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BCC Minutes 10/30/1992 WSTRATEGIC PLANNING WORKSHOP October 30, 1992 Stenographic reporting by: Jacquelyn D. McMiller Deputy Official Court Reporter Collier County Courthouse Naples, FL 33962 APPEARANCES ** COMMISIONERS: Michael Volpe - Max Hasse - Tim Constantine - John Norris - Chairman Commissioner Commissioner Elect Commissioner Elect ALSO PRESENT: Nell Dorrill - Leo Ochs - Frank Brutt - Dave Davenport - Paul Brigham - Jennifer Edwards - Anthony DeBlasio County Manager Administrative Services Community Development Administrator Technical Service, Community Development Court Administrator Growth Planning 2 OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 PROCEEDINGS MR. DORRILL: We have an agenda with a short break and we'll do all that we can do today. The fact that there are only two commissioners that's of no Darticular consequence. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: When the manager and I discussed continuing with our strategic Dlan I think we consider this to be of the more imDortant asDects of what it is that we do as a board of county commissioners and we knew that there were a number of, we knew that Commissioner Elect Norris would be here. We knew that Tim Constantine Mr. DiBlasio. So, that I think this is imDortant for the staff and, I think, imDortant to those of you who will DerhaDs be involved during the process during 1992 and 1993. So, I view it as being a very imDortant meeting this morning and I know that the Staff has worked hard in develoDing their goals, objectives and measurables for .L3 the year. So, why don't we begin. ~ MR. DORRILL: The first division we want to do cf) this morning is administrative services. Does everybody have a cody of the document that we're working out of. It appears so. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: MR. DORRILL: correct? MR. OCHS: Yes. We're using the same book. My page number is six, Leo, is that MR. DORRILL: For those of you that may not know, Leo Ochs is Division Administrator for Administrative Services which include those internal support agencies and county government personnel, human resources, risk management, purchasing, facility and fleet management to our internal management information. It's sort of a joint venture data processing system that we have with the clerk. So, Leo I'll turn it over to you and let you walk the commission through the primary goals and let the board, don't hesitate to stop us and ask questions and generate some discussions. If not, we'll sort of move through these. MR. OCHS: Good morning everyone. AdministrativecD Services Division has identified three priority goals for the current fiscal year. The first one that you see, has to do with continuing to improve or refine our risk OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 management operation with focus on our group medical benefit program and our loss control program. In terms of a specific performance indicators which we have five listed in this particular goal. The first one has to do with expanding the scope of services and reducing or fixed program cost and brokerage of our property and casualty insurance programs. When I talk about casualty insurance I mean not only our civil liability but our automobile liability and our flood insurance coverages and our specialty coverages, such as all the aircraft coverages for our helicopters. Typically, when you go out to brokerage services for these types of coverages the brokerage fee is predicated on some percentage or commission. This one happens to have already been concluded. We have it this for October when we put the plan originally together ~ before was a goal for this first month of the year which~ has been accomplished, we went ahead and went out with cD NRP to evaluate the brokerage proposals on a combined property and casualty program providing coverage for all the assets in the county and as a result of looking for a flat rate payment to brokers instead of the traditional OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 6 commission basis we saved about $12,000.00 over what we would have paid if we went on a commission basis. Also again in terms of expanding the scope of this particular contract we used to have a series of brokers placing specialty coverages as well as property and casualty. We've gone through some economy scales, we've gone through the Master RFP approach and we want to go through the selection process and get better service. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Neil, is it necessary to go through a broker as opposed to dealing directly with the company. MR. OCHS: That's the same question I asked my risk management director and yes, it is. A lot of the excess carriers, typically, we go through Lords of London for our property and casualty excess layers. They only work through brokerage services. So, you need to, particularly if you're going with London, you only have a couple of major brokerage companies that are able to get~ to that market directly. So, we look for ways to avoid --~ using brokers when we don't have to but yes, commissioner, we do need to use brokers on this COMMISSIONER HASSE: program.On Is that a ruling of their's. OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES FL 33962 ....... , I · iii II IIII I IIII I I II I IIIII III IIIIII I 7 MR. OCHS: Yes, they work through the brokers that they have established business relationships with and they don't work directly with the business entity Darticularly on our large LA type Drograms where we have a self insured for all of your major lines of coverage DroDerty casualty auto in addition to medical programs and workers comDensation. In fact, we are uD own insurance comDany uD to certain level. In our case we have loss fundage establish what that means we Day Der claim to certainly limit then layers of excess or rein insurance kicks in. That gives county the benefit of retaining that money in our bank accounts earning it interests in I be stayed trading dollars uD front. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: My understanding was flat fee as a he is to Dercentage in the area eighty thousand dollars? MR. OCHS: Leasing about $75,000.00. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: What's the total Dremiums that .3 we're Daying for insurance in excess where we're not self~ insured. CD MR. OCHS: . In our, what we call our an ALA program, we have the limit with Lords. This gets kind of details, but we have our first layer of excess is up to OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, million dollar on property. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I was looking for the coverage. was looking for generally what are the premiums if you have ballpark if anything last year for insurance premiums for the various types of insurance in place. looked at $400,000.00 premium package. MR. OCHS: We're looking for I can give you fixed cost that includes premiums and brokerage fees paid for We our program about $743,000.00. Again that includes all our property casualty programs. So our brokerage fee of about sixty, seventy thousand dollars we pay replacement of all those coverages. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: have an separate arrangement for their insurance for that office. MR. OCHS: They have their own police indemnity protection, police liability, they cover. We obviously insure all of their facilities for general liability and property damage but they carry their own police professional liability. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: How about vehicles? CD MR. OCHS: They also cover their own vehicles. Does the sheriff's office are they 9 MR. DORRILL: They do that through the Florida Sheriff's Association and it is in that particular interest fairly competitive. COMMISSIONER HASSE: What about the risk of the constitutional officers? MR. OCHS: We provide that also. MR. DORRILL: This might be a good opportunity to say that we have been advised that the sheriff is evaluating Dulling out of our group health system, his rationale being for the most Dart his work force is a younger work force and less susceptible to big, large cancer claims or heart attacks and these types of these things and he's in process of taking bids, as I understand it. MR. OCHS: He's evaluating doing that. That's what I've been told. MR. DORRILL: Our impression is being totally self-insured. There is more in this for the community if we all stick together and we spread the various risks. For example, if the sheriff were to choose to leave just the group health program and do his own group health program we might want to evaluate whether or not we OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 I II II IIII I II ......... l il II II .... II II III 10 should leave him in the worker's comp program because, quite frankly, law enforcement people are more apt to file worker's comp claims in our community than any other agency. So, we're sort of helping cover what would be very high worker's comp premiums for the sheriff in return for which he frankly sort of helps cover and hold down the overall cost of the group health program. COMMISSIONER HASSE: Yeah, but that won't be so if he doesn't at least talk about it. MR. DORRILL: We had one worker's comp claim from the sheriff's department last year. The last time I reviewed the management report it was in excess of $200,000.00 for one claim. MR. OCHS: That's correct. MR. DORRILL: Cops are prone to get hurt, shot, in automobile accidents, bad backs, fights. The sheriff had one year the before that resulting from a fight in the jail where he has permanent disability claim. So, there's an incentive for us all to stick together and help spread the costs by having larger groups, benefits of larger groups for everything. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Is he talking with someone on your OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 11 staff or is someone from his staff talking with someone from your staff? MR. DORRILL: We have a very good working relationship with him but we were a little concerned when we heard that he was evaluating whether or not he wanted to leave just the group health. COMMISSIONER HASSE: And, that's his prerogative. MR. OCHS: Well, we don't know. There's the attorney general's opinion that is being researched by the county attorneys office right now that's going to tell us whether or not the sheriff has the legal authority to do that. Right now, the group medical program is just like the worker's comp and the other program. The Board of County Commissioner program in which all the constitutional officers participate and that's a questio.~ that we're getting answered right now by the county attorneys office. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I don't want to get too far afield, just a question, I know that as a part of overall cost savings program, in part, we've been asking our employees to absorb more of the cost of the premium on OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 IIIII I IIIIII I_1 I III IIII .... II II1~ - - - 12 the group health. We began that about three years ago, I think, maybe two years ago. We're trying to bring it more in line with what other employers are doing in the community when we compared with what the school board's doing and the City of Naples and Florida Power Light and so on. Has the sheriff done the same thing? MR. OCHS: To my knowledge, yes he has. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: How about the other constitutional officers, do you know if they have as well? MR. OCHS: With the exception of the tax collector to the best of my knowledge, they all have. bet me explain the system. What we do is we generate an invoice each month for each of the constitution officers and send them their monthly medical premium invoice and they cut us a check and that goes into group medical fund to pay claims and fixed costs. So, we don't know, it's not itemized on the invoice how much premiums for the family coverage their employees are contributing. We know that the board sets a policy each year in conjunction w~.th their budget development based on the recommendation from staff. That has been going up consistently. It's more than doubled over the OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 13 last four years based primarily on survey data locally. We do have knowledge, for whatever reason the tax collector I don't believe has chosen to shift that cost to employees. So, with the exception of the tax -- CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, that may be something as we get into something establishing our budget policies for next year just to determine, you know, within all of the constitutional officers, the health care package and certainly the sheriff's participation. MR. OCHS: I think, again, the thing that concerns the staff with respect to large a group like the sheriff going out on their own is that from a timing standpoint we wish we had known this before we negotiated our claims administration contract which we recently did with our claims administrator. Our reinsurance premiums are based on the larger group and the census data from the entire group so there's a potential that if this all occurs, and it's not by any degree certain at this point, that our reinsurer and also our TPA would have grounds to come back and say~ you guys have changed the rules of the game under which we initially submitted proposals and that may end up ._3 14 costing the board more money. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: fiscal year 1993, '94? MR. OCHS: I don't know. Wouldn't we be looking at it for a I'm hearing he's looking at it for January 1. I don't have that confirmed. What I did, I sent a memo to Gail Addison the chief of administration expressing our concerns and asking her to keep advised of any developments. COMMISSIONER HASSE: Don't they have an obligation to carry it through to the end of the period? MR. DORRILL: I think that's what he said, we're evaluating it. MR. OCHS: We're trying to get that research from our counsel. Frankly, I think part of the reason is, as the current board knows, this is an area of very high costs not only here but nationally health care costs is a very long big issue. Our costs, just like the nation, is going up maybe four times the current rate o~ inflation. We've been trying as a staff over the last several years to control our program costs. We did a series of plan design changes this past year to provide about $300,000.00 worth of cost OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 avoidance. Those are nice terms. Employees see that as actually reductions in their benefit plan and in some cases they're right and I think that's part of what has the sheriff's agency looking into this, maybe thinking they can provide a higher left of benefit. Our information, our loss information, tells us that we don't think they can do much better out there on their own because large numbers is what insurance is predicated on. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: It's these kinds of discussions that concern me about the communication between the Board of County Commissioners and the constitutional officers. We've worked to try to improve communications with the school board and the City of Naples. We've scheduled joint meetings with City of Naples and we've tried to formalized that with an agenda. .