BCC Minutes 06/23/1997 B (Budget Workshop)BUDGET WORKSHOP MEETING OF JUNE 23, 1997
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 9:05 a.m. in BUDGET WORKSHOP SESSION in Building "F" of
the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following
members present:
ALSO PRESENT:
CHAIRMAN:
VICE-CHAIRMAN:
Timothy L. Hancock
Barbara B. Berry
Pamela S. Hac'Kie
John C. Norris
Timothy J. Constantine
Robert Fernandez, County Administrator
Mike HcNees, Asst. County Administrator
Michael Smykowski, Budget Director
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Good morning. Going to call to order the
final day of the budget workshop. We've got wrap-up. Before getting
to those, let's go ahead and have a Pledge to the -- Pledge of
Allegiance to the flag, please.
(The Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison).
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to misspeak. We,
obviously, have some items before we get to wrap-up this morning,
but --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: I feel better now.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yeah. Don't worry, Mr. Smykowski, I wasn't
leaving any out.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Okay. We have a pretty full agenda. We will
deal with wrap-up. For the benefit of those who might be here for
wrap-up already, wrap-up will probably not be for a couple of hours.
We have to get through the enterprise fund, the internal service funds
and the trust funds first. So, for the benefit of all -- and then
there is a wrap-up list. We'll walk through those.
If there are wrap-up items that come up today, Mr. Chairman, just
because of timing logistics, we may just have to tag those onto the
end of the board meeting tomorrow if possible just because there are
-- there are no other times prior to your vacation that the board will
be meeting to resolve any issues, and the tentative budget would have
to be released prior to that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Well, I think there's -- it's going to move a
little quicker than you think because not all these things are things
that I remember specifically the board saying we wanted information
on. Wrap-up is not a time for departments who don't like what they
got or didn't get to come back and make a new pitch.
So, if the board, at the -- at the outset of any wrap-up item
doesn't recall really requesting that we hear more information on that
item, then we will just move through it and go to the next one. So,
hopefully, those won't bog us down to a lengthy discussion.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: In certain cases, we did -- there was questions,
and we erred on the side of putting it on the list at this point.
Obviously, it's your discretion over what items you would like to
discuss again.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Agreed.
For the rest of the board, I have a doctor's appointment today.
I have to take a lunch at noon or right at noon. So, if we're in the
middle of something, I'll just turn the meeting over and boogie on out
of here.
Let's go ahead and get started, Mr. Smykowski.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Okay. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Tindall,
the senior budget analyst, and we are going to begin with our utility
fund.
MR. TINDALL: Good morning, Mr. Chairman and commissioners. For
the record, Phil Tindall from the budget office.
Can you hear me okay?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yes.
MR. TINDALL: We're going to start off with Fund 408 which is the
county water sewer district, and as you can see, it's in total of --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Page and a book, please.
MR. TINDALL: -- a fifty million dollar bond.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Page.
MR. TINDALL: I'm sorry. We're going to start out on Page E-2 in
the detail book and E-2 in the summary book.
COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: That was easy.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Mr. Tindall, please continue.
MR. TINDALL: Yes, sir. If you'll note from Page E-2 of the
summary book, we have a total of 21.3 million dollars in operating
expenses for the total request of FY '98 which includes 256,500 of
expanded service requests which are broken out for you here on Page
E-5. Just as -- for the purpose of perspective, total expanded
service requests a year ago were almost 1.2 million, so the
departments have shown quite a bit of restraint this year, and I can
tell you, I've worked real closely with Mr. Newman and Mr. Clemons,
and they took a pretty jaundiced eye towards any new requests, and
they did a lot of cutting before bringing the budget to us, but as you
can see, overall in operating expenses, we are talking about a,
approximately, 1.4 percent decrease between the total request for '98
and the adopted budget for '97. Host of that is attributable to
decreases in the wastewater operating fund primarily because of the
fact that the consultant's estimate of the operating costs for
operating the north county plant were -- turned out to be somewhat
high, and basically, these adjustments are just bringing it more in
line with realistic operating costs.
That's about all I have to point out on that page unless there
are any additional questions.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Questions from the board?
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I -- I have just some general overall
questions. Is this the right place for those? MR. TINDALL: Yes, ma'am.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: When -- when I -- when I was looking at
this budget, I was harkening back to when we were talking about
privatization or the possibility of privatizing and the county
manager, Neil, told us at the time, no, no, no, this is not my bid.
Do you remember that, that he told us, you know, if we were to go out
to bid, I said, well, surely your budget is your bid, and he said, no,
no, that wouldn't be my bid.
So, I took this budget and just did some comparing with other
counties, frankly called some folks in Lee County, and, you know, they
privatize lately and they're -- they reduced employees by about 30
percent. They moved them to other places. There's just a whole lot
of general overall basic questions I have about whether or not we
couldn't do a whole lot more efficient job in here, and I can point
out some of them that I was able to get a handle on and tell you about
those of those if you would like to hear them.
For one that seemed pretty easy to me is on Page E-10 of the
detail. We are talking about water operations here. On the business
about flushing the system, we have four and a half FTEs. We have six
FTEs on new meter installation. I had asked, you know, how many --
how many meters per day should a person be able to install, and then
how many -- you know, what would be the resulting FTEs from that. I
was told that, you know, ten per day would be a pretty good standard,
maybe eight, maybe ten, including driving time and that kind of stuff
which made me ask, you know, how many new meters do we install. I
mean, how do we get to six because that would mean we have a whole lot
of new meters being installed? I wonder if that number couldn't be
lower.
I wonder if on the system flushing number, the FTE is four and a
half. You know, basically what that is is they go to the --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: It's opening up the end of the line.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yeah, blow out some water.
In Lee County, they are doing that with one person, and they say
that they ought to be able to do 50 of those a day per person or,
frankly, that meter readers could do that while they are out on their
route. So, there's another four and a half.
We've got three in administration on that page. I'll stop with
that page, but you kind of get the theme here as, in general, number
one, we know that this is not the best deal we can get from our own
staff because Neil told us that, that this was not his bid. Number
two, you know, with some comparisons to other counties, it looks like
there's maybe a 30 percent fluff in there of -- you know, that a
private company, anyway, could do it for 30 percent less, so --
MR. McNEES: Mr. Chairman, let me clarify the Neil quote, and
then I'll let Mike and Tim deal with the specifics. What Neil was
saying when he was saying no, this is not our privatization bid was we
haven't first designed any specifications for what services or what
level of service in particular we would be asking for from a
privatization vendor --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The same.
MR. McNEES: -- against what's in this budget. In other words,
a privatization vendor would not do some of the maintenance type of
things, would not do the level of flushing, would not provide the
level of service that you have come to expect from your utility. What
he is saying is, if we were to design specifications for a
privatization vendor, then we would provide a bid to meet those
specifications which would not be the same as the level of service
you're providing to your utility customers today.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But Mike, that really enforces the point
that if -- that -- from what I've learned a little bit just from a
tiny bit of research, and I acknowledge that it isn't a significant
amount of research, but that flushing the system more than necessary
is just wasting water.
MR. McNEES: I think Mr. Newman ought to address that one.
MR. NEWMAN: Good morning, commissioners. For the record, Mike
Newman, your water director.
Just kind of start at the top of the list there. As far as meter
installations go, I can assure you there are no crews in the State of
Florida that are doing ten full meter installations a day. What you
probably are comparing back to, and it's an apples to oranges type of
comparison, is there are utilities where the underground contractor at
the time of installation, he installs the service line and all the
apparatus other than just screwing the meter on. That's not the case
in this system. Our people have to actually excavate the line, make
the tap.
Developers have that option here. They can either put in the
services themselves, in which case we do the meter hangs, in which
case we meet that ten or better installs a day --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Why wouldn't we make developers do all of
that preliminary work? Why would we, you know, charge the general
rate payer to do that when the developer could be required to do that?
MR. NEWMAN: The cost, ultimately, is born by the customer.
Either the developer has the work done and then charges it as part of
the lot cost or that cost is born by the customer.
I can assure, you based on the conversations we've had with the
developers that are doing this themselves, they are paying more per
that unit of work than what we are charging our customers directly.
Some of them take the advantage and move forward on that simply
because they don't want us to come back and tear up their grass to do
the installation after the fact.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: You see, that's the general system, is
paying for that work if you do it.
MR. NEWMAN: No, it's not. That's a user fee that the user pays
at the time they make application. They pay a specific fee when you
come in and apply for service that only that user pays that bears that
cost. It's not borne by the general rate payer.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: So -- so, the developer can pay you to do
it or he can do it himself, and it's cheaper if he pays you?
MR. NEWMAN: Pretty much. It's cheaper for the customer, and the
developer -- the only reason they do it is because they want the
advantage of timing or they don't want us to come back and disturb the
landscape that they put into some of the projects.
As far as the flushing goes --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Uh-huh.
MR. NEWMAN: -- we -- we are fairly aggressive. We have the type
of community here that the type of development that's going on in this
community is typically a cul-de-sac type community. What you will see
through Lee County is that's more of a grid system there. It's an
older type community, and grid systems were popular in the old days.
Grid systems are all interconnected. They do not have the amount of
dead end lines that we have in this community. Almost every project
that goes in is almost exclusively dead end systems.
I can assure you right now, with the number of people that we
have on the flushing crews, we are not meeting all of our obligations
under the law right now.
Now --
MR. HcNEES: Let me tie this to something. Excuse me, Hike, if I
can interrupt you for just a second. You'll recall when we talked
about utility standards, you may have heard from your developer
friends' conversations about looping and how important Mr. Newman felt
like looping was in the design of utility systems.
Well, the builders, frankly, hate looping because it increases
their cost, and it increases the number of feet of utility pipe they
have to put in the ground. Well, the compromise is, okay, we won't
require that you loop your system to maintain the circulation of the
water and the chlorine residuals, the trade-off is -- in fact, this is
something Hike and I have talked about a lot of times over the years
-- the tradeoff is, we'll hire more people -- rather than require the
builder or the developer to do more looping, we'll hire more people to
do flushing, so that he can maintain his chlorine residual in those
dead end lines, particularly here where you have people who aren't
here all summer who may be on the cul-de-sacs, and not only is a
cul-de- sac, but there's nobody using water at the end of the system,
and if Hike falls out of compliance for his residuals in that dead end
part of the system, then he's got problems with DEP and notification
issues.
So, that, frankly, is a trade-off. You don't do looping, and you
don't make those connections. You hire more people to do flushing in
order to remain compliant with the DEP regulations.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: When was the last time we had a
general rate increase?
MR. CLEHONS: I think it was 1989. Tim Clemons, wastewater
director. I believe it was 1989. Ed Finn could speak better to that,
commissioners, than I can, but --
MR. FINN: Thank you, Tim.
Mr. Chairman, Edward Finn, public works operations director.
The last rate study was conducted in '91. There was a rate
revision at that point in time. Those rates have been the same since
1991.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And we are clearly not operating at a
loss now?
MR. FINN: Actually, the -- whether the utility operates at a
surplus or a loss is contingent upon the amount of annual pays.
You've got capital used to fund capital projects.
MR. HcNEES: That's a no --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thank you.
MR. HcNEES: -- we are not operating at a loss.
MR. FINN: That is correct.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: My point is, obviously, we want to run
as efficiently as we can, but if in seven years, we haven't had to
have any rate increase and those rates are considerably lower than the
competing systems such as SSU or whatever their new name or Florida
Cities, we are doing something right, and I don't blame you if we want
to trim it even more, and if we can, great, but I don't want anyone to
get the impression that we're not running an efficient ship.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: We are running an efficient ship from the
revenue side. I mean, I don't think that the rates are -- are
extraordinarily high. I just think that we can't lose sight of the
fact that they can be lower, and it's our responsibility to make them
as low as possible --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I would --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: -- or if some of those -- you know, some
other sort of general questions I have is what kind of -- what -- what
kind of fees do you guys pay -- does this department pay to the county
attorney's office? Is there -- are there ways to get money from this
into the general fund through --
MR. FINN: Mr. Chairman, if I could --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: -- rents and county attorney fees and
OCPH, and are those high enough? MR. FINN: Yes, ma'am.
If I may address that, Edward Finn. There is a charge back to
the general fund. It's called an indirect service charge where the
payment from the utilities department, Collier County Water Sewer
District, if you will, to fund internal general fund operations in
excess of 1.2 million dollars. The payment to OCPH occurs through
capital projects. Typically, that fee is 5 to 10 percent of the
capital project's total. That is, again, paid by the water sewer
district.
In looking at the overall rate structure of the water sewer
district, you'll find that in excess of 33 percent of the rates is
required to support the debt service on the infrastructure that's
currently in place leaving relatively limited flexibility in what the
rates can be.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Understood, and I'm not going to beat this
to death, but just because I'm going to -- I want to give you one more
example. On page E-16, just to pick on sewers since I picked on
water, we have 95 employees. We have five supervisors. One -- one
that seems sort of obvious to me is that we have 19 people in
maintenance. You know, in Lee County, that number is 11. In the
camera and vector with -- you know, what they do is send the camera
through and check the utility lines. I'm told the industry standard
is that one employee should be able to do 500,000 feet. That would
mean we are doing two million with these four employees. We've got
five supervisors, which, I guess, we would need since we've got 95
employees.
I just think that there's a whole lot of activity here that a
private company would do a lot more efficiently, and I would like to
think that we could do it more efficiently as opposed to a private
company doing it.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Mac'Kie, can I ask you a
question?
You mentioned a minute ago that you've been told that flushing is
a waste of water and --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: No, if you overdo it, it's a waste of
water.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Okay. I was going to say, because
what I heard Mr. HcNees say is to make sure we maintain some
requirements.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Oh, yeah.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Your points are very well taken. I think they
are appropriate. They are all areas we need to look at.
I received the same presentation from representatives of ST
Environmental Services, apparently, that you did, and as much as they
are a private vendor, and they are going to look through an area and
determine where they can be more efficient than maybe we are, I think
we have the responsibility throughout the year to take a look at those
individual areas, and if we can begin looking at either specific areas
that we, as a county, cannot do as well as a private sector group,
that's a privatization discussion, and we need to have it piece by
piece, bit by bit rather than maybe a system-wide approach. I don't
know if we are ready for that.
The one thing I explained to them, and I feel a need to remind
everyone, is we just began what I'll call a long-term maintenance
program with some authority last year. It was the first year that we
started putting real dollars into maintenance because we have a 12
year old system that when it dies, it's going to die in whole. We are
not going to see a piece over here and a piece over there. We put a
lot of infrastructure in in a short period of time which means when
that infrastructure starts to go bad, the amortization is not going to
be section by section. It's going to be grid piece by grid -- I mean,
it's going to be on a larger scale.
So, we are a little different in that respect. So, I think there
are some service areas, and you mentioned the vector side, they have
new equipment that they have actually got a patent on that does
cleaning and this and that and the other. I agree 100 percent. Let's
look at those things throughout the year and see if, in fact, we can
take what is being looked at as operation and turn it maybe into
capital so that we can do better system expansion and so forth and so
on.
Unfortunately, I don't have enough of a foothold on that
information to do -- to really move forward on this budget cycle, and
I don't know if you do. I didn't get into it deep enough to
accomplish that.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Well, frankly, I -- I had sought that
information out. I did get the pitch on that irrigation thing or
whatever it was too, but I had been talking to them some over the
year, them and others, frankly, about -- you know, it just stuck in my
mind that comment of Neil's that no, this isn't my bid. This is not
my bid, and I don't think that I'm prepared today to say here are all
the cuts that I think we ought to make and list them out. I wanted to
bring all that to your attention and, hopefully, we'll look at it
through the year on a piece by piece basis.
I -- I had hoped, frankly, that if I brought some of this up
today, some of you would have heard the same things and might also be
able to join in and have some ideas.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: In some ways, water and sewer, I look at it in
a similar light that we look at EHS. We can have a cheaper EHS
system. We can have advanced life support cheaper than we provide as
a county. I don't think we can have it better.
When you're dealing with water and wastewater. I think that type
of quality argument has to enter the picture, and that's the problem
with privatization is it's very difficult to put quality versus
quality in some of that.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I'll tell you to talk to some of your
counterparts in Lee County, and even the ones who were very negative
are, as I've talked to them, very, very positive about how -- you
know, the turn of events up there overall.
MR. HcNEES: Mr. Chairman, if I could offer maybe a solution
here. We are looking at some specific variables kind of in a vacuum.
We are looking at "X" employees in Collier County, "Y" employees in
Lee County for a specific function.
Well, there's a whole lot of other variables that come into play,
and, you know, how many linear feet of line in a particular area and
how many lift stations, which is one of the huge numbers in Mr.
Clemons' system, and how far spread they are, perhaps if you can
provide to us the information you're looking at, I expect probably
already in their files in their offices, these two fellows have
comparable information and have already done a considerable amount of
research. In fact, they are intimately familiar with the status of
things in Lee County. They keep up with that as a way to keep
themselves honest and to make sure that they can answer legitimately
the kind of questions you're asking, which they'll be happy to do.
So, if you can provide to us some of that information, then maybe
we can do a better job of explaining to you what the variables are
that affect our system, why we are doing things the way we are and,
you know, if you're not satisfied with that, we'll be happy to go back
to work on it, but they --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: My last comment is sort of along those
same lines, and that is, a couple of years ago when I first came on
the board, there was talk about an audit; maybe that the clerk's
office was doing an audit of utilities, and I don't ever remember
getting it. Was it ever completed?
MR. NEWMAN: Yes, ma'am.
MR. FINN: Yes, ma'am.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Is it something -- I mean, was it -- did
we discuss it as a board or --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. HcNees or Mr. Fernandez, perhaps
you can pass a copy of the audit on to her and -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Let's go from there.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: There's -- the points you've raised are
things, I think, we're going to be discussing from an operational
standpoint as the coming year -- there are no sacred cows, and just
because we haven't had an increase in six or seven years doesn't mean
we're not going to take a hard look at something if someone waves a
red flag.
So, let's turn our focus to doing that over the next year a piece
at a time, and maybe next budget year, a lot of these things will come
together under a single discussion.
COMMISSIONER MACwKIE: That makes sense to me.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Any further questions on water or wastewater
utilities? Seeing none, thank you, gentlemen.
That was almost a workshop discussion on utilities.
Next, Mr. Smykowski.
MR. TINDALL: Mr. Chairman, we also have some other utilities
funds to discuss.
CHAIRNLAN HANCOCK: Okay.
MR. TINDALL: If you look on Page E-7 of the summary book, notice
there are several other smaller funds that two utility districts, the
Marco Water Sewer District and Goodland Water District as well as a
couple of inactive funds and the county debt service, the utilities
debt service Fund 410. You may want to talk about Fund 410 first.
Thatws the utility debt service, and Mr. Finn is here.
CHAIRNLAN HANCOCK: Actually, I want to talk about 431.
MR. FINN: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Marco Water and Sewer has a 12 percent
increase. Can someone tell me why?
MR. FINN: Yes, sir. That 12 percent increase is primarily
driven by the increase in reserves there. There was a two tiered rate
adjustment. The second tier went into effect this fiscal year. That
brings that fund current with its, essentially, operating costs. As
you may recall, we essentially buy service from SSU to treat the
sewage in that area. SSUws costs have gone up dramatically over the
last several years. The board approved rate increases recently to
bring that up on par. That should provide some funds to allow Mr.
Clemons to do some critical maintenance activities that need to be
done desperately.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Basically, an aging system.
MR. FINN: Yes, sir.
MR. CLEMONS: Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: It is, and what the story is, as Mr. Finn
says, we -- we have to pay SSU for whatever they charge us. We donwt
have any control over really what they charge us. So, instead of
making a -- I donwt recall the figure, but it was a -- 60 percent was
it?
MR. FINN: It was substantial, yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: We went two years of 30 percent increase
instead of one year of 60 or something to that effect. So, we did --
we split it over two years instead of --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Like several shots with a small needle instead
of one with a big needle.
COMMISSIONER MACIKIE: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: And thatls -- thatls why itls up.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. I just -- when I see that kind of a
jump, it just catches my eye.
Letls go back to 410 unless therels any questions on 431, because
that actual to adopted to forecast is a little bit confusing when you
look at going from ten to twenty million from actual to adopted and
then forecast back down to ten million. Somebody tell me about that
roller coaster.
COMMISSIONER MACIKIE: Uh-huh.
MR. FINN: Yes, sir. When you look at the actual, the debt
service -- typically, bonds have a substantial -- a reserve
requirement. The reserve requirement in this case is close to ten
million dollars. When the budget office actually shows you the actual
number, of course, the reserves are not expended, so what you are
seeing there is nothing more than the money that actually went out to
debt service. When you look at the budget, the adopted budget in the
next column, you'll see that ten million dollars, roughly speaking,
put back in there.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So, basically, that's reserves plus what's
anticipated to be expended.
MR. FINN: Yes, sir. That's correct.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: And those reserves are established by a bond
covenant. There is no latitude to change those.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: No padding of the budget there then.
MR. FINN: No, sir.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I had questions on 421 and 433, just that
they both appear to be inactive. One is East Naples fire hydrants
that it was decided in '82/'83 to delay it indefinitely. There's
just, you know, $10,000 in there, but how long does that continue to
be carried before it's refunded or --
MR. FINN: If -- if I may address that.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Please.
MR. FINN: We have requested the county attorney's office to look
into a way to either refund that or expend the money. I believe their
verbal recommendation to me is, it probably would be most cost
effective to find a way to simply use it in the same intent that the
money was levied.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The same sort of question with 443 which
is sewer service area B, whatever that is, no longer active. It's got
about 6,000 bucks in it.
MR. FINN: And the same applies there, ma'am.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Thanks.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Can we ask that sometime in the next fiscal
year we see both of those funds come back for improvements to expend
those dollars and take these off the books rather than looking at
them? I think it's a good point. MR. FINN: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Not -- great.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Harry Hall will be here to talk to us about
area B.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Who will?
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Harold Hall.
CHAIRMAN NORRIS: That's what area B is. Okay.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I don't know who Harry is.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Well, just count your lucky chickens.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Any other questions on miscellaneous
enterprise funds, 410 through 433?
And Commissioner Berry, we have greatly overlooked the fact that
this is your first budget. Through many of this, the enterprise funds
were probably the most confusing to me as we went through them, but if
you have any questions, I'm sure Mr. Finn and these gentlemen will be
happy to -- it took me two years just to figure out half of them.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Isn't it fun this year to finally get it,
you know.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: This is my third budget, and I think I'm
getting all of it this time.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I told John I thought this was an easier
budget, and he said, no, I was just getting used to it, so --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: He's just getting it.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: That may be it.
Any other questions on enterprise funds?
Seeing none, Mr. Constantine, if you're done with Mr. Smykowski,
we could probably use him.
MR. TINDALL: Mr. Chairman, if there are no more questions on the
utilities operating funds, Mr. Vincent will cover the solid waste
operating.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Never mind, Tim, you can keep him.
Let's go to solid waste then.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Not that he wasn't going to anyway, but --
MR. VINCENT: For the record, my name is Gary Vincent, analyst in
the budget office.
The solid waste funds are on Page E-8 in the summary book and
E-28 in the detail book.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: You said E-28 in the detail?
MR. VINCENT: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you.
Folks, we are on solid waste. It's E-8 in your summary, E-28 in
your detail.
Mr. Vincent, please go ahead.
MR. VINCENT: On Page E-8, probably the largest thing there to
notice is that the grant funds are reflecting a decrease, and that is
because the grants from the State of Florida are, in fact, decreasing.
On the following page, E-9, they have two expanded requests. One
is for a truck to help pick up illegal dump sites, and that will be
paid from a grant fund.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Understand as a matter of interest that we
are now officially the lowest cost residential solid waste in the
state.
MR. RUSSELL: Yes, sir, we are about tied with Hanatee County as
having the lowest rate, that is correct.
David Russell, solid waste director.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Don't we beat them by a few cents or
something?
MR. RUSSELL: Well, it's very close. If we hadn't increased by
the CPI to keep pace with our contracts, we probably would have been.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: With the exception of grants, we're not seeing
any real material changes in the budget, anything of -- other than
mandatory collections going up which is a function of growth rate.
Any questions on solid waste?
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I'm persuaded by the captivating
presentation that we had on that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I for one am overwhelmed.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I'm underwhelmed but ready to move on.
Nothing personal. Just kidding.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Next.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Mr. Chairman, we need to discuss the utilities
capital funding. We neglected to run through that. Mr. Tindall and
Mr. Newman and Clemons.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Pages.
MR. TINDALL: I have to apologize, Mr. Chairman. I got a little
caught up in the momentum there.
We have the water and wastewater utilities capital funds.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Pages.
MR. TINDALL: We will need to go to the detail book starting out
on Page H-12.
This should be fairly straightforward. We didn't want to skip
this, so --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Substantial increase exists in the area of
accumulation of reserves and the purpose for each is -- while we are
accumulating reserves at a much higher level than last year.
MR. FINN: Mr. Chairman, if I may, Edward Finn.
You're on page -- the page you're looking at, sir.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Page 12.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Page 12.
MR. FINN: Page 12. On Page H-12, you'll see there are two funds
listed there.
The first fund, Fund 411 is the water system impact fee fund.
That is supported by impact fees generated on new construction. That
money is earmarked to fund new construction related projects.
The other fund, Fund 412 is the water capital fund that is
supported by a component of user fees. That fund is essentially
earmarked for renewal, replacement and enhancement of capital
projects.
The reserves you're referring to is in Fund 412. Those reserves
essentially are being accumulated in part to fund capital projects,
renewal and replacement capital projects that will be needed in the
future.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And we've got big reserve numbers because
we don't have any pressing need for spending right now?
MR. FINN: Yes, ma'am. For instance, Mr. Newman's north water
plant will require new membranes in about two years. That's estimated
to cost 1.8 million dollars, for example.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Everyone needs a new membrane now and then.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Lord knows I do.
COHMISSIONER BERRY: And this will come out of which one, Mr.
Finn?
MR. FINN: That would be renewal or replacement. That would come
out of Fund 412. That would be a component of what the utility users
pay.
If the board were to look at Page H-13, there's a detailed
listing of the projects that are actually forecast for this year and
proposed for next fiscal year. Page H-13 is the water capital
projects summary. Again, Fund 411 is the impact fee fund. Fund 412
is the user fee fund. The single largest project on this page is
seven zero eight five nine which is a water plant expansion project.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Where, which one and for what?
MR. FINN: Mr. Newman.
MR. NEWMAN: Hike Newman, water director.
Commissioner, that's for the north county membrane plant. That's
to increase that plant's capacity by eight million gallons using
brackish water.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Is that because of growth or --
MR. NEWMAN: Yes, ma'am.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Is that some formula that "X" number of
population requires --
MR. FINN: Yes, ma'am. Your growth management plan outlines the
level of service standard in terms of population. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Thank you.
MR. FINN: If I may direct the board's attention to Page H-14.
This is set up similar to the previous page.
Fund 413 is the sewer system impact fee fund.
Fund 414 is the sewer system, pay as you go, renewal, replacement
and enhancement fund. You will note that the '98 budget has a
substantial amount of loan proceeds coming in to support it. It is
staff's intent to pursue an SRF loan to fund an expansion of the north
sewage treatment plants.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What's SRF?
MR. FINN: SRF is a state program that provides low interest
loans for utility projects.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's a what kind of program -- state
program?
MR. FINN: Yes, ma'am.
MR. McNEES: State revolving fund is what SRF stands for.
MR. FINN: And on Page H-15, the board will be able to see a
detailed listing of the projects forecast to be expended this year and
proposed for next fiscal year.
Again, I'll address the board's attention to two substantial
projects. The first one being project 73053. That is the south plant
improvements phase two project at 12 million dollars. The other
project essentially occurring in FY '98 would be project 73031. That
is that expansion project I mentioned a moment ago.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Where are the scrubbers?
MR. FINN: Mr. Clemons.
MR. CLEMONS: Tim Clemons, wastewater director.
We have scrubbers at both of our wastewater plants.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But the project that we've been talking
about a lot that's associated with the smell at the landfill --
MR. CLEMONS: That's at one of your water plants.
COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: Sorry. Wrong guy.
Where are the scrubbers?
MR. GONZALEZ: Adolfo Gonzalez, capital projects director.
The scrubbers are at the south water plant.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Oh, I know that's where they need to go,
but are they in this budget for next year?
MR. GONZALEZ: Oh, yes, ma'am, they are in this budget for this
year and next year. As we promised, we intended to have that on line
by January of '98.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Okay. I just wanted to nag you.
MR. GONZALEZ: If you would like to see that, it's on Page H-13.
It's project number 70020, odor control.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: There you go. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Just for informational purposes, 74007 and 008
are reclaimed water mains. Are those expansions of our effluent or
tense water in order to provide additional service to those two, both
Quail Creek and Lakewood? MR. CLEHONS: The Lakewood project
74007, commissioner, is an upgrade to our system to provide
irrigation, supply water to the Lakewood community, yes, because
that's an expansion.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: It seems -- seems -- seems years ago that
we've said, let's do that. Is it just now --
MR. CLEHONS: That project just bid, and I think the board
awarded it two weeks ago. So, the work is getting ready to go under
way. We were delayed somewhat by some of the road work out there. We
had to wait on them.
74008, which says Quail Creek, reclaimed water main, actually
started at Quail Creek. We had a line out to the entrance of Quail
Creek. That line has run south to the Vineyards and is now running
east out to the regional water plant and picking up future customers
along that corridor.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. I just -- I wanted to bring out the
fact that we are continuing to expand that. I know that north county,
we were looking at new customers as soon as we can get that project
completed there too, so -- okay.
MR. FINN: Mr. Chairman, if I may, I'd like to bring to your
attention the fact that Mr. Ilschner and I are working on a multi-year
financial plan for the utility, and as part of that plan, the board
may see some subtle changes to this budget reflecting perhaps a shift
between funding sources, between impact fees and user fees. The
projects he just mentioned may well be examples of that. We are
re-evaluating whether those would be better characterized as growth
related projects rather than a pay as you go type projects.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Any further questions on wastewater
capital projects? Seeing none.
Okay. I believe we are done with that section again.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Thank you.
That brings us to our internal service funds. Ms. Leith is the
principal budget analyst. I'm going to turn it over to her. F-2 and
F-3 in your detail book though is the summary of the internal service
funds.
MS. LEITH: Good morning. Shelia Leith, office of management and
budget. We're going to start with the risk management funds, and
that's on Page F-14 of your detail book, and we are on Page F-2 and 3
of your summary book.
The first risk management fund is property and casualty. You'll
notice within that fund, there is a new program that's proposed that
Mr. Walker is looking at which is a pollution insurance type of fund.
There's an additional cost there for next year of just over $100,000.
Overall, the main increase in this fund is in reserves, that the
operating costs have only increased $36,000 from budget to budget.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Let's talk about that reserve increase, if we
may, from 982,000 to 1.17 million. The purpose for that increase in
reserves is?
MR. WALKER: Jeff Walker, risk management director.
The reason that reserve has increased has been primarily because
we brought the defense of litigation in-house about three years ago,
and we did not cut our rates at that time because we wanted to see how
that program has worked, and it has worked because you're seeing an
increase in the reserves as a result. A large portion of losses are
paid in terms of legal fees.
What I wanted to do with the FY '98 budget was to incorporate
this pollution liability program without increasing rates, and that's
what I'm attempting to do here.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You're going to use that increase for
reserves for that purpose?
MR. WALKER: For the pollution program as well. I'd like to set
about 100,000 of that aside for a pollution loss if one should occur.
That's a program which I feel is very, very important to the county
because of the varied types of pollution exposures. We have
everything from landfills to the application of pesticides to the
transportation of fuels, and it took us a long time to put that
program together, and that's what I'd like those reserves to be
earmarked for, and we are doing that without increasing rates, so --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: It seems to me there should be two things. If
we are going to allocate money to pollution control or pollution
related claims, we should have a line item for that as opposed to it
showing up in reserves because it lacks some clarity that way.
The second thing is that we are seeing, in essence, a $200,000
increase in reserves. Now, that explains roughly 100,000 of it. The
second 100,000, when you tell me that we reduced claims cost by coming
in-house, then we're increasing reserves doesn't jive. If we reduced
costs by going in-house on that, we should be reducing either the
rates or another element that affects rates.
So, you lost me a little bit on that one.
MR. WALKER: Well, probably what we should do, and, obviously,
this stuff works out as you're preparing the budget, is that in the FY
'99 budget, we should probably be looking at either a rate decrease or
given -- perhaps seeing what happens with the renewal this year. We
could have a hurricane which would increase our property rates again,
and we might need that money for that purpose, but obviously, we need
to take a look at our rates in the next fiscal year budget process.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Did I understand that -- the way I
understood your answer on the reserves question is that there has been
a savings associated with moving the litigation in-house in where that
100 grand or so, a little more -- well, actually 200 grand of savings,
you're proposing we spend 100,000 of that on this pollution program,
and so I'm wondering why we couldn't cut 100,000.
MR. WALKER: Well, you potentially could. You know, obviously,
it all depends on actuarial projections also. I mean, we do an
actuary study at the end of the fiscal year to determine what our
accrued liabilities are at that point, and there's potential to do
that, certainly.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It sounds like this year there's enough in
there for a rate decrease to balance out $100,000 even with the
pollution program. I don't know --
MR. WALKER: Potential, or you can -- you can either do that or
else you can offset it in future years. It's one or the other.
MR. McNEES: Jeff, is it fair to say that what you're saying is
one year does not make a trend and that we want to be careful about
making judgments.
