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CEB Minutes 02/24/2000 WFebruary 24, 2000 TRANSCRIPT OF THE WORKSHOP OF THE CODE ENFORCEMENT BOARD OF COLLIER COUNTY Naples, Florida, February 24, 2000 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the North Code Enforcement Board, in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at 8:30 a.m. in SPECIAL SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRMAN: Clifford Flegal George Ponte Don W. Kincaid Roberta Dusek Kathryn M. Godfrey Peter Lehmann Darrin Phillips Rhona Saunders Diane Taylor ALSO PRESENT: Jean Rawson, Attorney, Code Enforcement Board Michelle Arnold, Code Enforcement Director Maria Cruz, Enforcement Official Page Location: ~0DE ENFORCEMEN?..~O&RD. OF COIalaI]~R COUNTY, FLORIDA February 24, 2000 at 8=30 o'clock Collier Cotm:y Government Center, Adam. Bldg, 3rd Floor 1. Susan Nurra¥ 2. Barbara Burgeoon 3. S:an Chrzanowski 4. Johnnie Gebhardt 5. Joan Rawson Planning EnVironme~tal Review Engineer Review Building Parmitc Rules and RegulaEions NOTE: AN~ ~RSON WI40 DECIDES TO APPEAL A DECISION OF THIS BOARD WILL N£~D A RECORD 0P THE PROCEEDINGS PERTAINING TH~RHTO, AND THEREFORE MAY NEED TO ENSURE THAT A VERBATIM RI~CORD OP THE PROCEEDINGS IS ~L%DE, WHICH RECORD INCLUDES THE TESTZMONYAND EVIDENCE UPON WHICH THE APPEAL IS TO R~ BASED. N~IT~ER COLLIER COUNTY NOR THE CODE ENFORC~'%IENT BOARD SHALL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR PROVIDING THIS RECORD. 1. 3. January 27, 2000 4. ~OLL. CALL APPROVAL OF AGENDA APPROVAL OF ~INUT~S pU~LZC HZ~aIN~$ A. BCC vs. Southern Managemen= Corp. B. BCC vs. Paul L. aha Ba=baza A. Ri~dleberger C. BCC vs. NiCk S. Cencenaroo TR. CEB No. 2000-001 CZB NO. 2000-006 CEB No. 2000-008 CEE No. 99-073 A. ~C VS. Willi~ E. & Severly M. Hu~hy CE~ No. 99-066 A. Bce vs. Richard ba~ence Kntebea L Marsha b. To. send 8. 9. 10. REPORTS A. BCC vs. William E. & Beverly Hurphy B. FORF, CLOSURES COMMENTS NEXT MEETING DATK March 23, 2000 %DJOURN CEE NO. 99-066 February 24, 2000 CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Your show for the time being, ma'am. MS. ARNOLD: Okay, we are going to be -- for the record, Michelle Arnold, code enforcement director. I'd like to initially welcome our new member, Mr. Don Kincaid. He has been appointed by the Board of County Commissioners as a full member of the board. So welcome aboard. And this is a perfect time for you to start, because we're going to give you an introductory of our community development services division and how that whole process works over there. MR. KINCAID: I think you planned it that way. Thank you. MS. ARNOLD: We do have members of the community development staff here today. Susan Murray, which is in the planning staff. Barbara Burgeson, she's with environmental review. Stan Chrzanowski, he's with the engineering review section of the planning department. Johnnie Gebhardt, she's with building and permitting and review, and she's in that building department. And when Jean gets here, she'll go over the rules and regulations for the Code Enforcement Board and give you -- or address some of the other information that she provided to you all in the packet last month. Mr. Kincaid, did you get that packet as well? It should have been a folder, a separate folder. MR. KINCAID: Yes, I got-- MS. ARNOLD: Okay. MR. KINCAID: -- a separate folder with the rules and regulations pertaining to the Code Enforcement Board and a few other items, the statutes. MS. ARNOLD: Great. That's exactly right. All right, if I can have Susan Murray start the workshop. MS. MURRAY: Good morning. I'm Susan Murray, I'm the chief planner, planning services department, and I'm going to present a real simplistic overview of our site development plan process. Not knowing how much you all know or don't know, I Page 2 February 24, 2000 thought I'd keep it very simple and allow you the opportunity to ask questions. And there's other staff members that will be making presentations that will kind of dovetail on what I'm presenting. So I don't know how Michelle wants to handle it. Perhaps at the end if she wants to take questions at the end of each presentation, whichever you prefer. MS. ARNOLD: It's up to the board. It may be easier for you all to ask questions as the presentations are provided. MS. MURRAY: That's fine. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Yeah, let's let them give their presentations, and if while they're doing it a question arises, I think it would be easier to ask it then. Otherwise, as normally happens, we all tend to forget the question we had, if we wait. MS. MURRAY: Okay. What I handed out to you, before I get started, is an overview of the Collier County development approval process. And this will give you a little bit of a perspective on where the site development plan process falls into the overall development process, starting with vacant land and ending with an actual building on the site. As you can see, I highlighted in purple the SDP or site development plan process. It is an administrative process which usually occurs after a vacant piece of property has been zoned appropriately to allow the proposed use. So with that I'm going to go ahead and get started. Basically the site development plan process is an administrative process. It's a site plan review process. Basically it's been implemented to ensure compliance with the land development regulations prior to the issuance of a building permit. It's not applicable to all development in the county. Specifically it would be applicable to all commercial development, industrial development and multi-family development. It would exclude your typical single-family home or duplex. It does require engineered site plans. Some projects require signed and sealed architectural plans. And that would mostly apply to all of our commercial projects, and some of the Page 3 February 24, 2000 industrial projects. And also require signed and sealed landscaped plans. While we're going through the site development plan process, which involves many different sections within our administration -- I'm in the planning section. We also have Stan Chrzanowski will speak to you about engineering review. But when a developer submits a site plan, those plans are farmed out to each of the individual sections for their review and comment. And generally, when they're reviewing those plans, they are -- I was going to give you an overview as to what they are looking for, and that is specifically to ensure that the development complies with fundamental planning and design principles. We also ensure that the development is consistent with the county's Growth Management Plan. We look at the configuration of traffic circulation system; the layout and arrangements of buildings and open space. We also look at emergency access, architectural design and open spaces, the availability and capacity of drainage and utilities, the overall compatibility with adjacent development, and the impacts of the development on natural resources and any environmental concerns. Through your work here, you might often hear site development plan or site development plan amendment, SDP, SDP amendment or site improvement plan. Those are variations within the overall site development plan process. (Mr. Lehmann enters boardroom.} MS. MURRAY: And I've put up on the screen -- and I'm going to go into detail in just a second, so I won't spend a lot of time on this -- kind of an overview of the differences between those processes, to give you an idea, when you hear that terminology, what we're talking about. With that in mind, I'll start with the SDP amendment. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Michelle, this chart's very interesting. Would it be possible for you to see that we all get a copy of this particular one? MS. ARNOLD: Sure. Page 4 February 24, 2000 MS. MURRAY: SDP amendments would be applicable to any proposed change to a previously approved site development plan. I probably should have just started out with the overall site development plan itself. But let's assume that we have a piece of property that's developed and -- through an SDP and they want to change that, so they would be required to go through an SDP amendment. Within that process, amendments are defined as either substantial or insubstantial. Substantial would be any change which substantially affects existing transportation circulation, building or parking arrangements, drainage, landscaping or preserve and conservation areas. And this is defined in our Land Development Code. Insubstantial would be all other changes. Just to give you an idea of the cost, it would be the same as a new site development plan. $425, plus $9 per dwelling unit, plus $21 per residential building structure. And then for nonresidential, you would pay $425, plus a penny per square foot, plus $21 per building. The review time is generally 10 to 20 working days. And I want you to keep in mind that that 10 to 20 working days is generally the time at which the county staff is reviewing the project. And there can be several review phases within an overall review. So, for example, upon initial submittal, the county staff may have some detailed comments that they would write out and then send back to the applicant for revisions to his or her plans. They would then resubmit plans and they would be re-reviewed by the applicable sections. So the 10 to 20 working days is generally the initial review. Overall, I think generally site plans probably take about two months to complete, if the applicant is submitting revisions in a timely manner and county staff is on time with their reviews. MS. DUSEK: Excuse me, I'm interested in this part also, Michelle, because oftentimes we ask about cost and time. MS. ARNOLD: What I'll do is I'll get a copy of all her slides and then provide that to the board. