BCC Minutes 02/10/1992 WU~JLLIER COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
STRATEGIC PLANNING WORKS~tOP
(VOLUME I)
February 10, 1992
9:00 a.m.
Building Il, Room 216
Collier County Government Complex
Naples, Florida 33962
Reported by,
Jacquelyn D. McMiller
Deputy Official Court Reporter
Notary Public
State of Florida at Large
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS
Carrothers Reporting Service, Inc.
20th Judicial Circuit - Collier County
::~ 3301 East Tamtami Trail
~. ~.;' ;~ Naples, Florida 33962
::r:, ,',/'.;'q ,: ~
! . .
2
APPEARANCES * *
BOARD MEMBERS,
' Michael Volpe
P. Anne GooSnight
Dick Shanahan
Max A. Hasse
Burr Maunders
Chairman
County Commissioner
County Commissioner
County Commissioner
County Commissioner
Nell Dorrill
Mike Arnold
Mike McNees
Leo Ochs -
Peter Bolton
Bill Griffin -
George Archibald
Jennifer Pike -
Paul Brigham -
Tom Olliff -
Bill Lorenz -
Frank Brutt -
Sandy Bometer
- County Manager
- Utilities Administrator
- Budget Director
Administrative Services Administrator
- Emergency Services
Emergency Services Administrative Manager
- Transportation Services Administrator
Administrative Assistant to County Manager
Court Administrator
Public Services Administrator
Environmental Services Administrator
Community Development Administrator
- Golden Gate Community
Also Present=
~ohn Norris
* * INDEX * *
m m
mm mmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmm!
Leo Ochs ll*OO***o********** ..... Oil
Frank Brutt ........................
Bill Lorenz ........................
30 - 81
81 - 102
103 - 168
3
PROCEEDINGS
NEIL DORRILL: The only county even close to
Collier County is Sarasota County. For people that might
try and say, well, that's because you have an extra
ordinarily high assessed value, even when you look at
Sarasota and Palm Beach and Martin, St. Lucie counties,
counties that are similar to us with similarly high
assessed values and Lee County for that matter, you'll
find that most average county taxing rates are two or
three mills higher than Collier County's.
It also has some good population information on
there that's current from the 1990 census. But, it also
includes districts and districts are certainly going to
be one of those topics that we talk about.
Then, it has aggregate, county wide millages and we
just thought you might find that of, sort of, interest,
we did, as it stacks us up against our colleagues from
around the State of Florida.
news.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: That's perhaps the good
The bad news is I was reading an article, I've got
it on my desk at the office, that talked about the per
capita expenditure of government funds in the counties
and actually Collier County ranks amongst the highest in
per capita expenditures. So, the millage rate may be low
but that's only half the story.
MR. DORRILL: It is, and we' re in, like, the top
third of all counties for total spending and on an
aggregate level we may be in the top ten, state wide, if
you include the school board and the independent
districts.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE: Bill, what is that column furthest
to the right, percentage, property value totally exempt?
MR. DORRILL.. I'm assuming that that would be
primarily state or federal lands. I don't know we can
find out. If we're fairly high there, there might be an
indi -- but we' re not.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE: We' re very low. That was the --
it looks like 16, 16 and a half.
MR. DORRILL: If that's a function of property
value though, that might still be a reflection of the
state and federal lands because they're so poorly
assessed or so lowly assessed because most of that land
is either the national park or the Big Cypress Preserve
whose assessed value is a.percentage of the total,
_ ~ ~ ~ ii iii lllll ii I I J . I I I I I III
5
probably is very low.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: It does say percentage of
property value.
MR. DORRILL: Yeah, as opposed to acreage or
something.
Mr. Chairman, what we had intended to do, I hope
the board members had a chance to look over their agenda.
We had given you a sneak preview of this last Tuesday an4
we're prepared to work our way through this and hopefully
solicit some comments, some feelings or opinions, from
the board members.
We have selected the top two dozen goals for this
year as it relates to the various divisions of the county
government and if there are things that, frankly, we have
missed or things that may be a lower priority to the
board, that's the purpose of our meeting this morning.
And, depending on how quickly we move through we can
either break for lunch and go into the afternoon, but
we've kept it fairly limited and fairly straightforward
this year.
We only have three goals for each of the seven
divisions and then we have three for the executive
offices and we'll move through these quickly and ask that
each division administrator make their own presentations
but hopefully get some questions and interest from the
board members as well and with that, unless you have some
remarks, we're prepared to begin.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I Just have some preliminary
questions. We're going to address three primary goals
for each of the division?
MR. DORRILL: Uh-huh.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.' Is it correct for me to assume
that each one of the divisions internally has additional
goals beyond the--
MR. DORRILL: They do. They all have individual
work plans that go down to the department and section
level and from our perspective that becomes the
individual, what we call, key result areas or individual
personnel performance evaluations. So, it goes all the
way down to the individual level but there are work plans
for every department and every section that are in county
gore rnment.
COMMISSIONER HASSE.' You have nine of them here
now?
7
MR. DORRILL: We have nine total because I've also
for the first year we've included the courts and we had
touched on the executive offices the other day. While
they're not a division, that includes the county
manager's office, there are the seven line divisions and
then I've also included the courts this year. We have
the court's a~inistrator.
Mr. Chairman, I didn't know whether you wanted to
go over again the ones that we had done last Tuesday.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I think we should, briefly. Mrs.
Goodnight was not here. I think it's important for us to
go over it one more time.
MR. DORRILL: Okay.
We'll do this fairly quickly
and then we'll move on to the next one.
The primary goals that we see within the executive
offices that are worth exploring for the coming year
include program budgeting which we had indicated to is a
modified, zero-based budgeting approach where we will be
showing base level program budgeting for everything that
we do in the county manager's agency.
We're proposing to roll this out or implement it in
two years. We want to do all of the tax supported
budgets in the first year. The enterprise or special
revenue fund budgets the second year, our rational being
the tax related budgets are obviously the ones that get
the public's attention the quickest. If we feel that we
can do it a little faster we'll tell you that but we want
to make our priority here tax related budgets.
We're suggesting that this be a voluntary program
or proposal for the constitutional officers but that they
be strongly encouraged to do the same.
With that in mind, Mike, have we heard back from
any of the constitutional officers with the information
we sent them?
MR. MCNEES:
constitutionals.
No, not from any of the
I will say that we started to get in
some of the packages from the department and we started
to look at what the documents are going to look like what
the information is going to look like. I think you're
going to be pleased with it. We're real happy with how
they came out and how clearly they iljustrate how the
departments doing.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: What kind of a reaction
have you gotten --
9
MR. DORRILL~ If you don't mind give your name Just
so the stenographer will have that. I'm sorry.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: What kind of reaction are
you getting from the constitutional officers in terms of
the modified zero-based budgeting?
MR. MCNEES: We heard just from a couple of them as
far as the information and they wanted to see our forms.
The sheriff sent someone to pick up forms and to look at
the information but we haven't really heard anything as
far as whether they want to participate.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I would suggest, it' s
obviously going to be a voluntary thing for them, but I
would suggest that we schedule a time before the county
commission on a Tuesday afternoon, like at 2:00 o'clock
or whatever time would be convenient for the
constitutional officers to come and have a discussion
with them so the commission, as a body, can explain to
the constitutional officers how important this is to us.
It's voluntary to them but if we simply say it's
voluntary and we'll see what happens you're not going to
get a very good response. Let's put a little pressure on
them.
10
M~. DORRILL~ Well, that's going to occur tomorrow.
This is on your agenda for tomorrow. They have been told
that this will be on there. That's why we asked them
that if they had a concern with the forms or the format
that they needed to let us know in advance of Tuesday.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: What I'm concerned about is
making sure that they are invited to be at a certain
place at a certain time.
(]{AIRMAN VOLPE: Why don't I make a phone call to
each one of them this afternoon?
MR. DORRILL: Or, maybe do it at a time specific,
say tomorrow at 3:00 o'clock, we're going to talk about
program budgeting and make sure they' re all there.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Why don't I call them on behalf of
the board and invite them to be there tomorrow because we
are going to be discussing this and come up with a time
certain so they'll know when to be there.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think that's fine.
MR. DORRILL~ Okay. To close out Just the
introduction, again, we're following a very successful
model for this type of budgeting that has been an award
winning system with the with City of Clearwater. The
11
City of Clearwater has, at least from my perspective and
my colleagues around the state, they have one of the more
sophisticated budget departments in the state.
So, we're using the City of Clearwater~s program
budget as a model here. I think it's going to be a very
interesting aiscussion for us but I think it will also
help the public understand county spending a little
easier to see it on a program by program basis.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS= Are we sending somebody up
to Clearwater from time to time to check their system
out?
MR. DORRILL: We did a little better than that,
Jean Gansel, who works for us now part-time is the former
director of management and budget offices for the City of
Clearwater. So, she created this system in Clearwater
and we~ve Just swipea it from them.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Great.
MR. DORRILL~ Second on our list is to continue to
implement, but this year with an eye towards setting
goals as part of our quality improvement program on
efficiency and that we ought to begin setting targets for
productivity and efficiency matters as a policy
perspective and I'd like to touch a little bit on our
Q-Plus program that we have.
Again, this is the system, it's a part of the
Demming theory of total quality management and Demming is
probably the leading American scholar on quality programs
and it's based on a Japanese system of quality
management.
We've done level one. Level one is creating the
quality-plus teams that each of the lying divisions.
Level two moves us into after the teams are established
and making more task team assignments, like we had a task
team to do or management review project Just before the
holidays, but to begin setting some efficiency levels and
goals that we would strive to meet, to attain, during the
course of the year. We'll be telling you a little bit
more about that.
In that regard, I think Commissioner Volpe had
asked last Tuesday to know, you know, what have we spent
what are we proposing to spend in the way of training and
with Qual-Tech and Mike, I'll let you explain what you've
Just passed out.
MR. MCNEES~ Well, I've Just given you a breakdown
13
of the three years so far what we spent in the program,
what we spent in hard dollars through my office. What
you see then are hard cost savings documented are at this
point only about thirteen thousand dollars ($13,000.00)
based on quick solutions to things that the teams have
come up with.
Where we are today is in most divisions, the teams
are Just coming off the training process. Theytre in
their first few meetings and what we hope to see this
year is to be able to document more hard cost savings
based on team efforts but therets kind of a long training
cycle to get the teams up to the point where they really
are solving meaningful problems and we knew going in that
it would be a good year and a half to two years before we
start to really show hard savings.
Neil gave an example of the management review team
that was sort of a O-I task team. We could have probably
hired a consultant to do that work and paid a lot money
and that's the case where I think we~ve saved something
by doing that internally with a Q-Plus type effort but
you can't prove that, you know, how do we value that
teamts contributions. There are a lot of those kinds of
14
savings that we haven't really tried to document.
So, what you see is to date, we haven't saved a lot
of dollars that we can prove but we believe in the course
of the next year we'll start to show that we are.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE= When we first discussed the Q-Plus
program as I recall, just as I mentioned the other day
was an alternative to sending people off to various
training sessions either within or out of the county, and
there's a number that I recall being discussed somewheres
in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars and
I don't really remember what that represented, whether
that was in lieu of our travel expenses and the cost of
seminars and so on.
MR. DORRILL~ Originally, we had taken and made
this our primary training focus for at least last year
and we had said and we had reduced our training budgets
or our out of county travel budgets for training and
moved some money by budget amendment into this training
that was done last year, one hundred and twenty-six
thousand dollars ($126,000.00) and we may have said that
over the three years we'll be close to about a quarter of
a million. At least, that's what we have budgeted for
15
this year ts eighty-eighty thousand ($88,000.00). But,
our big year was last year in terms of cost and I dontt
know that we~ll spend little, if anything, in subsequent
years beyond the year that wefre in now.
The point being that we were designating employees
to become certified productivity trainers and we were
training trainers, so to speak, so that we would be doing
the training with our own people as opposed to having the
consultants to come in.
So, where we had incurred money it was to train our
own employees to be quality improvement facilitators,
lead team members, quality counsel members in the future.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN: Those three numbers add up
to roughly two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
($250,000.00).
MR. DORRILL~ And, that's pretty much what we said
and where we would be in terms of what it would take to
get the system started.
CHAIRMAN vor.pE~ So, have we found then that it's
not necessary to send as many people off to the training
seminars that we have been sending them to? Has that
been effective in that regard?
16
HR. DORRILL~ Yes, and we made those changes
beginning in last yearfs budget. Our pti -- we continue
to do some internal training through our human resource
department for performance evaluation, interview and
selection criteria. We're getting ready to do a training
session on budgeting and people that had been selected
that could benefit from, again, internal training, you
know, how to prepare and be a better budgetor. We do
some of our own internal training. But, in terms of
contracted or private training, we have not done that in
the last two years. Wefve put all our money into this
one program.