MR. WALKER: And that's a concern I have. I mean, you know, what
we found with Hurricane Andrew after it came through was that we were
in a very good reserve position prior to that. Hurricane Andrew came
through and our rates doubled. We just didn't foresee that happening,
and essentially, what I had to do is go to reserves to pay for
property insurance.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Got you.
MR. WALKER: So, fortunately, because of good experience and the
litigation in-house, we've been able to improve our reserve position,
but you never know. I mean, we could get another hurricane.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Agreed, but you just hit on the purpose of
reserves, is for an unforeseen circumstance that affects your bottom
line, you go to reserves. That extra 100,000 is kind of reserves in
reserves. It's a little above what we would normally -- I'm going to
invoke the Judge Ito rule if that keeps up -- the -- it's kind of an
extra on top of what are indicated reserves, even though we have a
hundred and some odd thousand dollar increase.
So, I understand your point about not being a trend, Mr. McNees,
but quite frankly, I'd like to let reserves function for their
intended purpose and not pad reserves. That's something that we get
trouble with.
MR. WALKER: We don't have any desire to pad reserves also.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Understood. You've been very cautious in your
approach, and I think I'm saying, let's be a little less cautious to a
tune of 100,000 or 90,000, whatever it is minus the pollution element
that you've stated.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Hike, just while I was bragging a minute
ago about understanding everything about the budget this year, I have
a question. The income -- the revenue stream for this -- for this
expenditure is not property taxes or we would have discussed it under
the first day, but the income actually comes from payments from other
departments, some of which, if I'm understanding it right, some of
which are property tax related.
My question is, if we -- if we make cuts in that, if we said, we
can save that 100 grand of reserves, does that filter down to a
property tax cut or where does it otherwise filter?
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Yes, it would eventually trickle through -- the
proportion to which that $100,000 would be general fund would be a
property tax savings.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Because these internal transfers mostly go
back to property tax questions.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Probably about 60 percent from when I looked
at it.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Sixty.
MR. WALKER: No.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Not that high.
MR. WALKER: No. I think that --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Because I was looking at this and IT and DOR
and --
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm trying to get that, yeah.
MR. WALKER: My guess is probably in the neighborhood of 25 or 30
percent --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Is it that low?
MR. WALKER: -- that might be property tax.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: With the balance coming from where?
MS. LEITH: Utility funds.
MR. WALKER: From -- like, for instance, the utilities department
or all of the other departments who are --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Community development.
MR. WALKER: Yeah, all of those.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Regardless --
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: It doesn't matter, but --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- I guess what would happen is if we made
reductions in these today, the millage rate we hear from Mr. Smykowski
at the end of today's deliberations, that will, in all likelihood, be
applied to the trim notice is the highest case if there is a reduction
in that as the numbers fall out -- because I wouldn't want to do --
what happens is we make 100,000 here and 100,000 there, yet we don't
go back and tag the individual departments for it, then --
COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Then it just goes into general reserves at
the end.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, which is not what I want to
accomplish. See what I'm saying. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So, I agree. As a matter of fact, I was on
that same plane when you start talking about that.
So, what I would like to do is, my personal feeling is, rather
than leaving an additional 100,000 in there -- and is that the number,
Mr. Walker, or is it more like 90,0007
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Well, it's nine eighty-two to one
seventy-one, so it's one hundred ninety. You want a hundred for the
pollution, so it's ninety.
MR. WALKER: Yeah. Well, the other issue here is that we are
also paying the -- we increased the premium for the pollution program
also in addition to the reserves, so I'm trying to figure out how
this works itself out, Hike.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Well, Mr. Walker, you understand the context
of what we are asking to be removed. MR. WALKER: Yes, I do.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Since it's not going to have a material effect
on -- you know, for today's proceedings, let's ask you to make that
change and forward it to Mr. Smykowski, and I'm not doing this
unilaterally. I hope --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: We need one more.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Is the rest of the board in line with that?
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That's fine.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Ask that you make those changes, and
Mr. Smykowski will sharpen his pencil and work it down through the
system.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Correct, Mr. Chairman. Just to kind of give you
a little -- a better idea of how this would work, we would make the
changes -- the millage rates we bring you to adopt on July 22nd, the
proposed millage rates would be inclusive of any changes like this
where the magnitude is somewhat unknown at this point -- well, it's
known to a certain degree, but it's not a specific dollar amount as of
this moment --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Great.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: -- and the rates would be reflective of those
changes you direct.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Good enough. You can't ask for more than
that.
And again, Mr. Walker, your caution is well noted, but I think
let's take a little advantage of it now. Okay. Next.
MS. LEITH: Next is the group health and life insurance fund.
Rather than going through the details of this, I think the board is
quite aware of the performance in this fund. The rates were reduced
from $4,900 for dependent coverage to $4,000 for dependent coverage;
2,300 for single to 1,900 for single for next year for FY '98.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Frankly, this is the one that made me
start looking at these funds more carefully because as I understand
it, that carry forward or that access has just been being collected as
taxes and kept in general reserves for at least a couple three years.
MS. LEITH: Well, there was about -- close to a million dollars
that was refunded to this fund because of an old policy, some money
that had been in reserves in that policy that was paid out. So, that
was a chunk of money that also came in in this past year.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Worth watching.
MS. LEITH: Yeah.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Next.
MS. LEITH: Okay. The next one is the workmen's compensation
insurance fund, and you'll see there that there's a decrease in
reserves. Mr. Walker is anticipating settling a number of old
workmen's comp. claims, and that's why the reserves are so large in
this fund at this time.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: These are -- these are tough projections. I
don't envy --
MR. WALKER: Very difficult.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Any questions on workers' comp.?
None, let's go to fleet.
MS. LEITH: Okay. Next we are going to go to the fleet
management administrative fund. This is on Page F-20.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Does the same sort of ratio apply here of
25 percent or so as property taxes? MS. LEITH: I would --
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Does somebody know?
MS. LEITH: Maybe Mr. Croft could answer the question.
MR. CROFT: Good morning. Dan Croft, I'm the fleet manager.
There is a combination of monies, depending on what departments
use our fleet maintenance, which is all departments. So, funds come
in to support their fleet operations from all funds, including general
fund.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm wondering if you have some idea of the
ratio of the amount of general fund as opposed to fee. MR. CROFT: No, ma'am, I don't.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, at some point, if somebody can tell
me that, I'd like to know it, not that the fee doesn't count.
Obviously, they do, but the general fund, we really have tried to
focus on.
MS. LEITH: There's an expanded service request within this fund.
The expanded request includes capital outlay for a purchase of an 800
megahertz portable phone for the service -- in the service area and an
overhang outside the two bay doors so that they can do larger truck
repairs in that area, whether or not the weather conditions interfere
with that.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Can I ask if -- when are we set to
construct the new facility, because I hate to spend $20,000 on the
overhang if we are going to be building that a year from now anyway.
MR. McNEES: We did defer it and don't show any construction
dollars in fiscal '98. I'm told that this is not lost money, that
this is something that would be portable, that we would be able to
take to the new facility.
COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Great. Thank you.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, good. Perfect.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And in the detail book, I'm sorry, we are on
page -- because we've gone through these.
MS. LEITH: F-20.
COMHISSIONER NORRIS: F-20.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you.
MS. LEITH: And 21.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
MS. LEITH: Also, in the expanded service request is a truck lift
for medium duty trucks and a gear pullet set, and the total expanded
request is $37,500.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: What was the second one; the truck lift and
what else?
MS. LEITH: And gear pullet equipment.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I thought you said ear pullet. I'm not sure
that's really in the right area.
Any questions on -- any further questions on fleet management
fund? With those additional capital outlays, we're still only looking
at 3 percent operational increase?
MS. LEITH: Yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Anything else?
Let's go to the next one.
MS. LEITH: Okay. On Page F-22 and F-23, we are looking at the
motor pool capital recovery fund. This is where we build up reserves
or build up funds to fund our purchases of new vehicles. You'll
notice that there is an increase in reserves within this motor pool
fund for next year's, and that's primarily because of the shift in
replacements. We are only looking at 16 vehicles and two ambulances
to be replaced next year. So, we are building up the money for future
purchases of replacements.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: What's the window on this, and I'll assume we
operate a program that we feed in every time a vehicle is purchased;
an amortization and it calculates each year what we need to meet an
amortization period of what? What's our window when we look at this?
MR. CROFT: The majority of the vehicles that are in the motor
pool fund, which are automobiles and light trucks and ambulances, with
the automobiles and light trucks we are looking at six years and
75,000 miles, and that generally runs true, and it follows along the
guidelines of the American Public Works Association.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I just -- I know that --
MR. CROFT: My name is Dan Croft, fleet manager.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I know that ten years ago, cars would, you
know, whether they are foreign or American made, would hit between
seventy-five and 100,000 a lot of major repairs that you can avoid,
but it seems to me that the construction, the longevity of engines and
parts has changed to where we should be getting close to six figures,
100,000 miles out of those vehicles. I would be very curious if you
would provide to me just individually why we are choosing 75,000 miles
as a cap, because it seems to me that the time, yearwise, is not
nearly as important as the mileage, and I'm curious why the
recommendation from the American Public Works Association would be
75,000 miles, and if, in fact, they've received some consulting
information from the big three on that -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yeah.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- because the cars are made a lot better now
than they were even ten years ago. I think we can get more than
75,000 out of them without experiencing those huge repair costs.
That's my assumption though.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We do a pretty good job with our
computer program maintaining records on each vehicle individually,
don't we, as far as milking as much as we can out of each. Some just
turn out to be lemons and we only get sixty. Some, I know we get --
when I look at what goes to auction, they'll have one hundred ten,
120,000 miles on them.
MR. CROFT: Yes, sir, we do, and the -- as far as the -- that
75,000 miles, we are running seventy-five to 100,000 right now as a
general limit.
When you start going over 75,000 miles, you start losing the
value of your vehicle as far as a sale value. Right now, we are
making some very good sales on our vehicles, so it's working out very
well for us.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Again, just kind of curious to see that
breakdown on paper, and if you can provide it to me rather than us
spending a lot of time on it now, I think it would be more
appropriate.
MR. CROFT: Sure.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I do have a question, the reserve, you
mentioned that we are not making a lot of purchases in this next year
compared to the average year, so, therefore, the reserve is building.
Are we anticipating the -- which out year are we going to get hit?
Which -- which one bubbles off the reserve build up this year? MS. LEITH: 2000.
MR. CROFT: In the year 2000.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Okay. Any other questions on motor
pool capital recovery?
COMHISSIONER NORRIS: No.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Uh-uh.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Let's go to the next.
MS. LEITH: Next will be information technology, Pages F-2 to F-4
in the detail book.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I'm sorry, the detail --
MS. LEITH: The detail book, Page F-2 to F-4.
Within the information technology fund, although we are looking
at a 13 percent increase here, what we are really looking at is an
increase in reserves within operating appropriations, budget to
budget. The adopted budget last year to current service is flat.
It's basically one million two seventy-eight to one million two
seventy-six, and then there's an expanded service request for one
additional person.
So, the total increase would be 3 percent with that additional
body.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: With the number of PCs we are bringing on
line, the expanded request for a person doesn't bother me as much as
the growth in reserves, particularly growth in reserves on a system
that overall is quite new.
Mr. Coakley, could you help me with that? It just seems -- it
seems extreme, quite frankly.
MR. COAKLEY: I'm going to ask Shelia to address that first on
the amount of the reserves.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Ms. Leith, do you want to give us the budget
magic on why those reserves are bumping up -- MS. LEITH: Sure.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- so high.
MS. LEITH: Well, in personal services, there was a $61,000
savings in this past year, and that was due to vacancies as well as
health insurance premiums savings. There was also -- I'm sorry. I
have this breakdown. I just need to pull it out.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: That's okay.
I can't wait for the second half of that because savings does not
beget increase in reserves, so there's -- I figure there has to be a
second part to that.
I take it, Mr. Coakley, you're just doing what Ms. Leith told you
to do on reserves?
MR. COAKLEY: For the record, Bill Coakley, IT director.
Essentially, that's correct.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: The buck has been passed, Ms. Leith.
MS. LEITH: Sorry. We did have some savings in the telephone
area. There was substantial savings there, and that's going to be
passed back to the departments, actually, by reducing the telephone
charges by $100,000.
The rest of it is that we just exceeded -- revenues have exceeded
expenditures, and so they continue to collect the revenues at the rate
they were -- that they had budgeted to charge them out and didn't make
that adjustment, so we do have some savings there.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Right. Now we are to the area I have a
problem with. When it costs less to provide the service than you
anticipated, you reduce the rates. We have reserves -- this
department has reserves that are budgeted either within itself or a
part of the county overall reserves. I don't want to go padding
reserves because we realized some savings. MS. LEITH: Right.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I want to reduce the rates, so --
MS. LEITH: Yes, and we -- there is a possibility of reducing
rates from those reserves. The problem we will have is we'll have the
fluctuations of one year down, one year up type of deal because
we'll --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: How many years -- how many years have we had
the IT department total now?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Two years.
MR. COAKLEY: Two years.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Understanding we're very early in the
process, but I don't want to begin a process of building reserves
unnecessarily. So, I would like a conservative but stretch estimate
on -- rather than taking reserves from 53,500 to 191,000, maybe
something in between would make a little more sense.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Maybe fifty-three -- what does this
department need reserves for in addition to general reserves, you
know, countywide?
MS. LEITH: They really don't. They do need some reserves for
merit increases, 1 percent is like all other county departments. They
would also --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So, leave it at that.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: As a general rule, we budget a 5 percent
continuance in all funds. That would be $66,000.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Then I would suggest we change that
reserve amount to $66,000 max.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Bob, the 5 percent requirement, is
that broken down and shown to each department each time or --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's general overall.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah, is this going to be separate?
Everything we budget --
MR. McNEES: It's fund by fund.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- we put 5 percent on there. If
we're going to do that over and above what we put here, we don't need
that sixty-six either. MR. McNEES: No.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That is -- the 5 percent is part of that one
ninety-one.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, let's make that all of that.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Thank you. Me, too.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Unless, Mr. Coakley, you feel there's some
part of the system that is -- that is a wild hair out there for next
year that you expect the additional reserves for. MR. COAKLEY: No, commissioner.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Let's bring it back to the 66,000,
which is the 5 percent then. Is that what I hear the -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: That's what I hear.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And reduce the rate that we are charging.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And that's part of what we'll see back on July
22nd, I guess, is Mr. Coakley will figure how that applies to the
individual departments, because it should be an across the board
reduction to what rates are being charged in order to avoid the
accumulation.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: To everybody's budget who is being charged
IT fees, because they -- I, you know, have -- you guys won't express,
but I think they are high.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I remember that discussion last year.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: On the teal colored page under program
administration, it talks about processing telephone bills and IGCs for
phone.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, no.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And then down below under
communication systems, telephone, it says review telephone bills and
IGCs for usage, and I'm wondering if you can explain to me the
difference between what the two people in administration are doing and
the two people in communication systems are doing with those two
things.
MR. COAKLEY: Well, in administration, commissioner, it's myself
and our secretary. The secretary sends out the bills. The telephone
department or section of the department, which is Mike Berrios' group,
actually reviews the bills for correctness, generates the systems
that --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: So, what are you personally doing?
You and your secretary are doing what with the telephone bills then?
MR. COAKLEY: I do very little, commissioner, but my secretary
sends them out. It's a mail processing function, basically. We have
quite a volume of them, as you can see.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: If it's just the two of you -- if it's
just the two of you, what else are you spending $221,000 on for
administration?
MR. COAKLEY: Basically, it's myself and a secretary,
commissioner, and --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Do you both get paid $110,000 a year
or -- I mean, what is that money going toward?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: What is the job classification for your
secretary?
MR. COAKLEY: Senior secretary.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I don't think our folks are making that kind
of money in the board office. Someone talk to me about --
MR. COAKLEY: There's some confusion here. Our secretary isn't
making any more than --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Of course not.
MS. LEITH: It's in this cost --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Let me be very clear, so you won't be
confused. I'm reading on the teal page. It says program
administration, you told me that's just the two of you. It says two
FTEs, so you've been clear on who those are, and it says fiscal year
1998 cost, 221,100. I want to know, of those two people, what's
happening to that $221,000.
MR. COAKLEY: Commissioner, I'm sorry. Maybe I misled you.
There's two people in there, two FTEs. That's myself and my
secretary. There's also other expenses in there that we carry for the
overall department; stationery supplies and some training costs. I
can pull it out for you --
MS. LEITH: Let me just -- can I interject here?
MR. COAKLEY: Sure, Shelia, go ahead.
MS. LEITH: The salary budget is 123,700 --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Is there a page here that will show --
MS. LEITH: No, I have a detail that -- I'm going to my spread
sheet on this department, but it's 123,000 for salaries indirect --
COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: How much?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: One twenty-three.
MS. LEITH: 123,000. There's 39,600 for indirect costs
reimbursement to the general fund.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm sorry. I can just barely hear
you. If you can --
MS. LEITH: I'm sorry, 39,600 for indirect service reimbursement.
There's $20,000 for contractual services. Then there's the sewer and
water for all the department, the electricity, all the utility
charges.
COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Which is how much?
MS. LEITH: Water and sewer is a thousand. Insurance is $8,600.
There's building repairs and maintenance, $1,300.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: You've got 11,000 --
MS. LEITH: Electricity, 4,900.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: 16,000.
MS. LEITH: We've got out of county professional development
travel, $5,000. This cost also absorbs a lot of costs for there are
other cost centers within that department, and they charge out to the
various functions.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Five thousand. Let me ask --
MS. LEITH: We have office supplies of seven.
COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Okay. Thank you.
What are you doing for 5,000 worth of travel? Where are you
headed? I assume that's not your secretary going, so it has to be
you.
MR. COAKLEY: That's correct. No, it's not -- no, I carry some
travel expenses for the rest of the sections in the IT department. MS. LEITH: And training.
MR. COAKLEY: It would -- and training, yes, training type
things.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: There's no travel anywhere else in any
of this?
MR. COAKLEY: No, there's some travel in the others, too, but we
have some in here.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Commissioner Constantine, you just hit on the
biggest part -- this has been the most useless page in our entire
book --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It really has been.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- because I haven't used it once in the
entire discussion because it tells us the percentage of overall costs
assigned to those two people, but the breakdown you just gave us, Ms.
Leith -- not -- I mean, if we had all that, you know, that's fine, but
it gets voluminous, but this is just a useless page. It has caused me
more questions than given me answers, so we've got to do something
about that because, you know, you're hitting on the same stuff that I
-- that had concerned me, and I had to find it elsewhere.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I don't quite understand your answer
there. If you have $5,000 budgeted under those two FTEs and you're
saying, oh, you're covering other people's travel there, too, then why
do you also have travel under the other items? It just doesn't make
any sense. It's not a logical answer.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: In all of that, if we can find some --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Can I get an answer to the question,
please?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I just wanted to support you on that.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thanks.
MR. COAKLEY: I don't have a good answer for that. I think I
misspoke. We are showing some amount of out of county travel in each
one of the sections in IT, that is correct. That 5,000 is in there to
cover me, basically. I'm not planning to send the secretary anywhere.
For example, going to the human resource users group, I did last year.
I expect to go again.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Where was that?
MR. COAKLEY: That one was in Nashville. I don't know where it
is this year.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I've got to imagine it doesn't cost
more than four, 500 bucks for tickets, and unless you stayed for a
month, I don't -- I don't understand why you need $5,000 for your
travel annually. It just seems like an over expenditure.
How much else do you have for travel in here?
MS. LEITH: In total, $18,000.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Good Lord.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: For out of state travel.
MR. COAKLEY: Well, any time we send somebody to a technical
refresher course, as soon as it goes out of the area, it becomes out
of state travel. It's not like they are going out --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: How many people do you have total?
MR. COAKLEY: I have 14.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It says 13.
MR. McNEES: Commissioners, maybe --
MR. COAKLEY: I'm counting John Daly.
MR. McNEES: -- I've sat through this sticker shock as well, and
let me tell you how I came around to improving some of this. What we
are calling travel is for this department, almost, I would say
probably 99.9 percent training expense where -- what I didn't
understand in the beginning as I began to look at this, if you buy X,
Y, Z software from a company, you would think they would provide you
the training for the most part on the updates and as it's modified.
Well, they don't. They charge you for that, too.
So, this is keeping your IT staff current to be able to support
the things that we've already purchased. In addition, sometimes
software companies will charge you to evaluate their new products, and
I've kicked and screamed and come to understand that that's just the
nature of the software business, that the training is expensive, and
if we are going to keep our people current, we have to pay the bill.
So, this isn't really travel money, as it's not conventions and
those kind of things nearly as much as the vast majority is specific
training that we send people to.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Of your 14 employees, 13 plus one
proposed, how many of those are support, secretarial support or --
MR. COAKLEY: One, commissioner.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: So, it's 12, looking at 13, so it's
roughly 1,600 bucks a person?
MR. COAKLEY: That sounds about right, yes.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'd suggest then we cut 3,400 off Mr.
Coakley's and leave him the 1,600 and then the rest will average out
amongst the remainder.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: At least that, and I have questions about
what is the 39,000 of reimbursement and the 20,000 of contractual?
COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thank you.
MS. LEITH: The 39,000 is the indirect service charge that pays
back to the general fund to reimburse for all the services that the
general fund provides to the non-general fund departments such as your
budget, purchasing, mail services, O and B. We are all general fund
departments that get charged back.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: And the 20,000 contractual?
MS. LEITH: There was $10,000 for Kelly Services for a temporary
that they utilized within -- to help with their help lines, and the
rest, I believe, is training contractual services.
MR. COAKLEY: We bring trainers in to teach as well.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I know one of those that our staff took was
not very helpful, but a second one was. So, there's been some quality
issues with a couple of those.
What of your travel budget last year, the 18,000 -- is it 18,0007
MS. LEITH: 18,000.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: How much of that was spent?
MR. COAKLEY: I don't have that here.
MS. LEITH: Just give me a moment.
MR. COAKLEY: I would have to get that for you.
MS. LEITH: I can add that up.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Would you, Ms. Leith?
Are there any other questions in the meantime?
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, if you spend 19,000 a year on
training here and 18,000 traveling elsewhere, how much time do the
individuals spend training versus actually doing day-to-day work? It
sounds --
MR. McNEES: The training here --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- like you can be doing 12 weeks of
training.
MR. McNEES: The training here is not to train them. It's
training your employees and all the other employees who are using the
system to use the various software packages. That's not to train the
IT people. That's to train the other people.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: But we don't have anybody that could
do that?
MR. McNEES: They do some of it. IT does some of the training
themselves, and then they bring in contract trainers to do some. So,
they do a little bit of both.
MR. COAKLEY: That's correct.
MR. McNEES: Or a lot of both, actually, I should say.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Do -- do any of your folks spend time over in
the sheriff's office?
MR. COAKLEY: No, commissioner, we don't have any interaction
with the sheriff's department except on very occasional --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Then you and I and Mr. Fernandez need to sit
down and talk because every morning when I come in, I see some of your
folks coming over from the sheriff's office, and I need to know why.
So --
MR. COAKLEY: I'm sorry. That's a surprise to me. We'll have to
find out.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yeah, me, too.
MR. CARNELL: Could I -- Steve Camell on behalf of your support
services division. Just a couple of things to remind the board of,
that we are -- we are dissecting pieces of the IT budget, and let's
keep in context and remember that this is a department that in its FY
'98 proposal is proposing to increase service and lower rates for its
primary program, which is the PC support program, and the -- in the
coming year, we also see this department being more involved in the
continuing development expansion of new software programs that are
being installed, and I'm talking about special applications beyond the
PCs as well, and this department will be having an even more
concentrated and, I think, more significant role in some of those
activities, and let me just specifically elaborate, and then I'll
terminate my comments here, but we just, Friday, got out of a very
potentially contentious negotiation with a software contractor up at
Horseshoe Drive who is providing and installing the integrated system
for Mr. Cautero, and that is a situation where we believe the vendor
potentially tried to take advantage of us in a situation where they
thought they perceived to have us over the barrel, and we are in a
situation now where we're going to be coming back to the board to
mutually terminate further development under that contract, and to,
instead, have the IT department use its internal resources to finish
that contract, and we are, at the same time, going to get an
acceptable functioning system for all the modules that had been
installed to date, and I think the point here is two things. The
information technology department has played a very significant role
in A) holding the vendor's feet to the fire in that development
process, and we're talking about an almost $300,000 contract, and
secondly, the information technology department, by having the
expertise that it has now, leveraged our position tremendously, and
maybe me more so than anybody else in this organization can appreciate
that having had vendors leave us in the lurch before, and I'm going to
stop short of saying that this one left us in the lurch because I
think we've headed that off before it got to that point, but what I
want to say to you is that there's a profit -- there's an overhead
cost and expense for this IT department, but there are benefits that
go beyond strictly the productivity of the end users of PCs, and I
think there's a real value here in that this -- in my 12 years with
the county and ten years of that in the purchasing department, it's
the first time that I really had true leverage with a vendor and being
able to say, if you walk, A) we're going to sue you, and B) we're
going to get the work done anyway, and you can't hold us in the lurch,
and I just want you all to know that.
That doesn't necessarily address all the details being broached
here, but I want you to know there's a value to this central
operation. You have very competent and capable people who have also
prescribed, I think, a very contemporary standard to build to, and
it's not the cheapest standard, and they incur a little bit of wrath
from you all for that, but I believe Mr. Coakley has been correct in
his path, and I say that because there are constantly other users
coming into the system, and I'm talking about non-BCC users who
interact or interface at some point with some part of our system, and
lo and behold, they're building the same standards that Mr. Coakley
prescribed two years ago.
So, I believe by and large, we are on the right track, and
there's some real value added to this department that isn't readily
apparent when you're looking at the detail or budget.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Mr. Camell, your comments are wonderful in
defense of a system that we directed Mr. Coakley to build. However,
technology is the toughest sale in all the things we do because you're
not producing something tangible. It's very difficult to look at and
just take it at face value. For the dollar spent, we'll produce X, Y
or Z, and that's one moniker this board has held to, and that is
simply, show us the savings, and that's tough to do in IT. We are
aware of that, but I think the line item discussions we are having are
just that. Looking at -- yes, we are picking it apart, but that
doesn't make his budget any different than anyone else's. Everyone
has been picked apart to the best of our ability, and something like
travel is one of those things that can get away from you sometimes.
So, your comments are understood, and I don't think you'd find
anyone here disagreeing with them. However, we are still going to
pick it apart.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Mac'Kie, did you get the
answers to your questions?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No.
MS. LEITH: I do have --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I understood the 39,000 reimbursement from
other, you know, general fund, but the contractual, I heard 10,000 for
Kelly Services. I never heard the other ten.
MS. LEITH: The other ten, I believe, is for training,
contractual services for training, executive training.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But, I mean, training, is that people
coming in to train Ms. Filson to use the new system?
MR. COAKLEY: If I may. If I may, we do two types of training.
One, we train other people in the county, and by the end of this
calendar year, we'll have 515 new PC workstations out there, and we
are responsible for training those folks for ongoing improvement of
the use of the system.
The other type of training and education is, frankly, for the IT
staff itself so we can keep up to date with the technology, and to do
that, in many cases we send them as nearby as we can, but sometimes it
goes out of county. Where we can do so and where it's effective, we
will bring a trainer or teacher in here to teach in our classroom to
our staff. As an example of that, looking at some of the office
technology, we've worked out a deal with the clerk of courts where
they are sharing the cost of bringing a teacher in.
So, we are just not arbitrarily bringing one in, but that brings
them in-house, and it's much more efficient for our staff. So -- we
do a mixtures of these things, and it depends on what's available when
the time comes.
I can't sit here -- I couldn't sit here three months ago, and
can't sit here now predicting what exact training is going to be
needed a year from now, and I'm projecting ahead a year, and the
technology field just changes readily, and I think you all know that.
So, I need a little bit of funding here to cover that kind of
training, and I can't be too specific about the details of it except
maybe in retrospect.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: If I may, Mr. Coakley, the training we are
going to require is that that is consistent with the purchases we are
going to make and new software and new programs. To say that we don't
know what training is required is to say we don't know what our
computer needs are going to be, and I would hope that in our capital
budget, we've made that determination already. So, I'm missing the
connection there.
MR. COAKLEY: I'm talking about training for our own staff in
this case. We find a piece of software hitting the market, let's say
-- we have a case of -- I'm trying to pick one. One of the new office
software techniques that hits the market this past February, and then
over the next year and a half, we have to raise the level of our
technology; knowledge inside and around the department to use that
kind of thing, and a year ago, we couldn't have predicted --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: What you're saying, that's my point is that we
should have made the determination at the front end of the year what
capital investments we were going to make in new software. Did we do
that? Did we determine how much we are going to expend on purchasing
new software in the coming year for our PC base system? MR. COAKLEY: Yes, we do that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. We have an idea of what those --
MR. COAKLEY: Per capital, yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. So, we have an idea what software we're
going to purchase. We also have to attach a training amount to that
based on the number of users that will be accessing that capital
investment. So, I guess what I'm saying is -- MR. COAKLEY: Yes, we do that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- 12 months out, we should be able to do
that. Two and three years, I agree 100 percent, but at least 12
months out, I can't buy that we aren't sure what training we're going
to need in the next 12 months because we've already determined what
capital investment we are going to make in the software area.
So, if we are not making that correlation, then I think we are
not trying hard enough, and I hope I misunderstood you.
MR. COAKLEY: No. With regard to the capital, looking ahead for
a year, we have projected that. For example, we are projecting ahead
for this coming year the completion of the three year modernization
program, and the software we're talking about there is essentially the
same software that we've been doing for two and a half years or two
years, I guess it is now. So, the training and education for that is
predictable. We actually pay a company called Executrain, for the
most part, to come in and do it. So, putting the capital programs on
the side, that works just fine.
When we look at additional software that we would buy on expense
basis during the year and other departments want to buy on expense
basis during the year, that's the one I can't predict very well
because new products are coming out on the market all the time. Some
of them are very, very beneficial. Some of them require us to
increase our knowledge level.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: In human resources, and Mr. McNees, maybe you
can answer this. I don't know that Mr. Fernandez would be fully up to
speed on it yet. When we are hiring new people, do we have a list
from IT or a list produced of software requirements for the job? I
know there was a time when Windows first came out that everyone was
trying to get people who had training in those areas. I want to make
sure HR and IT are talking together to make sure the positions coming
available, we have the software capable requirements for that job
being posted correctly so we can avoid hiring people and training them
ten ways to Sunday.
MR. McNEES: I think, generally, the answer is yes, all else
being equal, we try to hire people that are already compatible with
the software that -- the systems that we currently have, but from
another point of view, given a choice between aptitude and specific
knowledge, we'll hire the one that's got better aptitude because you
can train them to do anything as opposed to someone who may happen to
be affluent in a specific software package, but that's all they can
do. So, there's a balance there you have to find.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: As long as I know that's going on. That was
really the question.
Commissioner Mac'Kie.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I -- I know that Commissioner Constantine
is going to get us back to the travel and training budget, so as he's
looking at that, I need to understand about the telephone function.
The reviewing 2,700 pages of telephone bills, et cetera, is this
outside phone bills that come in that the county pays to United
Telephone or to AT&T or something?
MR. COAKLEY: Yes, commissioner.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Then why wouldn't that be a DOR function
instead of an IT function?
MR. COAKLEY: It's been assigned to my group. We review the
actual bills to make sure the bills are correct, and we pay them out
of our department. That's just the way it has been set up,
commissioner.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I have the same item circled.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Did you? It just seems like one more time
where something that could be a DOR function, because the idea was all
billing goes through DOR --
MR. HcNEES: Not bills we pay. DOR is bills we collect,
basically.
MR. CARNELL: All that's happening here, commissioner, is we are
paying the vendors through IT, and IT is getting reimbursement from
the various departments. It's strictly an internal process. There's
no member of the public involved at all.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Oh, I understand that. It just sounds
like something that a financial management department like DOR would
do more efficiently.
MR. CARNELL: Well, the reason it wouldn't work that way is that
you -- there needs to be some degree of accountability with
performance with the vendor, and our telephone support staff is within
IT, and those are the people who would have the most interaction with
AT&T or Sprint or any of the others regarding performance.
MR. HcNEES: The IT department is also the department that knows
who has what telephones, and they assign the extensions. They move
the telephones. They are our --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That makes sense.
MR. HcNEES: -- telephone vendor.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Who pays -- what department pays the
electricity bill?
MR. HcNEES: Skip Camp in the facilities management.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Why is that different from the phone bill?
Just a thought.
MR. FERNANDEZ: For the same reason, because he has
responsibility for managing the facilities that then generate the
bills.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay.
MR. FERNANDEZ: In this case, he's managing the facility, the
phone system that generates the bills. It's really the same concept.
MR. McNEES: Electricity is allocated on a square footage basis
as are some water and sewer, those kind of things. Skip deals with
those. Telephone charges are allocated based on the telephones and
the actual calls, and that's Mr. Coakley's responsibility.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Don't worry, Mr. Coakley, another ten years
most of these questions will be answered.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'd like a breakdown just for myself
of the expenditures within each one of those departments, what they
were last year and what you expect them to be this year. I'd like
that list --
MS. LEITH: You would like a detailed line item?
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yes.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: On phone bills, et cetera? What are
you --
COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: On everything on this blue page.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Could we all have copies of that? I mean,
I would like to.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Actually, could they have copies of that?
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. I'd like copies of that.
COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Yeah, those two would like copies.
COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Moving right along.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Any other questions?
Let's bring this part of IT to a close. Did we want to make a
reduction in the travel budget?
COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thirty-six hundred dollar reduction is
what we discussed.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: That's -- they spent fifteen out of eighteen
last year, so then that effect would be about 600 less than last year
on that.
Okay. I'm seeing heads nod. I'll give a pitch into that. Okay,
3,600 reduction.
Any other changes to that budget at this point?
MR. McNEES: I heard that you wanted to make a change to the
reserves.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, yeah.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah, sixty-six instead of one
ninety-one.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yes. Thank you. That was a big one. So, go
to the 5 percent -- the 5 percent, whatever that number came out to
be, Mr. Smykowski, instead of the one ninety-one.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, sir. I've got reduce reserves and reduce
travel by 3,600.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Any other changes to IT? Seeing none,
let's take a -- I say five minutes which usually means ten -- five
minute break.
(Small break was held).
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Good morning. We are going to reconvene
today's budget workshop. We are to, I believe, Department of Revenue,
am I correct?
MS. LEITH: Yes.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That's correct. Ms. Leith is the analyst, and
Mr. Yonkosky is here representing the DOR.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay, Ms. Leith. Take it away.
MS. LEITH: Shelia Leith, office of management and budget. We
are on detail pages F-6 to F-12. The summary book is still Page F-2.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Hit the high points and the low points, Ms.
Leith, and I know we are going to have some questions on this.
MS. LEITH: Okay. Operating expenses within the administrative
department increased by 46,000, and this is the indirect service
charge from the general fund that's increased by this amount, and
that's driving a portion of the -- a big chunk of the increase is
actually in operating expenses.
Within the utility services cost center area, their -- their
costs have actually decreased by almost $60,000 budget to budget, and
they've put in some cost savings, saving things such as reducing their
postage cost by eliminating final notices and there isn't -- but there
is also an increase in the customer base slotted for next year which
has some impact of bringing those costs back up.
We also have some savings from the mail automation program.
That's budgeted in there, and then if we move on to the special
assessment cost center, we are looking at a $20,000 decrease budget to
budget -- I'm sorry, $20,000 increase budget to budget, and this is
because the special assessment area will pick up the cost -- some of
the costs of the mail magnet, mail out program, and that's an
additional $13,000 for next year.
They have an expanded service request within the utility services
cost center. That's for an additional meter reader tach, and also
within the special assessments area for an additional fiscal clerk,
and that fiscal clerk position is to assist in receiving calls for
service. The program receives approximately 45,000 calls per year, 22
calls per hour, and they are on the phone about 10 to 15 minutes per
call. They are also seeing an increase in the growth in the customer
rate of about 300 per month.
If we move on to the EHS ambulance service cost center, Page
F-10, the total appropriations remain exactly the same as last year.
Landfill services, again, the budget is not increasing within
that area.
Those are the highlights within this budget.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. I'll kick off one element. We've
previously looked and approved the centralized mail facility, which
Mr. Yonkosky may remember as I toured your department, we looked at
those positions along the back wall that when mailing needs to be
done, then the necessary people will walk in the next room and do it.
There has to be some personnel savings in your department if that
central mail facility has moved out, I have to believe. Yet, I don't
see a commensurate reduction. In fact, I see an addition of a person
in your department.
So, help me understand why centralizing that mail facility will
not free up positions that can avoid the increase you're requesting.
MR. YONKOSKY: For the record, John Yonkosky, revenue services
director.
Mr. Chairman, commissioners, in the mail room proposal, there's
actually two processes. One of the processes would be that they could
actually take the printing, folding, stuffing and inserting over if
they had the equipment to do that, but it was not presented to me that
way -- or actually, what we are going to be doing in the department of
revenue, if the board approves the budget --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: If I can interrupt you. Let's go because you
hit one point I don't want to lose. You said it was not presented to
you that those positions -- that printing, stuffing, mailing -- that
that was going to be done that way. So, we have an internal problem
here because I believe it was presented to us that that centralized
mail facility would do those things. Either I'm wrong --
MR. CARNELL: Steve Camell, for the record. Let's see if we can
clarify this.
The mail room proposal from the get go has been to save postage.
It hasn't been about increasing or decreasing FTE, even though every
person who has looked or gotten within five miles of it has asked that
question.
The situation that Mr. Yonkosky is referring to is that we had
discussions with his office prior to the county manager's approval of
the request for the mail room service proposal in which we talked
about a number of different options with regard to how they affected
the revenue services department. Mr. Yonkosky is correct in that we
did not reach a firm decision on exactly where the hand off would take
place necessarily.
We put three different options on the table as a minimum; one of
which would be to have -- I guess the most comprehensive one would be
one where the revenue department prepares the bills and then submits
them on some type of electronic media to the mail room. In other
words, no piece of paper ever gets generated. The other extreme would
be to have the revenue department do everything but -- that it's doing
now all the way up to the point that the postage is affixed, and that
instead of the U.S. Postal Service receiving that postage and putting
the postage on, that the mail room will put it on, and we will obtain
the savings on postage by doing that. Now, those are the two
extremes, and then there's some options in between, such as the
folding and inserting with which Mr. Yonkosky was referring to.
The salient point here -- and let's go back to what I said to you
Wednesday, because they are -- we were consistent with what we said,
but my answer may not have been complete in terms of what Mr. Yonkosky
is talking about here, and that is that -- the consistency is that I
told you that the billing cycles that we would have to build up to
what we were doing in the mail room, and it would take several months,
a good part of the fiscal year before we were working and what we
would consider to be full operation.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think it was six months is what we were
told.
MR. CARNELL: Yes, and so, during that six month time frame, as a
minimum, the staffing issue in the DOR from our perspective is moot
because we have to run parallel for, at least, that amount of time,
and that would be the earliest that we would really have a handle on
the staffing.
Now, in talking to Mr. Yonkosky subsequently, I think he would
generally concur with that, and I'll let him give you more detail on
this, but let me just succinctly say that what he said to me, and I
think what he's indicating to you now, is that if you have the mail
room assume responsibility for the folding and inserting, yes, there's
an FTE impact, but it's very nominal in terms of the time spent for
the folding and insertion process, and I believe Mr. Yonkosky quoted
me as being 10 to 12 hours a month impact on that office, and if you
would like to have him walk you through that in more detail, then we
can do that, but that's, again, looking at one of the more best case
scenarios if we were to assume all of that for him, which we are
looking to try to do, but again, that hasn't been all ironed out yet
in terms of capability, and everything we said on Wednesday to the
dollar is true about the mail room proposal in terms of postage
savings. It more than pays for itself, but I would say on the FTE
side, if anything, you're creating more FTE in purchasing because
you're going to have somebody, an intelligent person whose focus is,
as I told you, the management of the mail in a central, across the
agency kind of way, and that is not eliminating people. That's adding
brain power, and that's adding focus to what we do.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: But it's also supposed to be avoiding
duplication, and anytime we talk about a centralized function such as
DOR, the concept that is heard by the people up here is that we are
eliminating duplication where possible throughout the agency. If
that's not the case, then let's stop using the word centralized
because that's what it means to me.
So, if, in fact, all we are doing is a new postage system, that's
how it should have been described to us because I remember -- MR. CARNELL: It's still a very centralized machine.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- I remember asking the question about the
equipment we just bought for DOR and how will it be used, and the
response that I got back was that although that equipment is not up to
the speed that this one facility would need, that equipment would
still be utilized and, you know -- I wasn't told it will stay where it
is doing what it does now. I was told that it will be utilized by the
central mail facility. So, again, the impression of bringing it into
a central facility was created, and I don't think I was imagining
that.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: No.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I don't think I was alone in that.
MR. CARNELL: Well, I would -- I would disagree with you in the
sense that this is a centralized process for the mail operation, and I
would -- and maybe you and I have a different understanding of what
that word means, but I --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: It's important that we have the same one, Mr.
Camell.
MR. CARNELL: Yes, and we are talking about it all routing
through one point before it goes to postal service. Now, I consider
that centralization, and in terms of affixing the postage, that's a
given, and that's going to save more that will more than pay for the
proposal regardless of anything else that happens.
Where the ambiguity, Mr. Chairman, right now is in terms of what
happens on the front end in terms -- with the revenue department in
particular with how much of that will be assumed by us and how much of
that will be maintained by them.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And you're absolutely right. We need
clarification on that throughout the year because it doesn't make
sense to invest it in one area where, you know, maybe four, $5,000 or
10,000 or $20,000 investment, here you can eliminate a function
elsewhere for the long-term. So, I want to see more of the
centralization aspect on that as it comes throughout the year. Mr. Yonkosky.
MR. YONKOSKY: The department prints its bills, approximately
500,000 a year, we will next year, slightly over 500,000. We take
those bills, and we fold them and stuff them and insert them in an
envelope and seal the envelope, and then we put them in trays, and we
deliver them to the post office. We pay twenty-nine and a half cents
postage to the post office for each one of those half a million
pieces.
Under Mr. Carnell's proposal, instead of delivering those trays
to the post office, if we deliver them to purchasing, and they fold
them in with the rest of the county's mail, the rest of the board's
mail, which the department of revenue represents 25 percent of that,
if we fold that into the rest of the board's mail so that it can all
be ZIP code sorted, then the price will go down considerably to
twenty-three cents a piece.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I understand that. I understand that, and
unfortunately, while you were speaking, Mr. Camell was shaking his
head no.
So, Mr. Camell, do you differ with Mr. Yonkosky's opinion.
MR. CARNELL: No.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. What I'm saying is, are there any other
departments that do folding and sorting and stuffing of envelopes and
sealing of envelopes, any other departments in the entire county that
do that? Do we do it here in this building now?
MR. CARNELL: To my knowledge, the answer is no, and what that --
that doesnwt mean that they donwt have someone else do it for them or
have a need for it, but I believe they are contracting it out through
other entities when they need that -- have a need for that service.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thatws the centralized function that Iwm
talking about is that if we are going to begin providing that service,
if we are paying -- contracting it out and paying every year to have
someone else do it piecemeal here, here and here, certainly a
centralized facility that does that where Mr. Yonkoskyws raw
information shows up in boxes instead of all being done in his
department, if we are already doing that function, it makes a lot of
sense to do it in one location. So, Iwm just --
MR. CARNELL: Yeah, you and I arenwt that far apart because what
wewre really talking about here -- youwre correct in that we want to
look at folding and sorting and centralizing that as well, and I donlt
want to leave you the impression that we arenlt, but Iim telling you,
this program in purchasing pays for itself if we donlt fold the first
piece of mail, just strictly on the mail -- CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Postage saver.
MR. McNEES: Mr. Chairman, maybe an order of magnitude, reality
check is in order here. If there are other departments that might
fold and stuff some letters or some notices or maybe assessment
notices, you know, that might be a few thousand pieces through the
course of the year. As Mr. Yonkosky said, they are doing 500,000
utility bills. They are cranking out a cycle or a batch of utility
bills every single day, and on a piece of equipment that was
specifically purchased for that purpose that is probably in use a good
part of the time and the bills are printed. They are stuffed. They
are folded and stuffed on the spot.
So, I mean if -- maybe the question youlre asking is, is that
folding and stuffing machine something that we could use, perhaps, for
other mailing in other departments. It might be, but DOR is
definitely the dog here when it comes to stuffing, and we donlt want
to lose track of the discussion as if there are somehow these other
big sorting functions that we are contracting out somewhere. They
have a pretty much full-time need for that.
CHAIRNLAN HANCOCK: I think youill find itls not the big ones that
are costing us the money. Itls the small ones.
MR. CARNELL: And Mr. Chairman, I just want to re-iterate our
commitment to do what youlre talking about here, to maximize that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: The second item that I flagged when we were
talking about other departments that affect DOR is the EMS billing
operation. This was problematic in that, one, Mr. Yonkosky was given
a target to hit, in which I believe you either hit or came very, very
close to. I think it was 75 percent, and you got 72 or 73 percent.
MR. YONKOSKY: Yes, sir. It was actually 69 percent the year
before. You told us -- directed it up to 72, and we are very close to
that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. What you should be commended for,
particularly when I went through and found out all the billing
problems that were occurring in the sense that the information
exchanged between EMS and your department was not happening as fluidly
as it should have. Since that time, Ms. Flagg and your
representatives have gotten together, I understand. The problem is,
what came out of that was an expensive capital project that puts our
EMS folks on, basically, an electronic messaging, that they fill out
the bill, and it gets transmitted electronically.
Again, here I'm looking at paying for technology, yet we still
need the same number of people to process it. So, we are paying the
capital cost of this billing process plus we are paying the same
number of people to do a lot of the same leg work, and that just --
that totally eluded me because if we've got a bill in the field that
is being produced, that can be formatted in such a way that it's
produced -- there's no problem reading the handwriting. There's no
problem reading copy, four of eighteen on those forms. There's no
problem with which code did they enter because it's entered
electronically and pulls up the same name every time. All of those
problems we were having in chasing them down and your folks having to
pull out diagnostic code books and look up codes to check them, that
should be going away. We should be seeing efficiencies, and again, if
we are not, I'm not going to -- you know, I'll go back to the stone
tablet and chisel.
If it works and we can't do any better and we are just going to
pay for a prettier form, I'm not interested in it, but if we are
paying for a system that is going to give us efficiencies, I want to
see the result of those efficiencies, and I want to see them in a
department. I don't care whose, whether it's EHS or whether it's DOR.
So, if we're going to fix all those problems and you're asking
the board to pay for it to do it, show me the result. So, I assume --
have you had the opportunity to sit down with Ms. Flagg and talk about
this system that -- Mr. Camell is saying yes. I assume you have.
Tell me where it's going to save you time and money, Mr.
Yonkosky.
MR. YONKOSKY: The system is something that's going to provide a
large amount of efficiency in several ways. The information is going
to be captured the first time and entered into the system by the
individuals that capture the information.
We have just talked about demographic information before, and now
what we've done since you raised the question last week, last
Wednesday, we've gotten together, and we feel real comfortable that
not only can demographic information be captured and input at the
point of origin, but the hospital and insurance information can be
captured, and that all of the coding that can be built into a database
will be built into a database, and based on that discussion that Jeff
and I had late last week and Diane and I had, that we feel that we can
offer up an FTE in the department of revenue.
Now, that has some assumptions to it that we can make the -- we
can get the computer system and make it work, but we think that we
can, and everybody wants to give that kind of an effort to it. So, we
feel comfortable that we can offer up an FTE, and it's not a net gain
to the board. We reduce an FTE, and Diane picks up an FTE, but the
gain is still there in efficiency. We're going to be able -- we
estimate to cut the billing process down by seven days.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We add one and we lose one, but in the out
years, are we going to have increased collections?
MR. YONKOSKY: Not only are we going to have increased
collections, if the system works the way that we think it's going to,
that system will actually -- if we get cash in faster, and we will,
and a permanent deferral or increase of cash by seven days on the
three and a half -- 3.6 million dollars is going to equate to six or
$10,000 additional interest earnings in an annual basis.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Does that reduction of an FTE, is that
reflected anywhere in the budget we've been presented today?
MS. LEITH: No.
MR. YONKOSKY: No, sir, it does not.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So, that's something, that addition would have
to be worked out. Okay.
Those are my two main concerns, and thank you for the work on --
particularly on the second part of that. The first part, we are just
going to have to wait and see, I guess, and we'll know more in six
months, I would take it.
Other questions on IT -- oh, I'm sorry, on revenue?
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I'm sorry, but just that that would be --
hopefully, we are going to get those quarterly reports, but that would
be one in particular to flag for a semiannual check.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: A semi -- a midyear report from DOR on that
one as we discussed here today?
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yeah. I mean, I'm holding my comments
about overall budget stuff, but we've had some allusions to getting
quarterly reports, and that would be an example of one that would be
particularly useful.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Mr. Yonkosky, in your budget, did you have any
money budgeted for the collection of interim government service fees
for the coming fiscal year?
MR. YONKOSKY: Yes, sir, we do. We have money budgeted in there,
and that will come out.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Not that we are going to pursue them, but
since we are not budgeting for those as revenues, let's not budget for
the cost of collecting them. If we are successful this year in
implementing them, then it's all gravy anyway. So, the cost, which is
far exceeded by the collections --
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: All gravy.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yeah -- so, let's make sure we pull that out
also. So, we have two things that are going to be coming out of the
budget so far. One is a -- I mean, it's a full year or part year cost
of an FTE, that needs to be determined, and the second is any cost
associated with the collection of interim government services fees
being pulled out.
Other questions on revenue?
Okay. Seeing none, thank you.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: That moves us to the -- prior to wrap-up, we have
grant and trust funds as well as --
MR. TINDALL: We have one more.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Oh, I'm sorry, OCPH first. Pardon me.
MR. TINDALL: Mr. Chairman, commissioners, for the record, Phil
Tindall from the budget office.
The last internal service function that we'll be going through is
the office of capital projects management, Fund 589, and we are on
Page F-2 of the summary book, Page F-26 of the detail book.
If you look at requested appropriations for FY '98, it shows an
increase of 3.4 percent which is a little bit misleading. If you were
to subtract out the transfers and reserves components of those
expenditures, you're actually talking about a savings of about 317,000
or right about 10 percent, and most of that, about two-thirds of that
is because of savings and personal services resulting from deleting
six positions, which that averages to about just under $40,000 per
position being deleted for FY '98.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: This is one of those departments we budget
reserves separately, not a part of the general fund?
MR. TINDALL: That's correct, sir.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. What's the purpose of reserves and OCPM
when it's really -- all of your revenues are derived from internal
departments? I'm not sure why we need reserves, and if we do, I look
at three million plus, if you subtract out reserves from your total
cost, I don't see 500,000 as being 5 percent. So, help me understand
the reserve amount in this fund.
MR. GONZALEZ: Adolfo Gonzalez, capital projects director.
Mr. Chairman, the reserves is to essentially have about two
months' operating expenses within our budget, and here's an example of
how we use that. When the fiscal year starts in October, sometimes we
do preplanning activities, lets say for this summer, for projects that
are anticipated to start in October. We are essentially charging time
to that but not building a project because the funds won't be
available until October of one year. That's one example.
Another example is when we are going through the beginning of the
first three months of the fiscal year, sometimes we wait as late as
January or February of each year for the audited carry forward amounts
from the capital improvement plan for the prior year, which means we
have to wait to do budget amendments until March, April of that fiscal
year, and again, we're looking at a difference in what we have
available versus what we expend. When we do the budget amendment, we
simply catch up again.
A third example of how we would use those reserves, although we
have not in the last few years, is, let's say we don't do as many
projects as we planned, maybe some projects take longer than we expect
to or unexpected projects come up, unanticipated projects where we
have to expend time and effort and dollars to do that, but yet, there
was no funding available at the present time, and it may be one, two,
three, four months down the road before we find a funding source,
rebalance a particular capital project improvement plan and then
request additional monies.
Those are the different ways we would use that reserve, and
again, it's about two months' worth of our complete budget.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Since that -- and I understand the operational
difficulties, but since you could carry a negative on the balance
sheet and have no material effect on the tax rate or project cost,
again, being internal transfers only, I --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The cash flows would look funny, but in
the real world, it wouldn't hurt anything.
MR. FINN: If I may, Mr. Chairman, Edward Finn, operations
director.
Mr. Gonzalez, his fund is an internal service fund, not
substantially different from the DOR or any of the other internal
service funds. The revenues he generates through billings need to
fully support his fund, and in the fund accounting, he does need to
have a cash balance at all times in there. The clerk does not look
kindly upon cutting checks when there is not cash in the fund.
Specifically, his reserve is designed to provide for two months of
cash reserves to allow for the cycling of billing as well as the
normal 5 percent the board establishes for all funds to having
reserves.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, see, we are not too excited about
that 5 percent one, but what you're telling me that sounds practical
is that the clerk is not going to cut checks if we don't have -- if we
have a negative balance, and we need the reserves for cash flow. MR. FINN: Yes, ma'am.
MR. GONZALEZ: That's correct.
COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: I get it.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Only government, you know.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I know.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Well, in addition, you have a large number of
employees with large -- perhaps large accumulative leave balances that
did not accrue while they were in OCPH, and OCPH, upon termination,
absorbs all the costs of paying out termination pay and those things
and has contingencies just like any other department, and that helps
to defray some of those expenses as well.
MR. HcNEES: To put this into perspective, I expect the Hole
Honteses and the Wilson Millers in the world don't pay their employees
with negative balances in their bank accounts either. They -- they
have -- have to have actual cash to pay the employees, and that's what
this is about.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It's almost the same but just not quite.
MR. HcNEES: It's not a government issue at all.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Actually, it is --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yeah, I think it is, too.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- because those companies -- any company gets
outside funds, checks from outside. So, basically, it's a game to
satisfy the clerk in my opinion. It's an internal fund that could
carry a negative without having an adverse impact on the taxpayer.
So, I disagree, but now is not the time to have a philosophy
discussion, so --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: On the positive, I just -- I think it's
great that you're looking to reduce the percentage -- that your
performance is to reduce the percentage of total budget that's OCPH
related because I hear both wonderful things about working with OCPH,
but God, they make a project more expensive. So, I'm glad to hear
that you're watching that and trying to keep that under control.
MR. GONZALEZ: Thank you, commissioner. If I could elaborate on
that. That's one of the reasons why we eliminated six positions for
the next fiscal year is that we're doing what you said -- what you
asked us to do four years ago when you consolidated the office of
capital projects management. We had about a 140 project work load
backlog at the time. We are down to about 96 next year.
With a decrease in work load comes a decrease in revenue. We
went back and matched our expenses to meet our revenues. I did that
by first reducing some of our operating expenses this year and next
year. We further cut down on computers, software training, all that
stuff.
The next step was to eliminate positions. I eliminated two
vacant positions, eliminated two positions that will be vacated
through attrition this year, and unfortunately, I also had to
eliminate two existing positions. Two individuals will be laid off
this year. We are trying to help them find positions -- available
positions within the county organization right now, and that was,
again, as a result of that.
One other positive note is that this year -- well, starting with
next year, we will have repaid back the full amount of the funds that
you gave capital projects to start out the department four years ago.
We've repaid back, as of next -- including next year, eight hundred
thousand and some odd dollars' worth of general fund and Fund 301
contributions you made. I've read some of the material from back
then. I don't know if there was any commitment or requirement to
repay that, but since -- in the last two years, we have done just
that, repaid the general fund to a tune of about $800,000 -- and the
excess engineering fees that we've collected through the years. Last
year, we did a lot more work than we anticipated in doing. That
created a surplus of funds. We are going to reimburse it back to our
customer departments based on the percentage of work volume we are
doing for them. This year it's about $120,000. Next year it's about
380,000.
We could have reduced the rate slightly by a half dollar or
thirty-seven cents, but I think there's more of an impact just to give
them back 15,000, 70,000 to the departments based on their work load.
So, I think what you set out to do, we are accomplishing that.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's great.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Your department is very thorough, and everyone
is aware of that. In all projects that I've been involved with and
those that I have been made aware of, the folks in your department are
very, very thorough in the projects.
What benchmark are you looking at as far as external factors to
determine if, in fact, you're operating like a, quote/unquote,
business? Are you doing comparable billing rates, comparable
consulting rates versus private sector projects? Are you looking at
any outside benchmarks to determine whether or not we're actually
paying more for internal management versus external contract
management?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Real important question.
MR. GONZALEZ: Two existing benchmarks. One is the hourly
billing rate. I don't have with me today, but I can show you a
graphic -- a chart that shows our team's hourly rate compared to four
consultants in the local area. Tom Conrecode did an analysis a few
years ago, and I updated it this year, which shows that essentially at
the lower positions, such as inspectors and CAD or graphic
technicians, our rate is about the same as the local consultants. The
difference dramat -- the dramatic difference and positive to our side
is in some of our senior individuals, our senior project managers, our
veteran project managers, their hourly rate, we top out at $66 an hour
is much less than 85 to $100 an hour that the consultant -- we are
paying the consulting community for right out based on experience and
level of work.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Probably charge more hours, too, but --
sorry. Never mind.
MR. GONZALEZ: I'm proud to say that --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Calling the kettle --
MR. GONZALES: -- more so than any other -- more so than any
other department in the county. We justify our existence by the hour
because our budget is based on hourly estimate for each project.
The other benchmark is -- hourly rates was one of them -- the
percent -- total project cost as compared to the industry. We have
some data that shows what construction management fees should be for
different types of projects. They range typically from 3 to 7
percent. On our utility projects, they are averaging less than 1
percent of the total utility project budget, a capital improvement
program, is going toward project management fees. Some of our other
projects, such as facility projects, the percentages are higher. As
an overall department, that's the 3 percent number that we are showing
you there.
Another benchmark we are going to try to have in place by next
year is the percent of change orders. What are we spending on change
orders in our projects? You will see that we are spending a lot of
money in adding additional scope to an existing project. I'm having a
hard time right now quantifying that as it is really just -- do we
have scope crete where we're just adding a little bit more each time
or are they better planned in the beginning. If so, then we'll deal
with it differently. That's another benchmark we are going to try and
use next year.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: The last point that's more difficult to
answer, but something, I think, we need to be aware of is duplication
of payment. A lot of times when you hire an outside consultant or an
outside engineering firm, whatever, you are basically hiring them to
do the professional job and accept responsibility for the work. When
we also have a management level on top of that, we tend to start
assuming some liability that had we done it a little differently,
maybe that liability would fall more to the design engineers.
My concern is twofold there. One is that we are not duplicating
the management aspect. In other words, they put in their budget what
they would consider response to problems, and there's a percentage in
there. We then also do that for the county, and then should something
go wrong -- as we saw on the Immokalee Road project, we got drawn into
it first and foremost because it was our people on-site saying do
this, don't do that, that may have contributed to some of the project
problems.
So, there's a little duplication there that I'm not sure if it's
-- if it's just I'm perceiving that duplication or if it actually
exists, but I'm always of the opinion, if you hire a PE, a
professional engineer or you hire an architect to design a building,
that architect is responsible for the quality of that design.
However, if the county begins overseeing that, do we assume some of
that responsibility and are we given some of that responsibility and
are we liable for it. So, there's -- it's always been, you hire a
consultant because they kind of took the ball, and if something went
wrong, they were responsible. It seems now that we are jointly
responsible now because of the way we are set up structurewise, and
I'm just not sure that's to our advantage.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, a couple of thoughts on that.
One, when we first started to try and do more in-house -- I mean, the
problem in 1992 and three, was -- it was like 15 percent or 18 percent
or something of all projects where we were actually doing the work
in-house, and now it's in the mid 40s, I think, which was the goal,
anyway, at that time. I don't think we ever anticipated doing
everything for that very reason. Some of the more complex issues,
there are a number of issues, including liability, why we don't, but
secondarily, I don't know that we've seen, and we certainly run the
risk of it, but I don't know that we've seen successful liability
claims against projects the county has done. We did the project on
Immokalee Road. That was an allegation, and we came to a settlement.
We had a very, very minor part of that settlement, and the big dollars
came from the professionals that were involved in that. So, I think
it's a natural thing, but I don't think we are looking to ever get to
where we are doing 100 percent in-house. There's a logical reason --
number of logical reasons, including what you said why we don't, but I
want to compliment you on how far we've come and how much has changed
in five years' time.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Certainly not a criticism but a concern, and I
just -- I'll look for the answers over time, but I just want to make
sure we are not over managing certain levels of projects on which we
are paying consultants to do that.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That's pretty straightforward. If we are
paying for it privately and consulting, let's don't also pay for it
internal, in-house, and we hear that that happens sometimes, and so we
are going to be eyebailing it.
MR. GONZALEZ: Sure; understood. That is our mission this summer
is to get back with our customers and make sure that we are their
engineering arm, but we are not duplicating any of the work. Host of
-- what we excel in are -- there's a few areas, public involvement.
We do a substantial amount, and we're doing more of it every day on
public involvement, more so than the consultant does.
The other one is in preliminary engineering, during the
preliminary phases when we're trying to give our customer, the client,
some engineering information on the feasibility of a project, that's
where we excel. The rest of the time we're just simply administering
contracts where we are only doing contract administration.
That percent of in-house design work is up to about 20 percent
right now out of the 40 percent total in billings. I think the proof
will be in the pudding next year when we start the construction of
Livingston Road. That project is being designed in-house by -- I can
tell you, you're not going to get a better design team than the one
we're using for the Livingston Road in-house design project, and
hopefully, no litigation or change orders or the percent of change
order will be -- be a good reflection on my design team. They
certainly deserve credit for that.
I just remembered the other benchmark, commissioner, that I had
told you about. The other one is the overhead multiplier rate for our
department. I've compared that with local consultants in our -- our
total overhead multiplier in terms of fringe benefits, administrative
burden, general overhead types of activities compares favorably with
local consultants.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Thank you.
Any further questions? Seeing none, is that our last one, Mr.
Symkowski, before going to wrap-up?
MR. SHYKOWSKI: No, there are actually --
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: The trust funds.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: That's right, trust funds.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: -- trust funds and the grants and shared
revenues, detail book D-2, D-3, and then the trust funds are on D-4
and D-5. Actually, overall within the -- on grants and shared
revenues on D-3, there's a net decrease of five and a half percent.
Again, these are based on estimated grant revenues to be received.
The nature of the grants within this section include things such
as the artificial reef program, the Section 8 housing, the HPO grant,
the parks and rec., summer food grant, the transfer -- the county
agent program and then the sheriff's grants.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: This basically is just an overall
reporting of stuff we've already looked at on a case by case basis
through the year on a grant by grant as they were --
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Correct, and the grants that are proposed or
budgeted to be received next year.
There's not really a whole lot of policy making. Each of those,
obviously, during the course of the year you'll have an opportunity to
vote upon as part of an executive summary as well before accepting any
grant.
COHMISSIONER BERRY: The grants that are shown here, these are
the ones we know we will have this next year?
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Or anticipate receiving based on past history,
yes.
COHHISSIONER BERRY: Okay. Are any of these multiple year grants
that are shown here?
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Multiple year grants.
MS. GANSEL: Jean Gansel, the sheriff's office, the funds that
are shown here are only an annual allocation. However, some -- and
they will come back each year to you. However, some of the sheriff's
funds grants, I believe, may be ongoing. I don't have that
information.
COHMISSIONER BERRY: Okay. I just wondered out of that 42.4
percent that is shown here, it shows for the sheriff's grant, 194,000,
I just wondered what percentage of that or is there any part of that
will continue on, do you know, or what you're saying right here is
what is for next year?
MS. GANSEL: This is for next year, and this is only the county's
match. That's not the total grants; the county matched and for an
annual allocation. Sometimes the fiscal years of grants are not
consistent with the county fiscal year, so some of them may go over
into other fiscal years because of the granting agency's fiscal year.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: The sheriff's grants are also unique. You're not
transferring -- the match is not from the general fund. It's
typically from the confiscated property trust fund as well. So, it's
not ad valorem dollars making that match.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We've asked this question each year. Do we
have a review of what are we getting stuck with when the grants run
out on this? In other words, out of the 194,000 that shows up here,
if and when -- well, when --
COHMISSIONER BERRY: That's where I was going, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. I thought -- in other words, do we look
at the individual timing of these and see how they stagger for
completion and what are we stuck with and what fund does it come from
at the end? Has that review been made of these grants?
MS. GANSEL: There are some of the grants that we have some money
in the sheriff's budget where the funding has completed. I believe
the cops grant is one of those that was addressed during the sheriff's
budget, operating budget where those positions have now been included
in the sheriff's budget.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. But we don't --
MS. GANSEL: That is true.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: In addition, most of these are -- are not really
geared toward personnel. You know, the summer food grant program,
obviously, just supplies lunches at summer camps. Natural resources
is the artificial reef program where you're utilizing funds to expand
artificial fishing reefs.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Well, that's why I asked about the sheriff's
because the rest of them, we tend to come through a more critical
review stage for us. A lot of the sheriff's grants, we just started
-- at least from the time I've been on the board, about a year and a
half ago, really started, you know, going after, well who picks this
up when it's done, how long is it going to last, and those questions
are usually -- the answers are somewhat ambiguous because you never
know how long the grants are going to last.
So, I just want to know, out of the 194,000, you know, how much
of it commits us to long-term personnel costs as opposed to computer
software which is a onetime shot?
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: You know, if we want to put our hand
on those, we can. Most of the grant programs, federally funded grant
programs have a life to them. You can look, and it has been funded by
the federal government through year 2001 or through -- it may or may
not get renewed at that point, but you know it's not scheduled
currently to go on a particular year, and you're right, we've never
got that comprehensive review back so we can anticipate when we'll
take up the slack.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We've done a case by case in the last couple
of years as they've come through, so I think we -- like the cops
grant, I remember talking about that my first year on the board, and
that was, I think, a three year grant -- COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yep.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- so it makes sense, but what I'd like to do
is -- and it can't be done right now, but to get a report back on
which grants are personnel oriented and have a long-term effect on the
personnel cost within the sheriff's office, and likewise, for any
others; if it's a parks and rec., a summer camp grant where they pay
for counselors. I mean, if any of those others are ones that we have
not reviewed recently, I'd like another shot at them so we can see the
coming costs.
MS. LEITH: Shelia Leith, budget office.
