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DSAC Minutes 01/05/2000 R January 5, 2000 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE DEVELOPMENT SERVICES ADVISORY COMMITTEE Naples, Florida, January 5, 2000 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Development Services Advisory Committee, in and for the County of Collier, as the governing board of such special district as has been created according to law and having conducted business herein, met on this date at 3:30 p.m., in REGULAR SESSION at the Supervisor of Elections office, 3301 East Tamiami Trail, Building B, Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRMAN: NOT PRESENT: COUNTY STAFF PRESENT: Dalas D. Disney Charles M. Abbott William P. Dillon Robert L. Duane Marco A. Espinar Blair A. Foley Brian E. Jones Sally Lam Dino J. Longo Thomas Masters Thomas R. Peek C. Perry Peeples Herbert R. Savage R. Bruce Anderson David Correa Robert J. Mulhere Phil Tindall Edward Kant Page 1 January 5, 2000 CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We'll call the meeting to order. Let's see. We don't have a quorum. MR. MULHERE: Wait, wait, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. We have nine. That's a quorum. I could introduce the new members. Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Perhaps an introduction to the new members would be -- MR. MULHERE: Okay. We have three new members in attendance today; Marco Espinar, Brian Jones, and Blair Foley. MR. DILLON: We have four, Bill Dillon. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And Bill Dillon. I apologize. I recognized the others. I did not recognize you. MR. MULHERE: So we actually have four new members, so there's 10 members. MR. PEEK: Well, since those of us that have been here a while didn't recognize the new members, they certainly don't recognize us, so it probably would be appropriate for the existing members to introduce theirselves. I'm Tom Peek. MR. LONGO: I'm Dino Longo. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: I'm Dalas Disney. MR. SAVAGE: I thought you were Walt Disney. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: No, sir, Dalas Disney. MR. SAVAGE: Herb Savage, architect. MR. MASTER: Tom Masters. MR. DUANE: Robert Duane. MR. MULHERE: Is that it? I assume that Connie has all of the information that we need from the new members, but if not, she will get in touch with you. I want to just mention that Vince is out of town right now. Unfortunately his father-in-law passed away quite suddenly, and he had to go up to New York, so you're stuck with me for this meeting. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Approval of agenda is the first item of business here. MR. PEEK: I move we approve the agenda. MR. SAVAGE: I second the motion. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Discussion items, please. MR. MULHERE: Thank you. I just wanted to bring up two issues as to whether or not you want to add them to your agenda or add them for discussion. One is, Vince asked that I bring up for discussion whether or not you -- you're meeting on the 19th. His question is, do you also want to meet at your regularly scheduled time in February? And that may be a real easy decision, but he felt like that was appropriate for the committee to discuss. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Well, the 19th is two weeks from today, and then February the 2nd would be the next regular meeting, which would Page 2 January 5, 2000 be two weeks beyond that. The meetin9 of the 19th, other than two items that I'm aware of, Bob, what else is on the agenda. MR. MULHERE: And he said there's quite a bit on the agenda. And in fact, he wanted to ask if you were going to meet on the -- if you wanted to meet on the 2nd of February and also on the 19th, if you were willing to meet at two p.m. MR. LONGO: Do you want to add that? MR. MULHERE: For discussion. Future meeting times and -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We'll put that under new business, B. MR. LONGO: One more thing, Dalas. I'd like to add the speaker on the transportation impact fee issues, Dr. Henry Fishkind. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: That would be item C. MR. MULHERE: Actually that's going to be under A, right? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: A, I apologize, yes. A recognizes the speaker at the appropriate time. MR. MULHERE: The only other thing I wanted to just mention is I'm expecting to have agendas hand-delivered to me today to deliver to those members in attendance for the 19th, so I'll get those out. With that, I'll turn it back over to the acting chairperson. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. Do we have any other discussion on the approval of the agenda? If none, we'll call for a vote, please. All those in favor, say aye. Opposed? (No response.) Passes. Second item on the agenda is selection of chair and vice chair for 2000. Mr. Mulhere, maybe you could conduct that for us, please. MR. MULHERE: Okay. The floor is open for nominations for chair. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Chairman, I think it's appropriate that we select our vice chairman to be chairman this coming year. I'd like to nominate, not Walter, but Dalas Disney. MR. MULHERE: That's Herb Savage nominating Dalas Disney for chairperson, chair. MR. PEEK: Tom Peek. I would move that nominations cease. MR. MULHERE: So we have a motion. MR. SAVAGE: I second it. MR. MULHERE: I couldn't get you. MR. PEEK: We're going to shut off the nominations. We're going to elect Dalas. MR. MULHERE: Okay. Close the nominations for that. Okay. Let's see. So we have a nomination for Dalas Disney to be the chairperson. That doesn't have a second. MR. SAVAGE: I seconded that. Well, you don't have to second a nomination. You have to second a motion. MR. MULHERE: So the nominations are closed. MR. SAVAGE: I second. Page 3 January 5, 2000 We don't need a second, we just vote? MR. MULHERE: MR. PEEK: Yes, sir. MR. MULHERE: Ail those in favor? Opposed? (No response.) MR. MULHERE: Congratulations, Mr. Chairman. I'll give it back to you. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you so very much. We'll open the nominations for a vice chair, please. A motion. MR. PEEK: Mr. Chairman, Tom Peek. I nominate Tom Masters as vice chairman. MR. FOLEY: Blair Foley. I'd like to close nominations. MR. SAVAGE: Second. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Congratulations. Oh, we need to vote on it. That's all right. I'm new at this. All those in favor, please? Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Now congratulations. All right. MR. MULHERE: Just let the record show that Charlie Abbott arrived. MR. ABBOTT: A-B-B-O-T-T, fashionably late. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: The next order of business is -- first the new business item, transportation impact fees. Mr. Mulhere. MR. MULHERE: I'm going to turn it over to Ed. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Kant. MR. KANT: Mr. Kant, Ed Kant. You're going to have to -- I have to apologize because I've got some bronchitis, and this is as loud as I can speak. MR. SAVAGE: You mean Mr. Kant can't speak loudly? MR. KANT: I've asked Steve Tindale from Tindale-Oliver Associates to make the presentation to you that he made to the Board of County Commissioners and to the CBIA. How many other times have you done this? MR. TINDALE: Several times. MR. KANT: It's basically a background as to where we are with road impact fees, how we got there, where we need to go. The basic approach is no different from the approach that we took in the 1992 ordinance, which is the operable ordinance. Now, I say the '92 ordinance. It's been amended, a gaz -- well, merely a bazillion (phonetic) times, but most of those amendments had to do with things under the affordable housing and tweaking some words here and there. The basic rate structure has never been amended. There have been a few category-specific rates added in response to development issues, but the basic rate structure's never been changed. So this ordinance that we're going to be hearing again on the llth is not a major restructuring. It is merely a change in the rate Page 4 January 5, 2000 schedule. I say merely mainly because in March, 9ire or take, we will be coming back to the board with a major restructuring of the ordinance itself along with the other seven -- well, the other 13 ordinances that govern the eight impact fees that we have in this county so that we will have one ordinance and each -- and each one of the impact fees -- so that the administrative stuff will be up front. It will all be consistent, and each one of the impact fee structures will be then added in as its own section as opposed to this melange of ordinances and revisions and what have you that we have now. In addition to which we're also developing what's called an administrative procedures manual. The administrative procedures manual is both for staff's assistance in making sure that everybody is treated equitably, and from the development community's and the public's point of view, so that when a question comes up, there's someplace to go and look. Because right now -- or up until this time, we've had a number of different places to try and go look, and a lot of times people feel like they're getting passed around from one bureaucrat to another bureaucrat. And another thing that we've done to try to bring this whole impact fee issue into better perspective is Phil Tindall, as some of you may know, is the county's new impact fee coordinator. Now, that's not just road impact fees. Mr. Tindall is responsible for all impact fees. With any luck, I will have less and less and less to do with impact fees, especially road impact fees. What we're presenting today are the road impact fees. The Tindale-Oliver contract calls for three impact fee updates; road impact fees, library impact fees and EMS impact fees. Library and EMS are, frankly, somewhat more cut-and-dry. They're obviously also a