As an aside, you*ll be getting a cop of a press
release, probably later today or tomorrow. Our quality
improvement coordinator, Doug Gotham, who has worked for
the county for about 14 years and the last two years in
this program, has resigned to accept a position with
Florida Power a Light who has the leading training
program in the state.
I know that Florida Power & Light was selected
along with the Walt Disney Company to be part of a task
force appointed by Governor Chiles to create a program
similar to ours at the state level.
So, if Florida Power & Light is stealing our people
away we must be doing something right and that's one of
the positions we'll want to try and replace as soon as we
can. But, I think Doug's last day will be tn March with
us?
MR. MCNEES ..
MR. DORRILL:
The last day of February.
The last day of February.
So, he'll
be leaving us but that's an indication that at least we
must be doing something right if the leading quality
Improvement company tn the state has swiped away our man
to go to work for them over on the east coast.
Pinally, the thing that I had touched on in our
office was the concept of expanding on our municipal
service, taxing and benefit units for a couple of
reasons, is we're increasingly concerned about taxes.
The first concern that I had is that increasingly
people want less government, not more, on a county-wide
perspective. It seems to me that we're going to have to
strive to set base levels of governmental services
throughout the county on a county wide level.
But, then as we see individual communities
18
clamoring to get higher levels of service, and I've
touched again on the Pelican Bay situation in law
enforcement or some of the things that they would like to
see done on, say, Marco Island with zoning or east Naples
with lighting and beautificat£on or Immokalee with
lighting and beautification.
People throughout the year come and Petition the
county commission and some of the latest ones, the Forest
Lakes communities petitioning the commission to do
something about their drainage situation.
It seems to me that the thing that would be good
for us to look at and evaluate would be to explore having
larger and more expensive municipal service, taxing and
benefit units where people are petitioning you to raise
their taxes for higher municipal or city-type services as
would otherwise be provided by the county commission.
The secondary, that I think that's important trying
to be a little visionary would be to recognize, dependlng
on who you talk to, there's continuing interest from time
to time, either in incorporation or annexation, where
people are again saying we want a higher, more
accountable level of governmental service and I think
19
that this is one way at least to the extent that we have
thus far that we can offer people these Services and
through our system of advisory boards give them more of a
say in the program areas that they want their money
spent. It runs the gambit again from police protection
to drainage to everything in between.
I don~t know what's going to come of this but I
know we have a couple of existing districts that are
looking for some expanded authority in the coming year
and again the one that they usually point to is the
situation at Pelican Bay but there will be others.
So, I~ve proposed us looking at this through the
course of the spring and being prepared, perhaps this
s~mer, to give further consideration to this type of
request.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Neil, how many of these special
taxing districts do we have?
MR. DOR/~ILLI Well, if you include lighting
districts, Itll bet we~ve got 50.
MR. MCNEES: Forty-two.
MR. DORRILL: Forty-two.
consolidate some of them where we can.
We might try and
This is something
2O
for counties throughout the state that has worked awfully
well.
CHAIRMAN VOnPE= And, I'd ask Tom Conrecode as the
person who oversees all of these special taxing?
MR. DORRILL= He oversees a lot of them. We're a
little fragmented there as well. We have some in water
management, for example, the one at Victoria Park and the
one at Hawks Ridge have to do only with drainage and so
John Bolt is responsible for those.
The lighting districts historically have been in
transportation. The beautification, the landscaping
districts and the larger districts like Pelican Bay are
in the project management section under Tom Conrecode.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE= How about the road maintenance, is
that a special taxing district?
that?
MR. DORRILL =
MR. ARCHIBALD ~
We -- George, why don't you explain
We currently have four MSTU's that
we tax people within those areas for certain material
improvements, primarily, road paving and road services.
So, those MSTU's are in place today and available
for use. The millage rates currently being assessed
21
would be somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred
thousand dollars ($100,000.00) for each of those per
year.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ There are four throughout the
county?
MR. ARCHIBALD: Yes, and they started with six,
five years ago the county was operating in sections, four
districts.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Do those districts come close to
the districts that we have for our impact fees like,
aren't there eight separate -- there are eleven districts
now?
MR. DORRILL= Probably not. They are some
similarities but because you have twice as many road
impact fee districts, and that's one of the things we're
contemplating as part of our Tindale-Oliver study. Do
we really need 11 or 12 impact fee districts when, for
example, county wide or area wide we have Just a single
district for water and sewer impact fees. We have a
single district for EMS impact fees. So we may be
contemplating going to a single district for impact fees
on transportation.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, Tindale-Oliver is
recommending eight from the eleven. If the issue comes
up in the context of the discussion that will take place
later on in the spring about increase in our road impact
fees and some concerns that have been expressed about the
use of our gas tax revenues, in the area -- we're ul~ing
our gas tax revenues now for capitol projects?
MR. DORRILL: Some.
MR. ARCHIBALD: Well, really the majority of the
gasoline tax now is allocated to maintenance. Only two
or three is currently used for capitol. Almost all of
the gas tax is for road operations.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: So, as an alternative to perhaps
an offset against the increase in the amount of the road
impact fees, if there were an opportunity to transfer
some of the gas tax revenues from the MSTU's that you've
discussed putting them over into the capitol side of the
a ledger, that could be used as an offset against the
increase in the impact fees and then we would have in
place MSTU's to use for the maintenance and you said that
it's a very low rate that we' re charging now.
MR. ARCHIBALD: Yes, what you're saying, we're
23
reallocating the gasoline tax back to capitol, of course,
as you reallocate the gasoline tax to capitol you reduce
impact fees by increasing some of the credit. But what
you do is create a bigger deficit in the road maintenance
area. That could be offset by increasing millage rates
within those special taxing districts.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE~ Thatts something that we as a
board will want to keep in mind as we discuss later on
the report of Tindale-Oliver because there obviously is
some concern about the magnitude of the increase thatts
being proposed for the road impact fees. That may be one
much those revenue, existing revenue, sources that we
could identify to help perhaps reduce the amount of the
impact thatts being discussed.
MR. DORRILL= Just in conclusion on this one, you
know, once before I know that the board was reluctant
moving ahead on somewhat thin ice with the police
protection issue but I will tell you that the Pelican Bay
people continue to be interested in this.
They are interested in it to the extent that if
necessary they would like to see it expanded, at least
through some of my preliminary discussions with Birney
24
Young, who I believe is either their chairman or he's
been designated to work with my office.
They're very interested in seeing the sheriff
establish a base level of service county wide. And, if
that means -- what the sheriff used historically for his
criteria was responses to calls for service and depending
on where you live you may have more or less road deputies
based on the number of calls for help or service that you
have.
But, then if people want to tax themselves beyond
the sheriff's base level of service, they'll be bringing
that back to you again and they' re willing to do it in a
larger area than Just Pelican Bay if that will help their
cause.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ There are a couple of things, I
met with the group on a couple of occasions and that is
a continuing interest that they have for some enhanced
police protection.
I think what happened the last time was that we
really didn't get as much input as we would have liked to
have received from the sheriff himself. I mean, this is
a service that he provides. It would seem to me he's got
25
to take the initiative in the first instance and tell us
how it is that he thinks he can provide or should provide
It seemed like we didntt get as much
the services.
input.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS~ Well, since I asked him the
question probably ten times at the meeting, do you
support the establishment of the MSTU for law enforcement
as proposed, and he would not answer the question, yes or
no. He danced around it for ten minutes.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ I think itts something that wetre
going to hear again but it's something in my opinion that
until the sheriff himself says this is the way that it
can be done and this is the way that I propose to do it
and I am in support of the concept and I~d like for you
to cooperate with me in doing it, you know.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN: I think if he understands
that possibly the concept will reach out throughout the
county he may take a completely different attitude than
he took with Just the Pelican Bay situation because it
was really politica/ly charged. I suspect he would
cooperate if he understands fully.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Well, there is a problem with
26
regard to that too, you know, where do you stop and
start? You know, you've got a~ministration, you've got
the sheriff department and so on, headquarters, all this
sort of thing. Are we going to charge a portion off to
the special taxing districts?
to do?
MR. DORRILL~
Is that what we're going
I think the p~rception of it last
time got ahead of us. The perception was that only the
rich communities were going to be able to afford these
types of higher levels of service. What the sheriff was
trying to say was the cops aren't in Pelican Bay now
because the request for service aren't there, you know,
without defending communities, the police in North Naples
are more apt to be in Naples Park than they are in
Pelican Bay.
Now, the people in Pelican Bay are trying to say
but we're willing to pay for a higher level of road
patrol within our community but not at the expense of any
of these other canmunities. Unless the sheriff can
establish what a base level of service is and by base
level meaning everyone is entitled to the protection that
they have now, then we probably won't get too far on
that.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ We may get some of that
information, though, from the work that's being done for
the impact fees for the sheriff.
MR. DORRILL: Uh-huh, Randy Young is looking at
that and he says it's rather interesting. He's not seen
this in other areas but he says it's interesting that
this may be a very novel concept for us to pursue.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ You mean they haven't done it
in other section of this state?
MR. DORRILL~ I think when Ms. Goodnight was the
chairman, that we did see, I want to say is was Brevard
County is using a similar system. They have established
a sort of base level of service county wide within the
sheriff's department for things like investigative and
correctional activities at the Jail but then they use an
MSTBU approach to providing and funding road patrol
activities in districts.
I want to say it's Brevard County but we made a
note and we're going to try to find if someone is in fact
doing that on the east coast.
with that, that was all that I had.
28
CHAIRMAN VOLPEt Just under executive offices,
we've had some goals, objectives and measurables from
last year. I didn't bring last year's strategic plans
with me. But, there seem to me that there were some of
those, in particular, I think we put an emphasis on
communication, we had a speaker's bureau, getting the
message out, those kinds of things that I would like to
keep out in front of us.
I'm not sure how good of a job we've done in that
regard during the last year but there are, you know, we
were endeavoring to be the best county government that we
could be and also in terms of communicating with our
constituents and the like, in service orientation.
M~. ~OP~LL: We did things where we never had
before and we do, in fact, and have created through Leo
Ochs' division a speaker's bureau and we advertise that
now to various civic and home owner, property owner
associations. We~ve create a interpreter's bureau to be
able to assist people with, I think, six or seven
different foreign languages.
We continue to print a county commission
newsletter. We originally, called that the county
29
manager's newsletter and we didn't like the sound of that
and we send a county commission newsletter now. We don't
do it guarterly anymore.
MR. OCHS~ About three times a year.
MR. DORRILL~ We have enough money to mail that out
to registered voters three times a year. So, we did a
series of things. I can't tell you frankly whether --
MR. OC~S~ We had an open house.
MR. DORRILL~ Yeah, we had an open house last year
for county government and we' re contemplating doing all
of that again this year. I can't tell you whether our
reputation is any better this year than it was last year
but we're doing things we never did before in that
regard.
CHAIRMAN V0LPE~ Well, one of the things you said
with some of the divisions that we're only looking at the
top three. Are these the only three that we have or are
those for executive offices or are those others still
there or some one of them?
MR. DORRILL~ Sure, and they remain funded and as
part of Leo's work program he is responsible for public
affairs along those same lines that we had last year.
3O
But, to not overwhelm us, last year I thought we
overwhelmed ourselves with goals and objectives and we
had a book that was, I think, three hundred pages thick.
That's why this year we've just chosen the top three.
Okay, Leo.
MR. OCHS~ For the record I'm Leo Ochs,
Administrative Services Administrator.
The first of the three primary goals that we've
outlined for administrative service for the balance of
this fiscal year has to do with continuing efforts to
maintain the rising cost of the board's group medical
benefit program.
As the board knows, back in October of 1989, the
board approved a self funded method of providing group
medical benefits not only to board agency employees but
also this program covers all county employees including
all the employees and eligible dependents of the other
constitutional agencies.
So, as you can see in the handout, we have a series
of general objectives that are outlined for the balance
of this fiscal year. In terms of a strategic plan of
action in controlling our medical benefits costs, we
31
basically, Jeff Walker, your risk management director,
and I have broken this down into five primary components.
The first thing we wanted to do was set up a very
aggressive hospital pre-certification and utilization
review process. We~ve done that and implemented that
this past October.
Then we wanted tot as a second measurer look at our
benefit plan and see if we could incorporate some changes
in the benefit plan and the structure of the benefits
that would reduce our overall costs.
Now, the board may remember back in January of this
year, the board approved that series of 15 plan design
changes. We implemented those in January of this year
and expect on an annual basis to save the plan about
three hundred thousand dollars ($300,000.00) through that
effort.