The human resources RSVP grant does have a position attached to
it. It's a three year grant. However, that position is a temporary
position and is funded through the grant and would go away if the
money did not continue on, but it is an ongoing program. There's also
half a position with the emergency grants, Ken Pineau's area, which is
also a temporary half-time position. It can also go away.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: And to demonstrate to you that we're cognizant of
that issue, within the solid waste grants, which were reviewed
actually as part of the solid waste budget, there is a reduction, as
Mr. Vincent indicated, in proposed grant funding next year and one of
the recycling positions is being eliminated as a result of that grant
funding going away.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I appreciate your attention to that. I think
it's stuff that may have occurred three or more years ago that we
probably want to get a good look at that we may not have had an
opportunity to recently.
Any other questions on grants and shared revenues?
Next.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Trust funds are on Page D-4 and D-5. Again, this
is money collected for a specific purpose, for example, the
confiscated property trust fund, the GAC land trust. Of note, the GAC
roads trust fund is essentially slated to be closed out in FY '98.
We've utilized that money, the principal and interest, to pave roads
to the extent that we could with available funds in that regard.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: That will represent a capital cost to the
county if we should continue on a policy that GAC continues -- which
is what; ten or more houses on a given street? So, there's a
potential for an increase in capital cost to the county if we adopt
that as a policy for capital improvements for roadways; isn't there?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: It's actually born in your road MSTDs where we --
where there was an increase, obviously, because of the lack of
residual funding available from the GAC source. That's made up by ad
valorem in that area in the estates to continue that road paving
effort.
The library trust fund is, obviously, just for bequests and
donations received.
Criminal justice trust fund is a transfer to the general funds.
So, that actually is general fund revenue, and let's see, there is an
expanded service request within the utility regulation trust fund.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Let's back up to criminal justice. You said
that that is actually revenue that is transferred to the general fund?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Let's talk about the big old drop in
that one. The adopted budget '96/'97 was 275,000. There was a
realization of some excess $129,000. What was the reason for
realizing that much more than budgeted?
MS. GANSEL: Actually, we had under budgeted for a number of
years, and there was a carry forward that had continued to carry over
in that fund. We would like to recognize all of that and transfer it
into the general fund. It's money that we received from the state for
our state attorney, public defender and medical examiner.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Are we then continuing to under budget by --
MS. GANSEL: No, that was a build up over a number of years that
had never been -- the carry forward continued. That is consistent
with -- our projected budget is very consistent with what we annually
have been receiving.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Right.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I don't know about the rest of you, but each
year there's an excess, I'd like to see the carry forward just placed
in the general fund. If that's where it's going to go ultimately,
let's do it every year. If we budget two seventy-five, and we get two
eighty in, let's put the additional five in the general fund.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And instead of us having to discuss those
each year, Mr. Smykowski, help us find those. Point those out to us
because it seems like every year we find a little something like that
that I wish we didn't have to discover.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Okay, and just to give you an idea, in terms of
last year, the court fees that we received that fund this transfer
were $288,050, and our budget is two ninety, so we are right in line
with where we need to be.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I see budgeted two seventy-five five.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: We do have the statutory requirement of the 5
percent revenue reserve, and that's actually where a portion of that
carry forward materializes from, by virtue of the fact that you can
only appropriate ninety-five cents on the dollar. It actually builds
almost a guaranteed carry forward, but we do pick that up in the next
year and would adjust for it in the forecast column where you would
receive the benefit of those additional funds.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: You're welcome.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And I'm sorry, please continue.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: There is one expanded service request in the
utility regulation trust fund, 669 on Page D-5.
MS. GANSEL: Before we discuss the expanded, I would like to
point out that currently, we do charge four and a half percent fee to
the private water and wastewater utility customers that are regulated
by the county. For fiscal '98, we are proposing a 3 percent fee.
Four and a half percent is what the Public Service Commission had
previously been charging and was carried forward for the first year of
this office's existence, but they are proposing to reduce that to 3
percent in the --
COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And that's consistent with our goal.
When we set out to do this, we said one of the benefits is that we can
do it more efficiently and cheaper than Tallahassee, and we've proven
we can, and so now we pass that savings on to the customers.
MS. GANSEL: And that will be discussed tomorrow. There's a
public hearing at your board meeting for that.
The expanded request is for professional fees with the
anticipated receipt of two rate adjustments in the upcoming year, and
that's what the $56,000 is for.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We have -- and Mr. Wallace, we have four
people in utility regulations, yet we are going to pay $60,000 to
consultants to review rate increases. Help me understand why -- I
just assumed that the reason we had staff members and utility rate
authority locally was to do just that, so help me understand why we're
paying another 60,000 to accomplish that, please.
MR. WALLACE: For the record, Bleu Wallace, office of utility
regulation.
Yes, Mr. Chairman. Initially, when you set up an office of
utility regulation, you're going to have some costs up front that you
normally have not experienced in the past. Number one is getting
qualified accountants up to speed in utility rate making. I
experienced this in both Hillsborough County and in Sarasota County.
Until the staff is qualified as expert witnesses to give
testimony in a public hearing and being challenged by the utility for
things that we find in their filing, you open yourself to have your
expert witness voir dired if they are not qualified, and also, you're
opening yourself up to possible litigation --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Mr. Wallace --
MR. WALLACE: -- if they don't get what they want.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: -- wouldn't that be a qualification
requirement though for a staff person that they --
MR. WALLACE: No, ma'am.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Why not?
MR. WALLACE: Well, we hired as the fiscal analyst is what we
have, and we have two on board. One is a recap, and one is a
qualified accountant, but getting the proper training and experience
in utility rate making, which is a very narrow field, that takes time
and experience, and I have sent both of these fiscal analysts to the
National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners rate course,
but again, this takes time, and I would imagine within a couple of
years or in receipt of a couple of rate cases, we can get that
expertise.
Now, that's not to say that these fiscal analysts haven't been
busy. We've received some seven utility adjustments or rate
adjustments in the past year. Six were price index related, and a
couple pass-throughs. We did have one pass-through decrease that they
have been involved in, and they have --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I'm sorry, but I didn't understand the
answer to my question. On the expert witness function and, you know,
the ability to be qualified to testify in the cases and that kind of
stuff, that's not a job description requirement because you couldn't
fill the job if you -- I mean, why would you not have that as a
requirement of a job description?
MR. WALLACE: Well, that -- those were the approved positions
whenever I came on board a year ago.
I had a similar problem in Sarasota County where they were trying
to build their own in-house staff. We were fortunate in getting one
qualified expert witness that was able to train the others in that
very narrow utility rate making field.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: So, if we changed the description of the
employees -- you know, if you had something other than what you are
handed when you walk in, you would include that in the job
description, I assume.
MR. WALLACE: I doubt seriously if we could fill that position.
I think you're better off gaining that experience through time.
We've yet to have a full blown rate case submitted. Once we do
and we acquire the services of a consultant, part of that consultant's
duties will be to work in concert with these fiscal analysts, let them
do a lot of the leg work, and they will gain through those
experiences.
We have not been challenged on the price indexes or the
pass-throughs, and these two fiscal analysts on board have been
testifying in front of the authority. So, they are gaining in
experience and knowledge of this utility rate making field, and I
think within a couple of years, we'll be able to reduce the budget
because we will be able to do everything in-house to include full
blown rate cases.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm going to try this just one more time,
and then I'll quit, but it seems to me that once they have that
expertise, they are going to want to be paid more or we are overpaying
them now if they don't have that expertise that we are having to hire
outside consultants to fill in.
MR. WALLACE: Well, I don't know if I can answer that or not. We
did hire an entry level senior fiscal analyst and also one recap
fiscal analyst two. These are degreed accountants and --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But it's a training position for them?
MR. WALLACE: Yes.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: They are getting some serious training as
a part of their employment in Collier County in this department? MR. WALLACE: Yes, ma'am.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Mac'Kie, since 1990, I've
been through three rate case hearings in Golden Gate when they were
all -- when they still went to the Public Service Commission, and Bleu
is absolutely right. You want to make sure you have qualified people,
and I think if -- the people who are on our staff are in training -- I
don't know that we'll ever get to zero budget for this, but we'll
probably have to -- better to be safe, we'll probably always have to
be sure that we have the ability to bring in someone during these rate
case hearings, if necessary.
I know Commissioner Norris has been through at least one or two
on Marco Island. I -- I think it's legitimate. I think what he's
asking for is completely legitimate. We've got to make sure that if
we have a full blown rate case, we have the ability to handle it.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, I just think that we ought to be
able to handle more of that with our staff and less of it with outside
consultants.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think those two dovetail into one question.
How long until one of these folks is an expert?
MR. WALLACE: That's a good question, sir. I was able to -- we
were able to get two qualified in Sarasota County in about two years.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. So, I think over the next couple of
years, we are going to be looking for that at each budget year how
much closer are we to having anyone certified as an expert, because I
think that could handle the majority of the cases, but maybe having to
bring in big guns for the larger issues that may arise time to time.
MR. WALLACE: Most certainly.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Does that make sense?
MR. WALLACE: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Does that answer your question, Commissioner
Mac'Kie?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I can live with that as long as we've got
a goal.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Any other questions on this?
Seeing none, let's move on.
MR. WALLACE: Excuse me. I would want to point out that on the
fee, reducing it from four and a half percent to 3 percent, you will
see that again tomorrow. Staff has already scheduled a public
hearing, and that does require a public hearing for that fee to be
reduced.
Then the water and wastewater authority then would have the --
has the power to order the utilities to reduce their rates
commensurate with that reduction.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I would anticipate a very short hearing on
that one.
Thank you, Mr. Wallace.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That concludes our regular agenda. If you'd like
to move into wrap-up at this time.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Chairman, as we prepare to go onto
the wrap-up items, something you said this morning I want to make sure
we're going to do, and that is the items for wrap-up are those items
that the majority of the board said they wanted to see again or hear
detail on --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Correct.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- not what somebody wants to take a
second chance at or -- and this list we've been given, there are
several items we didn't request. Under the sheriff, the attrition
savings, the 800 megahertz radio, the operating budget, none of those
did we ask to hear again. The --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Correction, on attrition savings, I did ask --
I asked for -- because we pointed out -- I asked for it. So, yeah, I
did ask for something on attrition to show the true attrition, not --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Actually, I remember that now.
The 800 megahertz and operating budget, I think we were pretty
clear by the time we finished those discussions. The majority --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Let me try to put some rhyme to this as we go
through, because on any position in which there was a majority of the
board making a decision, if a member of that majority wishes to change
their mind and hear additional information today, then that's fine,
but as you pointed out, 800 megahertz, I think it was five oh, that we
eliminate that. The sheriff's operating budget was -- I think there
was three affirmative votes at the level funded, and you're right,
this isn't the second chance saloon. You don't come in and get two
shots at your budget.
So, unless somebody on the majority wants to change their mind as
we go through these, then we will -- we are not going to hear them.
Although, if they want to hear them, they can sign up as a public
speaker and have their five minutes.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: There's a couple others on here, too.
The courts funding for a four-floor courthouse, I don't remember
anybody saying we wanted that to come back again.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And I thought we settled the domestic
violence unit as well with the understanding someone would be assigned
to that job.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: It's a requirement.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So, we can skip that one.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Capital funds, city beach ends, I
thought we said we'd go ahead and leave that in pending an interlocal
agreement which we'll try to get by September and then if for some
reason we didn't have one, we'd deal with it then.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's the way I remembered it.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Let me clarify that, at staff direction is
interlocal agreement by September?
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Before our budget hearings --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Finals.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- to final, yeah, but go ahead and
leave them in for now.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Mr. Olliff is nodding, so I would assume that can
be accomplished within that time frame. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Down under cable franchise, we did ask
for the equipment purchase, but I didn't recall a majority asking for
the telecommunications ordinance consultant, 30,000. I thought we
were very clear on that.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That was initially a flag and then an out, and
there was some question as to whether it was in or out. We erred on
the side of, again, putting --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It was out.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: -- it on the list, and also, on some of the other
items, they were requests from agencies that do not work directly for
the county administrator, and, you know, they did ask to address the
board on those issues, and we erred on the side of at least putting
them on the list. Obviously, you have the discretion to determine
whether or not they will be heard.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: As I expressed to you, Mr. Smykowski, I don't
want a constitutional officer complaining that our staff did not give
them their due time or did not schedule them, but it certainly is the
-- this board's authority to choose whether or not to listen to an
item twice instead of once.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So, let's go down the list again. We are
going to start with the Roberts Ranch caretaker position which we
agreed to hear. We want to hear on the sheriff's office, the
breakdown of attrition savings because they did it based on positions
as opposed to salary. I don't -- I don't remember Building J
improvements. I thought we authorized --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That was Commissioner Constantine's request.
There was $100,000, but I think that was made up of three or four
components, and at that point in time, they did not have the
individual breakdown of what those pieces were, and he did ask for
follow-up on that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Did we flag that as a reduction or was
that just a request for more information?
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I think we flagged that as -- it was
not reduced out. We flagged it because we thought perhaps we could
reduce some of that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. So, let's -- I guess we are going to
hear that.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: We'd better hear that.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, that is not part of your reduction list at
the moment.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: 800 megahertz radios, I don't think there was
any lack of clarity there. So, we're not going to hear that.
Sheriff's operating budget, that was three votes at 6.7 percent.
Does a member of the majority wish to rehear that item today?
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: No.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And again, if anyone wishes to speak on those,
you can register under public speakers.
County -- county attorney breakdown of personal services
increase --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Look at his memo, and he says he agrees to
decrease, right, which is what we -- I thought we had just asked him
to decrease it, and his memo says he understood that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I'll tell you what. Let's leave that on, and
we'll get a quick shot on that for clarification's sake; is that okay
with everyone?
EHS billing coordinator position.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It's okay now because DOR has taken theirs
out, right?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Right. EHS is an add. DOR is a reduction.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: We don't need to hear that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We don't need to hear that?
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Yeah, we've already heard that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Circuit court judges prior year's actuals of
temporary help. Okay, I do remember that discussion, so let's keep
that on.
Courts have been taken care of with the exception of, apparently,
Ms. -- Judge Wilson's resignation, which I've ironically not read
anything about in the paper.
State Attorney, public defender --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I thought we cut that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We cut it.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: You did cut that. The actual -- the cost
estimate at that point was 150,000, and you indicated at that point if
the state attorney or public defender had issue with that, they should
come and address you at wrap-up, and they have made the trek here and
are prepared to do that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: If we said that, then let's honor it. We'll
hear that item.
Grants, TDC coordinator position.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I thought we left that in.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I did, too.
Mr. Smykowski.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Yes, sir. The issue there was whether or not
there was immediate dollar for dollar revenue associated with that.
There was an $8,000 increase in the budgeted TDC reimbursement
revenue.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Right, and the balance was --
MR. SHYKOWSKI: And the balance was 50,800, and that was the --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I thought we left it in and said we're
going to watch for -- be sure it pays for itself, but -- that we left
the position in.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We -- yeah, we left it in but said that we
wanted to see offsetting revenue elsewhere throughout the year and
asked if you -- if that could be -- it was a little creative
budgeting, but if the department's effective would be offsetting in
revenues due to the receipt of grants. I wasn't aware -- I think the
position was left in, but we were saying we wanted to see the revenue
side increase to cover the balance of the position. That's my
recollection of that discussion.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: We just wanted it tracked --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That's right.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: -- down the year to see if we were getting
anything for what we were spending.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: So, we don't need to talk about that one.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: We don't need to talk about that again. We
just talked about --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: But somewhere, there needs to be revenues
budgeted so that it's not --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Even in the first year? I thought we said
we were going --
MR. SHYKOWSKI: See, and that is the issue we had at our
divisions staff meeting on Friday with Mr. Fernandez, in that year
one, a grant position is not necessarily going to show a dollar for
dollar savings or associated revenue.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I think we'd have to track it -- you know,
have to track it, but not expect actual dollars in the first year.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So, the number you're going to give us today
does not include offsetting revenues for that TDC grant position with
the exception of the $8,000 from TDC? MR. SHYKOWSKI: That is correct.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Not what I wanted, but I understand.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Then we finished the capital --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Beach ends interlocal is out.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yep.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Capital fund, concrete medians and lighting
issues.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We do want to go through that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Do we want to go through that? Okay.
Clerk of courts, additional turn back from 4 percent attrition
budget --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: I spoke with Mr. Brock on that issue since he had
not budgeted attrition, and I have a response.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Let's hear that.
Did you want to go through the video equipment purchases,
Commissioner Constantine?
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Do you remember they were going to try
and see what the -- if there was a reasonable expenditure at fifty,
and if not, we would just not --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Sometimes all I need is a little kick on some
of these to remember the discussion. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Sure.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Purchasing, personnel in DOR and mail room,
did we cover that today?
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: We talked about --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, that was covered today. That was just to be
sure that it was addressed.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Non-departmental deferral of general wage
adjustment, I thought we decided to do that, didn't we?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You were just going to tell us the number.
We were going to do it April --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: There was some issues related to the other
constitutional officer budgets. We did speak with the property
appraiser and tax collector in that regard regarding whether or not
they intended to comply, and we'd like to report back on that issue
for you.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Let's do two things here for everyone
who's seated here and maybe monitoring this. We are going to take a
lunch from noon to 1:00. What I think we'll do is let's go through
the museum element, and then the balance we will start promptly at one
o'clock after the lunch break.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Just to be clear, when we get -- we'll
do public speakers at the end when everything -- when we've cut
through our list?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Correct.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And everyone will have their five
minutes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Correct, five minutes time allotted for each
public speaker at the conclusion of today's meeting.
Let's go ahead and take the museum item on the wrap-up list.
This was the Roberts Ranch caretaker position. We were to look at
making an -- actually an additional allocation in the budget for a
caretaker.
MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, just to frame the issue for you just
for your recollection, the item was requested by the Friends of
Roberts Ranch, and it was a position, a caretaker type position that
would open the facility up to the public. The total estimated cost
was 23,700. In looking at what operational reductions could be
offset, we reduced the lawn maintenance contract and some of the
security contract costs that you would have borne had the position not
been there, and you can reduce that portion of the budget by about
$8,000.
So, the decision for you today is actually a $15,700 decision on
that position.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Olliff, was this recommended by
the county manager?
MR. OLLIFF: No, sir.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Okay.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: If we were to approve the position,
though, didn't we think -- excuse me -- that some of the things that
were in your budget could come out, like some of the maintenance
and --
COHMISSIONER BERRY: That's what he --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: That's what he just discussed was the security
and mowing was about 8,000.
MR. OLLIFF: Eight thousand dollar reduction.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Deja vu.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I knew I heard it somewhere. Sorry.
MR. OLLIFF: I believe the board has a couple of options. You
could charge a fee for entrance, but I can't tell you how much. In
fact, I would be real hesitant to tell you how much you might be able
to expect in revenue there, but that might be an offset, and there is
an option of having this go through a TDC fund as well, if you wanted
to have this as a special request for a TDC funded operation there at
Roberts Ranch, because it is tourist related. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Commissioner Berry.
COHMISSIONER BERRY: Is there any chance that we could apply to
the TDC? In other words, can we -- could we approve, say, this
$15,000 amount that Mr. Olliff has indicated and apply to TDC, and
contingent upon their approval of some funds toward this and if we
don't get them, then we'll have to take another look at it later on;
is that a possibility?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: It's possible.
My question is one of qualifying.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: That, I don't know.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Unfortunately, TDC, when it comes to museums
and so forth, addresses capital issues and not administrative or
personnel issues to my knowledge. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay.
MR. OLLIFF: You're actually funding your local museum operation
completely out of TDC funds for the last year and this coming budget
as well.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: That's correct.
MR. OLLIFF: And if you -- the third option I guess that you have
is, is your current museum budget which is funded by TDC funds does
have $21,000 in a reserve there which is unobligated in any expense
which you have as an option to use as well.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I have no objection to running it
through the TDC. I'm not sure I want to set aside ad valorem funds in
the meantime. I mean, if it goes through the TDC and for some reason
doesn't work, then we can try to address it again at that time, but I
don't want to put assurance in there out of general fund's money for
it. I think it's probably appropriate for TDC money.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Why don't we give Ms. Goodnight an opportunity
to address us, which she requested earlier or mid part last week, and
then we'll go from there.
MS. GOODNIGHT: For the record, my name is Ann Goodnight, and I'm
the secretary of the Roberts Ranch.
These were all the things that I wanted to bring back to you when
I came back in August or September and talk to you about just exactly
how we would do the funding of the thing, because we are so new, we
have applied for incorporation. We have not gotten back the paperwork
yet from Tallahassee, but we are in the process of doing that, but
some of the things that we have talked about doing is that we would do
all of the fund-raising, helping with writing the matching grants for
any type of restoration that needed to take place at the site, that we
would follow the recommendations of Chalmers Yeilding that I believe
you all paid for a couple of years ago as to the different sites that
were there.
We would volunteer to be on-site to help with any type of stories
that needed to be told about the ranch or people coming through there
and visitors.
One of the things that we would recommend to the board would be
-- that there would be some type of a donation or entrance fee after,
you know, we begin to get to where people could actually come on-site.
There's just a number of things that -- there's questions there
that the Friends need to decide how we need to go about doing this and
all, but what we are wanting to do is we're wanting to be the fund
raisers to raise the money to restore it, to give to the county and
help with any type of grant writing and any volunteering or anything
that needs to take place on-site.
We would also like to be in the loop as far as making
recommendations to the board as -- maybe purchasing property or buying
something that needed to be bought there. You know, that was all the
things that we wanted to bring back to you before the 1st of October
and telling you just exactly what we felt like we could do, but what
we feel like very positively is that we need to have an employee there
on-site the same as the Wash House in Everglades so that we can begin
to do the maintenance and making the place safe, and that's my biggest
concern is that right now -- your department of safety has said that
the place is not safe for anybody to come on, and that the county is
liable for it. So, we can't take any tours on there. We can't have
visitors to stop by and look at the place or anything, and this
employee can begin to help to rectify some of those problems.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Ms. Goodnight, I understand that this type of
commitment really would represent a major kick start for the people
who are interested in going out and seeking the funds and all of the
-- everything that you need to make this a quality tourism
designation.
My concern is a little bit of the cart before the horse. As I
look through -- and I thank you for this booklet because it shows some
strengths, and it shows some real weaknesses in what's out there. With
somebody on-site, I understand the security aspect, and it now makes
it possible for people to come out there because there is supervision
in place. However, I'm concerned about the quality of this as a
tourism designation at this point.
A lot of what you're talking about, the renovation that would
take place and the dollars that are needed to do it, once those
dollars are expended and the quality of the entire project begins to
take shape, then I think having someone on-site to spin yarns and tell
stories and do all that makes a lot of sense, but a lot of what I'm
looking at, the horse barn and tack room and so forth, and I'm just
wondering if we aren't just a little early in having someone on-site,
because, quite frankly, I'm not sure we want to encourage use of this
as a tourism site just yet. There's got to be some work done to make
it a quality experience. Otherwise, we are just not -- we are
spinning our wheels and doing so with tax dollars.
I would like to go to the TDC with a request, but that request be
part of a whole that says on this date, we are going to have this
program in place, and it's going to be great for people to go out
there, and it's going to be positive and so forth. I -- liken us to
having someone at the laundry facility in Everglades during
construction, that's kind of how I feel about this. There's a
construction period that needs to take place on this site to make it a
designation, and I'm not so sure that what we are doing isn't really
putting somebody on-site before that construction is completed.
That's my biggest concern about this.
MS. GOODNIGHT: And I understand that. I guess that maybe -- I
guess what the Friends are looking for is actually a commitment from
the county that they will work with the Friends, because if we are
talking about going out and raising several million dollars to restore
this, then I certainly want the county to step forth and say, yes, if
you do this, then we are going to do our end -- our end of the
bargain, and that's the reason why that when I brought it to you last
week, I said I have a proposal for you, I'd like to bring the final
proposal back to you in the later part of the summer, and at that time
then we can decide what we need to do to get this going.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I think -- I mean, I'll certainly
commit to work with you as far as going through the TDC and doing
those various things, but you know perhaps better than anybody that
has spoken to us in the last week that we can't commit to what future
boards will do, and I think the board of commissioners can take a
role. What happens five years from now, none of us have any control
over, but as far as a commitment to try to work with you, I'm happy to
do that. I just don't know that general fund dollars before any of
that work has been done and before some of that private fund-raising
has been done is appropriate.
MS. GOODNIGHT: And I wasn't necessarily meaning that the money
should come out of general fund dollars. I mean, I knew that the
museums was being funded now by TDC, and if that's the way that you
all wanted to do it, that's your decision. If -- that's not mine.
Mine was to bring to you the problem that we have, and we feel
like that we need this person on-site to help us to facilitate what
needs to be done. We intend on bringing all types of people into the
area to show them what the ranch is like. We are going to need there
-- we are going to need someone on-site to begin to help us to do some
of these minor things that needs to be done.
As far as the horse barn and things, that's not county property.
The facility, the building is county property, but it's not owned as
county property, and so that's something that's a long range that
needs to be done with the fund-raising and the grants and everything
to get it moved over or to restore or whatever it is that the Friends
and the Board of County Commissioners are going to do.
My thoughts on previous boards, and I agree with Commissioner
Constantine completely, is that it's real hard though when an employee
gets there, for that employee's position to be cut, and so that was
the reason why we felt like we would have a better chance of keeping
one employee out there if we could show we had done the type of
fund-raising that we intend on doing in making this place a first
class tourist historical spot for Collier County.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Let me see if I can kind of put together some
board direct -- I'm sorry, Commissioner Berry.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: I just -- in looking at this, is there any
chance of phasing this project, Ann, whereby the house -- the farm
house, that's on county property currently?
MS. GOODNIGHT: And that's what -- that's -- that will be what
will have to be done.
COMHISSIONER BERRY: Okay. In other words, I was thinking in
terms of looking at the home, if that could be a place that could be
used initially for tours if it were in a condition where it could be
used probably the first place and conduct the tour there. In other
words, the rest of the property at this time is not available for the
public, but if that could be a place that could be made available with
the plan for the entire site eventually, but at the same time, do you
really think you would need a caretaker then if you just used the
house as the launch site, let's say?
MS. GOODNIGHT: Well, there's -- my idea of this person -- and
yes, it's my feelings that it would be something that would be more or
less taken later on in the year because we would need to really get
ourselves organized. I don't think that we would be able to hire
someone the 1st day of October, but these are some of the things that
I could see the employee doing. They could begin to tear down some of
the old wallpaper that was in the house that's not appropriate. They
could begin to do some of the replacing of some boards that may not be
absolutely safe.
CHAI~ HANCOCK: Ms. Goodnight, with all due respect, I'm going
to interrupt you because --
MS. GOODNIGHT: No problem.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- I think what you're talking about is a
concept we need to discuss, but it really doesn't have a place in our
budget discussions today because we are just a little too early in the
process.
MS. GOODNIGHT: I know, and that's the reason why I wanted to
wait until later in this year.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I know, and what you're talking about out of a
$15,000 expenditure, and I don't mean to take any dollar amount
lightly, but let's face it, it's not a heck of a lot of money. So,
it's something that during the budget year, we can pursue the TDC
options and other things to try and come up with that when it's ready,
when the puzzle pieces fit together, and if you're asking if this
board is committed to taking a look at that during the year, you have
a yes here. I think I heard a yes on that -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yes here.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: What we'd like to do is, as your group puts
this together and we start seeing a time line of development and where
things can be inserted, I would like to look at this concept then, and
I hear five people saying the same thing.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: The general agreement is we don't
include the 23,000 in currently, and go through the process and look
at the variables --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I'd like to have this discussion when it's
more appropriate, because like you said, we're a little early. So --
MS. GOODNIGHT: I agree, but I just wanted to be -- you know,
when we talked to staff about it, I wanted to make sure that the board
knew this, and if they wanted to put it in the budget process, then
that's your option. If you didn't, then you would know what we were
doing, and that would be your option for us to bring it back to you.
So, as long as there's lines of communication, then I would be
completely happy with that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: For you, always, and thank you.
Let's take a lunch recess. Let's return at about five after
1:00.
(A luncheon recess was taken.)
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Good afternoon. We're going to reconvene the
fiscal year '98 budget workshop. We are to the wrap-up list.
For those that may have arrived late or did not hear, some areas
that will not be heard, unless you wish to address them under public
comment, are going to be under the sheriff's request, 800 megahertz
radio and operating budget reconsiderations. Under EMS, the billing
coordinator position. Under courts, the domestic violence unit and
funding for fourth floor courthouse design. Under office management
and budget, the grants TDC coordinator position. Under capital fund
306, city beach ends and an interlocal agreement. Under cable
franchise, the telecommunications ordinance, $30,000, and under
purchasing, personnel and DOR and mail room operations.
All other elements of the budget wrap-up list that we have, we
will take in order, with the museum already being taken care of.
So we are to the area of the Sheriff's Office; is that correct,
Mr. Smykowski?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Do you have any further changes to this list
before we get started?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: I do not.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Let's go ahead and proceed then.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What's the magic attrition number
translated into dollars instead of humans?
MS. MYERS: Jean Myers, budget analyst for the sheriff's --
excuse me, for the Sheriff's Office.
I did put two pieces of paper up there for you, commissioners --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Oh, there they are
MS. MYERS: -- first one saying fiscal year '96/'97 attrition
estimates equating that position number into a dollar figure. The
$1,663,600, or 3.9 percent, which is reflected in our forecast for
'97, is our attrition dollar amount, and the point there then that we
were trying to make, that -- equating -- that was for fiscal '97. We
had already taken another million seven in fiscal '98, which is kind
of a moot point at this point, but that's what we were getting at, the
11 paychecks, and I apologize for the typo there in paychecks, but
we're saying next year $275,000 or that 1.2 percent, to clarify that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: That's just like Olde Naples, it's the same
thing.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Paycheckes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So 3.9 percent, which is about the 4 percent
that we talked about, so dollar for dollar, apple for apple, it's --
it's balipark --
MS. MYERS: Over the year, yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Okay. Thank you for that.
The second item was one, I think, Commissioner Constantine, you
were particularly interested in was the building -- itemizing the
Building J improvements that are funded out of fund 301. MS. MYERS: Correct.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: First two, you don't even need to
review. I've been up there. I have no argument at all on those. MS. MYERS: Okay.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Anyone else have a question on the first two?
Okay. Let's go ahead with the modular furniture and on down.
MS. MYERS: Yeah, the last three items, and this whole particular
item in 301 as I, I think I had said before, is a continuing project
that we've tried to phase these areas in in converting them to modular
furniture, space saving and just trying to accommodate the people that
we have in the -- in the small space that we do have.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think in light of the 20,000 additional
square feet under the capital side that it's going to have to be
filled with something.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: This -- this isn't that though, is it?
This is replacing existing -- MS. MYERS: This isn't even replace -- well, replacement of just
the old standard metal desks.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Oh, okay. That's separate then. Okay.
MS. MYERS: Correct. This is just in our existing -- the space
that we have in A and J.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Well, it's hardly the Taj Hahal over
there, but, you know, if you guys looked around. I don't know what
the useful life is or anything on the furniture, but --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Well, we don't -- I don't think there's any
need to go into that level of detail on those -- on that amount of an
expenditure, and I think that we've looked at the overall on both
areas and made appropriate decisions there, so any further questions
on the Building J improvements? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: No.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Seeing none. Thank you very much.
MS. MYERS: You're welcome.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We are now to the county attorney line,
breakdown of personal services increase. There he is. Mr. Weigel.
MR. WEIGEL: Good afternoon. David Weigel, county attorney, for
the record. I have provided the commissioners and the budget staff a
written response to the questions that you raised this past Wednesday
on the county attorney budget.
If you'd like, I can detail those to you briefly, but it was a
description of the $59,700 increase that showed in the personal
services ledger of our budget. Do you want to go ahead? Okay.
Of that amount, 13,900 was included to provide as a potential for
salary adjustments for the 18 employees under the county attorney.
As the board indicated last Wednesday -- excuse me, the board
indicated that the county attorney employees -- employees should be
treated the same as all other county employees, so that factor has
been removed, which reduces that fifty-nine thousand seven down to
forty-five eight.
Of that forty-five eight figure, the 3 percent general wage
adjustment built into the board directive would purport to be just
over 24,000, and so if you can remove that, which I think we can do
just by showing that that is a factor that was to be implemented into
the budget, leaves 21,443.15.
As I mentioned the other day, we've had significant vacancies in
our office. The -- the filling of the vacancies takes time and -- and
the workload and caseload is difficult to allocate among attorneys.
During this past year, I made adjustments in the budget for
attorneys that were having to do work and work weekends and nights,
extraordinary hours to handle the caseload, and at the same time, felt
that we did not have an overabundance of staff at full staff, and so
the position that I -- the vacant position that we were currently
soliciting had built in a potential salary figure of 62,000, which
would not necessarily have been hired at that -- at that point, but
pursuant to the board directive, I've reduced that to 43,000 even,
which, including with that the calculations for the health cost
savings at the reduced salaries, in essence, brings the county
attorney office down to, I think the math is pretty close, a 1.5
percent increase on the personal services side, and that's taking into
account the potential 3 percent increase of general wage adjustment,
which is to be applied to all -- all salaries in all departments.
So I think from that standpoint, we've realized what your
directive is. I will state that the constraints of hiring and keeping
attorneys is something that is difficult to deal with and I think will
continue to be a problem.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Any questions on Mr. Weigel's
presentation?
Okay. Thank you for answering those questions for us, Mr.
Weigel.
MR. WEIGEL: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We are now to circuit court judges,
information regarding prior year actuals of temporary help used per
judge.