~ . ) Ive only recently been invited to attend the ~..., meetings of the constitutional officers. We're ~ constitutional officers as well but we don't seem to beC/] involved in those meetings. This takes us out of where we're talking about administrative services but, you know, Mr. Dorrill, as part of our overall strategic plan, OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 16 it would seem to me that when these issues start to surface in the context of this strategic plan, we need to have a forum it seems to me where the constitutional officers, including the Board of County Commissioners, or at the very least whoever happens to be the chairman, sits with constitutional officers to surface these issues because it's nice that Leo is taking with Ms. Addison but it seems to me that it initially should be dealt with at a different level. MR. OCHS: I asked for a meeting with the sheriff but I couldn't get one. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Yeah, that's exactly right. I don't know, Commissioner Hasse how you feel about it, but it seems to me we're hearing the criticisms that have been leveled against the Board in terms of not communicating with us and you've done things at the eleventh hour and you haven't told us anything about that. You know, they meet on a regular, monthly basis. I don't know where they meet. I don't know whether there's a formal agenda but maybe there's a way that perhaps we can involve ourselves more and so that we can open up that dialogue because these things are very OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 17 important to the community and to employees. COMMISSIONER HASSE: I'm afraid they feel they have an identity by themselves, you know, and if we're going to work together we ought to work together but perhaps they don't feel that way. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Maybe we can as a result of this discussion, Mr. Dorrill, maybe we can work at coming up with some goal of trying to improve those communications with our counter parts and other constitutional officers within the community. MR. OCHS: Again, my last word on that, I'm not criticizing the sheriff for taking a look around. My problem is the timing. If they had told us earlier we could have addressed that in our reinsurance contracts and our administration contracts but this eleventh hour, after the contract's in place and the fiscal year has started is what is troubling me. Moving are right along -- MR. DORRILL: One last little insurance note. The Board should not be surprised when your citizen productivity committee comes back this winter at some point. I think you should expect to hear from them as ,'iD OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FI, 33962 18 they relate your benefits structure on the insurance side, particularly benefits in general, they're going to encourage you to continue to cut employee benefits as it relates to the public cost. For the last four years in a row we have raised the employee contributions for dependent coverage and lowered the county's contributions. They're going to tell you that you haven't being begun to do enough. They may also point to the number of paid holidays and things like this. So, you should be ready to hear that and ready to measure and look at the analysis of what you're doing compared to what other agencies are doing. I'm pretty confident you're going to hear that. COMMISSIONER HASSE: Aren't we comparing now? MR. DORRILL: That's what I said. In each of the last four years you have raised the requirement for employee payments for their own insurance, their family insurance, but they're going to tell you that you need to keep headed in that direction. I don't know what a good ::3 level is going to be but they're going to encourage, I '~ think, when you see the final report you're -- ._. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: When we began this process about~'~ i iiii IIIIIII I IIII IIIIII IIII 19 three or four years ago, and I remember how painful it was at the time, what we saw what was happening is you've got a husband and wife both employed, one's working for the school board, one's working for Collier County Government and they're opting in favor of having their insurance through of Collier County government because the school board requires more participation from the employee and the same thing was true with the hospital, we've made, I think, some real progress. I understand what you're saying, we are analyzing but we need to continue to do that to make sure that we are fair but yet competitive with the other employers within the community. MR. DORRILL: And, we need to continue to continue to do that and I'm just telling you in advance to not be surprised if you see that in their final report. MR. OCHS: Item B, under risk management program, talks directly to those same items. This is an ongoing..., effort each February in conjunction with the submission of risk management budgets to the manager's office. We f.D make a series of recommendations regarding premium rates~ any plan design, changes that we think need to be made OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 20 and also recommendations on dependent coverage contributions by employees and that's a result of this ongoing survey that we do to try to make sure that we're competitive with the marketplace both in terms of our costs, our employer costs and also in the amount of costs the we shift to our employees in forms of deductibles, out of pocket expenses, direct premium payments for family coverages. You'll expect to see that as we have in prior years recommended to you as part of your budget deliberations. The third area, again, has to do with another component that we're working on to reduce our overall medical costs and that's the concept of the Wellness Program. By January, of '93, we intend to come to the Board with a recommendation on a Wellness Program that, in our view, will try to redirect our costs towards prevention and early detection as opposed to treatment after the fact. Fully, 49 to 50 percent of our claims costs, we spent six million dollar county-wide this year on medical claims associated with in hospital stays and doctors treatment in hospitals. So, we're working with our group OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 _1 1.1'1 ...... I__ . I ...... I'_ ........ " ...... 21 benefits administrator to try to put together a Wellness Program that will emphasize education, early screenings for cholesterol levels, hypertension, high blood pressure, et cetera, to try to get some treatment and intervention early on and potentially some kind of physical fitness component also as part of this Wellness Program. Again, you try to shift the focus of our efforts on the preventative side as opposed to treatment after the fact, after a heart attack or stroke. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: In that regard we discussed about a year or so ago, establishing a drug-free work place in Collier County Government. I know we had some discussion of where we are on that issue. Obviously, as it relates to worker's compensation with such a program. Do we have such a program in place, a formal program? MR. OCHS: No, we do not, no. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I think that that needs to be one!~ of those identifiable goals for a couple different reasons, one is it will impact directly upon our premiums. Particularly as it relates, I believe, to worker's compensation. Number two, I'm told that there's some state legislation that is going to require that all OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 people contracting with the State of Florida are required to have a drug-free workshop, workplace. It seems to me, you know, we all wore the red ribbons on Tuesday but I think there's a real benefit to pursue, you know, that type of a program county-wide with the number of employees that we've got as it relates directly to our insurance premiums and for other reasons as well. Can we do that, Mr. Dorrill? Is there some reason why we can't begin to thing in terms of establishing a drug-free workplace? MR. OCHS: We have done the research. We can do that. We already have in our personnel policies and procedures that govern the board employees, a policy on how we treat substance abuse and education. The points are well made on worker's compensation however in our case because we're self-insured, there isn't that premium percentage reduction apply because we're not paying premiums under an indemnity plan. ~ The contracting issue we also looked at. The law~,~ as I understand it makes a distinction between state an~ federal grant recipients, which we have, we have grant. 23 recipients, as opposed to direct contractual relationship to federal agencies but, all that aside -- CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I don't see the harm. MR. OCHS: There's no harm. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I don't see the harm in doing it and if you're talking, you know, the Wellness Program, if you're talking prevention, it seems to me -- MR. OCHS: It's not difficulty to do. The only policy the board will have to wrestle with is this issue of testing and if you want to test and at what level you want to test. Do you want to test everyone, do you want to just tests candidates for a new position, random testing. There are some legal issues there but that's all policy issues that this board can deal with. COMMISSIONER HASSE: Can you make that mandatory? MR. DORRILL: You can. COMMISSIONER HASSE: You can, can we? MR. DORRILL: You can. You just need to recognize the cost involved with mandatory urinalysis because if you're going to do it right it's very expensive and _ depending on which particular work groups that you want to involve, co 24 COMMISSIONER HASSE: Well, we can weigh It on whether or not the results -- CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, the cost benefit. I mean, does the sheriff -- we talked about a mandatory p~ogram and we were talking about, you know, some of our heavy equipment operators and thoro certain categorie~ of employees. But, it seems to me we had the discussion and we touched on it but there was some concerns about whether we could make it a mandatory program and don't we already have it under our policies and procedures. But, we require people who contract with the county, they get certain credits if they do have a drug free workplace. So, it seems to me we ought to pursue that. MR. CONSTANTINE: Mike, we set these up for folks at the Willow and the easiest way, both at a legal standpoint and financial standpoint is upon candidates who are applying and then if there's an accident, something rather than random testing. MR. OCHS: That's the legal problems with the random testing. MR. DORRILL: That's from perspective candidates and within certain classes. OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 25 CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I don't know whether it comes under your program but perhaps we can fit that into one of our goal in terms of pursuing the development of a drug free workplace. MR. NORRIS: Even though we don't have any direct premiums to save because we're self-insured, obviously if we have a very strict drug free workplace we're going to save health claims directly and probably substantially. I don't know how it could ever be quantified but obviously it would be. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I think it's a worthwhile program and I think it should be pursued. MR. DORRILL: We're not so naive as to think that with a work force of almost 1800, total, including constitutional officers, that people have a wide variety of problems and we're no different than anybody else. We've had employees with severe substance abuse programs. COMMISSIONER HASSE: The difficulty may be that you really can't control a constitutional officer. MR. DORRILL: There again, You can lead -- I'm aware that Mr. Carlton has a drug screening program in 26 CHAIRMAN VOLPE: That's another one of those instances where it makes just good sense for the constitutional officers to be looking at that type of an issue for all of the people who are employed by "government" The sheriff must have some type of a program in place. MR. OCHS: Yes. Moving along. Item D, we want to continue to be more aggressive in the way that we market our Section 125 Flexible Benefit Program, again, beginning in November and again in December for the next calendar year. Again, the consequence of that to the board, if you recall, this was the program where the employees can select among a variety of benefits, one hundred percent employee paid. The benefit to them is it could be purchased with pre-tax dollars. The benefit to the employer is that the amount of participation, the dollars that' they choose to purchase those kinds of flexible benefits there's offsetting FICA reduction because it's ~,> pre-tax and we share equally with the employee. ~ CHAIRMAN VOLPE: What's the level of participatio,~__ that we have now with our employees? OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 27 MR. OCHS: Well, there's two components of the program. The first is premium conversion and that means, currently employees that contribute for dependent family medical coverage and all of the people enrolled in our dental program, which is again one hundred percent employee paid, all of those people are enrolled into our premium conversion plan we have about seventy, seventy-three thousand dollars savings accrued to the board in their share of that FICA reduction. The second component is the one that we really want to try to aggressively market and that's the flexible spending accounts where employees can have child care expenses and uncovered medical program expenses, out of pocket expenses, deductibles, co-payments, et cetera, can also be treated as pre-tax and we have proved some savings there. That is the portion that we just have open enrollment on this summer. We had probably only 15 percent participation but, again, I think that a lot of people decided not to get in, in the middle of the tax year. The benefit of these plans is that you want to accrue a full calendar year worth of benefit for tax purposes so we have an open enrollment in November and 28 December and we hope to improve our participation. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Related, but maybe unrelated, have we surveyed our employees concerning what particular employee benefits are of primary interest to them? MR. OCHS: We're going to be doing that probably right after the holidays. In fact, we will be doing that right after the holidays. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: When was the last time we did it? MR. OCHS: Three years ago. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: It may fit in with the report of the productivity committee because what I'm reading and hearing is that different employees have different wants and desires and maybe they're not interested in having available to them any longer a dental plan, maybe they i) want some other plan available. So, I think it's a '~ worthwhile exercise. "~ MR. DORRILL: We'll have to see. You know, I meG with a group of line level employees every month as part of the county manager's, employee advisory counsel. Surprising, they repeatedly talk about the number of paid county holidays. I mean, you know, if that's a barometer of their feelings that we increased year before last, I OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY. ~ap3,~ III IIIII ......................... I -- II IIII ...... 