lot less money. And so it's not that they're being given short shrift, it's just that we felt that we would treat the transportation impact fees as a separate issue because, frankly, the transportation impact fees are the most complicated in terms of what the rationale and the parameters are behind them. I think that's about all I wanted to say on that. I'd personally like to try to get out of here by 4:30, but this discussion can go on as long as it wants to. I just need to go back, and I want my bed. So Steve. MR. TINDALE: Good afternoon. I'm going to make a brief presentation here. This is the same presentation -- I'm Steve Tindale -- that we made to the county commission. And after that we'll go into the questions and answers as far as any information we've provided, or questions that you have. MR. SAVAGE: Steve, there's no switch for that row of lights there, is there? MR. TINDALE: Quickly, we're going to go over historical perspective about where you were, the update of the actual components Page 5 January 5, 2000 and the impact fee equation in terms of the changes in those. We were asked to look at the actual fees themselves and actually look at potential revenue rates. And of course, the implementation schedule I know you're very familiar with. We've gone to the county commissioners, and we're back to have a public hearing. There will be an administrative manual on the consolidation of all the impact fees to follow this work, plus the EMS and the library impact fees. One of the things that I did was showed how Collier County's done in comparison to the statewide average. Collier is consistently outdistanced in the state in terms of change in growth. In the 60's and the 70's, even in the 80's, you were up, pushing nine percent annual growth rate for each one of those ten-year periods, which is just phenomenal in terms of growth rates. The state as a whole -- and I've got several communities that are below two percent, below one, one and a half, two percent. You're consistently running close to four to five percent growth rates, and you're continuing that. So you are -- as far as relative growth, with the increasing number of people you've already got in the county, that continued percent growth is kind of an outstanding thing to occur. The last update was 1992, and we did transportation, emergency service, and libraries. The impact fee formula, the impact fee itself basically starts with a cost, and the costs are calculated by demand, and then the cost to provide the service for each one of those units of demand, so that's basically the cost part. The second part is a credit. Many people feel that the court cases say you can't double charge. You can't charge a developer for building a road and then collect tax over a period of years to build the same road. They call it double dipping or charging too much. So we have a credit component that's put into the impact fee equation since about, I guess, the late 70's. The thing that's affecting the cost -- and it's happening all over the State of Florida, it's just not here, and it's right-of-way. The construction cost index has been reasonably flat. We've not had tremendous inflation over the last 10 years. The right-of-way has been the issue that has really inflated the cost. So this green at the bottom there is the basic -- gives you a relative feel of what the costs have been, going on since 1990 to 1999. In the mid 1990's when we were doing the long-range planning, the DOT was saying, use about 40 percent of the construction costs for your right-of-way. Construction's a million, right-of-way's $400,000. In the last half a dozen plans we've done in the last year, most of the district has said, the right-of-way is equal to the construction costs. It's about maxed. So the right-of-way has moved from the 10, 15, 20 percent of the cost to about equal, and I think most of them believe in the long-range plans they're way Page 6 January 5, 2000 underestimating. Even when they're doubling the right-of-way costs, they're saying it's equal, they really don't believe they're going to achieve that. In a 20-year period, the right-of-way's going to go well beyond construction costs, but that's the number we're using today. Besides the cost component, that's the major part of the cost in terms of the physical cost to build something. The other issue is what I call kind of a restricting or constrained revenue source. The gas tax is not a percentage. It wasn't 10 percent of 50 cents and now 50 percent of $1.30; it's one penny per gallon. So if you have the same number of gallons of gasoline, you're not going to increase even though the cost of gasoline has gone up. What's happened is in the 50's and the 60's, it was seven, eight miles per gallon fuel efficiency, and now we're up to 16, 18, 20. It takes twice as much travel on the road to generate the same amount of revenue. MR. SAVAGE: May I ask a question and interrupt you, or are you going to finish and then we'll ask questions? MR. TINDALE: Fine with me. MR. PEEK: I think it will be a better presentation if we waited until the end and ask our questions. MR. TINDALE: The main reason we show this, if you think about it, it propounds the financial process. You get all these cars out there, and it seems like your revenues -- if you were a business person, it seems like with congestion, your revenues ought to be up and you should be able to build more roads as you get more congested. Well, this kind of neutralizes that. You have to have more traffic on the same roadway to generate the same amount of revenue. And when you're seeing this congestion on a unit basis or a mile of roadway, we're not getting that revenue that you kind of mentally picture in terms of a revenue source, and that's what's happening in the fuel efficiencies. The things to build the cost is -- I put a median in here. And one thing that Collier County's done is you've got a plan to do your landscaping on all the roads in the county, major road systems, for the next 10 or 15 years. Your vision plan shows enormous commitment to that in your construction plans and what you're doing. That not only increases the cost to put that landscaping in in terms of capital, but it's also leaning on your maintenance. And I think that's one of the reasons that you're seeing the six-cent gas tax moved from capital and phased into the maintenance. You put the asphalt down, and of course, asphalt is not any cheaper today. It continues to go up. And then we buy the right-of-way. The right-of-way is not an acre of land. It's the assessed value that we have to pay for those little slivers that we have to buy. So the cost per square foot for right-of-way, and also Page 7 January 5, 2000 including environmental issues and having to replace the environmental areas, the drainage areas, the right-of-way becomes very expensive in terms of the right-of-way costs. One lane, both in the construction right-of-ways, is about a million six based on the cost components we got from the county. You build that lane at that cost and we basically -- we were asked to calculate a cost to add one vehicle mile at capacity. We used 8,600 vehicles, and that's how we get the million six. It builds that type of capacity. About 8,600 vehicles is a -- you put a home in it, the home on the average generates 35, 40 trips per -- the middle-sized homes are using something like close to the eight trips per unit with about a five and a half mile trip lane, so you're at about 40, 45 miles in terms of vehicle miles that you're adding a day when you do that. It basically takes that sliver, if you compare the 36 to 50 is what we averaged in the state, that 8,600, those ratios are the same ratios, the million six to the 3,000, so that's how we calculate the cost. We're basically charging for consuming a roadway and then having money available to replace that roadway that you're consuming. One of the things we've put into the ordinance, and we did that back, I think, in 1985, it was about 15 years ago, and that is to try to deal with affordable housing and some of the impacts with affordable housing. Clearly not advocating that the person per household has to do with the trip rate. And I'm sure you understand that it's strictly -- that what we've done is based on income. We found some studies, I believe, that were done in the 70's, late 80's, or early 80's, where it showed that the income went up and the trip rates went up. And basically what we've done is taken -- and I've had some phone calls, and I've got some articles here that we pulled the curve that we developed out from. We'll make that available to anybody. And basically it showed a couple break points. It was just kind of an interesting study that -- and it wasn't done for impact fees. It was done for modeling purposes, for demand modeling. And it showed about 1,500 -- size of about 1,500 -- size of a home or the income to be able to build that size home, then the curves leveled off, and then we had another break at about 2,500. So we basically develop an impact fee equation converting that to where we could charge for the size of home. A couple comments, I think, that made me feel a little more comfortable with this, even though it's been 15 years since we first did this, one is if you look at mobile homes, which is usually a lower income, the trip rates are lower, apartments, if you look at the people -- the income of people at apartments, the trip rates are lower. And we have actually found counties now that the income is Page 8 January 5, 2000 substantially lower than yours, and we don't come up with 10 trips per -- we come up with about eight. So we've actually found by total counties that the income within the counties has an effect on the average trip rate. So I think there's a lot of information, in any case, that income has a lot to do with people's traveling and the amount they travel. The impact fee costs are up to 91 percent, and that's basically because the right-of-way, I think, is a major item. I think that construction's like an