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BCC Minutes 11/29/1994 W (Intro and Strategic Goals)WORKSHOP MEETING OF NOVEMBER 29, 1994, 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 9:10 a.m. in Workshop Session at the Central Library, Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRMAN: Timothy J. Constantine VICE CHAIRMAN: Bettye J. Matthews John C. Norris Timothy L. Hancock Pamela S. Mac'Kie ALSO PRESENT: W. Neil Dotrill, County Manager Richard R. Clark, Administrator of Community Development Mike McNees, Acting Administrator of Utilities William C. Hargett, Assistant County Manager Paul Brigham, Court Administrator George Archibald, Administrator of Transportation Leo Ochs, Jr., Administrative Services Administrator John Drury, Executive Director of Airport Authority Norris Ijams, Administrator of Emergency Services Thomas E. Conrecode, Director of OCPM Thomas W. Olliff, Administrator of Public Services Michael Smykowski, Senior Budget Analyst William Lorenz, Administrator of Environmental Services Jennifer Edwards, Assistant to the County Manager Item #2A WELCOME AND BRIEF OVERVIEW FOR COHHISSIONERS HAC'KIE AND HANCOCK CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Why don't we go ahead and get started. I understand we've got a couple of folks that have to leave around 11:45 so I don't want to use up anymore time chitchatting this morning. Professor, do you want to get us rolling or Jennifer? I'm not sure who's going to start us off. MS. EDWARDS: Neil's got the agenda. MR. HARTIN: Neil's got the agenda. He starts it off. MR. DORRILL: First thing on the agenda this morning, it says welcome so I'll do that, and we'll have a very brief overview. This is the -- is the fourth in the series of meetings that we have had where on the fifth Tuesday -- for the purposes of the new commissioners, any month that has five Tuesdays, we have been meeting to discuss strategic goals that were identified by the County Commission I'll say nine months ago. The strategic goals have been reworked or elaborated upon by the staff to result in an annual work plan. And if you don't have it, we should probably make copies available, especially for the two new commissioners -- what has become the work plan for the staff taken into conjunction the Board's adopted strategic goals. We have been for the last two or three meetings having those division administrators review their proposed work plan for both the year that we're in as well as to elaborate where necessary the subsequent five-year strategic planning areas within the work plan. I think honestly the major areas that we have already reviewed in the last couple of months are contained on the inside cover of the document that you have. What we're intending to focus on this morning are issues pertaining to economic development -- very high on the Board's list -- and also, interestingly enough, areas of good governess. And we will be focusing on both the Commission's expressed desire to expand the role of citizens interpretation through the privatization task force that is being chaired by Commissioner Matthews and also the Board's appointed citizen productivity committee which some of you also have very intimate knowledge of. That will be the focus of this morning's session. We understand that a number of you need to either return to your office or have luncheon commitments, and I think for purposes of this meeting we will probably need to stop somewhere between 11:30 and 11:45 based on what some of you have related to me. We'll probably go down through and attempt to complete the economic development area. Then maybe we can have a brief recess and coffee break, and then we'll pick back up and start the governess issue. With that, that really can conclude my opening remarks. Item #2B STAFF INTRODUCTIONS It says we ought to take a moment to introduce the key players who are here this morning. We have the senior management team. I think it would be good if we could just start with Jennifer and come around counterclockwise towards Bill. If you don't mind introducing yourself and your division or department if you're in one of the executive offices of responsibility and maybe just, you know, how long have you been with the County and what your general background has been, I think would be good for both new commissioners and maybe some of the other commissioners who may not know that much about your background. So we'll start with Jennifer, and I'll let Professor Martin be last because he's next on the agenda. MS. EDWARDS: Good morning. My name is Jennifer Edwards. My position with the County is the assistant to the County Manager, and I've been with the County for eight years. MR. LORENZ: My name is Bill Lorenz. I'm the environmental services administrator. I've been with the County for almost ten years, nine years. The environmental services division is made up of pollution control, solid waste, natural resources, and sewer water management. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I'm John Norris. I'm the senior member of the Collier County Commission. MR. SMYKOWSKI: I'm Michael Smykowski. I'm the acting budget director. I've been with the County for seven years. MR. OLLIFF: I'm Tom Olliff. I'm the public services administrator. I've actually lived in this County for 25 years and worked here in the County for the last 11. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Bettye Matthews, commissioner for district five. I've lived here less than some of you people have worked here. MR. CONRECODE: Tom Conrecode from the capital projects office. I've been here about seven years. MR. IJAMS: Norris Ijams, emergency services administrator. I've been with the County I think two or three years. I'm not sure. Time goes so fast when you're having fun. Plus with the City of Naples prior to working with the County. We've added a couple of innovations to the emergency services this year. The communications manager is also on emergency services. We'll be hearing from -- a lot from this gentleman. MR. DRURY: I'm John Drury. I'm the executive director of the Collier County Airport Authority. I spent about four years at Melbourne Regional Airport, five years at Tampa International Airport, and a little time up in New England managing airports. I've been with the County for about nine months. MR. DORRILL: I think everybody knows me, but one thing a lot of people don't know about is where was he before he came here. I was actually the assistant to the town manager of Long Boat Key, which was about one of the most desirable, cushiest jobs anybody could ever have to get up and ride to Long Boat Key every morning. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm Pam Mac'Kie. I'm a new commissioner, and one of my favorite things is to be Floridian and be called a young gun. That's great. MR. OCHS: Good morning. I'm Leo Ochs, Collier County administrative services, administrator. I've been here for about eight years. MR. ARCHIBALD: Good morning. My name is George Archibald. I'm your transportation services administrator involved not only in the expansion of our road system but most important of all the maintenance of our road system. I've been with the County a little more than three months. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Tough act to follow, George. Tim Hancock. My middle name is now new commissioner. I'm a professional planner, my background with education and experience, and I am young. MR. BRIGHAM: Good morning. My name is Paul Brigham, court administrator. I've been with the County for six years. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Good morning. My name is Tim Constantine. I've been employed by the public of Collier County for two years and 12 days. According to the "Naples Daily News," I am the poorest commissioner. MR. HARGETT: I'm Bill Hargett, the assistant county administrator, and I'm pushing two years with the County. MR. HCNEES: I'm Hike HcNees. I'm the acting utilities administrator. I'm ten years employed by Collier County, 15-year resident. Before I was a bureaucrat, I was a district manager in the LP Gas business, so some day I'll figure out what I want to do with my life. MR. CLARK: My name is Dick Clark, acting community development administrator. I've been in the enforcement business for a lot of years, nine years with Collier County government, and I was in banking management, construction management in between those two. So I've kind of got a well-rounded background, and obviously I enjoy the enforcement business as well as management. Item #2C DISCUSSION AND APPROVAL OF THE WATER CONSERVATION PLAN TO BE ADDED TO THE ESSENTIAL SERVICES SECTION OF THE STRATEGIC PLANNING DOCUMENT HS. EDWARDS: The next thing we're going to do on the agenda is item C, and at the last strategic planning meeting, the Board had asked staff to develop a water conservation plan. So what we're going to do now is ask Mike HcNees to discuss a plan, which he has brought copies or has already distributed copies for each of you. And following that, we're going to have an update on the joint governing board meeting with South Florida Water Management District which Neil will present. And then we will introduce Professor Martin who will begin today's topics. Hike. MR. HCNEES: I'll be relatively brief and talk about the piece of this water conservation issue that you as board members want to talk about. First of all, I'm going to direct you to this report that you received earlier in the summer. For the two new commissioners, if you don't have this in your office, please let me know, and we'll get you a copy. It's a report that was prepared primarily by Fred Bloetscher in the capital projects office. That's a fully developed conservation plan that was prepared over the -- actually, over the past year, and it was given to you all this summer. What I've done is taken some pieces of that and tried to put into a little outline here for you to consider today that -- if you haven't received I have some more copies here, and anyone else who is interested I have a whole stack of copies here. But what I thought I'd do -- the South Florida Water Management District has a somewhat prescribed water conservation program that has a number of elements that they require that they consider mandates and a number of optional components to that plan. And I think you may not be aware of how many of those you already have adopted or prior boards have adopted. I thought I'd walk through those with you and then point out what seems to be a couple of the major issues that are outstanding, and you can tell us how you want to approach them or address them in your strategic plan. The mandated elements of a water conservation program -- and I'll tell you what they are and whether or not we already have adopted them. I'll kind of walk through them quickly. One is a public information program, and that's something that we do not have formally. It's something that we've kind of done piecemeal here and there. We do some mailings. We have some things on the bill occasionally about conservation. We've done some programs, poster contests with some of the schools, and it's been kind of a hit or miss thing when somebody had time or when they had a particular program they wanted to pursue, something that you haven't had within the County, either a full-time conservation officer or program, and that's something that we could certainly consider perhaps in the next budget year if you wanted us to head in that direction. Second mandatory element of the South Florida Plan or conservation program -- and I'm focusing on theirs because -- maybe I should back up a little bit. Water conservation needs to focus on sort of the individual needs of this community and the market, so to speak, and weather conditions and that sort of thing. So it's a -- the water management districts do a real good job of focusing us on the types of things that we should be considering. The second of those are plumbing efficiency standards for plumbing fixtures, and the 1994 version of the standard plumbing code that has not yet been adopted by Collier County but which I understand will be considered by you in early 1995 does include low-volume plumbing fixtures as part of the standards. So that's an issue that's coming for you that if you want that to become a part of the County's conservation plan, you'll want to be turned into at that time. Xeriscape landscaping is something that has already been addressed in your land development code. I included a copy of that page for you with your little packet so you could see how that's dealt with, and that's something you have already done. Permanent irrigation ordinance is something that the water management district recommends, something that you have not yet adopted. The only water restrictions, irrigation restrictions that you have done or that the County has done so far have been in times of, quote, "water emergency or shortfall." And that's an issue that if you want staff to go ahead and pursue in terms of research, you can direct us to do that, and we can bring back to you the pros and cons of how that might work. It's something that the water management district encourages but something that we have not done here in Collier County. Leak detection is something that the management district requires if you show more than 10 percent, quote, "water loss .... that is the difference between what you produce at your plant and what you're able to meet or account for. Your water system does not have a 10 percent or greater water loss, is not required to have a formal leak detection program; however, we have quite an extensive system of meter changeout and testing and leak detection. So that's something that we believe that's what keeps us under the 10 percent. So that's a program that you have, although it's not fully developed formally as it would have to be if we were over 10 percent. Conservation rate structure is something that the water management district recommends, something that you adopted in 1991 where the -- if you go over a certain threshold water usage, your rate goes up per thousand gallons as a means to encourage -- we have sort of the simplest method of a conservation rate structure, and your bill just goes up if you use too much water. Those would be the mandated things. So the only -- to go back, the ones that we do not have a formal program would be public information. We do not yet have plumbing efficiency standards. We do not have an irrigation ordinance or full-time daytime watering ban or however that might work. The last five issues, metering of customers or tense for irrigation of sewage effluent, pressure controls on a potable system, filtered backwash, recycling at the water treatment plants, and the elimination of potable water used for air-conditioning you have already adopted. All five of the optional items that the South Florida Water Management District recommends we already do in Collier County, you've already adopted. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: The tense of wastewater for irrigation, when you say we've already adopted that, is that on some limited scale or -- MR. HCNEES: You have adopted it as a policy as a first priority to develop for effluent disposal, and staff already sees that as your priority, and that may be something that in the strategic plan -- I don't think it's listed there -- we may need to add -- and I'm going to talk in just a minute about what staff sees as the direction today and what you might want to change based on some of your discussion the other day. Those are some of the last two things that we have here to talk about. But the optional items from the water management district you have adopted. You may be even unaware that for the most part what they would call water management or conservation plan you have already got the major components in place. The last two issues that I have in your outline here today are major components of water conservation. One is aquifer storage and recovery, and then I wanted to talk a little bit more about tense since your direction seems to be changing a little bit and I need to know how you want us to write that up for the strategic plan. Aquifer storage and recovery, I don't know if you could really consider that technically a water conservation issue as much as a demand-smoothing issue, and it's a construction avoidance or -- I mean, people are going to use the same amount of water. It's just with aquifer storage and recovery, you produce it in a more level means depending on the season of the year, the last thing you do normally. And I have included for you some brief description of aquifer storage and recovery -- I won't go over that -- and a little description of where we stand today with the test well that was constructed down in the Hanatee Road area that has completed the testing cycle and is at a point where we are prepared to pursue full operating permits for that aquifer storage and recovery project. I guess what might be appropriate rather -- it's certainly not something we can get into the technical details of today. If you wanted to direct staff to bring back a workshop on that particular issue or whatever information you might like to see on that to give us some direction of whether you want to pursue that as an operating method or whether you feel like as -- given the results of the testing, that you would abandon that project or how you feel about ASR's it's called. And so I would be open for some direction on how you would like to have that included in your strategic plan, how you'd like us to proceed with that. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Mike, based on your information, if I'm correct, ASR requires dual treatment of potable water? It has to be treated prior to injection and has to be treated again after recovery; is that correct? MR. MCNEES: Perhaps. Not necessarily. It has to meet the same standard after withdrawal and current feeling seems to be that initial withdrawal -- MR. HANCOCK: (inaudible) MR. MCNEES: Exactly. And you may need at most rechlorination. That would be the -- not necessarily refiltration, just rechlorination is the treatment that would be required. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: Thank you. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: One more question, Mr. McNees. This article indicates that in order to get 70 percent or more recovery, we're going to have to put 200 million gallons in the ground. MR. MCNEES: Yes, ma'am. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: What is that in terms of supply? About a ten-day supply? MR. MCNEES: More like a 20-day. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: 20-day supply. MR. MCNEES: Depending on the season, of course. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: And the cost of such a well is what? MR. MCNEES: The cost of the well itself I don't really have the numbers with me. The cost of that water -- COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: No. MR. MCNEES: -- or the well? COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: The well. MR. MCNEES: No. I don't have the -- I'm sorry. I don't have the numbers today. We can get that for you and provide the full -- COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I'm just trying to compare other methods for water storage and what the cost of putting it together and if this is anything comparable to the deep-well injection in cost. MR. MCNEES: It would be very comparable, yes. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: So we're talking $5 million to sink a well that will give us a 20-day water inventory so to speak. MR. MCNEES: Well construction itself would probably be less than the disposal well, be constructed to a different type of standard, much shallower well, but then you have withdrawal costs and possible retreatment costs. So I'm not prepared to tell you exactly. As far as dollars per gallon of storage, I think you're going to see that it's hugely cost-effective because if you talk about building 100 or 200 million gallons worth of above-ground storage capacity or whatever other options we may come up with in terms of traditional options here, it's very cost-effective, but there are some other options, as you know, on the table. So I think what might be appropriate is a workshop on the entire issue and to get some of those facts for you. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: One more question so that I can get a comparison. 200 million gallons of water is roughly how many acres of water? MR. HCNEES: I can't answer that, but I can sure find out. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I think we may need to know that eventually. MR. HCNEES: Absolutely. So am I hearing that you might want to workshop that issue and -- MR. DORRILL: We're going to have an opportunity on the 13th of December. In a conversation with Commissioner Norris, he is pursuing one of these options to be some type of reservoir project. I know he has discussed that earlier. He has asked me -- and, in fact, Wilson, Miller has been doing some work on an alternative that would be on the agenda for the 13th. I got a draft report, if you will, from Wilson, Miller has done last Friday. I have not had a chance to share that with Utilities. I've mentioned it briefly with Commissioner Norris to let him know I have received it. That may be a good opportunity to discuss all these storage options. The Board had also authorized a effluent master plan for the north county area that we have a similar type of issue for the south county area. And I really thought before the Board proceeded much further, the Board had retained Hole, Hontes to do the master plan update. And I thought it would be good to let the Board have a presentation on what the update is about the same time. And so I'd say the middle of December may be a good time to formalize some of these options that have been out there for I'd say six months. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Mr. HcNees, when we come up with that discussion item -- I'm sort of following up on Commissioner Matthews' questions -- could you have an estimate for us of what the cost per thousand gallons of the water would be after we treat it once, put it into the ASR, bring it back out and retreat it and deliver it? I would like to know how that cost would compare with single-treated. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It may not be that the whole Board needs a workshop, but you guys are talking things about acre and foot of water and things that I need an education on. So if it isn't something that the Board needs a workshop on, I need to get with you, Mike, to talk about it to be brought up to speed. MR. HCNEES: My engineering friend next to me tells me that's 500 to 600 acre feet. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: 500 to 600 acre feet for a 20-day storage? MR. HARGETT: 200 million gallons. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Thank you. COHHISSIONER HANCOCK: Mike, I think what we're coming to is that this similar effluent -- there's not one solve-all. In other words, we're not going to find one solution and dump it all in there. It's going to be a hybrid that we're going to have to mix because obviously, you know, we can't drop a deep-well injection and do residential irrigation, but a combination of some of the other alternatives is probably where the solution lies. So the type of comparisons that Commissioner Norris has asked for is going to make it a lot easier for this Board to determine that ratio and that approach as to what is a priority target, what is a secondary target. So in the information that we put together, if not for the workshop purpose, for the benefit of the new commissioners as well as the old commissioners, if you would put some type of format that we can compare, it would be beneficial to me at least. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Absolutely. MR. HCNEES: That would be our intent. In fact, most of these issues haven't been presented in any type of workshop so that's exactly what we intend to do, provide that for all the commissioners and have that presentation for them. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Neil, do we have any meetings do you know at this point in December that have somewhat of a light agenda comparatively speaking? Because it might make sense to schedule a workshop on a Tuesday afternoon following a regular meeting, assuming we have a meeting that might not go to five or six o'clock. Big assumption. MR. DORRILL: The best at this point would be the 13th. We're intentionally trying to keep the meeting before the Christmas holiday sort of light if we can. You're not meeting between Christmas and New Year's. The 13th might be good. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Why don't we tentatively schedule it for the 13th. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Mr. Chairman, is that sufficient time for Mr. HcNees to -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Mike, will that work for you? MR. HCNEES: Sure. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Can we talk about -- can I understand what the workshop -- because one of the things when Mike and I had talked when we had the deep-well injection issue come up that we needed an overall water master plan. And, frankly, Mike, I don't even know what all the issues are that should be included in a plan, but I know conservation is one but not all. Wouldn't might we have that kind of discussion? MR. HCNEES: Well, there are two somewhat separate but obviously connected issues. One is your water capital master plan in terms of how are we going to provide and produce water supply over the next however many years and that's -- the development of that plan is in -- or the update, I should say, of that plan is in this year's budget. And you will be seeing soon us asking your permission to do an RFP to get that project under way. The other half of it is the long-term supply issue which is what we're supplying storage. You have already -- you have a consultant working on the supply issue, the hyrdrogeologist looking at the next water supply for the indefinite future. And now we're back to the storage issues which is -- we can talk about, I guess, where we are, is when and how you want to talk about that and how do you want that to come forward in a workshop or board meeting. So those are the components of the concept. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I would like an opportunity to get a big picture, whether it's just you and I, one on one. MR. MCNEES: Absolutely. The two north and south county reuse -- effluent reuse plan, effluent management plans are key parts of that, and you'll be seeing those as Neil said very soon. I believe even next Tuesday you'll see the north county reuse management. You'll see both of them next week. So that's a key piece of it you'll be seeing next week. MR. CLARK: A small component. The county manager was approached about six months ago about a private enterprise looking at houses built on septic tanks or perhaps it could be applied to houses not using septic tanks as well, and that is using the gray water. Narrow definition of gray water is that from sinks, stools, so forth -- not the stool but sinks, showers, so forth, using that gray water for irrigation for single family for the point of origin. There is a pilot project financed entirely by the contractor, and after reviewing it have requested the county manager found a way we could protect the health, safety issues and allow that to happen. It is operational now and may well end up to be something that will be measurable in the future as far as not putting that into the ground but, rather, using it for irrigation purposes. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: That's interesting. You're talking about taking the wastewater other than actual sewage and using it -- MR. CLARK: That's right. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: -- as gray water to irrigate the home around and so the house would wind up having a separate disposal system? MR. CLARK: That's correct. And the economics seem to be close. In other words, there seems to be a close economic issue that it may be viable economically, and they're viewing that and may market that product or that system in the near future. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Mr. Clark, is that system targeted for septics simply because of the settling properties are drawn off the top of the septic, if you will? Is that the same system? Is that what you're talking about? MR. CLARK: Yes. That's one of the primary considerations; however, it could work also on the utility system, and the economics there obviously -- I think at some point somebody is going to come back to the Board and say, "Will I get charged for putting it into the system? I'm not putting a lot of it into the system. Can I get some kind of a rebate off my system?" MR. DORRILL: I have some houses up in the Vanderbilt Beach area, and it does not work off of the sanitary septic system. The house is separately plumbed for drainage purposes for all the sinks and tubs and shower drains. They have a kind of a what I call tertiary or basic treatment process separate and apart from what would be the septic tank that does some basic filtration, and I think it has some ultraviolet light disinfection associated with it before it goes out into a kind of a drip irrigation system for the house, and we worked out a mechanism to allow that house to be separately plumbed and inspected for that purpose. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Just a suggestion so we don't get too far off on any individual today, but if there's interest, perhaps we should have that as part of our presentation for the workshop as well. Item #2D UPDATE OF JOINT GOVERNING BOARD HEETING WITH SFWHD HR. DORRILL: If I could step us down to the next item, I think it's safe to say that thus far probably the leading issue in terms of the most important goal seems to be utility-oriented and what I'll call water resource-oriented. With that in mind, at the last meeting, the Board specifically asked that we could develop a joint meeting or workshop with the South Florida Water Management District which is arguably the most powerful state level, regional level, government entity that will affect all our lives. We are fortunate in that Valetie Boyd is the current chair of the South Florida Water Management District, and while their offices are in West Palm Beach, their regional area extends from just north of Orlando and through the Kissimmee River basin, runs down the middle of the state and expands out at a line essentially just south of Charlotte Harbor and includes all of South Florida. Very important board, very far-reaching powers, and our board wanted to see if we could develop a joint meeting or workshop here in Naples to discuss water resource issues. Valetie Boyd is very enthusiastic about that. I made and found time to talk to her about it, have confirmed our interest in writing for a time that would be in the early spring but before the end of our winter tourist season and sort of tentatively said the end of February, first of March that she would attempt to put together a joint meeting between the Board of County Commissioners and the South Florida Water Management District that would occur here in Naples, and among other things, be a major educational forum for the citizens of Collier County to understand who and what and where the South Florida Water Management District is and what they do and specifically focus on some of the water resource issues that we've already talked about here. We've confirmed that in writing. I told Miss Boyd that I would follow up with her after the holidays, trying to make some final plans, but she is very enthusiastic about that. And given the prominent position that she plays on the governing board, I think that she can make that happen. Tentatively scheduled for the early spring. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Question, Mr. Dorrill. I know we talked about doing that in August of having a joint meeting, and I'm really pleased that it's coming about. I guess my question is, should we include the Big Cypress Basin Board in that also as a local knowledgeable group, so to speak, in that same meeting because they're a little more knowledgeable on what is actually happening with the Big Cypress Basin? MR. DORRILL: As it pertains to drainage issues, I would agree that they have a very strong role to play, particularly the drainage issues. That's not something I've discussed with her, but I think we need to try and put together some type of agenda right after the holidays, and I think that needs to be part of the agenda. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I would be a little bit concerned too. We'll be talking about getting 15 or 18 people together. The group may get unwieldy just in size being able to accomplish anything. That's a problem too. Item #2E UPDATE FOR FY2000 MR. DORRILL: With that, I think we're going to 1E. MR. MARTIN: Is that me? MR. DORRILL: That's you. MR. MARTIN: Thank you, sir. Good morning. (The group answered in unison "Good morning.") MR. MARTIN: Come on. You can do better than that. I was sleeping, but you're not sleeping. Good morning. (The group answered in unison "Good morning.") MR. MARTIN: A special welcome to the new commissioners. Quick resume of where we are and how we got there. I don't know if I was drafted or if I received a summons from the sheriff, but all of a sudden one morning I became the facilitator for strategic long-range planning. I worked the month of December and January trying to develop a process by which strategic long-range planning could be accomplished. Looking at the State constitution, looking at some of the other critical reviews, we had found some criticism because the County had not established a long-range plan. The County did not have a well-defined vision statement, and as a result, some of our earlier meetings was spent at great length trying to determine things like that. Commissioner MAtthews came up with the basis for this vision statement which I think you will find in the books to make Collier County a premiere place to live with the most efficient run local government in Florida. We then perused a number of areas that would be the responsibility of local government to be responsible for. It fits in nicely what's happening. All of a sudden the last five or six months everybody is getting interested in vision. It was a massive meeting last Thursday. I attended the meeting. Commissioner Norris was there. Commissioner MAtthews was there. Commissioner Hancock was there. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I was there. MR. MARTIN: Commissioner MAc'Kie was there and a lot of other important people, and it seems to me that they are talking about the same thing that we've already been talking about here. I mean, we're not juxtaposition with them. We're ahead of them. They're trying to do some things that we've been talking about here already. We're on track. The problem I face is I don't want those outside organizations not to have input, but I don't want them to assume that we have all the responsibility for long-range planning. Responsibility is clearly defined in the state constitution. That's your responsibility. So we've got to keep the long-range planning within this group according to legal responsibilities. For example, they claim economic development is to create jobs. I don't think it's necessarily your job to create jobs but to create an atmosphere which they can be created in, so there is a massive difference. Here's what we've come up with. I wanted to get a ten-year plan going, but it was a big bite so we went to the first five years. And this was the toughest part to come up with the areas which major planning would take place. Essential services, safety, and so forth. You all have copies in the book which I handed out to you in February. We took the first bite which was five years, and we've already passed by the first year because on October 1st we started the first year of the five so it left us with four years in the first five years. Planning: We had asked through the commissioners and through Neil Dotrill, the various department heads, to submit what was already on the books as far as long-range planning and they gave us a five-year plan. I need to discuss with you the possibility of the Commission asking the administrators to give us one more fifth year which we are now lacking because you see the first year has become the operational year which we are now in. So we're really only on our books have the next four years. So my suggestion would be that the administrators go back and peruse what they have on their books, give it back to us in some form, and we will give it back to you in your booklets so we will by our next meeting be able to say we now have five years on the books. We had discussed essential services, safety, environmental conservation, and quality of life through our last meeting. This is where we are now for the next five years. Hopefully by the middle of this year or whenever we can get that far -- we've been slow. We need to speed it up. We need to get to these next five years. I think it will be easier going because there will be less on the books for us to discuss and give us more vision on what we feel we ought to be doing with the vision for this County for that period of five years. We are on a plan here which is kind of universally adopted. The plan is where do we want to go. That's really what visioning is all about. Where do we want to go, looking at where are we now, and this is where we are now, and we should know that. Number two, how are we going to get there? That's the planning that has to be done by this commission. Personnel. Who's going to do it? What responsibility within government is responsible for those implementations of those plans? And, of course, budget always raises its ugly head. How much is it going to cost? How are we going to pay for it? So I think if we can follow these, put them into these eight major areas, it's possible for this Commission to get a ten-year plan by this time next year. Maybe that's a little ambitious, but I would hope we could do that because as we start forward now, there will be less to talk about over here than there has been in the first five years. Maybe I could get Commissioner Constantine to comment on that. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Just one thing you and I had talked about the other day for benefit of the two new folks or anyone visiting, one through eight is not intended as a priority. That was just we needed to assign numbers to each. So we didn't want anyone to think growth management was at the bottom of our list. We just needed to put those through. Iwm not sure where you want to go. MR. MARTIN: The fifth year that's missing now. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I think what you said is a good idea in that if we're going to have a five-year plan, we've used up pretty much all of the first year now. So it's, in effect, going to be a four-year plan unless we have different department heads go back and add in what now will be 2000 and the year beyond. So I would think we would want to do that in time for the next meeting which will be in -- COMHISSIONER MATTHEWS: End of January. MR. DORRILL: Without elaborating on that, if there's consensus on the part of the Board, I think that's a maintenance item. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Maintenance item. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I wanted to make sure it didn't get forgotten and suddenly we had four years instead of five. MR. DORRILL: I appreciate Professor Martin bringing that to our attention. We need to make modification in our document process, and we will do that if there's general agreement on the part of the Board. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Please. MR. MARTIN: In addition to that, I have been attending meetings and I have been reading documents from these organizations I mentioned. I made some excerpts that I think might be valuable for you to have in your book, which are a condensation of -- some of these are 20-, 25-, 30-page documents -- and I know you probably want to read them or have read them but you probably don't have complete recall of all that information. What I've tried to do is the annual telephone survey of registered voters. I've come up with a half a page, which is very essential information, for you to have in your booklets, and we also have Political Action Committee of Collier Building. We have the recent telephone survey and excerpt from the South Water Management District plan so that you have a ready reference in your booklets, and these pages are numbered, and they are to go in section D in numerical order. And if I find some more interesting facts, I will pass them along to you. If you care to read the full reports, you can ask for copies of the full reports. Now, also we have a copy of this chart for you. Is that sent around? MS. EDWARDS: We've sent that around. MR. MARTIN: So you will have a copy of this to insert into your book. So you know what the basic plan that I suggested has been which is top-down bottom-up strategic planning. I don't think you need anymore questions or discussions from me. I think we should open it up now. Item #2F - PRESENTATION OF SECTION 5, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: Item #2F1 ECONOMIC ELEMENT OF GROWTH MANAGEMENT PLAN And the next subject is economic development for the next five years. You already have a page on that in your booklet. MR. DORRILL: We're probably a little behind where we ought to be so I'm going to ask Dick to move us forward a little and we'll talk about the economic element issue within the -- or economic development for the master plan element, and then we've got some people who are here this morning. John Yonkosky will make a presentation concerning the activities and work of the council of economic advisors, and we have some representatives. I know in particular 3B is something we need to try and do as soon as we can so some of the people who are here on behalf of the TDC can get back to work. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Just one thing before you start, Dick. I think you corrected it, Neil, but our agenda says element of the growth management plan. That wasn't a direction of the Board. MR. DORRILL: That's correct. And there's an issue as to whether or not we should have a separate element. There is a master plan being done. We currently do not have direction to include it as a specific element to the growth management. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: In a point in time will we make that decision once it's presented to the Board? CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: The original discussion had been -- Tallahassee -- at times DCA gets a little creative in how they interpret what our intent was. We can put together a plan and locally stick to it without necessarily making it -- because it's an optional part of our growth management plan -- necessarily have to give it to Tallahassee to tell us how to implement it. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: They get very creative. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: You want to give them the smallest stick to beat you with later. MR. CLARK: That's right. From that viewpoint, I'd like to give a little overview of the issue of that. At least the staff as part of the fiscal year '94, '95 budget process, the Board of Commissioners unanimously agreed the County should begin development of an economic development plan, and I stress plan. The concept originally began as a potential development of an optional economic element for the growth management plan, and that's the point we covered. However, the BCC decided to pursue the development of a plan outside the strict oversight of the development of community affairs as a freestanding ordinance as was commented. This gives the County much greater flexibility without the oversight and the heavy stick as Commissioner Hancock mentioned. Staff was directed to collect data and work within the framework provided by the DCA so the information could be converted into an element of the growth management plan if the BCC later decides to do so. The economic development plan will be a policy plan document which will assist the Board of Commissioners in making decisions affecting the future economic development of the County. Policies will be supported by extensive analysis of county economic base, economic strengths and weaknesses, labor statistics, relative positions compared to neighboring counties, and the original survey data relative to community attitude toward economic element, existing industry, and a needs assessment and profiles of recent business relocations to Florida. That's probably an important element to mention. Traditionally the studies have shown that new jobs are created -- 80 to 85 percent of new jobs are created by expansion of existing businesses. And traditionally I should say -- I think probably the common concept is -- economic development is bringing new businesses to the area when, in fact, traditionally 80 to 85 percent of all new jobs created are expansions of business, and obviously that's areas that all these advisers are going to look at. But where we're at now the information gathering point. Staff will complete the initial data-collection phase of this project by utilizing resources of a temporary employee. This phase will be completed in approximately four months. The BCC directed staff to complete the project without adding full-time staff positions. This phase will be completed concurrently with -- the council of economic advisors developed the original survey is supposed to be implemented with the assistance from the economic development council, the chamber of commerce, the board of realtors and airport authority. I might mention -- as I mentioned we're in the information-gathering stage, but a substantial amount of work has been done in that regard, and it's compiled in this document, that demographic and economic profile of Collier County, Florida, of September 1994. Commissioners all have this document, and it is available for others who want it. It has a wealth of information. The demographic profiles of -- for instance, when you look at -- and this is just one small area. But when you look at major employers of Collier County, we're talking about the Collier County, Florida, school board, 3,000 employees, and you go on down. Using this information, the council of economic advisors who are appointed by the board of commissioners is coordinating with staff and other agencies such as the chamber of commerce and so forth to extrapolate information from this to make some geographic specific comments on Collier County. Using this a plan will be formulated -- a plan of action will be formulated and brought back before the Board. If there are any questions on the general overview, I would be glad to try to answer those. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: The question may be premature and it may be answered later, but I noticed that the three elements that are going to be discussed today, agriculture, tourism, and construction, these are all existing mainstays of our employment base and so forth. MR. CLARK: That's correct. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: You mentioned focusing on existing businesses. What I'm concerned about is looking 10 or 15 years down the road and whether or not we are going to target at this point drawing different types of businesses and how to physically set up a situation to do that such as R and D, light manufacturing, and so forth. I guess I'm looking for a little background on that discussion this Board's had previously as to whether or not that was excluded or whether it was addressed. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I'm sorry. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: In looking at more than what we have now. We have agriculture. We have tourism. We have construction. What we don't have are a lot of the clean industries, and we talked briefly about this and I'm just -- I see that as a potential target, if not today, down the road, for us, and we need to begin to set up to draw those, but I'm not hearing it. I'm not seeing it. Maybe there's background I'm missing. MR. CLARK: I think you're absolutely right. That is part of the target area; however, what I was stating was at this point, we -- we're actually in the infantile stage of this in gathering information. And that information will then be gathered and put together in a work plan, and we have an economic development work plan -- in fact, I think I gave you a copy of it there -- in which we're going to give it to the economic council, development council, and seek their direction to see where they want to go with it. Nothing has been excluded. In fact, I think everything has been included exactly what you said, that the clean-type industries, all of those desirable factors. When you start looking at this, it's extremely interesting to note how this information is gathered. One of the areas we're looking at is people or businesses who have looked at Collier County and decided not to come here and why. Then we look at businesses who have decided to come here and why. And some of the -- for instance, Dole -- Dole, the processing, the pineapple and so forth, ended up in Hendry County and very clean, very beautiful facility. Why? You know, that was -- you know, those kind of questions really come out, and the why was land prices were much cheaper. So, I mean we look at all -- there's all kind of elements to look at. Some of the CEOs of the companies, why do some of the clean, smaller companies locate in this area, and we find out in looking at some of that because some of the CEOs like to live here. So they bring their business with them, some of the smaller businesses, so forth. So of all the economic data we can extrapolate from this we can get some patterns and perhaps find out the most efficient way of utilizing our resources to target those kinds of areas that we have the best probability of bringing here. Item #2F2 ECONOHIC COUNCIL OF ADVISORS MR. DORRILL: In order just to continue to move, we might ask John Yonkosky to -- if you'll work your way up by the front, John. John is the staff liaison apparently to the council of economic advisors, and he can perhaps elaborate on what their activities have been thus far, because I think everyone agrees manufacturing in particular needs to be part of an economic development plan to the extent what type of manufacturing base we currently have, what type of base should we be pursuing. MR. HARTIN: The strategic plan for economic development council of Collier County addresses a lot of those subjects, and it was just published September 15. If you do not have a copy of this, we can see if we can get one for you. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: I was concerned more with our process in incorporating those recommendations. MR. HARTIN: Yes. But I think you need to coordinate so you don't duplicate efforts, and that's one of the subjects we're talking about. You all might be trying to do the same thing. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: This work plan is for your division or for the council of economic advisors? MR. CLARK: The council of economic advisors. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Good. Thanks. MR. YONKOSKY: Good morning. My name is John Yonkosky. I work in the county manager's office, and I'm the staff liaison for the council of economic advisors. The handout that I just gave you is a list of all the members of the economic advisors, and on page two of that handout is an abstract or a summary of section seven of the ordinance that created the council, and it identifies some of the broad scope directions that was given the Board of County Commissioners for the council of economic advisors. They were actually created by ordinance in accordance with the rules and the advisory ordinance the Board of County Commissioners. They were created in May of 1994, and the Board of County Commissioners at that time, which three of the members here were on that board, they appointed by resolution the list of 12 members that are on there. Their first meeting took place on August 17th, and it was an organizational meeting as required under the resolution. They chose a chairman, Jim Losgo (phonetic) and vice chairman, Gary Tice, and immediately went to work. They decided to fast-track the methods that they're using. They meet twice a month, and they are trying to get up to speed. They at first recognized the membership concern because the way that they were created was a 12-member organization. Nine were voting members and three were alternates, and this became sort of a problem. There is going to be a revised ordinance brought back to the board to make all 12 members a voting member. That will be the solution that will be presented in the near future. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: John, I attended one of their meetings early on, and one of the things that I would hope could also happen when we address the membership issue is I got the distinct impression that they're not sure what their charge is. They're unclear about exactly what is it that the Board wants them to do, and I think that we owe it to them to make that as clear as possible. They seem very uncertain. So maybe we can use the ordinance as an opportunity to clear this up. MR. YONKOSKY: It certainly will be. I think on the 13th is when they're scheduled to make their first progress report to the Board. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: One of the things they've done as part of that is I know they met with Commissioner Matthews, and they've met with me. John, I don't know if they met with you yet or not, but I think they've been trying to get a feel for each of the commissioners, what direction to head so that we won't have a plan a year from now that we don't like or didn't intend. We want to make sure we're all on the same wavelength so that work and time isn't wasted or isn't put in the wrong direction. I think that was the intent by them sitting down with us, and I think their purpose or intent was to sit with each of the five of us and try to get that feel. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And as I sat with them when I was a commissioner elect, they basically said it's very confusing having met with individual commissioners and heard individuals because sometimes we can't talk to them as a group. So I'm hoping that when we have the opportunity of a public forum to talk to them and give them direction. MR. YONKOSKY: One of the members of the council made a statement at two or three meetings ago, and it was Parker Collier, and she said that this unease -- is the term that she used -- this looking for some direction is a natural phenomenon, and it will take in its due course, and it will gel. And I think that's what commissioners that have attended the meetings already have seen. There has been -- the way that they put the process together, the way that they've looked at it is to meet with county manager, with each of the commissioners individually, and with special interest groups or civic organizations, different groups in the community that have had a tremendous amount of input on growth and future -- greater Naples civic association and the economic development council are just a few. In these types of meetings they're looking for the -- not necessarily a direction but what are the criteria and the concerns that these groups have in the community with growth, and there's been a wide variety of areas the discussion has taken place. And someone mentioned redundancy a while ago. That's one of the things that they're trying to avoid as much as possible. They have met twice now with the County's long-range growth planning staff and are working very closely with them because there is no staff and no funds for the council of economic advisors. They're working very closely with the staff. As a matter of fact, the last meeting there were no visitors, just had a long-range -- I mean, a workshop for the plan that Dick talked to you about just a little while ago. They started off at first appointed two subcommittees. One was a mission subcommittee, and they defined seven areas in that commission that's been adopted -- statement that's been adopted that they're going to bring to the Board for verification on the 13th. The mission statement subcommittee -- and the second one -- subcommittee which has got an unbelievable task, and that's the subcommittee to identify and define all of the available projects and reports and demographic data that's currently in existence. And they are looking at the economic development council, the chamber, and a tremendous amount of other sources that are available to them. And then they created -- under the mission statement, there was five major bullets, and these are the subcommittees or task forces that were appointed in those areas. Now, the Board of County Commissioners on the meeting of the 13th may want to change the direction, but this is a mission statement that will be brought to the Board. The first task force was the enhancing and creating high-quality business enterprises as well as quality employment. Second task force was expanding and capturing capital resources. And the third task force was expanding research and educational opportunities in the County. The fourth task force was maintaining and improving the quality of life, and that's probably one of the most difficult task force that are out there because quality of life means something different to each socioeconomic group. And then the fifth task force was conserving and enhancing the natural environment. When they make the report to the Board, they've developed an operating plan, and that's what will be presented on the 13th. There is a list of five items, five categories. I don't know whether Dick handed that out to you or not, but in trying to avoid redundancy and duplication, those are the primary steps in putting together an economic plan as opposed to an economic development plan that are -- the staff in the long-range planning section and the council of economic advisors are going to work in a parallel process. So there's going to be a tremendous amount of interaction between the long-range planning staff and council of economic advisors. Basically that's the report I wanted to give to you on the council. It will be -- the chairman will be making a presentation of the operations plan on the 13th of December. Item #2F3b DIVERSITY ECONOMIC BASE - TOURISM MR. DORRILL: Thank you. As part of the discussion number three, I think I'm going to flip the first two just to help some members of the tourism industry. So if we can, Jean. Jean Gansel is a senior budget analyst in the budget department. And, again, for lack of having permanent staff, she is the staff liaison for the tourist development council. MS. GANSEL: Good morning everyone. I would like to briefly discuss the tourist development tax. The State of Florida gives local government the authority to levy 1 to 2 percent tourist tax. That tax is on all accommodations for six months or less. Collier County tourist development tax is 2 percent which was approved by the voters in November of '92. Of the 40 counties that currently levy a tourist tax, 2 percent is the lowest levy that there is. The State does give counties or local governments the authority to increase the tax by 1 percent after it has been in effect for three years. MR. DORRILL: This may be an important point. When would the three-year period be available to the county commission? MS. GANSEL: Okay. That would be in January '96 would be because it was passed in November of '92 and enacted in January of '93. So we would be able to increase it. It can be increased by an extraordinary vote of the Commission or by referendum. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Is this something TDC has reviewed or talked about in a favorable light? MS. GANSEL: Increasing the tax? They have not reviewed that at all. One of the issues was the tax -- the plan as it now stands has 60 percent of the tax revenues going for beach renourishment, 25 percent for tourist promotion, and 15 percent for special events which promote tourism. At the last TDC meeting, they did discuss possibly recommending amending that plan and bringing it forward. The recommendation at this point was not to do that, to continue with the plan as it currently is. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I want to make a comment. In the last legislative session, there was a bill before the legislation to allow what they considered small counties -- as far as the TDC was concerned, a county less than 600,000 population-- to use the TDC funds for parks. That bill died. It didn't come to the floor. With some of the discussions that we're having as to what to do for future parks and beach parks and parking and so forth, access to the beaches, we may want to talk to our legislative delegation to try to move that bill through so that we can use the TDC money for parks. And then in 1996 we may want to consider that extra penny for the tourist to help pay for the parks that they are using. We are talking a year's worth of planning, but we've got to get the bill passed first so '- MS. GANSEL: Yeah. There are many elements of this tourist tax that seems as though different counties have lobbied for certain things where you have professional franchise -- sports franchises and the like. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: The large counties can already use the money for parks. They can use it. We're under 600,000 and can't use it for parks, and certainly we have this greater need, if not greater, with the tourism that we have for parks. So it may be something that we may want to work with legislative delegation to achieve. MS. GANSEL: The spreadsheets that I believe have been passed around give you some indication as to the amount of money that we're collecting for tourist tax and how that money is being spent. The first spreadsheet is the month-by-month collections for the tourist tax. Last fiscal year we collected almost four million dollars. If you look at the chart and compare month to month, we experienced a tremendous increase for most months last fiscal year, which was very impressive, because many Florida counties actually were experiencing decreases in the tourism. So we were very pleased with that. Mr. Watkins is here to -- after I finish to speak about the efforts from the tourism council, and I think that they've been very successful as you can see from the figures. The next spreadsheet is the 60 percent of revenues that is for beach renourishment. A little over three million dollars has currently been allocated for specific projects in beach renourishment areas. The next spreadsheet is the 25 percent that's allocated for tourist promotion. Approximately a million dollars has been allocated to the Collier County tourism committee which is a coalition of the chambers of commerce and the visitors bureau that was formed for the purpose of promoting tourism in the off season in Collier County. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What's the tax collector's fees? MS. GANSEL: Okay. The tax collector -- we have a contract with the tax collector to collect the tourist tax. He charges three percent to do that. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It comes out of the tourism promotion 25 percent? MS. GANSEL: It comes out of all the funds. For each of the funds -- you'll see a five percent -- 3 percent for the tax. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I see. Thank you. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: You say chambers of commerce. Is that Naples and Bonita, or is Bonita not involved in ours? MS. GANSEL: No. Bonita would not be involved in ours. It would be Everglades, Marco, Naples, Golden Gate, the chambers in Collier County only. And the final spreadsheet is the listing of the special events, the 15 percent that we collect of tourist tax that's allocated for special events that are in the off season which are to attract tourism to Collier County. As you can see from this, there's quite a bit of fund balance in this particular fund. The criteria that's been established for funding special events is rather stringently -- COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We could sponsor another Woodstock with that, couldn't we? I'm not saying that we want to. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Commissioner Matthews proposes Woodstock. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: No. No. No. No. Have you been to New York to see what was left? MS. GANSEL: They don't give us cleanup money. Are there any questions about the tax or future direction? The additional payment where it says one percent increase after three years can be used for any appropriate purpose that's identified in the State legislature. It would not be specified for sports or anything. If there's no other questions, I'd like to introduce Mike Watkins from the Collier County tourism committee and the hotel industry. MR. WATKINS: Thanks. I've passed to the commissioners the cover sheet from our application for the bed tax last year which summarizes perhaps for the new commissioners maybe the breakdown of what the Collier County Tourism Commission is. And it does represent, as Jean said, all five chambers in Collier County, the hotel/motel associations, the Naples Visitors Bureau and pretty much the whole gamut of tourism. We view our responsibility of promoting the entirety of tourism which is well beyond just hotels. It includes restaurants, attractions. We're promoting a destination which is Collier County. We've divided the funds that we've received up into two accounts, one for the Marco Island Convention and Visitors Bureau and one for the Naples Area Tourism Bureau. So we've split the money that we get from the 25 percent that Jean mentioned. It's approximately a million dollars for the 25 percent if you take 25 percent of the four million dollars expected to be collected, and that's divided about 60 percent to the Naples Area Tourism Bureau and 40 percent to the Marco Island Convention and Visitors Bureau. And as Jean also said, we have had a pretty successful year. Our tourism is up a little bit which is indicated by the collections. The dollars are a direct percentage of room night accommodation expenses the guests pay either in hotels, in campgrounds, in short-term condo rentals. There are a number of different areas that we can collect the monies as the County. hopefully those collections will continue to grow if we're successful in the way we use the money. I will talk briefly about what the Naples Area Tourism Bureau has done with its share of the money. I have a couple of handouts here for the commissioners. Most of you have seen them before. Allison's going to pass out a couple more for the new commissioners. I'm also giving you a copy of press releases and some of the results of the efforts that we've had. We've produced a quarterly report which goes to the tourist development council members and also to the commissioners. That's the blue bound copy that the new commissioners got. I'm sure you current commissioners have those in a safe place in your offices to refer to from time to time. So we do expect that our monies will continue to increase. We produced this destination bureau. It's the first piece we have had as a destination. That was sent -- let's see how many copies? 290,000 copies were distributed to travel agents. We've sent the copy -- 200,000 more of those were dropped in newspapers in Miami, Dade County, Broward County. Our principal efforts have been toward the international market and then also to the Florida markets. As you recall, our charge is to promote this destination in the summer months, and we've been doing that both with an effort toward the domestic Florida traveler in particular and also the international traveler. I think you can rest assured that your money is being well spent, and we're also taking advantage of collaboration with private sector efforts that the Naples Visitors Bureau has undertaken, that the Naples area attractions are taking, the Florida Restaurant Association. We're trying to work closely with the private sector, and we again look at our role as promoting the entire destination for tourism. And relevant to what you're talking about with the economic element, I think we see that we can with effective use of this money spread out some of the seasonality that we've seen in the past in tourism. You'll never see the collections as strongly in the summer as you do in the winter because they're a percentage of room rates, but our occupancies this summer are the best we've ever had. So even though the percentages are -- they're over 50 percent now in the summer where they used to be down in the 30's as I can remember, but the room rates are still much lower. So our property, we're getting $250 a night in the wintertime. We're getting $90 a night in the summer. So 2 percent of $90 compared to 2 percent of $250 makes a big difference. So our collections will always be lower in the summer than they will be in the winter, but we're rounding out the seasonality that we've had historically although, again, the spending isn't as great. The visitor in the summer doesn't spend as much as the visitor in the winter, but we're still seeing a big change in improvement. We view tourism as a clean industry. We view tourism as only successful when there's a good environment in which for our visitors to stay. So the beaches are very important. The Everglades are very important. A clean environment is extremely important for the success of tourism. So we view tourism as a partner with everything that we're all trying to do here in Collier County to try and make this a better place to live because if it's not a better place to live, it's not going to be a better place to visit. So we believe that we're on the right track, that we can with your support do more to improve the economy from the tourism standpoint. We look forward to working with you to do that. We have plenty of information on what we're doing as the Naples Area Tourism Bureau, the Marco Island Convention and Visitors Bureau, but I think that perhaps I've summarized enough at this point. I'll be happy to answer any questions. We're very pleased with the 2 percent tax. We would not be as interested in additional percentages because we view that the higher it gets as a conflict with our ability to attract visitors. So we'd like to see that 2 percent continue to grow in terms of what it creates as opposed to adding percentages. That's the tourism industry's view on our tax, and it is intended to generate overnight stay, not to just to do infrastructure. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Do you have a position on this business about parks? MR. WATKINS: We view the efforts of the bed tax to be for promotion to generate overnight stays, and if it's a park that's principally for residents of the area, I think we have a hard time in our industry of supporting the use of monies that are collected for promotion being used for a park that wasn't going to be really aggressively generating overnight stay. This might have been one of the problems perhaps with the special events category in that it's difficult to meet the challenge of the test of the bed tax, which is to generate overnight stays, and some of the events are more geared toward local patronage than they are for overnight stays. The tropical chamber, Naples Area Chamber of Commerce has had for a number of years -- is not going to seek bed tax monies this year for that reason. So I think the tax is a legitimate one. It was there for the purpose of the bed tax to begin with, and so that, I think, needs to be kept in mind when we look at allocation of the monies. Thank you very much for your time. We appreciate your support. MR. DORRILL: I have a quick question. Several years ago the major hotels in the community formed what I'll call a consortium or a cooperative to put a focus on the German tourism in particular. Does that group still exist, or has it become disgrouped? And I'm relating that to -- at least what I've read in the media which is a new focus for South American tourists in a different type of marketing program, and is there any coordination for them too? MR. WATKINS: Yes. And I probably assumed too much. I brushed over that, but we are in collaboration with the private sector entities that exist. We have the Naples Visitors Bureau which Neil's referring to, which is a collaboration of beachfront resorts, the Ritz-Carlton, the Registry, the Edgewater, the Naples Beach Hotel, the Keewaydin Club and now LaPlaya. And our group, which was a four-member group at the time, went to Europe about five years ago to initially generate interest in Naples as a destination. Our first visit when we were meeting with travel writers in London, they thought we were from Naples, Italy. They had never heard of Naples, Florida. Twenty-five percent of the business at the Naples Beach Hotel now is European, both German and British combined. It's very, very significant. I don't think there's a retailer in town or anybody in town who hasn't seen the impact, and I think it's fairly positive of the international dollars that have come into our community. As a result, one of the principal efforts of the bed tax money has been to continue that effort for the entire destination, not just the private sector visitors bureau, beachfront property effort, but the groundwork was laid by the visitors bureau. In Hay the visitors bureau went to Brazil and Argentina for the first time. We're beginning to see measurable numbers. They're small, but they're measurable now where we didn't have them before, visitors coming from, in particular, those countries, Brazil and Argentina. We believe that that's a fertile market for us. It's a market in the same time zone. They're accustomed to coming to Hiami. There's not a concern of safety for those travelers coming to Hiami as there may be for the European travelers. So we're very optimistic about that market. With the limited dollars that we have in promotion, we're promoting the Naples Area Tourism Bureau with less than a half million dollars. My resort spends over a million dollars to promote the Naples Beach Hotel. So the $500,000, we're limited in what we can do to get the word out to the world; however, we're selectively working with Revene and Associates as a public relations effort to try to make those dollars go as far as possible. We think there's an opportunity in South America. Is that a pretty long answer to your question? MR. DORRILL: It was a very good answer to a very important question because of the very little knowledge I had about the other affiliated group that you all have. I'm just curious. How did you target South American tourists as sort of your next foray in the international market? MR. WATKINS: Their winter is our summer. We need the business in the summer so there's a logical connection there. There's comfort traveling to Hiami. They're already coming to Florida. You don't have to really introduce the location. There's a lot of good flights coming up. Language is not a major barrier. And it was a new market that hadn't yet discovered Naples. And what we found with Europe is they were already come -- we would not -- if we were in the middle of nowhere, we would not be able to attract European business to Naples, Florida, at least in the numbers that we are. Because Disney is here and because they were already coming to Naples, we're able to skim a little bit off the top. They're already coming, and the same is true as for South America. There's a terrific amount of investment in Dade County and Broward County from South America. They're accustomed to coming here. A lot of property is owned here, and all they're asking for is a couple of days while they're up here, and it's amazing what we can do. So we think it's a good opportunity. Yes, Mr. Hancock? COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Real quick. I'm glad to see two panels dedicated to the ecotourism, if you will. Do you have any numbers or any indications that targeting that group will prove beneficial to the overnight stays in the coming year? MR. WATKINS: I don't think too many people come specifically because of it, but they're liable to extend their stay because of it. It's a funny thing. Ecotourism is a great buzz word, but you can't make a living off promoting it because people -- they still want the beaches and they want the great restaurants and shops and so forth, but there's not a European who comes to this area that doesn't want to see an alligator, and so it's a component to the pie. And if it can extend a stay -- if an average length of stay is three days and you can extend a stay one day, that's going to cause 33 percent more stays and you're not spending any more money doing it. MR. DORRILL: So there's no truth to the rumor that Wooten's Airboat rides is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Naples Beach Hotel? MR. WATKINS: No, sir. However, if we can get the visitors center, the federal visitors center in Everglades City, it's going to be a major, major impact for all of us. And, again, we see tourism as a good, clean industry that has a ripple effect. It's estimated to be about seven times for the tourism dollar when it gets spread around the economy. I'd like to thank Hike Smykowski and Jean Gansel for the great help they've been. This first year has been trying for all of us. We collected the monies for the first time in '93. We're spending them for the first time in '94. We're learning. You're learning. We appreciate the patience, and we think we'll have a great deal more to tell you in a year. Thank you very much for the opportunity. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: One thing I don't want to escape that Hike addressed the visitors center in the Everglades National Park down there. That's something that these commissioners can be very aware of. The Park service only builds about six of those a year. So it's tough to get them. There's over 16 on a waiting list, as I understand it. But if you go down there, look at the facilities down there. It's desperately needed, and it could very well make that an extra night and extend the stay. So in the back of your mind, we may have a time where we can form a resolution to have the National Park Service pushing for that. Item #2F3a DIVERSITY ECONOHIC BASE - AGRICULTURE MR. OLLIFF: The next item is agriculture under diversifying the economic base, and I think the Board put it there recognizing that agriculture is an important part of the economy here in Collier County. Agriculture is still a very huge part of our economy. In fact, it's 350-plus-million-dollars-a-year industry of our county, actually the number two industry in all of Collier County. I think it falls right behind discount golf shops or something. Actually it falls right behind tourism. I think that's the reason it was here in terms of diversifying the economic base, trying to create some more stable industries throughout the county. One of the difficulties we have in putting it in a strategic plan is generally we're trying to put things in this plan that the county has some control over. You can only plan what you can actually try and effect. And in this particular case, it's very little that the County can actually do in terms of agriculture. We generally deal in terms of zoning and in terms of tax rates, and for other industries we might have regulatory responsibilities where we can either tighten up regulations or loosen regulations to try and promote that type of business. In agriculture, the County doesn't do a whole lot of regulatory work. In terms of zoning, I think all the land's generally not zoned is zoned agriculture. So from the zoning perspective, we make every stride we can to promote agriculture. And in terms of tax rate, I think agriculture is the lowest tax rate land use that there is in the County. I think in terms of the two things the County does, we've done as much as we probably can to promote agriculture. Our agriculture department and I provided to the Board probably a month ago now this little report called agriculture in Collier County. If some of the new commissioners haven't gotten it, I'll make sure that you do. It was a report in response to a couple of newspaper stories about the major farms in Immokalee that were no longer going to be in business in response to some of the national news about NAFTA and GATT and what effect it might have as to the Immokalee economy. Generally what the report says is for now not a whole lot of effect. I think there's some transition going on in Immokalee. Farming may be down somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 percent next year, but it's a change of who's doing the farming, not a great change of the amount of farming that's going on. What we tried to provide here is generally what the ag department does. We don't do a lot of promotion. Ag departments generally are a twofold department. They try and be a go-between between regulators and those actual people in the field doing the farming, nursery work, and cattle work. The other thing they try and do is they are a link between University of Florida which is still an agriculturely-oriented college, a research-based college and provide information from the college to the industry about how to do things either safer or smarter and increasing productivity. That's our function in agriculture, and we'll continually try and do that, and we'll continue to provide you reports to keep you up to date on this thing. There are major industries in cattle. We still produce six and a half million pounds of cattle, beef cattle, in a year in this county which is surprising. There is almost as much acreage devoted to cattle raising as there is to agriculture farming, and it's about 300,000 acres so there's a lot of land devoted to cattle. There's citrus industry, about 40,000 acres planted in citrus, a growing industry here because of the freezes up North. There's also the vegetables, which you know about, and a large growing portion of ag here is ornamental horticulture. Because of the amount and growth rate here, more and more people are growing their own horticultural plants. So from an ag standpoint, all we were trying to do is try and make sure that the farmers know what the rules are and can try and work within them to be as productive as they possibly can. And we'll try and keep you as a board informed of how that is doing if there is anything you think you can do to help promote it. I'm assuming that's why I'm here, because you want to promote it. Item #2F3c DIVERSITY ECONOMIC BASE - CONSTRUCTION MR. DORRILL: Questions? There's a general discussion as it pertains to construction. Dick, I didn't now if you all had a presentation on that, but construction is part of the third leg of the stool. I think it's safe to say that growth in this community has been an industry in and of itself, and I think that not only construction but the real estate and the land development speak for themselves. There's a wrath of information as it pertains to revenues and increased property values and the number of people who are employed directly or indirectly through construction. Unless there's specific questions, it is shown as one of the elements or a sub part of what will be the master plan for economic development. With that, I think we can move on to airports which is the next area. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Can I ask a question about how this is working? It's really the same question that Commissioner Hancock had, and that is, when will it become a part of this discussion to talk about others instead of the three-legged stool? COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I can tell you where I feel it will fit in, and that is that we've got three major industries in Collier County now. And I think that the idea is to take a look at what we have and enhance it, make it as good as we can make it, and then take the lessons learned from doing that and apply that to new industries. I think if you talk to TDC, almost invariably they'll tell you that capturing industry as Lee County has done is a one in a million chance, and that our greatest ability to grow with an economic base that's steady is to encourage existing businesses to grow. And it's the entire new people take on additional product lines and so forth, and I would see these clean industries, computer high-tech-type things growing out of our ability to better utilize prebasics. COHMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The only thing that troubles me about that is -- and, again, it may be I don't understand yet what the format is for the strategic plan, but if you're going to have a five-year plan and not address any industry other than the three in the five-year plan, is it going to come up in the ten-year plan? You know, what -- COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I'm in the same boat. I don't feel like we've even gotten to "A," where do we want to go. I feel like we're at, you know, one half of "A," where are we now. MR. CLARK: Right. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I think we can partially answer that through -- we talked about the economic council and advisors. That was the purpose in our putting them together, and they have a 12 months which now they're -- where are they? Three months? Five months into it? COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Tim and Pam be patient. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: It's a long process. MR. DORRILL: They recently -- when they invited me to come, there was a great deal discussion about the opportunity for Collier County to be a kind of a subregional banking and financial service center, which is not part of the three-legged stool now. You know, the major banking centers in the state are Jacksonville, Miami, and Orlando. There are subregional centers in Tampa, Boca Raton, and Sarasota. Because of the amount of per capital wealth here and especially in trust-related banking, they and the fact that the chairman and the vice chairman are both bankers, you may see a strong emphasis in financial service-oriented economy and what we ought to be, and so that's an example of maybe something that's going to come. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I think this summer when we appointed and -- created this and appointed these folks, the intent was -- we needed to look at exactly what you're saying, Pam, but we needed to have some people with some expertise in the various fields to help us along. So they have a particular time frame in which they are to come up with some of those ideas. I think both of your points are well taken. We need to -- I think I'm just reiterating what Bettye said. We need to strengthen what we have, take advantage of that, but I don't think we're intending by that to turn our back on anything new. I think between the TDC and ourselves and others in town and in the region, we're keeping our eye out for those, and if we can get it, great. But we don't want to put all our eggs into that because there are literally thousands of economic development councils or corporations or whatever around the country. So we need to develop what we have at the same time. Item #2F4 COLLIER COUNTY AIRPORTS MR. DORRILL: Mr. Drury. MR. DRURY: For the benefit of the new commissioners, I've brought the three airports that the Collier County Airport Authority is in charge of, Immokalee, up in Immokalee; Everglades Airpark in Everglades; and Marco Island off of 951. I guess I would like to start out by saying that to give a perspective of what kind of impact airports have on the economy by pointing out a little statement that talks about the air transportation system. The United States has the finest air transportation system in the world and not -- it's a multi-billion dollar infrastructure, and not having access to that existing infrastructure is like having a highway running right through your community with no on ramp or off ramp. The community fails to reap the economic benefits of that multi-billion dollar infrastructure. Airports are more than just ramps, but they certainly are ramps to that existing infrastructure. I have been charged and the Collier County Airport Authority has been charged to develop these airports into economic engines and economic catalysts where they're serving communities. There are two basic effects that airports have on the economy; that is, an economic engine, a continuing processing dollars and jobs in the community, and an economic catalyst. Very quickly we decided that Marco Island would be -- we would concentrate Marco Island Airport as an economic engine for the community, continue to building it up, treat it as an economic engine. But that Everglades and Immokalee needed to become more economic catalysts that help create jobs in new industry, high-tech industry, the clean industry, the semiconductors and the fiber-optic businesses and the satellite manufacturing community businesses that tend to go into industrial parks. With that, I'll talk a little bit about Immokalee, and then I'll cut it short because it's been a long meeting. Immokalee Airport has 1,333 acres of land associated with it. In the past, the airport master plan called for the development of a very large industrial park on the north end extension of the runway system over here. We started to get into developing that industrial park and ran into some environmental problems, the DRI process which is a very, very long process. I went through it in Tampa, and we're eight years into it still, and we haven't gotten the development order up there. What we thought we would do is bring down the development of the airport to a smaller area -- and I've said that these are landing strips, not really airports. There's no real fuel facilities. There's no terminal buildings, no fuel farms, taxiways, hangars, industry there. So we must first convert these landing strips into airports. What we decided to do is build a terminal building down here; build a small industrial park back in this area; build some fuel farms, taxiways, ramps; bring in water, sewer, electric, phones, cable; all the things necessary to really call this an airport. And that's what we are in the process of doing right now with that airport. As it relates to Everglades Airpark -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Just a quick question, John. The time frame on the Immokalee Airport, we're doing the engineering and all that work as we speak? MR. DRURY: We're heavy into it right now. We've received -- it's about a four million dollar program for the three airports. We've received over three million dollars in federal and state airport grants, and we're putting in -- the County has put in a couple hundred -- $900,000 to leverage the over three million dollars in grants. We have selected a design team that specializes in airport development. Work orders have been issued by the County to start bringing in sewer and water and electric into this airport industrial park. We are continuously working with and talking to industry that's interested in moving here. We had ten lease plots available -- seven are in negotiations right now from various industries; aircraft, upholstery shops, aircraft distribution-type facilities, and a recycling facility is talking with us. We generally require them to give us a deposit before we get into lease negotiations to see how serious they are about it. So if we were successful on all of them, we would have about a 70 percent occupancy rate. So we're real excited because we haven't even begun to dig the dirt yet. So we have no water, sewer, things of that nature. Everglades Airpark, we looked at the ecotourism. We looked at how it fit into the national park. The