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DSAC Minutes 01/19/2000 SJanuary 19, 2000 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE DEVELOPMENT SERVICES ADVISORY COMMITTEE Naples, Florida, January 19, 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 2:00 p.m. in SPECIAL SESSION at Conference Room "E", Horseshoe Drive, Naples, Florida, with the following members present: PRESENT: Dalas D. Disney, Chairman Charles M. Abbott R. Bruce Anderson William P. Dillon Robert L. Duane Marco A. Espinar Robert Foley Brian E. Jones Sally Lam Dino J. Longo Thomas Masters Thomas R. Peek Herbert R. Savage Page 1 January 19, 2000 CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Just a reminder before we start, we have a reporter, Cherie', here. If you're not recognized prior to speaking, please say who you are so that she has some idea what's going on. MR. SAVAGE: What did you say? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you, Herb. And for the sake of time, we're going to try to move the meeting right along as well, so from a comment standpoint, if it's already been said, try not to duplicate. We'll hopefully not spend the whole afternoon. So with that, we'll call the January 19th meeting of the Development Service Advisory Committee to order. And so our first order of business -- what are we -- I'll get through the preliminaries here. We're going to skip the staff announcements. Approval of the agenda would be the first order of business. MR. PEEK: So moved. MR. DUANE: Bob Duane, second. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Any comments on the agenda from December the 1st? Hearing none, all those in favor? (Unanimous vote of ayes.) CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you. We're going to go directly to old business. Item -- MR. PEEK: Mr. Chairman, did we just approve the agenda for today or the minutes for the last meeting? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Today's agenda. Thank you very much, Mr. Peek. We'll go to 4-A, old business. Update of the FEMA map study. Mr. Cautero has some guests here for us who will introduce them and we'll go through a little presentation. MR. CAUTERO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you all are aware, or -- I beg your pardon, as some of you may be aware, the county, along with the City of Naples and the City of Marco Island, recently signed an interlocal agreement Page 2 January t9, 2000 which stems back from meetings late last summer in which the three bodies agreed to embark on a study to bring in a professional consultant to analyze the revised FEMA maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That consultant is here today. And we've been working closely with a technical advisory committee, as well as Mr. Devlin, who is the floodplain management coordinator for Collier County. And Mr. Tomasello is here with us today who has embarked upon that study on behalf of the county and the two cities. He's going to provide an overview of his work to date for us today. We're pleased to have him today. Many of you, if you haven't worked with this committee or the technical oversight committee that Mr. Devlin put together, you have been interested in this issue and you have been following it. And I'll ask Bob if he wants to make any preliminary announcements. MR. DEVLIN: The only announcement I wanted to make is that on February 14th will be a workshop scheduled at the City of Naples for Naples, Collier County and Marco Island. And that workshop will be from 2:00 to 4:00. And there will be announcements coming out and announcements in the paper on that as well. MR. CAUTERO: Mr. Savage, question. MR. SAVAGE: Herb Savage. Vince, would it be possible that we might have each of the people stand and say which group they're from? Whether they give their name is unimportant, but I'd like to know what group they're representing. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: That's a good request. If we could, maybe just go around the room. MR. PINEAU: Collier County. MR. DISNEY: MR. MS. MR. MR. MR. MR. LONGO: LAM: Sally Lam, member of the committee. ABBOTT: Charlie Abbott, member of the committee. MARCH: Darrell March, Florida Engineering Society. DILLON: Bill Dillon, member of the committee. ESPINAR: Marco Espinar, member of the committee. Ken Pineau, emergency management director, I'm Dalas Disney, member of the committee. Dino Longo, I'm a member of the committee. Page 3 January 19, 2000 MR. MR. MR. Florida. MR. MASTERS: Tom Masters, member. MR. JONES: Brian Jones, member of the committee. MR. ANDERSON: Kim Anderson, Oswald, Trippe & Company Insurance. MR. McNALL: Bruce McNall, M-C-N-A-L-L, stormwater management coordinator. MR. DEVLIN: Bob Devlin, floodplain management coordinator. MR. WEIGLE: Brad Weigel, plan reviewer, City of Naples. MR. FOLEY: Blair Foley, member of the committee. MR. DUANE: Robert Duane, committee member. MR. PERICO: Ed Perico, building review and permitting department director. MR. ELLIS: David Ellis, Collier Building Industry Association. MS. SMITH: Kelly Smith, City of Marco Island zoning. SAVAGE: Herb Savage, member of the committee. PEEK: Tom Peek, member of the committee. KROESE: Jesse Kroese, Conservancy of Southwest MR. CAUTERO: Okay, if there's no other-- if there's no other questions or announcements, Mr. Chairman, I'll turn it over to Mr. Tomasello. Welcome. MR. TOMASELLO: Thank you. Are we turned on here? MRS. TOMASELLO: We need to have that turned back on. MR. TOMASELLO: Okay, I'm glad to be here. Bob invited me over here a couple weeks ago to make a presentation to the committee. My name is Dick Tomasello. Tomasello Consulting Engineers is the firm, our firm, which I'm president of. To give you a little background on myself, well, I was hired by the city to do this study, and I guess the funding's coming also from the county and from the City of Marco Island. The -- my background, education-wise, I've got a Bachelor's Degree from Florida Atlantic University, and a master's from Florida Institute of Technology in Physical Oceanography. I'm a professional engineer, been in the business for 28 years, and primarily in the areas of modeling stormwater hydrodynamics, Page 4 January 19, 2000 hydrogeologic modelings; just about any kind of modeling dealing with water I've been involved in over the years. I've been involved in coastal flood studies also, spread over just about my whole career, starting back in the early Seventies with an engineering firm. We did a coastal flood study for a couple of developers up in Manatee and Charlotte County and ended up revising the FEMA maps at that time. And since then in '81, I was involved in the coastal flood study for Lee County that we did -- I was then at that time employed with the South Florida Water Management District, I forgot to mention. My 28 years experience, about 11 of it was in government, eight and a half of it was for the South florida Water Management District. While I was there, I did the coastal flood study. We had the FEMA maps at that time revised also. They were proposed. And the county came and that's when they began participating in the program. I guess the City of Fort Myers and some of the other communities also began participating at that time. Then I was also involved in the Collier County study back in '84. I was supervisor for a couple of engineers that did the actual modeling and the actual work to come up with flood elevations in Collier County. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. I've also served as consultant to the National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences in Washington on reviewing the methodology that FEMA uses, and I've also served as arbitrator for -- on an arbitration board for the City of Brunswick Federal Court. The city had a dispute against FEMA, and we ended up actually redoing the whole report -- the whole study, modeling study and everything. So I do have quite a bit of experience in this field over the years, and am very familiar with how it's progressed. This community also. What I'd like to do, I started into this review, and we haven't really finished our review, but we know we can -- we're far enough into it to know where we're going. And before I actually get into our preliminary recommendations that we have to date, I'd like to go through the methodology that FEMA uses, just to Page 5 January t9, 2000 give everybody a feel for what we're dealing with so that my recommendations will make some sense, hopefully. Okay, you want to start? I've got my wife Dixie here pushing the buttons for me. She's also a technician in our office. I'm glad to have her here. First of all, in Collier County we've had an update of the flood insurance study; that's what FIS stand for. And the -- that review has come out in recent years -- I mean, the update has come out in recent years, and that's what we were addressing in our review. There's -- in a FEMA flood insurance study, coastal flood studies, three determinations have to be made: And the first one being the still water levels. That's the storm surge. And that's probably the most complex part of the study. It basically deals with a lot of data collection, data analysis, and then actual modeling with -- we'll talk about that more, too. The second determination is wave setup. And that's a new determination that FEMA just applied and added to their methodology. And then finally the third is the wave height analysis, which we'll talk about, too. Okay, first of all, let me address the still water numbers -- still water determinations. First of all, it's kind of a misnomer. It's referred to as still water numbers, but you can imagine if you have a bay that -- a bay or a back water area that's flooding from mean sea level up to 10 feet, you're not going to have much standing water. It's rippling, going through the inlets, in between structures, so there's high velocity flows during this occurrence, but they refer to it as still water, just to distinguish it from the MR. ABBOTT: MR. SAVAGE: MR. ABBOTT: folks, Herb. wave. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Tomasello, my eyes aren't as good as they used to be. Is that as good a focus as you can get? It's pretty good from here. I can read it all right but it -- It's pretty clear. Move up here with the old MR. TOMASELLO: Okay, next one then. Yeah, the still water determination really has two aspects to Page 6 January 19, 2000 it itself. Initially we're dealing with a storm frequency and parameter statistics. That's what has to be collected as part of this study. And then the storm surge. So first of all, we'll be talking about the frequency parameter statistics analysis. The way they do that is you draw a circle around the area of interest. In this case it was out of the Collier County report that the Water Management District had done. In their analysis, they used 150 nautical mile radius. I think FEMA now recommends 100 nautical miles typically. What you do is draw a circle around it and look at all the storms that have passed through this circle in recorded history back to 1896; National Weather Service has storms that go back to that date. So all the storms that pass through this circle, they look at the parameters of the storm that are -- as the storm passes through the area. So, you know, just because there was a hurricane when it came through the Caribbean and turned north and recurved back toward Florida, we don't necessarily have to count it as a hurricane or any intensity that it had in its history, only as the storm passes through this circle. And that's another point that I wanted to point out for a later point. The parameters we're defining on these storms that pass through this circle are the central period, which is the driving force of the storm. It's typically measured in millibars, and it's what they talk about when they report on hurricanes, the intensity, how Iow the central pressure is. Radius of maximum winds also varies from one storm to the next, and also within the same storm as the storm process through its history. Then the forward speed and the angle that it crosses the shore line, whether it's parallel or in some cases an exiting storm. So those are the four parameters that we're interested in. Besides the parameters, you have the frequency of the storms themselves, so you have to make account of the number of storms passing through the circle for a given number of years, which would be over 100 years now, since 1896, and you come up with a frequency. It's storms per nautical mile per year, and that's an important parameter in determination of the storm statistics. Page 7 January 19, 2000 Then when you collect this data, what you end up doing is plotting the various -- for example, this is forward speed. You would plot the forward speed points at equal intervals across the chart, and you end up with cumulative probabilities of storms equaling or exceeding a given forward speed. For example, forward speed being the parameter. Forward speed and given direction are the two parameters that we have quite a bit of information from. Back in 1896 they knew where the storms were at given times, just from ships recording information and islands and so fort. So we have good information on those parameters, so we can gather quite a bit of information on these. But radius of maximum winds and central pressure are two parameters that we don't have a lot of information on in the older storms. With the newer ones, especially with the airplanes and satellite data being collected, that's not a problem. But we're a little bit limited on that information in earlier storms. What we do then is plot these storms and break them up into little compartments, number of compartments. It's just kind of a subjective thing, but you -- each compartment is supposed to represent all the forward speeds in that compartment. For example, this compartment here is a forward speed of 20; would represent all the forward speeds from, say, 17 through 24, for example. And then based on the number of occurrences in the past, you end up with a probability of a particular forward speed compared to the others, and those probabilities will add up to one. So it's just a way of giving weights to the storm forward speeds in this case based on historic or past occurrences. And then of course we do the same thing for the others. Here's a radius breakdown. Central pressure. Central pressure being one of the most important parameters, because that tells you how intense the storm is. And then direction distribution. So you end up with these parameters broken down into a number of intervals. And this is the table that is generated to represent these. You have all the central pressures up here, the categories or Page 8 January 19, 2000 compartments of central pressure. Each one is assigned a probability based on past occurrence. You have these radii -- only has two radii. Forward speed. It's broken down to three compartments, and then the -- I guess that direction. Yeah, direction is broken down into four categories. And then the bottom one, the bottom number down here is the frequency I talked about. Actual number of storms passing through the circle in a given number of years. And over a -- and it's divided by the diameter of the circle, giving you the term in storms per nautical mile per year. And the whole purpose of that is to give you a probability for a storm that would be a combination of any one of those four parameters. The storm would have a central pressure, a radius, a forward speed and a direction. And it's all multiplied by the actual overall frequency of storms in history, and then you multiply it times a distance. And that distance is whatever breakdown you have in your modeling, and I'll point that out. For example, if you were to apply a given storm -- now, each one of these storms has a probability associated with it, which is a product of all these parameters, probabilities, and then you run it along these tracks. For example, this was a narrower storm and so the tracts are fairly close together. And these would all impact Collier County to one degree or another. May not have a significant impact, as far as coming up with 100-year event. But each storm would be run along each one of these tracks. And then the bigger storms would be run across the similar number of tracks, obviously spaced a little more. And then of course directions change. So you run through all these different directions, and these would be the exiting storms. I think we had four directions, so that covered it. Okay, so those storms, you have quite a few storms, there's 192 I think combinations of parameters. So it's like 192 hypothetical storms that are generated from that table ! showed you earlier. Well, then when you apply it to all the tracks that could be applied to, it gets up to the thousands of storms. But it's a finite number of storms that would affect the area. And those Page 9 January 19, 2000 hypothetical storms are supposed to represent any possible storm that would hit the area. I mean, you know, you get -- put it into one of those storms categories, no matter what storm occurred. Of course it's not perfect. The tracks are all straight and typically you don't see a straight track unless it's whipping across the area. But it's a shortcoming