The third component of our strategy was to
institute what's called an IRS Section 125, Cafeteria
Benefit Plan. That sounds kind of complex but basically
boils down to what that is, is a program that allows
employees to buy at their expense additional benefits off
of that pre-qualified list with pre-tax dollars. So, it
32
has the double benefit/ for the employer, we save money
because our FICA contributions are lower because of that
lower gross or taxable gross and the employees save money
on their FICA portion plus their federal income tax is
slightly reduced. It allows employees to pick and choose
the kind of benefits that are more important to them and
kind of customize their own program.
That was the third element of the program. Wetve
got, again, phase one was approved by the board and
implemented on January the 1st. We have about 700 new
insurance contracts that have been processed in various
lines of coverages ranging mainly from supplemental life
insurance division care. Again, these are paid one
hundred percent by the employee but do benefit the county
in terms of reduced FICA taxes to the tune of about
seventy thousand dollars ($70,000.00) this year.
That was our third element.
The fourth element of our strategy with controlling
medical costs has to do with looking every year at the
marketplace in terms of the premium rates that we charge
for both single and family coverage and that includes the
overall rate plus the proportionate share that employees
33
with family coverage pay towards that group medical
benefit. We are doing that now and we expect to have a
series of recommendations to the manager in March and I'm
sure he'll be discussing those with all of you as part of
the budget deliberation process.
The final component, which we'll be bringing to you
later on this year or early in the next fiscal year is an
area that we call Wellness.
Again, what this does is it tries to shift the
emphasis of the plan and its expenditures towards
prevention as opposed to treatment after the fact.
We have, probably 49 to 50 percent of our annual
cost of claims are related to in-hospital type stays and
related charges. So, clearly, half of our five and a
half million dollars that we pay annually in claims are
in, in-patient hospitals and related services.
SO, the idea behind the Wellness Program is through
education, initial screenings for various diseases or
conditions and also perhaps a fitness component to
emphasize the preventative aspects so we can head some of
these large expenses off at the pass, if you will. We
can get some early prevention and some treatment either
through lifestyle or diet or some other program of
treatment, we may save a heart attack or some other large
catastrophic illness and save us some dollars in the
process.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Leo, the -- obviously,
your re familiar with the hospital wellness program and
their facilities. They will also conduct a wellness
program at the site of a large employer which certainly
would be cheaper than trying to create a new program.
MR. O(HS~ Thatts a good point commiss~oner. What
wetve done, Just recently, our quality counsel has
co~missioned me to put together a task team to study this
whole Issue of wellness and fitness. One of the expert
members of the task team is Linda Hill who*s the
sheriff~s fitness coordinator who also worked with the
hospltal*s program for three years before co~ing to the
sheriff*s agency. So, we' re going in there with a
clean --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS~ Just as an example, they
have the equipment to do stress tests which would be a
large component of the wellness program. The equi~a~ent~s
fairly expensive. They've got an operator. They would
35
probably charge Just what it costs to run the test. I
think you need to talk to those people.
HR. O(~S ~ Sure.
MR. DORRILL~ One of our goals is to not, and
Co~missioner Hasse asked me on the way up here this
morning, he said I hope you're not talking about any new
programs or any additional funding requests. We want to
go in this using the resources of either Naples Community
Hospital or the sheriff or, for that matter the health
department has their own fitness coordinator's position,
try and use what's already here as opposed to us creating
our own position under risk management or wellness
program or buying equipment that might duplicate the
equipment that the sheriff has or the hospital has. We
don't have any intentions of doing that.
HR. OCHS~ We're also using, on the committee,
Frank Mattera f£om the health department here, they have
over in the other wing of this building, some of that
similar type of equipment for diagnostics.
They also do a lot in the employee education area.
So, one of the aspects of wellness would be maybe an
internally circulated newsletter that talks about
i I II iii II IIIII II I I IIIIIII I I IIIII
36
lifestyles and diets some of these things that can
prolong health for individuals and maybe get them back on
track.
COMMISSIONER MAUNDERS: We still have smoking in
some of our buildings in certain designated areas.
MR. OCHS~ In designated areas.
COMMISSIONER MAUNDERS= Itd like to see us in t92
prohibit smoking in all county buildings. Itt s going to
be a difficult thing for some employees but I think
everybodyts on notice that thatts ultimately going to
happen.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN ~
COMMISSIONER MAUNDERS:
us.
Check with Jim first.
Jim Giles? If Jim will let
MR. OCHS= As you know, the board has Jurisdiction
of those facilities since they pay the bills.
MR. DORRILL~ You own and operate all the
facilities and you set the rules and determine the space
allocations.
COMMISSIONER MAUNDERS= Could you perhaps give us
Just a very brief report in the very near future on what
the legal authority would be to ban smoking in all
county-owned facilities. If you can get that to me I~d
like to move on it pretty quickly.
CHAIRMAN V0r. PE~ In the same vein, this is
something that I had contemplated back six months ago,
so -- maybe a little be longer, having to do with a drug
free work place and I know that Guy Carlton has tried
that program within the tax collector's office and
apparently that program with the tax collector was a
mandatory drug free work place and he's being challenged
in the courts.
But, we may want to consider, at least initially,
some sort of a voluntary program.
MR. DORRILL~ You have a drug free -- not drug free
but you have a drug policy as part of your existing
personal rules and regulations and I'll ask Leo to touch
on that.
MR. OCHS~ Right. Basically, what the rule
provides for are testing, probable cause or
pre-employment testing as part of our normal
pre-employment screening process.
We don't have random testing as part of the policy.
We typically have not done random drug testing primarily
38
because based on the disciplinary case records that I've
seen since I've been here for the last five years, you
can probably count on one hand those behavioral problems
or cases of misconduct that were drug or alcohol related.
What we do typically with those, the first step is
to get some intervention through your employee assistance
program and we monitor and in some cases do follow-up
testing again and if there's probable cause, we make that
a condition of continued employment. We can do it, it
will Just cost some money to drug screen every new
applicant, for example, or to randomly test.
MR. DORRILL= We've had a half a dozen or so in the
last, I'd say two years, we probably had six employees
who, as a condition of their continuing employment here,
have to submit to required, unannounced or scheduled drug
testing in order to keep the Job that they have and then
failure to pass any one of those tests results in their
immediate termination.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE= There is, under the Florida
Statutes, if you have a drug free workplace there are
certain credits given to perspective contractors who have
a drug free workplace.
39
All that kind of thinking in terms of every time
someone comes before the board they tell us how much
money is being spent on drug and substance abuse and
prevention. If it's an important issue, the sheriff
comes to us, I mean, we've got so many dysfunctions/
families maybe we ought to, at least, set an example,
that it's an important issue and some survey that I've
read recently indicated that the issues of drug and
substance abuse are one of the primary issues of our
concern to this community.
MR. OCHS~ I'm not sure we can't qualify as a drug
free workplace without having to do go through the
lengths of random testing. I think one of the
requirements is that you have a policy in place which we
certainly do. I think there's another component that has
to do with some continuing education which is easily done
through payroll stuffers or some other type of
information campaign.
that.
CHAIRMAN ¥OLPE ~
little bit more.
COMMISSIONER HASSE
So, I'd would be happy to look at
If we could Just promote it Just a
That may be good but isn't
4O
they~ re equipped.
MR. DORRILL
contract out too.
A lot of their lab work, they
That complex urinalysis for various
drug screening they may not have the ability to do and
that's why we're using a contract service or testing lab
to do that when we have to do it.
there a way, you know, you were talking that five or six
people, who handles them? Doesn't the health department
do that? Can't we do that in-house?
MR. DORRILL~ I don~t know who does the actual
testing. They're required to coordinate through the
human resource department and probably David Lawrence
Mental Health or the hospital. I~m not really sure.
MR. OCHS~ We send them out to a screening here,
from a diagnostic firm in town that has the equitxnent to
do that sophisticated screening.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Don~t they have that here?
After all, if we~ve got a building, we~ve got the
equipment, we~ve got the people, why not do it here?
MR. DORRILL~ You can do it downstairs.
MR. OCHS= Perhaps, I don~t that the -- I haven't
checked with the health department, whether or not
41
MR. 0CHS~ Just parenthetically, the tax
collectorts random testing program was ruled
unconstitutional by the attorney general~s office not too
long ago, at least --
MR. DORRILLt I~m sorry, say that again.
MR. OCHS~ The random testing portion of Mr.
Carlton~s plan was struck down by the attorney generales
office here about a month ago. That's what I saw in the
newspaper anyhow, if that was an accurate report. I
believe that it was.
Let me Just give you a little quick piece of
information here and then I~ll get on to the next one.
This represents total medical plan costs for the
last three fiscal years, ~90, t91 and ~92. You can see
that our, again, projected for this fiscal year, about
5.5 million dollars to sustain your medical benefit
program. This is about an eight percent increase from
the prior year.
This four million, three figure that you see in
~88, ~89, again, was the first year that we went
self-funded and does not represent a full 12 months worth
of claims paid. You see the 17 percent Jump there in
42
fiscal year ~90, ~91 but that's because we went from
about nine months worth of paid claims to a full year.
Just parenthetically, the 5.5 that you'll spend
this year is still less than the renewal quote that we
got from the indemnity insurance carrier back in 1989,
~90.
In October of 1989, your insurance carrier at that
point wanted five million, five hundred and thirty-two
thousand dollars to continue on a traditional indemnity
type medical benefit program.
So, even though we obviously spend a lot of money
in our group medical program yout re still much better off
with the decision that you made to self-fund program as
opposed to keeping the indemnity program.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS~ Do we have some
catastrophic type of coverage?
MR. DORRILL ~ Stop-loss?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS~ Yeah. What is the maximum
amount that the county would be exposed to on a single
individual having some catastrophic injury or illness.
MR. OCHS: One hundred and twenty-five thousand
dollars ($125,000.00), up.to a million Per Person after
43
'chat, $125~000.00.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERSz Is the million per person
for the total duration of the --
MR. OCHSz Life of that claim.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS~ -- time that personts
covered or Just for the one claim.
MR. O(HS~ Just for the life of that claim. If
therets another claim then--
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS~ There * s another million.
MR. O(~S~ Yes.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS~ What are we paying for that
coverage? I presume that that's not included in the 5.5
million that we~ve spent.
MR. OCHS: Yes, it is. It*s total plan costs.
That includes your paid claims --
MR. DORRILL ~ A~ministration.
MR. O(~S~ Plus your reinsurance, your contract
with your contract claims administrator, and your
overhead employer, risk management.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Two numbers I would like to
know, one, would be the amount that we're paying for the
coverage, the million dollar stop-loss coverage and then
44
also how much of that total figure is paid back to us
through payroll deductions for the extended family
coverage? I think wet re charging them twenty dollars a
month or twenty-five a month per employee.
MR. OCHS~ Your stop-loss premium on an annual
basis is a hundred and one thousand, three hundred sixty-
six dollars ($101,366.00.) That is down actually, from
two hundred and thirty thousand (230,000.00) last year.
Primarily itt s down because the board implemented those
plan design changes that were then recognized by the
reinsurer and reduced their liability and in turn reduced
our premium costs this year.
MR. DORRIL~.~ That's for the total group. In this
instance, the county co~mission =uns the self insurance
program for any county employee. While you have nine
hundred and something employees, the group costs in this
case are for almost 1900 employees, it includes all of
the constitutional officers and the court system as well.
So, these costs here are for, I guess, 1900
employees and I don~t know how many dependents are
covered under the --
MR. OCHS~ You have over 300 total -- 3000 total
45
insured in the plan right now.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: So, we're paying about two
thousand seven hundred dollars per employee?
MR. OC~S: For that coverage?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: No, for the entire plan.
Rough numbers. Dick is the mathmetician here but I think
it was 2000 employees into the 5.5 million. So, is that a
number --
HR. OCHS~ Twenty-nine hundred dollars per
employee, Per year, this fiscal year for your medical --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: How does that number
compare to other similar sized employers or can you make
a comparison?
MR. OCHS: I've got a graph if you want to see it.
It's not a local market.
board --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
I meant to show this to the
Leo, aB far aB I'm
concerned, you can provide this later. This will give us
a little bit of an indication of how good our plan really
is by breaking it down a little bit.
MR. DORRILL~ My impression is we have an average
plan for employees. We have a better than average plan
46
for dependent coverage and that's why in both of the last
two years we have been requiring employees to pay more
per month for dependent coverage.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: That's an issue that we're
going to debate during the budget process, do they want
to increase the employee contribution.