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Excuse me, you're talking now about Page 5 February 24, 2000 an amendment, and you're talking this two-month period. What about if there are no revisions, just a straight SDP, is that about a two-month time period? MS. MURRAY: It's about the same time frame, yeah. And it really depends on the type of amendment. Some of the amendments can be relatively straightforward and not require substantive review by certain reviewing agencies. But I think this is generally a pretty good time frame to abide by. A lot of SDP's come in and we don't -- we'll submit first comments to the petitioner, and we don't hear back from them for months. And so it really is -- it's kind of a two-way working arrangement where they have to be responsive to our comments and vice versa. An insubstantial amendment costs $85, and our staff review time generally is within five to 10 working days. MR. PONTE: Susan, could you just -- what's an insubstantial amendment? What would that be? MS. MURRAY: I'll go back to this slide here. The way to define an insubstantial is basically to define a substantial. MR. PONTE: Good enough. MS. MURRAY: And as you can see, it's any change which substantially affects existing transportation circulation, building or parking, drainage, landscaping, preservation and conservation areas, Usually if they're adding impervious area or changing the traffic circulation pattern on a site, adding building square footage, those sort of things are generally considered substantial. We'll get insubstantial changes in -- and Stan may touch on those -- for a lot of engineering issues, like if they want to relocate a drainage structure, things like that that are really minor that really don't have a substantial impact on the layout of the site or the impervious or water management concerns; any environmental concerns, landscape, that sort of thing. MR. PONTE: Thank you. MS. MURRAY: You're probably also familiar with the terminology SIP or site improvement plan, and that would be Page 6 February 24, 2000 applicable to currently improved -- a currently improved site where there is no proposed expansion of existing impervious area or change or effects of the on-site surface water management areas. Site improvement plans we generally will use on older developments that were not -- that did not go through the SDP process. Some of these older developments may have been built prior to the Land Development Code amendments, which required site development plans for commercial and industrial development. So that's generally where a site improvement plan is applicable. Cost is $85, and review time is five to 10 working days. What I might point out is -- and I'm not sure exactly how you operate, but I don't know if you're charged with making recommendations to somebody you may have a code case with, to say you need to get an SDP or you need to get an SIP or something to that effect. But a lot of times the SDP amendments, be they substantial or insubstantial, or the SIP process, is kind of something that may or may not be easily determined, depending on the conditions of the site. So generally, as staff, we hold what's called a pre-application meeting, prior to anybody submitting any of these plans, to get an idea of what a person wants to do on the site, what's existing, what environmental concerns there are, water management concerns, access concerns, setback issues, anything like that. We generally hold what's called a pre-application meeting, to take a look at those issues on the surface, and then make a recommendation as to the process that the person needs to go through. So it might be difficult for you, and again, I'm not sure that you do that, to actually recommend, you know, to somebody you need to do an SIP or an SDP amendment of substantial or insubstantial change. Generally we determine that at the staff level, depending on conditions of the site or depending on what the petitioner wants to do, so -- MS. ARNOLD: Just for the board's information, an example of what would have occurred, our staff, code enforcement staff, Page 7 February 24, 2000 would have consulted with the Planning Department and recommended to a petitioner or respondent that they meet with the Planning Department to do just that, determine whether or not it's at the level of the site development plan or site improvement plan. The gentleman that was before you, I believe last month, with the containment areas for -- went through that process but didn't follow up with recommendations made by the planning staff. MS. MURRAY: I'm just going to give you a real brief overview. And again, some other staff members may go into a little more detail about this, about how the process works. Basically our project review section coordinates the review process. Site plans are submitted by developers -- or generally by the developer's engineer, and are distributed to county departments for review and comment. And that would include the planning services department, engineering review. Within our planning services, we have an environmental staff. It may or may not go to transportation. We have a landscape architect who does review, stormwater management, PWED sometimes will review our site plans. So depending on the nature of the site plan, it actually -- the plans are actually farmed out to what I call the various reviewing agencies, which would be various departments within the county for their review and comment. Again, they review the project for compliance with county codes, regulations and permitting requirements, and then the comments are collected back at the project review section and then distributed back out to the petitioner's engineer for changes to site plans. When all the reviews are complete -- and again I mentioned this, maybe a two or three-step process, whereby we submit comments and the engineer returns corrected plans based on our comments. So when all those reviews are complete and the plans meet the county codes, provided the applicant has met all the code and permitting requirements, administrative approval of a site development plan is then given. Page 8 February 24, 2000 Once the SDP is approved, the developer may begin to apply for building permits. And once permits are approved, the developer actually may begin construction. And that's where the building review and permitting would come in next after us. So with that, I'm finished. If you have any more questions, I'd be happy to answer them. MS. DUSEK: I just have a basic question. When you send the plans out to these different review groups, are -- do they have a certain amount of time in which to get them back? MS. MURRAY: Yes. That's where the 10 to 20 working day time frame would come in. MS. DUSEK: So they have to do it, say, within 20 days? I mean, what if someone is backed logged and can't -- MS. MURRAY: Right. MS. DUSEK.' -- within the 20 days? Is it required or is it just something you ask that they try to do? MS. MURRAY: It is actually -- I guess you could say it's actually a policy. It is required. And I would say generally we're pretty successful. All of our reviewing agencies are pretty successful in turnaround. And generally the first submittal you're required to respond back within 10 working days. MR. PONTE: One of the problems that we have is determining lengths of time. And so your -- the idea of 10, 20 working days is good. But I guess my question is, how soon can he get started? In other words, one has to have a plan amended, let's say. How quickly can that process start? Can the respondent leave here and go over to Horseshoe Drive and start it this afternoon, or is there a delay time in just getting started? MS. MURRAY: Generally a respondent could actually pick up the phone and call planning services department and set up what's called a pre-application meeting. We would take the information and try to set up a meeting -- at least try to return their phone call within either that same day or within two to three days, three days at the most, and then set up a meeting time. And that would be your pre-application meeting. So that, you're probably looking at about a week right there, if -- you know, between coordinating times. Page 9 February 24, 2000 Stan might actually be able to fill me in a little bit, because he's an engineer, so he might actually know, like the time frame it takes a person, once they've hired an engineer, to actually draw plans, fill out the application that we require, get their fees together, and submit the number of copies they're required. He might have a better idea of that. But that's also involved in the process. That's prior to even being submitted. Then once the submittal is received, it would have to be logged in and distributed, which generally takes about a day. Then you start your time frame for your review process, which would be your lO working days. So you're looking at two weeks right there. MR. PONTE: So it's a month before -- MS. MURRAY: Probably before they even get -- you know, probably about three weeks before they even get preliminary comments back, once they've submitted the plans. There's still the pre-ap and the actual engineering of those plans that has to take place before the staff even looks at that. And that's just for the first review. I've never had a -- personally never had a plan be approved on the very first review. It's certainly possible to happen, but generally revisions are necessary. So then you're looking at another time frame for review. I -- you know, I would guess if somebody was real conscientious and we -- and everybody was on the same time frame, two to three months you should be able to have an SDP approved, provided there are no major issues. But I might be being optimistic. MR. PONTE: One of the problems that we hear is it's almost impossible to retain the services of an engineer, if the project happens to be relatively small. Is there any guidance you can give respondents who are looking for engineers? MS. MURRAY: Not me personally. Stan, do you have any insight to that? I mean, you work a little more closely with engineering firms than I do. Yeah, I'm done. Before you -- MS. ARNOLD: Do you all have other questions for Susan, for Page 10 February 24, 2000 -- you know, not related to engineering? MS. DUSEK: I just wanted to know for my simple mind that if I wanted to develop a property, not just a residential home, but to develop a property, the first thing I would do would be get an application, then get an engineer, and then the process begins, is that it? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: If I were you, I'd hire the engineer first. I would know what I want to do, and then I would go out and find an engineer of a proper size to do what you want to do. We do have people come in with an idea and they want to set up a pre-application meeting, and we will tell them that -- they will say what size their project is. And we're not allowed to hand out -- you know, say go to this engineer, but we tell them a bunch of engineers of a comparable size and we tell them just to call them all and find yourself one that you're satisfied with and happy with. There's all different size engineering firms. They run from one-man shops that do it with Auto CAD in their backyard or in their garage up to a Wilson-Miller who's got state-of-the-art equipment on everything. MR. PONTE: So it would be correct for us to be able to advise a respondent that has a rather small problem that the county could provide, as the hospital provides, a list of references for doctors. They're not recommending a doctor, they're just saying here are the specialists in that area, if they went to -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Sort of. But I don't think we want to get into that habit. We could make up a list. We have a list of every engineer in Collier County that we send mail out to. If we have a change in the Land Development Code we think they all should know about, we have a standard notification list. We could hand that out, I suppose, but some engineers know more about Immokalee than the City of Naples, and some engineers know more about the City of Naples. You know, we'll hand out at least three or four names, but never less than that. But if you want, we could get up a list of every engineer in the county, but you might as well just go to the Yellow Pages. Page 11 February 24, 2000 CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: I don't think we need to. MR. PONTE: No, it wasn't that. It's just that I needed a little advice as to when we are told, and often are, we couldn't get an engineer because everything is so busy in the county. I mean, is that -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: That's about right. MR. PONTE: That's about right? It's a valid reason. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Yes. Okay, good morning. My name is Stan Chrzanowski and I'm a senior engineer with the engineer review section. My boss is a man named Tom Kuck. What we do is when the projects come in, like Susan told you, somebody will submit an SDP or a subdivision. I'm sure everybody knows that a plat is a map of a subdivision, a subdivision is when you want to subdivide land for sale. Other than the original 13 colonies, the rest of the United States was put into what they call sectional descriptions; section being a square mile, 640 acres. So when you divide sections up, like a quarter of a section is 160, a quarter of a quarter is 40, a quarter of a quarter of a quarter is 10. If you want to subdivide out a 40-acre or a 100-acre or a 50-acre parcel, you create what they call a subdivision, because you want to easily transfer the land. And the math you create over the subdivision shows the streets, the right-of-ways and the individual lots. And then you could call it lot 24 of Stone Bridge and just sell it that easily. You don't need to provide a metes and bounds description of the parcel. So if you want to subdivide land, you create the subdivision, you have to supply us with the plat, which is a map of the subdivision, and you have to supply us with construction drawings showing all the infrastructure within the subdivision, so that you don't sell a piece of land to somebody and they move down from New Jersey and find that they have no water and sewer, You can do it in a couple of ways: You can build all your infrastructure up first, or you can bond the uncompleted Page 12 February 24, 2000 infrastructure with us and start selling off parcels. That's -- I'm getting off on the side there. The whole thing is fairly complex. An SDP is a site development plan for a parcel within, say, a subdivision. Like if you were to create Pelican Strand, you have all the individual subdivisions inside. Up at the entrance you have a commercial parcel, when you want to develop the individual tracts, or you might have a bunch of commercial parcels up front. To develop one of those parcels, you would create a site development plan for that individual parcel. You would have created the plat first and then transferred that parcel to somebody else, who would then hire the engineer and come in to us for a pre-application meeting for a site development plan within that parcel. Sometimes the infrastructure is not complete within the entire subdivision when we get the parcels that want to be developed, in which case we will put conditions in there about -- that the infrastructure from your parcel to the entrance -- the water, the sewer, the road and everything that serves your parcel -- has to be complete before we'll give you usually the certificate of occupancy. We have had occasions where the building is done, but the infrastructure that serves them is not. And we get the occasional pressure to let people open with less than complete infrastructure. We don't do that. Okay, so you've got subdivisions and you've got site development plans. And like Susan said, you have insubstantial changes and SDP amendments, because somebody realized something wasn't selling, they want to come in and change it. That gets submitted to a woman named Sherry Long. Or I guess Belinda Smith does some of the taking in of the documents. When they get the documents in, we require something like 11 or 12 sets of drawings. And everybody asks why, all signed and sealed. Used to be that they would require fewer, and the drawings would go from one reviewer to another to another to another. And naturally that lengthens the process. (Mr. Phillips enters boardroom.) MR. CHRZANOWSKI: So they decided if they got enough Page 13 February 24, 2000 drawings to where they could send copies to water management, transportation, utilities, architectural review, landscape review, fire protection, planning and zoning, environmental review and the environmental health, HRS, who is also in our building that does septic tanks and drain fields for areas that don't have public water and sewer, if they could send those all out at once, it would speed up the review process. And the other thing we require is that all those drawings be signed and sealed by a professional engineer. Well, Sherry sends it out to all those people, and depending -- like right now, our review portion of it, we're about a week ahead. We're on -- I guess the next project we're going to review is about March the 1st. But we have been as much as three weeks behind. Because when these people submit, they don't talk to each other and space out their load. They come in, and you get 20 of them one week and then you don't see any the next week. So if that happens -- we try to shoot for 10 days review, but it's not a perfect world. So depending on how many projects you've got, and if you come into our building after hours or on the weekend, you'll usually see people there working, because different departments get a little far behind sometimes. I think three weeks, although we had a stretch where utilities was about a month behind. You asked about time frames? Depends on how many more people are in the system with you. If you pick a time when nobody else is in, you'll get a real quick turnaround. And these different reviews, some of them are more complex than others. So the HRS review might come around in the same day. Fire protection might take a little longer. But when Sherry gets all the reviews back, she puts them in another room, and one of the engineers picks them all up, collates everything, copies all the comments that everybody has, and faxes them out to the engineer. We require a contact person that's going to get the facts. The comments get faxed out to him. And sometimes we don't see comments, we don't see the corrections on the comments back for a month, sometimes eight months. The files just sit there. Page 14 February 24, 2000 You get the comments back, you pull out your original comments that you made, you compare them, and you see that they made the corrections. And like Susan said, very few projects make it through on the first review. I'd guess maybe one out of 100. MS. ARNOLD: Stan, could you give the board some idea of what types of things would be involved in like an insubstantial change? Because it seems that would be something you would be looking at. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Yeah, that's generally the planner's call. And how we usually determine it is if only one or two reviewers have to look at it. The planner always looks at it. But if it involves a little landscaping and some -- and you add a building addition or parking space, even though there's some more impervious area, if it's a small building addition and maybe a couple of parking spaces, that's basically insubstantial. Of course, utilities doesn't have to look at it, all the other departments don't have to look at it. (Ms. Rawson enters boardroom.} MR. CHRZANOWSKI: If you start getting into where two and three and four reviewers have to look at it for different things that they've changed, then we generally call that substantial and send it out under an amendment. MS. ARNOLD: So it's more a matter of how many people are having to touch the plan, rather than the amount of-- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: From our point of view, yes. That's generally what it turns out to be. The larger a change you make, the more people are going to have to look at it. So that's -- and it quite often is a judgment call. MS. ARNOLD: Could you give the board a little bit more insight in the difference between what the site development plan requires and the site improvement plan requires from your point of view? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: The site improvement plan. If you have an existing site development plan and you want to change it, we have a number that we can file it under, the change, so that we can look it up. The hallmark of a good filing system is Page 15 February 24, 2000 not being able to file it, it's being able to find it again. So if we have the number, we can put the change under the number and always be able to recall it. If the project is so old, like say 7-Eleven across -- along Route 41 that's been there since 1970 that we don't have an SDP number, then we don't have a place to file it. So we create a site improvement plan, which means you're improving an existing site. We're not making you create a brand new SDP. We have an SIP file to put it under and we can recall it if something happens. MS. ARNOLD: But in terms of engineering, you're not requiring them to revamp the drainage, for example. You're going to accept the drainage that they have? I mean, can you speak to them in that -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: If the project is substantially substandard, if it's substandard on drainage or any part of utilities and you want to improve it, we're going to make you bring the project into conformance. Now, there are certain areas that we don't. Like if the DOT is coming through and taking your entire front drainage area, we have an agreement with them where we won't make you put in another drainage area, because you simply can't. There's no place to put it on the site. MS. DUSEK: So do you just -- MR. CHRZANOWSKh We're not there to drive anybody out of business. MS. DUSEK: Do you more or less review the SDP first to see if they need to make any of these major changes before they start working on -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: We pull out the old files and take a look at what has been permitted, yeah. MR. LEHMANN: Stan, one of the things that the board has a problem with is assigning time frames into orders involving SIP's and SDP's. Do you have a mean time frame that you see or an average time frame that a respondent would have to go through to accomplish either an SIP or an SDP, on average? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: I would say the 10 working days. The two weeks is on average fairly good. We mostly hold to that. Page 16 February 24, 2000 But like I say, around Christmastime we were weeks behind. MR. LEHMANN: Does that include their engineering time also? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: No, it doesn't. That's just ours. MR. LEHMANN: That's just your staff. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: And their engineering time's based on the size of whatever they're doing. MR. LEHMANN: What do you see on average? Because you get the pre-application meeting, you get the application itself, and you go through the final review process. So you see in essence what they're doing engineering-wise outside of your own department. What do you project as a normal time that a respondent will go through involving his engineer, your department, all the other players into the mix? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: I think Susan was right about a couple of months. MR. LEHMANN: For an SIP or an SDP? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: For an SDP. SIP is usually a little quicker. MR. LEHMANN: So if the board chose to give a respondent three months to respond for an SDP, would that be sufficient time? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Under normal circumstances, yes. MR. LEHMANN: And the extraneous circumstances would be your department having back logs or possibly their lack of being able to accomplish an engineer, acquire an engineer? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: If somebody were to come to us and tell us it's a hurry, we could put it on top of the stack. MS. ARNOLD: Typically what's done, from code enforcement staff point of view, too, is that when we see the respondent is working in good faith when it comes down to, you know, coming back to the board with an affidavit of compliance or noncompliance, we would provide information to the board as to, you know, whether or not it was a matter of staff's review time or if it was a response and just lack of response. So we would take that under consideration when we're doing imposition of fines or-- Page 17 February 24, 2000 MR. LEHMANN: Sure. And I think the board would weigh that carefully in its decisions. Thank you. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Okay. So we send the comments back to the engineer who then, depending on what the owner wants to do, may take -- sometimes we get them back in a couple of weeks. Sometimes we have projects in there that are eight or nine months sitting there without response to the reviews. And we don't know why. Then when we get those back, those comments, it goes through the same process again, only goes out to the people that had comments the first time. If they made a change that might affect somebody that approved it the first time, usually one of the other reviewers will see it and notify that person, maybe you should look at this again. But when eventually the project gets approved -- and it's usually on the second, sometimes on the third review -- it goes into what we call the work room and it sits there usually for a day or two until one of the engineers picks it up and writes the approval letter. Then the approval letter has -- we need five copies of the drawings for internal distribution to the different internal departments that need them, the inspectors. And then we send back anything above and beyond that to the engineer, unless it's what they call a simultaneous review. A lot of times they are in for the building permit at the same time they are in for an SDP, because it speeds up the process a little. Then we have to send two copies down to the other end of the building so that they can compare those copies with the copies that they've been reviewing for the building permit, just in case there's a difference there. And then the project's technically approved. At that point they can go out, and the new rule on commercial and industrial, it used to be until January 25th for environmental reasons we let you clear for all the infrastructure but not for the building pad itself. As of January 25th for commercial and industrial, you can clear for the building pad when you get your SDP approval. Meaning you can clear the Page 18 February 24, 2000 whole site. You can't do that for residential. The other people we have in our department, we have Bill Spencer who does all the right-of-way work. If you want to -- you all know that the pavement is not the road. The road is the pavement plus the shoulders on both sides. Usually you've got 24 feet of pavement in a 60-foot road, or for four-lane roads you might have 150, 120 foot of right-of-way. If you want to work -- that right-of-way belongs to the county. If you want to work in the right-of-way, you're building a house in Golden Gate Estates, well, you can run your driveway right up to the right-of-way. It's on your own property. No problem, once you get a permit. But to work in our right-of-way, you need a right-of-way permit. Bill handles all the right-of-way permits in Collier County. Once a week he goes out and usually he grabs one of other guys. It used to be him and Wes Hill, who did the utilities review, would go out solely -- they'd go out once a week and they'd shoot the grades, because the hard part of allowing for right-of-way permit is making sure that the road drainage keeps functioning. So they shoot the grades on both side and tell the people what size culverts to use and where to put them. On the larger projects, the engineers will have designed all that before Bill goes out. It makes his job a little easier. And he just issues them the permit. Shirley Nix works in our department. When a subdivision