of the methodology. But what it does for you is it gives you a probability to hang on any storm. And what you do then is you'd run these storms -- you want to try to find out what the flood elevation would be created for any point. And if you can't recognize this, this is the west coast of Florida. It's kind of a bad graphic here, but this is right out of the Water Management District report. It shows the grid system that was laid out to represent the area that we're analyzing. Collier County is right about here. This was a course grid that took up a good portion of the Gulf of Mexico. The Keys are down here. This is the west coast of Florida, the Tampa area and so forth. And these grids are four and a half by five miles in dimensions. And this grid system is applied to a numerical model that would calculate the impacts on sea surface from hurricanes being applied. And hurricanes are applied numerically, of course, where they run a track with a given radius of winds, and wind speeds are generated by the model itself. The central pressure affects -- basically central pressure affects the storm surge by pulling up the water in the center of the storm. Sort of like a straw. You know, lower pressure pulls the water up where the higher pressure on the outside pushes it down, so you have a mound of water associated with the hurricane as it moves across this digital water basin. And of course when it approaches the shallow water, there's friction effects and momentum affects of the storm carrying the water with it that tends to amplify the mounded water so it rises as you get closer to the shore, and especially with the shallow water we have off our coast here. So anyway, what we do theoretically is run all 2000, say, of these storms through this model to generate a water surface Page 10 January t 9, 2000 elevation for each point of interest in the model. That would be just about the whole -- any of the grids along the shore of Collier County. We do have a fine grid model that's also placed in here, so the large grid model generates boundary conditions and then they're fed in the fine grid model. It gives you more resolution to see impacts of barrier islands and the bays and so forth, so you can get down to the nearest square mile, for example. Now, the reason you have this gradation of parameters that are fairly course, you have two radii we're dealing with. It's because these methods were developed 20 some years ago and the computers were pretty slow back then. Today you could probably deal with a finer network of probability and so forth to get a better resolution. I don't know that you'd get any better answers, but that's one of the reasons you're limited to the parameters you are, because the computer speed when this methodology was developed. Okay, the other thing you can do with this model is you can actually put a historic storm into it and calculate what the water levels would be if this storm would run through the electronic -- you know, the electronic watershed or basin or whatever you want to call it, to see how high the water levels get at various points in the model that correspond to the actual physical shoreline. That's called hindcasting with the model. That was done in the Water Management District's model for several storms. We didn't have many that generated a significant storm surge except Donna. Donna was a storm surge. And this is what we have here. You can't see it on the graphic, but these numbers are observed water levels throughout the county, as well as to the Fort Myers area and south to the Keys. But it shows how high the water levels got during this storm, and some of them were water levels inside houses where they had the water line on the wall. I remember going back to Everglades City, and a guy remembers a desk drawer, so we had that shot in. MR. ABBOTT: How wide is your path on the hurricane? Page 11 January 19, 2000 MR. TOMASELLO: The hurricane path. I don't remember how wide Donna was. But you put the track in the way it was plotted by the weather surface and put the radius of maximum winds that were recorded. We had fairly good information on Donna. That was 1960. And we were able to -- the model did a real good job of calibrating or estimating how much water levels or how high the water levels got. And so we were real satisfied with the results. And this is something else I wanted to get back to later on here in the presentation. And again, this model hindcasting is -- it's applied right back to the same grid system. These hindcast storms. Okay, so that takes care of the still water. You know, I kind of briefly ran through it. And it's a pretty complicated process, but the first step there, the still water determination, is the most important and, probably, the most complex. The second being the wave setup. And this is kind of a -- I think it's kind of an off-the-shelf type thing that FEMA has applied here recently. And it's not -- it's not a real well-defined method of calculating wave setup. It's something that typically, in the literature I've seen, that refers to the wave setup on the shoreline where you have a barrier, the beach that's blocking the progression of waves going any further. And you probably remember seeing it on the beach if you stand there on a rough day, the waves are coming together. Just kind of a mounding. That's wave setup. That's what we're talking about. And that's being applied now to the studies in Collier County. That's exactly what's happened here in the update is the applied wave setup. Then the third step is the wave height analysis, and it takes the still water and wave setup, which is added to the numbers and adds waves along a transect and the waves propagate. They start at the mean level shoreline with the surge and setup, mounding the water up high. In some cases, of course, the waves would go across the barrier island and into the upland areas. There's 30 some transects that the FEMA contract used, and I think we used something similar to that when we did the Page t2 January 19, 2000 study back in '94. These are the transects. You can't see them too well, but this is a shoreline of Collier County, and these lines that don't show up too well here are each transects that come in line. Okay, so hopefully I gave you a kind of broad-brushed overview of what the FEMA studies are involved. I'd been in a presentation I guess a few months back where we were talking about -- or they had a meeting, I think the County Commission meeting, where they were talking about the FEMA update. And some people got up and talked about, you know, what went into these studies, and I don't know, there wasn't a real -- it wasn't real accurate, and I wanted to clear up some confusion. There's no such thing as a 100-year storm. Some people think how that's going to impact the coast line. It's not that at all. Basically what you do, you take all 2,000 of those storms and from one point, let's say somewhere here in Naples, you'll calculate a water level for those 2000 storms; two, three, I don't remember the number. But each of those storms has an associated water level and they have associated probabilities. What you do is tabulate all those high water levels that are generated by all 2000 some storms, and from the top down, you add the probabilities of those storms. So, you know, one storm might have a .0001 probability. And then that created an 18-foot storm surge. Well, then you keep adding them up until you get down to where the total probability adds up to 0.1. And that's the one percent chance per year that the water level is going to be at that elevation, or lower. And so that's call called the 100-year flood level or the one percent flood level. So it's not any one storm, it's an accumulation of storms that none of them have a probability of .01. They have a much less probability. But as you add them up, you get to that 0.1 probability. So it's 100-year level, not 100 year storm. That's a misnomer, because in the past the Corps of Engineers used to use 100-year storms, and a lot of hydrology studies they use a lot of events, 100-year, but that's not the case in the FEMA study. Okay, okay, here we show some profiles actually from the FEMA study update. And this happens to be up at the north end Page 13 January 19, 2000 of the county. It's the third profile from the north end. What you see here is the still water elevation, or the storm surge elevation, plus the setup. The setup in -- happened to be at the north end of the county, anywhere between 1.4 to 1.8, depending on where you were at. When you compare it to the storm surge elevation that was calculated by the Water Management District on the open coast, the FEMA contractors indicated some communications with the county and with the FEMA themselves that they used a 1.4-foot wave setup. Well, that seems to have varied from one point to another, and I don't know if they did some smoothing of the still waters on the coast. Some points are lower than 1.4, but other cases they're quite a bit higher. We need some clarification on that, and we're researching that now. But one of the most disturbing things to me was the way they handled wave setups, and they applied it all the way across the transects. These transects sometimes are two miles long. Wave setup is really a local phenomena that you see at a point where the waves are coming up to the shoreline and mounding because of a blockage. And to apply that setup all the way across the transects just doesn't seem to make any sense. So we are further researching that. Apparently just recently had a communication from Pinellas County that Bob had sent me. They were talking about some of the points they came up with in their analysis, and they also had the same thing happening where FEMA applied wave setup over long periods, or long stretches of shoreline. Not shoreline, but long stretches of transects. But then the problem is you apply a one-and-a-half foot increase to the storm surge by setup, but then the waves come in on top of that. And because you have deeper water now, another foot and a half of water, or say two feet to make it simple, if you have another two feet of water, that allows you to have another 1.4-foot or so of wave on top of that. So you can increase the water levels as much as 3.4 feet just in the addition of this wave setup. Now, the wave setup, tell you one more thing -- go ahead Page 14 January 19, 2000 and show those things. These are some more of the transects. You have the same thing happening, just a level situation all the way across. The -- let's see. Well, one of the problems I had with the wave setup the way it was applied too was that we did, as I mentioned earlier, calibrate by hindcasting the hurricane Donna. And if you come in and apply a wave setup in these areas, then it should have been applied in the calibration too. So, for example, if we calibrate the models, we bring the water level up. You can calibrate the model to bring the water level up, and that is reduce impedance of the flow to come over the barrier and through the inlets. If you turn the knobs to make that higher, it will bring the water levels down. Well, we adjusted these knobs until the water levels got to where they were actually observed, and that's what we used. Well, if we knew we were going to have to use a foot and a half on top of the water levels that were observed -- in other words, the model, in the water levels, you had to add a foot and a half of setup. We wouldn't have turned the knobs, and we may have come up with a different level of elevations. I hope I'm clear enough. But the calculation was taking into account whatever impacts were making the water levels rise. And the model doesn't -- well, the model is really computing storm surges. It's using the physical phenomena that used to make storm surges, but wave setup could be implicit if we're turning the right knobs. Here we show some of the areas of -- that are impacted by these changes. In this particular area, I guess this is the north end, you can see we have quite a few areas that have been increased as much as a foot, 1.3 feet. The reason .3, I think you probably heard about the conversion from NGV to NAVD. There's a 1.3 conversion there, so you have the .3 show up, because they round all their flood levels off to the nearest foot. But the yellow areas you see have an increase of 1.3 feet of flood level to the 100 flood level, shown on the flood insurance rate map. And these are the numbers that are reflected on the proposed FEMA maps. And the light blue is 2.3 feet increase. You see a good Page 15 January 19, 2000 increase back inland here. And again she it's propagating wave setup inland. And we have some that are -- actually, there's some areas that we have actually had a draw down of the -- or a lowering of the flood levels. MR. LONGO: Dino Longo. The elevations are showing that's NAVD, current today? MR. TOMASELLO: Well, these are differences, so it really doesn't matter what the references are. They're differences between the new and old map. That's why the 1.3 and of course 1.3 is a significant difference. MR. DILLON: Can you locate it on the map? MR. TOMASELLO: This is the county line here. I guess this would be Doctors Pass. MS. ANDERSON: We have three maps, so -- MR. ABBOTT: That's the northernmost of Collier County. MR. TOMASELLO: Right. MR. ABBOTT: That's Wiggins Pass and Barefoot Beach at the top. MR. TOMASELLO: We have the maps from the City of Naples on the wall. They're not differences, but both of them are up there, the existing and the proposed. It's kind of hard to look at both maps to see where you are. Because you have one shown to NAVD. And one's NGVD. Behind the City of name Naples we have increases here. They're making increases across 'X" zones, which doesn't make sense at all for wave setup. Yeah, this is a southernmost -- actually, we don't get all the way down into -- I don't think this is quite in Everglades City yet. But at the southern end of the county, for some reason they didn't either apply the setup or the wave analysis was taking into account more attenuation than proposed in the previous study, so we're typically down actually below what the previous study had. Problems are more in -- from the south end of Naples up. The areas that are white and don't have any color would be areas that don't have any associated flood elevations assigned to them. So it would be 'X" zones or outside the flood zones. These white areas are just -- we had -- Page 16 January 19, 2000 MR. MARCH: Mostly D. MRS. TOMASELLO: "X", I believe. MR. KUCK: So the white zones on the coast then experience no change? MR. TOMASELLO: No, the white, we didn't have time to color them in. We didn't get the information off these maps yet. We're not finished. And over the next month we're going to be going full speed to try to get things ready for the 14th meeting. Our preliminary conclusions so far are that FEMA statistical analysis, particularly the storm frequency -- that's something I forgot to mention. They looked at water district analysis based on more recent data. They said well, we didn't have a problem there. We don't agree with the water district's analysis, but we don't think it will make more than half a foot difference, so we'll forget about it. Then they came back later and said we'll add .02 feet to the wave setup because of the statistics differences, so they're applying a higher elevation anyway. But we looked at their statistics and found that they included tropical depressions that went through the circle, so that increased a number of storms, and they apply it then to the parameters that are for hurricanes and tropical storms. So we think there's a bias that they are making the storm levels come up. Well, I'll get to my recommendations in a minute. The frequency analysis we felt like had some problems, and I'll talk about it in a minute in our recommendations. The second conclusion, preliminary conclusion we came to was concerning the waves setup. We felt like was not applied properly, because it's applied over the entire transects and not just in the immediate shoreline area. And it's true that wave setup, if -- could occur in the areas further back inland as the waves break there. But you still wouldn't expect it to be applied throughout the entire transect, because waves aren't breaking everywhere, they're being attenuated. Even if they are breaking, you still have to have a barrier of some kind for this water to stack up onto in wave setup phenomena. So we feel like that has not been properly applied. Page 17 January 19, 2000 Third, we feel like the FEMA wave analysis is too liberal as far as allowing the water -- the waves to pass through obvious obstructions. And it is their policy and their written methodologies to ignore buildings on the shoreline, at least the first couple rows of buildings, because their theory is that buildings will either be washed away initially in a storm or they're going to be designed to break away underneath, which, you know, I'm not sure how many -- one of the things we're going to do is go out and take some pictures. But how many buildings are designed that way on the shoreline of Collier County, I don't know. But I know, for example, I just saw a movie, some film shots of Galveston, killed over 6,000 people. Obviously there