29 guess we now have eleven paid county holidays and still have two personal days, county employees at least, in that committee seem to be willing to go back and even look at things like that. Unfortunately, sometimes when you give a paid holiday and you want to start talking about reducing the number of paid holidays it's tough because, are you going to give up Martin Luther King's birthday, are you going to offend the veterans, are you going to not recognize President's Day and those are tough because then they all little political ramifications but in terms of the and employees surveying benefits that's the one they seem to want to talk about. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, I think that's important. The other, of course, we haven't talked about recently but it has to do with child care. That was something that we talked about two years ago or so and there are certain employees who are looking for some type of child care benefit. You say we have, under the county manager, older employees as I look around I don't see too many of those older employees. I don't know, at one point, Mr.. Dorrill, you had talked about the establishment of a ._~ OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 30 daycare center, as I recall, in Building "W", was one of those. MR. DORRILL: Or contracting with somebody like the YMCA or having of a separate employee run enterprise. We had never suggested that the commission put any money in it but actually putting together a little not for profit corporation that would then contract with a provider to run a daycare center. COMMISSIONER HASSE: Wasn't that turned down? MR. DORRILL: We did survey that and the initial was good and the more talked about it and the more we identified the cost and, you know, where the thing might be in order to be convenient for the greatest number of people we got down to where we ended up with less that two dozen, I think, and at that point we said it's not worth the effort. .? MR. OCHS: We surveyed it to death. The other .- approach there is what we've done with the flexible co benefit plan and the flexible spending, they have the flexibility to send their children to whatever child care center they want. They now have the opportunity to have that cost treated on a pre-tax basis which reduces the -- OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 31 CHAIRMAN VOLPE: employees? MR. OCHS: Is that currently available to the That's the flexible spending program. MR. DORRILL: It's sort of like deferred compensation for income tax purposes. They declare it at the beginning of the year and we spend, for tax purposes, that amount of money that they spend on child care that they would spend on child care and they won't have to pay income tax on. MR. OCHS: The way we administer it, they can if they choose to and if the facility will agree to it, we can have it set up so our benefits administrator cuts a check directly to the facilities every month and they won't have to worry about it. That's the other angle we've taken on that because there's people that want so much flexibility, some want it right here, others want to go wherever they want to. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: That makes some sense. I wasn't ~ aware that that was one of the benefits that would be handled under the cafeteria plan. .iD MR. OCHS: The last item in the risk management -- goal has to do with continuing our loss control program OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY NAPLES FL 33962 32 as it relate, primarily, to our worker's compensation program. We have a person in our risk management staff that has a set schedule that goes out at least once a week touring all of our facilities. We also have a hazardous materials lecture series put on by our loss prevention consultants that comes down four a times a year to do that. We had an executive safety committee established this past year, representation from all departments and divisions in the manager's agency so we are continuing to fortify our loss control program obviously with the objective to reduce the number of accidents. This past year we've had a good year in terms of worker's compensation relative to the year before. Our frequency and severity figures are down. Of course, the year beforo that we had a vory bad year becau0e of tho large claims we had out of sheriff's agency primarily. MR. DORRILL: As a whole we have extremely low worker's comp, injury rates and always haQe. I don't know if it's attributable to higher than average morale. We have almost zero incidents bogus worker's comp claims and seldom, if ever, we have to go on appeal to contest OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, 33 worker's comp claim and to the extent that we do have serious injuries, the sheriff's department. Two years ago we had a county tractor mower operator killed in the line of duty. It was a significant claim loss for us. We're very fortunate in that we have very, very few and it's also evidenced by the fact that we have a good loss control program. We do our own inspections, our own safety inspections. Each division has a safety coordinator. Road and bridge and utilities that would normally have the highest incidence of blue collar worker's comp claims have very good safety programs in place. We're evaluating a safety shoe program. This county does not have a comprehensive safety shoe requirement. I don't want us to have to get in, again, as another benefit providing safety shoes to county employees but Leo is developing a proposal for us to review whsre we might have an annual contract for safety shoes and th~n through payroll deductions we would take $2.00 a week for each blue collar or safety shoe group employee and they would be entitled to two pairs of shoes a year through our annual contract. Then we would send them over to ~3 OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FI, 33962 34 Wal-Mart or we'll send them to Vick's Shoes and they would be fitted and through payroll deduction they would be buying their own shoes at a county bid, a government rate and that's one of the main things from a safety standpoint that we're going to look at through the coming year. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: What do we do about uniforms? MR. DORRILL: Uniforms, it depends. In many instances, we supply uniforms as a condition of -- MR. OCHS: Typically, we lease uniforms or rent uniforms through uniform companies. In some instances, determined it was cheaper to by uniform and have employees maintain them on their own. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: provide with uniforms? MR. DORRILL: Hundreds, four hundred. How many employees do we currently MR. OCHS: Yeah. I'd say four to five hundred. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I guess, when you mentioned safety shoes, I started thinking in terms if your providing them with uniforms. The question then becomes, the uniform is D It seems to me you're going to get , for identification purposes and esthetic purposes as opposed for safety. OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 35 into that discussion, if we're talking about a safety issue, you ought to work, maybe, offsetting a part of the cost of the safety shoe program and I don't know about the, you know, uniform allowance. or -- MR. OCHS: Is there an allowance Again, we go out with an annual bid for uniform rental services and we receive competitive bids and we select the lowest as possible. They deliver and pick up the uniforms through all the agencies. COMMISSIONER HASSE: MR. OCHS: Correct. COMMISSIONER HASSE: They do all the cleaning. How does the city work that? The city provides work shoes and provides uniforms, MR. OCHS: The city has an allowance for shoes and tools and equipment but most of those are a result of labor contract negotiations. COMMISSIONER HASSE: I thought they provided them. MR. OCHS: They provide them, I think it's $70.00 a year for safety shoes for their employees that have that benefit through the contract. That's another way to go. Again, budget's being what they are we didn't want to ge~ into the employer providing that money. :~ OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY° 36 CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I only raise it in the context of you're providing a uniform for them now and I don't know what the cost is but if you're providing a uniform for four or five hundred people that has to be a significant cost. It's like sheets, it's got to be expensive. I don't know if they've got to be cleaned once a week, once every two weeks. It may be, some type of an allowance program, it might be cheaper to go out and buy a pair of brown pants. As long as everybody has a pair of brown pants where they could buy, they take care of them themselves. You provide just the shirt and give some allowance for the overall costs to the community isn't any greater than it is right now and it does give a direct benefit to the employee in terms of safety. COMMISSIONER HASSE: You want uniformity too, then, in that case. I don't know if you could buy them in one place. I don't know if you can do that. MR. DORRILL: We're looking at it. You'll be surprised, it's little things like that that can get you in trouble with those particular work groups. I mean, so we're looking at it. I'm not interested in us buying OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 37 safety shoes but there seems to be a relationship between good boots or safety shoes for certain classes of employees and if we can do it and if we can provide a lower cost then they can Day for that themselves and they're very nominal. That's what I said, if you just took $2.00 a week and in return for which they're entitled to two pair of boots or shoes a year. That's the way we're pursuing it and we'll only do that if we appear to have good support on the Dart of the work groups. I tell the board every year, one of the most fortunate things that we have going for us here is an extremely motivated blue collar work force that has decertified every union that ever tried to come in. We don't have any unions here. We don't have to fool with union agreements, grievances and all that kind o~ silliness and that's got to be worth something to us not having union employees. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Next item. MR. OCHS: We can move on if you like to the next goal and that's the Fleet Management department. Again,_~ as those board members will recall, we started this 38 fiscal year '91, '92, taking that fleet management service back in-house so to speak and the results have been very fair, both in terms of the quality of the work and the cost savings so these four objectives are indicators in the coming fiscal year again designed to continue the momentum that was built up this past year in further reducing our cost of our fleet repair maintenance operation and also looking at ways to do a better job of utilizing assigning not only our light vehicles or light trucks and sedans but also getting in into more analysis o~ heavy equipment. Right now we have a kind of dual approach to the way we manage our fleet. Our motor pool, which is our sedans and half ton pick up trucks are signed out by fleet management. We call that our motor pool. We collect what, in effect, is a mileage charge and capital recovery charge from each department's budget each year~ to offset all of our costs in maintenance repair, fuel,~ insurance, et cetera. However, we also have a large number of vehicles, primarily heavy equipment, that are owned and operated by our enterprise funds, utilities, solid wastes and OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 39 transportation and parts and recreation, primarily. They come to us for repairs and we bill them directly for our labor and our cost of parts. So, what we're looking at in this item A, performance indicator is to see if there isn't a way where we could come to one centralized method of administering entire fleet and gain some economies, eliminate some duplication in terms of record keeping and perhaps even be able to reduce the size of our heavy equipment fleet because, for example, right now transportation will by "X" number of pieces of equipment, utilities will, parks and rec will, solid waste will, and they own and operate and assign that equipment out. We think that perhaps if we can centralize at least the assignment portion of that equation that fleet management is looking at kind of a central rental type of an operation where they can assign out based on need. We may be able to deal with one less backhoe or with one less motor grader by saying, if road and bridge needs i.t~ this week and so on. -~ MR. DORRILL: Leo, tractors and backhoes seem to ..~.~ the two best opportunities for us. If you ye got a co backhoe at utilities that's being used two days a week and one at utilities is being used three days a week and they're otherwise parked in the yard, we'd rather have it be owned and rented by motor pool and just have one backhoe being used five days a week. that. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: They're evaluating It makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, you have a dispatcher essentially the guy who controls the assignment of the vehicles. MR. DORRILL: It works well for cars and our trucks and we're evaluating it for what we call light equipment. There will always the be specialty equipments where, you know, the big compacting bulldozers at the landfill. It can't be used for anything other than that. COMMISSIONER HASSE: There was some discussion also about handling the sheriff and the constitutional officers. Whatever happened with that? MR. DORRILL: Again, we have some ongoing discussions with them. They seem to be sort of half-hearted. The sheriff runs his own mechanics garage for his cars. There's really no good reason other than, again, control and being able to prioritize what he wants OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 to do. I don't know whether he has purchased the facility that he's in or with whether they rent a facility in industrial park. MR. OCHS: They rent a repair facility in industrial Dark. They have worked with us as well as the city and the school board in joint bids for motor fuels, lubricants and also automotive parts and tires so they're taking advantage of economies in that way. But, they together we have not been able to cross the last bridge and that is more of a true consolidation of the service there. Again, we requested that we sit down and do that. I sent him a memo -- CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Does that become a goal, at least it to pursue it? I don't know how it's being explored. We've talked about it for a couple years now and the manager and myself at our joint meetings with the school board and the City of Naples have seen some opportunities perhaps -- it was discussed at our first strategic planning session. I think that became a goal of the board and then the manager. Within your division it would seem to me that maybe that should be a goal to see whether we can ...... IIIIII ...... IIIIIIIII I IIII I .... ~ ....... ~ .... 