MR. DORRILL~ Right. And, annually we have to
balance that against what if any cost of living
adjustment is included as part of our pay for Performance
because you need to know that so that you don~t give them
on the one hand 'X" Percent for satisfactory work and
then take it away entirely or more so. But, I agree with
you. We have a better than average plan for dependent
coverage, at least when we compare ourselves to others.
C~AIRMAN VOtPE: On the other hand, when the county
was unde~writing the entire cost of health ~nsurance we
didn't factor that into the percentage increase that the
employees received.
MR. DORRILL ~
COMMISSIONER HASSE:
people we' ve got?
MR. DORRILL ~
That's correct.
That varies with the number of
It does and then again those are
47
total costs and obviously thatts, depending on the nature
of the individual claims, some people get a great benefit
out of it. Others, who have never filed a claim get --
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Zilch.
MR. OtiS: This is your employee portion of the
dependent care premiums. Youtll see on a percentage
basis, FY ~89, ~90 it was twenty-nine dollars and fifty
cents ($29.50), we brought it up to forty-five dollars
($45.00), which is a 52 percent increase.
In FY t90, ~91, we brought up another 10 to $55.00
per month, which is a 22 percent increase over ~90, ~91.
Itt s still a very competitive, attractive rate as
compared to the market for dependent coverage
contributions. So, itt s one of the benefits that
typically we hear from new employees or candidates for
Jobs that's it's very attractive and one of the things I
think is a great recruitment tool for us.
This is Just some breakdown of information over
time. You can see your average paid claims, your fixed
costs, again, thatts your reinsurance, your claims
a~ninistration and your overhead in risk management.
Enrollment, actually, is down slightly this year
48
due to the hiring freeze. We have fewer people enrolled
in the plan and there's some history there on your rates
for employee and employee dependent that we're looking at
some alternatives based on the market survey that's
underway right now.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS.. That 55 is, pardon my
ignorance, I forgot, is that per pay period or per month?
MR. DORRILL.. Per month.
MR. OCHS: Per month.
Any other questions on the medical program? If
not, we can go ahead and move along.
MR. DORRILL: Again, I think that points to the,
the fact that we ought to look at a wellness program when
you're paying claims out at the rate of a hundred
thousand dollars a week. The more, the extent to which
you have a more in shape and less high risk employee
group, whether encourage stop smoking or drinking, you
know, increase health you can really realize some quick
returns if your employee group as a whole is in better
shape than they would be without an encouraged or
required health program as a function of the health
insurance plan.
49
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Does that include physicals or
anything throughout the year?
MR. DORRILL~ Thatts total so that any claim filed
under that. Itt s cost us about a hundred grand a week to
be able to pay the claims that are there.
MR. OCHS~ Just one more point on that issuew even
though your costs are continuing to rise, again, this
year as compared to last year, the costs will be up
about eight percent or slightly more than eight percent.
When you consider medical inflation alone is
running about 15 percent a year I think that there is
some comfort in the fact that the employees are smart
about the way they utilize the plan and that your staff
is trying to do what they can to manage and control the
level of increase in those costs.
CHAIRMAN V0~.PE~ Commission Saunders mentioned
something about working out or discussing with the
hospital about a wellness program. They have that
nutritional program now, called New Direction and the
like. But, BancFlorida has their own in-house person and
I~m sure that maybe Florida Power & Light has own their
in-house person. That may be an alternative to be
explored simply because from the perspective of cost
effectiveness it might be.
MR. DORRILL~ Thatts when I answered Commission
Saunders. The county, generically, has two in-house
people. The sheriff has someone whots full-time
responsible for their wellness program. The health
department has a full-time wellness coordinator. And,
what I said was before we even considered having our own,
we ought to use or participate with either the sheriff or
the health degartment because of the nature of the fact
that theytve already got people providing these types of
services. We should explore very seriously getting--
CHAIRMAN VOLPE= Who does the health department
provide that service to?
MR. DORRILL= Their own employees as well as people
that are referred there from the, you know, the health
clinic people that have high risk health and fitness
probl ems.
HR. OCHS~ Clients in the co~unity.
Okay, the second strategic goal was to maintain our
capitol asset values in all of our buildings and grounds
through continued emphasis on our facilities management
51
operation. We have four or five primary objectives
there.
Number one, is to maintain a formal preventive
maintenance program that we first implemented in 1989 and
'90. We found that prior to that we were running around
chasing problems all the time after they occurred at a
high rate of emergency repairs.
So, what we did, we put together a five man crew
that primarily went out and proactively surveyed our
buildings, did periodic inspections of all our mechanical
systems, changed filters, light bulbs, et cetera, in the
hopes of catching a lot of these problems before they
affected the customer and required an emergency type
repair. We found that it's been very effective. We
invested over 12,000 manhours this past year in the
preventive maintenance program.
We're finding that our overall number of workorders
are beginning to trend down due to the fact that we're
getting more of these problems corrected on the front end
and therefore spending actually less overtime for repair
calloutsw et cetera.
The second item is to continue the scheduled
building and mechanical system renovation projects that
we have in this year ts budget. Facilities management is
responsible for a portion of the capitol projects that
are budgeted in you= 301 fund, primarily, having to do
with renovation of facilities, either replacing roofs or
air conditioning systems or doing some additional
renovation or construction.
Wet re staying on schedule, primarily, and I think
we're on schedule within budget for most of our projects.
Wetve got 19 of those projects identified in your 301
fund this year that facilities has responsibility for.
The value of those in the aggregate is about three
million dollars so itt s a substantial effort.
One of the projects that we are running behind
schedule with is Building B and I know wetve gone back
and forth on that a little bit in the past few months but
thatts a project that we're working with the manager's
office to trying to get some additional alternative so we
can come back to the board in the near future and get a
decision on whether we want to move ahead with any kind
renovation work on that building this year.
MR. DORRILL~ Building B, being the old health
department building that's adjacent to Building P.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ That's on hold at this
point in time?
MR. DORRILL~ It is. We're trying to see if we can
do it in-house or at the same level that we renovated
in-house Building A, the sheriff's department, the old
courthouse building, at about half the cost per square
foot as to what had been budgeted.
Leo's given me a proposal to do that and I Just --
it's been one of those things that haventt been critical
enough to rush through so wetre holding that particular
project. We're trying to develop an alternative to do it
at how much a square foot?
Construction costs would be under $51.00
MR. OCHS~
a square foot.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN ~
And, that building started
out at about a hundred dollars per square foot as I
recall.
MR. DORRInL t Uh-huh.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Hasn't the board authorized some
work on third floor here at Building H?
MR. OCHS~ Yes. We had three bids Just last week
54
on that. The plan is to renovate half of that floor for
occupancy primarily by environmental services staff and
then there's a kind of a domino affect when they move out
of a 'G", Mr. Giles wants to consolidate his microfilming
operation which is partly in renovated Building A and
partly in Building F and bring that together in Building
B along with his mailroom. So, we're working on both of
those projects and will be coming back to the board and
suhait a contract to the board.
CHAIRI4AN VOLPE~ So, are those the two primary
capitol projects then, Building g and Building B?
MR. DORRILL~ Those are the biggest ones. You have
some other renovation work, some roofing work.
MR. OCHS~ We're replacing five roofs and five air
conditioning systems in primarily outlying facilities in
I~okalee and other areas of the county that are twenty
years old and try to get those cycled through. Once they
get that all squared away.
MR. DORRILL~ We're either Just about, as an
example to award a bid to renovate the roof and air
conditioning at the CHSI Building in I~okalee which is
the federally funded clinic but you own and operate the
~. O~S~ About to.
~. O~S~ The next tim ts ~o evaluat~ the cost
eEEecblveness oE bhe currenb con~gac,oc's
for both ou~ custodi~ se~tce and ou~ lawn maintenance
and ~rounds maintenance here at ~he gove==en~ complex.
We've had s~e success tn this past year doing that
tn our fleet management area and we're Just doing the
an~ysts cent,act versus ,n-house fo, both custodt~ and
grounds maintenance we've given that Information to the
manager an~ also to the board, p~o~bly as part of the
~. ~ILL= We had an indication as we we're
a~ut to o~n and have o~ned the n~ lfbra~ that our
conk~ct cos2~ ~e~en't ~here ~e 2hou~hk 2h~ eho~d
because we had an tndt~tion that we co~d hire our own
staff and do ~t as cheaply ~f not cheape~ th~ the
~ntract provi~r and what you mq see, I don~t w~t us
to get into the point of where we' =e hiring our ~n
custo~ st~f a~in because we haven't done that tn
'
56
years.
If our costs had escalated, this may be a good time
to re-bid our custodial contract and also our grounds
maintenanoe contract then we negotiated a lower price for
the library ~n lieu of hiring county employees because I
don~t want to add people to the payroll at this point.
But, that's something that Leo~s going to be looking at
this summer is whether or not we need to rebid those two
contracts.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Do we take into consideration
where the people come from, whether they come locally or
they come from the east coast or from where?
MR. OCHS: Under the contractual arrangement, no we
don~t. That's the prerogative of the employer. Where
we're primarily concerned with is that theytre Performing
as the contract provides for.
MR. DORRILL~ The current provider has a local
company here but he is -- the corporate offices are out
of Philadelphia.
MR. OCHS~ Yeah, theytre out of Pittsburgh.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Well, that's not what I~m
talking about. I~m talking about the employees that he
hires. We have people here that are out of work and we
go to the east coast7
MR. OCHS~ He hires local people primarily.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Are you sure7
MR. OCHS~ He has a supervisor that works out from
the corporate office but is on site here.
MR. DORRILL~ Who is a local employee.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Wetre talking about grounds
maintenance or are we talking about custodial?
MR. DORRILL~ Both.
MR. OCHS~ Both.
MR. DORRILL~ Itts not the same company. Grounds
maintenance is different. We Just awarded a new contract
on October the First for grounds maintenance.
MR. O(HS= Right, and thatts an annual contract.
We have a renewal option if the board chooses to exercise
it. The custodial contract was a long term contract that
is expiring this year, will be back out to bid,
regardless of what the analysis shows, wet re going to
continue with putting our specification together and
weWll be going out to bid this summer and see what kind
of bid price or competition wet re going get on the
58
custodial services.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE= What happened with the sheriff?
At one point the sheriff had indicated that some of his
awards were going to be available to assist us in these
areas.
HR. OCHS= He~s doing that. Primarily, on the
weekends, they empty all the trash cans twice a week and
then on the weekends they also have their community
service people police all the parking lots for debris and
do some sweeping.
So, there was an arrangement there where there was
a revenue transfer of a certain amount of money --
HR. DORRILL= Wetve done some other things. He's
cleaned up a couple of the lakes. I know they work a
crew, I know they work a crew every Sunday.
MR. OCHS = Right.
HR. DORRILL= There have been occasions when we~ve
worked some Saturday crews as well.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE= Who coordinates that, Skip Camp,
who does that?
HR. DORRILL= With the head Jailer at the Jail.
We're using people that are on weekend release or
59
community service to do that.
COMMISSIONER SHANARAN~ You know, based on the
economic conditions that are out there today we ought to
be reviewing any contractual arrangement that we have.
You hear over and over again that everybodyts fighting
for every potential Job thatts out there and the prices
are down, they're at their lowest level ever and it
provides an opportunity for us to bring our base down as
well.
MR. DORRILL~ We, in that regard, have Just
renegotiated some of our engineering agreements, you
know, from the glory days of the late 80's. When, for
senior principal engineers with some of our civil
engineering firms were paying up to $120.00 an hour.
We're renegotiating those now, and we're seeing costs of
almost 25 percent less than them and they want our
business and so it's a good time for us to go and
renegotiate.
CHAIRMAN VO~.PE~ Neil, just with the sheriff, are
we working St. Matthew's house, are we working with any
of these other agencies, agencies, any of these 'other
organizations to try to use some of their people where we
6O
can?
MR. OCHS~ We have not, no.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE~ ThatWs something we hear all of
the time in terms of there are people who are willing to
work. So, if there was some opportunity for us to hire
some of the manual laborers through St. MatthewWs House
or some of these day laborer arrangements.
MR. DORRILL~ We, occasionally, do contract day
labor on top of the free labor wew re getting from the
sheriff. Whether we have ever exglored doing that with
St. Matthews, the problem being that even with day labor,
the employer has got to have worker's comp insurance on
any day laborer that you hirer, hews got to keep records.
I donWt know whether St. MatthewWs or some of the
other agencies are set up to handle the clerical task of
contracting with us for day labor.
COMMISSIONER RASSE~ You might have some trouble.
I read in the paper this morning that these gentlemen
that you see out there with the signs, 'Will work for
food', make a $100.00 a day on doing that. So, thatts
not a bad deal.