eight percent change. It's basically the right-of-way that's driving it. The credits for gas tax actually started up, but then the county commissioners have given us direction that you are going to move the six-cent on gas tax out of capital into the maintenance area and have said they wanted a one-fee calculation. If the five-cent is not, we adopt it. They don't feel that that was a reasonable thing to do. So the schedules that you have, basically one schedule shows the six-cent being phased out and the five-cent being readopted. Another schedule was the six-cent being phased out and the five-cent not being readopted. This is the numbers we had before. The lowest impact fee is when you have the highest gas tax credit. That one assumes you extended six-cent to capital and you don't move any up to maintenance, and you extend the five-cent. We were instructed clearly that they'd already voted and that was not even an option in terms of that occurring. And the high one is just instantaneously taking the fifth and sixth-cent gas tax out and giving no credit for it. It's taking the current gas taxes and excluding those. That was the range we showed before. Given the direction that we've got, we've got now a number of 18 cents per gallon and the 14 cents or 14.8. The 18 is basically assuming the fifth-cent gets readopted, and the 14.8 assumes it doesn't. What we're doing is giving two or three years' credit for the six-cent as being phased out. The reason that it doesn't look -- you don't see a full five-cent difference there, we are giving credit for the gas tax that is being phased out over the next two or three years. We were asked to look at some revenue projections, so I put this together just to show you why we feel kind of uncomfortable with it. During the years '97, '98, and '99, apparently we had three or four of the large commercial developments come in. And at the same impact fee rate, the revenues were just tremendously different. The 1999 revenues are about twice, say, what the 1995 and '96 revenues are, and yet the rate didn't change. So if you took that line and said, do some predictions without any changing, it would be difficult to do it. But I think if we give it to them, that that's probably a lumpy process, but you have about a Page 9 January 5, 2000 two-year heavy commercial, then it's going to level back out. So what we did is we projected with the two different fee schedules some revenues out in the future, but we were very conservative with them as far as taking the five million dollars and looking at changing it rather than taking the eight and nine million dollars you've experienced the last two or three years. So the main thing is to let you know that we were asked to do revenue projections. We think it's really risky to really look at a 20-year crystal ball with what's happened over the last two or three years. We're developing an administrative manual that Ed mentioned. And it really should nail down how you come in and ask for any kind of variance or special study, procedures to go through. And it will be very consistent, not only for transportation impact fees, but for all the impact fees. And it really gives everybody a comfort, they understand before they even walk in what the rules are, and the rules will be consistent. We did do some local county studies. Most of the time when we do them, there's a misunderstanding. We're not doing local county studies to determine the travel characteristics in that community. There's no way you could afford it. In one of the communities that we did it in, it generally gave us a general feel of what was going on. It was in Pinellas County. It was about $400,000. In Charlotte County, we did single-family homes. I think we did 12 of them to come up with a trip generation rate for single-family homes. What we did do is take the special uses, there was some park uses, specialty retail, and we did look at the residential just to make sure that the numbers here -- which when you take a small sample this size, they do range quite a bit, but they are within some -- the average range that will be done all over the State of Florida in terms of travel characteristics. When I say that, I'm talking about the trip lane as to how far the average trip of a specific lane is used, trip generation rate, and if it's a retail use, the capture rate, how many cars are really not new cars. We've got about, my guess is about a million and a half dollars' worth of data we've collected over the last 10 years for government agencies all over the State of Florida, and we used that to really come up with the trip lengths and the capture rates, and we really lean on ITE, which has very large sample sizes. The Institute of Transportation Engineers, for the trip generation rates, are set up for some very special uses. So we did take some samples of, I think, three different lane uses, looked at them, made sure that we were in the ballpark and things looked reasonable in terms of travel characteristic studies for the county. Page 10 January 5, 2000 That's the end of the presentation. I'll open it up for questions. MR. KANT: I'm sure there's going to be an awful lot of questions, and I think that one of the things that I did that I do need to make sure you understand is that we're not trying to take impact fees and make them pay for the road program. You have to recognize that that is not within the realm of reasonableness. If you look today at what our revenue streams are, we have two basic sources of revenues. We have gas for our road building capital program. Keep in mind, road impact fees can only be used for capital improvements. By law they cannot be used for maintenance or operational issues. So our two basic revenue sources today are gas taxes and road impact fees. We spend -- and I'm just roughing these numbers up. I'm sure if you go and get a budget book, you're going to find I gave you the wrong number, but I'm looking at orders of the manual here. We spend about $30 million a year on capital programming. Of that we get, as you saw on that one slide that Steve showed you, we get somewhere in the neighborhood of 6, 7, 8 million dollars a year in road impact fees. Well, you don't have to be an Einstein to realize that's only 25 percent of your revenue stream. Even if you double road impact fees, which we're not proposing, but even if you did, that's only going to be maybe 50 percent of your needs or your revenue stream. You know, or triple them or quadruple them. When you get to a certain point where you can't sustain them based on what is the demand and the consumption -- and that's the basis for performing it. Steve is working with it. So this issue of road impact fees is that road impact fees are going to be one building block, if you will, or one player on the team of revenue sources that are going to get us our roadway network. I didn't bring my favorite exhibit with me. I have a copy of that PUD map that the county published that had all the yellow blocks in it to show you what's PUDs. And on that I've taken a magic marker and I've highlighted very heavily all the north/south routes and all the east/west routes. And you can do that. Just go down to AAA or somewhere and get a map. Start with U.S. 41 and highlight that, then go to Goodlette Road, then keep moving west until you get to 951. I stopped at 951. I started at Immokalee Road and I went south until I got to 41. When you're done counting it, I found that there were only six north/south routes and seven east/west routes. I can't count Radio Road because it doesn't start anywhere and it doesn't go anywhere. When you also look -- and I've included Livingston Road, I've included the infamous Santa Barbara and its extension, and I've included Logan Boulevard, that's the number six and seven. Page 11 January 5, 2000 And if you look at that map, you'll see there are very, very few alternatives. As a matter of fact, there are none, unless you get ready to buy some golf courses and some rather interesting commercial and residential developments. So we have to deal at the hand of the plate here, and we're going to get to a certain point where we're going to have to look at other alternatives. Well, once you get past alternative routes, you have to work with, how do you move the same volumes of traffic through the existing routes. One of those ways is going to be through what -- the technical expression is grade separations. You can call them interchanges, you can call them fly-overs, you can call them junk handles, whatever you want to call them. But the fact remains that all of the numbers that you're looking at here do not include any of these grade separations. The reason they don't include that is because right now, even though the long-range plan calls for grade separations, we don't have any in our five-year plan, we haven't built any in this county, so we don't have any history with them. That's going to change. It's going to change for two reasons; one, this year, as a matter of fact, very shortly, we're going to be reviewing letters of qualification for consultants. They're going to do a grade separation program study for the county. Probably about four-years ago, three, four years ago, the NPO identified 21 candidate locations for grade separation. And I know the obvious ones, Airport and Golden Gate and Airport and Pine Ridge and Airport and anything, and U.S. 41 and anything else. But there were -- think about it -- 21 candidate locations. And what we're going to do is we're going to ask this consultant to do three things for us. We're going to ask him to tell us what the state of the art is out there, what are these things and what different kinds are they. Then we're going to ask him to tell us what is probably most appropriate for Collier County given what our geometry and our infrastructure needs are, and third, we're going to take what we think are the top rank three or four, we're going to try to throw some numbers at those so that we can then crank those into our budget process. You