42 bring that to fruition and if we can't, fine. MR. OCHS: Certainly, from a long range strategic perspective I think there's opportunities. We have had discussions with Mr. Woodriff, at Neil's direction here two weeks ago, about perhaps the county bidding on repair of their heavy equipment because they want to get out of that business. I think those are certainly opportunities. For me to list it as a goal when I don't have the control or the authority to make these agencies actually come to the table or -- MR. DORRILL: It could be a goal to explore. If the sheriff says, "No, I like have having my own mechanics so I can tell them what to do." I mean, that's -- CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Presumably, the whole idea of strategic planning it's your goal to which this board has given it's imprimatur and we're saying that this is what we want as a board for you to pursue and we're listening to you and what you want. I'm saying, if you put it as a goal and obviously it becomes incumbent upon us to the extent that: we're OFFTCTAT, COt~T ~EPORTERS, COT,I,TER COUNTY, NAPI,ES, FI, 3~q62 II I I IIIIIIIIIIII II IIII III IIIIIIII IIIIII I I II I I ii - - Iii ii --~ , 43 capable of dealing with it to try to bring about that result with your help. MR. DORRILL: It at least forces the sheriff to evaluate a proposal that we give him. If we give him a proposal and it says, well, gee sheriff, we think we can do it ten percent cheaper than what you're doing it for, the sheriff is going to ultimately be responsible for that. He'll either come back and tell us where we're wrong or maybe give us a proposal to maybe do some of our work. MR. NORRIS: His negative is going to be, his reason for not wanting to be too willing to go along with it is going to be priority. He wants his vehicles back on the roads. So, what we need to be thinking about before we get into conversations with him, are we willing to prioritize his vehicles ahead of anyone else's because that's going to be the main thing. MR. DORRILL: You would have to have a contractual policy agreement with him and we went through the same thing with our own EMS director. The EMS director say, I've got to be able to get the transmission fixed now and we worked through that with the EMS director. OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 44 MR. NORRIS: He's going to be the same. to want his vehicles back on the road, now. MR. OCHS: not a problem. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: He's going Prioritization from our perspective is I think it's an issue but I think it's issue that seems to me, can be addressed. MR. NORRIS: I think that will be his concern. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Maybe we can fit that in somehow. MR. OCHS: We're going to do that anyhow. I just didn't list it because I think the control was outside my ability. MR. DORRILL: We'll add an indicator to develop a bid proposal for sheriff and city and/or school board where we think we can be competitive. MR. OCHS: We need to be prepared to see as part of that, again, in the vein of strategy planning in the current facility where we do our repair work, it is maximized in terms of utilization and available space. We're sharing bins with transportation as well as bridge out there and parks and recreation. If we were to take on an additional agency's fleet and try to service them in the existing facility would be virtually OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, F~, 33962 45 impossible to do. So, that will have to be another cost factor. Aside from the fact that that whole operation out there, I think personally, if all residential development started to surround it we need to be thinking about whether that's the right place, long term, to have that facility. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Is there any room at the landfill? MR. OCHS: I don't know, maybe if we kick the sheriff's gun range out of there. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I'm serious, I'm serious. MR. DORRILL: Either at the landfill or at the county regional water treatment site. We have thought from time to time about having our major public works barn facility a little more further located to the east either along the Landfill Road or adjacent to county water treatment plant. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Yeah, and access within the community with 1-75 to some extent do you know -- '~3 MR. DORRILL: As funny as it may seem for county purposes that is a more central locations and you can get vehicles on 1-75 to go north or 951 to go south to Marco. MR. VOLPE: Does the county own the site on County OFFTCIAT, COURT REPORTER,q. COTJT,TER CO~tNT¥. NAPT.P9. w' 7.qOnn Ill ..... III II I IIIII IIIIIII IIII I JJL _ ~ ' iii 46 Barn Road? HR. DORRILL: Uh-huh. I think it's ten acres. It's been at that site for, I believe, almost 30 years. Leo keep us moving here' MR. OCHS: Just one last quicky on fleet site, Item D, we're under state mandates to do some ground water and soil contamination abatement and clean up of our fuel site here at the government complex and we'll be continuing to implement that clean up and the new board will see over the next couple months, a couple requests to move ahead on a contractual basis with our engineers that we have on our annual contracts to -- CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Aren't there grant monies available for that purposes? MR. DORRILL: There are. We hays not yot determined our final eligibility. We have budgeted to do one, as part of some routine testing, for the fuel islan~ facility here, we found an old tank that may be at least.? 20 years old and was paved over out in front of the 'D warehouse that nobody knew was still there. That was hot, is what the environmentalists call it, which means that we've got some soil contamination and it's going to J'lO · 47 be fairly expensive to get in there and clean the soil and remove the tank and there's some ground water contamination as well. MR. OCHS: The good news there is we've already been approved eligibility under the State Abandoned Tank and Restoration program for reimbursement. We have to lay out the money but we do get reimbursed for that site. We have our current site and there's also some work that needs to be done but we think the bulk of the costs we can shift over there and we'll get reimbursement through the Abandoned Tank Program. MR. OCHS: The last items that we identified in administrative service had to do with continuing the improve the board's computer technology. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Leo, I just want to touch on one of these issues, inventory control on the bar coding, that's been something which I know the clerk of courts has been working on. With the change in that administration, he seems to have taken the lead, I think, but maybe I'm misinformed on the bar coding. .~ MR. OCHS: I think the clerk is more interested in~ the imaging system as opposed to the bar coding. Bar 48 coding is what you see in the grocery store. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Yeah, I know. I met with the clerk and he was talking about implementing bar coding ~or inventory control rather than going around and having someone -- MR. DORRILL: He may, for example, every piece of furniture here has got somewhere on it a little metal If he is pursuing that we ought to work with him on tag . that. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: He is pursuing that or he was pursuing that and the idea was every item of furniture and equipment that has a little metal tag would be bar coded so that you could just do your scanning in terms of inventory control. So, is that identified here as one of the -- MR. DORRILL: No, but it should be. MR. OCHB: I'll tell why, because the system, the management information system that we use out at fleet is not part of the central system because of the location. We've got a standard little work station that supports the software. It's an off the shelf software package that runs our fleet management operations and this bar OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 49 coding is a component of that. ~ I know Frank, though, in his division has been exploring through the main computer system with the clerk some bar coding for his inspection people so I know that discussion is going on. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Somehow that needs to be coordinated. Doesn't the clerk, either through our finance director, who's responsible for our inventory control? MR. OCHS: MR. DORRILL: department. The clerk, fixed assets control. The clerk through the finance CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Right, somehow, though, you've got some control over inventory as well, don't you? MR. OCHS: Yes, in fleet and facilities but not overall. We handle it when it become surplus through purchasing through auctions and surplus property disposition. We acquire it but we don't tag it ands CHAIRMAN VOLPE: So, why does the clerk have that responsibility? MR. OCHS: I don't know. MR. DORRILL: It's a finance and a county OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 50 requirement under the statute for auditing purposes which is the same reason that the clerk is the chief finance officer in every county that goes back to the 1920s in Florida because they couldn't trust county commissioners with the money. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Are you talking about a bar coding system as it relates to the assets, say, under your control? MR. OCHS: I'm sorry, yes. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: You've got Frank Brutt who's looking at bar coding as~it relates to something he's doing. You've got the clerk over here who's doing something having to do with bar coding with these assets that are under his control. It seems to me that that is the waive of the future is bar coding and scanning for inventory control generally. Somehow that effort needs to be coordinated. He's going to develop his own system, you're going to have your own system. doing. MR. DORRILL: conjunction with the clerk. Who knows what the sheriff is Frank's system would be done in What Leo is doing, is Leo, III - -1111 II III I 51 because they're off site and they don't have a very sophisticated or large computer need, they've got a little desktop computer that we probably spent a thousand dollars for and it's probably on a floppy disk, he can do and have his own little scanner and keep his own sparkplug inventory on that little desktop computer. As part of an evaluation of a large scale clerk's application to scan every piece of fixed operating capital equipment, we can tag onto that and the cost I agree, we ought to all be using the same type of system just for the compatibility sake of it. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: We've contracted with the clerk to provide our MIS right? MR. DORRILL: Uh-huh. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: So, this is a Dart of what he is developing as a Dart of our management information system. So, he's working on that as it relates to a certain part of it. 3 MR. DORRILL: My note here says bar code _~ coordination proposal with new clerk. ~1 MR. OCHS: Which kind of leads into my last area when you talk about coordinating, that's a technology 52 issue that needs coordination much like these other areas of MIS which we have identified within the control administrative services this year. We have begun the first master planing efEorts that includss all of the constitutional agencies and board agencies to try, Paul Brigham's, been good enough to coordinate those meetings and chair that effort. We have court administration, all the constitutional agencies, the board agencies, the technical people coming together for the first time trying to identify what everyone's needs are, what systems they have in place, how many of that hardware and software can actually talk to each other now and what the need is for different agencies to ? draw information from someone olse's data base. ~iThat's ; encouraging. That's probably the first time in many years since we've been able to start to move in that direction. I don't think for a minute it's going to be an easy sell but everyone has come to the table' ith an mind at this point. ~ :31 open Our goal is to have a recommendation out of that team with some kind of master planning book available by June. 12 MR. DORRILL: Lee, on the good side, on the original productivity committee recommendations was to try and centralize management and data processing systems and we went, essentially, from systems down to about four. Even during the current campaign, I know, the sheriff's opponents had talked about, frankly, the idiocy of having the sheriff by a one hundred thousand dollar payroll and financial software system that was already owned and operated by the county commissioners through the clerk's office. Everybody realizes the security and sensitivity but there's no rocket science associated with cutting payroll checks. So, the extent to which we're working with the clerk's office to develop a five year data processing master plan for the county through the county commissioners, again, we're going to try to encourage, in every area possible that we're trying to eliminate these five separate large multi-million dollar data centers and try to get them coordinated and consolidated into one because of the sheer economics of the thing. COMMISSIONER HASSE: We've come a long way with that already. OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 MR. DORRILL: Well, we no longer have our own. now joint venture with the clerk and aside from blips and the transitional problems we had with our utility billing system I'm glad to not be owning and operating my own large computer. !ii Increasingly, the criminal justice network is taking advantage oX that and whether you're the state's attorney, the court's administrator or judge, trying tO have a single criminal justice network as part of same system and there's a lot of promise there. I don ~t profess to understand a lot of it but I do understand the economic aspects of why we ought to do it. CD CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Is it administrative services t~t is dealing as well with communications generally? MR. DORRILL: Uh-huh. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: We're talking about MIS but how?!~ about, generally, communications? Are there any goalS!~%· r place next month within telecommunications. explain that to you. MR. OCHS: objectives as it relates to our communications network? MR. DORRILL: We have one getting ready to go into I'll let Leo I want to clarify, are you talkSng about OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 telecommunications or radio communications. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Both. MR. OCHS: Radios have now been transferred to emergency management for day to go day administration as ,. a result of the management reorganization I believe we~ have eliminated our communications positions. Gary Arnold has a good background in that. He's~ going to manage through emergency management department; our existing eight hundred megahertz administrative radio system on a daily basis. Facilities management handles~ the telecommunications. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: On the radio communications aspect, you're saying we're going to discuss that under, services because there are some issues there emergency that are emerging that we need to talk about at some point. MR. DORRILL: The sheriff is convinced that over!.~_~ the next five years he need to develop a, I heard 18 ~-%~ million dollars. That eight hundred megahertz which ~ the state of the arts process. We have a small eight COq hundred megahertz system that runs our existing two-wasf radios. I forget what we paid for it. OFFTCTAT, CO~RT REPORTERS, CO[JJIER COUNTY, NAPT,E,R, FT, 33962 56 MR. OCHS: Four hundred thousand. MR. DORRILL: We're convinced that through a parallel application of our system that you could have a public safety network off that and do all the law enforcement, fire, EMS. 'i:~' Now, sheriff the board's aware of this, he has a~ vendor that they like and that's Motorolla and our vendor doesn't happen to be Motorolla but I guarantee you that!s going to be a budget issue this coming year. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: That's why I bring it up and what I've heard is that it's -- MR. DORRILL: Excuse me. That was the rationale.~ for sort of taking the radio system out o~ administrative service and putting it over into emergency services because we see the burgeoning need and demand for radi communications being within the public safety group, no~ sort of the road and bridge department calling the utility department. 2D CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, somehow and again, maybe it's not under your division, I'm told the sheriff is looking 20 million dollar system and that the county is looking at a 6 million dollar system. Overall the 57 systems might be between 25 and 30 million dollars. I don't know who's talking about it but it seems to me that's the purpose of this meeting. MR. DORRILL: It's coming. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: It's coming, yeah. So, somewhere we need to put this on a piece of paper and say what are we doing about it. We've talked about that eight hundred megahertz system for as long as I've been on the board and it comes up under our none CIE element of our growth management plan and then it gets moved around and so on. The sheriff's got an idea about microwaving and all those other things. MR. DORRILL: I'll make a note when we get to emergency management at our next and hopefully final session that if that's not specifically shown as a goal and indicator with it then we're going to have to develop a plan to address what the sheriff wants to do because a'~ this point we're -- , CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I'm not going to belabor it but CD we've been criticize because our MIS system went off in--~ separate ways. Here, we know, that it's about to happen and need to get our arms around it before it happens and 58 try to make sure that it develops as a coordinated effort. MR. OCHS: Gary Arnold is a member of what's called the Public Safety Radio Communications Team that's been looking at these things. So, Gary is the right person to have managing our administrator eight hundred system and full knowledge of that while he sits in and listens to other proposals. I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, that's a discussion that needs to be had. MR. DORRILL: Our ace in the whole, though, to be honest with you, is going to be Gary because Gary is technology oriented. He can talk that talk. He can tell you when these salesmen are lying to you because Increasingly it's who's got the prettiest salesman and the slickest brochure and fortunately for us we have somebody ~rom a technology standpoint very capable, in Gary Arnold. CHAIRMAN VObPE: got? Anything else, Leo, that you've _D ¢3'1 MR. OCHS: No, just, out of those items there the one the board may be most interested in is Item E. As Neil mentioned, we had some computer related problems on · OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 59 the implementation on utility billing. We are working on some work arounds at this point. In fact, what we've done is taken the system off of the large computer which was bogging down the processing speed in that system with billings and moved it off on the smaller machine. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: delinquency expire? MR. DORRILL: don't know. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: little late. MR. OCHS: When does or policy sixty day Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I do. It may have already. I I'm still getting, my bills are a I saw Ron Cook in the hall this morning and he had a big smile on his face. I mean a big, big stack of bills, so the processing speed. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I still get a lot of phone calls from people who are concerned about their bills. MR. DORRILL: We stubbed our toe on that and we admitted it. That was one of the down sides of trying to work with the clerk to consolidate our computers because it didn't go as smoothly as we had intended for it to but it seems to be working much better now. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: The other issue as it relates to ' OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 60 MIS, consistently we're hearing about our programs interfacing with the tax collector and the property appraiser as we go to certain of these none ad valorem billings and I got a panic phone call that something wasn't merging last week and we think we've got it worked otherwise you were going to have to take care of. Is this something that your division is trying to coordinate in terms of whatever information as it relates to billings as we go to PBID and some of these others. How are we doing that? MR. OCHS: That's primarily the purpose of Item A, this master plan is to identify wherein, for example, our agency needs to reach across into the tax collector and property appraisers computer for information and how we make sure that conductivity is there to allow us to do it. That's primarily what this master planning effort 'i~ designed to do. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Each one of them seems to be different. With solid waste, it's different. With CD certain of these special taxing districts it's different. MR. OCHS: Well, in a perfect world if you had everybody running the same hardware platform it would be OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 61 fairly easy, you just have to have a network connecting up all the machines. But, when you have different vendors hardware and different agencies. MR. DORRILL: That was the travesty of the decision in the late 70's and 80's when all the constitutional officers, including the board, went through -- CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Aren't there applications now, where you can get, and I thought we did that, where you can get different equipment, whoever happens to manufacture it talks to each other now. MR. DORRILL: It's never easy. MR. OCHS: What you have, you've got these little black boxes, you can do it. You can do anything if you have enough money and have expertise to do it but it's more difficult, it's not as clean because you're not talking box to box, directly. You have this little communicator -- MR. DORRILL: MR. OCHS: other. Sort of like a translator. Yeah, translate one language to the It's doable, but you do run into more glitches. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I had the chance to look back over last years' strategic plan and it seems as though the OFFICIA[J COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY. NAPI,E.~ Fl. ~RQ&Q 62 majority of the goals that your division established for itself you have accomplished, thank you. MR. OCHS: Thank you. One last thing Nell. I didn't get a chance to talk to you about this and then I'll shut up. MR. DORRILL: You're 15 minutes overtime. MR. OCHS: In terms of the strategic issue, I think the board and the new board needs to be aware of is we just met again this week with representatives from the black affairs advisory board and they're still very determined to approach the new board again with this concept an equal opportunity department and want a lot of initiatives in this area of community relations and I don't know what the answers are but again, I think, as it heads up to something else that issue is not going to go away and either at policy level or staff level we're going to have to be looking at a way to address that again · I think the way that it went down at the board meeting several months ago probably left a bit of a bad taste in at least that particular sense. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: If you don't agree with them it's 63 going to leave a bad taste, isn't it, Leo? MR. DORRILL: I'll tell you, part of the problem is without insulting either one of the groups, they'll run out of things to do. They're going to have to start finding things to do and the immediate thing is let's find out what's wrong with the county commission. There was no clearly defined instruction and direction for either one of the two groups. We sort of said, gee, wouldn't we love to have a black and hispanic affairs advisory committee and they became the 39th and 40th advisory committees to the county commission and then they went off with no more direction than that. They still have no direction from the county commission as to what you think their priorities -- MR. OCHS: A consolidated approach, I think, is something that deserves an answer. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I've got the answer from the consolidated approach, c~ MR. OCHS: You have? CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Yeah. C~ MR. OCHS: They don't want to do it. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Absolutely no. I've been publicly 64 reprimanded and criticized for suggesting that perhaps we could have a consolidated minority affairs advisory board. For me it's difficulty to comprehend but they feel very strongly and I got some very, very strongly worded letters, mind your own business. MR. OCHS: I'm afraid I don't have the answers. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: is a community issue. Let me a suggest an answer. This So, maybe what we need to do, as one ~f our goals is a coordinated community effort through the school board, through the City of Naples and through the major employers, you know, come together with some type of, you know, rather than having it as a department or agency, the school board says they've got something in place, they're doing it. The City o[ Naples, with all of the public employers, is there some way we can address that as a consolidated effort? MR. DORRILL: There are different towns or counties across the country that have a community relations board. It sort of resembles your planning commission but they would have participation from the schools and from the municipalities. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I mean, we're talking about, the OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 II I II III I 65 focus of the groups have been county government. They didn't want to get into enforcement aspect of it. I guess they did want to get into the enforcement aspect of it. They really wanted to have county government go out and begin to do some surveys of the private sector to see whether there were violations of -- MR. DORRILL: Well, it was going to be a whole new regulatory arm of county government. Their original proposal, hypothetically, if you worked for Mass Brothers and you felt that you were being treated unfairly or whatever then you would bypass the Department of Labor or the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission at the federal level and you would file a complaint with the county commissioners that would be investigated and prosecuted by a new arm of the county government and that was the concern, aside from the cost and the duplication, the board's weren't just receiving real clear direction D from the county commission as to what you wanted their 13 role to be. ~ CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, that whole issue of ~ deferral, is what I think it's called, where you take it from the federal to the state to the local level, I'm not OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 supportive of so. MR. NORRIS: I think the voters said they're not supportive of more county government agencies either. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: If there's some way, maybe Nell this is something in one of these joint meetings with the school board, to see what they're doing and whether there is an ability to bringing the public sector employers together to see if there's something that could be done or should be done, that we're not aware of. MR. DORRILL: We're going to be meeting with the schools in a joint city county meeting, not a workshop, on December the 8th, with the new county commission and we could bring this up as an agenda item with the city council. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: You're meeting with the schools as well? MR. DORRILL: Not the schools, the joint city county meeting and I think it's December 8th, or something like, the first week in December so that may give us an opportunity to discuss that. MR. DORRILL: Frank, go ahead. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Are we going to take a five minute 67 break? Just long to excuse myself and come back. (A recess was had and proceedings continued as follows: ) CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Why don't you go ahead. MR. BRUTT: What we've done, utilizing our computers that we have in our office is prepared these particular viewgraphs, just three of them. Basically, what I've identified is the '92, '93 strategic goals that we have. The first is an analysis of the fees that we are collecting for the work that we're doing in our enterprise fund, the 113 Fund, which is basically building permits, building fees, et cetera. This study, of course, as we've mentioned before, and we've been to you before for the increase in fees is being done with the coordination of the development - services steering committee. ,.,~ Goal number one, revise the fees to reflect the :iD costs. Basically, what we've been doing is a very detailed time analysis using Ken Baginski's staff and John Madajewski's Staff, specifically, project review and current planning, how long it takes for us to process the city development plan, the plan unit development change, OFFICIAl, COURT REPORTERS, COI,LIER COUNTY, NAPI,ES, Fl, 33962 68 subdivision, et cetera. We have about 35 different activities that are going into this particular study. The main purpose of course is to make sure that we're charging adequately for the surfaces that we provide and not over charging for those services that we provide also. We started this as a pilot project in July of '91 with 36 individuals who were doing the time sheet analysis, that information is going into our computer and we should have tho results of our pilot program by th~ end of November, 15th of November to the end. As soon as we finish with that pilot program, each one of the major leaders in the organization, Ken Baginski, Ronny Nino, John Madajewski and his staff will prepare key result areas as a result of this pilot study that we're doing. Then we went to an analysis of are our fees sufficient, in sufficient, we'll expand and that third one that's identified with the green, what we will do is install data into the county-wide VAX system. One of the interesting things is we have a Q-Plus team, a Quality' Plus team, that has made an analysis throughout the ~ 69 entire division of all of the information we're putting into our computers, what we would like to expand into our computers and how we can tie it all together. As Leo mentioned this morning, Paul is doing a study also, a five year MIS plan we'll be coordinating our activities with him. At the end of the six month period we'll be coming out with an interim report and that will be presented to the county manager and also will be presented to the development services advisory committee. From that point we'll work on as far as increasing this from a pilot study to a larger study throughout the organization and also coming back with recommendations to fees, be increased or decreased. The second goal that -- MR. DORRILL: Frank, if I could touch on the end of the first one. Another benefit from the board's perspective, aside from keeping time sheets from the finance side of the equation, it also gives us time and motion performance for permitting. We have this chronic problem people saying, we can't get permits, we can't get decisions. It's stuck on John Madajewski's desk. By ~ : being able to begin keeping time cards on a daily basis_D OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 70 and doing automated permit tracking, we'll know how long somebody's permit is in each department, in each section and literally who had it, who worked on it because they're having to keep their time on a daily basis and we'll have the ability to know and the computer will give you management reports about which types of permits take the longest to get through. Is it our fault, is it the engineer's fault, is the contractor's fault. Are we waiting to get revised plans back and it will show all the barriers. So, while we got into this thing from the financial aspect, the productivity and the performance aspect of the thing will give us an automated system to be able to tell you where permits of various types are at any given time in the system and who increasing is the problem in trying to get permit approval through because that's sort of a chronic problem the board always hear's about. COMMISSIONER HASSE: Is that going to incorporate the time it takes the attorney's office to do anything? MR. DORRILL: It will show that as well. Increasingly, because of the complexity of the land development code, if we're forever waiting ~or some OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 71 assistant county attorney to give us a decision on a plat issue then we're going to have to go back and deal with those areas that's becoming problem areas. Rather than just saying, gee, it's stuck up on Horseshoe Drive, this effort and this system will tell is whether that's true or not. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: This is not going to become, the time tracking isn't going to become a permanent fixture though is it? MR. DORRILL: They have been doing some of that under this pilot effort and I'm going to let Frank -- MR. BRUTT: John Madajewski's organization at the present time has when it comes in, how many days it took to review, when it went to the developer, when it came back from the developer, how many days it took to review the second submittal, back and forth. After we get an analysis of the time study, I don't see a need, at this time to continue this on the magnitude that we're doing. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Because you can spend more time inputting your time and after you got the information il~ becomes meaningless. You're not going it to bill it, OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 72 you're not going to do anything with it. MR. BRUTT: After we conclude an average project "X" takes a certain amount of time, I don't see a need to continue it on and on unless we're going to get into direct billing which some cities and counties do. If a new activity is required of us by the passage of the new ordinance then we feel that activity should be time logged. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: ! gues~ my quost~on Neil, ~ you've got the information and you find that, are you going to use it as a management tool to determine, in terms of streamlining the operation? MR. BRUTT: Both. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Are you going to use it for billing it back to the customer? MR. BRUq~T: What we've already found in the process that we have is in our paper flow there are certain steps that are too time consuming and could be eliminated by requiring one additional person close to the scene to handle it in the initial steps. It's being used for both. It's being used cost analysis and also being used~ for process analysis. 73 COMMISSIONER HASSE: By streamlining like this you're going to save time and money. MR. DORRILL: Hopefully, what I'm interested in are the performance aspects of it. What they're interested in at the moment are the budgetary aspects because they don't get any property taxes and they want it to know, are building permits subsidizing site development plans or are costs and fees for rezonings subsidizing plat approvals. They want a better handle on how they spend their money and therefore should we he been raising some fees and cutting some fees and getting a better handle on who's having to pay for certain types of activities. CHAIRMAN VObPE: My only concern about these types of systems they become self perpetuating. As a management tool it's fine. We went through that analysis with Dave Pettro about the various fees that were set and went through the steering committee and there were some adjur~t.m~)nt~ mado. I~ this a refinement of what we've Just gon(~ through in terms of what the fees should be and who's paying what? MR. BRUTT: Yes. OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPbES, FL 33962 74 MR. DORRILL: At the moment it's not intended to be a perpetual system. At the moment it's intended to give me the performance data that I want and to resolve his nagging budget problems up there as we go these various cycles. I would hate to thing that we're going to get to the point where everybody up there every day is trying to keep a time card because you're going to create a little bureaucratic monster if you try and do that. COMMISSIONER HASSE: I don't see it like that What I see here is finding out where the hangups either. are. MR. DORRILL: That's what's intended at the moment and he's hoping to have his first one concluded by January, did you say, and some recommendations back to me and the steering committee by January. MR. BRUTT: What this particular slide shows you is that in 1989, 1990, our budget costs as estimated when they prepared the budget in relationship to the revenue. In 1989 we were ahead eight hundred thousand dollars; 1990, nine hundred thousand dollars; 1991, was a construction slump. There was a negative one million--d~ dollars, this past year, our revenue in relationship to OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 16 17 75 projection of revenue came out ahead $400,000.00. The bottom Dart of this particular portrayal indicates that our revenues as indicated on the top, as I just mentioned, the permits that we have been dealing with have increased and the staff has been cut back as you know, we've gone from, as I said the total staff of 164 to 153 and now this year we're down to 140. Of that 140, the fund 113 enterprise fund will be staffed down to 93 individuals. The interesting thing is that our permit activity this past year was about 15,800. We estimated for 1993, at about the same level. permits are increasing. So, what we're seeing is the The staffing is decreasing as per the budget presentation and adoption and where our revenues sit at the present time. MR. DORRILL: Frank, is it safe to say, though, ~ that, put that back up there a second Dave, that we've got things fairly leveled out at the moment in terms of what we project permit activity to be? I don't see any spikes either going into '93. Staffing, we've had to get a little leaner and a little meaner as a result of the 1991 year. Your projected staffing is flattened out for OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 76 '93 and projected '94. When you look down underneath that, both your revenues and your expenditures beginning in '93 are flat as well. I see, you know, some little' green blitzs there in '89 and '92 where we brought in a little more money than what we spent. What it says overall is we've got a good balance between the revenue generating capability and what it costs to run that separate non-tax enterprise fund at the same time. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Just a comment. If I've read correctly between the month of August of 1991 and the month of August of 1992, there was increase in permit activity of about 124 percent. I think that was the number that I had read. In terms of revenues for that same period I'm told that there were 76 million dollars in permit activity in August of 1991 compared to 56 million dollars in August of 1991, in the year. There's almost a significant increase. Is that reflected in here? You mentioned $400,000.00. I would think overall 1992, 1993, even though we've been in a down economy that those indicators are much better than what was anticipated. OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 77 MR. DORRILL: You can see a little spike up beginning in '91. You can see permits actually went up last year and you can also see a small increase revenue. Show him the revenue in '92. The revenue is green, see it zipped up there a little bit. That, from my perspective, has more to do with the imposition of increased impact fees and people getting th0ir applications in during the mid summor as m~ch as anything. We may be seeing some commercial increase in commercial. We're not seeing much increase in multi-family stuff. We're seeing healthy single family market and an increase in commercial building activity, multi-family is just the bottom is falling out oS it.' MR. DAVENPORT: Also the land development code fees being instituted in November of last year. MR. BRUTT: Okay. Knowing your time is short, the.~ second goal in continued participation in the FIMA community ratings system CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Let me interrupt just a second. I know it's important. I know we're trying to move through but what are you doing about building inspections is that somehow involved here. People complaining about fact OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPI,ES, Fl. 78 called inspection it's talking thirty days to do it. I've overstated to make a point MR. BRUTT: Thirty hours it might be. The difficulty we've got now, I have one inspector that went back for a second heart operation, Perrico. Another one is out. We lost one to the State of Pennsylvania. We're running about 35 inspections per person, Der day which Js an impossible number. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Is it part of what your overall goal is. Have you got some plans to try to improve. I mean you talk about the permitting process, getting the permits issues, but at the other end of that when you're doing your inspections, are you addressing then that concern about the delays there? ~ MR. BRUTT: Up until the time of the two illnesses ' that I've just mentioned, we were running about 95 percent within 24 hours which is, which is the marked oD goal of the industry. It's only been because of the two illnesses and vacations that we've gone into this problem we haven't been able to. From the time the person calls in on our tap in system requesting a building ins[)ection to the time we perform it we've been meeting our goal of OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 99 percent within 24 hours. room.) CHAIRMAN VOLPE: last year -- (At this time, Mr. Leo Ochs, left the conference There was also some d±scuss'~.on-:l MR. gRUTT: The last four days, five days, Ed McGuire has telling me they have not been able to conclude all the inspections. One of the problems it's darker earlier in the afternoons so even going into overtime isn't helping us. CHAIRMAN VOI,PE: What I'm suggesting is you're* telling us how you're going to get the permits through weeks ago we were making that 99 to 100 percent inspections. MR. DORRILL: that if you call us today 99 percent of the times we the system that much more quickly but I'm only suggesting that as a part of your overall goal, it may be at thee other end as well and I'm hearing what you're saying :is that you've had a problem because of some sickness and some vacations, is that the only problem? '~.~- i~:! -'~'~ MR. BRUTT: Basically, yes, because up until a ~few Our stated customer service goal }is [Will OFFICIAb COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 guarantee that you'll get an inspection tomorrow. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: In terms of the computer technology. department. those programs so that -- MR. DORRILL: It's in place. now. I know what we're doing in the utilities~i~ I thought that there was some enhancement~of He has a tap system ~R. BRUTT: The two parts of the system. The tap in system about, 80 percent, 75 to 80 percent of all requests for building inspections are being made by the individual taking a tap phone and going through the process and requesting their inspections. The second part that we're trying to institute, we have been working with MIS but the cost seemed to be totally extravagant although they would pay for themselves about two years, what I desire to do is to use the bar code reader for some other system where the ~ inspector can go out, go up to permit card, run off permit number with the bar code, do his inspections, all of the information goes into the hand held unit, come back into the office, drop it in, by the time the persoID takes off his jacket and his work shoes, that OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33969. 18 81 information is already into the computer and we have been investigating that since I brought the idea back in 1989. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Where is that in your strategic '~ plan? ., That was last year. We've already done MR. BRUTT: all of the work. The problem is about forty to eightyi,i? thousand dollars is it estimate the MIS people have given us as to be able to use the bar code into the VAX main frame and back out to us but because of budget limitations the last two years, we proposed it and we haven't -- MR. DORRILL: We didn't fund it. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I just don't want to lose sight then. You say that was last year. MR. DORRILL: They've evaluated it. We have a proposal and we weren't happy with the cost of the proposal to see if we could get it to payoff in one year. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: So, we're not going to do it then? MR. DORRILL: Well, we're not currently contemplating doing it. We continue to hay8 a manual ~ type system that requires the inspectors to come in at ~_~ the end of the day and do their day ending reports and cD OFFICIAIJ COURT REPORTERS, COI,I,TER COI~NTY, WApr,ve v, q Rqg2 82 that type of thing CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I'll end this discussion, in utilities the guys go out and read the meters and then they come in and plug their machine in and it's all done. MR. DORRILL: Same type of thing. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Except at forty to eighty thousand dollars which you decided you don't want to do? MR. BRUTT: I want to do. I don't have the money. MR. DORRILL: Technically, they lost money in 1991. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: He just told us he had four hundred thousand dollars more than originally projected. MR. DORRILL: In '92. MR. BRUTT: This past fiscal year we were $400,000.00 ahead of our estimate of operation. If somebody were to tell me Frank, get this thing going in 30 days. The technology is there. The research has been done, the equipment we've held it in our hands. It's great. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: This is an enterprise fund. It's the people who are being serviced, who are paying for the service. So, we're talking about increasing their fees~ or decreasing their fees they may be willing, if it's :-~'~ OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 18 83 going it to expedite the CO process, they may be willing to see some adjustment. Maybe we need to adjust our fee structure to pick up that forty to eighty thousand dollars. It seems to me that it's important enough because I get as many complaints at that end as we do on the other end about we're not getting it out fast enough. COMMISSIONER HASSE: Didn't we adjust the fees not too long ago? You know, there's a limitation on how you can continue to adjust it. MR. DORRILL: What I'll do is I'll make a note to look when we get to the year ending and the actual projections we may decide that it would be worth our while to come back and buy those devices. The other note I made was if we could get some long term disability that we need to go out and hire some full-time, temporary, building inspectors to get us over the hump because I keep hearing the economy's getting a little better and the contractors are anticipating a much better season than we've had the last two years. We need to have enough warm bodies out there to where we're not making thirty-five inspections a day. agree with Frank, that's just too many. · OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 19 have? 84 MR. CONSTANTINE: Frank, how many inspectors do you MR. BRUTT: My best guess would be about 17. MR. CONSTANTINE: My guess is if you cut, if I was in a private business and I cut two of those, I'm not sure I wouldn't ask my employees to delay their vacation instead of cutting my level of services since this is a temporary situation. MR. BRUTT: said, two of them Pennsylvania. the problem. MR. CONSTANTINE: I'm sorry, I thought you said some were on vacation was a concern too. MR. BRUTT: If I did -- may -- COMMISSIONER HASSE: You made also mention of the fact the time scheduling, daylight savings time has gone How does that affect you? At 5:00 it's still off now. light. It's a temporary situation. Like I are sick and one of them we lost to I don't think vacations were entering into MR. BRUTT: Usually, we can get some people to w(~fk later in the evenings but -- COMMISSIONER HASSE: Can they start earlier? ,~-T~TAT. ~'"~TTOrT'~ D~D~'IOr'P~'P~ ~¢'~T,T,TI?D ~f'~TT~,T~T'~V ~,~'~,~T ~ ~', "~(~. MR. BRUTT: We're starting at 7:30. I'm meeting with Ed McGuire, depending upon when Perrico comes back. He comes back on duty on Monday and that'll pick up 30 85 inspections. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I think the manager and you Frank, I think you've got the sense. I think it's an important part. You haven't addressed it as I've heard your presentation, I think you need to be focused on the other part in terms of your inspections and what can be done. You know, if there's some opportunity for next year to implement a newer system, it ought to at least be brought to the board again. MR. BRUTT: When we speak to other building inspector organizations, when they hear the number that we perform per day we're greatly over the state average by a considerable number, believe me. Even getting the 99 to 100 percent of all the inspections accomplished is quite a surprise to a lot of them. COMMISSIONER HASSE: They also say you can't do it. MR. DIBLASIO: You're also looking at quality of cD inspection. Being in the trades, an inspector comes, a~-d I've had this situation happen, I call for an inspectio~~ OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, 33962 86 the inspector comes out and breezes through it. You're not getting a quality inspection which could lead to county liability. MR. DORRILL: Not if they're doing 35 a day. I agree with you. He's hardly got time to pull up on the job and look at the house and sign the card and get back in the car and go. MR. DIBLASIO: A lot of times with the inspectors, you build up a relationship, a rapport, with the people running the work so after a while they pretty much trust but there's always that one time that they could miss something that could end in the county liability in the long run. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I was going to say, I think it's an issue, obviously it's a practical issue but it's also one of those in terms of your strategic plan in terms how you might be better able to automate that system, to improve the efficiency and how much time, they're probably spending as much time inputting this information manually and they could be, while they're inputting it, they could be out doing some additional inspections. MR. BRUTT: The processes is they hand their sheets I 19 87 in and a crew of secretarial staff do the inputting right into the computer. We acknowledge, we've done cost analysis, we could eliminate one full-time secretarial staff easily by going into the automatic download besides the fact that we get a tremendous number of management~ relationships coming out in printed form. ~!IN CHAIRMAN VObPE: You need to somehow keep that i front of us as a board because we just made a decisior last year and it's been dropped. I don't think -- MR. DORRILL: That's the -- go ahead, let's tal} about your disaster recovery. MR. BRUTT: I'll summarize by saying that becaus of the work that the staff has done, we have been able get a five percent insurance premium reduction on the flood insurance policies. Basically, there's about 35,000 policies in the county between the city and the unincorporated area. We're going to continue on that particular program in order to continue to save the citizens some $400,000. plus. MR. DORRILL: Glossing over this one quickly, this is the first time in all the years that I've bee! OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 ± iii i i i i 11111 I I1~__ IIII II III1# II i I I J I~111I IIIII I I I I i ~lll .... 88 with the county that because of the quality of the work and the relatively few variances given by the county commission we've been able to get a county wide decrease in flood insurance premiums. Like Frank said, $470,000.00 to the premium holders who are the people that have to write checks for flood insurance and we're going to try to do the same thing this coming year. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Is it annually that it's done or is it that you're saying reduce it further? MR. DORRILL: I don't know the extent to which we can reduce it further. We need to remain competitive within the class of premiums that we have now is the way that I understand it. MR. BRUTT: We must continue to send in information to them. There is a potential. It won't be this year, a potential in the future of getting another five percent. We won't see it in this next he year, possibly the year after. a disaster recovery task force to the meet the growth management objective. This is an objective that's in The third goal is the coordination and creation of) your conservation element of the growth management pla ~r~2~ [[ [[ i[[[llil[ .......................... I - ~ I Il Illllll II Ill ...... I 2O 89 It's required by the state growth management legislation. Essentially it's at the stage now of being up with the county attorney's office. We've done a draft of the legislation. Marjorie Student is checking with other counties so she doesn't duplicate the work that's already been done. We've had meetings with Ken Penau (Phonetic) and other individuals. Essentially, there will be about 26 members on this particular committee made up of members of the county government, tax assessor's office, the sheriff's department, the utilities, -- CHAIRMAN VOLPE: How about the City of Naples? MR. BRUTT: -- the building industry. It would require a interlocal agreement between the City of Naples, Everglades, et cetera, et cetera. So, we're working on it at the present time. We have a draft of the ordinance and we expect to bring it to you some time at the end of this year with a request that appointments to be made in January of '93. MR. DORRILL: One of the little known secrets of Hurricane Andrew was, Frank, actually began working on '~ this in May or June and when Hurricane Andrew came .~ through at the end of August we had had a little corp _D OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 90 group of post recovery people that just, by virtue of their, this particular goal, had been working with these types of programs in mind for about three months as evidenced by, we have a FIMA staff coordinator who's here, the guy is from Seattle. He's been working out of my office helping with the recovery and reimbursement side and to hear this fellow talk about it we've done probably about the best job in the state in terms of our Dost recovery, planning the initial inspections that was done by Frank's people in getting us eligible in getting our money back. According to this fellow we've done on~ of the better jobs in the state. We got a little lucky here but Frank's people have done us a real good job and it paid off in the recovery efforts after the hurricane. MR. BRUTT: The 4th goal is expand affordable housing options for the citizens of Collier County. Specifically, Greg McHalik has been working with the banking industry in order to assist in getting down the D down payments that are being required when a person is ~' going after their first house, first mortgage. ~ He's been working with the banking community tha~ OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, F~, 33962 91 held numerous meeting. They're setting aside monies to assist in getting the down payments provided from the secondary funding. The seconds item we have there is housing rehabilitation loan program. We have $250,000.00 available to us for hurricane damage repair and the state has indicated that we may be able to use that money for additional rehabilitation of a particular dwelling unit providing there was some damage of the unit as a result of Hurricane Andrew. The third item, is the one that we have money in hand, the consultants have already submitted their proposals for doing the work and it is the community development block grant funding for the division of water and sewer and screen improvement down in Copeland. The proposals have been received, we're reviewing it at the present time and the committee will be making a recommendation for the selection of a consultant shortly. Number four, is there are a lot of people that have high levels of equity in their home but still don'~ very have enough money to provide themselves with a good living base. There are ways of going into the reverse_D 92 mortgage program. This particular goal, what we'll be doing is, Greg McHalik and his staff will be developing a counseling program to educate individuals who have a high level of equity in their home as to how they can use that equity for living expenses, et cetera. Of course, that has to be worked out with the banks and he's working with that but it's a program that is available. It's basically an educating the individual to get them to make better use of the equity they have in the home. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Do you think that's the responsibility of the county government? That sounds to me as though, you know, to the extent that you can advise the private individuals as to how they can tap the equity I mean, that seems to me to be a mission in their home. COMMISSIONER HASSE: I think so. We do that in regard to those people who have difficulty affording to live. MR. DORRILL: The program as I understand it will only be to promote and refer people to participating banks and it's, it will be, it's going to be a lot harderJ to get people in that mind set. OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 93 I always think of grandmother who owns her own place but the way she still pays her bills she goes and she cashes her social security check and she goes around town and she pays cash the same day the bill comes for the power and the phone and the gas and trying to convince her to go borrow money against the equity in the house and she would owe somebody $30,000.00 or whatever. You just can't convincing people that went through the depression and that type of thing to do that. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I don't know where that program is going to go. I can relate to the same thing. Trying to convince my father that he should pay anything other than be cash for whatever it is that he buys. hope. That's wonderful but -- MR. BRUTT: At best, it's a counseling program. It's a type of -- CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Sounds to me like it should be in social services is where it ought to be. It doesn't sound to me as though it should be under your department but that's just and observation. MR. DORRILL: I think there's an obvious affinity-) between what they're doing and what Martha Skinner wou~ There's just no OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 _ . ,,t ....... -~ Il I I1[ I JIIIILI_ I III I II II II III II I! ~ ...... 94 be doing in their service for senior program where we have people that are just they're border line having to be institutionalized and then working with local banks. I'm making notes there, but there could be more. It's intended to be more of a referral program for people who are nearing destitution or institutionalization. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: And, you may tie in with Paul's operation there because, I assume, to some extent, it sounds a little remote but you get involved with conservatorshiDs and you get involved with guardianship and those are the kinds of people who may need some kind of counseling. So, there may be the first ~oint of entry in the context of court related services. MR. BRIGHAM: When they're brought to our attention. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: interface with this program. MR. DORRILL: Yes, that's a good point. COMMISSIONER HASSE: I think what Neil said there is important. Maybe it's HRS along with Paul as well. MR. BRUTT: Exactly, so I don't know how you,to We'll communicate with the other. The OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL _ II ..... ~ I ,. ~, . 