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BCC Minutes 06/22/1998 B (Budget Workshop)BUDGET WORKSHOP SESSION OF JUNE 22, 1998 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 9:00 a.m. in SPECIAL SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: ALSO PRESENT: CHAIRMAN: Barbara B. Berry Pamela S. Hac'Kie John C. Norris Timothy J. Constantine Timothy L. Hancock Robert Fernandez, County Administrator Hichael Smykowski, Budget Director CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Good morning. I would like to welcome you to the third day of our budget workshop. This is the wrap-up day. And if you would please rise for the pledge of allegiance. (Pledge of Allegiance recited in unison.) CHAIRPERSON BERRY: All of you should have the wrap-up list of items that as we were going through the budget we asked that staff flag several items for reconsideration today. We have those issues. All of you should have had or should have gotten that sheet this morning, so we will start, Mr. Smykowski. Oh, I'm sorry, Commissioner Hancock. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Madam Chair, there's one on item on here and, Mr. Fernandez, it's something I pointed out to you that's kind of tandem to the fleet management issue of the hundred thousand dollar fuel budget increase. Also tandem to that just below that sheet I handed to you was the change in the length of which we keep vehicles from seventy to ninety thousand miles. I had a question on that, so if I could ask the board's indulgence when we discuss under support services fleet management, the fuel budget increase, could we also include that in that discussion? CHAIRPERSON BERRY: The mileage change, the vehicle? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It sort of goes together. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah, there's a jump there, but there's not a commensurate decrease in the sinking fund for purchase of new vehicles. So it's kind of odd. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And I thought, Madam Chairman -- CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Yes. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: -- that there was also a flag for just DOR in general pending the productivity committee's review. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Correct. And that's not on here. Obviously, the productivity committee report, as we indicated during the DOR budget, would probably not be received until mid July. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Just want to be sure it had stayed on the flag list. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Okay, that's fine. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Regarding the reduced collections? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Well, just in general, frankly. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Okay. Any other concerns, things that you had thought would be on here that aren't or -- okay. Mr. Smykowski. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Yes, thank you. For the record, Michael Smykowski, budget director. Just from a logistical standpoint, there are copies of the wrap-up list agenda in the hallway on the table as well as the speaker sign-up sheets. So if anyone is interested in speaking on any given issue, we have already gotten four or five speaker slips, you will need to sign up to speak. And if you just bring them up here to myself or Mr. Fernandez, we will take them in the order received. In terms of procedurally today, these are organized by division and I am just proposing to go down the list and the respective personnel from that division to address the issue noted on the sheet. The first one is public services. The funding breakdown for the Bluebill Park project and Mr. Olliff is here to address that. MR. OLLIFF: Good morning. For the record, Tom Olliff, public services administrator. In follow-up to the first issue on the funding breakdown for Bluebill, the actual numbers came out to be, design cost of ninety-two thousand would be associated with what was the beach parking lot portion of that project, and fifty thousand dollars would be the portion associated with the design for the neighborhood park portion. So we would propose putting fifty thousand in fund three o six, ninety-two thousand in fund three -- in three forty-five, and I believe that we can do that at three forty-five reserves without hurting that fund at all, and three o six would simply be just an additional fifty thousand dollars in that fund. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I think the two have to go together. I don't want to see the parking lot without the neighborhood park. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Agreed. And, again, we don't know where the grant funds can be applied there, so, obviously, where we don't have a dedicated funding source to go toward is where we prefer to see the grant funds applied, but yes, thank you, I agree with that. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Okay. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: The brilliantly named Bark Park. MR. OLLIFF: That was the second item. In fact, the next two were simply the flagged items. I'm not sure that the board was looking for any additional information but simply to make a decision about whether or not they were going to remain in the '99 budget or not. The Bark Park I think you're familiar with, the vacant property that was on the Livingston Road extension north of Immokalee Road. It's -- currently it's proposed as a project of sixty thousand dollars out of county funds and thirty thousand dollars out of either kennel clubs or the local veterinarians' association. That's at your discretion. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Tom, if we're going to -- oh, I'm sorry. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Hancock. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Madam Chairman, my concern with that is the perception of the public that this is a done deal in that location, that this is going to move ahead. Obviously, the land would have to be rezoned. I think my concern is whether the location is as appropriate as another location in the county. Is there somewhere where there's not homes right next to the project, because I think it's a great idea. When we said no dogs on the beach, that was a good idea and that was the right thing to do. But it did cause me to look at the fact that, you know, people who live in urban areas own animals, and to have a place to run them and run them responsibly, if we can do it economically, makes -- makes sense. So I like the idea. That location is what gives me the greatest heartburn. So whether we leave it in or remove it is not as, you know -- I'm okay leaving it in. I just -- right now it's tied to that site directly, and that site out of the chute for me is not a good location for this use. So I don't -- I am trying not to make the land use decision before the funding decision. But if we're going to move ahead, I'd like to move ahead with the -- with several sites being options here as opposed to that one site. And if we can do that, then I am okay leaving it in. If that's not an option, then I would -- my desire would be to take it out. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: I have got, personally, some concerns with this particular location. It's just -- there's just too many houses close at hand, and I look at the sixty thousand -- was that for -- for land? What was that sixty thousand for, refresh my memory on that? MR. OLLIFF: Sixty thousand was going to be used for some parking lot improvements, actually to run a small water line for a drinking fountain and a dog fountain, some fencing around the area to make sure the dogs would stay on the property and some park benches. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Okay. I personally feel that it's going to require more than that because I think down the road we're going to have to look at somebody to be available to clean up the area. There will be people that will not be as diligent in caring for their pets as maybe they should be, and I just think this is an inappropriate use for this particular area. If there's something that's in a little more remote area and perhaps even a larger piece of property, but I just don't think this is -- as far as I am concerned, this sixty thousand -- as many people have made suggestions to me, they'd rather see sixty thousand dollars spent for children in a playground area or something as opposed to this. Now, those -- I'm just simply stating the comments that I have heard repeatedly. MR. OLLIFF: And I will tell you this is a very specialized type park use and this is not traditionally what we do, but this was brought to your attention simply because we had gotten a large number of public requests for this type of thing. That's not to say that we don't get a large number of requests for ATV tracks or for equestrian parks or for a whole number of other specialized type recreation uses. And this is a policy decision that you need to make thinking in those kinds of terms as well. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Mac'Kie and then Commissioner Constantine. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: My question was just is this the best we can do? You know, we need to provide -- I have been clear since the dogs on the beach decision that we need to provide some kind of availability for people with their pets, but I can't imagine really that the best we can do is to have a completely segregated park for the purpose of running dogs. MR. OLLIFF: One of the other options that actually we came up with this weekend was you have some donated land on Davis Boulevard for your new animal control facility. And we may look as part of that design to incorporating some area for pet owners to be able to go there where there are people who are trained on site to be able to deal with animal issues and animal problems. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: There's got to be something better. I mean, that already sounds better than the current proposal. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: There's a ton of logic attached to that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So I would like to leave the money in the budget, but -- but for the staff to come up with some more creative alternatives for how to provide for pets and parks. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Constantine. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, I was all set to say I agree with my fellow commissioners until I heard the leave the money in the budget part. If we don't have a specific item for it, I don't see a great deal of interest in just setting taxpayer money aside for no reason. I am only lukewarm on the idea of the Bark Park anyway as I look at the scale of things. I'm sure it would be a wonderful thing, but as you said, we get requests for all kinds of things. I just don't see this as the highest priority. I don't know how many of you have dogs or have had dogs, but how often you packed them in your car and went to a specific location is in question. This specific site, one hundred twenty feet wide, I don't think is very practical for it, but I don't see it as a priority item anyway. So if someone out there that loves animals wants to donate land and do some development on it specifically for this purpose then great, but I don't see it as a high priority for us. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: I just have real concern. If I had a dog that I valued, I am sorry, I don't think I would be taking that dog to an area where it is strictly prohibited to dogs because -- for various reasons of disease alone. If I valued that dog, I'm going to keep that dog probably away from other dogs, being I have had several. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: If I may make a suggestion? CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Certainly. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I have met with a couple of people that are very knowledgeable about this project and the level of controls and whatnot that they have talked about are things that I didn't know existed in the dog world, if you will. But what I would like to do is I think we should remove it from the budget. It's not something that we have reviewed and said this is a go, so to then allocate funds for it doesn't make sense. But I would like in doing that to ask Mr. Olliff, the suggestion he made about the Davis Boulevard site where we have animal control already, where there may be a slight modification to the site, could result in having a place like that, I think that's worth pursuing. So I would ask in the same breath that we take this out but that we direct Mr. Olliff to look at that site, how it can be, and I'm sure there's a far less cost associated with that that maybe the animal clubs could fund themselves on the land owned by the county. That is an approach I would like to see us take. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: I would much rather it be a self sufficient kind of thing. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That makes sense to me. My thought about leaving some money in the budget was I didn't want to tell Tom, go off and find a way to make it work some other place but we're not going to give you any money to do that with. If you can do it without the money, then I am happiest of all. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Are we in agreement that we're going to delete that sixty thousand? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yes, I am. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: I think so. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Sounds right. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Take it out. MR. OLLIFF: Okay. The next item was a picnic shelter which was programmed for the Pelican Bay Community Park. It's -- it's simply a picnic shelter designed for large groups. There are no picnic shelters at that particular park now. The picnic shelter is the exact same size and configuration as the one that's currently located at the Vineyards Community Park and one that was just built at the Veterans Community Park. And it's just a matter of whether or not you want to include that in your budget this year or not. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I have a question about that. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Hac'Kie. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Do we have numbers on the utilization of that park by non Pelican Bay residents? I mean, is this a county-wide used facility? MR. OLLIFF: I would have to say it is, primarily because of the tennis facility that's there. The people from Pelican Bay are generally using their own tennis facility at their own club. We're getting a lot of county-wide use because of the clay courts that we have there, and we also schedule a lot of soccer league practice and softball practice at our joint fields there. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: And you will find myself and my daughter at the park there rather regularly, and we don't live in Pelican Bay. COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: Non Pelican Bay residents. I just wanted to check on that and be sure we weren't building some special amenity. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That's when you have the vote Hancock shirts on. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It's because you have the what? CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Vote Hancock shirts on. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yeah, there's that. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: We do go to the playground there quite a bit and I can tell you I see a lot of people there I know that don't live in Pelican Bay. That's not a scientific answer by any means. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: But it's information and I appreciate it. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I -- we -- just because we don't have one in the immediate area, I would like to see it left in there. The nearest picnic shelter from there is actually at Delnor Wiggins State Park, which is not under county ownership. And the second closest one is Vineyards, if I am not mistaken. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And then, of course, there's stuff in the City of Naples, the -- not to this scale, I'm sure, but at Fleischman Park. MR. OLLIFF: I will tell you, there is a need for this size facility. We have one at Vineyards that I know from experience there is booked pretty much every single weekend day that it's available. And it's primarily used for birthday parties and family picnics and company picnics and outings. That large sized facility is just not readily available. Host of the picnic facilities that you will see will be one to two table sized. This is a size to be able to handle a fifty or more sized group. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: How many? MR. OLLIFF: Fifty. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Five o? MR. OLLIFF: Yeah. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I would like to see it left in. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: I would rather see the forty thousand for that than sixty thousand for a bark park. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, I think we should leave that in. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: I think this accommodates people. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I'm three. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: You're three? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I'm three. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: And then we have silence over here. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's okay. He doesn't have to cast a vote now that the majority has. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: It's four to zero. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Okay. So the forty thousand is left in for the picnic shelter. MR. OLLIFF: Thank you very, very much. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Thank you. MR. SMYKOWSKI: The next item on the wrap-up agenda is under emergency services, the termination of the existing Collier County fire contract by July 1, 1998. The handout I gave you provided by Mr. Ochs just identifies the adopted FY 98 budget and distribution of the Collier County fire dollars to the four participating agencies. The existing agreement, the middle column on your handout, if we stayed with the existing agreement, that identifies the distribution. And the third column is the staff recommendation as proposed. There's a difference in the distribution. Again, it's based on the number of fire service calls in those outlying regions in the Collier County fire control district. But in order -- if the board would like to pursue the staff recommendation, that would entail terminating the existing agreement and renegotiating that agreement with the participating agencies in that regard. MR. OCHS: Madam Chairman, if I may, members of the board, Leo Ochs, support services administrator. You actually have two options here. One is to renegotiate the existing contracts. The other option is to identify the shortfall and take that from the budgeted reserve amounts in those two dependent fire districts for the coming fiscal year. However, that's a solution for next year. The contracts with the fire districts for service in district one currently are not and have not historically been predicated on calls for service to that area. And what the staff had recommended to the county administrator and had some preliminary discussions with the four departments that provide service to district one, those being your two dependent districts and also East Naples and Golden Gate fire control districts, that we sit down and try to negotiate an allocation of those district one funds based on calls for service -- either average over a certain number of years -- so that we have some basis on which to justify the allocations of funds out there. Apparently, it historically has been some kind of negotiated arrangement. In the current contract, the allocations specify twelve point zero one percent be allocated to the Isle of Capri and the remaining funds are split up equally among the three other service providers out there, Ochopee, Golden Gate and East Naples. Those allocations, again, are not based on calls for service at this time. And we are suggesting that you may want us to consider as a policy matter sitting down with the agencies involved and determining what's the appropriate allocation based on the actual effort in that area over some historical period of time or some average. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Norris. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: We have an existing contract in place? MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: And we have the funds in place? MR. OCHS: Yes. The taxable base for district one will go down next year versus what the value is this year. So that will lower, as you see in your middle column for FY 99, based on the current contract requirements for allocation of the funds. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: So a lower available funds? MR. OCHS: Correct. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: But we're being shown here this two hundred forty-nine thousand nine hundred, we do have that? MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. MR. SMYKOWSKI: That's the available pot to be distributed. The middle column identifies if we stick with the existing contract how much each of the participating agencies would receive. The far right-hand column shows, based on the staff recommendation, how much each agency would receive. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: What we're not hearing is why we should even consider changing the contract. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I heard -- based on the calls for service -- who's providing service instead of just an arbitrary split it up three ways. MR. OCHS: There's two reasons. The first one is if you go to the first column on the handout, you can see what the staff has recommended for your two dependent fire districts for transfers out of district one, thirty-one thousand eight hundred for Isle of Capri and seventy-seven thousand eight hundred for Ochopee, are less than the amounts that would be coming to them based on the current contractual allocation of funds. So, again, in Ochopee you can see it's a fairly small dif -- excuse me, in Isle of Capri, about eighteen hundred dollars and in Ochopee about forty-two hundred dollars. As I said, those monies could be transferred out of the reserves in those two funds in FY 99, but that doesn't address, from our perspective, the larger policy question of what's appropriate to allocate those funds to the people -- or excuse me, to the agencies that provide services in that district long-term? I can give you some historical perspective, if you'd like. Calls for service in calendar year 1996 for district one, Ochopee responded to one hundred and ninety-three calls. Golden Gate responded to one hundred and fifteen calls for service. Isle of Capri responded to fifty-five calls for service, and East Naples responded to twenty-two calls for service in district one in calendar year 1996. We are compiling again those same numbers from the state fire marshall's office for calendar year 1997. We know our numbers are two hundred for Ochopee in 1997, eighty for the Isle of Capri, and we would expect the percentages between Golden Gate and East Naples to run pretty much true to form. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: When does this current contract expire? MR. OCHS: Let me check it here. Actually, the contract runs from October 1 through September 30 of each year, and it automatically renews unless it's terminated with the appropriate notice given. And that's why if we don't affirmatively move to terminate, the only other option is to seek an amendment by mutual agreement, which is provided for in the contract as well, but quite frankly, in our initial discussions with East Naples and Golden Gate, as you might suspect they're not particularly interested in taking a lower allocation than they have now. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But if -- CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Hancock. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: They -- the fire districts, like us, are going through their budget process. What is being proposed here is termination of those contracts by July 1 of this year and a new contract that would have a fiscal impact on the districts? MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Were they made aware of that fiscal impact prior to their budget deliberations? MR. OCHS: Well, that's why the notice provision calls for a notice on or before July 1. They had specifically requested that in the previous negotiations so that their boards would have time to address that issue if, in fact, there was a change in the allocation. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I guess what I would like to see is -- what we're talking about is the difference of, you know -- the pie is smaller so everyone's share is smaller is one option. The second option is to change the methodology by which we allocate those funds. Now, I happen to think the second one makes a lot more sense from an approach standpoint, however, understanding what it's like to get, you know, a piece of the pie taken away at the front end of a budget discussion and having to make up for that, particularly in districts like Golden Gate, East Naples where -- and even Isle of Capri and Ochopee -- I mean, none of them have tremendous flexibility. I would like to see us take a two-phased approach. One is to look at the middle column, which is just everyone shares in the reduction on an equal or proportionate amount for this coming year and then look at the calls for service as an identifier, because when I see East Naples twenty-two calls for service, Golden Gate a hundred and fifteen, yet I see the same allocation of dollars to each, I have to ask myself is that fair? It doesn't appear to be fair on the surface. It doesn't appear to be fair to Golden Gate. Same thing with Ochopee, one hundred and ninety-three calls for service and East Naples twenty-two, yet they get the same allocation. So, you know, I would like to see us -- everyone share in the reduction for this coming year. Maybe do a termination and one-year extension with the exact same percentages and look at changing the methodology so that everyone's put on notice almost a year and a half in advance that that methodology may be changing significantly and that will give us time to negotiate that and to work closely with the fire districts to accomplish it. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: That's what I would prefer, too. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: All right. Now, let's take it one -- let's go to the next step. What's going to happen to the Ochopee fire district? How -- this is the ad valorem tax, what about the PILT fund? How does that figure -- how does that figure in? MR. SMYKOWSKI: The PILT reduction has already been factored into the Ochopee budget. In this case, the staff recommendation, Ochopee would get seventy-seven eight, and the staff proposal, if we go with the existing contract basis, it would be forty-five hundred dollars. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Despite the fact that we're changing their PILT fund allocation, the numbers remain that constant? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes. MR. FERNANDEZ: The budget right now is balanced with a reduced amount of PILT funding compared to last year -- compared to current year. MR. SMYKOWSKI: PILT is not a component of this issue other than the Ochopee budget is predicated on the reduction in PILT and currently is based on the staff recommendation which is seventy-seven thousand eight hundred. If we go with the terms of the existing contract and delay this proposed change in methodology one year, the difference would be forty-five hundred dollars. MR. FERNANDEZ: That we would have to fund with additional general revenue. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Or absorb through decreased reserves in Ochopee. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Again -- again, I am looking at the number of calls made. You know, I mean, there's -- it's -- and I agree with Commissioner Hancock, too. I think if you're going to take a look at this, you need to look at the number of calls. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I just wonder why, when we have a contract with the July 1 notice provision, we need to wait a year, you know, before we take the appropriate action. I mean, if we can give them notice by July, which we clearly can, why would we not just have people, you know, be paid for the service they provide instead of some arbitrary figure? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Madam Chair, if I could be allowed to respond to that since it was my suggestion? CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Hancock. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: The reason for that, Commissioner Mac'Kie, is the number of calls is one thing but the cost of apparatus and personnel applied to each call is another factor that we don't have information on. When we look at Isle of Capri, say fifty-five or eighty calls, how many of those were two volunteers and a boat? Because a lot of their work is done, you know, in a boat, and how much of that is in district one? I don't know that. I am sure you do, but I don't. Let me look at East Naples, only twenty-two responses, however, what was the -- the requirement? Was it two engines? Was it six people? Eight people? I think there's more than just number of calls, but type of calls, because abilities vary from department to department. And that is kind of a variable factor that someone who is more knowledgeable about fire service than I needs to look at. We don't have time between now and July 1st probably to put all of that together. So what I am saying is I think that's the direction we need to take. But it doesn't appear as if we have all of that information here today to formulate a policy, but we need to make a budget decision. So that's why I'm asking that it go out one year. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Has staff done that analysis or is it strictly a calls for service? MR. OCHS: Commander Page is here and has done some of that analysis in some preliminary discussions with the fire districts. I know that the state fire marshall's office has a -- a flat fee schedule, if you will, based on different types of frequency and level of response. I am asking Jeff if he can come up and respond to that. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Why don't we do that? I agree with Commissioner Hancock. Is there a third one to do that? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yes. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: There's a third one. Why don't we just move on? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Was the direction clear enough, Leo? MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. MR. SMYKOWSKI: So the FY 99 allocations will be based on the existing contract, and a year from now we will be addressing a proposed methodological change as to the distribution of those dollars? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Right. Per existing contract, the middle column for proposed FY 99 will be the upcoming contract. So we are going to terminate, and on July 1, the contract showing these values would be put in place with notice that twelve months later, we are going to be doing the exact same thing, basing it on call-based information, but that's going to have to come back to this board after being worked through with the fire districts. MR. OCHS: Right. Very good. MR. SMYKOWSKI: We did have one speaker on that issue. I don't know if you wanted to take speakers as the issue crops up or hold off speakers until the very end. Chief Peterson from Golden Gate is registered to speak. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It might be good if we took speakers before we just made a decision. MR. PETERSON: Commissioners, for the record, Don Peterson, fire chief, Golden Gate Fire Control and Rescue District. I think with your clarification you just made we're all set for this year and we can get into the issues when we start the negotiations. Thank you. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Chief Peterson, you looked good on national television, by the way. MR. PETERSON: Thank you. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Right. In terms of -- again, there was an expanded service within this district. That was for Goodland and Horrs Island, essentially due to the Marco Island incorporation. Those two areas were outside the boundaries of an existing fire district and the recommendation was to place them into Collier County fire to enable them to receive fire service, and we showed that as an expanded service. So it was identified clearly how much money was generated from those two areas in order to effectuate a contract that they had a specific pot of money. MR. OCHS: And, again, I just wanted to make the point, because technically, again, if you look at the existing contract, it says that twelve point zero one percent of the total dollars in district one go to Isle of Capri and the remaining funds are split among the other three districts. Technically speaking, you have additional funds that are now being set aside for Marco Island. As long as both East Naples and Golden Gate acknowledge that and don't, you know -- as well as Ochopee, obviously -- don't lay claim to the remaining money -- do you understand my point? The contract says they get -- they get -- they split three ways whatever is left after Isle of Capri gets their twelve point one percent. What I'm saying to you is that there's a certain portion of that remaining money that goes off the table and gets dedicated to the Horrs Island issue. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: When you said to Marco Island, I thought we were giving money to Marco Island. MR. OCHS: Well, we have an interlocal with Marco Island to service Goodland and -- MR. SHYKOWSKI: That's pursuant to the -- MR. OCHS: That's coming out of district one -- MR. SHYKOWSKI: Essentially, we're treating this as two separate pots of money. There's the existing pot, which is the standard contract for the two mills for Collier County fire. The nuance this year is adding Goodland and Horrs Island into -- into the Collier County fire district. But we're treating them as a separate distinct pot. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: And those funds collected are utilized in agreement with Marco Island for service? MR. SHYKOWSKI: That's correct. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. Understood. Thank you. MR. SHYKOWSKI: The next issue is Isle of Capri fire service levels. There was some folks here on Friday that were talking about a proposed change to the level of service but still within the existing millage within the Isle of Capri fire district. And essentially we told them on Friday that that would probably be a more appropriate -- appropriate discussion at wrap-up. Do you want to entertain the speaker and then -- it looks like Pete Kocik. MR. KOCIK: Good morning, commissioners. For the record, my name is Pete Kocik. The advisory board and Isle of Capri had recommended to the commissioners that any extra monies that were available in the budget be placed to increase and enhance the fire protection. And at this time I believe it was approximately thirty-five thousand had been put in reserves. And the advisory board was looking for that to be implemented as soon as possible to increase our fire protection, increase hours. So I would like to see if it could be put into fire protection rather than being held in reserve to have to apply for it and have it freed at a later date? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: What would it be spent on? MR. KOCIK: I'm sorry? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: What would you spend it on if it were not in reserves? MR. KOCIK: More hours. It would come out to approximately three and a half additional hours per day with no increase -- with no increase in our millage. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But you have no reserves at that point? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Usually when something's put in reserves, it's put there for a reason and that's my question. MR. KOCIK: Well, I believe this -- this is just extra money. Not the whole thirty-five thousand to be used for enhancing the protection, but leaving the required amount in there. I believe it's -- I'm not sure on the percentage of it, but there is a required amount, I believe, to be held in there. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What is it, Leo? MR. OCHS: The required amount of reserves is usually five percent of the budget. Mr. Smykowski is cranking that out right now. But we had placed that thirty-five thousand seven hundred dollar dedicated reserve for Isle of Capri there specifically because we knew that the advisory board had requested some additional hours. We hadn't had time as a staff to determine the exact number of hours that we would want to schedule, but we knew if we had that money available in reserves, it would be a simple matter of a budget amendment come October 1, and we would be able to appropriate that into personnel services to pay for the additional hours of service, but we've got the summer to work that out with the advisory board in terms of the actual staffing. So that money is there, it's dedicated and it's available to do just what Mr. Kocik had suggested. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Between now and September when we do final budget, could you do it so it doesn't require a budget amendment? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes. Our recommendation would be to work with the advisory board to determine exactly the dollar amount required and then prior to the final adoption of the budget in September, we could actually place that money into personnel services out of reserves. There are more than adequate reserves in the fund. They only need seven thousand dollars as five percent of what is currently budgeted, so there is certainly more than adequate -- their proposal I think was in the magnitude of fifteen thousand, somewhere in there. MR. KOCIK: Approximately, right, somewhere in there. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That should work. MR. SMYKOWSKI: So there would be more than adequate reserves still remaining. MR. KOCIK: And our goal is to -- the island's goal -- the district's goal is to enhance our fire protection as soon as possible as we go along. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Mr. Kocik, are you here today to represent the advisory board? MR. KOCIK: No, I am not. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Are you a member of the advisory board? MR. KOCIK: No, I am not. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Thank you. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Well, then let's -- let's let staff work that with the advisory board with the idea of having it resolved by September one way or the other. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Which would accomplish your goal, Mr. Kocik, so we wouldn't have to go through the budget amendment process. MR. KOCIK: Thank you very much. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Thank you. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Thank you. The next item through support services, there are a couple of questions related to fleet management. Dan Croft is here from fleet management to address the issue, the first of which is the hundred thousand dollar budget increase in the fuel allocation. COMMISSIONER MACwKIE: What makes us think fuel prices are going up so much if the sheriff doesnlt think theylre going up? MR. CROFT: The basis for the fuel price increase -- Dan Croft, fleet manager -- the basis for the fuel price increase is based on -- we get an oil pricing index service which we base our fuel contracts on. The -- there was a meeting between the OPEC and non-OPEC countries back in February, and during that period they decided and made an agreement that they would hold back the production of oil and hold back on the availability of oil to the market. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: This is going to sound like Iim being smart, but whenls the last time the OPEC and the whole oil cartel actually held to an agreement like that for more than a couple of months? MR. CROFT: I canlt answer that question, sir. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I canlt remember it since perhaps 174. And so I am just wondering if that is our primary basis -- you know a lot more about it than I do -- but if thatls our primary basis, I donlt know if thatls necessarily a stable place. I look at fuel prices as a whole are down from last year and welre looking at next year obviously but -- MR. CROFT: Yes, sir. The fuel prices, as a matter of fact, right now at this point are the lowest they have been in the last five years. I mean, they have hit rock bottom. COMMISSIONER MACIKIE: You know, an OPEC agreement is probably the least stable reason to impose a property tax that I can think of, you know. And this is exactly what welre talking about, do we collect an extra hundred thousand dollars from people this year or not? And if the reason is OPECIs, you know, promise to stick together this time, I donlt want to take that risk. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I understand youlre being conservative, Mr. Croft, and thatls a good practice, but I donlt think this onels going to materialize in the fashion that is shown in the budget. I know itls based on tables. You didnlt pull this out of the air. MR. CROFT: Thatls correct. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: But I am not going to roll the dice for a hundred grand on OPEC doing much of anything. So I would like to see that hundred thousand dollar increase removed. COMMISSIONER MACIKIE: Therels two. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Therels three. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Four. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Four. COMMISSIONER MACIKIE: Five. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: The second item under support services, Mr. Croft, is something regarding the changing and mileage from a trade-in from seventy thousand to ninety thousand. Welre going up at twenty thousand this year. MR. CROFT: Actually, sir, itls not that welre going up as far as the base, but that ninety thousand is the actual average mileage of the vehicles that are being replaced this next year. At your recommendation last year, you brought it up, you know, why are we doing seventy-five thousand? I went back and took a look at that and did a little analysis as to the value that welre getting for our vehicles on -- during our auctions, which is very good for the past couple of years. And I increased the mileage for the vehicles to eighty-five thousand as far as our automated system goes. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. MR. CROFT: Actually, for -- the mileage doesn't play the most important part as far as replacement of the vehicles. The most important factor is the maintenance on the vehicles. When they start getting up over fifty percent of the value of the vehicles, then we start looking very hard at replacing those vehicles. Even though we have an automated system, which is a point system -- there's a fifteen point system. Two thirds of that is the maintenance value, and then you have a -- portions that are the age of the vehicle and the mileage on the vehicle. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: This change really just reflects what we're experiencing? MR. CROFT: Yes, sir. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: This is statistical changes? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: But let me ask you this. On the books, until this fiscal change occurred, were we basing our amortization and replacement cost on seventy thousand that we had funds in a sinking -- we had money in a sinking fund at seventy thousand to replace it if we needed to, is that what we have been doing? MR. CROFT: It was seventy-five thousand. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Seventy-five. MR. CROFT: It -- again, you're looking at three different factors on the replacement. The six years and seventy-five thousand miles, it was just an area that we looked at at replacing vehicles. As for collection of money, we use six years on replacing those vehicles. They might have gone seven years. There are some cases historically where we have replaced some vehicles in four years just because of all the mileage that's put on them. Like, to give you an example, last time the animal control, they -- in four years they're going to be over a hundred thousand miles in those vehicles and they're going to start getting significant maintenance problems. We look -- even though the computer tells us it's time to replace them, we look at each individual vehicle before we replace it to ensure that it is the proper time to replace that vehicle. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: And I am sure that you do. The reason for my question is that if we are seeing the average go up a little bit due to the maintenance work that you're doing -- and that's exactly what we pay you to do and I'm glad to hear that -- are we making a commensurate change in the funds we have set aside each year in a sinking fund for replacement? If we're seeing the life extended a little bit, shouldn't we be reducing per vehicle the amount each year that goes into that sinking fund so that -- otherwise, in essence, we're going to be collecting more than we need for replacement and actually building up that reserve more than we need to. And since it's a general fund impact, ultimately that's a concern. So as I look through the information, what I saw was no change in the amortization schedule for replacement yet pushing the window out for how long we expect or hope the vehicles to last for the most part. And what I am looking for is that change. MR. CROFT: Yes, sir, I understand your concern. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. MR. CROFT: These vehicles, they are amortized by each individual vehicle, each line item, for replacement of that vehicle. So the funds that we have in that fund are by the line item vehicle. COHHISSIONER HANCOCK: When we get there, do we stop? If we say for vehicle X, which we expected a life of seventy thousand miles at year, you know, five, year six, we're going to have the funds to purchase a new vehicle. Do we continue collecting the next year if that vehicle is still in service on that amortization? MR. CROFT: Not if we have the entire amount for that vehicle in the pot. If -- if, in fact -- because depending on what kind of deals we get from the factory on a particular year, we may make -- you know, may get some good incentives from the factory. So I may have budgeted twenty thousand dollars for a vehicle and have it in the pot for the vehicle and the vehicle only costs me eighteen thousand dollars. That other two thousand rolls over into that same line for that new vehicle, and then there's a reduction in the collection for the new vehicle. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. Okay. So it stays within the line item for the vehicle. It doesn't go into, in essence, a general sinking fund that can be applied to other vehicles? MR. CROFT: No, sir. On anything except for EHS. EHS we have got set up over a twenty-year program so that we can kind of stabilize the collection for those vehicles. But the remainder of the vehicles are by line item, and basically because it comes from so many different types of funds. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: For the purpose of the information we have today, your answers, Mr. Croft, are acceptable to me, and there's nothing I can hang my hat on and say let's make a reduction here or there. But the last time I did a work day in that department was when Dan Cooper (phonetic) was there, I believe, and a lot of neat things go on in fleet management. They do a lot of good work over there, but it's such a complex issue. I'm wondering if maybe a productivity committee look at what's going on there would help my understanding of these kinds of questions, because I, you know -- it's just something that I want to, you know, maybe pursue in the future. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Did we have a productivity committee do that like just a couple of years ago, though? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Was it that recent? COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm trying to remember. It seems like it's since -- since you and I have no longer been on productivity. MR. SHYKOWSKI: I believe that was related to a privatization issue -- in-house versus -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Maybe we can find out and get a report back because if not then -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah, I just -- the amortization is a complex issue, and I don't envy your job, but it's something that I would like to have a better understanding of and it certainly couldn't hurt to have that review. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Let's at least pull out, you know, if there was a productivity committee report that predates some of us, I would like to read it. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. That's all I have. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: So if they could get their hands on that, we could go from there. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: One other item before we -- it has nothing to do with Mr. Craft, that's fine, but before we progress any further here, earlier this year we had a goal setting session, and I was thinking about this, do we have a list of the goals? The only reason I am bringing this up now, we're dealing with the budget, we set goals and priorities. Are we falling within those -- the priorities that they set at that meeting? Is what wewre doing here, are we within that framework? I mean -- COMMISSIONER MACwKIE: Are we spending money based on our priorities? CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Exactly. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, in my opening presentation regarding the budget, what we did was identify the six strategic goals of the board CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Okay. MR. SMYKOWSKI: -- and the various elements of the FY 99 budget and how they meshed with the strategic goals adopted by the board. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Okay. I just -- I just wanted to make sure that we were staying within that framework. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Right. For example, stormwater management, you know, the additional crews, some of the equipment, and some of the additional programming that was proposed. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: All right. Just to refresh memories here. Okay, go ahead. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Okay. The next division, there was three wrap-up items, community development and environmental services. The first issue was justification for the additional code enforcement personnel. You will recall from our discussion a week ago today there were -- Mr. Fernandez approved two additional code enforcement personnel. He indicated at that point that he may have been stingy, that they had requested four. MR. FERNANDEZ: You donlt have to rub it in. MR. SMYKOWSKI: And the issue was, was there need, in fact, for an additional two, and we were going to look at and evaluate service levels and essentially the scope of work those people would do. COMMISSIONER MACIKIE: When we talk about, you know -- I assumed the additional cost of two more would be somewhere in the eighty thousand dollar ballpark? MS. ARNOLD: Well, for the two, I think itls like a hundred and forty thousand because itls -- Iim sorry. For the record, Michelle Arnold, code enforcement director. Because it -- in addition to personnel services, we also require a vehicle per investigator, so it increases the cost. The two positions that you-all were in question of is one, an environmental position, and the other one was a sign position. The environmental -- the concern I believe you all had was the amount of time that would be spent on exotics removal. I have put together a list of all of the different responsibilities that environmental personnel would have. Theylre responsible for vegetation removal, endangered species, water quality, sensitive treatment areas, coastal construction setback type things, illegal land uses, which all the investigators are responsible for, landscape maintenance, which includes the commercial areas within the county so that we make sure that their landscape is maintained and not dying off, exotics, erosion control, exotic removal enforcement, sea turtle monitoring, which we coordinate very heavily with our natural resources department on, illegal tree trimming and court cases. Some of our cases do end up before the judge and that takes up some of the time of each investigator. For percentages, exotic removal would be approximately fifteen percent of the time spent by that investigator. The majority -- well, most of the time is spent on landscape maintenance, which is about twenty-five percent, and illegal land use, which is another twenty-five percent. And then vegetation removal is another larger percentage, and that's about ten percent. The rest of the items that I mentioned are roughly two to five percent of that investigator's time, or will be. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I guess going back to our conversation from last week about Bayshore or the Manor or certain parts of Golden Gate, those just seem like areas I would rather see -- and I appreciate the other additions, because it sounds like they will be directed toward that, but coastal setback line just seems duplicative of the effort that should be happening at the time of permitting for that type activity. Exotics -- the landscape, when you say they're responsible for the -- making sure landscape code is maintained at commercial properties county-wide, it almost sounds like you're duplicating coverage area with other code enforcement officers who may be out there. And I would hope as I drive to one complaint, if I happen to go by the Winn-Dixie Plaza that has lousy upkeep of its landscaping, that I could take note of that instead of having a whole separate person that has to scan the whole county for that. I just -- I think the other three are all a necessity. I think we have all seen in our districts the areas that can use the improvement, but I am not comfortable adding this position, again, trying to put it in a prioritization thing in my head of what's most important county-wide and what I am comfortable spending dollars on. I don't think I am for that. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Mac'Kie. COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: My question is if we disagree with the particular assignment that Hiss Arnold has in mind for them, I nevertheless think that we're in desperate need of two more, that we desperately need two more code enforcement officers. And we give some policy direction about what we want them assigned to do. The sign one is tremendously important. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Oh, I agree. The debate, though, is actually between whether do we give them three more or four. COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yeah, and I think that we give them four more. We have already given them two and I'm suggesting we give them all four, and then, you know, give some policy direction about how they should be used, but I think we need four new code enforcement officers. It's one of the things that we hear the most complaint about. The things that I hear, the most about from -- from constituents is why is it so hard to get code compliance? What's the point of having these great codes if we don't have code compliance. And, you know, Hichelle gave you the numbers of the cases handled by each of these guys, you know, it's overwhelming. I think we need four. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: I can support four, but I'm very reluctant to tell Hiss Arnold how she should appropriate -- I am not sure that that is necessarily our job. I believe that that is her job to take a look and see exactly how she ought to utilize those people, and if there's any justification in the future, if we have some concerns or things that are brought to our attention, we may bring those to her attention and she may choose to teassign or do some different things, but that's why she's in that position. So I would be very reluctant. You either go with whatever number you feel is appropriate or -- but as far as advising her where they need to go, I don't think that's our position to do that. COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I certainly agree with that. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Mr. -- or Commissioner Hancock. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I am just willing to compromise. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Let me understand. When we expanded we expanded two positions in code enforcement already; is that correct? MS. ARNOLD: That's correct. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: And those are general code enforcement positions? MS. ARNOLD: Yes. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Doing the entirety of code enforcement? MS. ARNOLD: Yes. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. What we're talking about here today is an additional two positions? MR. FERNANDEZ: Correct. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: And those two positions, again, are just code enforcement, correct? MS. ARNOLD: Correct. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: The environmental specialist position is yet another one? MS. ARNOLD: No. MR. FERNANDEZ: No, that's one of the four. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That's one of the four? Okay. So all we're talking about is adding two positions. You're saying one of them is needed as an environmental specialist because of what they do? MS. ARNOLD: Correct. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. Because of the demand on calls and whatnot. When you mentioned some of the things that an environmental specialist position does, some of them are permit fee based, such as coastal construction setback lines. MS. ARNOLD: Uh-huh. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Is this person anticipated to be funded out of general fund entirely? MS. ARNOLD: I believe what the administrator mentioned at the last time that we discussed this was one thirteen? MR. FERNANDEZ: Yes, funding source one thirteen. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Which is building permit fees. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. That answers it for me, because the call load, the call base on many of those things are development related and coming out of one fifteen (sic) resolves my concerns that -- I -- you know -- I heard two, make it three for adding the two positions. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I just need to say one thing. I respectfully disagree with you, Commissioner Berry, on what our job is and isn't. Obviously, not on a day-to-day level should we be telling Hiss Arnold what to do, but our job is to determine what areas are appropriate to spend funds on and what are not, and we may disagree on this. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Well, that's fine, we'll disagree. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: But I just want to clarify what our role is and what it's not and that's the whole purpose for those hearings is to decide what areas are appropriate. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Well, I think that was my point, Commissioner, that you can either agree to go with the two positions, but as far as her coming -- she really -- she could ask for the two positions. You either agree with that or disagree with it. How she tends to allocate it is actually her job to make that determination. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I heard you the first time, and I disagree. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: You heard me the second time. Commissioner -- or Commissioner Fernandez. I just demoted you. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: How would you like a cut in pay, Bob? CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Mr. Fernandez. MR. FERNANDEZ: Madam Chairman, I would reluctantly jump in the middle of this. I think the board's direction at this level should be pointed at the question of do you want to increase code enforcement at the level that we are requesting to have it increased? The basis given by staff is the basis that they have for making the request. But really the policy decision for the board is do you want to increase this particular function and by how much? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And you have got three people saying yes we do, so let's move on. MS. ARNOLD: Thank you. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Thank you. MR. SMYKOWSKI: And one of those two additional positions would be funded by one thirteen, just for clarification. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: That's fine. MR. SMYKOWSKI: The next issue is justification for an environmental specialist which was included in the planning services budget. MR. MULHERE: For the record, Bob Mulhere, Planning Services Director. As I indicated previously, this -- this is an entry-level position that we are requesting an environmental specialist one. The issue really is predominantly level of service related. And what I propose to do with this position is actually to share it between two sections, the current planning section which coordinates the development and review process and the engineering review section which actually does the field inspections during the site development process when they actually begin to go out there and develop the site. We have two environmental specialists currently assigned to current planning. In 1993, we had five. Activity levels have pretty much remained the same, although over the last two years they have increased in those types of petitions that require an environmental participation, including site visits for all of those land use activities and all of the site development plans and site improvement plans that are submitted. We also averaged -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Is this user pay or general funds? MR. MULHERE: It is one thirteen funded. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right. And as far as I'm concerned, if, you know, the consumers of the service are willing to pay for better service, then I support their request. MR. MULHERE: May I just add that the development services advisory committee did entertain this request and recommend -- recommend approval. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Did DSAC support this? MR. MULHERE: Yes. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So do I. There's one. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: I'll support it. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That's fine. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: As long as they want it. MR. MULHERE: Thank you. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: For the record, when the DSAC people met with me, what they also told me is that they supported everything in the -- in planning's budget except they thought they should get higher raises. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Wasn't it the merit? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Yep. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: I think the merit situation. And I guess I had to tend to agree with that. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: He, too. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Particularly when I looked at the dollars that were sitting in the fund there. There's big bucks and too much money sitting there as far as I'm concerned. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Is that on our agenda today? CHAIRPERSON BERRY: No, it's not, but I just thought I'd throw that in. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Because I wasn't going to waste time if it's not, because I have a different opinion. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: That's fine. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Okay. The next item is natural resources, the artificial reef program. There was an expanded request for fifteen thousand dollars. The question raised by the board on Friday was about joint participation with the City of Naples due to obviously the city being located along the beachfront and -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Were there any overtures made? Any contacts made with the -- to the city? MR. SHYKOWSKI: Mr. Bill Lorenz is here. MR. LORENZ: No, we -- my reef coordinator was out of town -- Bill Lorenz, natural resources director. In the past what we have done is we have worked with them logistically for locations of appropriate placement -- placement sites, but we were unable to get with them in terms of talking about any specific funding options. The options that we do have for -- for a program, of course, would be the general fund, which I believe this was listed. But the other thing that staff has reviewed is voter registration fees because a number of the other counties are looking at or actually using voter registration fees for this and, of course, they are collected county-wide. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That makes a lot more sense than a general property tax to me. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Constantine. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. With there being no grant this year, again, looking at the priority schedule on general property tax, it just seems like there are higher priorities than dumping debris in the gulf to spend money on. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I love how you couch things sometimes. I think of it as an artificial reef that, you know, I have dove on several times and you look at it as debris. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I look at it as eighteen thousand tax dollars -- or fifteen thousand tax dollars. MR. LORENZ: If I may add, we did do a survey in looking at the charter captains in terms of the amount of revenues they receive from taking parties out to the reefs, and that averages -- our projection is three hundred ninety thousand dollars a year revenues from the charter captains' businesses. And again voter registration fees would be an appropriate -- I think more of an appropriate source of funds than the general fund. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: How did it come in as a general fund request to start with then? It seems to me like that's such a good idea, I wish you had thought of it first instead of later. But -- but I think that's a great idea. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: If it's not going to be a general fund item, we have until September to decide what we want to do with it. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Right. I don't think it should be a general fund item. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Mr. Olliff, I just verified with him, there are some available voter registration fees, so we could in essence substitute a funding source that would reduce ad valorem fifteen thousand dollars and just reflect the funding source for this if the board is so inclined. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: What else do you -- voter registration fees on? MR. SHYKOWSKI: Anything waterway, navigational, safety, boat ramps, any waterway type improvements. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Maybe we could just kind of get a review on that before we say a definite yes only because boat ramps is one of those things we keep saying geez, we got to have more and more places and if we're going to prioritize, it seems like a boat ramp might be a higher priority. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I would just like to take it out of property taxes for today and have staff come back with a proposal about funding, looking at that voter registration fee budget overall. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: And we will get an update on that prior to the September decision as to whether to finally leave it in or pull it out. I'm okay with that. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Sounds good. MR. SHYKOWSKI: So at this point we're going to take it out of ad valorem. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yes, we are. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Okay. Thank you. Miss Vasey had desired to speak on the support services issue relating to fleet management. So before we get too far away from that. MS. VASEY: Janet Vasey for the record. I did want to mention something on the fleet management. The collections for the fleet management have increased every year and increased this year in '99 also, in the budget of '99. And the changes that have occurred on running the cars and the vehicles for an extra twenty thousand miles should have an impact on collections and that hasn't occurred. And I think looking into it is the right thing, but I do believe there's a couple of hundred thousand dollars at stake here in making a correction on that. Is there any way we could have that looked into before September? I think there's some real money here in having this -- this calculated the way it's actually going to occur. If you're going to amortize it over seven years or eight years instead of six years, I would believe that there's some big money there. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: The good news is if we can save some money between now and September, we have the ability to easily do that in the September hearings. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: The question is who do we direct that research to? I guess we'll do it through Mr. Fernandez and ask that maybe the assistant county manager or your designee -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That's his business. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: -- maybe the assistant county manager or his designee -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Whatever you want. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: -- take a look at Mr. Croft's amortization for replacement and make sure it is, in fact, matching the need as opposed to maybe being a little bit over. MR. SHYKOWSKI: We will research that and have an answer for September. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Okay. Thank you. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Okay. That moves us to public works. Some of the issues that came up Friday, NPDES program, the question was could that program be delayed one year. Mr. Boldt is here to address that. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I think I probably caused part of that confusion with my two hundred thousand population when it's really over a hundred thousand. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That was the basis for this item coming back as I recall, and if that's no longer there, then I don't think we have an option on it. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It's over a hundred and we have got to do it. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: We just have to thank the federal government for imposing this upon us. MR. BOLDT: For the record, John Boldt. You're correct, we have a mandate. We have an April of 2000 deadline to meet, so we need to get started with this initial funding. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: We have an unfunded mandate. You left out the unfunded. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I can't wait to see what happens to communities under fifty thousand when they -- I mean, how are they going to fund this kind of stuff? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Right. Big dollars. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Unbelievable. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Okay. So that's -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's in. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: -- that's in. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: That's the yes, Mr. Clinton to that one. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Uncle A1. MR. SMYKOWSKI: The second issue was the Belle Meade master plan that we discussed as part of our capital project discussion on Friday. It is funded by a transfer from the general fund, four hundred thousand dollars. The issue the board raised was since this is development related, would there be any private sector funding options available? I think the board was concerned that the general populace would be made to pay essentially for a study that would enable development to occur. MR. BOLDT: So I boil this down to a key question. Do you think over the next five to ten years there's going to be an increasing demand for residential development in the so called Belle Meade area that is now predominately devoted to agricultural production? If you agree, then I have proposed a plan of action. If you don't think there's going to be increased demand down there, then the basin study is really not needed and we will withdraw the application for funds. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Any planning people to tell me where's the urban boundary in relation to this area? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And I just need someone to help me with the basic philosophy of there will be development, so the general taxpayer should pay four hundred thousand bucks. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, my -- my theory on that is I wish there was some other source of payment and I am open to listening, but if we're going to have development in an area, we've got to know what restrictions to impose on that development which we won't know if we don't have some kind of a study. Otherwise, we will end up with, you know, the creation of problems out of ignorance. But if this is outside the urban boundary, I am wanting to discourage development in that area. MR. CAUTERO: Vince Cautero for the record. I believe the -- I will double-check on this before you finish this discussion. The urban boundary area cuts part of this lower southern study area. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's mostly just the lower study area -- MR. CAUTERO: Is that what you're concerned with most? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right. Because 951 -- what is it, one mile east of 9517 MR. CAUTERO: One mile east, right. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Yeah, but then you have got irregular -- irregularity that runs down 41. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's true. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: It's called the urban residential. You mean the piece that juts out south of 417 CHAIRPERSON BERRY: It's already there. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I am afraid we have to do this. MR. CAUTERO: We can -- we can find out very shortly. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Otherwise we're going to allow development to occur without knowledge of what kind of regulations we should have and we're going to create a lot of problems. MR. BOLDT: My recommendation would be that we initially fund this with a hundred percent county costs of two hundred thousand and give us another year while we're preparing these topographic maps to come up with a funding plan for the rest of the study, for the engineering, and for the construction that would include other funding partners, perhaps FDEP and the Big Cypress Basin, property owners, major property owners in the area, and other appropriate, you know, funding partners that would help them with the rest of the study, the two hundred thousand and the three hundred thousand dollar cost and all future costs. It's too late -- excuse me, sir. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: The map really helps a lot because it -- again it appears to me that this is an area that would have been and has been studied by some of the other agencies, either at the district level or at the state level or for that matter perhaps even higher than that. But this area down through here has been studied and restudied. Would some of the plans from the state where we're looking at some ag. land here -- and that's what I want to make sure that this was the ag. land that's just east of the southern blocks -- and unless my memory is completely faulty, that has been part of some of the plans for the watershed. Now, I am just wondering if it might not be helpful to compile what all is already studied before we start again, and do we know what that is? As of last week we weren't sure, and so I hate to dedicate two hundred thousand or four hundred thousand or ten dollars to something that we don't know what was already studied down there. MR. BOLDT: There's been a number of studies done for various purposes in the area but nothing specifically that says if you're going to develop this area over a period of time with this hodgepodge of berms and ditches and pumps there, where should be the major flow-ways, where can we designate regional retention areas? And that's kind of a focus of what our study would be using -- everybody else's data. COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Stormwater was what number on our top five priorities? MR. FERNANDEZ: Three, I think. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Hancock. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: John, how would this money be spent? Is it internal staff time and field verification? Are we adding personnel? Are we contracting out? How do you anticipate completing this study? Who are we paying? MR. BOLDT: Well, the study would be managed in-house between my department and OCPM. We would contract out to consultants for, you know, the data collection and assessment and the evaluations. This initial cost of two hundred thousand is mostly aerial photography work that we need for the area. What we have down there was done in '83. It's some fifteen years old and we need to have, you know, brand new aerial topographic mapping of this study area down there that we can lead ourselves into the next phase. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. I guess rectified aerials were flown not too long ago of Collier County, but does that pretty much stop at the urban boundary and doesn't go beyond there? MR. BOLDT: Didn't cover this specific area and these need to be really low level, high resolution specific to do topographic mapping of the scale we need it. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Mr. Fernandez, do we anticipate getting a start on the GIS this coming fiscal year? MR. FERNANDEZ: Yes. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: What Mr. Boldt is talking about, if we're going to fly any kind of aerials in this county from this day forward, they need to be done on state plan coordinates so they can be incorporated into a GIS, otherwise, we're going to be duplicating that work. What you're talking about doing should essence -- in essence be layers within what will be a useful GIS system we have. So I guess what I'm looking for here is -- I think we need to begin moving toward this so that we understand the issue better, we as a board do. You have said that for, you know, two hundred thousand dollars you feel you can get that started. Is that -- is that a conservative estimate so you don't have to come back for a budget request or do you think that we're really talking about maybe a little less money than that? MR. BOLDT: That's our best estimate at this point in time what it would cost to do the proper type of preparation to get into the study. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Let me suggest maybe a little bit of a hybrid approach here. Mr. Boldt's key question here is do you -- do we expect increase in demand for residential development in this area? Well, so far there hasn't been any particular evidence of that. And perhaps what we can do is to fund the initial portions of this study and then if there are increasing residential demands in the future, tie them into the funding of the completion of this study as a condition of permitting. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: So in other words, if the preliminary study says yes, there are significant problems that need to be fixed, we in essence draw a line around this area and say okay, if you're going to come in and make situations worse you have a commensurate responsibility to fix the problem. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Right. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: How do we do that? How do we draw the land -- the line around this area? Because that -- that sounds satisfactory to me, but it sounds like it needs a comp. plan amendment. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Well, that's what the topo. does. You have to get the basic information as to who contributes to the area and the areas within that that are problematic. Just like you do with Naples drainage, you know. We actually reached out to everyone who contributed to the system and were able to create a funding mechanism that way. This may be very much the same way, but I like that as an approach. I guess I sense that we need to at least get the information to determine what our direction should be and, Mr. Boldt, if you're saying it takes two hundred thousand to do, I guess taking two hundred thousand dollars out of the budget is better than nothing. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: I agree. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Better than a stick in the eye. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Better than a sharp stick in the eye. COMHISSIONER NORRIS: Does that sound functional to you, Mr. Boldt? MR. BOLDT: Yes, sir, it does. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Okay. So reduce that number by two hundred thousand. MR. SMYKOWSKI: That concludes the departmental specific wrap-up items. There were two general policy issues for wrap-up. One, we discussed briefly the other day, whether or not there was any board interest in pursuing a utility franchise fee in order to diversify the general fund revenue. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: A couple of thoughts on that. We have the lowest ad valorem tax in the state, first of all, so I'm not sure what we're trying to diversify there. But what irritates me the most is we have had this discussion in detail and the board said no. And frankly, it appears little has changed except our county who I think favors this. I'm irritated that we're revisiting the issue simply because Bob's direction or Mike's direction may be different than what the board said, but I don't think any information has changed than what this board said. It's a new tax. It's an additional tax. Long term, Pam, you're absolutely right. Long term, when growth slows down, you could have a need for it and some day when growth slows down, that commission will have the option to exercise it, but today we don't have that need for it. And it's just -- I don't see any need for creating a new tax when we don't need it. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Hancock. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: I think Commissioner Norris was trying to get you first. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Norris. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, if you can create -- and this is the argument I made before because I do favor this -- if you can create a different method of collecting from different people, you can help to flatten out some of the inequities of all tax systems, and that was the argument that I made before. It would reduce property taxes by the same amount that you collect. I know your argument is that the board will incrementally creep back up, but that's why we have this budget process so we don't do that. But I don't know what the current feeling of the board is, but I was at least mildly in favor of going forward with this the last time we had the discussion. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's two, because you know I already have stated that I am in favor of -- and John articulated it perfectly. It's that it balances the inequities that are inherent in a property tax, a hundred percent property tax system. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Or any tax. I mean, any time you have most of your money coming from one tax, that's going to be -- there will be inequities somewhere. And the more different sources that you have to generate the exact same number of dollars means that you have leveled some of those inequities. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I guess that's just the key to it is to generate the same amount of money. I don't believe that in the long term. I know human nature. I know government's nature. And over the long term you will end up with more tax on people. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Madam Chairman? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: You can make that argument, but at the same time, you do make the argument that we have the lowest property tax rate in the state and so that sort of contradicts your first argument. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I don't think so at all. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Hancock. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: When we decided not to go ahead with this, I think it was a three/two vote not to go ahead, and Commissioner Berry was not on the board at that time. I don't know if this is here because it was Mr. Fernandez's doing, but I remember you talking about it, Commissioner Mac'Kie, during -- during the budget discussions, and it is a policy issue. The budget was not prepared this year with anticipation of this occurring, so I don't think it's appropriate for us to say whether we're going to throw it in now or not. Commissioner Norris, you know, your argument is valid, but you're never going to fix the, quote, unquote, inequities in an ad valorem system and we've had, you know, I mean -- I don't care whether your home's worth sixty thousand dollars or six hundred thousand dollars, you know, you're going to call me and tell me you're not getting your tax money's worth in this community. I mean, that just seems to be an underlying current out there. Those who are paying more in taxes are unhappy and want more back for their money and those who are paying less still want more for their money. So no matter where the source is or what the source is, I don't think we're ever going to resolve the tax equity question. My concern about this is when you -- people know they pay property taxes and they know pretty much that they're used only for the essential services government has to provide or local government is left to provide, and where I had a problem with the franchise fee is -- or the franchise -- well, it's a franchise fee, but it's a percentage of your payment -- is it should be used for things that those franchises exact or costs incurred as a result of those franchises operating in this county, and that correlation wasn't really there. And I am always leery of any new type of tax because I think the perception on the general public's part is you're trying to get me somewhere else. Even though this board would not let that happen, you know, you would see a commensurate reduction in ad valorem, I just think the simplest and most straightforward way is to say look, folks, property taxes are there, they're going to be here for the rest of your life and that of your children and grandchildren, and you can throw everything else in the mix all you want, but I think there's a perception on the public's part that adding new taxes in essence is reaching for more of the pie, and I just really don't want to go down that road, not right now, not when we don't have to. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: And the fee is a tax. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The fee is absolutely a tax. The question is -- Tim's exactly right, we will never solve the inequities of property tax, but we can reduce the inequity by diversifying the manner in which we tax. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, the other key ingredient -- I don't know if that's exactly true when you start looking at the federal income tax picture, because the other key ingredient is ad valorem tax is one hundred percent deductible, franchise fee is not. So if you are doing as Commissioner Norris suggested and having the same amount of tax on people, they're actually -- it's going to cost them more money because they can deduct less on their federal. So, I mean, you can play this any different way you want, but right now you have one particular source, people can see very clearly where that is, they can deduct it out of the federal income tax, but to create a new tax -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Basically, what we're -- the inequity that this would help balance is that right now the more expensive property owner pays so much more than their share. And if we had a tax on utilities instead of a property tax, then it benefits the more expensive property owners who are otherwise paying a great deal more than their share. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: I think this should wait until the new look in the year 2001 when they restructure whether you're going to be able to deduct some of this or not. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Well, good point. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I don't have -- CHAIRPERSON BERRY: At that point in time, this may -- this may look entirely different when you're not able to deduct your ad valorem tax. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I don't have a desire to pursue utility franchise fees. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Nor do I. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Okay. Scratch that one. MR. FERNANDEZ: Madam Chairman. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Mr. Fernandez, did you want to say something? MR. FERNANDEZ: I don't want to open the issue back up; I heard loud and clear. Just to explain the reason it was before you is because we felt that the discussion that the board had in their discussion of the goal settings -- at the goal setting session -- and the nature of diversification of revenues, that this was an issue that had been on your table in the past and we needed to at least bring it back up to give it a look. It's not something that was -- that the budget was based on. We were a good year away from budgeting any revenues here if the board decided to go forward. So I heard it loud and clear, we'll go on. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think you can see, Mr. Fernandez, the clarification is we were talking about diversifying the tax base with the focus on economic development as opposed to diversifying the source of taxes. MR. FERNANDEZ: Okay. Thank you for that clarification. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Okay. Next item. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Yes, the final item on our wrap-up list is -- as I indicated in my opening remarks, there was a pay plan adjustment that was a principal component of the FY 99 budget in the county administrator's agency. That impacted approximately thirty-six percent of employees within the county administrator's agency. The request is to expand the merit pay program by one additional percent. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Can I just comment from the productivity committee, because this was very thoroughly reviewed at productivity committee and heartily endorsed by them, basically, because we're -- through implementing this program we're eliminating the concept of COLA increases that everybody gets a pay raise just because they showed up for work, and we are rewarding merit and acknowledging acceptable performance but not rewarding unacceptable performance. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Throughout the budget discussion I have kept referencing priorities and what's a high priority and what's not, and obviously taking care of our employees is the number one priority. If they are happy, they're going to do a better job and the public's going to be happier. That's corporate one-o-one, so I don't have any problem with this at all. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I think it's the right thing to do. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Hancock. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I just want to seek a clarification. In the past, what we have done was cost-of-living increase and then a one percent, you know, bonus that did not apply to the base of the employee. And the problem is what happens when you do that every year is they may get a check for a few hundred bucks as a bonus but yet their base salary stays only with cost of living. It may not reflect what is occurring in the market. So every seven years or five years, we have to look at a pay plan study because the base salaries of our employees have only grown with the cost of living, not with market factors. And so every now and then we take a big hit while, you know, taking smaller hits in the budget every year. That didn't make sense to me. But when we -- when we pursued this as a -- or gave this as a direction to the county administrator, I want to make sure I understand what's happening. As we allocate these funds nobody is guaranteed a raise; is that correct? MR. FERNANDEZ: That's correct. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: The raises will be based on their job performance, added to whatever -- you know, the whole package of that individual employee. So we're in essence empowering our division administrators and the people just below them to make these determinations. I would ask you to flag any department where everybody in the department gets the exact same raise, you know, anything over four or five people, because I think what happens then is there's failure to recognize the superior performance and to reward that performance, then the department manager is not doing their job. Because any time you have more than a couple of employees, somebody is going to be outperforming somebody else. And what I don't want to see happen is we bump this up and the result is everybody gets more across the board. So I would ask, you know -- and you may disagree with that from a management style -- but I think if we see that in a department, it ought to be cause for concern because that's not the intent. The intent is in essence to reward and not penalize. And in the past we were penalizing the good worker and rewarding the poor worker. So as long as we can agree that that's a good approach then I am okay with it, but I want to really take a good hard look at it next year and see how it was implemented. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We actually did something similar to this in '93 or '94 or a couple years there where it gave some leeway for -- it was I think an average of three percent but the outstanding folks, the -- might get one. And, of course, you have some complaints from some folks who don't think they have been treated fairly in that, but I just think that's a better way than a straight -- well, as you say, you show up for work, you get a raise. It provides a little incentive to work that much harder. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Mr. Fernandez. MR. FERNANDEZ: Madam Chair, Commissioner Mac'Kie described this pretty accurately in our discussion with the productivity committee. Originally the plan was to reward -- to only have three categories for performance, meets expectations, exceeds expectations or does not meet expectations. And with one percent we felt we only had enough to grant merit increases for those that exceed expectations. Given our -- now our information on how many employees will be impacted by the salary survey implementation, we face the realization that there was the potential that a large number -- a large percentage of employees may receive nothing at all. And we felt there was -- and in our discussion with the productivity committee -- a tool to address this issue would be to revise the merit program and to give merit increases for those that meet expectations and exceed expectations. That's what the additional one percent would allow us to be able to do. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Obviously not the same percentage for meeting as for exceeding? MR. FERNANDEZ: That's correct. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Mr. -- or Commissioner Hancock. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: The Mr./Commissioner thing has just got you today. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: I know it. I can't deal with it. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Let me ask a scenario. If somebody within the organization is getting a pay plan adjustment up to the cap, say ten percent, I believe is where you capped it; is that correct? MR. SMYKOWSKI: It was ten and eight. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Ten and eight. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Ten for non-exempt, eight for exempt. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: If I am getting a ten-percent adjustment to bring me up to market conditions, am I also going to get a three percent COLA and a one percent merit on top of that? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No COLA. MR. SMYKOWSKI: There is no COLA. The three percent is the pay plan. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. Again, I understand there is no COLA, but if I could get four percent -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And, yeah, I think we're saying and meets. You get your ten percent adjustment and you meet expectations, which is essentially cost-of-living increase, are you getting both of those? MR. FERNANDEZ: Well, I would say that the answer would be no if we were strictly doing a COLA, because the pay plan survey implementation could be argued to be the updating of that particular salary. But because it is performance based, we're trying to keep the merit program separate from the salary survey implementation. So I would say yes in that case. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I understand the intent. My concern is that it then reduces the pot for others who are not getting possibly a ten-percent jump. I know we're in the area of discretion here, and I'm not trying to do your job for you, but I would like to see if somebody's getting as much as a ten or eight percent increase based on salary survey, that if they're getting a merit increase, that it be may be a little less than it would be otherwise and that be explained to the employee that, you know, there's kind of a limit in a given year. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Adjust the merit scale if you were -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah. I'm going to ask for your consideration with that. Obviously, I can't, you know, direct it and I don't really have all of the information to be -- MR. FERNANDEZ: Okay. I understand what you're getting at there, and we will take that in consideration and try to develop something that is fair, is consistent in its application to employees, but yet addresses the fact that there should be some limit to an increase an individual receives, and yet there's still the incentive for performance, and that's what we're trying to accomplish. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: And, Mr. Smykowski, we as a board next year when we look at current service, we're going to see on personnel costs a one to two percent increase over this year because of -- that's the one year hit that we're going to take. Next year budget wise for salaries is going to be a little more of a movement than it was in years past because of this adopted policy; is that correct? MR. SMYKOWSKI: That is correct because the merit will go into base salary which is a distinction from what has been -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Basically, we're amortizing. We shouldn't be doing pay plan adjustments of the magnitude we have in the past by utilizing this policy? MR. FERNANDEZ: You should minimize that in the future. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I like eliminate but minimize is probably all I can hope for. MR. FERNANDEZ: It's a dynamic process. We're still going to need to take a look at it from time to time to make sure we're staying competitive. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: If we look at the last five-year trend, you know, five years from now we need to look at that and compare the two to determine whether this policy has been effective and cost effective and year to year or not, but time will tell. MR. FERNANDEZ: Madam Chair. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Uh-huh. MR. FERNANDEZ: I think it's also important to mention the fact that this could, in fact, have the ripple effect on constitutional officers. I think they probably based their request to us on what they need to be our percentage limit, and we had told them that that limit was four percent at the time that we were preparing budgets, so we could expect some adjustments from them as well. Although the kind of discussion we have just had about application isn't going to apply to them. They're going to, of course, use their own policies for implementation of a salary management system. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: This was contained in our budget book for discussion, wasn't it? This wasn't an eleventh hour add on? In other words, constitutional officers knew that we were going to be discussing this? MR. FERNANDEZ: Yes, they did. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It was a change from our budget policy that we adopted earlier in the year. MR. FERNANDEZ: That's -- that's the reason we're bringing it forward. The budget policy provided for the four percent limit and this adds another percent to that. MR. SMYKOWSKI: And the budget that you saw did not include this additional percent. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: In the event the constitutional officers opt for that, to come in and ask for that as well, what does that do to our overall dollar and tax and picture? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Well, the total of a one percent addition of personnel services county-wide across all funds is one point one million dollars of which eight hundred -- about eight hundred and sixty-six thousand is general fund between constitutional officers and funds like EMS and road and bridge. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: What does that do to the ad valorem tax rate? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Assuming we had that across-the-board increase? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Well, we do have savings and retirement of approximately a hundred and seventy thousand dollars that had not been factored in. Overall we'd add back in about seven hundred thousand dollars to the general fund and -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Millage translation for that is what? MR. SMYKOWSKI: It would pretty darn close to wash out based on the changes the board has made with the three hundred seventy thousand in the sheriff, the two hundred thousand dollars in the Belle Meade master plan. We're up to about six hundred thousand there. In addition there's another one hundred twenty thousand or thereabouts from the transfer from the unincorporated area general fund for the franchise administration folks that moved over. We talked about making that change. That's another hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So if they -- if we approve -- MR. SMYKOWSKI: -- so it about washes between the cuts you have made. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It would basically spend what we have cut, though, if the -- MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- if the constitutional officers came in and asked for an additional one percent and if it was approved, we'd spend everything we have cut, so we certainly don't want to encourage them to do that or to assume that there's any automatic approval of such a thing. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Right. The constitutionals are just about half of that total one point one. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Can we can go back just for a minute to the beginning of this conversation where originally we talked about a three percent plus a one percent to make up for the merit. From a dollar standpoint, how does that differ? And I don't just mean the raw figure of three million against four million, but how does that differ for our ability to take care of employees? And you said a little bit on that, but of going with three percent plus one versus the three percent plus two that's being asked for now? MR. FERNANDEZ: Is your question how does that change our ability to take care of a larger percentage of employees? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah, if I'm the typical employee, what's the likelihood of me seeing something from that in each scenario and what's the likely impact on me if I'm a thirty thousand dollar a year employee? MR. FERNANDEZ: It's difficult to answer because of the implementation of that one percent merit. Under the original plan of the three percent salary adjustment we know -- let's break it down into those parts. The three percent salary adjustment would affect thirty-five percent; is that correct? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Thirty-six percent. MR. FERNANDEZ: Thirty-six percent of employees. It's impossible to predict how many employees would be affected by the one percent merit increase because it's based on performance. We felt that there was probably a pretty large gap between the thirty-five percent affected by the salary survey and the one percent receiving exceeds expectation evaluations, and that's why we felt there was the basis to request that also we reward for meets expectations, and I don't know the numbers. It's just the anticipation that it will probably -- this -- this proposed combination would reach the majority of employees. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: The -- and obviously, we want to do that. That's how I started the conversation, but I am also trying to find a way we can afford to do it and -- COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Make it a percent and a half instead of two. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah. Either toy with that -- and actually where I am basing that on rather than just picking it at random -- and I think we're on the same track -- is the actual consumer price index for the southeast, which is traditionally what we base this on, is at about two point one, I think. Nationally it's lower than that, but we have always taken our little corner which is often a higher number. But that was according to some stuff we read last week anyway. So I don't know if that helps us at all. I just want to make sure the employees keep pace, but I want to make sure we do it in a way we don't end up increasing the tax. MR. FERNANDEZ: Madam Chair, coming in at this late date with a request to reconsider a cost-of-living adjustment was my initial plan. I have changed that after having spoken to the productivity committee and hearing their reaction to the concept of a cost-of-living adjustment. Remember, when we originally requested the four percent at budget policy time, that was based upon a premise that the cost of living or consumer price index was probably going to be pretty flat this year, and it has now gone to a two percent number. So at the time I was before the productivity committee, my plan was to ask for another one percent cost-of-living adjustment. But I got a very cold reception from them and it caused me to reconsider -- reconsider my proposal, and what we have heard this morning is the result of that discussion, that there's a way to affect more employees, address the same issues, without it being considered a straight across the board where everyone receives the same amount. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Hancock. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Commissioner Constantine's point with the cost of living I think is a good one. What we're actually looking at here possibly is, you know, for an employee that meets standards and we want them to keep pace plus get a little bit. The potential pot here is really cost of living plus three percent with this additional one because it's five -- I mean, we're talking about -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: That would be five; we're only talking four. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We're talking five. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: We're talking five percent. So what I am saying is if the -- if to keep pace is two point one percent and the available pool -- for -- now the available pool for every employee is cost of living plus three percent -- and I look at actual budget dollar impact of that on all constitutional officers, it's a little higher than I want to go this year. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And where we came up with the original three point -- three plus one was anticipating the consumer price index would be three. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: I would like to see us kind of split the baby here and go to instead of two percent available on the -- we need to come up with a word other than merit pay program, you know, whatever you're going to call it, Bob. Instead of two percent being available, I would like to bring it down half a point and reduce the fiscal impact. In the end, we are doing a couple of things that we haven't done since I have been on this board and that is applying it to base salary next year, which has an incremental effect that hasn't been seen. The second thing we're doing is recognizing with only two point one percent as cost of living out there, the potential for increase on average is over two percent above holding your own. And in, you know -- I just think it also lessens that total impact to the general fund this year and also reduces the increment that we're going to be looking at next year, but it's still far more fair and a better approach than what we've had in the past. So I would like to see the additional request of one percent we're talking today go to point five percent. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: My support is going to stay with the manager's proposal because, frankly, having sat through hours of review by people with a whole lot more expertise in personnel and human resource matters than I think any of us have, the productivity committee's careful, thorough review -- and they're as stingy as any of us because it's their dollars we're talking about -- I think it would be shortsighted of us to substitute our judgment for the administrator's when he has spent so much time on this plan. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: I think, though, it does fall to us, Pam, to look at the out-year budget impacts -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Of course it does. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: -- and what we can and can't afford, and we have to balance those. The productivity committee doesn't have to consider those. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, but they did. I mean, they gave a whole lot of attention to that. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: It doesn't rest in their hands ultimately is my point. COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Of course. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: And I'm looking at eight hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars to the general fund. I need to bring that down a little bit personally to -- to meet what I think is a reasonable budget that we can carry into next year without having a lot of fat in it. COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Isn't the eight sixty-six assuming every constitutional officer got this same percentage increase? MR. SHYKOWSKI: Yes. COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: So what's the number without that assumption? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: How can you -- I'm sorry, go ahead. MR. SHYKOWSKI: It's approximately half. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm going to agree with Commissioner Hancock just because it does a couple things. It puts more than twice CPI into our ability to give raises to county employees. The original three percent was based on an assumed CPI and then the plus one percent was for merit. So the total CPI, plus one. We're doing CPI plus two and a half here. So I think it does the goal of rewarding the employees real well and doing it in such a manner as you say that it's a one-time payout but it's an actual adjustment so that next year they still enjoy that plus whatever further they do. It achieves a couple very good things for the employees. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Did -- did the productivity committee talk about including this in so it would be on their base for the following year? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yes. That's one of the most fundamental, you know, positives. And the productivity committee talked a lot about the potential debt other constitutional officers might likewise have for such, but nobody has assumed and I hope -- you know, I think the fault in our logic here is if we are assuming that they're all going to come in and ask for and we're going to approve -- I mean, in the sheriff's budget -- just take the sheriff's budget out of that eight sixty-six, Mike, and what are we talking? Because that's just not apples to apples as he tells us every dang year, that their personnel needs are not the same as our personnel needs. MR. SMYKOWSKI: That's four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I agree -- I agree with Commissioner Hancock on this. I think we should go with the half. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: That's three. MR. FERNANDEZ: Madam Chairman? CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Mr. Fernandez. MR. FERNANDEZ: Just a couple of points, if I may. The first I would like to make is that I understand that given the cuts that have been made in this process, this amount could be accommodated even if you assume all of the constitutional officers receive it without affecting the millage that was originally proposed in this document, okay? So it can be accommodated given the cuts that have been made through your process. The second point is that the three percent and the one percent that the board approved at budget policy time was based upon the same percentage amount that was in the previous year. In the previous it was based upon a three percent cost of living and a one percent merit. But at that time we said -- we anticipated that the cost of living would not be at that same three percent level, which gives us an opportunity to use that same percentage amount of funds to do the pay plan management work that needs to be done, because we have gotten out of sync with our competitors. And I am saying that to make it clear that this is not -- the three percent was not proposed as an attempt to -- to address a cost of living increase or a consumer price index kind of concern. It was clearly a need for us to do salary survey implementation and salary management based upon that information. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Let's just take a little break here anyway, okay? That's fine. We will take about a five to seven minute break. We're just about finished. (Break was taken.) CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Okay. Mr. Smykowski. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Okay. Just for purposes of clarification, to the county administrator's agency of the eight hundred and sixty-six thousand, ad valorem is two hundred and sixty-two thousand. The constitutional officers as a whole would be six hundred thousand or seventy percent. It wasn't 50/50. The 50/50 breakdown was sheriff and county administrator. It's actually 30/70 when you wrap in all the constitutional officers. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: But the county -- the constitutional officers have already submitted their budgets and they don't reflect any of this and they're not likely after today's wrap-up to come in and ask for something more, are they? MR. FERNANDEZ: Madam Chairman, to that one I can only say that one constitutional officer has spoken to me about this, that's Mr. Skinner. He has indicated that if, in fact -- and I told him that I would be asking for more here and that if, in fact, the board was inclined to do that, to let him know, that he would be asking for the same consideration. Also, I would offer to the board that we've been talking about the funds necessary to fix a problem essentially that has been created over the years from having a program that didn't contain the necessary elements to maintain its integrity over time. That's kind of a unique problem, and I don't know if the constitutional officers all are facing that same problem. In other words, have they all been giving raises that didn't go into the base of their salaries? I thought that the Board of County Commissioners was pretty unique in that regard. And that's part of the problem that we're trying to solve here. I'm not sure how -- how legitimate I would consider an argument from the constitutional officers that their needs are the same given a different history there. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Even if they ask for it doesn't mean we have to approve it. Because if we can see the distinction, and I can, then we can hold to it. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Madam Chair, in a discussion with the county administrator in the break, let me offer a clarification. The -- as I understand it the three percent that we have been talking about since the term COLA has been thrown in the trash can and rightfully so, the three percent was -- under Mr. Fernandez's plan directed solely to the salaries of bringing people up to a point that is competitive in market value and whatnot. That left only one percent for anyone who is, you know, doing their job. And with the two point one percent, that's going backwards. The problem take was that if we restrict that three percent as, in essence, a pay plan adjustment -- and here's where I think it does or doesn't apply to the other constitutional officers -- we have done a review of the positions and that three percent, in essence, is a pay plan adjustment. We did a pay plan adjustment for the sheriff two years ago, for the clerk, was it last year or the year before? COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Recently. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Recently. And unless those departments, and Mr. Skinner included, have done the commensurate work on a pay plan study for their positions, then I am not sure we can say that it blanket applies. However, I think we need to budget in such a fashion that that may be -- may be an outcome one way or the other. It may be a mid-year adjustment, I don't know. Here's what I'd like to offer. I still think the total amount allocated should be at four and a half percent, but remove the restriction that three percent of it goes toward the pay plan adjustment side of things. Make it a pool of four and a half percent so that those employees who are doing their job and doing it well do not go backwards because we are bringing other positions up to a base salary that they should be at. Maybe some of those positions are brought some of the way this year, the rest of the way next year, but it does two things. It reduces the hit from one year to the next, and it also ensures that an employee that's doing their job, not just showing up but I mean doing their job, does not go backward. That person can still get roughly two percent so that, you know, a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk means the same to him as it did the year before. I think we can do that at four and a half percent if we take the restriction off three percent being used solely for pay plan adjustment and give that flexibility to the county administrator and also reduce the hit for next year by a little bit. And so that's -- when I talk about four and a half percent, that's the manner in which I would like to see it utilized. COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Agreed. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: How do you feel about that, Mr. Fernandez? MR. FERNANDEZ: I think that's workable. That's something that we can probably -- it gives us the flexibility to go back to the pay plan adjustment and ask ourselves are there some adjustments we want to make in our implementation of it given the fact it's a -- as I said, it's a dynamic process. Maybe pick up some of next year that we choose not to do this year, and it gives us the flexibility to put together a merit program that gives legitimate reward to our performers so that, as you say, we don't lose ground to inflation. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: I'll support that then. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Good. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Very good. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: It looks like you have five on that one. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: We have speakers, though. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Do we have speakers? MR. FERNANDEZ: I think we do. Janet Vasey. MS. VASEY: Janet Vasey for the record. We have a few observations both on the pay plan and on the merit issues that we would like to just bring to your attention. Basically the best reason we feel to adjust pay is because you have a problem with recruitment and retention and in some areas you do have a problem. I believe we found that with the information technology, some of the public works engineers, and there may be another couple of job categories. But by and large a lot of the classifications and pay that are being adjusted are not experiencing high turnover or recruitment problems. So in the past, you have had -- like the sheriff you mentioned before, that was two years ago where you had the pay adjustment. You just did that a couple of months ago for the EMS paramedics based on recruitment and retention. And I think the nexus between that situation and a pay plan adjustment is very strong. I would suggest that some turnover is desirable in an organization. It allows people to progress up the ranks, and also if you're filling from outside, to bring people in from outside the organization with new and fresh ideas. This pay plan gives increases in many instances of two and three -- sometimes three grades are being increased. There is an option to do only one pay -- one grade increase, but a lot of them are two and three. As background I would like to mention that we had a pay plan adjustment just two years ago for the county, and it was about seven percent, and at that time we supposedly achieved play plan equity. And since that time, one year later, then, you had a COLA, and one percent merit, four percent increase one year later. I think the first -- the pay plan adjustment was about March of '96. In March of '97 you had a four percent increase. Six months later you had another four percent increase in October of '96 -- '97. And so now here we are another year later with a pay plan adjustment that gives a seven percent increase. Now, it does only hit one third of the population, but it is a seven percent increase. And it just seems sort of strange that you would be needing to rebalance again after just two years and those intervening pay increases. We think that the -- widening the pay bands is a very good idea because there you have gotten a little bit further range to go in progressing up the grade, and I do know that there are thirty or so -- thirty to forty people that are hitting at the top, and I think that's a good move to change it from fifty percent to sixty percent. Also, you putting the merit pay in the base is another good move because it's not just a one-year kind of thing. It should go in your base. And that's going to have a major impact on people, to have that in their base. And it just seems like all of these things coming together are putting an awful lot of money into the pay area. In the past the philosophy has always been COLA plus one percent, which is pretty reasonable. Now you're talking a whole lot more than COLA plus one percent. And we would just ask you to reconsider or to take a real hard look at whether that is totally necessary given the limited area where you have retention and recruitment problems. Thank you. MR. FERNANDEZ: Do we have any other speakers? Madam Chairman, you have two speakers who have elected not to speak, just to mention their names for the record, Tony Brock and Kent Orner. I think both were in relationship to the Ochopee fire control district, and they have waived. We have other speakers that are in the general area and not specifically on this subject. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Okay. MR. FERNANDEZ: Would you like to call those now? CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Go ahead. MR. FERNANDEZ: The first is George Botner. MR. BOTNER: Good morning. For the record, George Botner, president of Collier/Naplescape 90's. Commissioners, late in the budget cycle we at Naplescape, as you know, have been grappling with the issue of what sort of long-term funding controls we might be able to place over the very exuberant response that we have from the public in streetscape installations throughout the whole county. And to that end, we -- we being Collier/Naplescape, thought perhaps as recently as four months ago that we might visit the -- or revisit the subject of a special taxing district for the urban area. And you know, you-all looked at that several years ago and the timing wasn't right to do it then. Sitting with a number of you, however, since then, it came to our attention that perhaps we could, instead of creating a new tax, apply the same system really that we're already using, the transportation maintenance MSTDs. That would do a couple of things for us. Number one, we wouldn't have to create overlay taxing relationship to our program. And number two, it's a system that we're all familiar with that would respond to geographic needs for the funding resource rather than doing it county-wide. So there are a number of reasons why that seemed to make sense as a possibility. And, you know, a year ago when you approved and adopted your streetscape master plan, it was recognized at that time that the only thing it really didn't have was a sense of how to go about funding those programs in a rational, consistent and thoughtful way. So it was -- it was our feeling, especially after speaking with the transportation director and Ed Ilschner in public works, that we could work together with staff in the realm of the MSTDs and look at, over a five and a fifteen year schedule, what the impacts would be to what sense of scheduling for road landscape work. So that every time a proponent for a landscape project comes before you, you know very clearly how it fits into the overall long-term strategy. So that was one thought that I wanted to bring to your attention. I know we're awfully late in the process and that it would be difficult to delay any locking in of the MSTD millage rates at this time. The request before you, since we do have three viable live projects that wanted to go forward this next year, that we look at the opportunity here, even though it is very late in the budget cycle, of applying those projects to the existing MSTDs to see what the impact would be on the millage rate and to lock in the funding for those three. There are other projects out there, but these are the three that we know about that are ready to go right now. And I have got a handout, but instead of having you labor through that, we have a total of five hundred and thirty-six thousand dollars of private funding to do landscape programs this year. And that's taken as you can imagine a lot of cajoling, a lot of meetings, a lot of design work up front to try to bring those projects to a point where they're available for this program. So what we would like to do also at the same time is to recognize that those three projects that are coming up and we're in preparation of agreements for all thirty-six of them right now though to bring them to your attention, that we try to fold those into the MSTD funding resource rather than to do what we have always done and that is to come forward mid budget cycle and to try to do the funding at that time. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Mac'Kie. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: A couple questions on the subject. One is -- well, first let me just say I think the MSTDs is exactly the right place to do this Naplescape matching grant kind of work because they're neighborhood district oriented. In other words, in -- North Naples will pay for the improvement or the matching fund for the North Naples Gateway, but East Naples won't. And, you know, East Naples will pay for its but North Naples won't. Golden Gate, you know -- so the MSTD is the logical place for this to be happening. But the general question that I had, Mr. Smykowski, I guess, is how are we funding -- do we have adequate funding for the current landscape projects maintenance? The projects that we currently have in the ground, where are those being funded? Are they being funded out of general funds or are they being funded out of MSTDs? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Road MSTDs is where the maintenance for those projects -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Because that's where it ought to be, so that the area that has the pretty landscaping is paying for the maintenance of the pretty landscaping. How hard would it be to -- to identify -- I mean, I think you can probably do it right now, is tell us if these budget amounts, the matching funds that Mr. Botner is looking for, were incorporated into the relevant MSTDs, what that would do to the millage rate in those MSTDs? Because we're not talking big dollar amounts and all we would have to do is bump up the millage in those MSTDs where the projects are proposed. We could either do it now or we could do it as we come back through with the budget amendment, but again it makes more sense to do it. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Well, depending on the magnitude, you may not be able to do it by budget amendment, because staff would not recommend depleting your reserves to fund one project when those reserves are essentially to cover contingencies for the other projects that are included in the budget. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So this -- if we want to fund these kinds of projects through MSTDs this year, we need to look at it between now and September or we're pretty much -- MR. SMYKOWSKI: Now and July. Excuse me, but -- because we adopt the tentative millages in your meeting in July, I believe the 28th, beyond which you cannot increase the millage further unless you sent a certified mail to every tax -- and that's unlikely. So you would have to incorporate that into your July millage decision. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's a shame that we're talking about this at the point in time when we are. And it's a shame that we didn't talk about this, you know, in the regular budget process. But when we're talking about, you know, a hundred seventy thousand dollars, two hundred twenty-five thousand dollars, two hundred thousand, fifty thousand, could you do a calculation and tell us in the respective millage -- MSTDs what that would do to the millage in those MSTDs. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Sure. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Madam Chair -- before -- MR. SHYKOWSKI: I think -- COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: My desire is to leave that opportunity available so that we don't lose a year on all of these projects. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commission Hancock. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: At this point that's Commissioner Hac'Kie's request. I want to make sure that we talk about this -- COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Of course. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: -- before giving direction to Mr. Smykowski because why we didn't hear this a month ago, it wasn't in front of me. That's -- that's one real good reason. As you know, I am a big supporter of the landscaping. I mean, it's one of the things that speaks so loudly of the quality of this community for not just people that come here from somewhere else but people that live here. You know, I was just -- I was over on the east coast this weekend, and I drive back in and all of a sudden, you know, it just hits you, you know, what it does to this community and for this community. So I am clearly an advocate of that -- that continuing and having some consistency and having a future that is less hodgepodge. The problem I have is that Mr. Botner has brought forward a handful of projects that he would like to know are guaranteed for maintenance dollars in this coming fiscal year. I think that's a piece of the puzzle. I think by saying well, let's go ahead and bump those HSTDs by a couple hundred thousand dollars without really stepping back and looking at not just those projects, but how are we going to do this for the next five or ten or fifteen years, may accomplish the immediate goal of those individual projects but I think misses the mark in this board formalizing a policy on how to address this. I don't want to take fiscal action in the absence of a policy on these and that's what I fear this direction is doing. In the past what has happened is during the year, mid year or late year, the project is brought forward to the board, we determine whether we do or do not want to process the necessary budget amendment from reserves to HSTDs or whatever may be required to accomplish the project and the maintenance of that project for the balance of that fiscal year. It then becomes a part of the HSTD during the next budget cycle; is that correct, Mr. Smykowski? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Uh-huh. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Okay. Mr. Botner, I appreciate you looking for basically an agreement of advance funding for maintenance so you know we can move forward on those projects, but until this board adopts a policy on how to deal with all projects, I don't want to treat these any different than we have the others. I think they need to come through the process the same way the others have. We need to look at them individually to determine if they are appropriate, the funding is there and whatnot, and in the process, and during the next year, let's try to adopt that fiscal policy that deals with these things for the long term. That would be like -- that's the approach I would like to see us take rather than trying to pick up two or three on the -- on the books for this budget cycle at this late hour. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Commissioner Norris? Commission Constantine? COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I agree. MR. BOTNER: What -- could I ask one more question, then? CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Uh-huh. MR. BOTNER: With these three projects that would like to work with you for implementation next year, what -- what is the approach available at this point? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: A budget amendment. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: A request through the county administrator's office to ask the board to fund the maintenance, and then it's up to the board and the county administrator's office to recommend the appropriate funding source to do that. Through that we then look, as we have in the past, what is the maintenance cost for the balance of the fiscal year, you know, what's the staggering of projects for that year and whatnot? Where you're trying to go, George, and where I want to go are the same place. I just think doing it the way you have suggested just isn't appropriate. I -- you know, if one of those projects or two of those projects has to wait twelve months to be in place and then be covered by a long-term policy that this board has adopted, I think that's great impetus to get that policy in place. And so -- it's just requesting the county administrator's office to be heard on those items. MR. FERNANDEZ: Madam Chair? CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Mr. Fernandez. MR. FERNANDEZ: We have been working on this budget since March, and if this had been submitted to us in that process, we could have given full consideration to that, evaluated the implications of it, computed the millages, the impact, and considered it along with all of the other things that have been submitted in this process. Coming to us now at this point doesn't give us the opportunity to do that. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That's really the part that concerns me. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: It's just awfully late in the process. It's just like the other requests that we had that they had missed their targets, and we can't -- we couldn't address them, you know, during our budget session so -- MR. BOTNER: Well, is it true, though, that you would be willing to hear about those three projects and judge them on their own merit at such time as those agreements are forthcoming? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Always. COHHISSIONER HAC'KIE: But the problem is -- let's just be sure we understand -- is that as these -- what I heard Hike Smykowski say is that as these applications come in for budget amendments, we may not have enough money in the HSTD reserves to be able -- we may not have the option of funding them this year. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That's correct. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: That's not in the budget. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: And unfortunately that's just the price that we pay for not doing -- sending this through the process the way it should have been a month ago or two months ago. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Again, I think I need to hold those projects up as examples of why this time next year we need to have a formal policy in place so we can consider them in the budget process, you know, year to year. So, again, I am just not willing to make an exception to that at this late hour this year, but I think it sends a clear signal we need to have it in place for next year. MR. BOTNER: And Naplescape, just so you know, is willing to come forward with some funding for staff time to do the numbers crunching, look at the implementation schedules relative to the projects that we know about and the sequencing of them, which, as you know, was a part of your original streetscape master plan. That plan contained five and fifteen year schedules, but that schedule was done in 1995, and, of course, you know, you have to go through and update it periodically, at least annually, we think. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: George, even though we're not going to be taking the request the direction you requested today, I do want to say, without the private funding and the effort of Naplescape, we wouldn't be anywhere close to where we are. And you folks, at least from me personally and from the community -- in my opinion -- so I appreciate that, but we're just not going to be able to take that direction today. MR. BOTNER: Thank you. MR. FERNANDEZ: Next speaker is John Drury. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: How many do we have, Mr. Fernandez? MR. FERNANDEZ: We have two more after John. We have Mr. Watler and Faye Biles. MR. DRURY: For the record, John Drury, Executive Director of Collier County Airport Authority. At the last budget workshop I brought up the manufacturing incubator facility, and I received several phone calls over the weekend because of the potential delay in making a decision. I will be asking that -- consistent with Commissioner Norris -- recommended that it go at one of your regular meetings, but I don't believe we will be able to wait a month and a half until you reconvene after the summer break. I will be asking that you take this issue up at tomorrow's meeting as an add-on for your consideration. Unfortunately, I will be in Immokalee all day tomorrow. We have got a consortium of manufacturers from Ohio and West Palm and Lee County that will be meeting up there at the airport pretty much all day, but I will have somebody here. And I just wanted to go on the record and request that that be considered as an add-on for tomorrow's meeting. Thank you. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Any questions for Mr. Drury? COHMISSIONER NORRIS: No. We did check last week -- well, we discussed taking it out of capital reserves for now, advance funding that out of capital reserves? MR. SHYKOWSKI: That is correct. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: We did determine that there are sufficient capital reserves for that? MR. SHYKOWSKI: We may be dipping to general fund reserves. I will have to work with Mr. Drury's staff today. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: But that will be current year reserves, correct? MR. SHYKOWSKI: That is correct. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Not the budget year we're talking about but last budget year? MR. SHYKOWSKI: In the current year, but that will reduce carry forward by three hundred -- it will have the impact of reducing next year's reserves by a like amount is what we're saying. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Are we intending to hear this item tomorrow, then? CHAIRPERSON BERRY: We will it have on. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Would hope so. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Well, I was -- as long as -- as long as Mr. Drury has spoken to this -- and I don't know if this would be out of order or not -- but I -- if we can do it, if we have the dollars to go ahead and do it -- my fear is that if we delay this, we're going to lose the people that they have got lined up. And it was something that we kind of knew -- well, we didn't know that they were going to be short. We didn't know how the bids were going to come in. You never know that process. That's just one of those things. But at the same time, I would like to see us go ahead and go with this. Commissioner Hancock? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: That's two. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's three. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: That's three. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's five. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I guess we don't need to add it on to tomorrow's agenda then. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, maybe as a consent item or something. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Do we need to have a formal -- MR. SMYKOWSKI: I don't believe you can approve a budget amendment today. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Okay. But we can give the intent. We will deal with it officially tomorrow but we will give the intent to Mr. Drury today that we will be going forward with this tomorrow. We will take the official action tomorrow. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Mr. Fernandez, since -- since you have already had accolades by the board, could that go on as a consent item? MR. FERNANDEZ: Yes, we can add it as a consent item in the morning. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: So then it won't be necessary -- if you were going to have somebody come and speak in your absence, you won't need do that. It will be on the consent agenda. MR. DRURY: Very good. Thank you. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I think I have got a way to make up those reserve amounts for carry forward. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Good. Got your credit card out? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Better check your limit, pal. I don't think I can quite cover it. MR. FERNANDEZ: Next speaker is Eric Watler. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I have the American Express plastic card. MR. WATLER: Good morning. Eric Watler, GNCA. I have some observations to make on the budget process. You know we have been involved with that for two or three years now, and sometimes when you stand up here for three or four or five or six minutes, you forget some of the important things you wanted to say, so I have written it down. And if you will permit, I will just read it. I don't normally like doing that, but some items are important I think. We have spent many hours on departmental budget reviews courtesy of Mr. Fernandez and now three days of public workshops including the normal marathon with the sheriff and his people. We have witnessed a great deal of budgetary skill exhibited by the various county departments -- and I mean all of this stuff -- and agencies have now -- maybe now is the time when you're all tired of the whole thing when we should all sit down and shut up. But that will be irresponsible, because I believe there are issues that should command your attention now and not be put off until we look at all of this stuff again next year. And that's exactly what will happen if I don't say these things. Number one, considerable progress has been made in the budget review process. I remember a year or two ago we used to flit from page to page a bit like bees looking for pollen, and we don't do that any more, so that's a huge step forward. But still missing is the essential summary format where you can look at the whole picture. You can see at a glance what you spent, who spent it, how they spent it and how actual year-to-date compares to the budget. More importantly how it compares to the forecast, and I think this is the major issue. Forecasts, which are really an opinion at a point in time, are not validated during the budget process. In comparison of next year's expense is budget-to-budget and not budget-to-forecast, and I think that is a considerable flaw in the whole process and the ramifications are significant. The lack of quarterly reporting is a significant weakness in the process. With quarterly reporting -- and we have discussed this before many times -- the board can review variance analysis through the year, validate the year-end forecast, and more importantly, become very familiar with the budget numbers on a regular basis. This permits better decision-making at workshops time, like now, and a more efficient yearly review. The county administration essentially manages a service organization for the public and like any other service organization, the people and the utilization are the two most important factors of expense. This does not really emerge during the budget reviews. With some notable exceptions, the posture is to defend the budget, quote, positions, unquote, and then justify the expanded positions. Again, quarterly reporting will permit evaluation of management of personnel as well as evaluation of forecast. Productivity measures should be instituted and management should be constantly challenged to prove their need for personnel. Cost justification should be an automatic procedure for any new positions, but seems to be rarely in effect from what I saw. For example, it was used by the utility department but not used by I.T., to make it specific. In total, the cost of people does not appear on any summary to the best of my knowledge and cost per person, a measure used throughout industry, does not appear on the budgets and I do not remember the question ever being asked. Finally a subject -- finally -- you will be happy about the -- the subject that has been mentioned by the board -- various members of the board from time to time. The subject is growth and the good times. I think I quote Commissioner Hancock on the good times. Collier County has been on a growth path in good economic circumstances for years now, but as has been said, it won't last forever. Examples abound of the high cost to employees when the change occurs. IBM, AT&T, the auto industry, small businesses are a few examples. The reasons may vary, but the good times stopped. A superb example right now is Southeast Asia where the goods times have really stopped. The real problem is that waste creeps into every organization that is on a continued growth path, be it IBM or South Korea. The most intelligent way to reduce the hurt factor -- hurt, quote, is to control employee growth when the good times are still rolling, and that's now. The companies and countries mentioned did not do that. Their price is high. Therefore, we recommend that a highly skilled person be assigned to the preparation using different differing growth reduction and productivity assumptions for planning -- for forward planning. Capital budget should be separated from expense budgets to avoid confusion. This person can be cost-justified by the savings that would emanate from their work. Prompt action put into effect would create very positive reactions, two or three years from now, it's true, down the road, from employees and taxpayers alike. And we really recommend that you look very hard at this, take some action. Please don't leave it until next year. Thank you for your time. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Do you -- could I just ask how -- MR. FERNANDEZ: The last speaker is Dr. Faye Biles. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: While she's coming up, Mr. Fernandez, how could we implement something like that proposal about -- the last part of his proposal about a review? MR. FERNANDEZ: Madam Chairman, I think part of the challenge that I have inviting this group into our administrative portion of the process is the fact that they only get a window. They only get a brief window of the process and what's going on in that. And there's a lot of work that goes on between the budget analysts and the departments prior to the meeting with me. And it's something of a danger I think to invite groups to come in and view that window and to expect them to have some full appreciation of the process. There's a lot more to it than that. It's an ongoing -- it's a year-around process. It's part of the work that not just the budget staff does but the management of this organization does. And there's a lot of people working very hard to make this organization the very best that it can be. It doesn't always come out during that window when they're sitting there observing that portion of this process. It was a new experience for me to invite this group in. I understood that it was part of the tradition here in this organization and I was willing to go along with it this year, but I have to say that I still have my reservations about the value of that. I think that the groups that do show the interest have the opportunity to come to meetings like this and your public hearings and to let you know what they think about it. But I really think that it's a lot to ask to expect them to get involved at the level of detail that they have chosen to participate. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Just one comment that I was going to make in sort of wrapping up is how pleased I am with how the budget process has changed in the three years that I have been here, and a great deal of that is as a result of the input from Greater Naples Civic Association. So I hope that you will continue to see the merit, although I understand it's not a perfect system. My understanding is the budget process has been exponentially improved by virtue of their participation and the change in the way, as Mr. Watler said, of how the budget is presented to us. So I hope you will continue to see that value. MS. BILES: Faye Biles, and today I am going to speak on behalf of all of the taxpayers in Collier County. First of all, my comments come right back a little bit to what Mr. Fernandez was talking about as far as the committee is concerned. A great deal of time has been spent in going over budgets and going over figures and numbers, especially by Janet Vasey, who is a financial manager and also a professional budget analyst. And so I think there is value in doing that. And, again, I can understand your comments coming from that. And my question is, where do you want us to go from here? I think -- one of the perceptions that I get sometimes when Janet comes up to speak is that she presents what she feels and thinks and has found, but it just kind of goes over, and I am not sure where it goes from there. Should that material come back to Mr. Fernandez and be taken for what it's worth and to look over and perhaps, you know, in that angle? We certainly did appreciate being able to come to all of the departmental meetings. That was a great help to get the budget figures and watch the progress made. And I do want to compliment, there has been a tremendous process going from those departmental meetings. I am sure many, many hours are behind the scenes to the budget hearings now. And I also want to thank the board for the many times I have heard we don't want taxpayers to pay more, because I do feel that you have been very conscious of the taxpayers' responsibility and what's going to happen to them in this whole process. I do have another question. I know that rollback -- I don't how close we are to rollback. I am just curious. I do know that the assessments now have been presented. Mr. Skinner has presented those, but we didn't hear too much about how -- what effect does that have or what impact does that have on the total budget? Usually assessments necessitate an increase. So only a rollback means that there won't be any tax increases. COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's right. MS. BILES: Now, I'm just curious, has anything been done about how close we are to that point? Is there any possibility that there just might be a rollback and therefore no tax increases this year? MR. SMYKOWSKI: No, we're a couple million dollars to start from rollback. MS. BILES: Okay. MR. SMYKOWSKI: With the changes the board made throughout this workshop, the net reduction is probably a half million dollars or thereabouts, five hundred and seventy-nine thousand. So in terms of rollback, we're probably still a million four from rollback. MS. BILES: From rollback. Thank you. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Right, in general funds. MS. BILES: Just curious about that. But again thank you on behalf of all the taxpayers and really thank you for allowing GNCA committee to come in and do the work we have and certainly take it, you know, for what it's worth. Thank you very much. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Thank you. It's always going to be hard in a rapidly growing community like this to stick to rollback because you have each year more people to provide services to. So naturally you're going to have to spend more to provide services for that incremental amount of people. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Commissioner Norris, that's the fallacy of rollback, you know. In a community where you don't have anybody moving in, in a given year, or your percent change in population is one percent or less, rollback is an excellent benchmark to use in your budget process. But when you have four percent more people and only two and a half percent increase in your budget, guess what? You did more with less. You operated efficiently to meet the increased demand of four percent increased population with only two and a half increase in taxes. So the problem in this community is rollback basically means that that new library you just opened, staffing it with the same dollars you staffed every other library the year before, with that EMS unit, putting people on that unit to cover increased calls with the same dollars you used the year before. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: In other words, reducing service in other areas is the only way you can -- COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Ten thousand new people a year is going to cost some money. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yep. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: That's right. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But the good news is we're all as focused as we can be on getting us as close to rollback as we can. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: My benchmark is always what was the increase in population? Because if our budget goes beyond that with the cost of living, you know -- if everything costs two percent more next year, you can expect the total budget to go up two percent. If you add the percent of population on that -- if we're at that or below it, we're doing our job. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: How are we doing on that benchmark, Mr. Smykowski? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Which benchmark? I'm sorry. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The two percent of capital -- say it again. Increases in cost of living and four percent -- six percent -- MR. SMYKOWSKI: We don't -- we don't really -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Never mind. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Yeah. Through his office, we really don't draw that out because the only thing we're required to do is attach it to rollback from the state on a truth in millage and so forth. But that's just something I think we have to keep present in our mind is we increase by four or five percent in people every year, yet our budget's only going up two and a half percent over rollback. MR. SMYKOWSKI: And another item in the future revenue source, depending on future board direction, is the interim government service fee and where that all stands. So that offers another potential revenue source in the future to assist us in those efforts. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Do you have anything else for us, Mr. Smykowski? MR. SMYKOWSKI: I do not. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: Any other public speakers? MR. FERNANDEZ: None. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: None. Commissioner Hancock? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: We were talking about we had three votes to go to four and a half percent. We offered some clarification on that. For the purposes of calculating our budget, I think there's something we need to recognize there. The sheriff's office -- part of the reason we're doing a bulk four and a half percent is because of pay plan upgrades that are required within the county manager's agency. During the entire budget deliberation from the sheriff's office, we didn't hear anything about pay plan inequities. Plus we did a major bump two years in a row to meet that pay plan adjustment of the sheriff's office. The policy of four and a half percent is not a policy that we're adopting as a policy county-wide as we used to with COLAs and merit. So I think in determining the amount of funds we should be prepared to expend, I think we can -- COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Recognizing the unique situation. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Recognizing the unique situation, we can remove the application to the sheriff's office and the clerk's office based on their recent pay plan adjustments. I don't know that the property appraiser or tax collector has done those kind of pay plans, and we may hear from them. But I want as a rule for assessing our taxes -- I don't think we should tax for four and a half percent to apply to the sheriff's office or the clerk's office. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Agreed. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: It never occurred to me that we would do that, frankly, because that three percent was pay plan adjustment -- you know, was to bring it into compliance with standards in the industry. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: And I think you will find that more or less offsets what we just did with the incubator project, so we should be in a very similar position than we thought we were prior to making the decision on the incubator. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Usually at the end, Mr. Smykowski gives us a little summary of where -- assuming what we did stays all finalized, then we are what percentage over rollback and what the total millage will be. I'd just love to hear that before we go home if that's easy to do. MR. SHYKOWSKI: Sure. Bear with me a second. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: You can tell me privately because I see people who are ready to go. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Maybe we can have that information for tomorrow's board meeting. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: There you go that's fine. COHMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That gives him a chance -- MR. SHYKOWSKI: That's fine. That would help and obviously we will be bringing back the proposed millage rates for adoption in July as well. CHAIRPERSON BERRY: If there's nothing further before this board, we are adjourned. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 11:48 a.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COHMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL ATTEST: DWIGHT E. BROCK, CLERK BARBARA BERRY, CHAIRPERSON These minutes approved by the Board on , as presented or as corrected TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC. BY DEBRA J. DeLAP, NOTARY PUBLIC.