national park is right here. You can see the boat basin. A lot of tours are done in this area. There's actually a little walking path from the airport to the national park, a restaurant over here, and the community really within walking distance. A lot of airplanes come in here during the summer months. We did an inventory last -- or during winter. Last winter we found some 240 aircraft flying in from all over the place, and we asked where were you from. London, Switzerland, renting small airplanes in the United States, Texas, Hiami, all over and flying their little airplanes into this airport. And asking what they were doing, and they were renting the canoes, going on the boat rides, seeing the alligators, and things of that nature. And getting stone crabs because the community is very large in developing stone crabs. We thought we'd -- again, this airport, I call it a landing strip. There's no terminal building, no fuel farm, no water, no sewer. So we are in the process of developing that. If you were to fly an aircraft and look on a navigational map, you wouldn't see this airport on the map for any practical purposes because there's no fuel there. We want to put that airport on the map, and the way to do that is by putting services there. We're also looking at the possibility of development of the seaplane basin. Clark Airlines, the largest seaplane operator in the south operates outs of Hiami. I think a lot of the Europeans, the Swiss and the Germans, from Hiami fly them to the Dry Tortugas, Fort Jefferson, which is a seaplane basin there, then over to Key West for lunch and then back, sort of a round robin type of thing. We're working with them to discuss how Everglades would fit into that round robin. Could they fly from Hiami to Dry Tortugas and maybe Key West and spend disposable income in that community before they went back to Hiami. And they're very excited if we are successful in developing a seaplane basin, but they may do direct flights from Hiami to here in the seaplane operation. We have to go through a full master planning process to do that. We have to talk about manatees and environment and the national park and all of those things before you get into developing a seaplane basin. It will be about a year or two before we actually have addressed all those issues. One of the things we found in talking with some of the businesses that were interested in locating here is the develop -- the availability of skilled employees in Collier County that could do some of the high-tech work necessary for aircraft refurbishing and things of that nature. We're working with a very large aircraft refurbishing company right now that's based in Naples that's interested in expanding. It basically maintains all the aircraft engines for Delta, U.S. Air, particularly now, and some of the other large airlines. And they found that the level of skill needed to work on the sort of high-tech business was a little less. So we worked with Vo Tech and to see if we could develop a program where we could take welding and aircraft repair program into the school, and they're working very, very well with us. The types of jobs that we're talking about are ten to $14 an hour. Vo Tech needs about a $8.50 an hour job before they can get grants to set up programs in their schools. So this type of industry falls right into helping them get grants so that they can set up programs for some of the lower income areas to move up in the chain, if you will. You can take an automobile mechanic who meets the basic skills, put him in a two-year program, elevate him a little bit and then get him into a ten or $14 an hour job which helps, of course, the family and the economy and things of that nature. That's kind of a big, quick overview. One last thing I should point out, foreign trade zones, very important. The last airport I was at we managed a foreign trade zone, trying to think about the future, where industry is going. That's international commerce, just in time inventory, getting products from the manufacturer to the shelf just in time, and that's air transportation. Not a lot of warehousing is going on in the industry anymore. It's very competitive. Aviation is very important. Host of the foreign trade zones are being developed at airports. There's a foreign trade zone in Tampa and a foreign trade zone at Port Canaveral and then one down here in Hiami, and there's no foreign trade zones in Southwest Florida. There's a void, if you will. They're very, very important in developing a good job base for business. Lee County has announced they are seeking a foreign trade zone, and we are trying to work with them to see how a sub zone might work at this airport to help attract industry. And the biggest things with foreign trade zones is, of course, the duty paid on importing goods. You don't need to do that. I'll be happy to give a better description of what a foreign trade zone is if anyone would like me to do, but I know we're short of time so I'm going to cut it off right there and answer any questions if anyone has any. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Just a statement that I'm impressed with the aggressive program that you've put together and congratulate you on it. MR. DRURY: Well, the Board of County Commission, the County staff, and Airport Authority, and economic development council, and FAA, and all these different groups have really come together and made this thing work. I've just sort of been a facilitator and kind of pointing people in the right direction. But without everybody pulling together, we would have never gotten as far as we did and grants for construction, but I appreciate it. MR. DORRILL: Mr. Chairman, would this be a good time to take a short break? CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Let's keep it fairly short. We have a half hour or 45 minutes when we come back to do the efficiency. Take five minutes. (A short break was held.) Item #2G - PRESENTATION OF SECTION 6, EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE: Item #2G1 - EFFICIENCY Item #2Gla PRODUCTIVITY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Let's get back at it here. Neil, our next item is efficiency. MR. DORRILL: I think in the time remaining we'll focus on items number one and number three which deals with privatization and efficiency. Bob Byrne is going to start, and then Mike with the fund raising will address discussion productivity committee and budget and taxation issues. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Bob will have to be very efficient with the time running. MR. BYRNE: I'm the model of productivity. Bob Byrne, staff liaison for the productivity committee. I have been asked to give you a brief -- and I'll emphasize brief -- report on productivity committee affairs. Actually, the Board should be fairly familiar with most of the activities the productivity committee has been doing. I recently heard from them regarding -- the information technology department wrote a memo regarding that as far as staff's recommendations. That's continuing efforts of their MIS subcommittee. Also heard from them with regard to the establishment of the department of revenue. That was -- originally the Board and the workshop with the productivity committee in April gave them charge to look at utilities and environmental services. The environmental services subcommittee, the major problem that they were hearing about and working on was mandatory trash collection billing efforts and that dovetailed nicely with the staff's move towards the department of revenues that you heard from them regarding that as well. The other, as I mentioned, utilities was another area for them to look at. The Utilities subcommittee is currently gathering data and preparing a draft report. The are human resources subcommittee as part of their last year's report set out certain recommendations, and they're continuing to monitor those. And one other item I wanted to mention with regard to the productivity committee is that they've had some turnover of late and currently have four new members, and so they'll be starting to get their feet wet with the next meeting. With that, if there's any questions, we have the former chairman of the productivity committee as of July. I'm sure he can answer some questions too. COMHISSIONER HANCOCK: I know absolutely nothing, Bob. When is the next meeting, Bob? MR. BYRNE: December 14th, 10 a.m., in the media center. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Fine presentation. MR. BYRNE: Thank you. MR. DORRILL: Editorial comment from my perspective. The productivity committee has proven to be one of the more, I think, valid advisory boards to the Commission. They certainly get a lot of media attention and has had a very legitimizing effect on behalf of the -- you know, what the commissioners are trying to do. It's not a make-work-type of advisory board, and I think to the extent they have some accountability make recommendations directly to the Commission and, in turn, see what the implementation suggestions or plans are to help you and legitimize. In fact, a final note, today is Bob Byrne's last day in the budget office. He's accepted and is going to take a position with the clerk's agency, but I think -- for what it's worth, you've seen a number of people from the budget office today, and I think they're indicative of very bright, young talent who are helping not only in support of the TDC but the productivity committee, and we will certainly miss Bob in that particular role. Mike, you want to talk about budgeting and taxes. Item #2Glb PROGRAM BUDGETING ANALYSIS MR. SMYKOWSKI: Quickly, for the new commissioners, I gave you a little handout, a sample program budget package from the program budget efforts we went through last year. That example happens to be the economy probation packet. What we've utilized for the last three years -- the first year was on a trial basis. The last two years each of the departments in the County administrator's agency have participated in the program budget process, and it's a modified zero-based budget process. Initially the starting point is a base level of service, and how we define the base level of service is those items are either mandated by law, necessary for health and safety, or, third, to maintain capital asset value. So that's been our starting point. And from that point, we build activities beyond the base in terms of programs or services offered, organized and grouped in program packages that are then prioritized by the staff and then added to base level until you build up into the department what the total services provided currently by the department. And the handout for the new commissioners you'll see there's -- for the probation department there's a subtotal that roughly shows what their current budget was, and then there were new or proposed services above and beyond that level, they will be added to that and then prioritized by the staff. After the staff prioritizes them, the Board is involved, and that's where from the policy-making standpoint they get involved in developing a ranking of each of the program packages. And the base level we've determined to be as being given the rank of mandate, and then there's three other rankings; essential, which is essential to the operations of the County; a discretionary program that is neither mandated nor considered to be essential, and funded based on available revenues; and then finally there's the infamous NR or not recommended category, and those items are not included in the budget. And for purposes -- this provides a good overview, I think, from the types of services for the new commissioners. This is the output of last year's program budget process for each of the departments. It is comprehensive, and it provides not only from the -- as a budgeting tool, it also just provides a general broad overview of the types of services that the County department is providing, and I think you'll be amazed how varied they are. I know my initial background was working for a city government. When I came to Collier County, I was amazed at how many more and varied services were offered by the County. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: I was just curious, in this county probation example you've given us. It looks like that what you're talking about on the first page is an 8 percent increase over last year's. Is that why we went down to 108 percent? MR. SHYKOWSKI: Yes. The subtotal -- it basically identifies the existing services provided. It gets -- this is the summary sheet, and there's a detail for each of the program packages that follows, and that provides kind of a guts of the service provided, what the service impacts are, who the customers are, et cetera. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: My question was, why doesn't this look like zero-based budgeting to me? I mean, does this come after we designated this as an essential service -- or it looks like you started with last year's and added 8 percent. MR. SHYKOWSKI: What we do is identify the programs that are offered currently. COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: And are those deemed to be essential services? MR. SHYKOWSKI: They're grouped in terms of base level which is, again, mandated by state or local -- state or federal law necessary to maintain capital assets, value, or deemed necessary for health and safety. That's going to be your basic core service. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: Excuse me. I think Commissioner Hac'Kie is looking at the 100 percent on the subtotal -- COHMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Uh-huh. COHMISSIONER NORRIS: -- And is wondering how this can be zero-based budgeting. It looks like baseline budgeting. I think that's your question? COMHISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yes. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: This happens to be maybe not the best example we could have given you because there were -- as we went through the process, there were a number of them that were less than 100 percent. There were a number of them that were a little more than 100 percent. This one just happens to be 100 percent. That's not typical of all of them. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Pam, also to answer your question, you said is this after the fact. You see where it says BCC tier? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Uh-huh. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: And that is what we were ranked those to be. So this is indeed after we've gone through the ranking process. Staff has -- Neil may not recommended it before it ever comes to us and -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What's the M? CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Mandated. MR. DORRILL: This is sort of a modified zero-based budget. We don't actually go all the way to zero because the Board has thus far agreed that they didn't want to spend a lot of time going all the way to doing a zero base because a fair amount of what we do is mandated. And if it's mandated, and that's why we have a base level budget for every program area that you will see. And those are those things that are determined to be mandated that we don't really have any discretion over. The Board historically focused on those things that are non-mandated that are either essential or desirable. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Commissioner Mac'Kie, to further elaborate on your question, we break down the budget into the programs and services provided and based on the prior year's adopted budget, this would have been the '94 adopted budget. The 100 percent level shows you within the current services offered what -- how they break out programmatically. So that gets you to the 100 percent. Within the available dollars that were allocated and appropriated to the probation department, they break them out programmatically into the following: A, B, C, D. COMMISSIONER HAC'KIE: Okay. So there's really -- there's really a fourth tier. I mean, there's essential but the only thing -- MR. SHYKOWSKI: Discretionary -- mandatory, essential, discretionary, and then not recommended. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. MR. SMYKOWSKI: And that has been utilized. And another thing, in terms of priorities, one of the advantages of this is that the staff goes through and provides a ranking and says we feel or -- you know, once you get beyond base level that our -- what's most important to the staff is public service, technical support, and then third would be automated offender. And then they were looking for a new program for intensive supervision. That would be the fourth. These are our goals and objectives and how we view them in a priority. You're allowed to by ranking say, no, I don't think we should be in the business of doing -- providing this service, so that's where the discretionary or not recommended may come in. Or you may change priorities and say, no, I think as a commissioner we should be providing this intensive supervision in Immokalee. That should be the second ranked program and change the priorities. So it's kind of an opportunity for the staff goals to mesh with those of the County Commission. In the upcoming year we're proposing to allocate dollars according to the following programs in this hierarchy and does that meet with your approval. Do you think they should be in the business of doing that? MR. HANCOCK: Mike, in the interest of time, Commissioner Mac'Kie and I are going to have a lot of questions so we're get to know each other really well. Why don't we continue with the agenda and you and I will target that on our own. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Okay. That's fine. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I think that one thing that may help you be aware that this is just the first step and about six months' budget process based on what we do with the program priority budget that the budget department goes back and prepares the budget in the June hearings. MR. SMYKOWSKI: This provides kind of the base and direction to the staff programmatically to develop a line item budget. So this is a precursor to the development of the line item budget. And based on the priorities that you establish and/or if they're proposing new services and you say, no, we're not interested in funding that, in your line item budget you're not going to see a program that you have deemed not worthy of funds. This is the basis by which you provide the -- in your policy-making role, the direction to the staff in terms of what areas are a priority and which are worthy of funding and which aren't. MR. DORRILL: Final question. When will the Board see the proposed budget and fiscal policy? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Typically end of January, early February. Kick off of the whole process. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, good. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Based on that they do the priority budget. And based on the priority budget, they do the June workshop. MR. SMYKOWSKI: One of the advantages too of this is between service level impact of decisions that were made. We focus on each of the program budget packages as a statement of service level and description of the program packet so, you know, if we don't fund this service, here is how the customer is affected, and I think that's an important thing. Before we utilized this process, it got down to when dollars were tight at the last minute, it's cut a million dollars from the budget and, you know, you have -- it's in between the public hearings. You have a week to do that and you're scrambling and making decisions that might due to time constraints, might not be in the best interests of County services. In this vein, you know and you're providing the direction up front, and if push comes to shove and dollars are scarce, the items that you ranked as discretionary and subject to availability, then we would group those together. For instance, any programs in the general fund that were ranked discretionary, they would be competing against one another for funding and then rather than saying just cut $100,000 from the general fund, we'd be looking at you for direction, probably make staff recommendations. Within the discretionary programs, you would have to select a priority that you deem to be most worthy of funding, and we may be forced to make a decision are we going to decrease parts maintenance or fund additional library operating hours? And that's one of the advantages here to sustain the service level impact. Those were hypothetical examples. Item #263 PRIVATIZATION HR. DORRILL: Thanks, Hike. Hy suggestion would be in the time remaining -- we've got about ten minutes or so -- to have Commissioner Matthews update us on the work privatization. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We're going to miss Bob Byrnes who was also related on the privatization task force. Are you still here, Bob? He's gone. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: That was not only his last day, that was his last hour. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We have a new liaison, Mr. Smykowski, who is, based on the last few meetings, going to do an equally good job. The task force was formed in Hay and we began to meet in, I believe, June. The first things that we did was to take these priority program budgets and distribute them among the members of the task force so that they would have -- so that they would review them and report back to the committee as a whole on what the various programs were. And then we could in our judgment take a look at what we thought would be prime for further privatization. Having done that -- we've completed that late August -- and having finished that, we've decided to first take a look at transportation, and Mr. Archibald spent two meetings with us, I believe, and we had thought that median maintenance and highway mowing were highly privatizable, and he told us that he was in the process of putting together an RFP and agreed to furnish the completed RFP and the results of the proposal. We also talked about street lighting, street striping, signage and street sweeping. The committee still feels that lighting, street lighting -- replacing bulbs and so forth in the street lights, especially as we install more and more street lights, may be something that we want contract out. And that street sweeping and striping, there may not be enough lane miles available at this point to attract a variety of proposals. Another area that we have some interest in is signage, and that's our street signs or stop signs, yield signs, mile-per-hour signs and so forth like that. We're trying to find out more information on what it costs to use a sign shop. Currently we are looking at parks and recreation. We met two weeks ago with Mr. Rinkman (phonetic) and some of our thoughts at this time are to look at maintenance of our park system, the aquatic centers, and the recreation programs that are offered by parks and recreation, whether it would be interested to contract those out. Last evening it took a little bit of a different turn and just as we conceptualize these things and one of our members came up with an interesting idea of why not privatize a park and a company comes in and does everything for that park. For example, in our community to operate Veterans Park, so to speak, a company would come in and say, okay, we'll do the maintenance. We'll do the rec programs. We'll do everything associated to that park, and this is the fee. So that's a little bit of a different twist that it took last night. So there's -- we'll continue to investigate it and see if we can't come up with some alternatives that will lead us into a more efficient and maybe less expensive operation. Other areas that we're going to be looking at is Animal Control. There's some thoughts that we might be able to privatize that with the Humane Society for the operation of the veterinary services and the kennels themselves. Of course, the Animal Control feature or the law abiding code feature is something that's a realistic thing that we probably have to continue ourselves. There's also been talk in the group of the museum and the possibility of having a group take it over, operate it for whatever donations and so forth. That's done that way in other cities, and we want to take a look at the possibility of doing that. Lake Trafford Cemetery is one I keep talking about and telling them that, Hey, the County wants to privatize this one. Let's get on with it, and it is on the burner. We are looking at it, but it's not ready to boil. Another area that we talked about is in the utilities area, and that is the privatization of water and sewer operations. I think the very size of that type of a proposal is going to cause us to delay investigating that until we get some more that are easier to accomplish in place, because this particular one is going to be quite large and probably at least as complicated as the privatization of the land that we're looking at now and whether that actually goes through or not. So there's lots of things that we're looking at. We hope to be able to bring some specific recommendations to the Board in March in time to fit in with the budget process. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Perhaps you all have entertained this anyway with some of the suggestions, but I wondered if you might be interested in looking -- and if the board would think this was a good idea -- setting up some sort of policy where our departments can regularly bid against private enterprise. There are going to be times just as you've laid out where it makes sense, and there's going to be times where it doesn't, but at least give them an opportunity so that it gives us an incentive to keep the costs down rather than turn it over to public to private. COHMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I think that's an excellent idea. It probably will be in the end exactly what the privatization task force recommends is that at any point in time where we have the potential to get valid proposals from the private sector, that we entertain getting the proposal, but at the same time ask our staff to make a proposal on it also. For all we know, they may be able to do it less expensively than they're currently doing it because they know how to do the job and we don't. We don't know what is there, but I certainly agree to ask our staff to jump in as well. COHMISSIONER HANCOCK: Commissioner Matthews, are there any indicators you look for in prioritizing seeking privatization for certain things such as you mentioned the park system and for -- you know, the five years I've been down here, I've enjoyed the leagues and everything, and to me the parks are run exceptionally well. I guess I have to compliment Mr. Olliff on that. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: They are run well. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Very well. And I guess I'm seeking out, there are a lot of views out there that it may be possible for privatization, but is it reasonable to look at privatization in that, or are those efforts best used elsewhere? I'm guess I'm asking for some criteria that your committee develop in determining where to look in terms of privatization. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Basically the criteria that our staff were using is -- number one, is the function being performed as a public service, a, quote, unquote, police power similar to Animal Control. Certainly the response of the Animal Control officer to pick up the animals and so forth is a quasi function of a police environment, but the kenneling of that dog and the veterinary services associated to the animal are not. And that's a function that we could privatize if, number one, we have companies who are willing to assume the proposal and responsibilities associated to that means that we are Collier County. We're only 180,000 population. We're, quote, unquote, sort of at the end of the highway. We don't necessarily have the numbers of companies available to us like Tampa would have who would be interested in making a reasonable -- a proposal. Some of the services we have to perform because there's no one else that can do it. Whether we're going it efficiently and in the most cost-effective manner is pretty much what this group is looking at. If there's a way to do it for less cost and be as efficient and do it as well, we're looking at that. If there's a way to do it more efficiently at the same cost, we're looking that. But certainly if it could be less efficient and increase costs, it's not what we want to do. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Thank you. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: It's a juggling act. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: You've given me the parameters and that's the question. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Quite frankly, we're finding in general we're doing a very good job. And we may in the end find that there's not a lot of privatization. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I hate it when that happens. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Pardon? I didn't hear you. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: I said, don't you hate it when that happens. COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: No. I think it's marvelous. I think it's marvelous. We're looking at it and saying, Hey, some of these things we're already doing the best that can be done, and that's marvelous to be able to tell our constituency that we're running a good operation right now. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Neil, do you want any wrap-up? Item #2H NEXT STRATEGIC PLANNING MEETING: January 31, 1995; SECTIONS 7 AND 8, HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES AND GROWTH MANAGEMENT MR. DORRILL: Not other than to thank the Board. We'll see you in January for the social services and -- see you in January for the other two areas for social services and health and growth management. We'd also like to add a special word of thanks for those people who always get here early. I think sometimes we take it for granted. We have name tags and doughnuts and coffee, show up. We ought to thank Leo for taking care of the niceties. COMMISSIONER HANCOCK: Next time I don't need to bring the doughnuts. MR. OCHS: No. Those are on the Clerk. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: We're out of here. There being no further business for the Good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by Order of the Chair at 11:37 a.m. TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF DONOVAN COURT REPORTING BY: Christine E. Whitfield