know, every February we sit down and start our budget process. Now, I'm not talking about throwing another million dollars or two into the budget. You know, I shouldn't say this, but I can find a million dollars if I have to. I'm talking about maybe 15 to 25 million a copy, maybe more. I've got some right-of-way that we've just acquired that's cost us over $20 a square foot for a little teensy piece, but we needed it. Oh, yeah, I can go out and buy a right-of-way for a buck a square foot too, you know. Anybody got any here? My point is that all of these costs are things that we're going Page 12 January 5, 2000 to have to deal with. And one of the things that we're going to try to do is make this road impact fee part of that team of revenue players. Gas taxes. Now the board, as Steve pointed out, two years ago the board initiated in its budget policy a diversion -- I shouldn't say a diversion -- a reallocation of the six-cent local option gas tax at the rate of a penny a year from capital to operating, or to maintenance. Well, that takes it out of that $30 million need stream or building stream. We also have this five-cent local option gas tax which is due to sunset in 2003. Well, I've got three years to worry about that? No, I don't. Because now, next month when I start the budget process, I cannot count on that for my new fifth year of my work program. Because as far as I'm concerned, that's sunsetting. And if I listen to what the board is saying, you know, they're not particularly interested in re-upping it unless it goes to referendum and people say, yeah, we want to bring it back. And if I listen to what I'm hearing people say, they say, well, no, you said it would only be there for ten years, now we don't need it, so we don't want to bring it back. So that's very iffy. So what we do with road impact fees today is to basically bring them into conformance. One of the things that I've heard is, how come this is such a major jump? And frankly, I think we're a little bit to blame for that. In 1992, when Steve and his firm did the last update -- he's correct, 1985 was our initial road impact ordinance. It was updated in 1990 with a new fee schedule. And then in 1992 the existing fee schedule came into play with a whole new ordinance. And that new ordinance said that every three years it had to be reviewed, which meant it should have been reviewed in '95, should have been reviewed in '98, and it probably should be reviewed again next year. Well, in 1995 we had a different administration, and at that time they did a review, that is -- I know because I've got the draft sitting on my desk. And we tried to simply upgrade it in-house, and at that time it didn't go forward. In 1998, which is when we started this process, we hired Tindale-Oliver, so we were going forward through on that one. But if you think about what had been done, let's take a single-family home road impact fee, $1,379. I would predict that if we're looking at 17 or $1,800 today -- what's the number today? Close to 2,000. MR. TINDALL: Twenty four hundred thirty-three. If we're looking at Schedule C based upon -- MR. KANT: Schedule C, is that what we're looking at? MR. TINDALL: Yeah, 2,433. MR. KANT: Say roughly 2,400. Well, we might have gone from 1300 to 1700, then we might have gone from 1700 to 2100, then from 21 to Page 13 January 5, 2000 24. So I would submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, that we're not doing anything today that's way out of line. Because if we had made an adjustment in 1995 or 1998, it would have been a few hundred dollars. The other thing that I want to point out is that travel characteristics in this county and everywhere have changed. We have new generators. We have new attractors. We also have things we didn't have before. You know, back in 1992 the Hollywood 20 Theaters wasn't even a gleam in somebody's eye, so there's a lot going on there that wasn't going on. And so what looks like a radical departure today is really not that radical. Thank you very much for listening to me. MR. TINDALL: Can I just add a couple things here, if I could, make sure everybody's on the same page? Phil Tindall. I'm the county's impact fee coordinator. The table we're talking about, just getting to the bottom line in terms of the rates that we're trying to move towards would be representative schedule -- Table C of the handout. I have some more of these if anybody needs one. Here's the handout itself. MR. KANT: Herb, you had a question? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Before we have a question and answer session here, we've got Dino's Dr. Fishkind here. Perhaps we could hear from him, then we could put all our comments together and questions, then we can go forward from that point. MR. KANT: I didn't know we were going to be into a debate. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: I don't know that we're debating anything. MR. FISHKIND: No, not at all. I think you made an excellent presentation. I'm Hank Fishkind from Fishkind and Associates, a consulting firm in Orlando. MR. SAVAGE: What do you do? MR. FISHKIND: I'm an economic and financial consultant. In this county what I do is design special tax districts. I'm the financial advisor, I think, to all of the chapter 190 special tax districts. On impact fees, the county actually has retained me to do the fire and EMS impact fees for some of the southern special districts in the fire district, and I've worked with Tindale-Oliver on I don't know how many cases, 10. And so the first thing I would echo is that the update study that has been described to you is directly within the heart of the way in which these things are done. There's nothing untoward about any of it. The county clearly needs the money. In fact, I was very glad to hear Mr. Kant say that this is just one part of the funding program. I hope the county will commit itself to more gas tax. Because the impact fees, as Mr. Kant described, and the current amount of gas tax is not going to be on the roadways. It's just not enough money, so it's pretty obvious that something needs to be done. Page 14 January 5, 2000 There's a couple of things that I have some question or concern about. The first relates to the costs. As Mr. Tindale pointed out, the cost is about 1.6, 1.7 million dollars a lane mile, and that's a pretty big number. The cost by comparison in Lee County, just for the county roads that were built over the last nine years, was about a million dollars. So that's a big difference. And certainly some of that, as I understand it, is because of the design for the medians and other things in this county that drives up both the cost of construction and the cost of right-of-way acquisitions. And so one thing that might be considered is that the capacity be separated from the landscape and median. MR. KANT: If I may. I don't mean to interrupt because you were kind enough not to interrupt. I want to make something clear. I'd mentioned it to Bob earlier. First of all, it is my position that road impact fees are not an appropriate source of revenue for doing median landscaping or anything other than providing capacity improvements. There is a line item in the capital budget for a quote, Naplescape Project, which I think it's funded -- Susan, a million, give or take, a year, or something like that -- which is funded out of 313, which is the general capital fund, not the road impact fund. Every time they try to use road impact fees for landscaping, I fight it, and I've been about 90 point something percent successful, mainly because, as I said earlier, it is such a constrained income stream. I'm not sure it's legal to do that. So I just want to make sure you recognize it. We know that difference and I'm very vigilant about not letting it happen. MR. FISHKIND: I would agree with you. I'm not sure it's legal either, but I don't want to get into that kind of discussion. But there is that significant difference. I'm not suggesting that your estimate's wrong, but, you know, when there's such a big difference between Collier and the adjacent county, it makes me wonder, what's causing that to be so different. And it may well be good things, but a 60 percent difference is a pretty big thing. If it's not the landscape and the median, then it might be something that you want to look at at least to be able to -- not justify, but explain that gap, because it just seems -- I'm not a traffic engineer, but it is pretty substantial, and of course, it drives the formulas going forward. The nine dollars a square foot number, I understand putting land in -- and I think land should be in, but I think there is some difficulties in including it at that level in an impact fee. For example, if a developer donates right-of-way or gets some impact fee credits for right-of-way at today's levels and then we come back historically and charge nine dollars a square foot, there may be a mismatch between the real cost and that nine dollars. Page 15 January 5, 2000 Or alternatively, if some of that right-of-way was acquired in the past with bonds, then there needs to be a credit to offset the nine dollars. So those are some of the things you might want to consider if that nine dollars is going to be included on the cost side. On the credit side, clearly the county can pursue whatever policy it desires and wishes in terms of allocating its gas tax money to maintenance or not. I may disagree, but they have that policy prerogative to do that. I'm pleased that that money for maintenance has not been driven by the landscaping, you know, when you go out to maintain. If it is, then that may be something that you want to -- MR. KANT: Landscaping maintenance comes out of the MSTDs, which is a separate -- MR. FISHKIND: Okay, good. So it's not coming out of your gas tax. But there are some other things that are used on the revenue side, at least as I understand the capital improvement plan. I mean, there are some interest earnings and some carry forwards. And to the extent that there will be both those things going