in planning now how do we attract them to southwest Florida, particularly in Collier County, instead of after the fact going, okay, now what do we do. MR. SUMEK: That's correct. And now's the time to start doing that, Tim, because you can get ahead of the curve on that one. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Our college opens in '97, and the first graduating class, I guess, will be 2001, so we've got five years. MR. DORRILL: John tells me you can't get a -- it takes five years to get -- CHAIRMAN NORRIS: Taking -- MR. DORRILL: -- those AP things. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: It's hard enough to enroll in Edison. MR. SUMEK: You don't have experience with that, yet, do you? Your kids are younger; right? MR. DORRILL: John's are a little older than mine. MR. SUMEK: I understand that, John. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: I don't know how that happened. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: They're smarter than we think. If you can stay in college an extra year, come on. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: They're -- they're smarter than we give them credit for, yeah. MR. SUMEK: Any -- so one of the things would be to initiate some active discussions with not only the school district but with the college -- COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: College. MR. SUMEK: -- about work force preparation and how we utilize facilities and programs so that there is a prepared work force there. And as several of you were talking about, that is important to people today, that businesses -- they want a prepared work force. And what, John, you're talking about, I'm hearing that all over the country. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Life's too easy. We haven't had a major turmoil like the depression and the second world war in so long that there is no work ethic anymore. It takes those hard times, hard living, to -- to instill that work force ethic generally throughout the population. We just haven't had it. And life's just simply too easy in this country, and we're not used to having to knuckle down and do work. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: It would be nice if we could solve that problem without having to go through it. MR. CONRECODE: I think there's another factor, though, when you talk about worth ethic. We have literally three hundred and some people that work just within my division. And I think you'll find that because employment is so easy down here, it's so easy to find a job here, that what you get and what you keep is the difference between work ethic because the ones you keep are the ones that have it. And the ones not -- I think we talked about turnaround and not knowing when someone is going to show up. I don't think that you can't keep people you don't want to keep -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Right. MR. CONRECODE: -- are the ones that are bouncing along. So I think we do have a lot of good people. I know my experience here at the county is we have a lot of good people. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: It takes you a while to find one. MR. CONRECODE: You go through a lot to get there. MR. SUMEK: Good. Another target was to target high tech software type of industries that that becomes a primary focal point. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Yeah, but the whole country's targeting them. What can we offer that's going to really attract them? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Step outside and take a look. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah. COHHISSIONER NORRIS: That's really what we've got to sell. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: If you were a CEO, where would you want to live, and those are businesses that can be operated from anywhere. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That's -- that's the third one on my list here. The bottom one is to try to attract corporate regional headquarters, for example. Because in today's technological age it doesn't really matter where you physically are because you're wired in to everybody anyway. MR. DORRILL: I was -- I was reading the classified ads in Sunday's paper, which are -- usually the big job wanted section is the Sunday paper, and I saw there's like -- there's some new software company in town called Evergreen Software or something, and they were running display-sized job wanted ads bigger than the ones that we run with their own fancy logo, and they were outspending us by two to one. And I never heard of these guys. Where did they come from? And they were hiring all kinds of systems this and regional marketing that and administrative assistants and programmers. And I'm like I've never even heard of this company. They must have had a half a dozen major ads, display ads, in the Sunday news. Again, they're here -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Some of the things on major regional are things beyond our control. There's a software manufacturer here in town that is considering moving the operation to Georgia, not because they want to. They love it here. The CEO lives here. But the State of Florida has certain things that penalize them for being here, and it doesn't have anything do with Collier County or what we can or can't do. But some of the penalties just by being here if they move north of the state line -- MR. SUHEK: What kind of penalties, Tim? MR. DORRILL: Tax. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Corporate tax. It all boils down to the buck. MR. DORRILL: If that's somebody like Allen Systems -- and I don't know whether it is or not -- they employ a hundred people here. Should we be out trying to develop some initiative to keep them here or to compensate for Florida tax law or worker's comp. law or something that penalizes them? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: If that's going to help existing businesses grow, absolutely, yes, we should be. MR. SUHEK: Let me give you an example. Lane County, Oregon, do any of you know where that is? COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I know where Oregon is. MR. SUHEK: It's -- Eugene's -- you know, probably not dissimilar in size to yours. And the lumber industry there, which has been their primary mover for years -- you know how you got the University of Oregon there. But lumber, when that went down the tank, they started looking around, and the City of Eugene and Lane County have a business assistance team. And every business employing over 50 people is visited by a representative of the city or county saying, hello, how are you, do you plan to stay here, and can we do anything to help you. And it's on -- the city and county jointly are doing a -- taking the initiative, going out, knocking on doors, and giving some personal attention to folks; and it's out of the county administrator's and city manager's office. And that program has tre -- has made tremendous headway with businesses who are thinking about expanding. And -- and then it's in little ways. So I would urge you to look at some of the programs being utilized by other cities and counties. That's one that has worked. That took a little bit of resources, but I bet you to that day that resource that they brought into the community is a lot greater than their salaries. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, and that's something, Neil, I think about with -- I know you've got sort of chopped back on budgets for attending seminars and national -- those kinds of things, but I -- I wish that you were able to be out there more seeing what other communities are doing to bring back ideas, because it's not like the five of us are going to think it up. We know where we came from and how things are going here -- well, we're not. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Original ideas -- MR. DORRILL: I think it's smart to find people who are similar sized. The ones that I hear about at the moment for people that do what I do are like Duvall County, which is metropolitan Jacksonville, and Mecklenburg County, which is Charlotte, North Carolina, but they're like -- they got a million people in those two communities. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah. MR. DORRILL: And I don't know that that's the level. We need to find those other communities that are a quarter of a million, which is where we are and what we are. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Small cities. MR. DORRILL: Because we're not Charlotte, North Carolina. MR. SUMEK: And that's why Lane County fits because it's very comparable sizewise to your county. MR. CONRECODE: The other thing -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Tom, where were you a week ago? MR. DORRILL: Sarasota. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Wasn't there some management association -- MR. DORRILL: Neil and I were both up there because the contact I was talking to last year -- COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: My point is, he is doing that. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: I think he ought to do more of it. He did that one that made me think -- MR. SUMEK: But an action could be -- MR. DORRILL: I could tag along and, like, carry your bags for a month. MR. OLLIFF: Yeah. MR. SUMEK: Going to strange places. MR. OLLIFF: A couple of the action items that I think MR. SUMEK: Why don't we capture this one and then get to yours, Tom. One of the things you could do would be to survey comparable counties in terms of size and see what -- what they're doing like this business assistance team. It's called the BAT team in Lane County. And they have been doing this now, I think, for about six years so -- MR. DORRILL: That's a great idea. MR. SUMEK: And it goes back to -- if you look at what you're trying to achieve here, existing businesses, if they get a contact from you and they get personal service or even going through the paper and saying, God, I never even heard of these folks at Evergreen. MR. DORRILL: Yeah. MR. SUMEK: So somebody calls up and says, hi, can we come out and meet with your folks. And just say, hi, we're the county, what can we do to help, what are your corporate plans. You can even, just by going through the ad sections, identify some of those. MR. DORRILL: Gee, we're glad you're here. Did you know we got the lowest ad valorem taxes in the state? Thank God you're here and not in Fort Myers. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Do we -- is this something, Vince, that maybe that long-range planning or growth management people ought to be recommending? MR. CAUTERO: I don't -- no, I don't believe that that's the appropriate place for it. I don't believe that it's inappropriate in the community development or planning framework, but I don't think those people really have to be involved in it. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: They need the training. MR. CAUTERO: Well, they can have the training, and some of them do, but I don't think it's appropriate there. I think it's probably something that you -- you either have a separate section for or put your best people on it. MR. OLLIFF: Two of the things that -- two of the things that stood out to me in saying some of the discussion we've had is, one, we sort of targeted the type of business that we want to have here in Collier County being high-tech computer or whatever it might be. And we need to make sure that the university is producing the products that those businesses are going to need. And, I mean, I'm not sure -- I hear Lee County wants to attract those same kind. But it seems to me the focus of that university is more environmental-type graduates and those kinds of things, so I'm not sure that we're producing a product that's going to draw those kind of company -- MR. SUHEK: So part of this one here is looking at the programs and how those link to -- MR. OLLIFF: Because everything -- MR. SUHEK: -- this over here? MR. OLLIFF: Everything in terms of attracting businesses is what's your competitive advantage. And if we don't have -- what we have is environment and those kinds of things and tax rates, and we also need to have that work force that they need to have. So we need to be working with the university to make sure that they're producing what we want so we can attract those businesses. The second thing -- it seems to be a great opportunity in theory -- is that the corporations that are coming to what we do have are the hotels, and they're coming to the Registry, and they're coming to the Ritz on these big corporate getaways. We ought to be sticking something in their hand saying, hey, don't just come vacation here, come take a look at us from a business perspective every time they show up, because every time I go to the Registry Hotel it's another 300, 500, 600 CEOs -- something -- coming here. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Excellent point. MR. OLLIFF: I don't know if anybody has put anything in their hands and say not only a good place to vacation, a good place to have a business. MR. CONRECODE: I think one additional step that we could along those same lines is we could -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: We could pay for that with tourist tax, couldn't we? MR. OLLIFF: Absolutely. MR. CONRECODE: If we take a look at companies like Arthrex who is building a 8 or 10 million dollar facility over in Collier Park of Commerce, go to that CEO and say why are you building here, what is it that made you decide, what were the other locations you looked at, and what are some of the issues that we should address to attract more companies like Arthrex to Collier County. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Tom, you make a point that I'm dying to get made. If we -- exactly what you just described is exactly what EDC is already doing. And what's missing from this picture is we don't have a county person to send to coordinate to make the circle. MR. SUMEK: Which goes back to that first action item. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Exactly. Because we want private industry to do as much of it as possible, but right now the county is completely out of the loop because we don't have a person. MR. SUMEK: Is this helping on the economic development, giving some focus and direction? MR. DORRILL: That's why I mentioned it to you this morning, because when I wrote down -- looked down our -- our action agenda for this year, and as we're trying to put one together for next year, we were just swinging and missing. MR. SUMEK: What about this -- these different groups? What needs to be done there? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What do you mean, what groups? MR. SUMEK: You've got your economic advisors; right? COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Advisors. MR. SUMEK: That's one. You've got -- COMHISSIONER NORRIS: EDC. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well the only one -- MR. SUMEK: -- EDC. You've got the county. Now, you're talking about we need to be -- we, Collier County, need to be a major player in this. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Well, you know what. We're -- if we're going to be a player of any size, the first thing we need to do is decide what we are willing to do. I don't think we've done that yet. MR. SUMEK: Either this to -- even the incentives, what those are. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: We've got goals and outcomes we want to get to, but we haven't decided what it is we're going to technically physically do -- MR. SUMEK: Do. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: -- to get to those goals. MR. SUMEK: What would you suggest needs to be done, John? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, there's -- what we need to do as a commission is to decide by policy are we going to give these incentives. We haven't done that yet. I mean, we haven't decided that. What are the incentives we are willing to give, if any, to attract or to keep or to expand businesses in the county? We haven't decided that. Until we have done that, we -- we really don't have any need to have a county designated contact person to go out there and talk because we don't have anything to talk to them about. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That's part of the EDC is to help develop those, bring something, a framework, back that we build on. MR. DORRILL: Part of our -- COHHISSIONER NORRIS: True, but I'm just pointing out that we're a little out of sequence in our discussion here this morning. We're deciding what we have done, but we haven't -- we haven't decided how to do it yet. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I thought that's what we were doing. I thought that's what this workshop was, that we were deciding what we wanted to do. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. Go over here. We want value-added jobs extended by 10 percent. Okay, what are you going to do to do that? MR. SUHEK: And that's where the blue is. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: One thing I'd like to do about it -- one thing I'd like to do about it is designate a county person, designate a county person -- COHMISSIONER NORRIS: He doesn't know what to do. We haven't told him what he can do yet. He doesn't know -- he -- he wants to go out and contact this business and say we're here because we want you to add 250 more jobs in a high-paying category, and they'll say, fine, how are you going to help me do that. And you're -- he's going to say -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: There has to be a policy before you can implement that policy. You can hire somebody but -- MR. SUHEK: We've got it up here, something that needs to be done in a timely manner to make a policy decision on what that -- those incentives are. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And I guess we don't know -- I mean, I understand what you're saying now better, John, because I don't know what we have to do. I don't know what causes 250 more jobs MR. SUHEK: So we're back up here to that survey, what's worked with others in our county and what's worked with other counties. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I'm just saying we kind of got the cart before the horse here. We need to do number 4 and number 6, and then we can start back with number 1. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: But can we put these ideas out to the EDC and the Council of Economic Advisors and say this is kind of a broad picture of where we want to go? MR. SUHEK: Right. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Will you help develop the program to get us there? MR. DORRILL: Well, I think they're doing that. Susan's here, and they have got that plan that Pam has alluded to twice. We need to get that into a public forum so that we can have some decisions made, and I think -- MR. SUHEK: What's the plan called? MR. DORRILL: We, county staff, need to do the survey in order to present those types of things that other counties are doing and then do them in conjunction with the EDC initiative proposal that's there. But we need -- we need to kind of do that prior to the final budget workshop, because by then you all have made the decisions for next year. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We're not going to have time then. MR. HIHALIC: We're doing comparable surveys with the EDC task force that should be done in the next three weeks or month. MR. SUMEK: So these two things will be on the plate ready to become what John's talking about; right? MR. MIHALIC: No. There's a little over 500 businesses in Collier County. Already been a survey of the top: What do they like about the county, what don't they like, that's done right now. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: That's fine. Then we need to put that together, get it in front of the board, set a policy, and then we can go back to number 1. MR. SUMEK: Right. That's why we're doing this. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. MR. SUMEK: Putting together our game plan. Where does this inventory fit in, because that's also maybe part -- are you guys doing that as well? Is that part of that data gathering? MR. MIHALIC: Yeah. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I have a question, though. Is all of this going to be available to us before we have our final budget workshop, because we're going to give direction to staff in June for the final budget to come to us in September? MR. DORRILL: It's going to be real close. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: It sounds like we may not -- MR. DORRILL: You may not -- you may not see the final proposal on that, frankly and honestly, until you come back after the 4th of July recess. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Then maybe as a board before we set our millage and the TRIM notices go out, we may need to have a pocket of money set aside for whatever this might be because we can always reduce the millage in September, but we can't increase it. MR. DORRILL: Or -- or you're going to have to ask the TDC and the Chamber whether they can agree to increase occupational license fees for the first time in ten years in order to help jump start some of what we're doing. COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: That's fine, too. I'm just saying we need to have something set in the budget so that we know what we're doing. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I like Neil's idea there. If we're going to look to enhance the business community, hopefully the business community is going to help us as opposed to the homeowner. MR. SUMEK: So that's a real key policy issue then as well that needs to be built into this discussion is how are we going to fund this stuff. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Occupational license -- MS. PAREGEIS: Can I make just a brief comment? I'm Susan Paregeis, and I'm sorry I wasn't here earlier. I found out last night that this meeting was occurring, or I would have been here at the very beginning. I was supposed to be at one right now at 11:30. I just want to briefly say that I think the EDC has been in front of this issue, that we've been working on this issue for 20 years since 1976 in this community, and that we have put a 20-page document in front of each of the Board of County Commissioners as well as our county manager reflecting kind of a consensus between the EDC board and the Council of Economic Advisors regarding economic prosperity for Collier County. If you look at that 20-page document, it is very detailed as far as what the tasks are for the public sector and the tasks for the private sector. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Is it this? MS. PAREGEIS: Yes. COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: Nobody's got it. MS. PAREGElS: I hand delivered them myself to the front. They were stamped received. I stood there and watched. We will get you another original copy, Bettye. I'll be more than happy to do that. But, just briefly, we have identified occupational license fees as the source of funding that we would ask for at this point for this initiative primarily occupational license fees. However, we have not prepared for the thought of increasing those fees. We thought that the first two years out of the box that we would try and take a portion of current collection of occupational license fees. In order to prove ourselves, that before we went to the business community with an increase in occupational license fees, that we had a return on investment from those current collections of what we're doing for economic development in Collier County. And I'd love to answer any questions. I think that you're right on target, that we need to do a survey of the local business market, that we have to understand what our competition is doing with incentives. And we've got to look at markets that are comparable to ours. And I will tell you that within the next 30 days the process that Greg and I and Vince and Jim Loskill and Mr. Passidomo and I have worked out is that it will go before the EDC board on the incentives policy this month in -- in June coming up, that it would go to the CEA in July, and then it will come to you. If that is not the process that we need to follow, you know, tell me what direction you want us to go. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: You will have missed the budget cycle. MR. DORRILL: Yeah. One of the things that is important, Susan -- before you got here we talked about how we had been cannibalizing the general fund, and I think occupational license revenues are a general revenue. And so for you to say, well, we want our own money back when for 30 years we've been using that to balance our general fund, we don't have that really as a legitimate option this year. If you want to raise occupational licenses for the first time in ten years to help jump start some of this, then that's going to be one of those base core government things. We don't have -- you don't have any new money in the general fund to be able to go chasing these things unless we're going to take it out of park maintenance or EHS or libraries, which is really all the big money we've got left in the general fund. MS. PAREGEIS: I can appreciate that point very much, Neil. I think the core level of service's going to continue to rise. This is going to be a continual issue within Collier County if we don't diversify our business base. We have a two-tiered economy. It's parallel to a third-world economy, and we really need to target this. However, I would say to you if we had not had an economic policy in hand, I can understand taking business license fees and putting them into the general revenue fund. But as we have a program now that has been identified and should it be adopted, I think that a wise course of action would be to dedicate current collections, at least on the first or maybe the second year, and then go after an increase. But that's an administration issue, and you let us know how we come out. CHAIRMAN NORRIS: I think that's a board policy that we have to -- COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We're open to suggestion on how you replace that in the ad valorem. MS. PAREGEIS: Give me a copy of your budget. I'll find $120,000. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: It will be available -- actually we don't normally. MS. PAREGEIS: I appreciate that very much. Thank you, John. I appreciate it. MR. SUHEK: So going -- getting back to this issue is you've got a general game plan that's got -- a rather hectic one for six months. And you've focused where you want to go with it. The key now is I think it's yours to make -- to get into these issues, and there's some really key policy decisions that need to be made. And this morning's attempt was to put together a strategy and action plan: Where do you want to go, and what do we need to do to start to get on top of that. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, Susan said some of this is in motion. MR. SUHEK: Right. We've got some of that in motion. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: We're beginning to -- to see a little time problem perhaps as we go into this budget cycle, but maybe we can work around that. We'll have a better -- better chance to discuss the financial aspects here in a couple weeks. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, if we're not looking at ad valorem dollar for the -- we can adjust the other things later in the budget cycle as necessary as long as we're not looking at the millage rate. So if we're looking at collecting fees, we can still adjust that on the schedule -- MR. SUHEK: That's a good point, Tim. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, somebody needs to give us a good guess at what kind of money we're talking about. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: She said 120,000. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: One hundred twenty thousand. MR. SUHEK: Again, it goes back to the dollars are less important, outside perspective, than some of the key policy decisions that need to be made there. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, but policy's boring without dollars. MR. SUHEK: No, policies can guide those dollars. Just like the discussion we're talking about with your neighboring county, the policy, get five hundred -- what was it; 5,000 bucks per new job. Get the old checkbook out. Other comments on this one? We were going to take a few minutes. We've got about ten minutes left to talk about FOCUS and visioning. Do you want me to share some observations, and then -- or do you guys want to start talking first? MR. DORRILL: Go ahead. MR. SUHEK: My experience has been on similar types of efforts is what visioning tends to do is -- I'm not sure in communities it is possible to truly get a consensus on where you're going. And a lot of times that consensus -- I'm not sure how true it is when it comes to the political reality where you have to make decisions. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, does consensus mean majority or unanimity? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Majority. MR. SUHEK: No. It means some will support the decision, not undercut it, not go in a different direction. And it's different -- that's a true definition of consensus. And I think in counties today we have a lot of different communities that exist there and trying to pull them under one broad framework I'm not sure is really possible. Another thing is the ability of the negative 20 percent to influence and sway what actually comes out. And what I've seen is that some of the recommendations get compromised to the point they get watered down in the final visioning document. And everybody looks at that and goes, what in the heck does this mean, and then when it goes wrong, what does this negative 20 percent do; do they own their part of that compromise. They go (whistled); we're not with you. Another part of it is the expectations about timing, when it can get done, the resources. And the thing that was brought up -- who was it? Was it Tom over here or Vince? What's best for the overall community sometimes gets lost. Are you taking notes over here on what I'm saying? MR. DORRILL: The media is prompting the county. MR. SUHEK: Anyway -- because I think the real challenge for you is once a vision is there, how do you make it real. You make the policy decisions. John? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: My only comment is that it's far too early in the FOCUS discussion for the county to be involved in it. In my opinion, it's the surest way to put the kiss of death on any of these types of programs is to have the county start getting involved at an early stage and dictating policy. My opinion is that you've got to let this -- and this is all private, no county involvement. MR. SUHEK: I understand. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Let them make their final recommendations as they want to bring it forward to us for implementation, and we'll see at that time what we can and can't do. MR. SUHEK: Tim? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: One problem is definition or perspective. Are we talking about visioning or talking about FOCUS? And Pam and I might look at the same thing and see two different things. A good example is earlier on our list it said small-town feel. Well, I'm reasonably sure you'll get everybody in the community -- a vast majority of the people in the community to say, yeah, we want to try to maintain that small-town feel, but then when you break that down into what I feel is small town, what John thinks, what Bettye thinks -- COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We don't know what that means. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- we may have a different perspective. MR. SUHEK: That's correct. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: So you may appear to have a consensus on issues, but then as you break that issue down into specifics, that's -- MR. SUHEK: And where the breakdown starts to occur is where you take that document and put it into real things -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. MR. SUHEK: -- to programs, to projects, to budget allocations. That's where -- and that's what John's saying at this point in time, let that play out is the strategy I hear John saying. Let them bring us a final document, and at that point in time then we'll grapple with the expectations, we'll grapple with the resource issues, and we'll make the final decisions. Is that right, John? COHHISSIONER NORRIS: Yeah, similar. MR. DORRILL: Lyle mentioned to me that the whole country is doing this visioning thing right now. It's real chic to do. But the people that are becoming the whipping boys for it are city councilmen -- MR. SUHEK: County commissioners. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: -- and especially county commissioners. MR. DORRILL: They think they're involved. It's like Tim said; everybody's got a different perspective of what the vision is. Then if they get frustrated in the implementation phase, it's not the board of directors of FOCUS that are going to get blamed for it; it's the county commissioners who get blamed for it. MR. SUHEK: They look to you all. And some may -- and they may have the different definitions that Tim talked about. And they come to you and say, well, I thought you were going to do this to my neighborhood. That was our community consensus. You're not doing it; therefore, you're not responsive to us. And a lot of communities are getting caught in that. The other part is who gets involved with this, too, because some citizens will only get involved when it's "I" oriented, affects me, otherwise why do I need to get involved in this broader thing? Life's okay here. I'm going to go out and play golf, boating, and do all these other things, and I'm not going to be involved. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Work ethic problem. MR. SUHEK: What, Bettye? COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I said that's the work ethic problem; you want to go play golf or go to the beach. MR. DORRILL: I was telling Lyle this morning it's sort of "don't east coast the west coast" thing has sort of caught on real quick. I was telling him, like, what's that mean? Nobody wants the west coast to be like the east coast, but what does that mean. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: He's the guy that invented that. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That whole catch phrase is. MR. SUHEK: It's traveling, because Sarasota talked about it. They did a very interesting definition in the City of Sarasota. It's when you can talk from the top of a building and somebody on the ground can hear you. MR. DORRILL: Yeah, we got too many jet skis for that. MR. SUHEK: If you can't do that, then we're east coasting it. And they had -- it was a funny discussion, but there's a lot of truth in what that definition means. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: By that you mean you can't hear over the noise of the buses? MR. SUHEK: Roar of traffic, height, jet skis somebody said, put all those factors in there. So is it the sense of the county commission to at this point let the process -- as John says, play it out and let them bring to you a final document? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That's right. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I think that's what they want from us. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That's what they better want. MR. SUHEK: The point this morning was to just test with you where you're going with that and making sure you're comfortable with that. Neil, did you have any other comments on that? MR. DORRILL: Well, I think we got to stay in touch with them. COHHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Oh, yeah. MR. DORRILL: To a great extent they think that it is odd that the people that are on the board of directors thinks that when we finish the FOCUS fairs that -- now they have busted up into all these different committees for implementation -- and I think there is an impression within FOCUS that -- MR. SUHEK: You're done. MR. DORRILL: -- here's the game plan, and now we've got all these committees that have got to go effectuate the game plan. And I just -- here again, I just don't want the county commission to be blamed for this thing a year from now when everybody says nothing is happening and nobody did anything with the FOCUS. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: No, I agree with that. But my assessment of what they're doing as they're breaking into these committees, to start getting the specifics out of the generalities. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: They're assigning a game plan. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Maybe I've got the wrong impression. I don't know. MR. SUHEK: Who knows. Maybe there's nobody -- somebody needs to find out, just get back to the commission. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: They're not having another meeting until when; September, October or something. MR. DORRILL: The only other just concluding remark that I wanted to make is that I think the staff did an outstanding job converting our management-conceived and management-oriented work plan, which is in the back and was scraped on January 1st, into what we then re-tailor quickly our work plan, even though we were two months into the year. And in running some numbers we have maintained 95 percent on schedule delivery by month of the things that we said that we would do. There were only two things that were canceled and scrapped, and they dealt with the -- COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Beach foraging. MR. DORRILL: No, beach foraging is still there. We scrapped government days at the mall this year because the mall with the food court under construction -- COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah. MR. DORRILL: And while that is a very pro-staff event, I think your division administrators have really done an outstanding job of quickly refocusing our work plan to be your work plan this year, and they kept it 90 percent on schedule year to date. And to the extent that there have been slippages, they're only like one month, if you look at it. But we're excited about the opportunity to define and maybe reprioritize economic development in number 3 or 4, wherever it was, and have a work plan ready to go on October the 1st this year that matches your budget, that matches your priorities. And that's -- so we're back on sync or on task, and I think we're looking forward to the coming year improving on our 90 percent delivery rate. MR. SUHEK: The other thing I'd urge you to do is if you look at the goals you set in October, you've made some major strides on most of them. Some of them you've forgotten about. Some of them you've said, gee, they're staff driven; some of those were board driven. But I would really share those with the community and let them know you're moving towards a destination. If you look at what is one of the major criticisms of Dole today, says where do you want to take this country, what is your vision. And several of his advisors have said you need to have an idea of what that destination point is. You have a destination point. It may not all have the same definition, but I think it's close enough. And I think today the intent was to review where you are on those goals as well as to address two of them: to get closure on the FOCUS issue -- and watching the heads nod it's real clear. Maybe there's a need to say check with them, where are they, and get back to you. But the county gets that document and makes the decisions based upon that document -- and then an economic development strategy that can be built into the budget, which you've defined some outcomes of what you wanted to achieve, and put together a fairly realistic action plan for six months to really get -- get on top of a fairly difficult issue, an issue a lot of folks are -- are grappling with. As I mentioned, I'm working with Cincinnati. That community has gone from over 600,000 to just over 300,000 in the last 15 years. People are moving -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: They all came here. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: They all came here. MR. SUMEK: No. They're moving into Camelton (phonetic) County. We were talking about this recently. They were talking about their assets and liabilities. Do you know what one of their major economic liabilities is right now? MR. DORRILL: Marge Schotz. MR. SUMEK: Marge. I was in the mayor's office, and she comes bursting into the mayor's office. They were trying to get $30,000 for the campaign, because they're building two new stadiums, $550 million government contribution. That's a significant role. They said, "Can you contribute $30,000?" And she said, "No." And as she was saying no, Schotzie (phonetic), the dog, took a dump in the mayor's office, this big -- and I'm sitting there going I don't believe what I just see going on here. That's a -- do you know? Have you seen Schotzie, John? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I've seen him on TV. MR. SUMEK: He's a big dog; right? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Right. MR. SUMEK: It's a Saint Bernard, not a small variety. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Not a little lap dog. MR. CONRECODE: So the statement he made was substantial. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: So for a $550 million project she can't put 30,000 into it? MR. SUMEK: That is correct. She refused. And that's a -- Bettye, that's -- from my perspective for the city, that's a hell of a contribution to an athletic team. And we're talking about a very goutmet, nice stadium. I've enjoyed seeing you again. Hopefully we got through what we needed to. We'll get a summary back to you of this. So good luck, and I would say your leadership challenge over the next six months is continuing on the progress and letting your community know we're moving, and here are our successes. We've accomplished a lot together. And it's about two after, and so -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Thank you for your help. Thank all the staff members. MR. SUMEK: Bye. Good luck, folks. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 12:02 p.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COHMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL JOHN C. NORRIS, CHAIRMAN ATTEST: DWIGHT E. BROCK, CLERK These minutes approved by the Board on as presented or as corrected TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF DONOVAN COURT REPORTING BY: Barbara A. Donovan