were no buildings standing after the storm. But one thing that was clear was even though the buildings weren't standing, there weren't necessarily no obstructions, because there were mounds of wood everywhere. And so certainly there could have been an obstruction. And I think sometimes they ignore fences and landscaped walls and things that may end up getting washed away, which would certainly be an obstruction, so we wanted to look at that in more detail. As far as recommendations, I think the wave setup should be applied in the localized areas, as I mentioned already. And I think we need to address that to FEMA. Or come up with a -- you know, our own study to show more physically what the wave setup impact would be. And the wave setup should also take into account any storm surge model calibrations. So if you're going to go in there and apply a wave setup of a foot and a half to two feet to an area that was used as a calibration of a model, then you have to take that into account. So if the water levels were modeled at a foot and a half higher than what they were observed at, then some adjustments need to be made to the original still water levels. Then finally the statistical part of the analysis, as I mentioned, the FEMA contractor said in their -- some of their documentation that they weren't going to look at still water levels, but then they went back and reviewed it anyway. And they skewed their results upward, because they felt that the Page 18 January 19, 2000 original statistics weren't proper. When we went back and looked, we felt that their statistics weren't proper. But since they opened the door on the statistical review and update, what I think they should look at is interrelationships between parameters. And historically -- see, what they do on the circle for the central pressures, they come up with all the central pressures that occurred in that circle and that's the central pressures. Well, that's independent. Sitting out there independent, those distributions, then the direction, they're independent and radii and so forth. Well, because the central pressures and radii are independent, you're applying to the storms that are landfall in Florida, versus those that are exiting. The more severe storms are all coming across Florida. They're exiting storms. So they're not having near the influence they would if they were land falling storms. So what I would suggest and recommend is if we're going to get back into this and recommend to FEMA what we feel that the updated recommendation should be, that that kind of analysis should be done. There's enough data. Like I say, the central pressure is more scarce than the track data. But you look at the storms at all the highest pressure storms, they're all either exiting or in the case of Donna was more a long shore storm. But we didn't have any intense storms hit this area coming out of the Gulf. And it's physically explainable. Most of the storms that are coming back to the east are already dying out. They're recovery storms. I think Lenny was the first one that kind of surprised everyone this past year. That was quite a bit south, too. They tend to start fizzling out a little more when they come up to the north. So that's all I had for presentation. I'll entertain any questions. MR. MASTERS: Tom Masters. I had a question. When you looked at the radius, the 150 nautical miles, did you take into account what the storm was doing over our area as opposed to what it was doing over on the east coat? MR. TOMASELLO: In the case of 150 nautical miles, it did Page 19 January 19, 2000 extend over to the east coast. So we would count that pressure. MR. MASTERS: So the storm that directly hit my Miami, we would be using those numbers? MR. TOMASELLO: Right. The 26 hurricane, that came through our area, but the intensity was more on the east coast. The 26 storm passed through this area, actually came out Fort Myers, and the 28 hurricane. So there was quite a few very intense storms that hit the east coast that came through this radius that didn't necessarily have a ma]or impact. But the pressures, when applied to the overall hypothetical storms, would certainly tend to bring the elevations up. MR. ABBOTT: Increasing the frequency you said by using the tropical depressions, how does that affect our statistics? MR. TOMASELLO: Well, that's one of the factors in the formula that I put up there, the probabilities of storms. The first parameter is the frequency of storms. If you artificially increase that parameter by having -- counting tropical depressions as part of the storm population, then that probability increases. Then when you're adding them up, the probabilities -- MR. ABBOTT: So it substantially increases our probability. MR. TOMASELLO: It could, yes. MR. PINEAU: Ken Pineau. I think along those same lines also, if you eliminated all the tropical storms, it would also have an impact. The storm surge associated with tropical storms are minimal. MR. TOMASELLO: The pressure distributions include tropical storms. MR. PINEAU: I'm just pondering if they should. MR. TOMASELLO: Well, we'd have to cut back the number of parameters, that's partly why. Because they have a few more tracks in there, if you included tropical storms. MR. PINEAU: Concerning the numbered A zones out in the Estates, now, obviously those aren't storm surge related. Those are sheet flow flood. Did you look into that? MR. TOMASELLO: Well, I was instructed to look into that. I got from Ananta the other day some data, but I didn't have time to get into it. We will by next month. Page 20 January 19, 2000 MR. MARCH: What's your gut -- MR. DISNEY: Could you tell us who you are, please, for the reporter? MR. MARCH: My name is Darrell March. Just what's your gut feeling toward that probability change? I mean, do you think it's going to be significant, or is it just going to be a small item? MR. TOMASELLO: Just the frequency change isn't going to have a major impact. Well, they were saying -- they were indicating it could -- you know, if they would have applied their distributions, it could have increased everything a half a foot or so. And I think they could keep it down, it wouldn't justify any increases over the past. But I think this relative probability of pressures assigned to direction could have a significant impact. That could lower things. And I can't guess how much, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was more than a foot down from what we had before. MR. ANDERSON: Bruce Anderson. To what extent if any have the renourished beaches been factored in since the last FEMA in the flood zone? MR. TOMASELLO: I have the beach profiles that they used, but I'm not sure -- I don't know what the dates are on them yet. That's something we have to investigate. MR. PINEAU: I think that the study was actually done back in '94, '95. That was before the beaches were renourished. So obviously it wasn't factored in. MR. ANDERSON: Certainly that was one of the rationales for renourishing the beaches was storm protection. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Tomasello, Herb Savage. I was critical of the FEMA people in Naples, because nobody ever talks to the local user, if I want to call it that. And you did tell me they did measure in Donna how high the water was in somebody's desk, et cetera, et cetera. Is that pretty much the only storm that we've been able to measure by the user, the height of the water? MR. TOMASELLO: Well~ they have some data from some other storms. More recently, Donna, but they weren't nearly as intense as Donna. so the surge was like three, four feet. So we Page 21 January 19, 2000 haven't really had anything here severe enough. MR. DISNEY: Mr. Tomasello, I'd like to thank you for your presentation today. This -- maybe -- if anybody else has telephones, maybe you could turn them off for the meeting. I'd like to thank you for your update. This is an update on a non-action item for all of us. This information is precisely what our committee and subcommittee was very, very concerned about, and you've enlightened us greatly and brought it to course. We're looking forward to the conclusion of this study. MR. LONGO.' What is our next step? MR. DISNEY: I would -- MR. CAUTERO: There's nothing on the horizon at this point until the board and city -- the two city councils hear the report. MS. TAYLOR: When is that supposed to be? MR. CAUTERO: February 14th. MR. LONGO: At the workshop you'll present your final recommendations, and at that point is when you'll decide to either hire Mr. Tomasello's firm to continue further or whatever. MR. CAUTERO: It's up to the three elected bodies at that point. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Chairman, Herb Savage. Will we be receiving the graphics that we see on the screen in our report, our final report? MR. TOMASELLO: Yes. MR. DISNEY: I presume that we would, yes. MR. MASTERS: Tom Masters. So your final recommendation then will be some kind of adjustments that you would recommend pursuing? MR. TOMASELLO: I imagine it will, yes. MR. DISNEY: We first -- MR. KUCK: When you first started discussing wave setup, you mentioned that you thought 1.4 was a conservative leveling of it, that in some areas it was even higher. MR. TOMASELLO: They said it was 1.4, and -- well, actually they -- in some of their documentation, they talk about 1.2 and they added two-tenths because of a storm statistic, they adjusted it upward. But when we actually went in and looked at Page 22 January 19, 2000 how they applied, the transects in some cases were two feet higher than the still waters. Because the still waters went up and down a little bit along the coast, and they may have tried to smooth things down a little and ended up bringing it down a little. MR. KUCK: Does some of that have to do with their fancy for fractioning off levels to a foot? Now they add a wave setup to it. Because I'm noticing the same thing, when you compare them and do the transfer, that it's not 1.4, it's increased. It seems to go up to like 2. MR. TOMASELLO: If you look at maps, they are rounded to the nearest foot. Whether -- I guess sometimes it could help you, but -- MR. ABBOTT: Yeah, but for awhile you have that 1.3 and that's enough to round it to t.5. MR. KUCK: Well, they round it if it's 1.1. MR. DISNEY: Very good. Thank you so very much. MR. CAUTERO: Take a 10-minute break to settle down. (Recess.) CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We'll come back to order, please. Our -- we skipped ahead and skipped over a couple of items. Maybe we could go back to Item 2, approval of minutes of the December I meeting. MR. PEEK: So moved. MR. SAVAGE: Second. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Savage seconds. Any comments on those meeting minutes? Hearing none, all those in favor of approval, please? Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Passes unanimously. Staff announcements. Mr. Cautero. MR. CAUTERO: A few announcements, Mr. Chairman. In your packet you'll see the summary of ordinance amendments, which is current. I'd like to take a moment to discuss that with you briefly. We have archived the older ordinance amendments that the Page 23 January 19, 2000 committee had discussed previously in 1999, and started this particular sheet with the amendments in the early part of 1999. And I still listed some other ordinance amendments as well. You'll notice that there are some that are pending that we'll be moving forward to you in the next few months, there on the bottom of Page I and the top of Page 2. Those include the Weed, Litter and Exotic Control Ordinance, which is a proposed amendment that the committee has recommended to the board, or will recommend to the board, and ask staff to write it, which is reverting to the old language dealing with coverage; citation amendments that Michelle brought forward. She is working on the language to bring forward for your consideration; and two new ordinance amendments that the county utility franchise regulation staff has been working on that you haven't seen yet and you will shortly, and then you may or may not remand them to your utility code subcommittee, and those deal with a telecommunications ordinance and a right-of-way ordinance that the county administrator has asked staff to work on. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Very good. Mr. Savage -- oh, Dino, yes. MR. LONGO: Vince, can you tell us what the status is on that Weed, Litter and Exotic Control Ordinance that's pending? I mean, they were supposed to come back to us with the revised reverted language. MR. CAUTERO: Yes. We haven't finalized the language on that ordinance yet. Staff was instructed to seek comments from the Mosquito Control Board's professional staff and haven't received those comments yet. So that ordinance amendment is pending. MR. LONGO: Thank you. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And Dino, didn't we have some -- we had some things from subcommittee that I don't see listed here. The disaster recovery -- MR. LONGO: Yes. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: and the flood ordinance. MR. LONGO: Yes. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: -- ordinance and the coastal setback So those are pending based upon our Page 24 January 19, 2000 FEMA outcome? MR. ABBOTT: Yes, the FEMA stuff. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. Any other announcements? Vince? MR. CAUTERO: Couple of others real briefly. You'll notice in your packet the revised copy of the action items from your November 3rd meeting, and the action items from your December meeting. Of course, at your next meeting you'll receive action items from this meeting, as well your January 5th meeting. And if those are acceptable, we would then ask you to enter those into the record. That's much more informal approving those than the minutes, since the minutes are verbatim. But you had asked us several months ago forward both of them to you, both sets of documents, and we've done that and we'll continue to do that at future meetings. And then finally, I apologize again for not being here your January 5th meeting; I was out of town. I would like to give a warm welcome to the new members of the committee, and -- some of which I know, some I don't. But I'm sure you'll be hearing from me a lot in the future. And two other pieces of business, real briefly. We have a revised sheet with phone numbers, fax numbers and E-mail addresses. If there are numbers here that are not correct or if you have updated numbers, we ask that you please correct them. We'll be passing those around to you at a later date, giving you a little directory of all those numbers. And just one more piece of business. Contrary to widespread rumors, Mr. Perico is not retiring. (Applause.) MR. SAVAGE: He's tired, but not retired. MR. CAUTERO: Not retired. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Good. That got us up to date then? MR. CAUTERO: That's all, thank you. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you very much. We'll go to old business then. 4-B, update Growth Management Plan, rural and agricultural assessment process. Page 25 January t9, 2000 MR. CAUTERO: Thank you. Mr. David Weeks, principal planner in the comprehensive planning section, as well as some other staff members, the new section manager -- I apologize, I'd be remiss if I didn't announce it -- Stan Litsinger, many of you know. For those of you don't, long-time county employee, is the new comprehensive planning manager. And he has two principal planners with him today, David Weeks and Amy Taylor. And I believe David is going to make a brief presentation, updating you on the rural ag. cultural assessment process. This involves essentially two committees that the board has formed to make recommendations to them as required by the Governor and the Cabinet last June. MR. WEEKS: I'll be very brief. I'm not sure how much you all know. I'll just be brief and then let you ask questions, if you wish. Because of the final order that Vince mentioned, the county has to deal with the citizenry and assessment of all of the agricultural rural designated areas of the county, as well as the conservation designated areas of the county and the south block of Golden Gate Estates. Ultimately the end result will be some amendments to our comprehensive plan. That's a huge area. That's the vast majority of Collier County, those areas I mentioned. There's a rural fringe committee, which is only looking at the portions of the agricultural rural designated area located west of Golden Gate Estates. And then the whole rest of the county is the rural assessment area, the vast majority of the remainder of the county. The so-called Berry (phonetic) Committee, or the eastern property owners committee, is only looking at a portion of that rural assessment area. So east of Golden Gate Estates there's a committee that's looking just at that area north of 1-75 and east of Golden Gate Estates area. But that, as I'm saying, does not encompass all of that eastern area, all of that rural area. So the eastern property owners have contracted with Wilson-Miller to prepare an assessment of their properties, gather data regarding protected species, environmentally Page 26 January 19, 2000 sensitive lands, flowways, panther habitat, all sorts of information pertaining to protection of groundwater, protection of natural resources, et cetera. And so they'll take care of part of it. But the county recognizes that number one, that doesn't include all of that land out there in the eastern part of the county. And secondly, it's possible that the county might want additional information to be part of this study and assessment beyond what the Wilson-Miller firm has been hired to compile. The committee had its last meeting about a week or so ago, and they're going to be on break for about two or three months while Wilson-Miller goes out and begins their data collection. And likewise, the county will begin to work also in gathering additional data for the remaining areas of the county. And so in a few months that committee will be meeting back again. And ultimately the end result again will be there are going to be some comprehensive plan amendments affecting all of these rural and conservation designated lands. I am not involved in the rural fringe committee, so I'm not sure exactly what they're doing, other than I know that they are still meeting and they probably are going to end up finished sooner than the rural lands are; that is, they'll finish their data collection and have comprehensive plan amendments to address their part of the puzzle first. Amy, you want to talk about the -- MS. TAYLOR: Sure. MR. WEEKS: -- select committee and how it relates to all this? MS. TAYLOR: Amy Taylor. I'll come around here. The -- just to give you a little bit of background, and then I'll kind of let you know how it connects up with the rural studies. The Board of County Commissioners back in April of this past year appointed a select committee on community character and design. The committee was tasked with developing a very comprehensive look at the county in terms of transportation, land uses, architectural guidelines and green space. And it -- the resolution that established this committee also said to look at Page 27 January 19, 2000 distinct features of the rural area, as well as the urban area to develop a distinct character for the county. The select committee prepared an RFP, and it was a very broad and general RFP which included general descriptions of tasks that need to be accomplished in the rural and urban areas. They selected the firm of Dover-Cole and Partners, and they're out of Coral Gables. And they are partnering with Glad and Jackson, out of Orlando. And staff's working with other departments to then begin to prepare a more detailed scope and a contract with Dover Cole. We began discussions about the crossovers and the relationships between the task of the rural fringe and rural assessment committees and the Dover-Cole project. And what resulted is a recommendation to the -- both of the committees that Dover-Cole be asked to perform additional tasks as needed for the rural assessments that would assist the county in fulfilling their requirements of the final order. And this is important, both for the Berry committee, as well as the rural fringe committee. The Berry committee, with the assistance of Wilson-Miller, will be covering just a certain -- the certain criteria and requirements of the final order, but not all of them. The rural fringe committee does not have the benefit of consultant services, so then the Dover-Cole task, as outlined later on and approved by the Board of County Commissioners as they are detailed and defined would meet the needs of that section of the rural assessments. The Board of County Commissioners approved this approach at their last meeting on January 11th. Both of the committees endorsed this approach. So if you have any questions of David or ~ -- MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Savage, please. MR. SAVAGE: I wasn't listening as I usually do, don't listen. Stan is replacing someone? I thought he was already -- MR. CAUTERO: Barbara Cacchione. He replaced Barbara Cacchione. I'm sorry, I forgot to say that. Page 28 January 19, 2000 CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Quick questions for David or Amy on this information item? No? Everybody okay? MR. DUANE: Robert Duane. Would you care to venture when the rural assessment area -- when there might be a working product out of the fringe committee, the rural fringe assessment committee? Sometime this year? MS. TAYLOR: Yes. MR. DUANE: Summer, fall? MS. TAYLOR: Yeah, I would say from my conversations with Bill Lorenz that it's two or three months that they would be completed with the data collection. But I don't -- that's a question for Bill. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And of course any reports or recommendations would come back through this committee for our review. Thank you. Okay, good, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Next on our agenda is subcommittee reports. Land development regulations subcommittee. MR. DUANE: We are going to meet tomorrow at 3:30. Robert Duane again. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: I apologize, I missed an item. We'll get right back to you. I missed old business, Item C, update on technology enhancements. I apologize. MR. CAUTERO: No problem, Mr. Chairman. Ron is going to give you a brief update on that. MR. NINO: It's going to be very brief, because Bob -- I wasn't aware of this, that technology update would be one. We're getting into a rather elaborate scanning system. All of our documents coming into the office will be scanned and placed into an electronic mode so that -- and hopefully available on the Web site so that anybody coming into the customer services area will be able to bring up that information as well with staff. That will be a major accomplishment in terms of one, accessibility to the data that we have, and of course we're going to start with the new stuff and eventually work back and scan in Page 29 January 19, 2000 all of the old documents. Obviously that's going to solve two problems: One, make sure that we no longer lose records or can more readily access records. And as all of you know, that's been somewhat of a problem in terms of accessing records. And thirdly, it's going to free up an awful lot of space. And quite frankly, we're running out of space, as Vince knows only too well. The other technological introduction that we have of course is the establishment of the percanty (phonetic) system, or the development services module, which will bring an enhanced level of electronically recorded information on each parcel of land in Collier County. That system is in the process currently of being set up and we're training staff -- within the next three months we'll be in a training mode to deal with that enhanced level of electronic recording of what's happening on each property that's -- you know, every building permit, every activity, every SDP activity would be recorded. And it will not have at this point in time, however -- what am I trying to think of? It escapes my memory -- the geographics quoting system. At this point in time we won't have that. The GIS system, we won't have that level of enhancement to complement that system. But hopefully we're all working towards achieving that goal. That's about it. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Very good. MR. NINO: Bob would have taken at least 15 minutes more to explain that. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Before you go away, we have some questions. Mr. Savage. MR. SAVAGE: Ron, you were saying awhile ago about records. And I'm not an expert in the world of Enad (phonetic), et cetera, et cetera, but did I understand you to say that we could look into the records through our computer system, find what we need? MR. MR. MR. MR. NINO: That's where we're hoping to go. SAVAGE: Drawings, everything, we can do that. NINO: Correct. Correct. SAVAGE: Interesting. Page 30 January 19, 2000 MR. NINO: We'll be there. Probably a year, but we'll be there. MR. SAVAGE: See, I still have a crank phone, I just didn't know -- MR. PEEK: You needs some new batteries in it, too. MR. ABBOTT: Elsewhere as well. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you, Ron. Okay, now that we're finish with that item, I haven't skipped over anything else. Subcommittee reports. Mr. Duane? MR. DUANE: Yes, we have a meeting scheduled at 3:30 to -- tomorrow to discuss two items pertaining to parking and storage of certain vehicles, and also modify the definitions of commercial equipment. I'm going to hand out the document for tomorrow, which staff did not get to you, but Mr. Peek, you probably would like one. Mr. Master's would like one. I'll give you one. And would anyone else like one? Thank you. MR. SAVAGE: As long as you have three or four extra, Bob, I'll take one. I need a little bit more paper. MR. DUANE: No further report. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you, Bob. MR. LONGO: I have a question. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Longo. MR. LONGO: Bob, what came out of that sign ordinance meeting, finally? MR. DUANE: Well, I think that's a complicated issue. I think there's going to be some amortizations of signs prior to '91. And we're still going to have modified pole signs but with boxes and covers on them. And I'd let Vince add to that. MR. CAUTERO: My staff in the back can probably answer those questions better than I can in terms of the logistics, because the changes were happening so rapidly. Ron and/or Michelle. But before they take the floor and talk about that, I will tell you that the board, at their hearing on -- January 5th -- January 5th was the final -- MR. NINO: January 11th. MR. CAUTERO: At the final public hearing they -- or even Page 3t January t9, 2000 before the final public hearing, they asked Michelle Arnold to come back with information regarding how many staff members it would take to perform the task at hand that they had in mind, so we talked as a group about that, and we had to make some guesses or some educated guesses as to what the board was going to do, and the board was changing things on the fly. But finally we were able to come up with a recommendation that was palatable to them. And the board authorized, based on the sign amendments that they made, which you'll hear about in a second, they authorized the hiring of three new staff members in the Code Enforcement Department to work solely on sign enforcement. MR. NINO: January the 5th was the formal public hearing date for Land Development Code amendments. That meeting was continued to January the 11th, specifically for the purposes of taking up discussions of amendments to the sign ordinance. The board at the January 5th meeting in principle adopted all the other land development code amendments that you all looked at and all recommended. That continued discussion on the 11th gave us specific marching orders, and that was that to basically concurring with the amendment in principle, the amendments that we walked into the January 5th meeting with; one, that we're going to deemphasize -- well, you know, our original recommendation was to remove pole signs and go to monument signs. We ended up with a hybrid. We're now going to have -- if there is a pole sign, 50 percent if it's under coverage is going to have to be covered. So to that extent, it's 50 percent of a monument sign. But the height has been reduced. The square footage of the copy material has been basically reduced, consistent with the original recommendation walking in. We're not doing anything with construction signs. That's taboo for the current time frame. However, that wasn't an amendment going in. It came up at the January 5th meeting. Amortization is -- we're still dealing with signs approved prior to 1991. Page 32 January 19, 2000 MS. ARNOLD: At three years. MR. NINO: At three years. And signs approved after that and inconsistent have no moratorium relationship. However, if they exceed 50 percent reconstruction, they need to come into conformance. If they're blown down as a result of a hurricane, they need to come into conformance. If they go to change copy, they need to come into conformance. So that was -- so we got a piece of the pie, basically, but not the entire pie. And I think that's basically the substance from the specifications, and then perhaps Michelle can deal with some of the code enforcement issues that came out of this discussion. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Question, Ron. What is the effective date for that ordinance now? So that -- MR. CAUTERO: I actually misspoke, but it's a fait accompli, but the board is going to approve it actually next -- MR. NINO: January 25th. MR. CAUTERO: -- January 25th. The effective date would be at least a week after that. But the board stated what they intend to do, they just need to know-- see it in final ordinance form and that would be next Tuesday. It's not officially a done deal. I apologize. But on January 11th they made what they believe to be their final decisions. MR. LONGO: But you have revised language that still has to be done? MR. CAUTERO: Yes. MR. LONGO: So that will not come back before this board? MR. CAUTERO: No. The board made it clear that this is their direction and they want those amendments in place. This committee of course is free to make any recommendational statement they wish, but the board was making changes. I was just jotting down the statements. The board heard this on December 15th, January 5th, January 11th and again January 25th. It was happening so fast. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Anderson. MR. ANDERSON: Ron, you didn't mention, and I read in the paper, so I will defer to whatever you say, that the grandfather status of sigtts after '91, they would lose that grandfather status Page 33 January 19, 2000 if the property were sold? MR. NINO: No. MR. ANDERSON: That's not the case? MR. NINO: That's not the case. They have three years to come into compliance. MR. ANDERSON: No, those after '91. MR. NINO: Oh, after 1991 they only get changed in the event signs -- there's an ownership, that ownership thing, that fell apart. MR. ANDERSON: Okay, good, thank you. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Chairman, just to be a little facetious, Ron, couldn't we just plant a tree in front of the sign? Excuse me, I didn't mean to say that. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Any other relative comments to this topic? Mr. Ellis. MR. ELLIS: David Ellis. If it's appropriate, the CBIA and ASCF and anybody else that's interested, Commissioner Carter asked us to take up the idea of the construction signs. The board had some concerns about signs on construction sites, that they were somewhat unorderly, and it was an initial proposal that there only be one sign on the site that listed all the subcontractors and such things, and that was problematic. And due to some good judgment by the board, they took that off, but they said they wanted to bring it out at the next cycle. So we're meeting together, the county construction groups, to try to come up with some kind of proposal. And when that gets done we'll bring it here and let you all run through it. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you very much. Would love to see it. Anything else on the land development regulation subcommittee? No. Construction code subcommittee. Mr. Longo. MR. LONGO.' Mr. Chairman, we did not meet, and we don't have a meeting scheduled. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Very good. MR. ABBOTT: We're waiting on the FEMA stuff. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Utility code. Mr. Peek? Page 34 January t9, 2000 MR. PEEK: There was no meeting in December. We have our next meeting scheduled for January the 27th at 3:00 p.m. And we have a workshop scheduled for January the 26th at -- to discuss the proposed changes to the drawings that accompany all of the typical drawings in the back of the utility ordinance. I believe that is scheduled from 1:00 p.m. till 5:00 p.m. at the Wilson-Miller conference room. The technical working group will meet. And anyone else that wishes is welcome to attend. That's the schedule for our meetings. But in general, while I have the floor, I'd like to ask, have we asked all of the current committee members to specify which committee they'd like to serve on for the year 2000? MR. CAUTERO: Not yet. MR. PEEK: And I want to put a plug in for the utility code committee. It needs membership from representation from this committee on it. But we do need to look at that overall requirement to have all of us identify which committees we're going to serve on for the year 2000. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: It's an excellent idea. And if it's not out of order, maybe we could do that right now. MR. CAUTERO: That's fine. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Do we have information on who is on what committee at this point? MR. SAVAGE: Tom Peek and Herb Savage are on the utility committee. And we need more people on that committee. MR. CAUTERO: I have a list from my previous ordinance. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Maybe we'll get that before we leave the room here today. MR. CAUTERO: Okay, I'll get that right away. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Excellent. Thanks very much. MR. JONES: Excuse me, Dalas. I have a question for the utility-- Brian Jones. What issues are before the utility committee? I see what the others are. MR. PEEK: What issues typically come before us? Primarily they have to do with the utility ordinance, and that usually consumes most of our time, looking at the utility ordinances and Page 35 January 19, 2000 trying to get them all -- keep them up to date, drawings up to date. Some issues come before that committee that relate to how development services review the authority that they have and the reviews that they conduct in keeping with the utility ordinances as plans go through for review by development services. And it serves as a coordinating unit between development services and the utility department. MR. JONES: Okay. MR. SAVAGE: And the last couple of years it's really improved in its cooperative area in the entire county staff. And I might also add, too, it talks about back flow preventers. My favorite subject. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And the other two subcommittees, construction code and land development regulation, are rather self-evident by their titles, construction code, anything relating -- most anything relating to vertical construction, construction-related activities. We got into the flood ordinance issues. MR. LONGO: It covers all your building ordinances, all the way through septic. MR. ABBOTT: Plus a couple things that kind of touch on construction. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Right. Lands development regulation. Most of the land development -- or all of the land development issues and the LDC proper. Excellent. Okay, next item for us, new business. Copyright plan sales. Well, maybe before we go on with that, since we have the list back, we can do this right now. MR. CAUTERO: Subcommittees. This is a list that we prepared the middle of last year. Of course, it has the old members names on it so we would take them off. And what I believe to be are the current times and dates of the week that the committees meet. So this is a good idea. We can get that changed right now and revise it for you. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: So let's see where were at. Land development regulations committee, third Thursday of Page 36 January 19, 2000 each month at 2:00 p.m. We have the members on here. Obviously there's some -- no longer members of the committee. But Cliff Barksdale, Brian Nelson, Bob Duane, Tom Peek, Herb Savage, Tom Masters, Sally Lam and Bruce Anderson. MR. DUANE: Time's 3:30, actually. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Time's 3:30? Cliff Barksdale is no longer on the committee. Brian -- MR. PEEK: Brian Nelson is no longer on the committee. MR. CAUTERO: He's no longer on the committee. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Bob Duane, you're still on there? MR. DUANE: Yes. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Tom is, of course. Herb is. Mr. Masters, you are, Sally and Bruce. Construction code, second Wednesday of each month, 3:00 p.m. Dino Longo, Charlie Abbott, Dalas Disney, Perry Peeples and David Correa. I think that time is right, 3:00. MR. ABBOTT: Um-hum. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Utility code, fourth Thursday of the month. 3:00 p.m.J.A. Rautio, Chris Dane, Herb Savage and Tom Peek. So we have actually only two members on utility code. So with our six new members, volunteers for particular interest in particular committees? MR. FOLEY: Yeah, I'd like to volunteer to go on the land development regulation committee. I have a member of my staff that's currently on the utility code committee, so I think it's appropriate that I'm on the land development regulation. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Very good. Thank you. MR. ESPINAR: Mr. Chairman, Marco Espinar. I'd like to volunteer for land development regulation. MR. SAVAGE: I might mention, ladies and gentlemen, that we need to have somebody on each committee. It's not very popular to be on the utility committee or -- but construction is excellent, and I think you should think about that. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We do need some assistance on the utility committee, if we could have some volunteers for that. MR. DILLON: Mr. Chairman, I'll volunteer to be on there. Page 37 January 19, 2000 CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you very much. MR. ABBOTT: I'll volunteer Brian Jones for the utility committee. MR. JONES: I'll bring my dust pan. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: All right, does that have everybody then? We have everybody on a committee? Anyone like to change the committee that they're a part of? MR. SAVAGE: May I ask a question, Mr. Chairman? Is everybody on this board on a committee? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: It would appear so. MR. CAUTERO: As long as all the -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And in some instances, more than one committee. So it appears as though we have everyone covered. Very good. Excellent. MR. CAUTERO: I'll have this revised for your next meeting. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you very much. Next item on the agenda, new business, copyright plan sales. And all of you have your package. You can see that that has my business letterhead on it and was generated by myself. I've had some concerns for quite a while, as outlined in the letter, about copyright plan sales from the records room. And I have provided some concerns and some -- a possible solution. In addition to that, I brought with me a little item that I happened to pick up from a fellow in my office that was just up at Kinko's to do some reproduction work, and we can pass those out. This is an item that they're using related to copyright and infringement. I give that to you just as additional information. And I wonder if maybe, Vince, since this has come to you, if maybe we could get some comment from yourself and maybe staff on the topic. I know there are some other issues related to plans availability and copyright that will relate to this -- MR. CAUTERO: Okay. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: -- and maybe we can have a discussion and possibly some action on this. MR. CAUTERO: Okay. Our customer supervisor, Johnnie Gebhardt is here. We've talked to legal staff about this, as well as having a lot of internal discussions, and I would turn it over to Page 38 January 19, 2000 Ed and Johnny to make a brief presentation on conversations we've had with legal staff. MS. GEBHARDT: Let me just pass out these -- to give you guys an idea. We've always operated under the premise that everything that we have in our office is a matter of public record. Obviously since all this came up, I've sent several memos to my staff in the records room, which has been tweaked again and again and again, because every time I send it to them, something else comes up, a new twist comes up. This is the latest revision. Feel free to offer any comments. What we're doing is requiring that for anyone who wants a copy of plans prepared by any design professional, they must have a letter on that design professional's letterhead, allowing them to procure a copy of those plans. In the case -- and I've tried to cover every -- every situation. And I know I've missed some. In the case of a deceased architect or engineer, you know, we have to rely on them to give us a notarized statement that they're going to use them for their own personal use and no other use. If you see something I've missed, please tell me and we'll try to address it. There is a sign posted in the records room advising the public that we will not make copies of plans prepared by design professionals for the public without that written authorization. MR. ABBOTT: What's the -- what's the significance of the 1990 date? MS. GEBHARDT: Well, at some point in time Tom Palmer's response was to my question what do we do with these old homes for homeowners -- and obviously this is only homeowners that can acquire those without the written authorization of the design professional. His point was who's going to come in and want to get a house plan for something built 10 years ago, you know, for any use other than their own personal. And the fact is that those homeowners are probably second or third or fourth homeowners down the line, and the odds of them having a set of plans for their house are probably slim. If I go out and buy a home that somebody's just had built, obviously Page 39 January t9, 2000 they're going to give me a set of the plans. But for subsequent homeowners, the odds of them giving that to us are slim to none. And we had to draw a line somewhere. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Longo has a question. MR. L. ONGO: On the first item, contractors who are in the process of constructing a building and need a new job site copy, those plans would be stamped then new job -- or ]ob site copy? MS. GEBHARDT: Yes. MR. LONGO: The second question -- I forgot my second question. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: When you think of it, Mr. Savage has a question. MR. SAVAGE: I just don't know that everyone on this advisory board understands why this was brought up, but I think it would be worthwhile for Dalas Disney to tell us. It's very interesting. I think you ought to hear this. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: I'd be happy to expand upon it. Mr. Longo has his question back here, before he forgets it. MR. LONGO: We're going to a new computer system and I saw you flinch. Are we going to keep the plans and submit plans and stuff out of the public database for access to the Web site? Ron was mentioning that we would be able to pull up a set of plans right on the site you can make a copy right off the computer. MR. CAUTERO-' I think that would depend on how we set that up. I mean, it's public information. But how that information is copied and downloaded is still problematic for it, and we would have to deal with that. If we're telling people that you can only receive a copy of this documented material, copyrighted material, and someone has to sign for it or show documentation MR. ABBOTT: Personal application. MR. CAUTERO: Something of that sort, yeah. I think we have that same issue, whether it's electronic or paper. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Chairman, that's the reason I asked Ron that question. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Right. Well, and Mr. Longo's right, I did Page 40 January 19, 2000 flinch. Because if it's available on a Web site and it's been scanned then you have no protection. If I can pull it up on my computer sitting at my office, then generally I can download an image of that, or at least print a screen, and I have it without any protection. So that causes me some pause for concern. The background and the problem with this particular issue that really has caused me to push a little harder with this is that plans for a small office complex that I designed suddenly showed up in Fort Myers, and I was not retained to be the architect of record for that project. How the individuals got the plans is an item that probably will come out in discovery with a federal infringement suit that I am ready to file. And these folks, certainly not unexpectedly, claim of course they had no idea that that building had been designed before in that manner. But they made the same minor discrepancies and errors in the plans that I did, so I'm pretty sure that I know where it came from. The question that again has not been answered is where did they acquire the documents. Now, they could have gotten it off of the job site, they could have walked right in here to our records room and acquired a copy of it without any questions asked. In fact, with Mr. Savage's knowledge on a project that I am working on that he originally designed, I walked into this room, as I outlined in the letter here, and I was not at all questioned and was able to acquire for the purchase cost of $5 a sheet the -- whatever, three bucks a sheet, I think it is -- the 11 by 17 copy that I am currently using and it works very well. MR. SAVAGE: For me he could have gotten it for 2.50. MR. ABBOTT: You have a trusting face. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: The problem that is created is that now I have absolutely no idea where these folks acquired these copies of my plans. If we had in place in this records room for Collier County some document where they paid for a particular purchase out of a particular permit file and I knew who purchased it, then I could prove my case and it would all be over with rather rapidly. And I think it would induce them to stop Page 41 January 19, 2000 using it and settle the case. Thus my proposed solution. I'm glad to hear that you're going to sign off on some documentation before they're sold, but the question I would have is where is that sign-off going to be kept so that it can be retrieved in an easy fashion? MS. GEBHARDT: In the permit files. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: In the permit files. MS. GEBHARDT: When a person comes in and requests a copy of the set of plans, I would anticipate that my staff would give them the permit number. When they call the design professional or go see the design professional to get authorization to pick up that copy of plans, I would hope that you would reference that permit number. That gives us something to tie it back to so that the receipt and the authorization letter go in the permit file. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Certainly that would work very good. MR. DUANE: Mr. Disney, do you make a distinction between architectural plans and site plans? I can understand how you don't want to see your good work pirated. On the other hand, you know, I and other members of the development community routinely get a copy of the site plan, if we're building a building next door, to see where the utilities tie in, where the access is. You know, someone looking to purchase a piece of property, you know, can I expand a building envelope into this area? Bruce Green and Associates may have done it 10 years ago, but are no longer in business. So I ask you, do you think that this record -- new procedures ought to apply to site development plans and architectural plans? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Well, I guess it's a question in my mind as to how you make that separation and who's making the determination. If it's a clerk standing at a desk that has no idea, it's just blue lines on a piece of paper, I wouldn't want to rely on that person to make that judgment. I don't know -- MR. DUANE: Whether something is a building permit, a set of architectural plans with a building permit or an SDP -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: I think that's clear. Certainly -- Page 42 January 19, 2000 MR. DUANE: That's my point. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: -- the SDP versus a building permit set of plans, I think that that's very clear, and certainly you could make a distinction there. I mean, that is -- that distinction is already made in our file rooms, isn't it? MR. DUANE: That would be a distinction I would want to make if I were going to support your motion. MS. GEBHARDT: The question has already come up and it's already been addressed, and the way I left it is that any plans for a building cannot be copied. So that -- because somebody wanted -- MR. DUANE: Vertical versus horizontal. MS. GEBHARDT: Yes. MR. JONES: I have a question on the -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We have one over here. Mr. Anderson. MR. ANDERSON: Do you have a written opinion from the county attorney on this matter? MS. GEBHARDT: Yes, I do. MR. ANDERSON: I'd like to be furnished with a copy. MR. ESPINAR: Mr. Chairman, just -- I do pull plans all the time, specifically like Bob was saying, looking at the neighboring jurisdictional lines or neighboring preserves, so -- you know, so I could abut my preserves or look at, you know, previous jurisdictional lines. So if I go to the records room, I don't mean to request somebody's permission to pull that -- MS. GEBHARDT: Not for a site plan, no. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Tom? MR. PEEK: Tom Peek. Bob, with regards to being able to pull a site plan, I'll tell you an instance that happened to us a few years back is someone came and got a copy of the site plan that we had prepared, and we found out about it when someone called us about to file a lawsuit against us because a sprinkler system, the irrigation sprinkler system didn't work correctly. And we happened to go back and look at our original, and we did not design an irrigation sprinkler system. It was not on that set of plans. Someone had come here and gotten a copy, taken it and Page 43 January 19, 2000 made a transparency of it and put their own irrigation system on it and then published it with our title block still on it. So I still have a concern about the free availability of site plans being pulled. MR. DUANE: Well, I guess we-- I appreciate your concern, and it seems that you may have had grounds for a civil action if someone deliberately modified plans over your seal. But you understand my problem, too. MR. PEEK: Oh, yeah. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Chairman -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Brian, did you have a question? I'm sorry. MR. JONES: Yes. Concern is if you have designed a -- let's say the shell building and another designer is going -- he needs to reference the information so that he can do a tenant improvement, does he then have to get -- maybe show the elevation just for showing the elevation because it's required in the architectural code? His intent is to design the interior. Does it present some snafus for that, the next guy, because you have to be able to sign off, and maybe you want a retainer for -- there's potential for abuse that way. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Your point is valid. And it's not necessarily successor architect under the Florida Statutes. Chapter 481 is the rules for architects. But certainly having knowledge of who is acquiring your plans I think is a valuable thing. I would not unduly personally withhold, for legitimate reasons, documents for those sorts of purposes. And as a matter of fact, I don't think that that even becomes a problem, because if you have a shell building, there's a permit set that is generally available to the building owner. Those portions are sold, those documents are generally a part of that, and it carries right on, with an acknowledgement, you can use portions of those documents, as long as they're not copied in whole and they're not for reproduction purposes of new buildings. That seems to me to be a separate issue from maybe coming down in wholesale taking away separate sets of plans. Page 44 January 19, 2000 But from a remodular, yeah, that would definitely be a concern. And I think that you should go back to the original author of those documents and let them know what's happening with it. John, you had a question? MR. KUCK: John Kuck. We had dealt with this issue before, Dalas, and the basic opinion we were getting from the attorneys was this public access in no way negates copyright. It doesn't matter if it's a civil drawing, and architectural drawing or a letter. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Right. I think the entire premise of this is to understand and know who is utilizing your documents out of those files, and have some record so that you can come back and trace -- in the example that Tom utilized, you wouldn't know who came back and acquired a copy of it. Even if they used a fictitious name, you have something to track it, someone made a copy of it. MR. LONGO: Why couldn't we look at -- I see a lot of problems with having to personally signing off. It could be a firm in California, logistics, time frames. Why couldn't we go along the routes that you're suggesting? It's covered by statute to start with, you have case law on your side if you have copyright infringements. Why couldn't we just have a sign-in, sign-out strictly? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Well, that's fine. And that's part of why I brought this. MR. LONGO'. With maybe photo I.D., so that the person coming to sign off can produce a photo I.D. that they are that person, and they sign off, you know, legitimately. MR. ABBOTT: Well, this is assuming all liabilities from it is what Kinko's is doing. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: This is correct. And they verify who is purchasing the plans, making -- in our instance, purchasing the plans. In this instance, making the copies. And Kinko's assumes no responsibility for it. But they have a record in the event that you need to come back to that. MR. LONGO: Well, that way it doesn't put a burden on the county for policing who should not be filing lawsuits for copyright Page 45 January 19, 2000 infringement. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Savage. MR. SAVAGE: It's very interesting, this last two weeks or week I had a telephone call from the records department, Johnnie, and they indicated to me, and I did not know this was so yet, but they no longer give these plans out at the request of a person coming to pay $5 a sheet. And so I talked to the person who was asking for it, who happens to be a unit owner of a condominium on Marco Island. And they wanted to make some revisions to that condominium unit. And so I said well, come into my office on Marco Island, I'll be glad to work it out with you as what you need. And it was very easily done. My only concern is old Herb Savage is still here, but Herb Savage some day 20 years from now isn't going to be here. Pardon me if I use the wrong number, but -- 20 years. But if that office, that originating office is no longer here, or even existing, that gets to be a problem and we have to look at that a little bit. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Well, that's why it seems to me again just perhaps the acknowledgement that the county is not -- Collier County is not endorsing the re-use and there's notification of copyright infringement and you have some record that is retrievable, seems to be fairly easy. And certainly from my point of view, that would satisfy the need. I bring this up only because it's an ongoing 'concern for me and -- I know there have been some revisions here, which I applaud. But it seems as though it might need this one additional staff. Mr. Dillon. MR. DILLON: William Dillon. I just wanted to reiterate Mr. Longo's suggestion, I think we just need a recordkeeping system so the courts will -- civil actions will take place, you just need a way to find out who's propagating, you know, the plans. Other than that, I think it's putting a little undue burden on the county and it's putting a little bit of undue burden on the person who's Page 46 January 19, 2000 actually requesting this plan, because there is potential for abuse in obtaining authorization of copies. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay, very good. Mr. Longo. MR. LONGO: I'll put this in the form of a motion, if you'd like me to. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Please. MR. LONGO: I'd like to make the motion that the memorandum that Johnnie has issued be revised to be stipulated that those who come in for copies or parts of copies of existing design professional drawings, including site plans and anything else designed by a professional, that they should produce photo I.D. and sign out what they are picking up, with cross-references like dates, permit numbers, legal descriptions, those type of things. It could be a very generic form setup that just simply they fill out with a photo I.D. and they have a permanent record. And to take a look at the electronic end of the things when our computer systems get up, as far as how that's going to be accessed. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: That's a motion. Do I hear a second? MR. MASTERS: I'll second that. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Second, Mr. Masters. Any other discussion, please? MR. SAVAGE: I'd like to ask Dino, when you say someone has to sign this form and so forth, that's for all buildings, isn't it, not just -- you said professionals. But I mean, a house doesn't require an architect, you know. And a designer isn't necessarily called a professional. And you'd still have to sign that form for those drawings for that house. MR. LONGO: You're right, you're right. I would amend that to include all buildings. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. You have amended your motion. Will you accept that on your second? MR. MASTERS: I'll second that amendment. I just want to make a clarification at the same time. Basically the biggest thing that we're changing from Johnnie's memorandum here is that we aren't going to require an approval, Page 47 January 19, 2000 correct? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We wouldn't require a letter to come back from -- if I'm understanding correctly, a letter to come back from the design professional. It would be a standardized form that people could acknowledge it -- MS. GEBHARDT: It goes in the file. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: -- and sign off, and it goes in the file at that point so it would be retrievable. MR. MASTERS: Does that make sense to staff? MS. GEBHARDT: Does to me, if it's what you guys want. We're trying to please you. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Peek, and then we'll go to Mr. Kuck. MR. PEEK: I have a question of Johnnie. Having drafted your existing memorandum to your records staff, based on the county attorney's opinion, can you change that without going back to the county attorney? MR. CAUTERO: Mr. Peek brings up a good question. And with your indulgence, if I may ask my question at this point. I was going to ask the question before you voted. The work -- or the information that we bring to you usually falls into one of three categories; and this is one of the very rare ones. Usually we bring information to you and one of two things happens: You make a recommendation to the board because you serve the board. You're an advisory committee to the Board of County Commissioners. Second, we bring things to you that we ask for your blessing on or things that we're about to do or things that we'd like to do, and you say yes or no, we think that's a good idea or a bad idea. And if you say it's a bad idea, then we take sometimes other action or we drop it, depending on the immediacy of it. This is the third area, which is the gray area. Where you're asking us to do something that is not -- that we don't have to go to the Board of County Commissioners for, it's an administrative issue. So -- and you're free to make any recommendation you wish, and we welcome that, because you're giving us advice here. Page 48 January 19, 2000 Mr. Peek's question is similar to my question to you, or my comment. Once you make a recommendation on what you'd like to see, we're going to have to discuss it as a staff to determine how feasible it is. And secondly, we may have to go back to legal, since Mr. Palmer, the assistant county attorney, who handles building department matters, has already rendered an opinion. Third, if it's something that requires action that I don't have the ability to make, which I don't think this does, I may have to even go up the ladder to my boss or the county commissioners. So I'm glad Mr. Peek asked my question. I was going to ask a similar one in a few moments. So please, by all means, tell us what you'd like, and then we'd have to take the appropriate action and come back to you. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Sure. Well, in the event that you have a problem with our final action here, I'm sure that you would bring it back to us. MR. CAUTERO: Absolutely. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And your implementation otherwise through administrative process would simply occur from our recommendation. MR. CAUTERO: That's correct. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Very good. Question, Mr. Kuck. MR. KUCK: Two things. I think it's not just -- it's whatever material is turned in carries a copyright, if it was not produced by this facility. And number two, the reason Kinko's has you sign that sheet is it's a waiver protecting them. If the county is making copies, I think you want to have a release. Not just record of just signing, but a waiver stating that you are not infringing or violating any copyright. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: That's a good point. MR. KUCK: I mean, the reason they sign this is because Kinko's got sued by a design professional when he found out his plans were being copied by a homeowner, and they were building his house multiple times in a development. That's where this Page 49 January 19, 2000 sheet developed. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Right, right. Well, this sheet also comes from -- I know their relocation of their large format copier now was no longer behind the copier, it's out for public use, so you could just walk in and use it and no one questions you any longer. So they've gotten around that in a number of ways. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Chairman, Herb Savage. I just think the strangest story I've heard all afternoon was the one that Tom Peek told, when -- their drawings, their title block and somebody made all the revisions. I think that's great. That's a wonderful story. MR. PEEK: It's a wonderful story, but it wasn't a wonderful experience. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: It iljustrates exactly why we need these controls. Exactly why. Mr. Anderson? MR. ANDERSON: Was inquiry made to other local governments in Florida about the conflict between copyright laws and the state's public record laws and how they handle it? And why are we reinventing the wheel and potentially exposing ourselves? MS. GEBHARDT: No. I simply made a request of the attorney's office for an opinion on copyrighted material. MR. ANDERSON: And you don't know whether he made any inquiry? MS. GEBHARDT: No. I think he, you know, obviously looked under Florida statutes and said no, everything's considered copyrighted. MR. ABBOTT: I would ask a bigger county. Because they've had it before. You know they have. MR. ANDERSON: I'm sure. MR. ABBOTT: Broward or somebody. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: It would seem appropriate. And I've outlined in my letter here in Fort Myers, Lee County Development Services, they stopped me from getting copies of plans until I would get a letter of authorization from the Page 50 January 19, 2000 document author. So they do not just hand out -- they make it available, you can look at it all day long. Makes no difference to them. But they will not copy it without a letter from the document author. One more, and then we'll call the question. MR. LONGO: I'm going to withdraw my motion. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: You're going to withdraw your motion? MR. LONGO.' I'll restate it. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Withdrawing the motion. I guess we -- I'm not sure what the parliamentary procedures MR. CAUTERO: Withdraw the second? MR. SAVAGE: You're not allowed to withdraw it. You have to act on it. You're not allowed to withdraw once it's been seconded. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: All right, you want to make a motion to reflect another comment? MR. LONGO: I'd like to make a comment that it be in the form of a release and information form then. That was the gist of my motion is what I was trying to get to. Just I agree with John Kuck, that there should be some release of liability. And Vince has brought up the fact that they are copyrighted materials, per se. So the motion I made may not pertain to what we're asking Johnnie to do, but it may in the form of a release and information form. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Chairman, is it in order that I make a motion to refer this matter to staff and to ask them to come back to us with a recommendation so that it meets all matters of this office? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: All right, very good. Well, we've got a second motion on the floor now. Is there a second to that? MR. SAVAGE: That is in order, and that's the best thing to do. Wouldn't you think so, Vince? You have to sort of look at it a little bit and come back to us. MR. CAUTERO: I'm going to come back to it anyway. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Your motion dies for lack of second. Page 51 January 19, 2000 We're going to call the question on the first motion. All those in favor, say aye. All those opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. MR. SAVAGE: And you were going to withdraw it. MR. ABBOTT: No, he modified it to a degree there. This is merely discussing it. We still have another shot on it when we get some more answers. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay, very good. That puts that issue to end. We'll move to the second one, which is -- MR. ANDERSON: Could we take up Item C? We have a staff member who's been waiting around here, and we usually try to get them in and out of here. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We can jump ahead to Item C, proposed fee schedule amendment. MS. ARNOLD: This executive summary is in your packet, I believe. MR. ABBOTT: Exhibit A, last page. MS. ARNOLD: And this item was brought before you last year. You actually heard the proposed revisions to the rental registration ordinance, and this is implementing fee change. I don't -- for the new members, we have a program called rental registration. All the homes that had rented properties are required to register with our department. And we've modified the way the programs administered in that we made some enhancements. We -- there's one time of the year that the registration expire and have to be renewed. There's renewal notices that are sent on you, as opposed to last time it was all done on the honor system and it wasn't very effective. So with these enhancements that took place, we are requesting a fee increase from what was $10 for renewals and $15 for the initial registration to now $15 for initial and -- sorry, $30 for initial and 15 for renewal. MR. DUANE.' Move staff recommendation. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: I have a motion. Is there a second? Page 52 January 19, 2000 MR. FOLEY: I'll second it. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Second. Discussion? MR. LONGO: Mr. Anderson. MR. ANDERSON: Michelle, The original purpose of this ordinance was to facilitate you notifying people so you could perfect liens on their property when they did not comply with the notices of violation. MS. ARNOLD: No, the original intent was to have better contact with property owners, because we found when we were -- we had a lot of out-of-town -- we have a lot of out-of-town property owners in this county and in Florida, and we spent most of our time, instead of enforcing the codes, trying to contact these property owners. It was very difficult to get ahold of some of these that have two and three addresses all over the world. And so this way, if we have a local contact, someone that we can contact immediately to let them know what the problem is and they can correct it more expeditiously than what we were doing before, it worked. That's the intent of it. So we can have someone local to get the problem addressed rather than spending motion of our time finding the property owner. MR. CAUTERO: If I can add to what Michelle said. What she is absolutely correct, but when I arrived in Collier County in June of '95, which effectuated this changed already been written, which was extremely more restrictive than what the board ended up with and I believe this committees voted it was unanimous to not move forward with that amendment. And that included inspection of the premises every time a tenant moved in and out. You can imagine what the real estate community's reaction was to that. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Abbot had a question. MR. ABBOTT: Usually when we accept any of these fees like for fire or whatever, we get an economic analysis of it like the how and why. We're doubling the fee. I don't know where it goes. It doesn't sound like much money, but I'd like to see a spreadsheet showing. MS. ARNOLD: Well, it costs -- we do -- all of our mailings by certified mail which and it costs three dollars alone just to put Page 53 January 19, 2000 those mailings out. On an annual basis. And what we're sending out in mailing alone doesn't -- is not covering the cost that we're MR. ABBOTT: need to see them. to be justified in it. I understand there's costs involved. We just I think it's only that bites people that we have MR. LONGO: The language certificates are good for one year. And then the next statement says all expire on January 1st. They don't run from inception date for one year, so if they get it in May, it expires in August. MS. ARNOLD: Right. MR. LONGO: So it's not really good for one year. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And you'd come in then, Michelle, to renewal of $15 -- MS. ARNOLD: Right. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: -- is that correct? MS. ARNOLD: Yes. It's an annual -- MR. CAUTERO: Should be up to one year. Thank you. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Peek. MR. PEEK: Can the ordinance be written to require only those property owners who live outside of the county to be required or ordered to comply with this, as opposed to having a blanket coverage? Because there are thousands of rental property owners that live in this county, I'm one of them. And my name's on a tax role and I can be found any time I need to be found. Why should I have to go through another layer of government to have enforcement action and raise the rates to enforce that enforcement action? MS. ARNOLD: You'd have to come back with another amendment, because this is not an amendment. MR. CAUTERO: Yes. MR. PEEK: Can we have it apply only to the out-of-county property owners? MR. CAUTERO: Yes, it can, and you're free to make that recommendation that we carry that for you. MR. PEEK: I'll make such a recommendation. MR. DUANE: I'll accept it. Page 54 January 19, 2000 MR. FOLEY: I'll accept it as well. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Here we are. And what's a difference between a mobile home and mobile home park? MS. ARNOLD: A mobile home is an individual unit, and a mobile home park is multiple units in a park setting. MR. ANDERSON: Okay. MR. ABBOTT: That is a big issue? I mean, the difference between the two. Or do you have some that are just mobile home parks? MS. ARNOLD: Some parks have a whole -- you know, there's a multiple, and there's one agent that represents the entire park, and they list all the units that are being rented in that. But for the most part, there are individual parks that are being rented. It's just for clarification purposes, if somebody has a question. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. No other comments, questions. MR. CAUTERO: I had a question on the motion. I thought I heard Mr. Duane recommend -- excuse me, the motion was to approve the staff recommendation was to approve exclude the local residents from the requirements that have? Regarding Mr. Peek's issue that he brought up, yes, we would bring that forward to the board. But I also heard Mr. Abbot talk about more analysis being done. Is it the committee's wish to let us move forward with it and then bring you that analysis, or do you want us to hold back on this while we bring you the analysis? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Is there a consensus on that? MR. ABBOTT: I'd like to see the analysis. We make everybody else do it. And it's not hard to do. I'm sure she can do it in a couple hours. MR. CAUTERO: I just want to be sure. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: So we'll let that come back to us, and we'll finalize this with another review then. So we've got a motion to accept -- MR. CAUTERO: I just wanted to know what you want. I'm not trying to change what you said. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Couple comments to that. Is there a consensus to bring it back to review the -- Page 55 January 19, 2000 MR. LONGO: Well, isn't that a requirement of the executive summary to have-- I mean -- MR. CAUTERO: The executive summary would have to contain that information. But I only bring it up because I thought I heard Mr. Abbott say that he wanted to see that. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: A valid point. Do we maybe want to table this issue until next meeting so we can have -- MR. ABBOTT: Is there a schedule that you need this? I mean, have you already set up a timetable to go before the board? MS. ARNOLD: No. MR. ABBOTT: All right, well, then next month. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: So we can table this to next month, and we can see all of the information, and we'll look at it at that point. Again, procedure-wise, do we do anything with the motion and the second that we have on the table? Do we want to approve it, pending acceptable review of that information? MR. PEEK: Well, I'd like to look at it. Particularly I think my amendment to the motion carried with it an amendment to the ordinance to have it apply to non-resident owners only. MR. ABBOTT: Why don't you -- everybody's heard all this. Why don't you table the entire thing until next month? MR. SAVAGE: You don't table something -- MR. ABBOTT: Okay. MR. SAVAGE: -- you postpone it, please. MR. ABBOTT: Well, we could postpone it. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Fine, postpone it, or we can vote it up or down. MR. ABBOTT: Under the table. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Somebody assist me procedurally here. MR. CAUTERO: We'll put it on your -- we'll postpone it until the next agenda. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Postpone it till next meeting and look at it with some additional data at that point. Okay? All right, where are we on the agenda? MR. CAUTERO: Mr. Chairman, we're to the item -- Page 56 January 19, 2000 CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Item B. MR. CAUTERO: Item 6-B. However, before you get into that item, at the beginning of the meeting, I was remiss in not asking to you formally change your agenda. I had a couple of updates I wanted to give you, and I thought I would do that at the end of the meeting. I wanted to get Mr. Tomasello going as soon as possible. We had a full crowd here today. I do have one other staff member here, Mr. Phil Tindall, our impact fee coordinator. I'd like him to just briefly discuss what the board did on January 11th at their meeting regarding impact fees. Of course this committee made a recommendation. That recommendation was carried to the board and a letter was handed out to them. The board did adopt a new fee schedule for transportation impact fees. And we're here to talk about that briefly. And then I would recommend if you have no problem with it, finishing up your agenda. And I just have a couple of updates that I wanted to give you that I feel comfortable with under staff a announcements. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: That's fine. Why don't we go ahead with our--with Phil. MR. TINDALL: I'm sure most of you are familiar with our building block notices that go out to the building community whenever we have important bits of information that we need to -- if I could just kind of get you guys to help pass these out. If I could also ask someone to raise the screen for me and put down a few -- we're automated. Put down -- I've kind of outlined a few notes which kind of follows the order of the information on the document that's being handed out. But these are kind of the high points that I'd like to make clear in terms the new impact fee scheduling and all that goes along with that. First of all, as I'm sure you know, the board determined that they wanted to make it effective April 1st. And in terms of just the business impact, what that means is it's effective for permits that are applied for as of April 1st or later. In other words, if you Page 57 January 19, 2000 want to try to get a permit in, that on the old impact fee schedule, then you would need to have the application turned in by March 31st or earlier, okay. So the date in which the permit is applied for is the date in which the impact -- the applicable impact fee schedule will apply to that permit. Some of the main points, as far as things that are being changed, as I'm sure most of you know, for single-family homes, one thing that is being changed is that there are now three tiers for determining which single-family homes rate applies. The last two pages on your handout are the actual fee schedules. The first item being scheduled for single-family homes. As you know, it's -- the applicable rate will depend upon the square footage. And just for clarification, that is square footage under air, okay. So, for example, if it's a single-family home with a garage, the garage space would not apply unless of course it's air conditioned. So just for clarification there. For condominiums, we used to have only one rate. Now we have two. And they're basically condominiums which are one and two stories will have one rate and what we call high-rise condominiums, which is three or more stories will have another rate. Just in general, for our process and procedures, we have had -- and if you can just kind of help, you know, to communicate some of this to your peers out there in the building community -- is we occasionally have a problem with assessing the wrong rate for a condominium because -- and this is true now with the current schedule, and we're concerned with maybe the future schedule as well in that sometimes we get plans and they indicate that it's a multi-family type of a construction, but it doesn't specify that it's a condominium. And then later on we have to process refunds, because we find out that what's being constructed is not indicated on the plans anymore, it's actually condominium. That's important to you because a condominium is a lower rate than a regular multi-family, like an apartment complex, so it's -- when we get the plans in and the permit applications, it's helpful to us, staff, if it's specified somehow that it's Page 58 January 19, 2000 condominium. There's a new category for resort hotel. I explain in the text there what the difference is between the resort hotel and a conventional hotel. But probably the most important difference to you is that a resort hotel has a lower rate than a regular hotel. For golf courses, it's going to be -- the fees are going to be assessed now per 18 holes instead of per acre, as it has been over the past several years. There are some things that you'll see in the fee schedule that has been built into it to try to lessen the sticker shock that some people have been experiencing whenever they've been doing build-outs for shell buildings and also for changes in land use. We see this particularly as to restaurants. Whenever somebody takes an existing retail shell building and then they build out part of it as a restaurant, we have to assess the impact fee at the restaurant -- well, at the restaurant rate less the prior -- the rate for the prior retail use. And that's quite a big difference. So people are often surprised with an impact fee they weren't expecting. This is also true with build-outs. And typically like with some of the industrial type uses, such as industrial manufacturing warehousing, we've combined those all into a general industrial land use. And the purpose of that is to help reduce some of that, as I said, sticker shock that some people are experiencing when they do some of the build-out projects, because oftentimes it -- there's kind of a cloudy differential in determining what the -- when the original shell building is constructed, what the actual land use is, because it's built as a shell building with the intent of having a little bit of flexibility. So then when it's built out, it -- you know, any number of different types of tenants could use the facility. Oftentimes we end up -- for those build-outs for those industrial type facilities, we have to assess an impact fee on the differential, on the margin for the build-out permits. What we've done is we've combined those manufacturing, industrial and warehousing type categories into a general Page 59 January 19, 2000 industrial category, just to kind of, you know, lessen that effect on the build-out type projects. Which is not to say that you can't request an alternative fee calculation if you're building something for a shell building and, you know, you feel very strongly it should be assessed as a warehouse. Which of course would come -- would ultimately be a lesser rate. The problem is ultimately subsequent to that, if there's a change in the land use or a tenant built out something and it turns out to be a more industrial type purpose later on, then we have to do basically what we see a lot going on now, which is assessing an impact fee to make up the difference. So we're trying to lessen a lot of that effect in general with some of the things we're doing in the fee schedule. We have two new categories: Specialty retail and business park, which are explained in the text. These are uses that are multiple uses within a large construction project, which take into account the number of different land uses, including restaurants, which will be included in that fee. And whenever there was a build-out or a change in land use within that specific construction, we would not need to charge a -- you know, an additional impact fee later on. And that's the benefit of having those two new land use categories and the fee schedule. MR. ABBOTT: But specialty retail is basically double. MR. TINDALL: Right. That's because it takes into account the fact that you can have a number of different land uses within that project, and subsequently there would not be any additional impact fees charged on build-outs like for a restaurant, for example, or for land use changes later on. MR. ABBOTT: But what would be the difference, though, between saying you were retail and small or you were a specialty retail? MR. TINDALL: I'll give you an example. Say you didn't want it. You know, you submit a permit application with the plans and everything. You don't want to call it a specialty retail facility. MR. ABBOTT: Absolutely not. But I go do that first in the back. MR. TINDALL: Right. So what happens, you call it a retail Page 60 January 19, 2000 facility and we -- based upon what you provide us, we say we don't have enough information for us to insist that it's a specialty retail facility. There's a certain element of -- you know, where you can't tell for certain, so we would give you the benefit of the doubt and we would assess it as -- for the impact fees as a specialty -- I'm sorry, as a retail facility. Not a specialty, but a regular retail facility, which gives us the lower rate. Well what will happen later on, if there's a tenant build-out project and somebody wants to take part of that space and build it out as a restaurant, they're going to get -- the tenant's going to get charged the impact fee -- MR. ABBOTT: As well they ought. MR. TINDALL: -- for the restaurant. So like I said, what we're trying to do is provide a means so that -- for some of these subsequent build-out or land use change type projects of remodeling, et cetera. We have a means, if the community elects to use that, so we can avoid some of these unanticipated, unexpected impact fees being charged for those build-out projects. MR. ABBOTT: I hear what you're saying, but I think that -- because I've been one of the remodelers who've run into this kind of stuff. But I go in the back first and it's on my budget first. But Phoenix has been cured of building those buildings and getting some warehouse rate and they all end up being retail and everybody has that sticker shock. But I don't like the idea of specialty retail at double the amount of the next category. That -- you're asking for restaurant when restaurant's so different from CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Charlie, you have no choice at this point. This has already been enacted. MR. ABBOTT: It has? I'd just like that category -- MR. TINDALL: It's a new category. It was created to take into account multiple land uses to avoid subsequent impact fees in the future whenever build-out projects occur. It doesn't mean that we're going to -- you know, we're -- how this all works out after the fee schedule comes into place, it's all going to have to play out a little bit. Page 61 January 19, 2000 You know, I can't say that we're going to insist -- the description and the trip generation manual, the ITE trip generation manual, has very -- somewhat I guess you'd say specific parameters for what constitutes a specialty retail facility. So we're not going to necessarily tell you that's what it is if you're telling us no, we're building this, it's entirely retail and it's not going to have all these multiple uses. So, you know, we'll kind of work -- we'll have to deal with that as the permits come through. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And the other issues, where are we at on that list item? MR. TINDALL: We're about halfway down. Business park was a new category, which basically serves the same purpose. Some of the new land uses that were thrown in. I've explained -- it's on the second page, but basically what constitutes a business park. Some of the new land uses, movie theater, pharmacy/drug store with drive-thru, home improvement super store. There's going to be a new Home Depot that's going to be built on Airport Road here pretty soon. So that depending upon when the permit comes through, that new rate may apply. Some other categories like a Jiffy Lube type thing, tire stores and new and used auto sales are some of the land uses that have been added. MR. SAVAGE: Mr. Chairman. Is there anything you're asking us for? MR. TINDALL: This is totally informational for your purposes. I made quite a few copies of these, if you want to take extras with you. MR. JONES: Mr. Chairman, I have two questions. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Yes. MR. JONES: Question one: The permits submitted on or before April 1st and it's applied at the old rate; is that correct? MR. TINDALL: That's correct. Before, not on. MR. JONES: Okay, before. MR. TINDALL: Right. MR. JONES: And number two, you mentioned an alternative Page 62 January 19, 2000 rate. MR. TINDALL: If for example -- like for example, if you wanted -- you know, we don't -- we no longer have a warehouse rate, okay, because we incorporated the industrial, warehouse, manufacturing, all under general industrial fee rate on the schedule. If -- you of course by ordinance have the right to submit an alternative fee calculation, and I use that as an example. If you're building something, you're absolutely certain it's a warehouse, it's going to continue to be a warehouse, that it would be better assessed as a warehouse, you still have the right to submit an alternative fee calculation, okay, which of course we would have to take to the county commission, and that would basically be incorporated into our fee structure. MR. JONES: This is no long based on a trip study evaluation, as the old impact fees were? MR. TINDALL: Yes. I mean, the new fee schedule was -- our consultant created the new fee schedule based upon, you know, the trip information that's provided in the ITE generation document. MR. ABBOTT: That's the -- they build a shell and they would pay the lowest impact fee they possibly could, and then they would subdivide it, let's say, into nine units, and then those people were stuck with, you know, $10,000 impact fees. And so that was the sticker shock that somebody comes along, and they thought they bought something to just remodel into a retail, and next thing you know, you've got this horrific impact fee. So I came in about that several months ago over one, and it was a big hassle. So they want to do something to correct that upfront. MR. CAUTERO: That was an administrative issue, though, that's not an issue that the consultants -- MR. ABBOTT: I understand. But I think it makes good sense, that issue, as to why they were doing it. MR. TINDALL: If you read the ITE trip generation document, it explains in the description a number of these land use categories that often the distinction is quite blurred between some of these industrial type of land uses. So we're trying to, Page 63 January 19, 2000 from an administrative standpoint, you know, avoid a lot of confusion, especially since it oftentimes plays out differently when the build-out projects permits come through. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Very good. Thank you for -- Mr. Anderson has a question. MR. ANDERSON: Just one question about what -- there's a distinction in the amount of fees for a single-family detached home based on the size. Why is there not a similar distinction for multi-family, based upon the size? MR. TINDALL: Well, it is indirectly in that you can assume that something that's three to six stories is going to be greater in size than one to two stories. You don't see a whole lot more of variation in size of multi-family homes compared to single-family homes. MR. ANDERSON: You would if it was affordable housing. MR. CAUTERO: Correct, but would that not be covered under the provisions for deferrals that are in the ordinance for affordable housing? And this is yet to be discussed, the policy of the board on affordable housing. MR. ANDERSON: Deferral, but ultimately-- MR. CAUTERO: Payment. MR. ANDERSON: The Government's going to have its hand out, MR. CAUTERO: Unless the board makes a policy change, you're absolutely correct. MR. TINDALL: Right. I mean, it doesn't diminish the fact that we still have provisions for waivers and such for affordable housing that would still be applicable. But waivers are not available for rental housing. That's for purchase of affordable housing for home buyers. MR. CAUTERO: But those are issues that the board would have to take when the ordinance amendment documents are -- MR. TINDALL: Something else we're working on is we're preparing -- we're working with a consultant to prepare a consolidated ordinance that incorporates all the eight different impact fees. And we're also at the same time working on our specific language in each of the different areas to include the Page 64 January 19, 2000 road impact fees. And we are working on updating our language for exemptions, waivers, deferrals, things like that, you know, at the staff level right now, so that you'll have some opportunity for public comment on that in a couple of months when we go to the board with changes to the actual ordinance language. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you for the update. We appreciate it. MR. ABBOTT: Are the other impact fees available to us? MR. TINDALL: I can get you that. We have -- in the customer service area, we have that available for handing out. MR. ABBOTT: Is it on the Internet? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Charlie, can we handle that after the meeting? I'd appreciate it. Last item under new business was Item B, which we passed over, fixed term architectural services. This just so happened that this also was a letter from me, but I was asked to refer this to Development Services Advisory Committee here. Vince, would you like to do comment on this? MR. CAUTERO: Sure, I'll make an opening remark. As the chairman indicated, he and I had a discussion on this and a letter came in in December. An issue that I thought that would be handled by this committee or that the committee might be interested in making a recommendation to the board, and then I could certainly work through the staff members that would be responsible. It's an item that really deals with the purchasing department, dealing with, as Mr. Disney said, fixed term architectural services. We talked about some issues that he felt were important. He had identified them on Page 2 of the letter. And we felt it was the probably the best course of action, or it would be an acceptable course of action, at the very least, for you to discuss the item and see if there was any interest on the committee's part to make a recommendation to the board. If that were the case, then I'd send it to the purchasing department and work with them to that regard. You have the letter in front of you. And I would just open it up for questions of myself or Dalas on that issue. Page 65 January 19, 2000 CHAIRMAN DISNEY: I would say, just in a preliminary comment here, that while this addresses fixed term architectural services, it would not necessarily be limited to -- or should not be limited to only the architectural services, but I think all of the fixed term services that the county employs. And it is in brief simply to apply the statutes for selections in an equitable distribution of the work. Mr. Anderson had a question. MR. ANDERSON: Dalas, I think you have a legitimate gripe, and I understand you directing it to this forum, but I don't think this is the place for it. Vince, what -- among your many and varied responsibilities, what responsibility do you have in your role for the county of selecting architectural firms to do work for the county? MR. CAUTERO: I don't have any. The only say I would have for the hiring of an architectural firm or any firm would be only if my division was initiating that hiring for a project. Like Mr. Tomasello, for example, a professional engineer, earlier today. I had some say in that. But that's it. As far as policies, procedures, protocols, that's strictly the purchasing department's responsibility. Only if I believed an architect should be hired to perform a function for this division, or if by directed by the board, then I would recommend firms to be hired. But I would have no say in the protocols. But personally no, I wouldn't have -- MR. ABBOTT: How was this routed to you from Dalas? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Well, as I outlined in the beginning of the letter, I spoke about this issue a number of times to a variety of people, most lately, two of the County Commissioners, and I was referred back to Vince. And they -- both of the commissioners felt that it should come to this committee first. Now, it seemed to me also to be a purchasing issue, and probably needed to go to that department. And in speaking with Vince about this prior to dropping off this letter, I felt that this probably should just be routed out to purchasing and then I can -- I or Vince or a combination of us can simply follow up on it. MR. CAUTERO: I steered Dallas this way as well, because I fell that since you make recommendations to the board, it Page 66 January 19, 2000 doesn't necessarily have to come through my division or specific department here, it can go through purchasing or another department. And that was really the call I made. And I didn't see the harm in bringing it forward to see if the committee wanted to entertain a recommendation. And if you do want to entertain some kind of a recommendation at all, then I'd be happy to send that over to purchasing for then submission to the board. MR. LONGO: Does this really fall under the guise of Development Services Advisory Committee? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: I think it's marginal, at best. MR. CAUTERO: I think Mr. Peek is saying no. MR. PEEK: I don't think it does. And in follow-up just to get it off the table, I move that we refer it to the purchasing department. MR. ABBOTT: Let me air one little comment about this, because Dalas and I did the same. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Just there's a motion. Do we have a second? MR. MASTERS: Second. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We've got a second for discussion. Charlie. MR. ABBOTT: I was asked by the library and the museum to come and take a look at some of the remodeling projects. And I went through this incredible rigmarole with purchasing that they only open up entertaining new contractors every two or three years, and they select the same group year after year, and never change it. And they never checked my references. And then they said -- they reported to the chairman of the county commission that, quote, my references weren't suitable. I only did half a million dollars for the tax collector and the property appraiser and the clerk of the court, I can't imagine what we do for office remodels and such that I couldn't be suitable. And they gave me such incredible runaround. And I just told them, just remember, long memories come back to really bite you. And so I'm glad to see Dalas doing this. Boy, I'll raise the flag in a heartbeat, because the museum and Page 67 January 19, 2000 the library have asked me again, because they're so disgusted. There's nine people applied. The lowest grade given was a 92 out of 100 points. Out of the nine customers, in my argument -- or the nine firms I said why wouldn't you have nine on your list? Increased competition would be better for you. And they said no, we're going to insist on our standard of selecting three. And eventually they went to four. But when you call one of the four, you can't get them for six to eight weeks to even come and look at it, much less give you a price. So I just think it's the most ridiculous and short-sighted policy yet. Nine bidders would be far better. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Foley? MR. FOLEY: Yeah, I'm sensitive to the whole topic as well, because our firm oftentimes tries to go for both the professional engineering and also the professional surveying end. And I'd like to at least be a bird on a limb and work with you outside this committee, but I too believe that it's probably not in the best interest of this group to pursue in this forum. MR. SAVAGE: Call the question. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: With that, we'll call the question. All those in favor of the motion? Opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN DISNEY: It passes unanimously. Thank you. Only other item on the agenda is committee member comments. Any comments? Mr. Savage. MR. SAVAGE: You knew good and well you'd have one from me, CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We always do. MR. SAVAGE: Last month our director was not here. And what I said last month, I'll say again today. I'm a great believer in local services, and I would hope that he rethinks, if he has not thought about it already, that he would rethink and would request an interview with those who will make the decision that he become the administrator for Collier County. He's done a fabulous job. Page 68 January 19, 2000 And I'm not doing this to make you like Herb Savage. I don't really care about that. But I think you've done a great job, and we ought to have somebody locally do the administration for the county; not go to Georgia or New York or someplace else. And I make that comment. I hope that you'll think about that a little bit. MR. CAUTERO: Thank you. MR. SAVAGE: I know there's been some remarks about whether you would or you wouldn't, but I hope you do think about it. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Peek? MR. PEEK: Question. In November, we asked for legal opinion concerning whether or not we were required to file a financial disclosure form one. And I missed the December meeting, and if the answer came then, I apologize. If it didn't, the question's on the table. MR. CAUTERO: I apologize, too, since I wasn't at your last meeting earlier this month. I'm still awaiting to receive that opinion from the legal office. However, I did talk to Ramiro Manalich, the assistant county attorney, and he told me that he thought you were going to have to do that, you were going to have to file it -- MR. SAVAGE: Well, the county attorney is very late on things, and he can continue to be late, as far as I'm concerned. MR. ANDERSON: Well, I think in the future we should write a request for Johnnie Gebhardt. MR. ABBOTT: She got an answer, you damn right. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Very good. Other questions, or other member comments? MR. JONES: Motion to adjourn. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Motion to adjourn. MR. LONGO: Second. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: All those in favor? (Unanimous vote of ayes.} CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you very much. MR. SAVAGE: You're supposed to ask those opposed. I was going to vote no. Page 69 January 19, 2000 CHAIRMAN DISNEY: No, we're not going to oppose an adjournment. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 5:10 p.m. DEVELOPMENT SERVICES ADVISORY COMMITTEE DALAS DISNEY, CHAIRMAN Page 70