I think this discussion centered around, if I remember correctly,
the fact that there's one assistant per judge and when one is gone,
scheduling and several other things that we're not terribly familiar
with so --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Quite frankly, the thing I found
irritating is, while I realize no one has control over a different
judge's assistant, it would just be common sense in a business that if
you can't support, you don't send your people on vacation. You might
have a different department that you borrow people from from time to
time when there's a shortage, but you don't send everybody away on
vacation at the same time and close down the store and --
HR. HIDDLEBROOK: They don't do that. They don't send everybody
away, Commissioner. I was merely --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Name, please?
MS. MYERS: I'm sorry. Mark Middlebrook, senior deputy court
administrator.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: No, I know. The issue at the time was
just if they send more than one away on vacation at the same time,
then they end up short-handed, which I understand. It just doesn't
seem like a very good plan.
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: Well, we need to address some other -- I was
merely responding to that it could happen. It doesn't happen that
often, but it does happen.
First, we have some senior judicial assistants that receive four
weeks of vacation a year. That's three of them. Between the nine
judicial assistants, they receive 27 weeks of vacation, so it averages
basically three weeks per assistant.
We did some studies as far as hiring a part-time legal assistant,
which is what it would take to fill in for the judicial assistants.
We're utilizing the county attorney's cost of 41,000 per year with
benefits, so if we take half of that, 20,500, that's about $1,000 more
than we're seeking for the temporary help.
In addition, the judicial assistants have two three-day
conferences which they all go to, and that's to update them on new
Florida law and procedures, so that equals out to ten weeks of time,
and of course, we have sick leave. So if we did hire one part-time
person, we, A, would not be able to meet our requirement for
fulfilling the vacations, to begin with, as well as sick time and
these judicial conferences that they go to.
Again, I think the question was, why did we have such an
increase. It's supply and demand. We can only hire certain people
that have knowledge of the law, legal assistants, legal secretaries,
and we pay roughly thirteen dollars an hour for that.
In addition, the judges have, in the past, done their best to
cooperate and only had someone come in for approximately four or five
hours a day. Because we are so busy now and there's such a demand on
the office, they need coverage eight hours a day, and that is why
there's an increase.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I know that -- maybe you can help me with the
process a little bit. If, just to pick one out of the air, if Judge
Baker has a judicial assistant and the judicial assistant says, I want
to take the first two weeks in July off, does Judge Baker grant that
or do you grant that?
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: Judge Baker grants his assistant's requests.
They, in essence, work for the judge.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Who are they paid by?
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: The State of Florida.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: If you're the -- and this is where I lose it.
If you're the court's administrator and you are paid by the State of
Florida; am I correct there?
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. There is no one really in charge of the
pool of judicial assistants then because the judges can tell them what
they can and can't do without ever consulting anyone else; is that the
structure we have? I'm not asking you to be critical of the judges,
I'm just asking about the structure.
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: I believe it was two or three years ago --
prior -- prior to this change that happened two or three years ago,
they worked for the court administrator. Hiring, firing, promotion,
demotion, came from within the court administrator. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Scheduling?
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: Everything. There was a change in the
legislature that made the judicial assistants the employee of the
judge.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. That's stupid, quite frankly, because
we have a pool of individuals that do similar, if not exact, tasks,
and although they work for an individual Judge, the fact that you
can't pool those resources to save the taxpayers some money is just a
terrible system. Who do we need to address to change that structure?
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: Probably across the hall.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: I -- I need to stress here that we do pool
resources --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Not an accusation. It's just in this one
instance for this part-time help, it seems if you had more scheduling
flexibility or if that went through an administrator who looked at all
those schedules across the board, that overlap that is causing you to
bring in more people could be reduced. That's my assumption and I
assume I'm not too far off the mark with that. MR. FERNANDEZ: Mr. Chairman?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yes, Mr. Fernandez.
MR. FERNANDEZ: I have a question that may be along these same
lines. I thought Mr. Middlebrook indicated there's four weeks of
vacation time for the employees; is that correct?
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: For three -- for our most senior assistants.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Oh, for not -- not all of them?
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: No, some have two. It -- it works out an
average of three weeks per assistant. Some have two, some have three,
some have four.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Okay. That's -- that's a policy that's different
from county employees?
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: Yes, they're -- they're under the state
program. I was about to address that. We do utilize each other's
resources that the judges, except for the deputy chief judge, who is
Judge Blackwell, all are in a pod of two chambers, so there's always
two secretaries. When there's a daily miss, they don't bring anybody
in, they try and transfer the phones and do their best for scheduling.
We're merely trying to cover vacations, extended sick time and the
judicial conferences.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Any questions for Mr. Middlebrook?
Thank you, Mr. Middlebrook.
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Next up is state attorney, public defender's
office fund 301 general ad valorem taxes used for computers. This was
a phase-in that was new this year?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Correct. We're showing that as a reduction at
the moment, actual savings, which amount to 161,000, but you had left
the door open if they had issue with that to be able to respond, and
Mr. Pearlman and Mr. Sullivan have made the trek from Fort Myers to do
that today, so we appreciate their efforts.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And other than the issue being we'd like to
have them --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That is the issue.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's a question of when. We were hoping
we could put it off one more year.
MR. PEARLMAN: Dennis Pearlman, executive director for the State
Attorney's Office. Thank you very much for the opportunity to address
this issue.
At the conclusion of our conversation, I'd like to read a letter
into the record from Mr. D'Alessandro. He was unable to make it, as
was Mr. Hidgley this morning.
With me also is Bill Yeaget from our information technology
department and Don Peterson, should -- should you have any specific
technology questions, who is our CJIS project manager.
My primary responsibility here this -- this afternoon is to
address the current need for this PC conversion. I'd like to clarify.
I believe on Thursday's presentation from Mr. Coakley, it was not
explained enough, in that we've been in this process -- or we were
issued notice that the PC conversion would happen back in '96.
We, subsequent to that time, where we were supposed to get the
PC's this year, in fact have been bumped. Now we're debating whether
it will be bumped for the next fiscal year.
We've had correspondence going back and forth through Mr.
Smykowski and myself, Mr. Stanzill and myself, as well as your prior
county administrator, Neil Dotrill, as to how Collier County is going
to fit into the circuitwide CJIS plan. As you know, there's five
counties that are -- are -- comprise our Twentieth Judicial Circuit.
What we've done is develop a three-year plan whereby we are doing
conversion from dump terminals off of a digital vac system to a PC
based environment. In that process, we're also doing a complete
software rewrite. Collier County, as it stands now, is the only
county that functions as an independent CJIS community.
Based on an earlier commitment that we were going to receive a PC
conversion here, we went out and got certain funding from the state
level and we took certain actions as far as trying to come through
with compatibility with what Collier County was doing, that's
Microsoft office products.
The biggest problem that we're going to face if you are unable to
give us the PC conversion dollars that we need is that effectively,
Collier County is going to be cut off from any electronic mail or
communication from the rest of the circuit and I -- while I realize
you're focused on Collier County issues, my office, as a separate
state entity, has to look at what the circuit is doing, and the
result, the benefit that you will receive in the process is a sharing
of resources from Lee County, our -- our hub.
If there's any questions, I'll answer those. If not, I'd like to
read the letter into the -- the record. That may explain some
additional things of what we're trying to do and how long this process
and project has taken to evolve and where we stand.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: When you say Collier would be
effectively cut off from electronic mail communication, you mean we
wouldn't have the ability to do e-mail. What else would be cut off?
MR. PEARLMAN: Currently your -- your e-mail or the e-mail system
that is available to us is an all in one digital dump terminal e-mail.
Your county, I believe, as well as the rest of the circuit, is going
to a Microsoft office exchange type of e-mail, which is based on PC's,
which also has utilization of the Internet, so if you just take that
little section and -- and talk about the communications, there would
have to be some bridges or some additional dollars spent to try to
bridge what we're doing and what is left remaining in Collier County.
You also have -- you will have the inability to share in
databases, criminal histories, investigative services that are being
created in Lee County and has been available.
Let me give you an example, and this will be detailed in my
letter. I don't come to the board here with an empty hand and say,
give me, give me, give me. What we've tried to do through RICO case
prosecution, what we've tried to do from funding sources at the state
level through the IRC, Information Resource Commission, is to
contribute to this conversion process as much as possible. My office,
and I'll speak for the state attorney, of course, is we've already
outfitted my investigative unit in Collier County with PC's and
printers and all the wiring that's necessary because we wanted Collier
County to take advantage of the investigative database that's
available throughout the rest of the circuit.
We went to the IRC, received a number one ranking for networking
issues between counties, which of course Collier would be included
coming back to our hub county of Lee, also for training issues. While
we understand that Collier County will do the training or has done the
training when they've done PC conversions in the past, we have
received, as of July 1, funding for training issues also.
We're trying to bring everyone together to be able to share in
common databases to be able to help us utilize our resources. When
you start getting into what does this do for you, we're talking about
a new CJIS system here. We hope to bring Collier into the mix. The
development costs of all -- are already being borne by other counties
and from the state level.
You're going to have the ability for a -- a comprehensive
criminal database, which of course, is going to help us in my case
prosecution. We'll have Internet access. We'll have countywide
e-mail and communications.
Although -- you know, far too often when new computer systems are
put in place, the first question is, well, how many people is that
going to reduce. That personnel cost -- those personnel costs for the
public defender and state attorney are borne at the state level, but I
think what you'll see by having a -- this transition is you won't see
increases in personnel, but what you'll see is a change in how we
allocate our resources. What we're trying to do in Collier County
from the state attorney side is develop our domestic violence witness
program. We're also trying to develop victim services. If I don't
have to put people into the clerical line area, I can put them into
other places, and what this system will do is eliminate duplicate data
entry and just have a better utilization of resources circuitwide.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: You indicated you had been counting on
a commitment made by Collier County in the past? MR. PEARLMAN: Yes.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Did -- from whom did that commitment
come?
MR. PEARLMAN: That commitment came in the budget process, I
believe two years ago, when I had contacted Mr. Smykowski and asked,
should I put these funding issues into specifically the state
attorney's budget, and for Mr. Sullivan's part, the public defender's
budget. At that point, I was told no, that is going to be in the --
since it's a general revenue issue, it would go into an information
technology issue. It was placed in that budget, and although I
believe funded, was then pushed back.
Again this year, I -- I took the route of not placing it in my
budget because I was under the assumption here that it would happen in
this upcoming fiscal year.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I guess I just don't recall having
that discussion at this level, and ultimately, it's these five people
who decide what amendments -- what we make and what we don't and so I
just -- I'm not insinuating that you're purposely misleading. I just
don't want anyone to misunderstand that the county has made some
commitment that we'd do this and now we're backing off. I don't -- I
don't know what conversation went on with Mr. Smykowski or others, but
I don't know that this board had made that commitment?
MR. PEARLMAN: Well, Mr. -- and -- and speaking for him for a
moment, he did not say directly to me, your funds have been committed
and you are going to get them without fail. No, that was not the
conversation, but in dealing from a five county level, I have to make
certain assumptions, if that funding was placed into the budget and
then what I thought was granted, but then bumped -- because what we
did, we got together with the public defender and the courts,
presented a strategic plan that we have to do through the IRC
commission. Our plan was ranked number one in the entire state for
all public defenders and all state attorneys. We received funding for
that.
In that plan, we stated that the PC issue, the actual hardware
conversion for Naples was going to be covered by the county, as it is
with Lee County, as it is with Charlotte County. Issues such as
networking between the counties that go outside of a specific county
realm and issues such as training, those are -- are what was funded
based on what I thought were commitments or good assumptions on the
part of Collier County.
What I'm trying to do is -- is, my balance is and our balance is
to bring all the counties together so that we can have an economies of
scale and share resources and produce the best -- in the case of the
public defender, defense product and prosecution product from the
state attorney's office as possible.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Something happened last year during the budget
that whether you're aware of or not has probably had a material effect
on your request. Our initial I.T. phase-in was a two-year phase-in.
We were to be completed within the county within two years, and then
you were, as you understood from two years ago, that third year was --
was your time.
MR. PEARLMAN: Right.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Last year we cut last year's commitment in
half and spread it out over two years because we simply couldn't ask
the taxpayers to bear the brunt of that in last year's scheme of
things.
What that did was rolled a couple hundred thousand dollars into
this year that weren't anticipated. I think we're seeing a cumulative
effect of that rollover in this year's budget. As I looked at the --
the public offender -- public defender and state attorney's office, I
believe I saw 9.2 percent increase this year to the general fund out
of their budget; is that correct? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. If you combine what we have done in
I.T., the bumping, with the 9 percent increase, already you start to
see a broader picture, then when we add $161,000 in, it becomes --
becomes larger than -- than I think we anticipated. If we had a 2 or
3 percent increase in your office and were asked to bring more general
fund dollars for I.T., then that's a different ball game, so it -- it
-- you know, it's a lot of cumulative effects, but that bump last year
is probably the single biggest reason why we feel the need to push
this off to next year, because without any capital improve -- we don't
have any PC's -- we're done with PC's after this budget year for the
county; am I correct? We have done our modernization bulk side. We
have some -- the follow up to do --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- so I don't see any problem in next year's
budget. I understand that it would mean that you would lose probably
a lot of funding from the state that has been promised based on the
fact that you'd have PC's on every desk after October 1, but we have
to -- again, we have to look at the whole, and we are looking at a
couple of -- a 9 percent increase is substantial in any budget.
MR. PEARLMAN: May I speak to that point? The 9 percent increase
is due mostly in part to, again, the assumption that I made that the
PC conversion was going to happen, and I'll speak for the state
attorney's side here. We asked for six LaserJet printers, network
printers that made the largest increase in my budget. Obviously, if
you are not going to fund the -- the hardware portion, then I'm not
going to need those network printers, and I don't want to fool the
commission into saying, well, I'm not going to mention that money and
I'll just buy what I need. That's not the point of what we're trying
to do here.
If you -- when we create funding, there was a specific
recommendation from your I.T. department that said, both general
revenue fund and non-general revenue fund departments must budget
their own printers, scanners, digital cameras and other special
purpose devices. That's why my budget specifically showed --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
MR. PEARLMAN: -- as high an increase, and if I can bring one
other point up, please. We're not talking about next year funding my
-- funding this PC -- PC conversion. We're talking about the fiscal
year after that when the process --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I understand the fiscal calendar, sir. I've
got a very good grasp of October to October.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Especially after the last week anyway.
The -- do you want to go ahead and read the letter from Joseph
D'Alessandro.
MR. PEARLMAN: It was with great disappointment that I learned of
your decision to again delay the implementation of the PC conversion
in the Naples office of our prosecution function.
To date, the remaining four counties of our circuit have met
their commitment of transitioning both hardware and software
components of our CJIS system. Far too often, local governments fail
to seize the moment of technological opportunity in the name of
savings to the public, when in fact postponement of such projects
usually costs additional dollars because of the loss of economies of
scale for its implementation, training and maintenance.
In 1995, based in part on your plan of PC conversion, we
developed a three-year plan where this circuit could finally and
collectively participate in a fully automated sharing of information,
e-mail and criminal case tracking data that could provide my office
and our citizens with the enhanced ability with which to manage our
prosecution effort. This plan initiated by Lee County includes a
complete revision of our current software and hardware properties.
As you know, Collier County is the only independently functioning
CJIS system of our five county circuit. Even during the project's
infancy, Pat Hanifin was part of the -- and very instrumental in
guiding my staff, along with the public defender and court
administration, on vendor selection and review.
Prior to his leaving the county, Mr. Hanifin was aware of future
plans of possibly taking on the added responsibility of administering
the Collier County CJIS. The possibility of joining the Collier
County CJIS circuit wide has been discussed over the past two county
fiscal years with Mr. Dotrill and staff. This could have, and still
can, create a tremendous cost savings to the county.
We have benefitted a great deal from Lee County's financial
participation in helping us rewrite the current CJIS software, and as
a result, have created an environment whereby all counties will be
able to share in a Microsoft Word and exchange e-mail standard, in
addition to an Oracle database for our criminal case tracking
statistics. Recent discussions with Mr. Coakley have confirmed the
need for software and hardware standardizations. We understand the --
the importance of partnerships and the expenditure of funds for
transitioning to a new system and hardware environment.
Last year, our project received a number one ranking in the state
for all state attorneys and public defenders for our proposed new
system from the Information Resource Commission of Florida. With this
ranking comes funding for training and networking between the five
counties of our circuit.
We are additionally pursuing all available avenues for federal
funding through grant participation. We also have, through our RICO
prosecutions, established a trust fund which has allowed us to
complete the PC dump terminal transition for the investigative unit of
our Naples office. This has allowed them to access an extensive
criminal database, as well as the ability to share prosecution
resources circuitwide. The remainder of my staff would share in
similar benefits, but only if you follow through on your commitment of
conversion.
Currently, Lee, Hendry, Charlotte and Glades Counties are
scheduled to phase out their current method of CJIS and all in one
e-mail in November. Electronic communication with Collier at that
point will be extremely cumbersome and acquire -- require additional
funding just to create a bridge between the new CJIS network and your
county.
In summary, if you ask me if we can survive with the current CJIS
system supported by Collier County, my answer would be yes. If you
ask me if the quality of prosecution would suffer as a result of not
transitioning hardware, my answer would be as it has always been, that
I would prosecute to the best of my abilities no matter what
conditions existed.
Our citizens in prosecution function do not need a Cadillac of a
system to perform our duties, but what we do need as community leaders
is to acknowledge a worthwhile priority of money savings issue when it
is presented before us.
Thank you for your time and consideration. Be assured that
whatever decision you make, my office will continue to provide this
county with the best prosecution effort and dedication that has been
displayed during my entire administration. Sincerely, Joe D'Alessandro.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: One thing that Mr. D'Alessandro says in his
letter that I -- that I hear all the time is the tremendous savings to
Collier County. You know, if I had all the savings we were gonna get
over the last two years of information technology implementation, we'd
be writing checks to the taxpayers. It is a savings, but it doesn't
show up from where it's expended, so to us, it's an expenditure.
Maybe you can help me with where those savings show up, because
our court costs continue to escalate dramatically.
MR. PEARLMAN: Certainly. Currently, nearly 40 percent or so of
my budget, my individual state attorney budget, is for information
technology or data processing cost.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What percentage?
MR. PEARLMAN: Approximately 40 cents -- 40 percent.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Forty percent?
MR. PEARLMAN: It amounts to about $95,000 that you are paying or
-- or it's a paper -- money that flows through my office to provide
data processing services.
What I'm getting to here is, I hope to be able to, once this
system is -- is developed and we are well on our way in all our
remaining counties, to come back to this board or to come back through
the County Attorney's Office and say, we do not need that particular
support. I believe the support that -- that you assess us is about
$954 per month. Well, once we transition these PC's in, you're not
going to have that data development cost. You're not going to have
the -- the -- every year individual costs of 954.
Now, you may have some associated costs with licenses, but you're
certainly not going to have that ongoing hundred thousand dollars
that's being allocated now. You're also going to be able to share in
the resources that I have employed in my Lee County office. They're
state employees, but they're used throughout the circuit. Obviously,
training, Mr. Coakley's office, I believe, would do the training
support for the Windows applications. My office has now been funded,
through the IRC ranking and through other means, to deal with the
training issues. Both of our offices have on-staff state compensated
computer people that could do training and wiring and system set-ups.
A lot of those costs would not need to be borne by Collier County at
that point.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Would there ever be any opportunity
for us to borrow those trainers?
MR. PEARLMAN: Borrow those trainers?
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yes.
MR. PEARLMAN: Yes, sir. As far as the State Attorney's Office,
those trainers -- borrow for what, my people to train or for your
people to train?
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: To train some of our -- our people
that might be using similar computer systems, but we -- and I asked
that only half serious, but we got through this morning talking about
how much we spend on consultants every year to train, and I just
thought if there's already a public employee somewhere, we ought to
utilize them.
MR. PEARLMAN: Yes. You know, here again, where I -- where I
speak to the partnership between the State Attorney's Office, Public
Defender's Office and the county, whatever resources we can lend to
the success of this project, we're -- we're willing to do that. What
we've done, and here's where I get to the point of not recreating the
wheel, we've designed a training program for Windows applications for
Microsoft exchange for micro -- for Microsoft Word, standards that
your county is going to. We have all those things laid out. We've
developed a training room in both the State Attorney's Office and the
Public Defender's Office from state funding where we have a lab where
we train these people. As a matter of fact, this afternoon, a portion
of our Punta Gorda office is in my Lee office being trained on those
specific applications, so they're -- when I get into economies of
scale, no, it's not a specific Collier issue, but I have to look at it
on the level of, what are all my counties doing and how can I get that
resource to Collier County in the most efficient way.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. I think we've -- first of all, I
appreciate you being here today and bringing Mr. D'Alessandro's
comments with you.
What's the pleasure of the board on this item?
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, I think you've stated it fairly
clearly. I -- I understand some of your points are valid, but I think
Commissioner Hancock has stated it fairly succinctly, and that is,
it's a matter of what we can afford right now and we ended up bumping
our own projects an extra year last year when everything was
particularly tight and have -- are finishing that up this year, so I
think the concern isn't as much with the validity of what you're
trying to achieve, as it is how many dollars do we have to spend.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Let me ask the board if they would consider
one -- one thing, and that is, there is an unknown each year at this
time during budget, and that is whether or not maybe turnbacks are --
are higher or lower or whatever. It's not a question of whether this
board, I think, wants Mr. D'Alessandro to do a -- even a better job
than he does now, but a question as to, are we willing to write -- ask
our taxpayers to write a higher check this year for it. So what I
would like to do is to ask the board to make two -- well, do two
things. One is, not to put it back in at this point, but to wait and
see what our numbers are in September, and if we are able at that
time, within the tax rate that we set for trim notices, to provide
that funding for those computers to your office, that we give it a
very serious consideration at that time.
I think it's well warranted, but I think in the overall scheme of
things under the I.T. banner, we did what was appropriate this year,
knowing what -- what we're asking the taxpayers to do, so to say that
it's not dead, to say that it's alive until we see what our
constitutional officer turnback is and what our final numbers are for
the year, if we can eke out most or all of that at that point, I'd
like to see us do that.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That's fine.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That sounds reasonable.
COHMISSIONER BERRY: That's fair.
MR. PEARLMAN: I -- I appreciate leaving the door open on this
issue. I will say that anything that the public defender or the state
attorney or even the court can do to help you, either through numbers
or -- or whatever issues you need, we are available and -- and willing
to deal with that.
If I could just mention, the six LaserJet printers that we had
talked about that were funded in my individual budget, because we are
going to have a lapse in communications, I'd like for the board to
consider leaving those dollars in there and allow me to purchase a pro
rata share of PC's so that, at a minimum, I can set up particular
stations in my office where they may be able to access e-mail until we
get through to the -- the entire conversion.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I don't have a problem with that.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I think that's a great idea.
MR. PEARLMAN: Mr. Sullivan, do you have --
MR. SULLIVAN: No, I just want to thank you for not killing this
totally and I wanted to make sure that we understood that -- I think
you were left with the impression that this was a new request --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: No.
MR. SULLIVAN: -- and this is something that has been ongoing,
and as Dennis has done a very good job of explaining, it's something
we've done a great deal of planning around with the -- CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I'm sorry, your name please?
MR. SULLIVAN: Jim Sullivan, Public Defender's Office
Administrative Director.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think, unfortunately, what happened is, the
bump last year wasn't anticipated by you. You were still going on
what the initial outset for implementation was, and that bump last
year, to us, meant everything got bumped an additional year, including
your request because of -- of the dollar amount that -- there was no
dollar amount allocated this year for the county, it was supposed to
be just you. Then when we split that out, that's what happened.
Mr. Smykowski, I'd like to do two things. One is, as the numbers
become finalized in, I believe it's September when we do our final --
final setting of the millage that is at or below what the trim notices
are mailed at; is that correct? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. I would like these gentlemen to be
contacted prior to that to determine whether or not that -- there is a
gap there that will help serve these specific needs, and barring we do
this with anything else, I don't know of anything else that would be
more appropriate, barring we do it with anything else, that should be
the only consideration at that time for us. Is that reasonable?
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Yes.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
MR. PEARLMAN: Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thanks.
Okay. We are to capital fund 313, concrete meeting -- medians
and lighting issues on U.S. 41.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Correct. I believe Mr. Bobanick is here from the
Transportation Department to address this issue.
MR. BOBANICK: Commissioners, for the record, my name is Dave
Bobanick, Interim Transportation Director. This issue concerns an
additional cost to upgrade the lighting and median strips on the U.S.
41 project that was recently -- recently let and awarded by the FDOT.
We've reviewed this project and have determined that probably the
best way to approach it would be for us to come back to you with an
executive summary in about two months with a recommendation that the
cost to fund this be from the 313 reserves. Additional costs will
amount -- will amount to the following: To place lighting on both
sides of the road, we're estimating $134,000. Additional design costs
of approximately $20,000, and any change to the decorative fixtures on
both sides would be $102,000, a total of 256,000.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And these -- these costs are to be
borne by the MSTD, by that road district anyway? Traditionally we've
just let each commissioner deal with their own road district and not
really argued a whole lot. If you've got a feel for it and think
that's where your folks want to go, I'm not going to argue with it.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, I -- I think that it is where it
wants to go. I think that's where people want it to go.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Yeah, let me --
MR. BOBANICK: I'm sorry, commissioners, this -- this would be
313 reserves?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That is a gas tax supported fund.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Exactly.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That, I do have a problem with. I'm
sorry.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Because we are not -- you know, what's good
for one is -- is good for all when it comes to our roadway projects.
For the most part, we've tried to be very even-handed in sound
attenuation and design and we're trying to do it in landscaping as
best we can, and if we're going to do decorative lighting, you know,
to the tune of 102,000 for decorative, 134 for redesign, what I'm
afraid is that there's a -- some business owners that are driving the
train on that one that will be most effective on that corridor and set
-- set up an MSTU and full speed ahead.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, what's wrong with the MSTD fund?
Why can't we use that money?
MR. BOBANICK: We could if -- if -- if this money was put into
the MSTD fund, we could use that --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's what I asked for. I didn't ask for
gas tax because of exactly what you guys are talking about, so what
I'm asking is that it be put in the MSTD.
MR. BOBANICK: That would be fund 102.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: So that part of the community would
just tax themselves for it?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And can I ask, the majority of the
communication you've had on this, has it been with businesses or --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Actually, my communication on this has
been with this past Monday night, a week ago today, when we had the
road widening meeting about U.S. 41 and we had at least -- well, we
had 100 people, at least, in the room, a broad spread from general
civic -- East Naples civic kind of people, residents, businesses.
Certainly -- I mean, I think we had a very diverse group, and this is
an issue that's come up in every one of the meetings about the Davis
triangle, whether they were residential or commercial, and frankly, I
don't think that you would have any question about it if you saw the
plans for the U.S. 41 widening and saw just how stark they are, and I
think it's --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Well, it's FDOT.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, it's DOT, and if we -- we need to
get the money in there because this is our shot at it, at doing it in
any kind of a cost-effective manner, to do it during the construction
instead of after.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So you're talking about 256,000.
Commissioner Norris?
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: The other element to this is the -- the
medians. Mr. Bobanick, were you going to address that as well? MR. BOBANICK: Pardon?
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Were you going to address the median
question of --
MR. BOBANICK: That will be addressed down the road at -- at some
particular time. We -- on January 7th, we had a representative of
East Naples approach the board and request that we put the -- put a
design together so that we could get sleeves in place and so forth for
a future median landscaping project.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: But what about the -- the contract's been
let to put in four and eight-foot concrete separators.
MR. BOBANICK: With the -- right, and that can be changed with
little additional cost or no -- probably no additional cost as far as
the FDOT is concerned.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Have we have had conversations with FDOT to
confirm that they are willing to do that?
MR. BOBANICK: We have. I -- I spoke with Mike Rip (phonetic)
this morning about that, yes --
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay.
MR. BOBSICK: -- and he feels there would be little or no
additional cost on that one.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Those are the two most important features.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. I did want to broaden that second one,
because as I read this letter from Mr. McGee who's the landscape
architect that owns a company that does a lot of the landscaping
around here, he says, one, that curbing on the four and eight-foot
wide solid concrete separators, there are some instances where you
don't have a very long strip of four-foot wide, and paver bricks or
something that is -- I don't want soil and turf in every four-foot
wide section, regardless of length, so please --
MR. BOBANICK: Certainly it will be designed by a landscape
professional.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. And -- and someone who maybe doesn't
have a contract for maintenance.
MR. BOBANICK: Okay.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Good point.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, as long as the -- it's the road
district picking that up, I don't have any problem with that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. So that's a two hundred -- as I
understood it, 134 in lighting, 102 for decorative lighting and 20,000
in design comes up to 256,000 additional dollars in that light -- in
that district --
MR. BOBANICK: That would be HST fund 102.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, and that would be an increase of about eight
dollars and two cents per hundred thousand of value. That was not in
the budget at the moment in that road MST, just so you're aware of
that. We would be increasing the millage further to fund that item.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: In that MSTD.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: In that MSTD.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I understand that.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Okay.
MR. FINN: Just to provide some perspective, Edward Finn,
operations director, that's seven dollars or eight dollars on top of
about 14 dollars a thousand that it currently is, so it's about a 43,
45 percent increase in the millage to fund this proposal.
MR. McNEES: Per hundred thousand.
MR. FINN: Yes, hundred thousand. Shorthand. I apologize.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Any other questions?
All right. Thank you, Mr. Bobanick.
We are now to clerk of courts, and I --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, I can address that. I spoke with Mr. Brock
on that issue. He did indicate that he would not budget turnback, but
that we -- we could increase his -- sorry. He did not budget
attrition, but that we could budget additional turnback, which has the
same net effect.
COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: We don't care how.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Correct. So what I'm telling you is, your cut
would stand as is.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: With no real net effect, because we'd already
applied it for --
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Correct.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: He didn't -- he didn't tell us the opposite, that
it --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We haven't got there yet. Okay. So it's 4
percent attrition, it's just called increase turnback?
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We'll have to remember that one for next
budget year too, by the way.
Cable franchise, video equipment purchases. Commissioner
Constantine had some request for detailed information.
MR. FITZEK: Yes, sir. Good afternoon, commissioners. James
Fitzek, Office of Franchise Administration.
As per your directions on Thursday, the staff has developed a
plan for equipment purchase that will increase the quality of
programming on Channel 54 and of meeting coverage, while at the same
time reducing staff hours needed for that coverage. If you would
like, I can take you through the list and identify or answer any
questions that you have.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: The whole purpose in going through
this exercise for me was to see, for roughly the same budget, what we
could achieve with reference to putting together a higher quality
product, and obviously if we can decrease the number of hours that
we're demanding from Katie and yourself, then -- then that's a good
thing too, so I'd just as soon keep that item in the budget as long as
this is where it goes instead of the multiple VHS decks and so on we
had talked about last week. MR. FITZEK: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Big difference -- the only difference being,
we had 50,000 in the budget. This is 56,500 anticipated, and if we're
going to increase that at all, we need to -- we need to -- it needs to
come off somewhere else. I don't mind -- did we count that as toward
our list of reductions?
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: No.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We did not?
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: No.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That was a flag --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yeah. What I'd like to do is authorize the
50,000 and say, well, you only need to find 6,500 off of this list.
Is that what you're down to?
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Agreed.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. That's three, four -- unanimous.
MR. FITZEK: Thank you, commissioners.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you. And you'll forever be known as the
guy who took us to BETA.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: From the rock and roll commissioner to the
BETA commissioner.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Last item. Non-departmental deferral
of general wage adjustment until general wage adjustment until 1998.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Yes. On that issue, we spoke with the
constitutional officers regarding their willingness and/or ability to
comply. The property appraiser and tax collector's budgets were
already submitted to the state based on the budget policy direction
from February, which assumed 3 percent cost of living on October 1st.
At this point, they also have the option of opting for the
state's salary scale adjustment as opposed to the county's. They said
they have not made decisions in that regard, but they would be
awarding on October 1st.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: What's the state's number?
MR. SHYKOWSKI: They -- they have a sliding scale. Up to $20,000
salary, an individual would get a $1,200 raise, which at the $20,000
level is 6 percent.
From 20,000 to 36,000, an individual would receive a $1,000
increase, and above $36,000 in salary, they would receive an increase
of 2.78 percent.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Did we --
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Miss Morgan was also contacted. It is her intent
to award on October 1 as well at the 3 percent level, and obviously of
concern was the -- the inequities across agencies that would
potentially exist.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yeah, when we -- when we were going through --
again, I'm going to go back to something so I have a benchmark. When
we were going through and listing things that were -- were reductions
on initial requests, did we list a dollar amount for this?
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Yes, $170,000.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: A big one.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So if we were to -- if those constitutional
officers were to do as they have indicated, October 1st, and the only
one left is us, what does that reduce it to?
MR. SHYKOWSKI: No, the $170,000 was just on the general fund
component, which would be essentially the county manager's agency,
because the -- at that point, the discussion was, well, don't count on
the sheriff's and the constitutional officers were unknowns at that
point, so we had only counted essentially the county manager's share
of said pain.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. So the constitutional -- the
constitutional officers are hanging on to October 1. The question is
whether or not we want to stay with the mid-year.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: That is absolutely correct.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Is there anything we can do to -- I mean,
we don't have a veto over that decision that the constitutional
officers are making?
MR. FERNANDEZ: I think that's an administrative decision they
can make within their department. Your decision is on the allocation
of funding to them.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah, we don't have literal veto over
that particular decision, but we do have the control over the purse
strings. Yeah, if we give them less and they still choose to do that,
still choose to award it October 1, that's fine, they just make it up
somewhere else, but we have the opportunity through the purse strings
to give them, you know -- let them make their decision how they want
to handle it.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Mr. Chairman?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yes, Mr. Fernandez.