is completed, the utilities in many cases get turned over to the county. Shirley is the one that's charged with all the utility turnover paperwork. At the end of a project, you'll see a lot of times the certificates of occupancy are put on hold because the utilities haven't been properly accepted. There's a very convoluted -- naturally, since we're the government -- procedure for this. You have -- you have to disinfect the lines. The lines -- this is for potable water. The lines -- the disinfection letter has to go up to DEP who then writes a letter allowing you to use the pipe to tie in, and it has to be done within 30 days or else the bacteriological tests are Page 19 February 24, 2000 deemed to be too old. We have our own inspectors that go out there and have to issue all these letters. And then there's a barrage of legal documents that accompanies this all. Shirley has a checklist I'd~ say probably about 30 items long. Not always do all the items apply to every job. As the individual pieces comes in, she crosses it off the checklist. We try to tell people to submit everything all at once, but we usually get it one and two items at a time. So she has all these files on her desk that are partially complete, and it gives her something to do all day long. Then we have a whole -- we have a surveyor, but he recently resigned and we're trying to find another one. He's the one that reviews the survey portions of the plats that get submitted, the maps of the subdivisions. Then we have a whole inspection staff under Don Nobles. We have a couple of well inspectors. If you want to drill a potable water well or a well in Collier County, you have to get a permit. They go out and do the inspection, make sure the well is drilled properly. If you want to abandon a well, they make sure you abandon it properly. We have inspectors that strictly look at the subdivision improvements, and we have other inspectors that look at all the houses that are being built, the drainage. We field a lot of complaints. We spend a lot of time on the telephone. That just about sums up what we do for a living. If you have any questions, I'm sure you probably will. MS. DUSEK: I have a question. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Yes. MS. DUSEK: I thought I understood Susan to say earlier that you get the SDP, then you apply for your building permits. And then I believe you made a comment that you can do it simultaneously? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Yes. We don't like it, but you can. MS. DUSEK: But they can? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: It makes it a little more complex. And I'm not -- I guess it saves you the time that it would take if you Page 20 February 24, 2000 waited to do them consecutively. But you wait a little at the end because then we have to compare both the sets of drawings and send them out to Bill Spencer, who does our review, to make sure that the building drawings match our drawings. And then a planner who does the same review and an architect on the other end of the building who has looked at the building plans and done the same review, and they do theirs consecutively. So they're signed off on the same set of drawings. So that takes a couple of days. But it does save you some time, yes. Was I that clear or was I that fast? CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: You're that good, so see? MS. ARNOLD: Thank you, Stan. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: You're welcome. MS. BURGESON: Good morning. For the record, my name is Barbara Burgeson, with current planning. Just hand out a sheet here. What I've handed out is an example -- actually, this is exactly what the two environmental specialists in 1998 working for current planning did that year. We put this list together as an ability to substantiate the fact that we needed to hire another person. At the time we were anywhere from three to four or five weeks behind on most of the projects that we were doing. The list includes 1,001 individual projects that were permitted during that year by Steve and I. The majority of these are incorporated into other reviews. The first item that's listed, site development plans, new and amendments, encompassed more than half of those reviews. Underneath that, preliminary subdivision plats, plans, PUD's, rezones, conditional uses, DRI's, boat dock extensions and site improvement plans are all incorporated into a function of other reviews. For instance, when Susan gets a rezone for review or a PUD or a site development plan, those are distributed out. The environmental staff incorporates their review and response back to the planner who's working on that as the overseer of the project. The next eight -- actually, the remaining nine on that list are Page 21 February 24, 2000 freestanding environmental reviews that at this point we do have a third person working with us, so there are three environmental specialists doing those freestanding reviews. The majority of those are types of clearing permits, agricultural clearing, exotic vegetation removal permits, clearing permits, regular vegetation removal permits. I imagine that you have those that come in front of the board in terms of violations of clearing permits. Each of those type of permits take us approximately 10 days to review and respond to the petitioner. Agricultural clearing permits can take longer, because we have to make sure that they have their state surface water and consumptive use permits before we issue the agricultural clearing permits. So depending on how long that process takes with the state probably adds a few weeks to issuing that agricultural clearing permit. The coastal construction setback lines, variances and permits. Variances, because they go in front of the Board of County Commissioners, have to get advertisement time, and the County Attorney's Office reviews those for consistency. Those take approximately six to eight weeks, if everything is submitted and staff doesn't have to turn that around and put it on hold. The remainder of those items below that are all administrative and fairly quick. Within five to 10 days, you should be able to have those permits issues. MS. TAYLOR: Excuse me, what is a sea turtle permit? MS. BURGESON: We have two. One is construction within a sea turtle nesting area. So during sea turtle nesting season, if somebody wants to do construction within 100 feet of an active nest, they have to apply for a special permit for that. And the second one underneath that is sea turtle handling permit. And you have to have a sea turtle handling permit if you're going to be relocating or working with any of the nests. That goes through our department. You were also talking about being interested in the costs. We have a resolution -- I'm not sure if you have a copy of it, but there's a resolution out that addresses all the schedule of fees. Just as an example -- just an example, this shows you the sea Page 22 February 24, 2000 turtle permit fees, the vegetation removal permit fees. We also have recently instituted an after-the-fact fee for people that have done the clearing prior to obtaining the permit. And that's on CCSL variance petitions. It's two times the normal fee. The reason it's that is because that variance is our most costly variance, $1,000. Two times that we figured was substantially enough. On all other environmental and landscaping permits and inspections, the after-the-fact fee is four times the normal fee. If you want, we can get you a copy of this. I'm not sure if they have that. MS. ARNOLD: Uh-uh. MS. DUSEK: So what you're saying is if someone goes ahead and clears property without permitting it properly, then when they do file for their permits, it's going to cost them twice as much or four times as much? MS. BURGESON: Right. Just to submit for the permit. That doesn't mean that there may not be additional mitigation that they have to do, but the code enforcement department takes care of that. For instance, if it were something that on a site development plan that we would clearly have allowed them to clear at the later stage in the process, it may be that we would just institute that after-the-fact clearing permit fee and not require them to do any additional mitigation. This book that I have right here has copies of all the environmental sections of the Land Development Code. It includes the Environmental Impact Statement section, protected vegetation, protected species sections, the coastal construction, and the Environmental Advisory Council ordinance. Anything else that the environmental staff might need to use to review any of the project petitions that come in to us on a daily basis. We provide these to the members, the nine members of the Environmental Advisory Council when they join. If anybody here would like to have copies of these books, we can make them available, or if you want to make one available for the board that they can keep here as reference, I'd be happy to do that for you. Page 23 February 24, 2000 The only other thing that I'd like to address in detail is the Environmental Advisory Council. We take all projects to the Environmental Advisory Council that by their ordinance required an Environmental Impact Statement to be provided, that have either a special treatment overlay, have the requirement to be a development of regional impact, or -- or if there's a time when the developer and staff can't come to an agreement on a project, then it can be brought in front of the Environmental Advisory Council as a means of kind of negotiating through that disagreement. We are