MR. OCHS~ Okay, our next area is Just, again, to
61
· continue the initiatives that have been made with the
Automated Energy Management System.
We have that system installed in buildings, F, L,
H, C, Building D is on schedule this year to be completed
and implemented or outfitted, I should say, with the
energy management system. Right now, that controls our
air conditioning and heating systems. In this building
also, it can control the lighting and has the capacity to
control security in all the facilities as well.
MR. DORRILLI I dongt know how many of you aware of
that and I~ll Just throw these things in, we have a
computer system now that runs the heating and chilling
and the lighting levels for all of those buildings that
he Just mentioned. There had been certain meetings in
the evening in Building F where we had to make
arrangements to have the computer overridden if we were
going to work late that night because the computer will
automatically shut the air handlers and the chillers down
and will turn lights off at certain level in the event
the people don*t or in order to save money.
What were the buildings that are part of system
again?
MR. OCHS: We have F, L, H, those are the new
buildings. Building C and Building D will be finished
before the end of this fiscal year.
MR. DORRILL~ Payback on that, the investment, you
have to go and do some remedial wiring and stuff in the
buildings in order to have the circuits be able to be
remotely turned on and off by the computer. Our payback
on that is less than five years I think.
MR. O(~Sz Like three years.
MR. DORRILL~ We'll recover all of our capitol
costs to retrofit these buildings in three years in terms
of the energy that we've saved.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Is FP&L giving us any credit for
that type of a system?
MR. DORRILL~ They do. We have a negotiated rate.
We're paying the lowest utility rate that you can get
because of, it's called shearing, I don't know what the
term for it is.
MR. OCHS~ I don't recall the technical term for
it. We meet almost regularly with FP&L because they do
give us discounted rate by that bulk-type rate for a
facility our size.
63
MR. DORRIL~.~ We do the same for our major utility
plants. We get a cheaper rate per kilowatt hour because
itts a shear rate and within 30 minutes notice youtve got
to be able to generate your own power in the event of a
brownout state wide or something like that.
As a result of that, every month we get a discount
rate from even the commercial rate that we would
otherwise pay.
MR. OCHS~ The last two items, real quickly,
there's a new federal law called the Americans with
Disabilities Act which has a couple different primary
components to it. One, which has to do with publio
accommodations or making public accommodations or
facilities accessible for disabled people.
Again, one of our objectives for the balance of
this year is to insure that this county is fully
compliant with all of the provisions of the particular
federal law.
The public accommodation aspects of the law went
into effect January the 26th of this year and then
there's a whole other series of personnel related impacts
that go into effect on July 26th of this year. So, we~ll
64
be working with both the facilities an~ then again in
human resources over the balance of this year to make
sure that wet re compliant with the provisions of that new
law.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Itm glad we don~t have any
subways.
HR. OCHS~ The last item is, again, on efficiency
effort, automate our workorder processing and building
functions so that an employee can sit at a computer
terminal in Building F, for example, call up a work
order, fill it out electronically, mail it over to the
facilities where they can then issue the work order and
then input the final cost for labor and materials and
then have bills automatically generated and reconciled
back through the finance system in Mr. Yonkosky~s
operation. I think we can turn things around, less
paperwork, I think it's more efficient.
MR. DORRILL~ This is something we're going to have
to do because two of the employees associated with our
management review cuts, formally were responsible to
manually prepare all of the work orders and all of the
bills to charge out to all of the departments.
65
Two of the positions that are proposed to be phased
out are going to be replaced with an automated system,
where you will order a repair over your computer terminal
and the computer will determine the billing rate and the
hours. So, we're automating that whole particular
process and we'll have to have that ready to go by the
end of the year.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Are we including any of the
constitutional officers or --
MR. DORRIr. L~ Anyone who is part of our electronic
mail system. I know the clerk and Ms. Morgan are on
system. The sheriff is now on it as well and I know the
tax collector and the property appraiser have access to
it. So, the answer is yes.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ They have access to it~ do
they use it?
MR. DORRILL~ Theyt re going to have to.
COMMISSIONER HASSE ~ Okay.
MR. OCHS~ We can still do it manually but we
prefer to do it automated if we can.
This is the last graph I'm showing. I wanted to
point this out to the board so you can get kind of a snap
66
shot of where we're heading. It concerns me to a certain
extent.
If you look at the square footage increase, this is
from 1988 through 1992, our square footage has increased
to about 48 percent. Our maintenance budget has gone up
about 37 percent in that same period of time.
Our personnel in the maintenance section as the
manager Just mentioned, wetre actually losing people in
that area, so our personnel compliment is down about four
percent.
Your good news is your maintenance cost per square
foot is down also about 8 percent and the square foot
maintained per worker is up 58 percent. So, therets some
good news there in terms of your cost but when you get to
a point of diminishing returns when we had 25 people in
1988, now we have 24 and next year we're losing two more
people out of the maintenance section. So, itt s becoming
increasingly ~/fficult to maintain your facilities with
the number of people available to do the work and I Just
wanted to point that out so the board understands where
the trends are heading here.
MR. DORRILT.~ The POint being here, we cut this one
67
as close as we can. I mean, we're right on the edge.
You own and operate, probably county wide, two million
square feet of property, real property?
MR. OCHS= Probably about a million and a half.
MR. DORRILL= Okay, a million and a half square
feet. It's being maintained by Just 24, soon to be 22
employees. We have cut our costs as closely here as we
can and you can see while your costs per square foot to
own and maintain property have gone down in the last
couple of years, itt s because the number of employees are
physica/ly maintaining almost 50 percent or more square
foot per man, per man hour, than they ever have before.
This is one department that I think has done on the
maintenance side, is doing you a real good job
maintaining the assets that you have for less and less
money each year as opposed to more money.
COMMISSIONER HASSE ~
automation?
MR. DORRILL ~
A lot of that is because of
Some, but also increasing or
improving the way that they approach and assign theytre
work without seeing an increase in repairs because, you
know, you can get to the point to where you dontt
68
maintain your buildings and they begin to fall apart on
you and thatts been our concerning that we dontt cut our
nose off to spite our face. We need to maintain the
stuff that we own but do it as efficiently as we can.
MR. OCHS: 0uite frankly, some of the things that
we used to do in this area, in terms of what we call
special services, we Just don~t do them anymore. Or, if
we do them, instead of taking two weeks to get done it
may take two months to get that Job done.
What we do in those cases, we call the customer and
say, we can get this done for you but it's going to be 60
days from now so, you decide. If you can wait, this is
our cost to do it and when we can do it. If not, herets
a list of contractors that can do the work, feel free to
call them and get some prices.
MR. DORRILL: Some examples, we used to build a lot
of our own furniture. We dontt build our own furniture
anymore. We don~t do our own formica work, is a good
example. We don~t hang pictures on walls anymore. We
dont t move furniture back and forth across the campus
because we~d rather be spending our electricians and our
plumbers and our HVAC mechanics time doing the type of
69
stuff they ought to be doing than making formica
furniture or bookcases or hanging pictures in offices.
So, we haventt done any of that work probably in what,
two years?
MR. OCHS~ T~o years.
COMMISSIONER HASSE ~
Who does it?
MR. DORRILL~ Nobody. The point being that you
ought to be able to hang your own picture. If you need a
bookcase bad enough, you ought to be able to find money
to buy one as opposed to having one custom made for your
office.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Nell, the concept of rent an
employee which is kind topical now, has the county
considered any type of a program such as that?
MR. DORRILL~ Yeah, we have but there have been
some recent IRS problems associated with that. Leo, I
think the question is in terms of a full-time temporary
contract type employment. I know Mr. Yonkoski has some
concerns about that.
MR. OCHS~ Are you alluding to the leasing concept
that was in the paper last Sunday.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Yes.
7O
MR. OCHS: No, we have not looked at that. It's
typically geared towards small employees that don't want
to incur the overhead expense of processing payroll and
insurance benefits, et cetera, for those people.
We haven't looked at that but we certainly can
talk with the finance people who process the payroll for
the boards.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I'm not sure that there's an
advantage to it but obviously it's some that other
employers have come to --
MR. DORRILL: Yeah, I think you're talking about
something other than what I have just said, but then I
don't are read the paper so I wouldn't have seen it.
MR. O(~S~ I know what you're talking about. We
can take a look at it and see.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Well, I was thinking about the
carpenters, if we need some carpenters to do some work.
Rather than going out and letting an individual office or
division contract with someone to do some carpentry work
you might have a situation where you would actually, for
whatever projects you have to undertake, period of, you
know, two weeks or whatever where you'd actually lease
71
some carpenters to do the work.
MR. DORRILL~ It's worth looking at.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Again, I don't know that there's
any advantage but it might be something that we ought to
at least look into.
MR. DORRILL~ Leo, why don't you move us on into
your last area and let's try to finish this by 10230 Just
to keep us on point.
MR. OCHS~ The last area represents the top three
goals, that we're looking at is maintaining your capitol
asset value in your fleet, motorized equipment.
The board remembers this current fiscal year we
obtained authorization from you to move away from the
contract service and take responsibility for fleet
management and fuel management, in-house with county
employees.
Most the objectives here are listed, and I won't go
through them, relate to gaining efficiencies and reducing
costs in that regard. I'll Just share one graphic with
you and I think this will give you an idea of how we're
trending so far in this effort.
These are first quarter numbers and what you see
72
here, the blackend bar, are actual expenses for the
contract service for the prior quarter of ~90, ~91.
The second bar indicates this yearts budget which
is reduced by $186,000.00 as a result of taking the
service over in-house and the third bar represents our
actual expenses this quarter.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Leo, could you move the
chart a little bit so would, could see what the left hand
axis is in terms of dollars?
MR. OCHSt Is that better?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS~ Good.
So, the total expense was, in t90, ~91 was Just
over 400,000?
MR. OCHS~ That's correct, 409,700--
MR. DORRILL= For the first quarter.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS~ Oh, this is quarterly?
MR. OCHS= The is quarterly. The first quarter,
under the contract service, last year~s first quarter
expenses, $409,730.00. This year~s budget for that same
period, $340,203.00 and our actual expenses against that
budget, $293,961.00 for the first quarter of the year for
labor, parts and sublets and overhead.
MR. DORRILL~ So, wetve saved about 110,000 for the
first quarter?
MR. OCHS~ Yout re 28 percent lower than what it
cost you last year to do this with the contractor.
Your re 14 percent below what we budgeted ourselves for
the first quarter this year. So, the trend looks
encouraging at least through the first 90 days of the
program.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Your inventory of parts
will be similar to what it was under the general
contractor ?
MR. OC~S~ Itt s less. We always suspected, and
that's one of the areas we told the board this past
summer that they had more in their inventory than they
needed. They were buying more product than they were
turning around in an appropriate period of time.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: You dontt anticipate at the
end of the year needing to purchase more parts and --
MR. O~HS~ No, no.
MR. DORRILLI We're buying them straight from the
parts houses. I spent a work day out there recently and
you can get parts around town, like, with within 30
74
minutes if you call one of the major parts houses that's
on our annual bid for car parts and theytll deliver to
your location within 30 minutes.
So, we have kept our investment in parts to
practically nothing. It's like -- what's our parts
inventory running now?
HR. OCHS~ About 30 or $40,000.00--
HR. DORRILL~ The contractor had $200,000.00 worth
of parts that he maintains.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS~ The reason I asked the
question is that we're showing some savings so far and
that sounds like a significant amount of that savings may
very well be that we've reduced the inventory of parts.
So, at the end of the year we may not have quite
the savings that we anticipated. I'll Just have wait and
see how that turns out.
MR. DORRILL ~ I agree.
MR. OCHS~ ! think if you look at the overhead
section you will see that they're up, those expenses are
up and part of that is due, commissioner, to your point.
To start up, we spent some money in upgrading the
facility for a worker's safety perspective and we've also
purchased some d~agnostio equi~ment that we hadntt had in
the past that~s a/lowing us to do more work in-house
which is helping our is sublet costs we made low relative
to the prior year.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Has there been any change in
efficiency and repairs.
MR. OCHS~ Down time, equi~ment availability is
about the same as it was under the prior contractor, so
far. But, again, wet re only ~90 days into it.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ I understand.
MR. OCHS~ That's all I had unless you have any
questions.
The only other point I want to make is the fleet
management area has to do with the fueling system. We
have four, automated, fuel dispensing facilities. The
fifth one is in the 301 budget to be installed out at
Cams Town this year before the fiscal year is out.
Again, we have a fully automated system. We~ve got
into some Joint ventures, bulk rate purchases with the
school boards and the city that has saved about
$20,000.00 in fuel costs and we're about to open a bid
for automotive parts and tires with those same two
76
entities along with the sheriff. So, wet re trying to
take advantage of some economies there.