33962 95 fifth goal we have provide incentives to industries and major employers to locate businesses in Collier County and promote economic developments. Our first sub-goal in there is to promote the advantage of the enterprise zone that we have out in Immokalee. As you know, we've had a French group that was going to go come in and use the black plastic that we use in our agricultural industry and unfortunately that fell through. There's another group that came in and has made proposals also but hasn't finished the paper work, that opportunity has dropped. Basically, there's about $565,000.00 available in grants providing we can do two things; work out some of the environmental problems of the, I guess, Scrub J (Phonetic) out at the airport in the Immokalee area and we're working with George Archibald to redesign of the road, moving it over so we can cure that problem. That airport is an enterprise zone and the enterprise zone, of course, gives the potential developer a lot of tax advantages when they create jobs, sales tax credits, et cetera, et cetera. The programs are there. We're dealing with the industrial people working with EDC 96 and the Chamber of Commerce. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Frank, we need to do something more than what we're doing. I had an employer come to me frustrated by the fact that they wanted to relocate their business to Collier County. They didn't know who to talk to and what to do and they said when they went to Jacksonville, they had a little brochure about what it is that could be done within their 'community, what incentives are available to this company. They wanted to relocate from Wisconsin and they employ 40 to 50 people now. They're here, part of their grant is here. I don't know who you're coordinating with. If you're going to do that we've got an industrial development authority out there, right? MR. DORRILL: Correct. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Who are they? do? them? Who what do they Who do they report to and how are you involved with~ MR. DORRILL: What we're saying is this ought to be an increased goal involving the Immokalee Airport because A, we own the property free and clear; B, we're eligible in fact we have completed the redesign to build Immokalee 97 Airport's first industrial park with grant money; C, the fact that this county has the lowest ad valorem tax rate in the state and we have a federally approved enterprise zone at the Immokalee Airport has got to be a tremendous tax advantage to people that we ought to be stealing away from other communities to come out there. CHAIRMAN VObPE: I agree with you. What I'm suggesting is that I don't sense a coordinated effort in that regard. Don Pickworth is the attorney for the Industrial Development Authority. They have got monies available to assist for people who want to locate in one of these enterprise zones. I don't know who they report to and what they do. MR. DORRILL: Our primary initiative in this instance has been housing. We don't have any staff who are identified for economic development to the extent of which we participate EDC is poor and the extent to which the EDC has a lot to show for their individual and private efforts is almost nonexistent and there's no good coordination amongst the three of us at the moment. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Let me just, A, we've directed staff to develop an economic element to our growth OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 98 management plan. Presumably, they're working on that. MR. BRUTT: Right. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: So, that's happening. MR. BRUTT: Right. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: We've got an identified enterprise zone. We've got the EDC out there and I don't know who they're coordinating with. It seems to me that there's an opportunity for the government -- MR. BRUTT: Staff is coordinating with them. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: -- to bring that together, Frank. I just didn't see it in this objective, to try to bring those various groups together even as it relates to housing, Nell. You know, again, we have some low interest loans that are available out there and we always end up with Scambia County and who knows, in order that we joint venture it with them and I don't know how many of those funds are coming back locally. I don't know who identifies that within county government. MR. DORRILL: There's a tremendous opportunity, I thought maybe we would at least address it through some .~ previous direction that y'all gave us to look at creating an airport authority. We're going to have a special acrid OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 - -III I EIIIII I' - iiiii IIIII -- 99 of the legislature ready for you to look at, at the end of November to create an airport authority and if we do that, from my perspective, it would be their obligation with the combined airport authority that they've got this huge asset Immokalee. I read in yesterday's Florida Trend Magazine that somebody, a U.S. sugar corporation, just made a decision to build a new orange juice concentrate plant in Hendry County. All it things being equal, the fact that we own the land at the airport. We've got the money for the infrastructure. We've got the lowest tax rate in the state and a federally approved enterprise zone to give them tax relief for income tax purposes and sales tax purposes. We ought to be able to beat the pants off of anybody in South Florida in terms of attracting an industry to the airport site out there but we haven't had anybody or any time or any staff ever allocated to do that. We've chased housing programs but what we're contemplating is through a consolidated airport authorit~ we're trying to have some resources to develop industria~:E OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY0 NAPLES, FL 33962 100 properties and tax base at the Immokalee Air Property. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: You already have that though. You have an industrial development authority out there. MR. DORRILL: Whose sole purpose is to sell bonds to build facilities but in terms of promoting and attracting industry and making and giving presentations or proposals to perspective industries they're not really doing that. They exist as a financing mechanism and they're probably only one cog above a three cog wheel at this point. MR. BRUTT: The second item under B as it says applies to loans and grants of businesses and as stated here we are working with and will continue to work with the economic development counsel and the Chamber of ,'7 Commerce. As Nell has identified it and I've said the,_.'-~ same thing we don't have a focal individual coordinator:i: for industrial development. CD When you talk to people in the chamber and the EDC you don't walk away from either group with the feeling that they themselves has said you do it and we'll supply the information or somebody else do it and we'll supply the assistance and that's why we're saying here that we OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33062 101 will assist businesses in developing qualified proposals for funding when nobody is available out there. The economic development element is finishing up their study. Part of the items that we've been waiting for is actually how many people employed in this county, doing what, where, at what level of income and Dunon Bradstreet has this information and we've purchased the information and now we're getting in and we should receive it in the next few weeks. You've identified the same thing that's obvious to a lot of people, there's no focal point to industrial development in the county. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: So, what does this do for getting us to that focal point in this community? MR. BRUTT: It identifies what we can do as a county with the staffing that we have and the limited ~ amount of resources we can apply to this type of cid activity. It basically says, yes, we know things can be done, there's money out there, there's a community development block grant available. There's a $565,000.00 grant available. It's like Nell mentioned we need to tie old parts together. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Maybe that's identified as a goal 102 here but maybe that should be, if nothing more, we can provide the networking to bring those groups together. We don't have to spend dollars to do that but if we can -- MR. BRUTT: I don't know who this person came into the county to speak to but Greg McHalik and Russel have been working with people that come in and say what does the State of Florida have. The State of Florida has a very nice brochure that I have in that attache case. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: These people had a problem finding how to get into the bureaucracy. Once they got into the bureaucracy they didn't who to talk to and when they went to the EDC, you know, the EDC is not all that well organized. So, they didn't have anything available and they said, you know, we're frustrated. I mean, I tried refer them out to different people but somehow we need to try to bring that together. We've got an analysis that's been done of our industrial needs within the community and that was a part of why DCA "D rejected that settlement agreement because we didn't hagi~ that analysis. We've got it now in terms of the -- industrial properties that are available. ~o MR. DORRILL: We have that and there's another, the OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 103 community commission has underwritten about twenty million dollars worth of tax districts improvements to the Pine Ridge and Naples Production park sites. I agree with you, there's no central point of authority or promotion for perspective industries that may want to come to Florida. MR. BRUTT: We're doing an analysis of all the industrial and commercial zoned land and also the restrictions that are on those parcels of land so that we will know what is available. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: The frustration isn't going to happen here. It isn't going to change with the Chamber of Commerce. If you've got the Chamber of Commerce focused on tourist and tourist development they're not going to be focused on industrial development within our community and somehow that needs to be identified and 'again, I don't see anything other than perhaps working and bringing those people together to be facilitators. Somehow you've got to be the facilitator and it isn't happening. MR. BRUTT: that in quite some period of time the economic My experience in Palm Beach County OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33969. 104 development activity existed when I was executive director I was given that particular function. It went on about four years until the down side, no, the boom in the 70's and it Got so big people were saying why should the county spend sixty thousand dollars, having two people do economic development. We had maps and aerials of every potential location in the county for use. Ail of the information you wanted was in file drawers. We had two persons that meets and greets people and take people out. When the boom came along people were saying we're Growing too fast. We don't need this and wiped the budget out. Two years later a council of 100 was created because the community itself acknowledged that they didn't need to do something. I'm experienced in doing that. MR. DORRILL: My suggestion would be perhaps what we ought to do with the new board would be to give you a status report of the economic element with which we have committed to do sort of in the interim. We're not near being complete yet. Maybe in conjunction with that we could have a follow-up workshop, invite EDC, express some ,AD CD OFFTCTAT, COTfRT REPORTER,q, COT,T,TP~ cc)TTM'T'v M~pt~ mt 105 of our concerns and the board could determine what their plans for the industrial sites that we own are. Maybe we could, you know, convince the DCA side from having quarterly meetings, cocktail parties, annual golf outings and say we need to work with them in promoting, you know, the county owned industrial properties and because they do have a staff they have a staff of three people and I can't tell you every day what they are doing that might not be fair, they may be doing far more than what I realize. When perspective industrial manufacturer comes to Collier County, we ought to be coordinating a presentation to them to show them what the tax implications moving to our county. CHAIRMAN ¥OLPE: Somehow, we need to somehow point, we need to start thinking how to do it from staff's perspective. MR. DORRILL: My suggestion would be maybe during January, we should have an interim report workshop and invite the EDC, invite finance authority to be there and get the county commission fired up a little bit. ! agre9 I don't want to have to create a county with you. OFFICTAL COURT REPORTER.g, 106 department, department head, secretary, assistant and all that because there are staff resources available through EDC. Maybe we ought to help them so that the county manager or manager's office, budget office chairman meet with EDC staff or these respective people to put a sales pitch on and maybe tentatively schedule that for January. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: We've covered three so far, Nell now. How many more do we have? MR. DORRILL: I thought we pretty much did the executive offices and the board. You and I spent as much time talking about the coming years as we did the last year. We have Paul's division. We have utilities, public services, transportation and emergency services. So, we only have four more. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: How about environmental? MR. DORRILL: We have five more divisions to do. We've done two divisions, the executive office and the board office so we're, for all practical purposes, about halfway. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, we'll need to come up with some time so maybe we can -- our goal was to try to do ~ this all some time during the month of October. ~ 33962 OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 107 MR. DORRILL: Uh-huh. We're ahead of last year. What we really ought to do is begin this again in May with the new board so that the new board can set all of their goal related Driorities before we ever comDlete the tentative budget. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: That's the goal. MR. DORRILL: Right. I wish the new chairman all the luck in the world in trying to coordinate that and convince his fellow board members to come to the sessions. CHAIRMAN VOLPE: We're getting better, I think, in terms of involving the board in terms of these divisions issues. Thank you. (Proceedings concluded at 11:20 a.m.) OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 108 STATE OF FLORIDA ) COUNTY OF COLLIER I, Jacquelyn D. McMiller, Deputy Official Court Reporter and Notary Public in and for the State of Florida at Large, do hereby certify that the foregoing proceedings were taken before me at the date and place as stated in the caption hereto on Page 1 hereof; that the foregoing computer-assisted transcription, consisting of pages numbered 2 through 107, inclusive, is a true record of my Stenograph notes taken at said proceedings. Dated this 25th day of November, 1992. !1£~'~..~%. ~m;a~ss-~ I1 c ~~'~_~~i~ S ate of Florida at Large , My commission expires: 4/16/93 OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962