forward, you might want a credit on the other side, because new growth is going to pay a part of that also, so that might be something you also want to look at. Along those same lines, Mr. Kant, when I was looking at the capital improvement plan, I wasn't sure what gas tax was built into the existing one. But based on your comments today, I understand that you're looking at it going forward. That is to say, I think in the capital improvement plan I looked at, for the next five years, you've got the full 22 cents in. MR. KANT: I would hope not. MR. TINDALE: You phased out your six-cent gas tax in your capital plan. MR. KANT: Yeah. It better not be in there. MR. TINDALL: All the revenue projections show it being phased out. MR. FISHKIND: Okay. So the -- in the CIP -- MR. TINDALL: At a rate of a million dollars a year. MR. FISHKIND: Okay. In the CIP that I looked at, I just wanted to make sure that you had some consistency on both sides of the equation. MR. KANT: Oh, yeah. MR. FISHKIND: Those are the biggest issues, especially the costs that I'd asked you, perhaps, to look at. And I've put some of my comments here in writing for you. MR. KANT: Good. I do want to make one comment to this issue of right-of-way. And Steve is the guru on this, I'm not. But he explained it to me, and I said, do it in words of one syllable or Page 16 January 5, 2000 less, so if I have to re-explain it, I'll be able to do that. But I think that what we're trying to do is introduce the concept of the value as opposed to the cost. For example, we may go out and put another two lanes, let's say, on a section of Airport Road. We've already got a hundred foot of road, and all we need to do is pick up some corner clips, maybe pick up a sidewalk easement or something like that, and let's say on a five, six, seven million dollar project we pick up -- we spend out-of-pocket for surveys and closing costs and land costs and everything else, a million dollars, nice round number, but when you look at what is now the value of that right-of-way, there is something already there. What is that hundred feet worth? It's worth something. Somebody had to pay for it, whether it was paid for by bonds or whether it was donated. If it was not donated, we would have had to go out and buy it. MR. FISHKIND: Sure. MR. KANT: If there were impact fee credits -- I love impact fee credits. You know, I'm getting to use somebody else's money today for less than it would cost me next year. So I'm not sure that that really enters into the picture. But what our attempt in putting the full value of the land was in this equation was to take into account that we have spent, in one way or another, millions and millions and millions of dollars acquiring this right-of-way. And somehow it's got to be accounted for. MR. FISHKIND: Well, I think it does. I would agree with you. I think that the difference in my view and your explanation is, should it be put in at what its market value was or its cost. And generally speaking, impact fees are calculated on the basis of cost. Because you don't want to be in a situation where something is acquired -- I'll just make a caricature example that something is acquired for bonds at five dollars a square foot and you have bond payers, which is everybody paying it off, and then on a project you calculate a right-of-way on an estimated nine dollars a square basis with a delta four, you don't really want to do that in the impact fees. And that's why they typically rely on cost, not on value. So we agree that something's got to be in there, and I would just counsel, I think cost would be the more appropriate basis, not because it results in a lower number, but because it is consistent with the way impact fees are done. It keeps you out of other potential problems. MR. KANT: Let me take the coward's way out of that and say I'll discuss that with our consultants. MR. FISHKIND: All the comments are here in writing for you. MR. KANT: I appreciate this, I really do. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you very much. Maybe we can open it up to member comments here. Mr. Savage. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Kant, I heard you say that we get one cent per Page 17 January 5, 2000 gallon of gas for our impact fees? MR. KANT: No. MR. SAVAGE: No? Steve, you said -- MR. TINDALE: I said that your revenue is on a percent per gallon, not on five percent of a dollar. It's not a sales tax, on a percentage. It's a fixed number. It may be 10 pennies for one gallon or 15 for one gallon. And what happened is, years ago, the gas tax was probably 45 or 50 percent of what it cost to buy a gallon of gas, and now it's 15 or 20 percent, 30 percent. It's about 40, 45 cents out of maybe a dollar and a half. MR. SAVAGE: Who decides to raise that if it was practical? MR. TINDALE: The county commissioners do it with a six-cent and five-cent, the state does it and the federal government does it. There's three different rules that -- MR. SAVAGE: We don't have to follow somebody else's rule; we can do it ourselves, right? MR. TINDALE: No, you have some state laws that allow you to adopt up to ll-cent locally. That's 11 plus another penny. For potholes there's about, I think, maybe -- then you have two cents added. It's about 15 or 16 cents total for the county that you go up to. And what you're getting ready to do is you're getting ready to drop five of those, and you're moving six of them over into maintenance, and that's having a dramatic effect, not only on the impact fees, but you're going to lose a lot more revenue in gas tax than you are the little bit of money you're going to raise in impact fees because they're going up. MR. SAVAGE: The other thing I wanted to ask, and this might be a different time, but I've talked to people who said that we seem to design our clover leaves, our access routes like we had nothing but open property. He was telling me about cities he lived in or had gone to and through, that they used considerably less property to get off of an expressway onto a local road. Who sets all those standards? MR. KANT: I think really that question needs to be referred to the Florida Department of Transportation, because we have no expressways in Collier County, nor do I foresee any. Well, I shouldn't say that. I think there are one or two routes that could conceivably become expressways if we can't come up with other alternatives. But that's not an issue which Collier County has ever had to deal with, and with any luck, will not have to deal with. I can tell you, just as an example, we're looking at one location, which I prefer not to mention specifically today, where we're looking at a grade separation and the maximum width for the overpass, for the parallel road at grade, and for an allowance of 17 and 16 -- what's that, 33 feet -- 33 feet of landscape area. We're only looking at a maximum of 285 foot of width. So I think that the Page 18 January 5, 2000 way we engineer these things is quite conservative, and we certainly know that we don't -- the bottom line is, you obviously don't want to buy one square inch more than you have to buy in any given situation. And as, I think, Steve alluded to a few minutes ago, it's not necessarily because that one square inch is going to cost you a few bucks, it's because, if we're dealing in commercial properties, as we just recently found up on a location on North Airport Road, we spent over a quarter of a million dollars on just a couple of acres, just an intersection, because it impacted not just the property we were buying, but the remainder property. So there's a lot that goes into this, and that would be something that Mr. Fishkind and I might want to discuss as to whether or not that total cost should go in or not. MR. SAVAGE: Well, I'm glad to hear you say this is a conservative approach about space, because I think it's ridiculous to get so elaborate, you know, that we spend a fortune on acquiring right-of-way. MR. KANT: Let me give you one final example before I take that lady's question. There's another section of Airport Road where we thought we were going to run into some difficulties with adjacent property because what we needed was an easement to bring the back slope down to the original ground, and they wanted what we thought was an outrageous price for it. So I asked our engineers to calculate what would it cost to put just a short retaining wall along the entire thousand feet of frontage of this property. It turned out to cost us half of what it would cost just to do a nice back slope of grass. We're putting retaining wall in. It won't look as pretty in front of their property, but it was their decision, not ours. I bought it cheap. Ma'am, you had a question? MS. LAM: I was wondering, when you were figuring out the trip ratio, did you consider the fact that Collier County seems to be -- it is a very large county. We have workers who travel great distances to get to work. There is not very much in the way of middle-class housing, so that tremendous numbers of the workers come in from Immokalee. And as you build a development, it's not only the people who live there, it's a tremendous number of people who have to work there in the clubhouses, on the golf courses and so forth. So we have a lot of people who have to go great distances just to get to work. MR. TINDALE: We took three residential sites and five or six commercial sites and actually interviewed people and measured how far they were traveling. Again, two or three sites is not statistically valid in terms of me saying I'm 95 percent sure that the range of travel -- and yeah, you have some fairly high trip lengths. We had one residential site that the trip lengths were twice as long as another residential site. There's a wide range of that going on. What this is is an attempt to come up with an average. And in Page 19 January 5, 2000 all cases when we lay it out, we usually come up conservative. If we err on the generation rate or the trip length, it's usually an error of 10 or 15 percent on the low side. If we ever end up in court, I think I can build numbers that are substantially higher if you want to look at a range of things you could do. But we did look at trip lengths, and that's one of the biggest problems with impact fees 10 or 15 years ago, one of them still today, is they did not have data on the trip lengths. They had a model that they tried to predict it but really didn't have it, and now we've got, I think, 350, 400 sites that we've actually went out and interviewed people and measured the trip lengths for each lane use. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Other questions. MR. JONES: Question. What is the percentage increase that will be generated by the new impact fees, and I mean net? MR. KANT: Brian Jones. MR. TINDALE: We gave -- I think that spreadsheet shows the percent changes of each one of the -- Schedule C, on the far right it shows a percent difference for each one of the categories of impact fees. MR. JONES: What's the total? MR. TINDALE: Well, that's the thing that I showed that -- in terms of revenues, the range goes anywhere from 30 percent to 70 percent. If you took a 40 or 45 percent average for all of them and said that you're going to be 50 percent higher than you are now in terms of total revenues, is basically what I did on that little graph there. MR. JONES: So we're going to generate 50 percent more than prior? MR. TINDALE: Right. MR. JONES: What is the shortfall that we have? MR. TINDALE: Well, the number, again, he mentioned the impact fees never pay a major percentage of it. Your current long-range plan, I think, is $400 million on a 20-year period, and at $5 million a year, over 20 years, that's $100 million. So your current fee was generating about 25 percent of what's in your cost, not to meet your standards. That was based on actual revenues, other gas tax revenue available. Your needs plan, I'm not even sure, was ever totally costed out in terms of that. So the impact fees based on five million a year, which is a hundred million over 20 years, would have been about 25 percent of the cost. When they redo the cost, my guess is, what's going to happen is the cost is going to go up from 400 million to eight or nine hundred million. These revenues may go up to a cost of a hundred, 300 million, and they're still going to be 25, 30 percent of the total revenue in terms of building the plan. Page 20 January 5, 2000 I've got a couple counties that the impact fees actually exceed 40 or 50 percent of the total revenue. It's very rare the impact fees pay more than about 25 to 30 percent of the total revenue or cost of a plan that's being put together. MR. KANT: I'd like to make a couple comments to that. And again, I don't want to insult your intelligence, but let me just remind you that every year we go through our capital improvement program, and we not only include projects which are in the capital improvement element of the growth management plan, but also projects which are additionally concurrency driven and also projects which become operationally driven, such as interchanges, such as intersection improvements. We did a rough guesstimate back in the end of November, I think it was, that tentative plan. I think it was about a month ago, a little over a month ago. And we're looking -- if we -- when we flesh it out, we're looking this year, when we came into -- when we came into fiscal year 2000, which is where we are now -- keep in mind fiscal year is October to September -- we had a balanced plan. Now going into fiscal year '01, we're looking at about a five and-a-half, six million dollar deficit in the first year, and over five years, as Steve points out, it's going to accumulate to, I think -- I didn't bring it with me, but the numbers stick with me vividly -- 24, 25 million. And what is driving that? Well, it's not necessarily the nine dollars a square foot that we've got in for right-of-way, because that program is driven by our engineering estimates of what it's actually going to cost us. It's not -- it's not a revenue program. It's an expenditure program. We put down what we need to do, we add up all those dollars and say, okay, that's what we have to spend to meet our concurrency requirements and meet our operational needs, then we go and we look at the revenue side and we add up all the revenues, and we say, okay, here are the revenues that are available to meet those needs. Right now, as I said, in '01 we're going to be looking at about a five and change, I'm not sure, not quite sure, $6 million deficit. What's in that program all of a sudden that would drive it from being equal or being revenue neutral to being in a deficit position? Well, we've had things happen this past year. We've had some changes in policy. When I say we've had things happen, we've had -- every year the NPO re-does the deficiency projections. And depending upon what traffic does, sometimes a road which was shown as deficient, say, in '03 moves in, it's deficient now in '01 or '02. Under the state's growth management act, in the IJ-5 provision we have, we don't have a three-year window. Well, if we weren't planning on doing construction on something, say, till '04 but deficiency shows now it's going to become deficient in '02, we have to move that into Page 21 January 5, 2000 the program maybe a year earlier than what we had planned. And that happens from time to time. Plus we find our new needs. The board, through its policy-making initiatives, may determine that they want to do something at some particular location and direct staff to include that in the next year's program, to bring it in as we compete for funds. Now, keep in mind, when I talk about a $6 million deficit, I don't mean that that's cast in -- what I'm saying is, if the board will approve the program that we think they want to have us implement without doing some hard looking at the numbers, we'd be in a deficit situation and we'd have to figure out a way to make that money up. We have some ideas as to how we want to make that money up. But those are policy decisions, and it's not up to me to promulgate policy decisions. What I think we have to make sure you understand is that we're on the edge, we've been on the edge for a number of years, and we will continue to be on the edge, and if we're not careful with how we do this financial thing, we're going to fall off the edge. I'm not a prophet of gloom and doom. I'm just telling you that there are a number of forces that are driving our program that we have very little control over. Somebody back there, a gentleman had a question? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We've got one over here first. Mr. Peek had a question. MR. PEEK: Tom Peek, for the record. Looking at the impact fee schedules, B and C are the two that I've heard discussed. But I understand from reading your numbers that Schedule D is really for information and not really practical. But looking at B and C, as I read those, and I think I understand them, B reflects the six-cent local option gas tax reverting to maintenance one cent per year over six years. MR. TINDALE: Uh-huh. MR. PEEK: And Table C does the same, but in addition to that, it takes into consideration the sunsetting of the five-cent gas tax. MR. KANT: That's correct. MR. PEEK: And somewhere, I think, perhaps in Phil's comment, do I gather that it is the staff's recommendation that C is the table that -- MR. TINDALL: That's correct. Based upon the direction we have been given from the board, and that was reiterated on December 14, that the financial assumptions we should be making should include the sunsetting of the five-cent local option gas tax on December 31st, 2003, and not being reduced. MR. PEEK: Well, with that understanding, help me with the process. Why would it not be more appropriate to adopt Table B if you are under a mandate to review this ordinance every three years anyway, that to adopt Table B, because you are still collecting the five cents Page 22 January 5, 2000 until 2003, and if it, in fact, goes away at 2003, then you adopt the schedule that takes that into account at 2003? MR. KANT: It does two things; one, it changes -- depending on which table you've got, it changes your revenue projections. Frankly, I'm not real comfortable unless I take a very conservative approach. I believe that the fact that we have been given the direction by the board, coupled with the fact that we've also been told the board's going to continue, we've been told, in February, the budget policy meeting, they're going to continue with the one-cent re-allocation and the other six cents, that the prudent proposal, the prudent recommendation would be to take five cents out of there, because we can't count -- I can't count on it starting this year. I can't put that into that fifth year, whereas if I kept that in there and I had the higher projected revenue stream, based on the way the budget's prepared, I would have what I believe are false numbers, and I'd have to kind of keep it in the back of my mind that I don't really have this money. And so I'm going to have to show up at the end of three or four years, and instead of having a couple million dollar deficit or maybe even a couple million dollar surplus, wind up significantly further behind than what was projected. So I think that the conservative approach is to take the board's direction, which is, we're not going to renew that gas tax. We're going to reallocate the other six cents, work with what you've got. MR. PEEK: Well, you know, for argument's sake, it would seem to me like, notwithstanding, you've got to go through some projection generations, from a, perhaps, a legally and justifiable position using the basic formula that you're using to give credit where credit's due. You're collecting that five cents from now till 2003. MR. TINDALE: You get credit for that. That's been calculated and brought back. You're getting credit for all the six-cent that hasn't been phased out, as it gets phased out. You're getting 100 percent credit for all the five-cent until it