The only high risk area or area of exposure is in
this contamination and site clean up of contaminated old
fuel sites. As we remove old ones and install new ones a
great deal of detail work that we have to do to make sure
the sites are in good shape and if there's any
contamination we'll have to get those cleaned up.
We~ve spent about $30,000.00 on an assessment out
at the county barn facility last year. We're incurring
higher costs than that at the government center. There
was a detection of some ground water contamination in the
facility. We have out here now, we're working through
Bill's office and George Yilmaze to get those things up
to state code.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Leo, how many employees
have vehicles now that they take home? Do you see any
savings or any potential savings in reducing that number
and requ~ring those people to --
MR. DORRILL~ There really arentt any left. If
you'll remember, last spring we went through this.
Jennifer, usually keeps that list in our office.
MR. O(~S~ I sent a report to the productivity
committee Mr. Canter asked for some follow up a few weeks
ago. One of those things were that are. This past year
the 24 hour take home vehicle list was are reduced by 27
percent. So, you have 13 vehicles that are authorized to
go back and forth.
MR. DORRILL~ Out of how many? How many do we own?
Whatt s the rolling stock?
MR. OCHS~ We have 208 motorpool vehicles. We have
over 400 primary pieces of equipment.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS~ Those 13 are people that
are essentially 24 hour call?
MR. OCHS~ Theytre exclusively public safety.
MR. DORRILL~ They're required to be public safety.
MR. OCHS~ Including animal control also.
MR. DORRILL~ Well, yeah, and first responders in
the event utilities. The think the chief water operator,
the chief sewer operator, but there is no one else. So,
we're down to 13 out of two hundred and how many?
MR. OCHS~ It's 208 motorpool vehicles.
MR. DORRILL~ If you compare that to I think the
sheriff ts number of take-home vehicles are is excess of
78
three hundred.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE~ Yes, that's a different Issue
though. There was some discussion when we were talking
about fleet purchases about policies and procedures for
people who do take their automobile home.
MR. DORRILL~ There is a criteria now.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Has that been established?
MR. DOI~RILL ~ Yes.
MR. OCHS~ The manager has two administrative
policies that he had put together this summer and have
been distributed to his agency. One to do with this area
of utilization and assignment of vehicles. The other has
to do with how we~ re going to manage this 200 plus motor
pool vehicle and the manager's established a minimum
monthly mileage criteria.
Twice a year, our fleet analyst look at all of our
vehicles, see who~s not meeting that requirement and then
they move those vehicles around where needed and those
that arenft needed we put into surplus.
MR. DORRILL~ Rationale being, what's the n~nber of
miles that you have to drive, from the minimum number?
MR. OCHS~ Well, we donft have a minimum number
79
anymore, we have five criteria in the system.
MR. DORRILL~ The point being that if you're not
using vehicles for 500 miles of official business per
month then it's cheaper for us to pay you a car allowance
or to reimburse the employee for driving their own
vehicle for those instances so we've been taking vehicles
away.
In fact, my office was one we had a staff car in
the county manager's office and we didn't drive it enough
to be able to Justify being able to keep it. So, they
took it away from us.
MR. OCHS~ In fact, this fiscal year, again, as a
result of last summer's work we didn't buy any new
vehicles all for motorpool. There was about a dozen
scheduled and what we did look at our utilization, pull
vehicles from other areas that were underutilized, assign
them to those people that have requested new vehicles
that have established a need and basically eliminated
any --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ What of the state's attorney's
office, are they part of this program?
MR. DORRILL~ They' re part of your motorpool
8O
program, they're not under my policies though with
respect to take-home allowances.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Health department also?
MR. OCHSt The health department has about seven
vehicles that the county owns. The state's attorney has
about seven vehicles that the county owns and they have
about seven more that the state has purchased for them
that are primarily undercover type vehicles.
They use, as I understand it, Jennifer and I have
talked about this in the past, they use a portion of the
county's subsidy to their budget to pay for their ongoing
maintenance of most of those vehicles. But, I think,
again, we have some obligation under state statute to
provide for--
MR. DORRILL~ We have one for the public defender
as well.
MR. OCHS~ Yes.
CHAIRMAN VOLP]~ So, are they not being maintained
as part of our fleet maintenance program?
MR. OCHS~ Only those, for example the state's
attorney, he's got seven that are ours that we maintain.
He got another seven or eight we don't maintain those.
81
MR. DORRILL~ Anything we own we maintain.
MR. OCHS ~ Right.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ Does fleet repair
maintenance service program with the sheriff look
promising or is it too early to tell.
MR. OCHS~ It's a little early. We~ve only had two
meetings. We're going to continue to meet. I think
there's a possibility but I~d like to reserve Judgement
right now.
COMMISSIONER SHANA~AN~ There's a lot of vehicles
there.
MR. OCHS~ Yes, sir. Thank you.
MR. DORRI~.L~ We~ll take a short break. Take about
a five minute recess.
(A recess was had and proceedings continued as
follows~)
(At this time, Commissioner Saunders left the board
room and did not return.)
MR. BRUTT~ For the record, Frank Brutt~ Community
Development Services A~inistrator. Our first goal we
have identified in our strategic plan for the coming year
to reorganize the community development division as a
82
result of the management study that we prepared and
presented to you last week.
During the presentation by Mr. Barber who is the
chairperson of the development service steering committee
he made several recommendations and on the handout that I
gave you, on the second and third pages, essentially the
way the study came out originally, if you look at that
first page it has a number 15 on the lower corner, the
management study that was developed and submitted to you
for consideration --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Frank, which one are we talking
about, now, the handout?
MR. BRUTT: Looking at three page memo at the
bottom of that is page 15, on the right hand is page 15
of another report.
In the original study -- in the original study, the
housing and urban improvement department was mentioned as
being self-functional with no further consideration to
it. In the report that Mr. Barber presented to you,
their recommendation is that the housing and urban
improvement actual function or related to social services
and perhaps should be moved to another area of county
8~
government. So, thatts one difference between their
study, meaning the developaent services steering
evaluation and recommendation.
The two departments, growth management and growth
planning in the original management study and also the
comments by Don barber, both of them are indicated to be
merged together.
If you will turn to the next page which is
identified as page 16, interestingly enough, the original
study recommended that the customer service agent
function, those are the people on the counter, the people
doing records functions'~ the issuing of the building
permits and counter functions be combined with project
review functions that John MadaJewski takes care of.
In Mr. Barberts presentation, the recommendation is
the customer services functions as I mentioned Joe Magri
is taking care of right now, would be moved to over to
compliance services to be incorporated that way.
Either way, those operations can operate smoothly.
Whether Joe Magri~s group operates with and under the
compliance services or over with, what is identified here
on this sheet, project review functions with John
84
MadaJ ewski.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE~
projects review?
MR. BRUTT~
Would planning services go under
Well, I haven't gotten to planning
services yet. In both of the presentations, planning
services are indicated as being split. Some of the
planning services staff that you're familiar with at the
county commission meetings will be going to growth
planning and growth management and some staying with
project review, specifically, those working with the site
development plan.
So, in essence, I've got about six variables to
look at relative to the two plans and the best
utilization of the staff positions.
So, obviously a little additional work is going to
be required, some additional guidelines, hearing your
discussions and deliberations from last Wednesday night
they were several comments made relative to utilizing
vacancies that exist at the present time and best
utilization of the staff. So, our work is a little more
complicated than I had indicated originally trying to
accomplish this in 20 days but we are moving ahead with
it.
I will be meeting with Don Barber with the
development steering committee on Wednesday of this week
to start reviewing their input and the reasons that they
suggested certain staff movement.
If you have any questions I~ll be happy to attempt
to answer them.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ The goal is 20 days.
MR. BRUTT~ Twenty days prior to the time that Don
Barber came up with their representations because their
recommen~ations have a few switches that I mentioned, the
major one is the customer service agents. The first
study he said working under John Madajewski~s project
review functions and Don Barber's recommendation is that
the customer service agents be under the direction of the
compliance services. So, we~ve got to look at some lines
and responsibilities and interaction on how that~ll take
place.
Also, the same thing as far as planning services,
the best utilization and the best staff to accomplish the
mission of both the project review when the project is
going through the site development plan into construction
86
and those planning items that are caning to you.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ I asked about twenty days, Frank,
excuse me for interrupting, is because this year in
discussing the process of strategic planning with the
manager, wetve talked about some performance indicators
so that we can measure our successes and you your
performance indicator is that within 20 days so it seems
to me we ought to have, you're suggesting that 20 days
was your original goal but now with some later
developments, what is the period of time we may be
talking realistically.
MR. DORRILL~ My understanding of the motion the
other evening on Wednesday was that Cc~_~issioner
Goodnightts motion was essentially three parts, the one
that related to development services, was to work with
the development service steering com~ittee and monitor
the existing service levels but be prepared to propose
any other reorganization as a part of the budget
presentation later this summer.
that's been modified somewhat.
prepared in advance of that.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~
My understanding is
This was obviously
So, you're saying that this may
not be until June or July of this year?
MR. DORRILL~ Probably June. When are the
tentatively budget workshops with the manager scheduled
for, June? So, I~d have to have my plan ready for June.
Ytall typically take the month of June off.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT ~ July.
MR. DORRILL~ So, Itd have to have these ready to
present to you as soon as you get back from vacation or
recess at the end of July.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ So, are we saying August, Neil?
Is that what we t re saying now?
MR. DORRILL~ I~d have to have my recommendations
ready by the time he suhnits his budget. He su~nits his
budget to me by June so I~d have to know what my plan is
going to be by June.
MR. MCNEES~ Last year the board workshopped
everything before they went on vacation.
MR. DORRILL~ That~ s right.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Last year we worked the
last part of June and then we took off the last week in
June first two weeks in July.
MR. DORRILL: And, did enterprise budgets.
LI.
88
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ Then we went through the
actual public type hearings that we had people oame in
and talked to us.
MR. DORRILL: So, I td need to be ready to go by
June.
CHAIRMAN V0~.PE~ What Itve done, Itve changed
performance indicated then, to complete the
reorganization by June of 1992.
~R. BRUTT: Our second goal is to revise the fees
to reflect operating costs. Interestingly enough, after
we had suhaitted this particular one to you, Pat Neil
called me up and sa~d he would like to meet with me and
bring a couple of the members of the productivity
committee over to the office. We met approximate/y a
week ago on Friday and went through our desires to get
the cost in a close relationship to the actual functional
responsibility and expenditures of the different section
of the fund 113 activities.
We have done some of these for the unif~e~ land
development code. We have another up,ate that wetre
working on right now between staff and the development
steering committee. What we really need to do is get
89
right down to hourly cost of the individuals and how much
it's costing to do our exact functions.
We have tak.en our Q-Plus group, formed a team, that
team is operational, itts one of about six teams that we
have in this division that will operate and that one
specifically is going to be looking at what it costs to
do so each item that we are involved with. Those items
run everything from a person coming to the counter and
saying I desire information that might take 30 minutes.
In the second handout I gave to you, we Just took
some of sheets, the first one's a routing sheets, we
worked with John MadaJewski~s people and in these
particular other sheets we~ve identified activities that
other staff tracking the number of hours, et cetera.
We spent quite of a bit of time with Ea Flynn from
the budget office looking at our overall operations,
overs/1 costs and expenditures and one of the interesting
things is available software on the shelf for doing the
type of cost analysis as we desiring to do. As I
mentioned, we met w~th Art Largent and Pat Neil of the
productivity committee and Pat brought to our information
the software package which he~s using and we're exploring
9O
the use of these on-the-shelf software packages.
Specifically, what we went to do is be able to tell
the developer your project took this amount of time. If
you want to see the printout sheets we have them.
Already, I didntt give you this one particular
sheet, wetve used it in other iljustrations, on our
tracking schedule going through John MadaJewski's shop
this one Just iljustrates when the project came in, how
long it took to go through each one of the reviews, the
number of hour and when it was produced.
The last sheet that I gave you in this packet, if
you look at that, this ties into both our costing factor
and also the third item of our goal and that is having
additional information and education into the develo~aent
community. On that last sheet what we have here is a
weekly site develo~nent plan review and identifies the
project, the engineer, the suklnittal and additional
information that is needed.
We use this as a log to indicate where we need to
strengthen our education with the developer's so that we
can reduce number of resubmitals that are for any
particular project. So, a lumping together the fee
91
schedule relationships in our second goal and the third
one so that we can work with the developers.
John MadaJewski is going out and meeting with the
development com~unity at the present time, saying this is
what we need, this is the format you should provide it in
to do two things speed up the process for us to reduce
your costs and obviously reduce your costs within your
own organization.