coming up on -- May 1st will be our one-year anniversary for joining the two old boards, which was the Environmental Advisory Council and EPTAB, which was the advisory or the environmental technical and professional advisory board, which provided background information to the old Environmental Advisory Board. We've combined both of those and this is -- we're coming up on one year for those two old boards functioning as one. Most of the projects that go in front of that board, they're brought there on a monthly basis, the first Wednesday of each month. Most of those go through with a staff report, with recommendations for stipulations attached to those reviews. Discussions lately have been a little bit more in-depth than we've seen over the years. And we've had some input that's now leading to some changes in the Land Development Code. I don't know if there's anything else that you had specific questions on you wanted to ask me. MR. PONTE: Barbara, this may be not the right place, but it sounds like you're in the area. We had a case that took many, many, many months and it involved the environment and the effect that was being caused by a fellow moving his house. And mitigation then came into the conversation. He was going to mitigate the land. It took a year and a half, and it seemed that nothing was happening. Could you give us a realistic time frame on some of these cases that might come up that would involve environment? I mean, it -- it takes forever. MS. ARNOLD: I think in that particular case it involved the Page 24 February 24, 2000 state acquiring or accepting 'acquisition, land acquisition. So it didn't -- that didn't involve county's review at all. That was -- it was the state. It was another agency. And we have no control over how long they take to review things that are accepted to them. MS. BURGESON: The type of things that can slow down environmental reviews are typically not something that we have immediate ability to get involved with. For instance, if there's wetlands on-site or protected species, they are required to get this, either the South Florida Water Management District, ERP, which is the environmental resource, or the Department of Environmental Protection permits, and often the Army Corps of Engineers wetland permits as well. Prior to our issuing the final site development plan approval, that's a requirement of the Land Development Code, that all other permits have to be submitted to us prior to our releasing the site development plan. The reason for that being that if we allow site development plans to be approved before we know what the state 'and federal agencies may want, often the site development plans are inaccurate and have to come back to us and be re-reviewed. Sometimes people get -- take a jump once they get the SDP's and start clearing, and then they've got state and federal violations. So since at least 1989 we've required that all other permits be in-house before we release any final development orders. So it's usually other agencies that have those long time frames, and sometimes they can be six months, 12 months, 18 months. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: As a general rule of thumb for just your section for environmental review, time period? Ten days, roughly, five days? MS. BURGESON: Again, it depends on if it's a regular review for, say, a site development plan, hopefully within 10 days. If we're back logged, it can be a week, two weeks, three weeks late. If it's one of the freestanding permits, we try to get all of those out within 10 days, with the exception of the variances, because of the additional review needed by the County Attorney's Office and the advertising. That's closer to an Page 25 February 24, 2000 eight-week process. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Thank you. MS. BURGESON: Questions? MS. GEBHARDT: Good morning. I'm Johnnie Gebhardt. I'm the customer service supervisor in the building review and permitting department. And since I don't make any pretensions of knowing everything that my staff does, I brought one of my most experienced customer service agents, this is Steve Fontaine, so that if you have any procedural questions, hopefully Steve can answer them. I'd like to give you just a brief overview. And in response to a question that you asked earlier about the SDP and simultaneous submittal, before I forget that, they're only allowed to submit one building permit application simultaneous. Basically construction that costs up to $750 does not require a building permit, unless -- and of course there's always an unless -- there are structural components involved or it's a fire rated assembly. Those things do need a permit. $750 up, unless it's a concrete slab, which has no structure on the top of it or a driveway, which there's nothing for us to inspect, even if it does cost over $750, unless it's connecting to the road; in which case you have to have the right-of-way permit and then you do have to have, you know, a permit for that. An owner/builder can do any work on his own home, as long as it's his principal place of residence. He can use his friends to help him, if he wants to, as long as he doesn't pay them. If he's paying someone, he has to ensure that they're a licensed contractor. If it's a home that he rents out or if it's a duplex or any property that's rental property, he must hire a licensed general contractor. He cannot do the work himself, even if he owns it. MS. DUSEK: Question. When you say friends can help, if they wanted to do plumbing or electrical, don't they have to be licensed? MS. GEBHARDT: It's his responsibility. It's the owner's responsibility. When he signs up for that owner/builder permit, he makes himself liable. He makes himself responsible to make Page 26 February 24, 2000 sure that everything is built to code. He is saying in his application that he knows what the rules and regulations and codes are, and that he will follow them. And also that he will get any other applicable permits that are necessary. So that if he needs something from, say, South Florida Water Management District or something from planning services, he knows he's got to get it. He's saying that he knows what the rules are, and he's going to follow them. MS. DUSEK: After he completes his work, is it inspected? MS. GEBHARDT: Oh, yes, ma'am. Absolutely. He has to call in his inspections just like a licensed general contractor does. They're inspected just like anybody else's work is, to make sure that they meet code. MR. PONTE: Johnnie, just as a point of clarification, you mentioned you don't need a building permit if the construction of a building costs less than $750; is that correct? MS. GEBHARDT: Uh-huh. MR. PONTE: Do you remember the tree house? MS. GEBHARDT: Yes, I do, very well. MR. PONTE: Can you explain anything about that tree house to me? I -- you know, it couldn't have cost them $150. And I thought one of the things that came up was it didn't have a construction permit. MS. GEBHARDT: And it was. And I don't know what the cost of that tree house was. I think one of the issues there was that it was built in a setback too close to the neighbor's property. It also was an elevated deck with a house built on it. And there's a requirement that any elevated deck has to be engineered if it has construction -- MR. PONTE: Whether it cost him $150 or not. MS. GEBHARDT: Well, they also had wiring in there, I think, if I remember correctly. MS. ARNOLD: Right. MS. GEBHARDT: They had some electrical wiring, an air conditioner, and I think some other things in there. MS. ARNOLD: And the 750 does not apply to electrical. Isn't that correct? If you have electrical -- Page 27 February 24, 2000 MS. GEBHARDT: Well, if it's very, very minor and it's -- MS. ARNOLD: I thought there was another fee, another amount. Right, it's a different amount for electrical. MS. GEBHARDT: Oh, right, right. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: When you say an owner/builder, what are we -- I'm thinking of a case we just went through. People don't come to get a permit, okay? In other words, their interpretation is gee, it's my home, and if I do it and it's under $750, I can pretty much do what I want. Is that a true statement? MS. GEBHARDT: If it's their primary place of residence -- CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Okay. MS. GEBHARDT: -- and it's less than $750. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: So if I want to run -- and it's not going to cost me much if I want to put in a new toilet and connect the plumbing up myself and I can buy the materials and do the work myself and spend less than $750, and I don't come to you to get a permit, am I in violation of something? MS. GEBHARDT: Steve was just pointing out, it's based on a contractor's estimate. So if the contractor would estimate that it would cost more than $750, then technically yes, you'd have to have a permit. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Okay. And this statement where you say up to 750 -- and I don't know what that comes out of, having not seen the document. Does it say $750 based on a contractor estimate, or is it misleading? MS. GEBHARDT: Probably not. That's out of the Administrative Code, I think. I don't know that it says based on the contractor's estimate. Do you know? I don't think it does. MR. LEHMANN: Mr. Chairman, if I remember the code ordinance correct, it is very misleading. It just says $750. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: That's my point. MS. GEBHARDT: Yeah, I think that's-- CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: I feel very badly that people get caught up in something when we have something that may not be written where they understand. Because to me, if it's up to 750 Page 28 February 24, 2000 and I do it, and I went out and I bought a toilet and I bought the plumbing supplies and I did the work and I spent 300 bucks, and then some contractor says no, that's a $1,500 item, why? I only spent $300. And now you're telling me oh, but we interpret that. See, that's very misleading to the public. And they're the ones that come before us, and we in turn not really punish them, but because they violated something, they have been misled. And that's why we're trying to understand what's going on. If this is a particular case, then my recommendation would be that the county needs to get a little more specific so that we don't mislead the public. I don't want to see them here and have to slap their hands for doing something wrong when they were misled. And this is a good example. Because I could sure put in a toilet a whole lot less than a contractor. MS. GEBHARDT: Yeah, I'm sure you could. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: I mean, it's not that big a deal. MR. LEHMANN: And in review of cases such as what our Chairman had pointed out, this board has to look at the sheer fact of the ordinance, what does it say. And oftentimes we're led into deliberations, and very time-consuming deliberations sometimes, based on what happens there. So our Chairman's point is very well taken. MS. GEBHARDT: And I will be happy to check that. But truly, I do not think it says -- CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: If it's in an instance like that, and unfortunately this happens to be one you spoke of, I think if there's a way to correct that, that the county sure should look at it. It would be a big help, not only to the public, but for us in trying to maintain, you know, control over the ordinances and see that everybody is in compliance. MS. GEBHARDT: Right. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: You know, you don't want to do something to somebody when, you know, in essence you've kind of misled them down the path. You feel bad about doing that. And we need not to do that. We have a lot of real good residents here. Page 2 9 February 24, 2000 And I'm thinking of what people have said when they've come before us, "but it says that," you know. MS. GEBHARDT: Right. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: "1 didn't need this approval." Well, that's true in the words. But if somebody's interpreting another way, we need them to understand that, you know. MS. GEBHARDT: Our general advice to anyone is if you have a question on whether you need a permit or not, call us and ask, because as I said earlier, when we say $750, we're also saying unless there are structural components involved. For instance, you may be able to move a wall and it costs less than $750. But that wall may be crucial to the integrity of the house. So, you know, we advise everyone, if you've got a question, come show us what you're going to do and we'll tell you whether or not you need a permit for it. Many times they don't. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Yeah, I think you'll find the average citizen, if they read a sentence that says up to 750, or somebody has told them, they're probably not going to come and ask you. They're going to say gee, if I go to Home Depot and buy this and this and this -- MS. GEBHARDT: Sure. I know can do it for less than $750. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: -- and I spend $400 to buy the stuff and I do the work, hey, it's less than $750. They feel comfortable in that. So I'm looking for a way to get the public more knowledge. I think it will help them and keep them from becoming a person who has to come before us. If there's a way to do that -- MS. GEBHARDT: And if that is not spelled out in the ordinance, I will see that it's done in the next -- CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Right, by changing some words. I think that's in the county's interest, so to speak. MS. GEBHARDT: I would agree with you. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Thank you. MR. PHILLIPS: I have a question. That $750, though, that's comprised of both labor and materials? MS. GEBHARDT: Yes, that's the entire cost of the project. MR. LEHMANN: And Johnnie, in endeavoring to help our Page 30 February 24, 2000 Clients with our firm, I've called the county myself on this particular issue, and the personnel that I've talked to -- and it's a number of personnel that I've talked to within your department .- have never been able to give me an answer on what this $750 is. Is it a contractor, is it materials only when I do it myself? Or whatever. So the information coming out of your department, at least in my experience, has been very confusing. So anything you can do to clarify that just helps us, because we have to go by the word of the order, in essence. And our-- MS. GEBHARDT: And we can do that. MR. LEHMANN: -- our abilities are somewhat limited in some areas. MS. GEBHARDT: And I apologize that you get, you know, conflicting information. Unfortunately we have a pretty big turnover, and-- MR. LEHMANN: I'm sure. MS. GEBHARDT: -- these guys have to learn so much, which is the reason I brought Steve along. I haven't been there long enough to know all these rules and regulations myself. So, you know, they have to learn so much. And being relatively new at the game, many of them don't know. You know, so you're right, to spell it out for them would certainly be helpful, I'm sure. And thank you for the suggestion, we'll do that. MR. LEHMANN: Well, I appreciate that. MS. GEBHARDT: Commercial projects. All commercial, multi-family projects have to be signed and sealed by a design professional, architect, whatever. I think I'll let Steve just run through basically some of the things that we're looking for when we take a permit in. The life of a permit, a typical long-form permit, which is for general construction of a house or condo, or whatever, is 18 months. The life of an express permit is six months. MS. DUSEK: I'm sorry, would you repeat that again? MS. GEBHARDT: The lifetime of a typical long-form permit, which is what you would pull for a house or a condo or a Page 31 February 24, 2000 multi-family, is 18 months, as long as you have a passing inspection every six months. The life of an express permit is six months. You're entitled to two extensions of 90 days each on a long-form permit. There is a cost; I believe it's 10 percent of the permit fee. There again, you have to have passing inspections in order to get the permit extension. Any expenses after those two 90-day extensions have to come before the Board of County Commissioners, who can grant whatever time frame they wish to grant. Typically, if they grant that extension, they will ask for a time frame, a construction schedule or something to tell them, you know, I'm going to be through within six more months, and then they'll grant the extension. There again, there's a charge for that also. Steve, if you want to just run through some of the basic things that you guys look for. MS. ARNOLD: Can I ask also that you provide for the board what would qualify for an express permit versus a long-form permit? MR. FONTAINE: Any express permit would be a fence, a shed -- THE COURT REPORTER: Excuse me, your name? MR. FONTAINE: Steve Fontaine. A fence permit, a shed, a reroof, air conditioner change-out. Relatively simple one-trade jobs. And we have a special form that's just a one-page form that lists all these different types of activities that you can do on the express form permit. When you come to me for a permit, I'm going to be looking for, number one, a completed building permit application, be it long-form or express, depending on the work that you're trying to do. If it's commercial or multi-family, I'm going to be looking for two copies of the stamped approved site development plan from planning services, showing this building on the site development plan. Page 32 February 24, 2000 Commercial, multi-family requires four sets of signed and sealed plans; whereas, a single family, if it's on county utilities, only requires two sets of plans. And three if it has a septic system for the Health Department review. Currently each -- with the exception of Golden Gate Estates, each single-family permit package requires a copy of the county site drainage form for stormwater -- stormwater -- what do they call that? MS. GEBHARDT: Site drainage plan. MR. FONTAINE: So that each lot takes care of its own stormwater runoff. And it's a form that we have in the department that it's just showing how they plan to take care of the stormwater runoff. We also require energy calculations for insulation and air conditioning. And that's all involved, usually done by an AC mechanic. The truss layout for each set of plans. We require one sealed vacant land survey on new construction, and an existing survey, if you're doing an existing or doing an out building. And then we also take care of the concurrency information at the time of application, and there's a $35 application fee for that that's nonrefundable. If per chance whoever is applying for the permit is, say, an owner/builder, has signed the application as a contractor, if they're not going to come in to actually pick up the permit, they need to authorize an agent to do it for them, and that authorization has to have their signature notarized. That would be required at the time of application, if it's applicable. The