MR. FERNANDEZ: At the appropriate time, I'd like the board to
give consideration to receiving a presentation from Jennifer Edwards.
I've asked her to be prepared to present to the board a discussion on
why this is significant, why it's important, what are the important
essential components of a -- of a human resources program and the
effect that the action that you have historically taken really has had
on the program, so if you're willing to listen to --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think now would be a good time to hear that.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And while she's coming up, the number that
-- the net effect number of this is a million seven or something?
What was the number?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: No, $170,000.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: A hundred and seventy.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Can you -- can you, while she's doing
that --
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: A million three was the big number, but we
carved it back and back to 170.
COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: While Jennifer's doing her
presentation, can you do the math and figure out ballpark what it
would be in each of those three constitutional officer's offices?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: In Ms. Morgan's, it would be relatively easy.
Within the property appraiser and tax collector, again, their budgets
are approved by the state, and the only transfer you're making to them
is the fee portion for collecting your ad valorem taxes, so you're not
making --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: For my purposes, can you give me those
three numbers when Jennifer's done?
COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Just so that you'll know in advance, I
don't have any support at all to the fact -- to dictate what they do
in their budgets, so if you're going to ask for support to do that --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm asking what the dollar numbers
are, so -- I mean, if the board and some constitutional officers are
doing one thing and other constitutional officers are deciding not to
participate, the public ought to know what the dollar impact of that
decision is.
COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Okay.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, I can do that and I have the numbers
available currently.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Miss Edwards.
MS. EDWARDS: Good afternoon. My name is Jennifer Edwards. I'm
the Human Resources Director. I'm talking to you about a topic that's
very passionate -- I'm very passionate about right now. As a matter
of fact, I came in yesterday and I developed a very lengthy
presentation for you that, listening to the tone of the meeting today,
I'm not going to take that much time right now.
I'm going to cut to the chase and tell you that one of the very,
very important roles of -- of a human resources department is to
maintain a pay and classification plan, a very credible plan, and we
do this by doing our own surveys, market surveys locally. We also
participate with the Florida League of Cities in their surveys and we
look at the internal equity issue also, so it's a constant -- constant
maintenance and study of our pay plan.
We need a plan in order to maintain that internal equity and to
be competitive with other agencies. We are constantly competing with
other counties and local governments as well as other -- or
businesses, private businesses in this community for our professionals
and all of our staff.
In 1995 when I went down to the human resources department, one
of my first challenges was to continue with a project that Mr.
Whitecotton had begun, and that was working with a consultant to do a
major analysis of our current pay plan, and this was the same
consultant that did the overall pay plan for us in 1988. The
consultant did recommend significant upgrades and you approved the
implementation -- or the board at that time approved the
implementation of that upgrade in March of 1996.
When we asked you to authorize the pay plan upgrade, we
recommended two cost savings measures. One was implementation of the
plan at half-range movement. Now, what this meant was that the
consultant recommended that approximately 220 classifications, and we
have a little over 300 classifications, but he recommended that 220 of
our classifications be increased, so the ranges increased, but our
recommendation to you to save money was that we would only fund the
increase halfway, so that meant our employees only received 50 percent
of the recommended upgrades that the consultant recommended.
The second cost savings measure --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Before you go on, do you remember what
the -- the average adjustment was, percentage-wise?
MS. EDWARDS: Seven percent.
COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thank you.
MS. EDWARDS: The second cost savings measure was the deferring
of the general wage adjustment, which was 3 percent, until April 1996,
and that is the one that we've just rolled out in April, and that is
the first time in my memory, and I've been here a few years, that we'd
ever deferred an across the board or a general wage adjustment to mid
year. We've always implemented them at the beginning of the fiscal
year, and that's just prudent human resource paying classification
management, because it helps us to maintain our competitiveness.
So today I'm asking you to help us to continue with the proper
maintenance of our compensation plan by allowing us to implement the
recommended 3 percent as of October 1, 1997. If the value of this
savings is critical to meeting your budgeting goals, please consider
phasing in a service to the citizens, rather than affecting the salary
checks of your employees.
We implement -- I want to step back a minute and explain to you
that for our employees who are at max of their range, when we
implement a general wage adjustment, those employees receive the wage
adjustment, but it's as a bonus, so they receive that bonus over 26
pays, and at the end of those 26 pays, if it's a full fiscal year,
then their salaries will decrease. You have 38 employees who are in
the bonus situation and their salaries will decrease for six months if
you defer this until April.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: How many?
MS. EDWARDS: Thirty-eight.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Mr. Chairman?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Mr. Fernandez.
MR. FERNANDEZ: If I could add a couple of remarks. Of course,
I'm new, and part of what I'm going to say has to be conceptual
because I don't know the organization that well, but I really believe
that it's important to avoid the erosion in the quality of the
services that you provide. You've already had discussions about the
significance of maintaining the capital assets that you have, the need
to maintain your buildings so that you're preserving the -- the
investment you've already made in those buildings, and I think that
the same concept really holds true for your staff.
I've been very impressed with the quality of your staff. I -- I
believe that you are as well, and the kinds of components in a
responsible human resources package are necessary, I think, to
maintain that quality that you have here.
I would like to echo Jennifer's comments about the choices that
you have. I would much prefer to see the board take a more critical
look at the services that you're providing and maybe scale back some
of those services rather than erode away at the quality of those
services that you're trying to provide by shortchanging what I would
regard as a responsible human resources package. I think that's very
valuable for you to -- to preserve. It's something you ought to think
about very seriously before you start a trend to -- to erode, and I
think that that trend has already begun from your actions that you
took last year, and I would hate to see that continue.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, I -- I disagree, and obviously
all of us want to have a responsible pay plan and want to take care of
our employees and that was the whole premise of us doing the wage
adjustment, doing the study and then actually following through and
doing the adjustment.
I take some exception to the suggestion that we only did 50
percent of what they asked for, because our employees, on average,
still got a 7 percent adjustment, which is a pretty healthy
adjustment, and -- and so I don't appreciate you minimizing that
adjustment because it was certainly due and certainly worth doing, but
it was not -- it wasn't small apples. Seven percent's a healthy
adjustment. Over and above that 7 percent, six months later, there
was a 3 percent raise, so in six months, there is -- you're shaking
your head.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's the fallacy. That's what I thought
too, but that's not what she said.
MS. EDWARDS: No, we did not get the 3 percent --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: When did the 7 percent go into
effect?
MS. EDWARDS: March of 1996.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That's when we approved doing it or
did it not go into effect until October?
MS. EDWARDS: It went into effect then, and then we got the 3
percent general wage adjustment a year later in April of 1997.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So we were off on our dates.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: No, we're not. Excuse me, but -- let me --
let me jump in here because we're not off on our dates. Effectively,
April the 1st of 1996, they got a 7 percent adjustment, and in the
scales as well. Then one year later, they got an annual, signifying
one year, cost of living adjustment, April the 1st, 1997. Now what
you're saying to us is six months later, give them another annual cost
of living adjustment, and that's not right.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I guess I -- I look at it --
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: That's a -- that would be two annual cost
of living adjustments in a 12 month period.
MS. EDWARDS: But -- but the earlier one --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I guess I don't -- I'm not sure I can
agree with your argument that as long as you've been here, it's always
been October 1. Well, just because something's always been that way,
doesn't mean that's the only way or the most appropriate way to do it,
and I remember in 1991 when -- it was prior to my time on the board,
but the entire thing was deferred for a year, there was one lump bonus
fee, but it was deferred for an entire year. It wasn't just deferred
a few months. There were no raises given that year, and I'm pretty
sure you worked for the county then. MS. EDWARDS: I did in '91.
MR. McNEES: Commissioner Constantine, maybe I can clarify an
issue that Miss Edwards made, a point that she made. When she's
talking about that we only went halfway, we made half-range
adjustments, nobody's making any effort to minimize that the folks got
substantial raises at that time.
The point that she's making is, the consultant told us at that
point that there were 220 of our pay classifications where we were
paying people substantially below what the job market in other places,
and even locally, pays the same job, and so when she uses the word the
competitive issue, that's the issue we're trying to address there, and
at that point, we made adjustments to bring those people halfway to a
market rate salary, but we didn't bring them all the way, so we
continued to deal with what is what we call a compression problem,
which is people who have been in a job for a number of years make very
little more today than someone that we can hire off the street because
different things affect that compression, and it creates problems for
us, and when we don't do -- when we defer cost of living adjustments,
you have further compression, people who have -- have worked here who
then are still not far above what we can bring people in at entry
level today, and it -- it creates real world day-to-day hiring
problems for us and in maintaining our internal equity, so we don't
mean to minimize what's happened in the past, but the competitive
factor is a real one.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, cost of living adjustments though are
based on an annual. We tie it to the CPI, which is an annual figure.
Maybe it -- maybe I'm confused about the calendar, but what is the
date a year from April the 1st, 1997 forward, what would the date be?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I think --
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Do you have an answer for that or shall I
show you a calendar?
MS. EDWARDS: The question was from April 19967
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: No, nineteen -- well, all right, from April
1996.
MS. EDWARDS: A year from that is April 1997.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: And a year from that?
MS. EDWARDS: Is April 1998.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: My point exactly. Not October. It's April.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I think -- Miss Edwards, let me see if I
can see if I understand this point --
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: And Mr. Camell, I don't need to hear from
you on that. I know how to read the calendar.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I think that what -- that this sales
pitch --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Steve, Steve --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I think that this sales pitch would have
been better if what you had told us was, instead of this being second
COLA of the year, that it is the catch up, it's the other half of the
pay adjustment plan and we only implemented half of it at the time --
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: But that's not right. That's not right.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Folks, we're -- we're focusing on the
timing in which an increase occurred and I guess I start a couple of
steps back. The whole reason that we deferred for six months an
increase was because we had a pay plan that affected two-thirds of our
positions, and I think that was a good decision that year. One of the
reasons we took a big hit on that pay plan is because we continued
talking about acting or conducting ourselves like a business, but we,
come budget time, we do it like government. When we give -- if all
we're going to give is a maximum 4 percent, 3 percent or 2.7 percent
plus 1 percent merit, we're not operating like a business, because in
-- in the business world, you don't artificially fix and artificially
cap salaries for performers. You base a salary on actual performance.
So if you've got an outstanding employee, maybe they get 5 percent
instead of 4 percent or 4 percent instead of 3, but because of
government, because of the size we are, we don't do things that way.
We just haven't.
We've tried the merit scale, we've tried different things, and
the truth is, in an organization this large, it just -- it doesn't
seem to work the way we want it to and -- and what happens is, we kind
of artificially keep things down year to year, and every seven years
or so we go get a PATE study and we get a one-time shot of -- of -- of
a tremendous amount of money and it causes us to rethink things.
What I'm concerned about is, when we put that off for six months,
I don't know about the rest of the board, my understanding was, that
was a one time savings to try and reduce the hit on the taxpayer that
year. I did not anticipate pushing that off until April the next
year, because from my perspective, those hundred and some odd
employees that did not receive a pay plan adjustment were held steady
for six months and then bumped --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: With their COLA.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So in my opinion, from their perspective, from
what was tradition, they didn't get that -- that six months that they
expected, so even though cost of living went up, their salary stayed
the same for six months, and I call that going backwards.
So it's never popular to pay government employees anything,
period. We heard that in the hiring of Mr. Fernandez. I mean, my
God, people thought we should get him for $60,000 and a Yugo. The
truth is, we are competing out there and that competition does cost
money and I don't think, getting back to where we started, which was,
an October adjustment is necessarily a bad thing.
I understand the point about it means they get 3 percent at this
point and 3 percent here, but my understanding when we did that was
the six month one time deferral, not a six month annual deferral.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Forever.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That's not my exact recollection. There's
a -- there's a '-
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Well, I'm just giving my impression.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. The reason we didn't put a COLA in
for that six month period is because we made a major wage scale
adjustment. Now, you've got to separate -- there's two things we're
talking about here. One is a wage scale adjustment that has nothing
to do with the COLA.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Right.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I mean, they're not -- they're two separate
issues. Now, if you want to say, all right, on October the 1st, we
want to pay them COLA, fine, count it from April the 1st. What has
the CPI increased from April the 1st to October the 1st, fine, pay
them that.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: A cost of living increase is -- is
done on an annual basis, and the last cost of living increase was done
in April, and if we do that on an annual basis so that we can keep up
with the cost of living, thus raise COLA, then you do it again in
April and I -- I understand everyone's point that we want to take care
of our employees. In the private sector, there are some employees who
get zero or even get decreases and we --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I'm trying to make that happen here too, by
the way.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We don't do that here. I mean it --
as much as we try to run it like a business, there are certain things
that just don't happen that way, but I mean, looking at it -- October
'95, the fall of '95, we had the cost of living increase, roughly 3
percent. I think it was actually over that in '95, it was 3.4 or
something. March of '96, we had the 7 percent. April of '97, we had
the 3 percent, so -- so if you do an increase this October, that will
be four in a two year span, so I don't think -- I mean, the argument
that somehow employees are being shortchanged just doesn't wash.
MR. HcNEES: I think what we're saying is this --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Excuse me, Mr. HcNees, I'd like to continue
this. Maybe the solution isn't in the dollars, but in the policy.
Why are we talking about everyone gets a COLA? I mean, you just hit
the biggest point, the biggest problem I've had since I came here, and
that is the non-performers, you have no financial incentive to kick
them in the rear and say, you know, get in shape or you're out of
here, because they all get the same base every single year, and I know
when I got an annual review that said -- well, okay, I didn't, but if
I had got one that said that you're not doing your job very well, I
wasn't expecting a 3 percent increase. I was expecting a deferred --
I mean, I got nothing until the performance would change. It was tied
-- it was tied financially --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We actually did that one year, we had
one, three and five, I think were the numbers that -- that people
could be in the range of, and when Mr. HcNees talks about morale
kickers, we had people who were griping because the guy next to them
got 5 percent and they only got one, they didn't think it was fair. I
agree with what you're saying. I'm just saying, when we tried to put
it into practice, our own people came back and said, it's not working,
we can't do that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: My point is, why don't we fix the dollar
amount and ask Mr. Fernandez to determine the allocation.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, okay, let's -- let's -- before we get
into a whole new --
COHMISSIONER BERRY: That's a different discussion, I think.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yes, it is.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: This board needs to set a policy and
ask him to carry out that policy.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: But let's -- let's finish this discussion
before we start a new entire program. If you -- the CPI is tracked
monthly. You can look at it monthly. If -- if you're -- if your
point is to pay an annual, once a year COLA, then it's only logical to
do it next April the 1st because that's a year.
Now, if your -- if your point is to bring it back to October the
1st, fine, you can do that. Take the six months of the CPI and pay
that. It's very simple.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: But, Mr. Norris, what about the -- what about
the ones who didn't get anything at the cost of living --
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Everybody got something on April the 1st.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: No, no, no. Going back to October of last
year, there was --
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Everybody got it.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. But 12 months prior, they did, and it
was based on an annual stipend to cover an annual cost of living
increase.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Six months prior to that, they had their --
their pay scales adjusted.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Not all of them. Two-thirds.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, Fred Sullivan would tell you
that's because everything in life isn't fair, but Commissioner Norris
may have a different argument.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: But see, the thing with the pay scale
adjustment was to get everybody back level to where they should be in
the marketplace, and then at some point in the future we were going to
start paying COLAs again on that. That's the way the discussion went.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Right. That's correct.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I don't know. I don't disagree with that. I
just -- my understanding of what we did then and what the result was
the following year fiscally is different than yours. I was of the
understanding --
COHMISSIONER BERRY: The 7 percent was to level the playing
field?
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Uh-huh. It has nothing to do with COLAs.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: But then we told them if we defer for six
months, that's this time. We didn't say -- I mean, this -- this is
the integrity crunch that I see for the board is -- is when we paid
COLA in April, we didn't say, and henceforth, it's going to be. We
made them wait 18 months for COLA and then -- and now we're --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Again, you're minimizing by saying --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Well, let me finish, if you don't mind.
We let them -- we made them wait 18 months for COLA because they had
gotten the other, you know, the wage adjustment increase, but we
didn't say, you're never going to get that six months' worth. We said
we're going to ask you to wait six more months.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Did we say specifically that we were going
to pay that six months --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We didn't say anything.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: We didn't say it at all, but we said it
was a deferral.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. Well, then you better check the --
the minutes to see if that's what you promised because I don't think
it was. I disagree with your --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: My recollection is, we did not make a policy
decision as to whether or not from that point forward they'd be
annualized on April, nor did we make one saying they'd be in October.
We didn't make a policy decision.
Now, Commissioner Norris' understanding is, when we do a COLA in
April, that means automatically it's April of the next year before you
do an annual COLA. Mine was a -- mine was just -- mine was different,
and I guess that's what I'm trying to be -- that's what I'm trying to
honor at this point is what I thought we were doing and what I thought
the end result was there, not sitting here trying to argue with
whether you're correct or whether I am. I don't think that's the
point.
My direction then was, you know, me individually, was that we
would defer six months in that year as a cost saving measure and
because of the -- the general wage bump that occurred to two-thirds of
the employees due to the study, but that it would return in October of
the next year.
If we want to do an across the board at a lesser amount, I am
more comfortable with that than, again, a deferral out to six months.
Of the two options, I'd rather go the other way. If we do a 2.1, 2.2
percent for the year and get back to October, I'm more comfortable
with that.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I have no objection to that as long as it's
done on a -- on a CPI basis because that's what it --
COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: Does anybody know what that number is, the
six months of CPI?
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Be close to half of the annual because it
hasn't changed a lot.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, the last six months would be 2.7
divided by two, 1.35.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Technically, you -- you -- your point's not --
I mean, you make a very good point. I don't disagree with it. I just
did not -- that was not the inference that I understood when we made
that change, and I'm trying to be at least, you know, true to that.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And when I -- when -- my recollection is
obviously the same as yours. When I made that -- cast that vote, I
would have said, let's change to an April COLA adjustment date.
Instead, what I remember the discussion was, let's defer for six
months. Not let's make a policy decision to change COLA to April.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, it makes a lot of difference whether
you say it's a deferred or whether you're going to decline it for six
months.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yeah, I think we said deferred, guys. I
think we --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: What -- again, we can kind of -- I mean, if
someone wants to pull the minutes, we can pull them and that's fine,
but we have a decision to make today. We -- what is -- what has the
history of our cost of living increase been? Give me the last three
years. It's -- each time we've done a cost of living increase, it's
been what, Mr. Smykowski? Give me the actual numbers.
MS. EDWARDS: I believe it's been 3.5 in '95 and three -- three
in '96, and then we had recommended three -- or three for '97, and we
had recommended three again for '98, so the last two years was 3.5 and
then 3 percent.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Not that it matters that much, wasn't
one of those years 2.8 or slightly below three?
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Uh-huh.
MR. HcNEES: Yes.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thank you.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Commissioner Berry, you weren't on the
board at the time we had this discussion, is that -- so you weren't in
on that deferred versus changed?
COHMISSIONER BERRY: I'd probably be in favor of doing the six
months to October.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Doing a lesser in October? Rather than 3
percent, do a 2.0 in October across the board, at least we get back on
to October, something like that?
COHMISSIONER BERRY: If that's -- if that's where you want to be.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And I -- I don't know. Commissioner Norris
has asked, well, in the last six months, what has been the cost of
living increase, and the chances are if it's 3 percent last year, it's
probably a percent and a half in October.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah, it's 1.35.
COHMISSIONER BERRY: Yeah, 1.35, whatever it is. I mean --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm just thinking mathematically, if I
were an employee, I'd rather get the 3 percent for six months than the
other way around because cumulatively, over the long term, you're
going to see more money that way.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Uh-huh.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And -- and if we were -- if we're
looking at trying to set a dollar amount here and take care of the
employee, I would say that's the better of the two. I mean, we can go
with the six month CPI in October, but we're not going to save dollars
in the next tax year, yet the employee will see less in the long run
of their career that way.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Through the magic of compounding, of
course.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Correct. That's a financial guy over
there.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. If we are going to do that, then we
just need to make a policy decision that the COLAs apply on April,
quite frankly, and -- and need to stick to that because I'm not
comfortable -- I feel like I did something different than you did a
year ago and --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Me too.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I -- I just remember it as saying we're
going to forego six months of the COLA because -- because we had the
big scale adjustments. That's the way I remember it. If that's not
correct, then we can do it another way.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Chairman, can I just make a
suggestion? We'll poll the board and if we get three, fine, and if we
don't, we'll perhaps get another suggestion. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'd like us to do the 3 percent or
whatever cost of living the CPI indicates and do it halfway through
the year.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: There's a reason that Hiss Edwards pointed
out that it should be done on October, and that was for 38 employees,
if you have your COLA date on April, then there will be six months
that they get --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Less money in their paycheck.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Surely through the magic of all this
information and technology that we've put together in the last year,
we can find a way to accommodate those 68 employees. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Thirty-eight.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thirty-eight employees.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Not really. There's really not. I
mean --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We have to create the dollars from somewhere.
Now, I would suggest the airport capital improvement area, drop that,
you know, $50,000 and use those funds would be my suggestion.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: If I could finish what I was gonna
say. Surely there's a way to accommodate them. It doesn't have to
take additional money, but you could do a -- do the 1.35 for them
beginning in October and they could get the balance of that when
everybody else gets their increase in April. That way they don't have
to wait 18 months and we still keep it a constant COLA for everyone
and every other employee doesn't suffer in the meantime, they still
get their full 3 percent.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: But you know that's still a reduction in their
paychecks.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Someone's gonna get a smaller
paycheck?
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yes. They're going to get a smaller
paycheck if we don't --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: How?
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Tell it again, Jennifer, how they get a
smaller -- the 38.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: If someone makes $300 a week, they're
going to see -- they're going to get less than $300 a week then?
MS. EDWARDS: Yes, they have been receiving their 3 percent
general wage adjustment as a bonus, so if we take that bonus away or
we reduce it, then their check is reduced.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And that, guys, makes the -- I think,
evidences the fact that it was a deferral and not a denial of the
other six months of COLA.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, the only way you'll ever know that is
to go look at the record and see whether -- whether it was voted on as
a -- as a deferral to be made up at some future date or whether it was
just a complete, you know, termination for -- or suspension, I guess,
of the COLA for six months, and that's the only way you're going to
know is to get somebody to check the records, and I don't know if we
can do that --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I've got an idea. Why don't we leave this
-- why don't we put this 170,000 in, pending --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I made a suggestion. I'd like to see
if we could poll the board. I asked that --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Were you in the middle of something
because I --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Commissioner Hac'Kie, Commissioner Constantine
had a suggestion on the board and we need to act on that suggestion
before we go to a second one, as a matter of procedure. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Okay.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: The suggestion was to --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Still go with the full 3 percent in
April as we'd indicated.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I -- I'm not -- I would choose not to do that.
I think there's another solution out there.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I think there's another solution out there
too.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Okay. I have a -- that would be enough to
shoot that one down, so I have an alternative proposal.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: What?
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: How about if we leave this $170,000 in the
budget --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Put it back in.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I'm sorry, put it back, and between now
and -- leave it in for trim, and between now and final numbers, we get
the minutes, we find out what we promised people and we stick to what
we promised them.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Absolutely, because I think we should stick
to what we promised, and if -- if it's a deferral, then that's what
we'll do, and if it's a suspension --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Then it was.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Then it was.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And you want to leave it in for trim notice
without removing funds from anywhere else we might happen to see like
-- well, anyway.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: So we're adding $170,000 back --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Back.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- back in?
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Pending -- just for trim, pending --
COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I don't know if I agree with that.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: -- pending what we find out the minutes
actually reflect, out of fairness. Let's just do what we said we were
gonna do.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: What does that do to our millage rate, Mr.
Smykowski?
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Well, we're -- to reach the millage neutral
position and eliminate the funding that was for the intergovernmental
services fee, we needed total cuts of two million, nine fifty-five.
We're at two million, nine forty-eight, but I have not adjusted the
reserves on any of the reductions, the sheriff's budget reduction
alone of 2.2 million would reduce contingency reserves by 110,000, so
we would be below that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Let me just --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I'm -- I'm not gonna -- this is not a year
that requires for us -- people to pay higher taxes. I mean, come on.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: But did --
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: He just said we'll be below.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yeah, you'll be below it.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: You'll be below the millage neutral rate that you
sought out at the beginning of these workshops.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Which means -- you said below the rate, which
means there would be an increase, right? MR. SHYKOWSKI: No, no, no.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. You're going the other way. So if we
put this $170,000 back in, are we going to see a reduction in the
millage?
MR. SHYKOWSKI: Yes, and I'll give you an exact number in --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I don't want anyone to misunderstand, you
know, I think we need to address this in a better way, but I -- I -- I
just really had higher hopes for this budget year.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I just -- I don't think anybody is
suggesting that we do anything contrary to what we said a year ago as
policy, but I mean, there's nothing to prohibit us -- we know the
dates. Let's get the minutes now. We don't have to wait until
September. If somebody can pull the minutes on this discussion --
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I think we're going to have some public
speakers here in a little bit. Why don't we have somebody try to pick
that record out right now.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Let's not forget, there's still areas we could
remove money from.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: You got a suggestion?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yes, I do, reduce airport capital improvements
to $500,000, which they said their spread on their capital was a half
million. I want to hold them to it, so, you know, in lieu of a
business plan, we could take 115,000 off of there.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: With the cuts you have in place, taking into
account that reduction in reserve for contingency on the cuts you have
made, last year's adopted millage rate for the general fund was
3.7241. The proposed -- the revised proposed millage rate would be
3.7176.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That's with the 170 back -- back in?
MR. SHYKOWSKI: That is correct.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: But if we take 115 out, we're going to do
ourselves a little bit -- I just -- that's still a little burr under
my saddle because we don't have a business plan on the airport and --
COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: No offense, but you're not letting other
people take second bites at the apple, so I think you should --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I'm allowed to.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Okay.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I believe, as policy setters, we -- we are
provided that opportunity weekly, quite frankly, so I -- you know,
that still has been a -- a concern.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Mr. Chairman?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yes?
MR. FERNANDEZ: Along those same lines, I'll just reiterate what
I said earlier, I feel so strongly about this that I would request
that we give -- we be given the chance to do the same thing with the
county manager agencies rather than have this reduced. I'd rather see
-- I'd rather give them a chance to go back and take another look at
their departments and maybe come back with some recommended cuts to
equal that amount rather than what you're -- rather than considering
slipping that date.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Then -- then we don't need to add the
170 back in. We can leave the 170,000 out. We can still go ahead and
make that adjustment and just count on the county manager to find
$170,000 in cuts.
MR. FERNANDEZ: My point is, if it's -- if it's that critical for
you to keep that millage rate lower then it's -- it's that important,
I think, to me to make sure we keep that October 1st date.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Consider it that critical and then let's
see you do that -- we'll do it that way.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: In the meantime, I'll try and help you in some
other areas. I'm not giving up.
Okay. So we are -- take the 170 back out. We're not adding it
back in.
MR. SHYKOWSKI: We're not?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: No, we're not.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Well, it's going back in that budget, but
it's going to come out of other budgets.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: So the overall number, we do not
need --
MR. SHYKOWSKI: The overall number stays the same.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Raw number stays the same.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. Mr. Chairman, before we go to public
speakers, we probably need to give her a break. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yes.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: And I have a question on public speakers.
COHMISSIONER BERRY: Find out how many we have.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Are -- is it your intention to have public
speakers only on those items that we covered today?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: No, I think since it's wrap-up, you know --
how many speakers do we have total?
MR. FERNANDEZ: Twenty.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Twenty. How many of those are here on the
Sheriff's Office?
MR. FERNANDEZ: Nineteen.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Nineteen. And how many of those are employees
of the sheriff's agency?
MR. FERNANDEZ: I'm not sure.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. With that, we're going to cut our time
limit on speakers then. That's -- that's, what, roughly a hundred
minutes of -- okay. Yeah, we'll go to -- we'll go to three minutes on
speakers --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Can I just make a suggestion?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think, under wrap-up, I think we need to
hear final comments from everyone. I know even GNCA probably has some
wrap-up comments, so let's --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Chairman, just a suggestion as --
and you may want to reiterate this after we come back from
adjournment, but one of the things we've tried to do in the past year
is -- is let speakers say their piece, let them say -- if we have
comments, take notes, write them and let's all talk at the end rather
than talk between every single speaker because we'll be here 'till
nine o'clock doing it that way, just more effective.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Let's take a five minute recess and
then we'll reconvene for public comment.
(A brief recess was had.)
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Good afternoon. We're going to reconvene the
wrap-up session for the initial budget workshops.
We are to the public comments section for the day and as -- as we
indicated earlier, the public comment can be on both today's items and
previous items. What I'd like to ask is for your assistance. We do
have a lot of public speakers. Based on the timing today, we are
going to allot three minutes per speaker. If someone has addressed an
issue that you are addressing and you agree with their standpoint, we
ask for your courtesy to state that and be as concise as possible. I
think everyone would appreciate that, and with that, Mr. Fernandez,
why don't we go to public speakers, please.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Mr. Chairman, I understand that you asked to
consider those speakers that -- those speakers first that are not
related to the sheriff's budget?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Because of the bulk of the speakers on that
item, I think it would be appropriate to get the handful out of the
way before that and move to that item.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Okay. We have three that are not related to the
sheriff. The first is Mark Middlebrook.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And if we'd also call the second speaker so
they know they're on deck.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Second is Fay Biles.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And again, I'd like to ask all board members,
take good notes during the speakers and then we'll address everything
at the -- at the finality of the public speakers. Mr. Middlebrook.
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: Thank you, Hr. Chairman. Mark Middlebrook,
Senior Deputy Court Administrator, Twentieth Circuit. We sought
funding for the fourth floor build out this year. Our understanding
is, it was denied. I'd like to give you a quick review of the
history.
In 1994 and '95, began planning to build out the fourth floor.
'95, '96, we never made it past the county manager's overview or
review of the budget. '96, '97, we were told, don't even bother
asking for the money this year. Next year will be your -- your time
to do it, and here we are again.
I've provided you with some information which really probably
doesn't mean a whole lot to you at the moment. I'm going to try and
clear that up in my two minutes and eight seconds. Those are the
results of a study by the Wiley Group done in 1993, which we asked to
have projections of the needs for the Twentieth Judicial Circuit's use
for judgeships and courtroom space and so on.
As we follow through the statistics, we find that Mr. Wiley was
within 3 percent of the actual figures that we now realize. In 1990
-- I'm gonna just give a brief summary here. In 1990 to 1996, we've
gone up 50 percent in felony filings in circuit court. Domestic
relations have gone up 70 percent. Circuit civil has gone down 20
percent. Probate filings are up 20 percent and juvenile is up 45
percent, and that was as of 1996, which is the latest figures we have.
We have nine judges assigned here full time regularly, one of
which is only here, though, two weeks out of the month. We have two
additional judges that are here assigned to appear during one week
each month, as well as we have senior judges that visit. If, today,
fortunately, two of our judges are on vacation, but had they not been,
we would have had 11 judges here today to utilize nine courtrooms.
We have no more judge's chambers. As you can see, the
projections are that we're going to grow by four circuit judges, of
which we have received one and a quarter. We will also be growing by
four county judges by the year 2010. If we -- and we anticipate
receiving another judge next year, we will not have judicial chambers
for the judge, nor the JA, and we are out of courtrooms, so I again
ask you to please --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Good timing --
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: -- reconsider the funding and the build out of
the fourth floor. We are at critical mass right now.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you, Mr. Middlebrook.
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: Thank you.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: If we -- is that the only speaker on that
topic, because I have a question on that topic? I didn't know what
your protocol was, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I tell you what, since that's the only speaker
on that topic, if you have a question, fine, but let's hold board --
let's hold discussion until later.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: My question was, what are you going to do
-- you've got a judge and a quarter coming in next year?
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: No, ma'am. We've gone up from -- according to
the projections, we've already received one and a quarter of the four
circuit judges that we will be assigned here in Collier County. We
are anticipating an additional judge next year, and again, we have no
housing for the judge. Right now we're housing visiting judges in --
in conference rooms and jury rooms. When we have juries, we have
nowhere to house the visiting judges.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Mr. Middlebrook, you're quoted in the Naples
Daily News, Friday, March 28th, 1997 as saying there's nothing to
indicate another -- the county will be assigned another full-time
judge.
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: This year. That -- and that came to fruition.
The --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, this is only, you know, about
six or eight weeks old, so I -- obviously -- I'm not talking about
last year's budget. I'm talking about now. This is an article about
your request for next year, and in the article you're talking about,
if we had another full-time judge, and then they asked you, do you
think you're gonna get one, and you said, there's nothing to indicate
we'll get another one, and now you're saying, well, we'll get another
One.
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: Okay. The legislative session has already
ended for this coming budget year, which is July to June, and that was
what I was referring to in that article. I am now referring to 1998,
July 1st is -- is our anticipated time frame, during that budget year
for another judgeship, and -- and I was correct, we did not receive
another judgeship for this coming budget year, state budget --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: State budget year?
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: -- fiscal budget year.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Mr. Chairman, my question is, the state
gives us no help in terms of funding for circuit judges' quarters; s
that correct?
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Correct.
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: Yes, I tried my best to avoid article five
references this budget time, but this is an unfunded mandate by the
state. They provide you the person. You have to provide the work
space.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: What it means is, July of next year, if
another one is allocated, we have three months in that fiscal year in
which there will be no space for that judge as a permanent -- as their
courtroom, so to speak?