We are also doing this, Dave Pettrow has been in
communications with Jackie Williams who I know you know
from Im~okalee, as well as a meeting with developers and
builde£s out there. We have been attending the monthly
meetings of the architectural group the first Wednesday
of every months. The first Tuesday of every month is
what is known as a small builderts organization, that
staff has been going to, to coach them through the
various processes and speeding up their particular work~
reduce their costs and improve more efficiency.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Frank, how does this relate? When
we adopted unified land development regulations I recall
that Dave Pettrow, I think it was Dave, made a
presentation about the fees that are incorporated into
92
the unified land development regulations and we talked
about billable hours and keeping track of the actual time
that was expended by members of the staff on a particular
project. I thought we had addressed that fee structure.
MR. BRUTT: This is a higher level of
sophistication of that particular study that was done.
In some cases we had the hours, in some cases we didn't.
What we want to do now is set up with the budget office
a, you can say, a universal system whereby where every
activity that we are involved in we'll be able to build a
data base through our computer system through MIS.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: How about, performance indicator
here, what time frames are we talking about in terms of
commencement and a completion of this type of a study?
MR. BRUTT~ As I had in Item C, su~nit a revised
fee resolution to the development services and BCC within
30 days of the study completion. The study completion
will he dependent upon several factors available to staff
that we have also the time that the budget staff can work
on. I'm looking for something as fast as possible to
feed this in by June.
HR. DORRILL~ They have done some preliminary work
93
and this is one of the things that we're going to have to
submit to the develo~nent service steering committee to
see if theytre really interested in doing this. We may
have -- have we already shared some of this information
with them?
MR. BRUTTt We shared it with them. We get two
different factors within that group, one Just wants to
have a set fee and the other one says, hey, I think
that"s great, thatts the way we operate on an hourly
basis. But, we have other members of that organizations
that don't like the idea that we are going to actually
come up with a figure and perhaps, I think they're
afraid of as noted on this last page, we get some new
firms coming in and we've got some old ones that take
three, four, five times to give us the information that
we want. They~re a little bit hesitant saying, yes, bill
us on the average cost of that group of individuals
working on that --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~
said of the other.
MR. DORRILL ~
concern is.
What was that, a majority and one
They can't have it both ways.
There is. Let me tell you what my
My concern is on the rework rate that if
94
we're Just going to bill people based on per hour of
review time incurred, you're going to see some very quick
complaints when the development community feel that we've
become so fee driven that we're spending longer than
perhaps than we need to or that we're nitpicking plans in
the event we need to send them back to have them redrawn
and resu~itted.
I would responsibly be more inclined to say that
the initial review would be based on a per hour
incremental charge. You know, more complicated and
larger projects need more review by engineers and
planners but that if, and to the extent that plans need
to be reworked, we might be better served by a lump sum
because if not we'll be accused of the same thing that
private civil engineers are in this town are
intentionally padding their bills or their monthly
invoice to the clients and I don't want us to be subject
to that criticism.
MR. BRUTT~ Prince William County's system that I
was utilizing in another location, they set their, what
we call our pre-application hearing and our final
application hearing they figured out the dollar cost of
95
the review team in the room and when you have paid your
fee, for the project, depending upon the number of acres
or dwelling units, it included two or three meetings
depending upon the complexity.
If the information or lack of information that was
provided to the county in that case required another
meeting, those meetings were billed four and five hundred
dollars each because of the fact that it took mXf number
of persons in that room again and the indication that I
got from those people when I talked to them was that it
was amazing when the word went out you had two meetings
as a part of the basic applications that third meeting
was going to be five hundred dollars, this is about four
years ago, the quality of the information improved a
thousand percent.
They were not using the staff to do their work and
in any organization like ours we have a lot of people
that would love to have the staff do their work for them.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ Frank, back to when we did
the LDC, we agreed to a number of fees, the staff and the
steering co~mittee all agreed on, I dontt know of what
percentage it was of the total, and you implemented those
fees and there were a number that were left open because
there was disagreement on each side and you were going to
get together, settle on a price and come back to us.
Are you telling me now yout re going to redo all of
the fees or Just the ones that were in conflict.
MR. BRUTT~ Wet re going to, the ones that are in
conflict, in fact, therets a second package coming to you
tn the near future, but we have had this request of
actually proving what does it take to do a certain--
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ But, we did implement all
of those increases, if there were increases, after we had
agreed at the LDC meeting.
MR. BRUTT~ Yes, you did adopt --
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ So, therets a sizeable
number of them that are up to speed --
MR. DORRILL~ Have already been increased.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ So, we're still reviewing
the ones that were of a difference of opinion.
MR. DORRILLt Those are the ones, commissioner,
there are more hourly driven as opposed to a lump sum
type of fee. What I said wet re not going to do any of
them until they've been to the steering committee and
97
theytve come back from the steering committee with a
recommendation either pro or con so that you can make a
final decision.
MR. BRUTT~ Therets a management side to the this
study also was for us to go back, gives us the
opportunity to go back and recap the number of hours it's
taking certain persons to do certain types of activities,
are we spending too much time on certain types of
activities, are we asking for too much information, how
can we streamline the process. Until we actually get
good ~ata can't go back and make a determination.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE~ Frank, there isn't any kind of a
manual like they have for an automobile mechanic that
says when I bring my car in there's so many hours that it
would normally take to do this particular type of
service. Is there anything like that you have for
planners?
MR. BRUTT~ Very community requires different
things, differently intensities and different regulations
SO ~
CHAIRMAN VOLPE ~
MR. DORRIL~. ~
So, there is no uniform type.
There is a client's, if you will,
98
checklist because one of the concerns that we get ve~f
early in develo~nent services was that this whole thing
was running up the bills for private developers. So,
there is a checklist of requirements for whatever youire
doing, I don~t care whether it's a set of building plans,
preliminary site develo~nent plan, final subdivision
review, so that a client or an owner will know whatts
expected of his engineer. That why when we get a partial
submittal and we send it back saying this is incomplete,
we want the client to know as well what is required of
his civil engineer or architect in advance.
But, therets no rule of thumb similar to automotive
industry where, you know, a tune-up take you the better
part of one hour and then you charge on a per hour basis.
It's hard to tell because every community in their
subdivision ranks or the building codes they*re requiring
different things.
MR. BRUTT~ The unfortunate thing is and I~ve seen
it so many times, you call up the neighboring communities
and say what do you charge for this, everybody gives you
their information and then you go back to their
ordinances and find out that what we require for
99
something they don"t require. So, this will give us a
much better handle on the activity.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHANt It's extremely important
because as you know we were criticized last time for
increasing these fees to cover loss of business, so to
speak, not necessarily by the operating costs, we're
reflecting the operating costs so every bit of effort and
analysis and study that we put into it. An agreement
that we can come together with is going is going to be
extremely important to the entire community.
CHAIRMAN VO~.PE~ I don~t know where that issue of
the unified land development regulation is going to come
up. Whether itt s going to come up under your d~vision,
Frank, but there are already some areas of concern that
have been identified to all of us and Itm sure to you as
well.
MR. BRUTT~ We are working on the glitch amendment
with the county attorney's office. We have been asking
the develo~xnent community that any time they find a
difficulty, problem, confusion et cetera, to pass the
information on to Dave Pettrow.
MR. DORRILL~ There are two that I~m aware oft in
100
fact, Joe dealt with the one recently on exotics and
Australian Pines. That was the first one that came up
and the other has been mentioned to me through
correspondences, whose responsibility is it to prepare
the final development order and whose machine is it going
.to be done on or whose standard board or plate language
would be used and this type of thing.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ On develop order are you talking
about the PUD document itself?
MR. DORRILL ~ Yes.
CHAIRM~N VOLPE~ So, thatts another issue, is that
ri ght.
MR. DORRILL~ Those are the two that Itm aware of
and there may be some other ones that are coming up
through the steering committee but those are the two.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE= Those are the only two that I~ve
heard of.
MR. BRUTT~ We're looking at a February, some time
in February, March, depending upon the volume and the
speed and turnaround at the county attorneyts office.
MR. DORRILLz Yeah. Keep us moving, Frank.
MR. BRUTTt Basically, on our institute training
101
information, public relations program, as I mentioned,
we' re working with engineers, we' re working with various
consultants, we're holding sessions on the unified land
develo~ent code. Last year, two years ago, we held a
session over at Vo-Tech on our site development program.
We're planning on doing the same thing, bring in
Madajewski to discuss the site development plan. Ken to
do zoning, et ceterav et cetera and turn it into a four
or eight hour workshop for those that are interested in
the community.
So, the program is ongoing and he we are utilizing
staff in their specialties.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Howls that being promoted? How
are you promoting that amongst the users, the customers?
MR. BRUTT= We have sent out memos to the
development community and also John MadaJewski has been
meeting with the larger firms and individuals, hers met
with Wilson-Miller. He~s got other meetings set up. We
call them, we say our staff is available if you woul~
like to identify those parts of the code or the ordinance
that you want some sales help on, we'll send a staff
person right out to your office.
102
CHAIRMAN VOLPE= There might be a better way of
doing that, I~m not sure exactly how. But, in terms of
part of the ongoing educational process and, you know,
the small home builders who are, you know, maybe dontt
have the same access to some of the larger engineering
firms, how do you reach them?
MR. BRUTT~ The small building contractors have
formed their own organizations and as I mention, staff is
meeting with them the first Tuesday of every month. We
have had, I think three now, breakfast meetings with that
group. There's about four of us to meet with the
architects at their monthly meetings is the first
Wednesday of the month and also we have printe~ building
blocks as we call them, which are news releases that go
over to the BIA for incorporation with their weekly
newspaper which is about 26 or 27 hundred circulation in
each issue.
MR. DORRILL~ We have a newsletter that we put out
for small contractors and the name of the newsletter is
called Buildings Blocks and it mentions problem areas or
new codes or ordnances and we share that. We have our
own mailing list but in turn, building blocks becomes
103
part of the weekly-- the contractor's association is
printing their ~wn newspaper that comes out, I guess,
once a week and we have our own section of their
newspaper called building blocks.
dissemination of that information.
MR. DORRILL ~
MR. LORENZ =
So, we get very good
Will that do it, Bill?
For the record, Bill Lorenz,
Environmental Services Administrator. I'd like to cover
for the first topic, and I've got some information for
your handout, which is the adoption of land develo~ent
regulations to protect coastal and inland habitats.
The Growth Management Plan of course has required
us to development a number of land development
regulations to protect our native habitat in the county.
In addition, to look at the coastal zone as a very
specific area in the county to develop a coastal zone
plan and a series of coastal zone land development
regulations.
The first item I'd like to cover-is the coastal
zone plan. Last February, in fact, staff had completed
the coastal zone plan and developed the data and
inventory, analysis in addition to a series of policy,
104
recommended policies and a series of recommendations to
manage the natural resources in the coastal zone.
This plan was taken then to the Environmental
Advisory Council, the EAC, the old EAC, since we have not
yet had anything like the present environmental type of
advisory board, held a number workshops through August,
received a endorsement from the EAC, went to the
planning -- went to the county attorney's office, it
should be for review, it should be on the planning
commission's next meeting to review the recommendations
and they're going to hold a workshop on the coastal
zoning plan.
From the planning commission we will then go to
board of county commissioners. The county attorney's
office has decided that we need to have the evening
public hearings for the coastal zoning plan and from
direction from the board on that particular plan we will
then go into a series of ordinances or amendments to the
Unified Land Develo~ent Code to incorporate the
recommendations into ULDC.
On page one of your fact sheet for the land
development regulations to protect coastal and inland
105
habitats, we have developed these recommendations into
basically four different groups. It's fairly, the plan
itself is fairly lengthy so we'll Just summarized here
the type of topics that wet ll be addressing through the
coastal zone plan.
Group number one, basically, it was developed by
staff to identify and ensure that Collier County will be
consistent with all other applicable government
regulations.
You can see that we have a number of
recommendations that deal with surface and estuarine
water quality, exotic vegetation removal, coastal
construction, public access, water-dependent, water
related uses, dredge and fill activity, some specific
recommendations for the Pelican Bay conservation areas,
that plan passed, and also recommendations with regard to
species protection.
The coastal zone plan you haventt seen yet but you
will see within the next several months is fairly
extensive.
Group number two, recommendations that are in plan
will adopt policies that provide guidance, if you will,
106
internal county sponsored programs and development
activity.
Wetve also identified a number of programs within
the coastal zone plan that we feel are needed to ensure
that we have sufficient data that wet re taking care of
that certain operating results in the coasta/ zone plan.
So, Group Three recommendations deal with that, w~th
those particular topics.