septic engineering, if it involves a septic system, has to have all of the paperwork involved with the septic system, the perk test, the drain field design, and Xerox copy of the boundary surveys. And if the -- if it's a commercial building and it's required to have a fire sprinkler system, the commercial plan review department requires that a set of that plan for the fire sprinklers be included in the package. Any right-of-way permits that are required, we take care of Page 33 February 24, 2000 at the front counter at application time. If it's an owner/builder, there is an affidavit that they have to sign as part of the application, and they also need to bring proof of ownership, either property deed or a paid tax bill. And then there's a lot of detail on the plans, depending on what it is. The more involved the project, naturally, the more requirements on the plan. A typical single-family home just needs the two sets of plans showing the various details for the plan reviewer. And the express permits, typical fence permit, I need basically the express permit application and two copies of the site plan showing me where you're going to put the fence and how tall it's going to be, and a general description of what type of a fence it's going to be, a stockade fence or -- MS. DUSEK: I have a question at that point. When you ask for that particular site drawing, can I, as a lay person, do that, or do you have to have an engineer or somebody professional? MR. FONTAINE: No. On simpler projects like a -- MS. DUSEK: On simple projects. MR. FONTAINE: -- fence or a shed, you can draw the site plan. It is supposed to be drawn to scale that we can follow; either a quarter inch equals a foot or whatever you might -- one inch equals 10 feet. But you need to state that on your plan so that we can see it. And on a fence permit, we're not as particular because you cannot put your fence on his property, on your neighbor's property. We have to ensure that you do know where your property line is. And you can put your fence post right up to the property line with the finished side of the fence facing your neighbor, which we also state to the applicants. Shed permit? On a shed permit, basically, it depends on whether you're going to build a frame shed from the ground up or you're going to go to Home Depot and buy a kit or a pre-made shed. A pre-made shed, basically it's a tie-down permit. That shed, since Hurricane Andrew, has to be anchored so it won't just blow around in the wind. There we would need two copies Page 34 February 24, 2000 of site plans showing us where it's going to go on the property and the details from wherever you're planning it. They usually have specifications stating that this shed is guaranteed for 110 mile an hour wind loads so it won't just blow apart. Now, if you're building it from the ground up, it's just like a house, we want to see all the construction details and two copies of the plans. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: On setback requirements on your properties, when you say it's a shed or you're building an unattached garage or something, must you still maintain normal setbacks? MR. FONTAINE: For the type of structure, yes. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Okay. MR. FONTAINE: And a minimum of 10 feet between structures for an accessory structure. A guest house, you have to have a minimum of 20 feet between that and the main house. But it still has to maintain all the other setbacks also. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Thank you. MS. SAUNDERS: Do painting and landscaping require permits? MR. FONTAINE: No. MS. SAUNDERS: Exterior painting. MR. FONTAINE: Landscaping might require a permit on commercial jobs, but not on single family. Painting, tiling, carpeting are all considered cosmetic and not involved in the permitting process. MS. SAUNDERS: And a driveway would require it only because it was attached -- MR. FONTAINE: If it's in a county right-of-way. MS. SAUNDERS: Yeah. MR. FONTAINE: But there's no structure really to review. MR. LEHMANN: What about stucco? MS. GEBHARDT: I'm sorry? MR. LEHMANN: What about stucco? MR. FONTAINE: There are requirements for stucco. So if you're going to other than just repair stucco, if you're going to stucco an entire house versus vinyl siding, it would require a Page 35 February 24, 2000 permit, because there is an inspection required, because there are specifics on how thick that stucco has to be. MR. LEHMANN: You actually do stucco inspections? MS. GEBHARDT: I think they're probably just final building inspections. MR. FONTAINE: Part of the final building inspection on a new house, because very rarely do we have people come in to re-side with stucco. They usually re-side with vinyl or aluminum. They find it's less expensive. MS. GEBHARDT: Once the permit applications are in and have gone through the customer service agent, who verifies the setbacks, notifies the applicant what those setbacks are, if the zoning allows what they're doing, then they go to plan review. If it's a commercial project, it goes back to the commercial plans reviewers. We have structural, electrical, plumbing, mechanical and fire. And it must go through each one of those plan reviewers. Typical turnaround time, if there are no problems, are 12 to 15 days. If there are problems -- and we have had them take as many as six to eight months to get through. If they identify things that need to be corrected, a letter is sent to the architect or engineer, whoever the contact person is, with the list of corrections that need to be made. They make those corrections, bring them back in, and they're reviewed again to make sure that they have done what they were supposed to do. As I said, if there are no problems, it's 12 to 15 days. If there are things that need to be corrected, depending on how fast they could get the corrections in, it could take whatever length of time it takes them to get the designs back in. MR. LEHMANN: Johnnie, would you inform the board as to when an architect or an engineer would not be required on a building permit? MS. GEBHARDT: Only if it's a single-family home. Any -- MR. LEHMANN: Single-family? Maybe a duplex? MS. GEBHARDT: -- commercial or multi-family -- THE COURT REPORTER: I'm sorry, would you repeat your response? Page 36 February 24, 2000 MS. GEBHARDT: Only on a single-family home. Any commercial or multi-family requires a signed sealed drawing by a design professional. MR. LEHMANN: What about a duplex? MS. GEBHARDT: I'm sorry, single-family under 5,000 square feet. Anything over 5,000 square feet on single-family has to be -- MR. LEHMANN: So a respondent could almost be an owner/builder and go through and put his own plans together for a large garage, shed or something of that nature? And go through the -- MS. GEBHARDT: On his own personal? MR. LEHMANN: And do it on a lay person's basis, in essence, right? MS. GEBHARDT: He can actually draw the plans up himself and submit them, absolutely. And they do, frequently. Single -- MR. PONTE: And what would you -- excuse me. MS. GEBHARDT: Single-family permits, we usually have those out -- depending on what's involved, if it's a single-family house, they're usually out in three to five days. If it's something smaller than that, then it could be out the same day or the next day. MR. PONTE: My question has to do with time frame. What would you suggest the time frame is for the completion of one of these one-page express permits? I mean, is that -- MS. GEBHARDT: Instant. MR. PONTE: Instant. MS. GEBHARDT: It takes longer for the people to sit there and wait to get waited on than it does for the permit to be issued, as a rule. MR. PONTE: Great. Thank you. MS. GEBHARDT: Anything else? CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Any other questions? Thank you. MS. GEBHARDT: Thanks. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Michelle, what time did you set for the -- I see some people coming in. MS. ARNOLD: Yeah, I was just going to -- CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Did you set 10:007 Page 37 February 24, 2000 MS. ARNOLD: 10:00 was the time that we set for the public hearing, so if we can -- and we -- if we go over the approval of the agenda, we have just one public hearing for today. So if you want to postpone the rest of the workshop until after that public hearing? CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: I was going to say, if nobody objects, since the people are here, rather than make them sit through something, if Jean doesn't mind, when we get toward the end, would you mind we go through your little -- MS. TAYLOR: Thank you all. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Thank you very much. MS. TAYLOR: Thank you very much. MS. RAWSON: I don't mind at all. I need to leave at 11:30, because I have to give a speech at a luncheon. But if this isn't going to last very long, that's not a problem. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: That's fine. If for some unforeseen reason it continues, then we'll prevail on you some other time, if you don't mind, so we can -- MS. RAWSON: That's fine. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: -- get the public on. MS. RAWSON: I'm here every month. CHAIRMAN FLEGAL: Okay. Let's take a quick two-minute break and give our reporter a little chance. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 10:00 a.m. COLLIER COUNTY CODE ENFORCEMENT BOARD CLIFFORD FLEGAL, CHAIRMAN Page 38 February 24, 2000 TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC., BY CHERIE' R. LEONE, NOTARY PUBLIC Page 39