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Or office.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Right. Okay.
MR. MIDDLEBROOK: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you, Mr. Middlebrook.
And following Miss Biles will be?
MS. BILES: Fay Biles, president of the Marco --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Hang on just a second.
MS. BILES: I'm sorry.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Following Miss Biles will be?
MR. FERNANDEZ: Next is Janet Vasey.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Vasey.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Vasey?
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Vasey.
MR. FERNANDEZ: I'm sorry, Vasey.
MS. BILES: Go?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yes.
MS. BILES: Fay Biles, president of the Marco Island Taxpayers
Association. There are two that have come up today that I must make
some comments from a Marco Island standpoint. The last one is the
discussion on the Davis triangle. As you know, East Naples and Marco
share District One, fund 102, and when I heard that murmuring of a 45
percent millage increase, I became very much concerned, because about
eight years ago, I remember very well that when East Naples had to put
sewers in and all the roads had to be redone, Marco Island got zip,
absolutely zero funding for anything, and since that time, Mr.
Archibald and Mr. Bobanick have been just absolutely wonderful about
doing our share every year and it's -- it's increased -- I bet you it
increased greatly.
I'm concerned about this, though, because this Davis triangle
that you're talking about, according to the map, I see shares two
different commission districts, and I'm wondering if that shouldn't be
looked at very carefully to see -- because I'm telling you right now,
if -- if there's that big millage increase and Marco Island has to pay
for that, you're going to hear some loud shouts.
As you remember, we came before the board to ask for our own MSTD
for roads and we were turned down a couple years ago. Maybe --
perhaps it's time to come back and -- and do that again.
The other issue is on the water committee. We -- if you remember
when the regulatory agency was set up last year, there was just a
discussion, there wasn't any hard and fast promise made, but at that
time, if you remember, you said they didn't need the four and a half
percent, but they could go down to 2 percent, that that was plenty of
money that was needed, and as you know, Marco Island probably
supplies, what, 75, 80 percent of that -- those are our bills.
Every percentage that that little thing goes down means a big
reduction in our water bills, and we're -- and we're not complaining.
The compromise to 3 percent is fine, but let's do hope that next year
perhaps we could go down another percentage so that we can get it down
to that 2 percent, because our water bills are very high, as you well
know. So those two things from Marco.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you, Miss Biles.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Miss Vasey.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And following Miss Vasey, Mr. Fernandez?
MR. FERNANDEZ: Next is Mr. Doug Caperton.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Oh, Caperton.
MS. VASEY: Janet Vasey, for the record. I'm speaking for the
Greater Naples Civic Association and I just wanted to remind you that
there is still a little potential play in some of the numbers.
First of all, we have -- we'd identified a hundred and -- we'd
identified in 1998 about $300,000 of additional revenue we thought
might be generated and we'll be working with Mike's office to -- to
see how that works out by the end of the year. You kind of wanted to
wait on that one, and so that's kind of a do out bill where we might
have some savings yet that haven't been included in any of Mike's
numbers.
There's also -- we have projected an -- an increase in carry
forward from 1997, expenses that won't materialize and revenues that
probably will of about $600,000, so that's about $900,000 that's still
out there potentially.
We also have, depending on the resolution of the COLA decision,
not only is there 170 with -- in the general revenue fund, but there's
also additional monies out there from some of the other service funds,
the internal service fund and -- and some of the other funds that
would filter down into less money needing to be transferred from the
general revenue fund, how all that -- that all works through, and --
and I just wanted you to hold that in your mind too because those
things together could result in maybe as much as a million five, and
you remember today on the internal service funds, you cut about two
and a quarter -- $225,000 from those funds, which then will -- will
filter down through the -- the customers and 001 is one of those
customers, so I -- I think we would say that there's about a million
five out there that potentially could come in by the end of September,
and if you do have some bills out, I know you made some commitments on
the -- on the -- automation equipment to the Public Defender's Office,
so that was 160, but I just wanted you to keep in mind that there may
be some other money out there that could take care of other problems
if you saw them as being significant. Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you, Miss Vasey, and once again, thank
you for your -- your notes and efforts in GNCA. We appreciate it. MR. FERNANDEZ: Mr. Caperton, and then Crystal Kinzel.
MR. CAPERTON: Good afternoon, commissioners. My name is Doug
Caperton and I'd like to speak to you this afternoon regarding the
sheriff's budget. I've been a member of the Sheriff's Office for 24
years, and in watching and reviewing the budget proceedings going on,
I feel that I need to say a few words as both a member of the
Sheriff's Office and a citizen of Collier County.
It appears that by declining the sheriff's request for sufficient
funds to support the current services of the community, that you are
asking the sheriff and members of the Sheriff's Office to work harder
and smarter with less. I understand that you represent the people of
Collier County and are trying to act in their best interest, but I've
been working under -- we've been working, excuse me, smarter and
harder with less for a number of years.
As I'm sure you agree, people can only be asked to work harder,
smarter with -- with less for so long before stress takes its toll.
I've seen -- been seeing the stress take its toll in the Sheriff's
Office for a while now and I feel that cutting the requested budget
would create -- would create even more stress on a group of dedicated
people in an organization which is understaffed and overworked in a
community which continues to grow at a rapid pace.
Law enforcement is a very labor intensive profession, and I'm
asking as a member of the Sheriff's Office and as a citizen of Collier
County for you to rethink your position on the sheriff's budget for
the sake of the citizens of our county and for the sake of those who
make the law enforcement their life's avocation. We are really trying
to protect and serve this community and are only asking for your help
in funding the positions needed to do this important job.
As the community policing coordinator for Collier County
Sheriff's Office, I have the responsibility for working with the
entire community to create innovative problem solving and crime
production projects. We've been able to implement many new projects
which solve problems and maintain the quality of life the people of
Collier County expect.
Again, my concern is that without sufficient positions to do the
job, much of what we've been able to accomplish over the past several
years will go to the wayside and we'll be moving backward in our
attempt to reduce crime and people scared of crime in our community.
Please reconsider your position on the sheriff's budget so that
we might be able to provide the basic law enforcement services on the
level we've been providing over the past year. Thank you. MR. FERNANDEZ: Miss Kinzel, and next is Mike Fox.
MS. KINZEL: For the record, Crystal Kinzel. I'm the finance
director with the Sheriff's Office, but also as a citizen and
taxpayer. We've worked long and hard on the Sheriff's Office budget
and we may not have all the answers the first day we come over here,
but we go back and we work very hard to try to bring you the answers
to the issues that are brought up during those original workshop days.
Now at this workshop, you've asked us to speak as a member of the
public instead of working with us on the Sheriff's Office issues.
You've raised concerns over the last few days about the taxpayer's
pocket, and I, as a taxpayer, appreciate that, but with the other
hand, you've assessed 1.2 million in median beautification
assessments, a half a mill in my particular area. That's about ten
times what the Sheriff's Office is asking for their budget increase
this year.
You've indicated that you've taken away from parks and recreation
or some other county departments in the past in favor of the sheriff,
yet parks, for example, have increased 27.6 percent, 10 percent in the
general fund. This may be necessary, and I agree, I like the parks
and I enjoy our community and our neighborhood, but I think sometimes
as you can see by these percents, a -- a bottom line percent number
might be misleading in what we really need in the community. I want a
beautiful community, but I also want a safe one.
The cuts you are making in the sheriff's budget cut into our
current services and operations. Please leave the dollars in, at
least for the trim notices, and give us the opportunity over the next
couple of months to complete our town hall meetings and provide the
information to the taxpayers. If you still feel it necessary in
September, then you have the opportunity as the Board of County
Commissioners to cut our budget, but by cutting trim, no matter what
we do at the town hall meetings and no matter what public support
we're able to solicit for the budget and our needs, you won't have the
funding available to go back and give the Sheriff's Office the money
it needs to operate. Thank you.
COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Up until today I thought that only in the
federal government would they call a three million dollar, 6.7 percent
increase in funding a cut. Please don't say cut anymore, people.
Please don't say that. It insults all of our intelligence for you to
come up here and say three million dollars extra money is a cut.
Don't do that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: As much as I may agree with you, let's try and
get through all the public speakers and then we'll have all the
opportunity for discussion and debate we need.
MR. FOX: My name's Mike Fox. I'm currently with the Sheriff's
Office also. I am assigned in the violent crimes bureau. What --
what we've been doing since 1989 is the old adage, do more for less.
Since 1989, we've had the same amount of investigators in our bureau.
Our reports, as anybody can see, have doubled, tripled, even -- even
more so.
Just a couple of statistics. In one of our major crimes that we
work which would be a homicide, on any known offender, you're looking
at one single man hour of 162 hours for one case. On unknown
offenders, you're looking anywhere above and beyond 1,200 hours.
During the month of May, we had five homicides. Even just one murder
can take up to 500 hours even if an arrest is made on the scene.
We have five investigators. We also work anywhere between 150
and 200 cases a month. Now, if I have one investigator, if he takes
even the 162 hours, his other cases just sit there, and we haven't
complained. We've worked with this. We've pulled in people and
everything else, but I think, as Mr. Caperton said, you can only do so
much for so long.
That's all I have to add.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Dennis McDaniel, and the next one is Robert
Bennett.
MR. MCDANIEL: Good afternoon, commissioners. My name is Dennis
McDaniel. I'm an employee of the Collier County Sheriff's Office and
a homicide investigator. There's only a couple of things I can add to
what Sergeant Fox has added. I'm one of the lead investigators that's
working the homicide. Unfortunately, we don't have the time to spend
and to give one-on-one, patience with people. Unfortunately, with
this type of case, I'm asking, we need more people, we need more money
to address these situations because not only do we have a suspect or
offender, we have to deal with victims and victims' families also.
What I'd like to ask at this time is to reconsider the sheriff's
budget. We really need some help. I'm not a politician. I'm one of
the detectives that stays up until two or three o'clock in the morning
that goes to a scene. From my point of view, I wish you would really
look at it from a cop's point of view. Thank you.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Mr. Bennett, and then Sheri Barnett.
MR. BENNETT: Good after. I'm Bob Bennett.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Do the time clock, Hike.
MR. BENNETT: I'm a citizen of Collier County.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Excuse me, we need to reset --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I just didn't want it to beep as soon as
you started, so he's starting the --
MR. BENNETT: Should I start over?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Go ahead.
MR. BENNETT: Bob Bennett, citizen of Collier County. I have the
best of both worlds. I'm a vice-chairman of one of your boards,
gentlemen and ladies. I'm on the wastewater and water utility
authority for the county, and on the other side, I've worked for the
sheriff's -- is that for me now?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you, Mr. Bennett. No.
MR. BENNETT: On the other side, I'm getting a good education in
-- in the sheriff's agency. I've been through the citizens academy.
I've been through eight or nine of their -- wonderful -- I've been
through eight or nine of their postgraduate courses. I'm a volunteer
for the agency. I'm one of the people responsible for putting out the
badge and key, which is their internal house program, and this is
quite a good experience because I wander around the whole agency. I
to talk to people at all levels and all areas of expertise.
I'm a former Fortune 500 senior officer and I've had the ability
and the opportunity to analyze and see what many people do in the
areas of their professionalism. I can say this is a very professional
group of people at all levels. I'm very impressed. I -- as a person
who does some work for the county and does some work for the sheriff's
agency, I'd like to see more harmony. I don't like to see people
taking -- sniping at the sheriff's agency, which I feel has been the
case in some instances.
In any event, the agency is suppressing crime, they're efficient.
They've been holding it down in this county; street gangs, crime, all
types of crime. Unless they can keep up with the population growth --
growth and the crime growth with their personnel and their technology,
we'll find that they will go from suppressing crime to reacting to
crime, which is the case all over the state, and I don't think we want
that. So I say as a citizen and as a volunteer -- I'm stopping for
the fifth time -- I hope you will reconsider your budget. The federal
government talks about cutting. Well, they -- they cut the -- the
rate of increase. I hope that you will not cut the rate of increase.
Thank you.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Sheri Barnett, and the next is Tina Osceola.
MS. BARNETT: Good afternoon, board. I'm Sherry Barnett. Host
of you know me, except for I believe Mr. Fernandez hasn't gotten to
hear me speak yet, and all of you also know that my husband is a
deputy for the Sheriff's Department, but I'm not here speaking for
him. I'm speaking for myself.
I just had a couple of questions because I've been trying to
listen to the budget workshops and work and it's been a little bit
difficult. I haven't been here for everything, but I have a couple of
questions that I would like to address. One of them being the first
one, I understood when, I believe Barbara Berry was trying to make a
point that if we kept everything at growth rate, which I believe was
7.8 percent this year, that that was a number that I could handle with
utilizing as a base for what the Sheriff's Department budget should
be, because then it would not be falling below growth, but I'm not
quite sure where you derived the number that you came up with to get
the three million cut. I believe it ends up being like 6.7 percent,
and I'm not sure how that figure came about and I was just curious as
to if possibly someone could give me some indication.
And the other question I have in regards to COLAs. I understand
that you're looking at probably putting up a procedure that you're
going to have for the county. The other constitutional officers are
already using the 3 percent because of other reasons, but you're
expecting the Sheriff's Department to do theirs on an anniversary
budget as they have done in the past because it saves money. I'm
questioning whether or not that's fair.
Those are just a couple of things that I'd like to ask. I would
like to see if you would reconsider. I don't think anybody is
expecting you to grant their full amount that they've requested, but I
would like to see if you would consider adjustments. Thank you. MR. FERNANDEZ: Tina Osceola, and Paul Canady is next.
MS. OSCEOLA: Hello, commissioners. Tina Osceola, for the
record. Welcome to Collier County. I feel like I should say that,
for one thing, but --
MR. FERNANDEZ: Thanks.
MS. OSCEOLA: My great grandmother, grandmother before her was
born here in Collier County before it was Collier County, what is now
known as Fakahatchee Strand. My -- my grandmother was born here, my
father was born here, I was born here, so I feel like this is my
county.
There's one important thing in my life and that's my daughter and
there's three reasons why that is. Number one, I'm concerned for her
education, her medical care and her personal safety, the -- the
protection of her life, the protection of her property, my property,
what have you. Well, for her education, I have a choice. I
personally can decide to send her to private school, to public school,
whatever, it's my choice. For her medical care, I can go with Doctor
A, B or C, I have a choice, but for her protection of her life, I
don't have that choice, you do, and it frightens me in many ways now
that I am working for the Sheriff's Office. I see things a little bit
differently, as a citizen of Collier County, I put a great deal of
respect and admiration, even -- I could even say that, for both the
Collier County Commission and the Collier County Sheriff's Office,
because I feel like I grew up with this county. I did.
When I was born in 1967, the Sheriff's Office was in one
building, basically, so as I grew up, so did the Sheriff's Office, and
I'm very concerned that what Sheriff Hunter is requesting and is
saying that he needs for -- for us for a citizen isn't being taken as
serious as maybe it should be because he didn't come here and ask you
for something that would satisfy the needs versus growth here in this
county. He's telling you what we can get by with, and that worries me
because I don't want my daughter's safety just getting by. I think
that's scary and it should be scary for you, as well as I've worked
here at the Sheriff's Office. I've had to watch investigators and
road patrol people out on the road that have had to deal with babies
being murdered to people being raped. It's not pretty, and what
they're asking for and what we're asking for as a Sheriff's Office and
what I'm asking for as a citizen isn't something that is, as you would
say, the Taj Mahal. We're not asking for 100 percent quality of life.
We're asking for protection. Protection for every one, and I don't
like it being taken lightly as a member of Collier County and as a
member of the Sheriff's Office as well, but number one, as a person
that was born and raised here.
It's -- it's really scary to walk outside and see your county
grow into what it has without knowing that the people that are there
to protect us aren't being treated the way they should. So I
desperately urge you to reconsider your point, and as you said,
Commissioner Norris, I know that we're using the word cut. And all of
us in public administration use that synonymously with the word
decrease. So let's not decrease what we've asked for. We just look
for full consideration of that. Thank you.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Paul Canady's next, and then Eric Daniels.
MR. CANADY: Good afternoon. For the record, I'm Paul Canady. I
come here today also wearing both hats as a 25 year member of the
Collier County Sheriff's Office and a 30 year resident of Collier
County and a homeowner/taxpayer. What we're asking for and what I'm
specifically asking for is for the commission to reconsider what
they're looking at, and I understand what your position is. I sat
here with you for three years. I know how tough the job can be, so I
don't think I'm speaking out of class.
What we're asking for is that you reconsider the position on
millage rates and look at asking the taxpayer to spend a couple of
dollars extra for public safety. I, as a taxpayer, am willing to do
that, have on many occasions in the past. Don't necessarily always
like it, but sometimes it's a cost of doing good business, and I think
that's the position that we're in right now, trying to find a way to
do the best business we can for the taxpayers of Collier County, and
that's what we ask you for, and I won't go back over the points that
everybody else has brought up, but it's important. I don't think
we're asking for excess. We're asking to be able to provide a service
to the taxpayers that's needed, and I ask your consideration. Thank
you.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Eric Daniels and Acey Edgemon.
MR. DANIELS: Good afternoon, commissioners. For the record, I'm
Eric Daniels. I've resided in Collier County for 48 years. I've been
employed with the Sheriff's Office for 24 years and I'd like to speak
to you today in reference to the sheriff's budget and reconsidering
that budget. I speak to you as a taxpayer and an employee of the
Sheriff's Office and would like you to consider that in East Naples
alone, there are approximately 37,000 residents, that last year they
generated 79,000 calls for service for our sheriff's office, and that
equated to about a 17 and a half percent increase in calls for service
just for that area.
The sheriff, I believe, you've asked him to do more with less,
we've heard that already. I believe he has. He's -- he's instituted
a lot of cost saving methods. He's -- he's gotten more federal funded
programs for the Sheriff's Office. He's utilized the -- the federal
auction system to -- for the helicopter and other equipment for the
Sheriff's Office, so I believe he's -- he's shown you that he can and
does try to save money at any place that -- that he can do that.
Also consider, commissioners, that the Sheriff's Office probably,
if not absolutely, is the first line of defense and the first line of
protection in any of our situations of emergency, such as hurricanes,
any natural disasters, and we need to be -- we must be prepared to
meet any and all of those instances and we need your support to do
that.
In closing, I just received my tax statement for North Naples and
I'm paying three times more for -- for a drainage pipe up there in
Naples Park that doesn't even go in front of my house than you're
asking me to pay for the sheriff's budget and I would be much more --
much happier to pay that sheriff's budget to get the protection than
to pay that drainage pipe that's going over there that I'm not seeing
any benefit from. Thank you very much.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Acey Edgemon, and then it's Gene Brown.
MR. EDGEHON: Commissioners, my name's Acey Edgemon. I live down
on beautiful Isles of Capri and also am a long time veteran of the
Sheriff's Office, 26 years, but I actually have some good news to tell
you. The sheriff asked us a couple years ago to find ways to save
money and use other resources that are available. We did that, as
you're well aware, through the military surplus program.
Two of the things that I do for the sheriff is, I -- I supervise
the marine bureau and aviation bureau, so because of the fact that the
government's downsizing, particularly the military, we were able to
require a lot of stuff for about 2.6 million dollars worth of
equipment so far, and that's part of the helicopter program, which we
would not have if we didn't go through this program to -- to do that,
but it's also a double-edged sword. We found out among the things
with the military downsizing and also a lot of the other agencies that
we used to get support from are also downsizing, such as customs, DEA
and the other agencies along those lines. Lieutenant Daniels'
admission about the fact that we are front line now and we are.
Several years ago, the customs office here was 28 people and about
four or five boats. Today they have three people and one boat with no
gas. Their officers actually ride with us when we go patrol, so
that's where we're at today, so drug interdiction and a lot of things
that maybe you're not aware of fall squarely on the sheriff's
shoulders, and that's what we're trying to do, so please take a look
at the budgets. One of the positions in this budget currently is for
a marine officer for Harco Island, which we desperately need just
because of interdiction and everything that goes with it, so those are
things that we need to take a look at. Thank you.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Next is Gene Brown, and then Bob Burhans.
MR. BROWN: Good afternoon. My name's Gene Brown. I'm employed
with the Collier County Sheriff's Office. My position is captain in
charge of the criminal investigation division, and I don't want to
take your time now and stand here and rehash what everybody's saying,
but I would like to give a couple of examples of -- which shows that
the -- the problems that we deal with, and since 1989, we really
haven't added any certified personnel to the criminal investigations
division except through grants, and three of these positions were
domestic violence investigators. These three investigators are
charged with working 227 cases on the average per month. That's
better than 80 a month per investigator.
The example I would like to give of the problems that we're
suffering here, which is due to lack of funding and personnel, is that
last month, I received a request from two of these individuals
requesting reassignment. Their concerns were that the quality of
their work would probably not be up to what we demand of them, and as
such, the citizens were suffering. Being dedicated individuals,
they're concerned that if something falls through the hole, so to
speak, it's going to result in an injury, if not death, to one of the
citizens in this county. They are very concerned about that. As
their supervisor, I am also concerned about it. So I would ask you to
take some time, really look at what we need and please address our
needs as -- as you would see fit. Thank you.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Next is Bob Burhans, and then Tom Davis.
MR. BURHANS: I'm Bob Burhans. I'm a tax paying resident of this
county. You've known me also as well as a member of the Sheriff's
Office. You -- you speak frequently of your taxpayers. I am one of
your taxpayers. I am one of your fellow taxpayers. I think that
funds raised locally should be used locally and I think that I join
the multitudes who don't want to see any more money than necessary go
to tax expenditures.
I believe that money spent in public safety and law enforcement
are monies well spent, especially when they're monitored and
supervised as closely as those which we use in the Sheriff's Office
are. Again, as a resident of this county, I think that -- that if the
commission could have the opportunity, individually or collectively,
to spend some time with the members of the Collier County Sheriff's
Office in any of their various capacities, you might find that you
probably are getting more than your dollar's worth out of virtually
every one of them. I, for one, as a citizen and as a member of that
agency, am tremendously proud of them. I think that they do a super
job with what they have in this burgeoning age of -- or age of
burgeoning technology.
I think that if we allow ourselves to fall behind, we're going to
have a very serious catch-up day that will come sometime in the future
and it won't be a long time in the future at that. I would implore
you to look again, to reconsider at least what seems to be that very
reasonable 7.8 percent level which was mentioned the other day. Seems
to make good sense and should be acceptable, I would think, throughout
the county generally. Thank you very much.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Next is Tom Davis and then Mr. C.V. Nind.
MR. DAVIS: My name is Tom Davis. I'm also a resident of Collier
County and I'm also the lieutenant in charge of the youth relations
section of the agency. My job is basically to make sure there's a
deputy at each high school, middle school and elementary school.
Right now, we have two deputies in all the high schools except the
Immokalee High School, and we have a deputy in the middle schools and
we're not servicing the elementary schools according to the way we
should.
We're presently with 25 elementary schools, and I'm having to
take the deputies out of the middle schools and the deputies that work
in the high schools, the second deputy to cover the elementary schools
and try to, with all that, to be proactive in the school system and
giving presentations, but recently what we've been doing is more
reactive work, where we've been running from call to call. With --
right now we presently have about 26 deputies in the program. It
appears that we're just trying to keep up. There's, totally, 40
schools right now, including the Gulf Coast School will be coming up
in the near future, which is another high school that's going to be
coming, and we need to cover that as well.
There's a lot of programs that we're offering in the school
system and trying to maintain control of the -- the kids in the
schools and some of those programs are the DARE program, the junior
deputy program, and do presentations in the school to try to work with
your kids and my kids. If you have kids in the school, you realize
the importance of having a deputy there and making sure that those
schools are protected.
I've been in the school system right now, I've been here since
1979 as a -- as a youth relations deputy working in the middle school,
and it makes a big difference to have that law enforcement officer
there. I think as a result of having deputies in the schools, it has
definitely made a difference between Collier County, Miami, Fort
Lauderdale where you see people are being shot, those kind of things.
I think having that deputy there and being there for such a long
period of time, we've built quite a rapport with the students, the
teachers, the community and we've made a big difference, in my
concern. So I'm asking that if you could, there are three officers
that the sheriff is asking for within the youth relations program,
that you could try to maintain those three. I appreciate your concern
and thank you very much.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Mr. Nind, and then the next is Gene Davis.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: You can work on the name with him later.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Did I not get it right?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: No one does.
MR. NIND: Commissioners, good afternoon. I am Chris Nind with
the Collier County Sheriff's Office. Commissioners, what I would like
to do is to explain to you why the Sheriff's Office requested three
hundred and six thousand dollars, six hundred -- $306,600 from the 301
fund.
What I would like to do is to go through the front page that I
have given you, and I need to take you back, really, to October of '94
when the 800 megahertz contract was signed, and if you look at page
two, I think I've highlighted in most of the copies, you will see that
the sheriff requested 299 mobile radios and 556 pottables, giving a
total of 855. Actually, the sheriff has received, through the
contract, 300 mobiles, 459 pottables, giving a total of 759 radios.
There is, therefore, a shortfall of 96 radios. A shortfall of 96
radios, and what I'd like to do is explain how and why that occurred.
If you look at the second block on the first page, in the October
'94 contract with Erricson, the cost of pottables and mobiles was
averaged. It was averaged, and in the document, you will see --
that's on page three of the -- or it's the third page that I gave you,
you will see that the average cost for a mobile is 2,363, and for a
portable is 2,446.
Now, the actual costs, actual costs in November of '95, for a
mobile was 3,158, and for a portable, 2,560. If you then look at the
fourth column on that second block, the contract total for mobiles and
pottables was two thousand -- $2,066,513. The actual costs for 299
mobiles and 566 pottables, which is what the sheriff requested and
certainly wanted was $2,367,410, a shortfall of $300,897, a shortfall
of $300,897.
Now, the Sheriff's Office has tried to live with that, but the
fact that the law enforcement vacancies within the Sheriff's Office
are now going to be absolutely full and filled, means that we do
require those additional radios from the original contract request,
and therefore, that is why the Sheriff's Office requested 306,600 --
$306,600 from 301 to purchase those outstanding radios, and therefore,
commissioners, I would ask you to review that request in the light of
this information, and I can only apologize I wasn't here on Thursday
because I think this may have helped things.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: On this item, I do have, if the board will
indulge me, I do have a question. On the information you just
received -- we just received from you, it says in 1994 there were
numbers of mobiles and pottables requested, and that amount received?
MR. NIND: Right.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: There's a cost on the next graph down on an
average cost allowed per contract, and then there's a November 1995
actual cost --
MR. NIND: Correct.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- which in the mobile radio section is
significantly higher than the cost allowed per contract. MR. NIND: Correct.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: What's the purpose of a contract if we're
paying more than the contract amount? You lost me there.
MR. NIND: The contract took -- if -- if you look at page three,
if I can go back to that in the averaging, the contract looked at
taking a number of different types of particular mobile and portable,
and then the overall number was averaged. Yes, there is a large
discrepancy within the mobile that the Sheriff's Office has and the
average cost that was decided within the contract.
At the contract time, which is October of '94, there were still
questions on which particular equipment we would purchase one year
down the road, because obviously there was still technology
developments within Erricson, certainly with regard to the mobile
radio, we were looking at certainly a radio that was capable to carry
mobile data terminal input, we were looking at a mobile radio that
certainly would have the power output that if anything did happen to
the communications system throughout Collier County, we knew that a
deputy, no matter where he was in the county, could actually get back
on his mobile radio if he needed to, back to communications with the
Sheriff's Office or car to car. So those were important factors in
deciding on what radio to -- to go with and obviously the newer or the
later radio to go with, we know that it is the best technology at the
time, and also we know that the spares are going to be available,
because obviously we're looking at the system taking us into the 21st
century. I mean --
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: But none of them were 3,158. Even the
most expensive was, what, 3061. How did they -- how did they end up
charging you something higher than anything that was quoted in the
contract?
MR. NIND: Well, the figures that were taken here were figures
that were back in basically in our original request of the RFP. We
laid down a number of things, and those were figures that they came
back with, but actually at the time of purchase, certainly that was
the mobile radio that suited public safety's needs, to be absolutely
honest, and yes, there is -- there is a $700 difference, and of
course, when you're ordering something like -- when you're ordering
299, that makes a big difference, you know. If it was eight radios, I
suspect one could, you know, get around that particular problem.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Did that cost -- I assume this contract, was
that contract between the provider and the Sheriff's Office or did
this board have any involvement in it?
MR. NIND: Yeah, this is the main Erricson contract.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank
you.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Next is Mr. Gene Davis and then Lieutenant Karen
Strickland.
MR. DAVIS: Good afternoon. My name's Gene Davis and I work for
the Sheriff's Office and I'm here today because I just have a comment
to make. Like yourself, Mr. Chairman, I started at the bottom area
and I've worked my way up to what -- I'm now considered admin. I'm in
charge of several people, but some of the things that goes with that,
I'm on a salary. I don't get paid any extra. I put in a lot of extra
time, but I'm from a police family and that's just understood.
I worked with the SWAT team in 1984. At that time, there were
ten full-time people and one supervisor. Well, today, I'm that
supervisor, but I still have ten full-time people, and we do a lot
more, again, trying to make things work. This requires specialized
training and equipment that any agency, not just this agency, any
agency that asks their employees to confront ever-increasing violence
in this society needs that equipment, and I want to thank you for
prior approval of funding, but remember that progress means change.
Change comes about from growth and growth costs money. I encourage
the board to make a stand for growth, to show the sheriff some
consideration on his budget request. Thank you. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Karen Strickland, and then Will Sargent.
MS. STRICKLAND: I'm Karen Strickland with the Sheriff's Office.
I have the command of the North Naples substation patrol division and
I just wanted to share with you from the patrol deputies' perspective
of looking back at our budget in recent years. We've not asked for
anything that would be a luxury item or an additional. We are asking
you for positions to cover the critical needs as far as expansion, the
increasing in crime rate, the juvenile problems, youthful offender
problems and all of the other areas that other members have shared
with you today.
I think that radios are a vital safety piece of equipment from
the deputies' perspective. You know, there's a lot of things going on
with the technology that -- that I'm not involved in. I'm speaking to
you just simply from the patrol perspective. We still have areas in
the county that do not have radio coverage, and that's being worked on
by the technical support people between the county and the provider
and our agency.
We have not expanded personnel-wise to keep up with the growth
and the increased crime rate. We're not adequately addressing some of
the areas that need a lot more attention. Lieutenant Davis hit on the
youth relations program and the attention that we need to be giving to
the younger citizens and cultivating a different kind of respect and
involvement with our little people growing into productive citizens in
the county. I would just ask you to look back at what we've asked for
and see that it is not extra. It's not luxury items. It's
maintenance, it's keeping up. Look at what we do with our patrol cars
and other basic equipment that we depend on day in and day out. We
don't even think about turning over a patrol car until it reaches a
hundred thousand miles on it. That's a lot of wear and tear on an
emergency response vehicle.
We have a lot of other shortages, but I'm sure you've heard those
stories of, you know, two computers in a substation for 45 people to
share. You know, we don't make issues over that. We deal with it.
I've been in supervisory capacity with the agency for around 15 years
and we regularly hear with, deal with it, work smarter with what
you've got, be more creative with scheduling, double up on equipment.
We don't depend on just the district for our coverage. We work
between all the districts. If we know we have a big event coming up
or if we have a disaster of some sort, we call on each other to
provide supplemental coverage. We do the same thing with our special
services divisions and with our criminal investigations division. If
we happen to have some flex time, which isn't very often, we
supplement our investigators on big cases, so I -- I am very confident
to stand here and tell that you we have a strong working team there
and we are good stewards of the taxpayers' money, and I would just ask
you to reconsider it from a functional perspective. Thank you.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Next is Will Sargent and then Hubert Howard.
MR. SARGENT: My name's Will Sargent. I'm a lieutenant with the
Sheriff's Office. I'm assigned to the crime intelligence bureau.
I've been there for ten years. Prior to that, I was with the San
Diego Police Department.
Part of our job is tactical support and the other part is
strategic support and advising administration on what is coming down
the road. What we're seeing is as Collier County grows and Naples
grows, crime is also going to grow, not only in numbers, but also in
the type of crime, and you currently have organized crime here. You
have traditional organized crime, you have European organized crime,
you have Asian organized crime influence in this county. You have
Caribbean organized crime. You have organized drug cartels, okay,
using this county as a -- an ingress and egress point, and we see all
of that continuing to increase.
Within my bureau, and I have the career criminal section, okay,
as Arlo Guthrie said, you know, they're not only the mother tapers,
they're the father tapers. What that means is, they are the worst of
the worst. We have 1,256 career criminals that are documented in
Collier County right now. There's an act called a Gort Act, okay.
It's where the worst, the most violent are prosecuted, and up until --
it was just created in '95, we have six of those cases currently and
one carried over from 1996. There are currently 72 open cases in the
court system right now on violent career criminals, and to handle
those, I have one detective and one analyst that see all those cases
through the court system, and two detectives that try to manage 1,256
career criminals that are out in the field.
Another section that we have is street gangs. We were the first
to alert the sheriff about five, six years ago that street gangs were
going to impact Collier County and we needed to start doing something
about it and he appointed the street gang coordinator. We have seen,
in the last 18 months, an increase in the severity of the individuals
involved in the street gangs and in the number of the street gangs and
people involved in them. We have seen as many as -- estimate 25 to 30
different gangs pop up, some of them are major, some of them are
minor. Three hundred plus individuals that are gang members or
associates that we keep track of.