gets phased out. MR. PEEK: That's in Schedule C? MR. TINDALE: In Schedule -- both in -- Schedule B you're getting a five-cent readopted, and Schedule C you're getting credit for all the guaranteed revenue for three or four years, brought back in credit worth. You're not getting credit for readoption. I think it's truly a -- you know, as far as legal, you like to be as conservative as you can be. It's a judgment call. From a practical sense one group is saying, wait a minute. It's not adopted, it's not readopted, it's not on the books, why assume -- you know, why are you being so conservative? I mean, that's a choice. We have given all the credit that has been adopted. Every penny that's been adopted and is now moving forward is being credited back. Page 23 January 5, 2000 But then what happens the last 20 years? We don't bring money back to present worth. So we are giving you 100 percent credit for every penny that's going to be adopted. It's really a choice whether you want to be exceptionally conservative and assume that in the future you're going to readopt it. Ten years ago we said, well, you know, in general, if gas taxes keep going up a little bit, why don't we assume they're going to go up some and be more conservative, and a lot of people said no. Mainly because three years from now when we redo the costs, it's going to be double. And when you get the gas tax credit and you double the cost, you're still under charging, so it's a judgment call. And they've said, don't put any gas tax in there that is not officially adopted. We're giving you 100 percent credit for everything that is adopted. MR. PEEK: I understand that. I understand the way the system is set up. MR. TINDALE: I tried to explain that. That's the reason it doesn't come out exactly. The difference between the two isn't exactly five pennies. The reason is, we're giving several years back that fifth penny even though it's dying. So I tried to explain that, but it's still complicated. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you very much. We've got a question here in the back. Introduce yourself, please. MR. BATEMAN: Yes. My name is A1 Bateman. I'm a real estate developer. It appears that the main thrust is to somewhat expeditiously implement these impact fee increases while we're hearing not much of anything about the other sources of revenue, for example, maybe higher real estate taxes, sales taxes. Is that just because it's just too politically unpopular? I mean, I say that with the exception of maybe maintaining some of the gasoline taxes. What about the other sources? MR. KANT: The short answer, sir, is we're not here to discuss the other sources. But the long answer, the one that you're looking for, that's board policy, and I think that some interesting discussion, for those of you that have an interest in it, might take place Monday evening at Veterans Park, the second district association. Mr. McNees is going to be addressing the issue of a potential sixth-cent gas -- sales tax, but I believe he's going to be doing it in the context of this team of players that I was talking about. I think that the other half of my first short answer to you is, while we're not here to discuss that, I think you need to know that staff, at least in terms of where we're looking at getting our programs put together, are looking at all sources of revenue. But as I said, it's an uncomfortable issue, frankly, for us to discuss, because we don't want to be in a position of standing up here saying something that may sound like it's a policy issue that, Page 24 January 5, 2000 frankly, is outside of what we're to do. Our direction is to carry out the policy of the board. Right now I've got two sources of revenue. I've got gas tax and I've got road impact fees. Now, frankly, I can tell you -- and again, I'm no financial wizard. I'd love to have 10 percent of that 30 million and leverage it with some bonds. You know, I could do some serious damage to that deficit if I could do that. But, you know, that's not for me to do. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you. Question in the back. MR. MASTERS: Yes, Tom Masters, for the record. Maybe you can explain to me, because I haven't been at the board meetings, why are we wanting to make the assumption that we would sunset the five-cent tax that's now in place, the tax where we already have a deficit in? MR. KANT: The five-cent gas tax in the original legislation will sunset in 2003. The only way that that five-cent gas tax -- well, there's two ways -- could be re-upped is through a super majority of the board or a referendum. That was built into the gas tax initially. It was supposed to be in place 10 years, 1993 to 2003. In 1993 -- and I was here, but I was just a puppy with the government at the time, so I don't really remember too much of what went on. But I speculate that the thought was that, well, geez, five cents gas tax, 10 years, that's a lot of money. You know, that will get us out of trouble, and unfortunately it didn't happen. MR. MASTERS: So the sentiment with the board is that they wouldn't support continuing that or -- MR. KANT: Well, at least one commissioner has stated on the record that he feels that people were told that this was going to be a five-cent gas tax for 10 years, then it was going to go away, and that that was the mandate, and he's not about to vote for it again. You know, it's one of those things where we're now talking about what is political versus what can I do for you. I'm a technician. MR. MASTERS: But why wouldn't we want to try to make the assumption that even if it went to referendum again -- MR. KANT: Can't do that. MR. MASTERS: -- that we would continue at least paying with something that we're doing now? MR. KANT: I think, as Steve pointed out, you can be a little conservative or you can be conservative. I believe that in my position as transportation director, I have a duty to the public to be conservative and not take a chance, okay? This is Collier County, not Orange County. I don't want to see something happen that shouldn't happen. So as a result, I think you'll find that the recommendations coming out of my office are very conservative, especially when it comes to the funding. Now, the next guy that sits in this chair may feel differently, I Page 25 January 5, 2000 don't know. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you, Ed. MS. LAM: I was curious -- Sally Lam -- whether other counties or other cities also charge impact fees to the schools. When I checked on the schools, I found that Collier County has to build a new school every year. And I'm not so good with my math, but I think they spend $20 million a year per school. They get back $8 million in impact fees. But that leaves taxpayers to pay that tremendous difference, and we're doing that every year, and yet I see we're going to charge them an impact fee on top of their cost. MR. KANT: I'm sorry, ma'am. I didn't understand the question. MR. TINDALE: Those are private schools. MS. LAM: These are private schools? MR. TINDALE: Public schools don't pull permits. MR. KANT: You're looking at institutions, elementary, middle, high school? MS. LAM: They're private? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Public schools are not -- they do not pay impact fees. MR. KANT: There's an exemption for public. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Savage had a question. In the interest of time, we'd like to wrap up the questions. MR. SAVAGE: I was going to say the same thing about time. I just wanted to ask you if you wanted me to talk to the county commissioner, I will, because when that was established, the costs were a lot different in those days than they are now. The boom that they talked about in the newspaper today, costs have gone up, prices have gone up, and it's also a reason why these figures should go up. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Longo. MR. LONGO: Dino Longo. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Mr. Tindale and Ed Kant and Dr. Fishkind for coming today, but I think we're all under the realization that impact fees, to a certain degree, are going to escalate over periods of time. We're all, I think, under the agreement that impact fees aren't going to resolved our transportation funding issues. I'd like to make a couple recommendations that they would come out of this committee in the form of a motion. I'd like to make a motion that we forward a letter to the county commission from the Development Services Advisory Committee asking for more time to study the impact fees in lieu of the questions and concerns that we're all looking at. And if by chance the commission does decide to move forward with this and implement this come Tuesday, that they give everybody the chance to adjust time to this and implement this effective with the budget, the year 2000 -- starting with their budget in the year 2000, October; that we recognize that impact fees are only part of funding solution for roads, and that we Page 26 January 5, 2000 recommend to our commission maybe a blue ribbon panel of some sort to work with the consultants and transportation on coming up with developing funding programs. This is always going to be an issue. This is not necessarily a construction industry issue. It's a community issue. In fact, impact fees being part of new growth -- and commit to supporting the new programs. I'd like to make those recommendation via letter from the chair if everybody will agree upon that. MR. SAVAGE: Is that a motion? MR. LONGO: That is in the form of a motion. MR. KANT: If I may make one comment. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Before we have any comments, is there a second to that motion. MR. SAVAGE: I'll second it. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Items for discussion. MR. KANT: I just want to make one comment, if I may, to one thing Mr. Longo said, and I should have said something earlier. Perhaps it would have reassured you. When the 1992 ordinance was enacted, there was a 90-day kicker in there so that the projects pipeline wouldn't get caught. And we're also proposing that regardless of what actions the board takes on Tuesday, or whenever, that there be some kind of a delay, whether it be 90 or 120 days. Frankly, we're not looking at October 1st for the simple reason that the board, via the administration, has been beating me and my team about the head and shoulders for the last six months to get something on the books, you know, so that we can deal with this impact fee issue. Frankly, I believe that it would make sense for the board to deal with the impact fees and put that to rest one way or another, whatever the fees are going to be, and then to begin to look at these other sources. Like the gentleman mentioned earlier, it may be in how they want to look at the comprehensive program. So I believe that may be the direction the board is heading in. But I want to point out to you that, yes, we agree 100 percent, there should be some kind of a lag, because we don't want to get -- the projects in the pipeline to get caught, because I know how you do your estimates and everything. MR. LONGO: Well, I'll put some other comments -- I'll put my other hat on for a moment. sixty to 90 days is not a sufficient amount of time for a large scale development that would project the sales based on cost, stuff like that. It could be a sufficient amount of money when we're talking 60, 90 days. The monies that they're projecting has not been budgeted for this year to start with. Page 27 January 5, 2000 There are some questions as to the dollar amounts as being proposed, as to how they arrived at the dollar amounts. I don't think industry is not for raising fees accordingly in doing fair share. This just does not affect industry. It affects everybody. And one of the main concerns I have as a member of this committee is this is the first time this committee has seen this issue before them, which -- no disrespect and no offense to anybody -- but we are charged with guiding and looking over issues that affect the development industry in Collier County, and this is a major issue. It needs a little bit more time, in my opinion. Not to say that that's what's going to happen. But I think other input besides ourselves as laypeople is similar to what we did with FEMA and other issues, it needs to be looked at in a little bit more depth. That would be my recommendation. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you. Other comments? MR. SAVAGE: I'd just like to ask Mr. Kant, is that something that you could live with, this motion that Dino just made? I know you have a time frame. MR. KANT: I can live with whatever direction we get from the board. I mean, you know, we're going to carry out their direction. If the board agrees that this is a logical thing to do, that's, you know -- and as Mr. Longo pointed out, you know, yeah, that's true, the money is not budgeted this year. And what the differential might be over the four or five months of the fiscal year, we might equal -- I won't say it won't be significant, but it's certainly not going to turn around the program. So, you know, whatever the board decides to do, we're okay with that. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. Other comments quickly? No? Call the question. All those in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Opposed? MR. PEEK: Aye. MS. LAM: Aye. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We've got -- who is opposed? Mr. Peek and Ms. Lam oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. MR. KANT: If you will excuse me, I've got to leave, but I want to thank everybody for your kind attention. If you have any questions, you can get ahold of Mr. Tindall. If I don't die between now and Tuesday, we'll bring this back to the board. If you have any questions, please feel free to call me. I'll do my best to answer; 774-8494. Thank you. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Take care, Ed. Thank you very much for your presentation. Is Mr. Mulhere still here? MR. TINDALL: Mr. Mulhere has left. I'll try to help facilitate the rest of the meeting. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Our next item we added to the agenda was to discuss the 19th meeting where we would meet on the 19th and the 2nd Page 28 January 5, 2000 of February. And this packet that was handed out, is that related to this? MR. TINDALL: I believe so. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Meeting of the 19th agenda. So it has been suggested that we meet on the 19th of -- I guess we could have comments. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Chairman, I move we meet on the 19th of January MR. LONGO: I'll second. MR. SAVAGE: -- and to not meet in February, or however you want to do it. We ought to have a motion. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. So your motion is to meet January the 19th -- MR. SAVAGE: Yes. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: -- and not meet February the 2nd? Is there a second for that motion? Hearing none. MR. PEEK: I'll make an alternate motion. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Entertain another motion. MR. SAVAGE: Whatever you want to do. We have to have a motion. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: I move we meet the 19th, and then at the 19th determine from the staff if there is sufficient agenda items for meeting in February. MR. FOLEY: I'll second that. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Motion and second. Any other discussion on that. 19th. MR. PEEPLES: I just want to let you know I'm out of town on the MR. ABBOTT: Same here. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: So we'll have two members missing. Everybody else will be here. We'll have a quorum. MR. SAVAGE: Quorum is the issue. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Quorum is the issue. It seems as though we would have that. We have a motion and second. We'll call the question. All those in favor. Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. Motion carries. The only other issue on the agenda for today is committee member comments. I'll go around the room. First, Mr. Abbott, none. Mr. Peek? Mr. Longo? MR. LONGO: I just want to reiterate that I've been on the Development Services Advisory Committee now for four years, and over four years I've seen us do some wonderful things, and mostly by us keeping on top of things coming through and down the pipeline. And again, no offense to anybody in the room, but the transportation issues, impact fees will affect our community. And I'm Page 29 January 5, 2000 not speakin9 from a developer or an industry standpoint. I'm just talking as a citizen. What we need is to take a hard look at those things and make sure they're happening through the process that we're supposed to go through. We learned that briefly with FEMA, and we're still doing things with FEMA, and congratulations to ourselves for making that happen. But I think we need to just keep abreast of those type of things and realize that we represent -- we represent our community, and that sometimes things just -- they go through real quick. We're not always bursting with information or even know sometimes to ask the right questions, thus I wanted to explain to the group my motion to bring this to the county commission. This is moving at a very fast pace. It affects a lot of people. A thousand dollars at today's interest on your mortgage is $10 roughly. And we're still fighting the affordable housing issue. An affordable house in Naples is a $150,000 home. So there's a lot of issues that go with this, and it just -- it's not just road transportation. We're looking at EMS, we're looking at libraries, we're looking at about, 13 total, more coming up. And impact fees have always been an issue. Other funding sources for whatever it is, transportation, library, EMS have always been indigent. I just think we need to keep ahold of that and really try better maybe this year. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you, Dino. Mr. Savage, quickly. MR. SAVAGE: Our magnificently handsome executive director is not here, Mr. Cautero. And while he's not here, I would hope that each of us on this advisory committee will go to a county commissioner and say, that man would be an excellent candidate for county manager administrator. I won't care who knows that I said that. I want everybody to know that. And I think he's done a fabulous job as the director here, and he's a magnificent man, particularly because it is a local whom we would look to. And I hope everybody hears me say that. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you very much. Brian? MR. JONES: No comment. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Other members? Ms. Lam. MS. LAM: No. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Any comments? Anything else. I'd just like to say welcome to all the new members, and eventually I'll learn all your names. MR. TINDALL: Mr. Chairman, can I just ask one question? And I apologize. I was speaking with one of the reporters, and I didn't catch the wording of the motion regarding the impact fee schedule. Could I just get that from you quickly? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Well, I have some notes here. And Dino and I are going to have to get together and write a letter here, unless he's already got something drafted, and we'll get that for you, but I have Page 30 January 5, 2000 a couple notes. MR. LONGO: I'll give it to you briefly. MR. TINDALL: That's fine. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: No other comments? Questions? adjourn? MR. PEEK: Motion to adjourn. MR. ABBOTT: Second. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you. All those in favor. It's not in format. Motion to There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 4:59 p.m. DEVELOPMENT SERVICES ADVISORY COMMITTEE DALAS D. DISNEY, CHAIRMAN TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC., BY TERRI L. LEWIS, NOTARY PUBLIC. Page 31