You just need to ask yourselves that if you don't put money up
front and address these issues now, how is that going to impact
Collier County down the road? Is the quality of life going to be the
type that's going to attract people here to live and businesses to the
county? I don't think we should just arbitrarily say we're going to
give the Sheriff's Office X number of dollars without looking at what
they're requesting and is that good money well spent. Thank you.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Next is Hubert Howard, and then Tom Morris.
MR. HOWARD: Good afternoon, commissioners. Hubie Howard. I've
lived in Collier County for 20 years. I hold the position as
vice-chairman of the Sheriff's Citizens Commission. I'm not an
employee of the Sheriff's Office and none of the commissioners are
either. We are 60 strong. The full commission meets every other
month and the executive committee meets monthly. We've been kept well
advised of the sheriff's budget for about four months. Some of us
serve on the sheriff's commissioners' budget committee, the chairman
of which is Ed Morton and you're all familiar with Ed, senior
vice-president of our hospital and an outstanding financial person.
We believe strongly that from what we've seen, and we're not
experts in this obviously, but as laymen, that the request for the
increase that the sheriff has made is justified. If he is constrained
to the three million dollars which your straw vote indicated was going
to be allotted, he will not be able to add any, or at least not most,
if not any, of the additional 13 manpower requirements, and you've
heard these loyal workmen -- workwomen and workmen in the Sheriff's
Office, employees tell you their jobs.
Now, I ask you to consider some subjective matters, two
basically. The first is that as our county grows and with the input
of dollars, some of which you furnished through TDC and the other
organizations in our -- in our county working to expand the county,
bring more people here, we bring more criminals here. They see our
ads, not just in the United States, but in Europe and around the world
and they come here because we are considered a rich county and it is a
-- an obvious target for them.
The other thing is that our people, and I -- in my own -- in just
research of people around the county to the degree I can, have become
much more aware through media, the events that have taken place here
and throughout the world and our country, criminal events. They
become much more aware of their own personal safety and they are
therefore requiring more service. It was Commissioner Norris, I
believe the other day, that made an excellent suggestion, to stay
revenue neutral and allow the sheriff a 7.8 percent increase, and I
plead with you that that is a fair way to proceed. Thank you very
much.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Tom Morris, and then Scott Salley.
MR. MORRIS: Good afternoon. I appreciate the opportunity to
speak with you today. I too am not an employee of the Sheriff's
Department. I'm an employee of the Collier County Public Schools and
I speak to you today on behalf of Superintendent Robert Hunz and the
administration of the school system.
We have had the great privilege of working for many years now
with the youth relations programs of the Sheriff's Department. They
are, in our estimation, excellent; excellent for the children of this
community and excellent for the community itself. We understand that
the sheriff is asking for some expansion of those programs and we're
fully supportive of the expansion of those programs.
I listed five things that I see as -- as particular values to the
community and to the -- to the kids for youth relations program. One
is rapport building with kids for prevention purposes. Another is
education on law enforcement matters. A third is law enforcement
itself. A fourth is getting intelligence information through the
rapport with kids for solving problems in the general community, and a
fifth is a spinoff benefit, I think, of a better educational
environment for the children of this community. We'd like to
encourage you in every way possible to support the youth relations
program in the Sheriff's Department. Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Dr. Morris, I just want to be clear. You're
here on behalf of the superintendent, Dr. Hunz, requesting that we
increase the proposed allocation of the Sheriff's Department?
MR. MORRIS: The programs that currently exist and the ones that
the sheriff's are -- sheriff is asking to increase, we would support,
yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So that's a yes?
MR. MORRIS: That's a yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Next is Scott Salley, and then Pat Mullen.
MR. SALLEY: Commissioners, good to see you.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Hi, Scott.
MR. SALLEY: Always a pleasure to have this opportunity to speak.
Welcome. My name is Scott Salley. I'm with the Collier County
Sheriff's Office. Again, I believe brevity is the key, so I'll keep
this very short.
What I'd like to do this afternoon is bring you one simple
message and that message is unfiltered, it comes from the horse's
mouth. We need to look in the future. We're going to have some
serious problems, especially with juvenile crime, with violent
juvenile crime.
I work in a very small piece of the pie of the Collier County
Sheriff's Office and that position is commander of the Drill Academy,
but working with these young men, I can tell you, through their eyes,
what we may anticipate in the next few months, few years or four or
five years down the road.
Yes, I am here to support the sheriff and the sheriff's budget,
but because the message I have is knowledge from these young men,
these young men that are in my school or our school, the school that
no one really wants to attend is not a fail-safe. It is not the
panacea. As a matter of fact, it's more of a reactionary mode than a
proactive mode, and that's what I'm asking at this time is to be
proactive. I strongly support, as well as all the other officers, the
sheriff, concerned citizens, that we need to work with the younger
generation with programs like junior deputies and more of the programs
that are innovative.
Also I'd like to talk about communication. Personally, I have
deputies that are out there checking out these juvenile offenders
without any communication. They're going into what we call, what you
would refer to as bad neighborhoods without any communication, two or
three o'clock in the morning. Someone's going to get hurt. We do not
have the radios.
So again, with those two issues, I hope you grant the extension
of the budget. No, I'm not going to say cuts, sir, but I think it
warrants that we continue with what we've proposed. Thank you very
much.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Next is Pat Mullen, and then Nick Ojanovac.
MR. MULLEN: Afternoon, commissioners. My name is Pat Mullen.
I've been a resident of Collier County for almost 30 years. I'm also
a member of the Collier County Sheriff's Office and I'm the supervisor
of the Immokalee substation uniformed patrol.
Everybody's come up and talked to you about several different
items that they're concerned with law enforcement, and as you know,
this past Saturday, we had a tragic homicide in Immokalee involving an
18 month old baby. Those type cases take numerous, numerous hours,
not only from a uniformed patrol perspective, but also from a criminal
investigative perspective. That's one case that takes numerous hours.
I mean, we have to preserve crime scenes, we have to preserve
evidence, we have to have the medical examiner, and I mean, just that
one case takes so much time out of a shift that an officer is working.
We have been asked to do more for -- with less for numerous,
numerous years now. I have meetings with supervisors and road
officers and I tell them, we've got to do this, we have to do more
here, we have to do more here, and finally people are saying to me,
officers are saying to me, we can't do any more. We are max'd out
with what we have, so the sheriff's budget that he's asking for,
please, take into consideration, not only for the rest of the people
of Collier County, but also for your safety, you know, I would request
that -- I've never known of a commissioner riding in Immokalee or any
other district in the county. You've ridden in Immokalee? Great.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: North Naples.
MR. MULLEN: North Naples. I offer that to anybody, please come
out and ride.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Scare you to death. Scared me to death.
MR. MULLEN: Come and see what the officers do. I think it's
very important that you get that perspective. Thank you.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Immokalee on a Friday night, I'll never
forget it.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Nick Ojanovac, and then Henry Ingwersen.
MR. OJANOVAC: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the
commission. First off, as a taxpayer and a member of the Sheriff's
Department, I'd like to say I thank you for allowing me to get up here
and speak my small piece.
I appreciate the job you all are doing. You're a tough group,
but I do believe that the sheriff in the past several years has
trimmed and cut and been the man that has been hit the most in all his
budgets. It's always cut, the Sheriff's Department. I believe that
law enforcement is of priority in Collier County. I have family here.
I have kids and grandkids. I'd like to see the level of law
enforcement remain high. I don't want our county to turn into another
east coast county.
Please listen to what he has to say. I'm sure things could be
worked out. Let's be reasonable, and as the other officers -- my
fellow officers said, we need all the support we can get, and I
appreciate anything you can do. Thank you.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Henry Ingwersen, and then Eric West.
MR. INGWERSEN: Mr. Chairman and county commissioners, I have no
connection whatever with the Sheriff's Department. I am a 27 year
Collier County resident living in Lakewood, and last Thursday night, I
went out on Thomasson Road to the East Naples park and attended the
sheriff's town hall meeting because I felt that the roads have become
so dangerous that it's time to start ticketing the handful of
barbarians, self-centered barbarians who are ruining driving in
Collier County for the rest of us, and the only way I know to change
behavior, as John Watson, the famous Harvard professor who invented
behaviorism, said, is to punish behavior you want extinguished and to
reward behavior that you want repeated.
Well, Sheriff Hunter said -- I asked why I saw patrol cars spread
around the county and I didn't see people being chased for speeding.
I'd like to see cars pulled over to the side of the road getting
tickets. He said that the number of service calls that he's received
-- that he receives has grown so enormously over the last five years
that it leaves him very, very few resources to -- for road patrol.
Now, I don't know how the sheriff's resources are allocated, but I
think that it's time that the commission made an attempt to find out
how the Sheriff's Department is organized and what it needs.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: What makes you think we don't do that?
MR. INGWERSEN: Well, I don't. I don't know.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: You're just making an assumption.
MR. INGWERSEN: I'm -- I'm just -- I'm making a --
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: It's totally unfounded.
MR. INGWERSEN: Well, okay. I -- I made an erroneous assumption.
In any event, I know that the barbarians that are ruining the roads
need to have their behavior changed and I see that -- that growth has
a -- a price and I believe that this testimony this afternoon is a
symptom of that price. Thank you.
MR. FERNANDEZ: Eric West, and then Sheriff Hunter, our last
speaker.
MR. WEST: Good afternoon, commissioners. For the record, Eric
West, a taxpayer, and I do -- am not employed by any public safety
agency and I have no relatives that are.
I spoke to you on the first day of the workshop about the issue
of public safety resource allocation dollars across this county and I
want to repeat that assertion and make an additional comment, but I'll
make that assertion stronger than I made it on the first day of the
workshop, and that assertion is that public safety dollars in this
county are grossly misallocated, and I feel more strongly about that
today than I did on the first day of the workshop, and with that
background, I would urge you to, as you're setting the millage rate or
the trim rate or whatever the technical words are for it, to leave
yourself some wiggle room, if you will, for EHS and a station there
and what -- what they need in their budget and leave yourselves some
wiggle room for the sheriff, and if that number needs to be 7.8
percent to keep yourself millage neutral, so be it, but I'd like to
see some room there, and as you look across these public safety
dollars across the county, again, as I said on the first workshop day,
I recognize that this commission does not have supervisory authority
over all the districts. I do understand that, but I believe that the
issue is so serious that I would like to request that this commission
begin thinking about funding, reasonably soon, an independent
consultant to look at the question of resource allocation in public
safety dollars across this county, and I would specifically suggest
that you look at population trends, both permanent and seasonal, to
get into the calls for service and find out which of those calls for
service are real and which aren't and which are false alarms and get
it down to what is the core of those calls for service, particularly
on fire and EHS, and then look at the dollars that are allocated
against it, because what I've seen so far is that the gross dollar
denominated in millions for fire is relative --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Mr. West, you know the set up. What do you
expect us to do about the fire districts?
MR. WEST: I just made that statement, okay, and let me repeat
it.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We'll just go ahead and consolidate --
MR. WEST: That's not what I said, Commissioner.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Oh, okay.
MR. WEST: That's not what I said, Commissioner. Please do me
the courtesy of -- of not misrepresenting what my words were. My
words were that I would like this commission to begin considering
funding an independent consultant study of allocation of all public
safety dollars in this county, but specifically on fire and EHS,
because I think that's where the misallocation is most severe and see
what we find and let that be an independent consultant.
Look at the population, look at the calls for service and look
for the millions that are put against it. You may find -- you may
find that your EHS is underfunded. You may find that your fire
districts are underfunded and you may find that fire districts
elsewhere are, in fact, overfunded. Thank you. MR. FERNANDEZ: Sheriff Hunter.
MR. HUNTER: Sheriff Don Hunter, Collier County Sheriff, taxpayer
and resident for about 35 years. I appreciate the opportunity to
speak as a resident. I'd like to sum up, I was -- I'm overwhelmed,
I'm very proud of the members of the agency who spoke today. They
speak on behalf, not only of the agency, but as representatives who
can give the commission the information that you need to make an
informed decision.
I've asked that you defer taking immediate and precipitous action
on the budget proposal as we presented it to you until we have an
opportunity to discuss it with the people that we represent as a
group, you as constitutional officers and myself as such, let them
speak, let them inform you of their concerns for public safety. Set
the millage at trim that would support the budget of the Sheriff's
Office and provide for the proactive types of public safety that I
know you want and that this community deserves.
I have already certified to you and you've heard it restated many
times today that we have not been asking for unreasonable budgets. I
summed the budget for the last five years, the budget increase and I
divided by five and I come up with about 7.6 percent per year that
we've asked for from this commission and you've been supportive.
Each year we seem to get into a situation of being somewhat
verbose and confrontational. I don't want that and I hope you don't
want that. I'm looking for solid, successful, efficient, effective
public safety and I represent that. The good, the honest,
conscientious and professional people that spoke to you today
represent that and we're asking you to reconsider your position and
give it the opportunity to be discussed, make this and keep this a
safe place.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Thank you, Sheriff.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Thank you, Sheriff.
MR. FERNANDEZ: That's all we have.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That's it. Anything else, Hiss Filson?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think there's an unfortunate -- I kept
hearing doing more with less since 1989, and since I wasn't on this
board in 1989, I started doing a little bit of quick research to find
out what was so significant about the last seven or eight years, and
we didn't need a lecture today on the integrity or qualifications of
the men and women of the Sheriff's Office, quite frankly. I
appreciate the information, but you're not telling us anything new,
but it made me look at, has this board in the past, long before I was
here, supported the Sheriff's Department and to what extent, and it
seems today that the measure is money. So let's talk about money.
In 1989, the Sheriff's Office budget was 18.2 million dollars for
a population of 146,000 people. They're your numbers. That's $124
per person in this county. In 1997, the request -- not the request,
the actual amount at 6.7 percent is 54 million for 172,000 population,
which is $314 per person. That's a 250 percent increase over eight
years.
What I kept hearing from all of you is that there just aren't
enough man -- there's not enough manpower, not enough people, not
enough investigators, not enough road patrol officers. Well, an eight
year increase of a total of 250 percent, there was only a 220 percent
increase in work force, so you may be on to something. The money was
increased 250 percent, but the number of people in the Sheriff's
Office has only increased 220 percent, so if there is a disparity, I
would guess it -- it shows up in the people.
What really told me something was the -- the cost per person for
population has increased over 11 percent per person, per year for law
enforcement. I don't think that's ignoring law enforcement needs, and
what we're doing this year is actually quite in line with that, but
there was a comparison. Everything from somehow us waving a magic
wand over independent fire districts and looking at EMS all the way
down to, I believe, Miss Kinzel is -- is an advocate of eliminating
median beautification and giving that money to the Sheriffws Office,
so I looked at what our budget increased by in the last -- same time
frame and we were at 18.3 million in w89, which was the same thing,
$125 per person, and wewre at 37 million for 172,000 which is $215 per
person, a hundred shy of what the sheriffws agency is.
So I -- I keep coming back to the doing more with less, and of
the departments in this county, I think itws been the county managerws
agency that has done that, has served a high population at a lower
cost per capita than the Sheriffws Office. So I -- I -- Iwm not sure
where this do more with less since w89 comes from, quite frankly,
unless itws a misperception throughout the agency or unless my numbers
are just flat out wrong, and that may be a possibility, but that kind
of dedication, financial dedication to the law enforcement in this
community doesnwt end with this budget. I think itws continued, so
unless something magical happens between now and the time that we get
final numbers in, I donwt see a way in which we can go well beyond
where wewve gone already and not give these -- this community what we
said we were going to do last year, and the reason that this board has
to review all constitutional officer budgets, including our own, is
because one collective decision has to be made that results in a tax
bill that arrives in everyonews home.
Otherwise, each constitutional officer could just submit their
budget and weld copy them all and put them all on the tax bill, but
the reason we have to review each and every one is because that
collective number is important to people who get a two and a half
percent cost of living on their Social Security payment last year and
next year.
So I think looking collectively at what that tax bill does to
peoplels lives is a critical part of our job and something we have to
do no matter how much we want to give money to one agency, to another
agency or for a given purpose, and that still, with me, rests the same
-- you know, if we can find money elsewhere in the budget that we
think is less important or not important at all or things government
shouldnlt be doing, great, but I havenlt found that this year, so Iim
gonna stay with the amount that we have, and hopefully between now,
and as I mentioned to Sheriff Hunter, between now and September, with
the exception of 161,000 that we discussed with the state -- or the
public defender and State Attorneyls Office, if additional funds
become available in that time where there is the opportunity to look
at additional funding, then we have the ability to do that, but right
now looking at the narrow margin between what we have already reduced
the initial request by and what millage rate that results in, I donlt
think we can go much beyond that.
COMMISSIONER MACIKIE: I -- I donlt want to waste a whole lot of
time because you guys already know that my position is that 7.8 is the
right number. I think 7.8 is the right number because itls the
population neutral number, and I think that it would be fair if welre
going to say three million dollars or if welre going to say six and a
half percent, that some justification -- frankly not only that it
would be fair, but that it would be a good idea if this ends up as a
transcript in Tallahassee being reviewed by somebody, that it be
stated on the record what the basis is for the six and a half percent
or the three million as opposed to the 7.8 that I would support.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And by the way, thatls not population neutral.
Population increase was 4 percent.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I'm sorry, property value increase
neutral.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, I think Commissioner Hancock has --
has -- has generated the figures that show the justification right
there with -- with a population increase of only, say 40 percent in
the last eight years, the budget of the Sheriff's Department has
increased over 200 percent, so it -- and the case that we're not
keeping up with population increase is certainly erroneous. I mean,
that's just not correct.
Also, in Commissioner Hancock's figures, you'll see that the
Sheriff's Department has, in that same time period, gone up at a rate
that is twice as fast as the county manager's agency. It has tripled
in eight years, where the county manager's agency has merely doubled,
which is about right, according to the population expansion. So I
think the justification is there, and the sheriff, himself, on
Thursday said that the average increase over the last, I think he said
four years at that time was 6.5 percent, four percent, 6.4 percent and
this is 6.7 as it works out, so this is right in line with what has
been increased in the -- in the past four years, so I think the
justification is right there in Commissioner Hancock's figures.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That -- that average that the sheriff
referred to previously though was reached including his requested
budget number for this year. If we approved his budget as requested,
the average over the last four or five years would have been 6.5 or
6.7.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, you can make that -- you can make a
calculation to present any kind of case you want. If you took last
year and this year together, then you would have a 10 percent
increase.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: No, I just wanted you to understand that
if you were gonna rely on his math, his math included approving his
budget as requested to come to that number.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Okay. At the same time, the sheriff is
very proud, and justifiably so, of pointing out that the crime rate in
Collier County is lower than the City of Naples, which is lower than
the State of Florida average, so those -- that raw figure indicates
that there's not any further justification for major expansion of this
agency.
COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: But we wouldn't wait for that to increase.
We would want to continue to keep that down.
COHMISSIONER NORRIS: I -- our sheriff is doing a wonderful job
of keeping that number down.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Quite frankly, one thing concerned me as I
looked at -- I want to make sure that over seven or eight years, we
weren't basically taking from the law enforcement agency into the
county manager's agency, quite frankly, because when I kept hearing do
more with less, more with less, that was repeated at least six times,
I stopped marking them after the fifth one, that concerned me, and
what I found is just the opposite, but what concerns me is that we
still have increased 6 percent per person, per year. That's a little
high, and that's in the county manager's agency. I'm not real tickled
with that number, so that trend is something that -- that bothers me
because that's -- if the cost of living is 3 percent and we're 6
percent per person, per year, that's a little heavy, so, you know,
we're -- it just goes to show that we haven't been as, you know, for
seven years haven't been the -- as tight-fisted maybe as we could have
been.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, you need to factor not only
inflation, but also the increase in raw population.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Agreed. I'm just saying --
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: And that's more like seven.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Sure, sure.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: And back in '89 or '90, it was a lot more
than that.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: We need to bring today's meeting to a close.
Are there any other comments on the budget?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I have just one last -- just -- I -- I
think the question's been framed, but I just want to be absolutely
certain that it has. Everybody understands that what we're voting on
now is the -- is the trim notices. CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Correct.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We lose our -- well, I'm sorry, the
millage we'll be setting -- Mr. Smykowski's shaking his head -- is
essentially what we will be setting as the trim notice millage.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: We will do that officially in July.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I understand, but today -- after we do
that in July, we won't have the opportunity to respond -- what
concerns me is, we have no wiggle room at all if there is a public
outcry, and I wonder what the harm would be in a 7.8 approval today
with the understanding that it's only there for trim notice and --
and, you know, it gives the public an opportunity to have a say on the
sheriff's budget.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: It's no different than last year after people
got their tax bills and my phone rang off the hook about the increase
in their taxes. We didn't have any wiggle room then either. I
couldn't ask for it back.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm talking -- if we leave ourselves the
room in the trim notices for people to say, I'm willing to pay that
extra dollar a year for the sheriff to get his budget. I'm asking if
you want to give us -- I would suggest that we should have that sort
of flexibility.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Well, that -- you're looking for the
opportunity to increase his budget then.
COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm looking for the flexibility to remain,
which it won't, once we set the trim.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: True. Okay. I've made, at least a -- just a
proposal to continue with the amount that we indicated previously.
I'll poll the board on that. Is there at least majority support for
that? Not -- not from Commissioner Mac'Kie.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Commissioner Norris.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Commissioner Constantine.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: I can count.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And Commissioner Berry has gone moot on the
subject.
Okay. Mr. Smykowski, that brings us to the end of this, and can
you give us the numbers as final as you have them at this point?
MR. HUNTER: May I interrupt just for a moment, Mr. Hancock, just
for the public record? For purposes of the public record, I
understand that I'm not being permitted to discuss this as a
constitutional officer, that I've been asked to speak as a public
citizen, a private citizen, and I'm asking now if there's an
opportunity to speak as sheriff to correct the public record from a
few comments that I heard, just so that the viewing public will
understand --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: If I misspoke, Sheriff, and you want to offer
information --
MR. HUNTER: Yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- to indicate that, that's fine. Just go
ahead.
MR. HUNTER: If I may, just -- just so that a couple of key
comments can be cleared up. I know we have some viewers and very
concerned taxpayers and public who are as much concerned as we are in
law enforcement. We don't tie our budget to the population, and
fortunately, the cabinet and governor know that. They're not looking
at the number of people who we're serving. They're looking at the
amount of service that is being provided and whether we need to remain
proactive or not, and that is a question in law enforcement that's
being debated, whether we're going to remain proactive or whether
we're going to be reactive.
You heard that today. We are being asked to do more with less.
We're being asked to cut back on our proactive posture that we've
maintained over two decades that I've been with the agency and to be
more reactive because the board does not choose to tax the public to
the extent that the public demands service back from its public
agencies.
I heard a statement made that the Board of County Commissioners
is maintaining a lower per capita cost of service delivery than the
Sheriff's Office, and I have two issues that I'd want the viewing
public to remember when they take Mr. -- Mr. Hancock's comments into
consideration. One is that the Board of County Commissioners is an
eight hour service, not a 24 hour, 365 day service, which costs more
to the public, just as a fire service would and EHS does, to a certain
extent, and you have to pay for that. That's a fact of life.
The other part of that is, I hope that your number included the
complete budget and not just the county manager's budget, because
we've had that discussion in years past when we talked about the
difference between the county manager separating out his 12 or 15
employees from road and bridge and animal control and everybody
else --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Yes, it included all of those.
MR. HUNTER: -- I hope we're using the whole budget and we take a
look at that, but keep in mind that we are --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Sheriff, how many calls of service did
we have last year?
MR. HUNTER: -- 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and not just a --
not just an eight hour operation.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: How many calls for service did we have
last year or in the last four years?
MR. HUNTER: Approximately 270,000 --
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Thank you.
MR. HUNTER: Off the top of my head.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: And that -- that wasn't a tit for tat. That
wasn't a, we're doing it better than you. That was gauging the
relative per capita increase in providing services to make sure that
we were not cannibalizing your budget over eight years in order to pad
ours. That was my check, because many of your agency folks said,
doing more with less. Well, it's -- MR. HUNTER: We are.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: -- it's one big pocketbook out there to the
taxpayer, so if you're doing more with less, maybe someone else is
doing less with more and I wanted to make sure it wasn't us.
MR. HUNTER: Well, and you see the school board building schools
at record pace. You see other agencies in government trying to
maintain pace with the level of service demanded by the public in
Collier County.
Let me add a couple of more points that weren't touched on today,
please. Since 1991, we had a 24 person boat station, I mentioned this
to you before, and I want to couch this in the issue of, we have been
provided federal and state law enforcement assistance before, but due
to the reallocation of assets locally from that 24 person boat station
U.S. customs maintained, we now have three people serving this coastal
area that's known for drug trafficking and the importation of drugs
and those persons that had previously been here are now redeployed
along the Texas/Mexican border, we're told, and perhaps that's an
effective use of manpower, staffing, but it means that local law
enforcement has to take up that slack, and Mr. Hancock, what you're
proposing, what you continue to suggest in these last two discussions
we've had is that everything has remained static for the last 30 years
and these budget adjustments that we've been requesting are out of
control and unreasonable. Things change every year, and what I tried
to -- what I tried to show you and demonstrate for you --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Sheriff, don't speak for me. Do not speak for
me and misstate it.
MR. HUNTER: Well, that's what I'm hearing. I'm hearing that --
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: That may be what you're interpreting, sir, but
that's not what you heard.
MR. HUNTER: Everything is not remaining static. Everything is
changing, and what I represent to you today is going to be different
than what I'm able to say to you a year from now because things have
changed and my forecasts, as good as they are, and as good as the
people that work in this agency can give you, the forecasts are going
to be different next year. That's not to suggest that we're lying to
you or misrepresenting facts, as I read in the paper. We are doing
the best we can to give you the information necessary to make an
informed and intelligent decision, and I don't believe that the number
that you've arrived at, for the record, is a good decision. That's my
opinion.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, what you read in the newspaper
was exactly what happened, and that is that talking about radios, last
week we were told two different stories, today we were told yet a
third story on why we needed the money for those radios. I'm not
saying anyone was lying. I'm saying it was -- something there isn't
right. One of those -- two of those stories aren't correct, but we're
told three different stories on why you need $300,000. How are we
supposed to know which one to believe, and that happens more often
than not.
It's interesting when you talk about trying to do more for less.
I asked you about the calls for service and -- and yeah, if you -- if
you compared dollar for dollar, we're not just talking about a dollar
increase. Of course we're eight hours a day and I would expect law
enforcement to have a higher dollar value than going to the park, but
I think the point that was being made by Commissioner Hancock was the
percentage increase since 1989, which seemed to be the magical number
with a number of your employees, was dramatically -- it was about
twice as high of a percentage increase since 1989 in the cost for that
service, and I'll give you an example. In 1989, the calls for
service, according to your budget figures from 1989, cost about $111
per call for service, and today they cost, for your proposed budget,
about $211 per call for service, and so when you talk about doing more
for less, I don't know what the less is there. That is a lot more.
MR. HUNTER: Well, once again, you're looking at a bottom line
number without taking into consideration any of the changes that have
affected Collier County in the last, now eight years. If you -- if
you want to discuss some of those things like double bunking the jail,
when you add inmates to the jail, you add expense to the jail in food,
medical and services to those inmates. We have had that since 1989,
dramatically.
We have added a Drill Academy to the Collier County Sheriff's
Office budget of 30 beds with a complement of member -- members to
maintain that facility. You cannot mislead the public, which is what
this is, by saying let's compare 1989 to 1997. I think you insult the
public when you do that. The public's smart enough to know that a lot
of things have changed in Collier County since 1989. I wish we could
go back to 1989. I wish we were in 1989.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Sheriff, it wasn't us who started the
1989 reference. It was about six different members of your Sheriff's
Department that kept referencing 1989. That's why I went back -- MR. HUNTER: They wanted you to be aware.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That's why I went back and got that
budget. That's why I picked that -- that out, was in response to your
comments. I'm not trying to do a disservice to the public. I'm
responding to the information that was brought forward by you and your
employees.
MR. HUNTER: They also complimented the board on being supportive
in trying to provide the resources necessary to do the work of law
enforcement, corrections and bailiff services.
COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, three times as much money, I
would think they would be.
MR. HUNTER: What they are -- what we are also trying to suggest
to you is that things have changed fairly dramatically and that we
don't have, at 6.7 percent, enough money to do what we need to do for
next year, as we have proposed in the budget. Read the budget, or at
least give it an opportunity to be read, and give some public comment
back, and that's what I'm asking for.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Unfortunately, Sheriff, this is the second
time, and it's only the second budget I've dealt with on law
enforcement, and every -- at least the last two years, I've been in a
no-win situation because if I -- if I agree to less than you're
requesting, I am labeled as sacrificing law enforcement, and I was so
labeled by members of your staff today by not increasing your budget
request from what we already looked at, so I'm already sacrificing law
enforcement, according to your staff members. I think I was accused
by one of taking your budget lightly, so I'm in a no-win situation
there.
On the other side are the taxpayers, who I understand at your
town hall meeting, how positive the return can be, and if you're
interested in things, you tend to show up for meetings involving
those. There's a lot of people who don't have time to be at town hall
meetings and those people do have time to pick up a phone and call me,
whether it be at home or in this office, so I hear from a broad
spectrum of people and I encourage that to continue, but the bottom
line is, there comes a time when increases are appropriate and there
comes a time when they're not, and to date, I don't know of any year
in which your budget has not increased, and it should, law -- I -- I
am fine -- outpace every other constitutional officer because the
money couldn't be better spent than on law enforcement, but there are
annual caps to that, and last year we were able to see past that and
see past the immediate effect on the tax bill, and we bit the bullet,
and even though you said you would take the heat, you didn't get it.
We got it. I got it individually, and I didn't mind because I felt it
was appropriate.
That still wasn't what you had requested. You had requested more
than we allocated last year also, so this year, yes, we are still
approving an increase. It's not as much as you requested and it's not
as much as what I'll call the fall-back position of 7.8 that you and
many of your staff members presented today, but I still think on
average when you look at the rest of the agencies throughout the State
of Florida, a nearly 7 percent increase is paying attention to law
enforcement needs, just not to the degree that you've indicated to us
is appropriate, and that's where the difference lies, and I don't wish
to make it personal. I never have. Unfortunately, it gets portrayed
that way, but this year, I've -- I feel like I've had to make that
decision and -- and I'm sorry if we disagree on it, but I don't think
we're going to change that in the next 20 minutes.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Mr. Chairman, if the -- if the sheriff
has other factual corrections he wants to make maybe we can do that.
Otherwise, can we move on?
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Seeing none, with no speakers.
Mr. Smykowski, where are we, sir?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, sir. To reach the millage neutral state and
eliminate the somewhat uncertainty in our own government services fee,
total cuts required were 2,955,000. You, through your efforts, have
reduced the budget 3,252,700, and at this point, the millage rate
would be 3.7088, versus the 3.7241.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Excuse me, would you say that again, Mike,
please?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Sure, 3.7088. It's a reduction of $1.53 per
100,000 of value, versus where we started out, which was about eight
dollars above, 8.19 above.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: So it's been about a -- per $100,000, about a
nine dollar swing?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. We're able to reduce the millage rate,
which as I remember correctly, is something we had hoped to do last
year when we discussed the budget.
Okay. Any further questions?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: I'd like to thank my staff individually. I'd
like to recognize them. They put in a lot of effort to bring about
the improvements that you saw this year, and I'm thankful for that and
I think it helped facilitate this process, Phil Tindall, Shelia Leith,
Tom Kukulski, Gary Vincent, Jean Gansel and Robin Bialkoski, who's
kind of the operator behind the scenes who provides the bulk of the
clerical support in bringing these efforts forward today. I'd also
like to thank everyone in the management agency, as well as the
constitutional officers.
This is -- this is a long and oftentimes difficult process and to
everyone's credit, we've worked together and I appreciate the
cooperation from the other agencies in working with them, and we'll do
our best to continue on that footing.
In addition, I realize the hour is late, at one point we had
talked about suggestions for budget improvements for next year's
process, and if you don't want to do that today, I -- I can understand
that. Frankly, I'm not sure I want to today.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: One thing that --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: But if you have comments that would be fresh, if
you'd just write them down and we can discuss them, if you don't want
to do it today, after a board meeting or just send it in memo format.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: I think we will, and I think some members of
GNCA are probably going to be making some evaluations, so it might be
more appropriate to maybe schedule that for a future Tuesday board
meeting and just have a little -- a little discussion on that.
I think we, as a board, owe you and your staff a debt of
gratitude for being Johnny on the spot after so much preparation with
the myriad of changes that we throw at you, and it makes our job a lot
easier, and we would be remiss in not thanking you and your staff for
an extremely well-done job. I've heard nothing but positives from
constitutional officers on your willingness to work with them and
assist them, so a credit to you, a credit to the county administrator.
Thank you very much. We do appreciate it.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I'd like to echo that and say that I've
been here now -- this is my fifth budget we've worked through and --
and this is, by far, the best presentation we've had. It's -- it's --
even Commissioner Mac'Kie was saying that she understood --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Even I got it this year, Mike.
CHAIRMAN HANCOCK: Okay. Folks, thank you, and we are adjourned.
There being no further business for the good of the County· the
meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 4:46 p.m.
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX
OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF
SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL
TIMOTHY L. HANCOCK, CHAIRMAN
ATTEST:
DWIGHT E. BROCK, CLERK
These minutes approved by the Board on
presented or as corrected
· as
TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE· INC.
BY: Dawn Breehne
Heather L. Casassa