These particular programs that we would have to
find budgetary authority or to go out for grants through
different agencies to implement these series of our
recommendations.
Group four, which is going to be the regulatory
areas is quite extensive on page two of your handout.
You can see that the list there where wet re talking about
adopting regulations which basically weWre blending the
Unified Land Develo~ent Code within the coastal zone.
These particular regulations, right now, the
ULDC has reserved a section for coastal zone management,
these particular areas that you will see in the plan is
reco~endations subject to approval by the board we will
then turn those plan recommendations around and make
107
amendments to the Unified Land Develo~nent Code.
Some of the more specific areas that I think that
in terms of, for your heads-up type of review is we will
be looking at very specific percentages of certain
habitats in a coastal zone so that a development will
have to put in as a preserve.
Right now, the recommendation is that if a
develo~ent were to come in and have a xeric scrub
habitat on site, the recommendation is we preserve 80
percent of that particular habitat. Thatts a very rare
and unique habitat in Collier County and it supports
certain rare species.
MR. DORRILL~ Bill, can you Just show the
co~mission typically where that exists? I know that a
lot of it is still in Immokalee but when you start
talking about having to require that 80 percent of that
type of land be maintained in preserve status.
HR. LORENZ = Well, a lot of this habitat here, the
coastal zone area is on the last page on your handout
where these specific percentages will occur. So, that 80
percent will not be applied, for instance, to the
Immokalee habitats. But, of course your re talking about
108
the coastal zone area coming down basically, seawards to
41.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Bill, how is that being
coordinated with the City of Naples? You've excluded the
City of Naples from the coastal management boundary and
presumably they're required to have a similar element or
sub-element in their growth management plan or they're
comprehensive plan, How are you coordinating with them,
if you are at all?
MR. LORENZ~ Well, we really aren't on this
particular area with regard to the habitat reduction.
We're simply looking at the habitats in Collier County,
what's left in Collier County and have not done any kind
of work within the City of Naples.
The other habitats, the Dune and Strand Habitat or
the Coastal Hammock Habitats typically are found within
the coastal barrier from the beach, backwards through the
Dune system and the recommendations here are 50 percent
preservation to be able to allow for a lot to have a
house, a single structure on it but then to retain as
much of the vegetat£on as possible on that particular
system.
109
That system functions in terms of environmental
values for the public health and safety with regard to
its barrier islands because that dune system, again, is
holding the sand in place and also is an environmental
function with regard to species protection and wildlife
protection.
These recommendations were taken to the SAC
workshop and now we'll be going to the planning
commission with them so weell prepare a workshop with the
planning cc~_~ission and then another time to get a formal
vote.
The plan itself will not be -- the adoption of the
plan itself will not implement the regulations. What
we're trying to do is develop the plan through a public
hearing process to get everybody familiar with what weere
recommending and then whenever it's finally adopted in
the plan, staff will then turn around and propose the
land development regulations themselves.
COMMISSIONER HASSS~ Are you looking directly at
the exotics. We're having nothing but complaints about
them.
MR. LORENZ ~ We do have policies --
110
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ I know you have policies. Are
you going to be adhere to the policies you have right
now? Itm not quite sure I even know what those policies
are right now, 200 feet from somebody complaining and all
that sort of thing is crazy.
HR. LORENZ~ There is a little difference. We have
our policies for exotic removal is simply the existing
recommendation as a development were to come lnw the
exotics would have to be removed. Therets a difference,
maybe Prank could comment on this, as I see it, part of
the 200 foot rule is basically is looking at more of the
nuisance or the public safety aspect as opposed to the
environmental.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Thatts part of the problem with
the ordinance as I understand-it, that we didn't come at
it from the perspective an environmental concern but
rather from a safety and nuisance. Itm not sure what the
status of that lawsuit is but apparently they've filed a
lawsuit.
COMMISSIONER S~ANA~AN~ They have three people have
filed a lawsuit. Also, we are in process of reviewing
the two hundred and taking it down to either a 100 or 50
111
and also maybe some incremental removal and some payment
plan. The biggest problem has been the cost of removal
rather than any of the other items. That's what really
caused the greatest amount of concern. So, that ought to
be coming to us reasonably soon for review.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Who's doing that?
COMMISSIONER SHANANAN: Dick Clark's with the state
attorney's office.
MR. BRUTT: I think the latest draft is up in the
attorney's office.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Well, I haven't seen it.
MR. BRUTT: Dick Clark and the attorney are working
on it.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Bill, my question about the
coastal, county coastal zone management, wasn't only
talking about the habitat but everything you've got here,
is any of this being discussed with representatives of
the City of Naples, not only the species and the
vegetation but Just in terms of the coastal management?
MR. LORENZ: No, it really isn't in terms of the
coastal plan. We focus simply on the Collier County
area. Now, some of the information that we've used for
112
purposes of putting the report together of course came
from the city with regard to certain data such as sea
turtles.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Yeah, but the city is still
Collier County.
MR. LORENZ ~ Yes, but right now, in terms of the
areas that we would control such as preservation
requirements or such as preservation requirements with
regard to land use decisions. These areas will simply be
within the countyts control not with -- we wouldntt be
making those recommen~ations.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Well, like dredge and fill
activities, inlet protection those kinds of issues.
MR. LORENZ: Inlet protection we did discuss that
with representatives of the city and it was decided that
the inlet and Doctor's Pass is maintained by the Army
Corp and therefore we do not make an recommendations with
regard to the City of Naples is terms of their inlet
management.
So, in that sense we~ve taken some isolated cases
and made those decisions but it would still be correct to
say that we have not done any broad overall
recommen~ations.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE ~ Okay.
MR. LORENZ~ That's kind of the focus on the
coastal plan that was established as a priority within
our growth management plan.
The second area, considering your outline, is
Habitat Protection Ordinance and what I would like to try
to show you here is that we are working with EPTAB now
and fashioning a, what wetre calling a Habitat Protection
Ordinance, that will identify the amount of habitat,
native habitat in the county, that will be established
for preserve areas.
The growth management plan currently has, to some
degree, what is called the 25 percent rule which says
that 25 percent of the sites shall be planted with native
vegetation. The problem with that, from our perspective
and from a n~ber of otherts perspective, is that the
habitat would complete destroy native habitat and then
planted with native vegetation to come up with that
particular requirement which would mean native vegetation
could be just along in the median strips. So, thatts
whatts currently being accredited. Of course, that
114
doesn't provide any k~.nd of habitat value from the goals
that was specified in the Growth Management Plan.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Bill, are these the coastal zone
plan and habitat protection ordinance, is this where
we're under some mandate to get them enacted within a
certain period of time and Mr. Beardsley and others, the
audubon?
MR. LORENZ: Yes, that' s correct.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE= So, where are our performance
indicators? When are we going to get this done because
we've been reminded time and again that we are out of
compliance?
MR. LORENZ ~ We are shooting for August of this
year, of '92.
CHAIRMAN vor. PE~ Well, as a part of our strategic
plan, shouldn't we have those indicators?
MR. LORENZ ~ Yes, what I try to do is instead of
putting the indicators with regard to the format I Just
covered the topics there in your outline.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ The idea though is that we're
going to try to measure our performance to see whether
we've got -- where it is that we had hoped to get and
11§
doing it throughout the course of the fiscal year so that
we will be able to measure our performance.
MR. LORENZ~ That's right, and we'll incorporate
those three things timewise.
CHAIRMAN VOLPS~ When?
MR. LORENZ: My understanding is, I don't see Nell
but Jennifer was talking about the action plans were to
come after this particular session.
MS. PIKE~ After to4ay's meeting, after your
discussions and the changes that you might make to this
plan then we're going come forward to you with an action
plan and dates.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Okay. As a part of that
discussion it seems to me that in this instance we need
to be aware of the fact that we are under some direction
from DCA and others that we've got certain things that
supposed to have happened back in September of 1990. So,
you are talking about August of 1992. I don't know if
that's a satisfactory time frame.
MR. LORENZ~ Well, it's a time frame that's simply
a realistic time frame at this particular point.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Do we need to get an extension
I I
116
from anyone? Is someone working on that? Have we talked
with DCA about it?
MR. LORENZ= Yeah, we~ve -- DCA has looked at it
from my understanding from growth management simply as we
continue to make progress for these particular deadlines.
Thatts what they are looking for us to do so is to make
progress.
We do have a series of amendments, proposed
amendments, to the growth management plan itself and
we'll be discussing that with growth management to
determine whether we actually want to do that.
When we put those amendments in place,
unfortunately, our target ~ates right now will occur, way
before, after -- way before, six or nine months before
the amendment even gets to DCA.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ What wetre talking about Neil is
the fact that wetve been challenged by the Florida
Audubon Society and that the performance indicator to me
that after this meeting that therets going to be an
action plan that we develop that will establish certain
time frames within which these --
MR. DORRILLz In either of what I call a recovery
117
schedule or what we're calling an amended schedule if we
feel that we're not going to be able to do so some of the
things.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Well, we already have that
recovery schedule someplace.
MR. DORRILL~ It is, but it needs to incorporated
as part of the -- for the rest of the cceunission, when I
had talked to the chairman last week in my weekly meeting
with him, he wants to see, when we're done going through
this today, he wants to see a finished document printed
with some actual ~ates. By this ~ate we would have done
it this and this date.
When the chairman has asked that as part of a
regular board meeting at mid-year, which would be April
1st, that we give an update and be prepared to give an
up~ate at the end of the year, did we meet our targeted
goals and the indicators that we set for ourselves, if we
didn't, then why. So, we'll report back to the board on
April 1st and at the end of the year in terms our
progress or lack of progress.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ We never got to that point last
year as I recall. We went through the strategic planning
118
and we never really had the opportunity to measure our
performance over the year so if we do it --
MR. DORRILL: So, we'll a printed document, the
results of today's meeting and then we'll have a mid-year
and a year ending report and measurement, a barometer of
how we did, you know.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ I think it's absolutely
essential ·
MR. DORRILL~ Again, that's part of keeping it
manageable this year, only dealing with the most
important things because I think we saw that we did
overwhelm ourselves last year.
MR. LORENZ: With regard to the Habitat Protection
Ordinance, what's in green are those areas in the county
that actually are plated as preserves. Everything in
pink has already plated or existing subdivisions.
When we look at in terms of the urban area, yellow
is agriculture. We would be applying the Habitat
Protection Ordinance basically everything that is Just in
white.
As you can see, there really is not a lot of green
preserved areas that are dedicated as preserves in the
119
urban designated areas.
When we start taking a look at and what EPTAB is
looking at is a ~ivision in the next 20 to 30 years,
without specifying very specific requirements to preserve
certain habitat areas, this whole area here, your re going
to be talking about very fragmented habitats.
On page three of your handout, what we~re trying to
establish is to work with the 25 percent nm~ber. That
has not been recommendation yet from EPTAB. Every ne~
development that would come would be required to place 25
percent of that area in a preserve status. Twenty-five
percent of the area would be identified through the
criteria that the ordinance is recommending so that we
get the highest and best environments/ values for the
9reserve areas.
This would not affect the developer's density
requirements because the density would be based upon the
gross density. So, we would be recommending that the
co~mission fix a certain percentage to be placed in
preserve areas following the rules of the ordinance.
EPTA~ is faced with a couple of issues as to
whether it should be applied simply in the urban area,
II II
120
county wide. EPTAB is also looking at certain threshold
levels, for instance, single-family residence probably
would be exempt, for what acreage would also be exempt
from that preserve requirement. So, this would be
targeting August of this year to bring the ordinance back
the commission.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~
Dontt we already have that within
our PUD~s. Don~t we have a requirement for preservation?
MR. LORENZ= We have 60 percent for open space but
that open space will be credited for a lot of ~fferent
items.
What this particular requirement would do is
basically identify habitat that would be established to
be put in preserved areas and that habitat would then be
put in the preserve area that could be -- the development
could be accredited for open space.
Again, it's not going to be an additional
percentage for open space and the developer could always
look at in terms of getting the density because the
density is calculated upon --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ You're talking about mitigation.
You're talking about some sort of mitigation that by
planting some of the native habitat that you could get
some credit against it?
MR. LORENZ= Right now, we are saying that if you
have a site aha an undeveloped site, we will apply a
certain criteria to that site to find out which habitats
are the highest value on the site. Using the 25 percent
as an example, you would then say that 25 percent of the
site must be set aside as a preserve and it's this 25
percent based upon criteria and ranking that the
ordinance would propose.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ What size properties are you
talking about?
MR. LORENZ ~ EPTAB has not yet come to any kind of
consensus on the *threshold for the acreage.
MR. DORRILL: Do you want to take us on to
stormwater ?
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Just one question before we Get to
that. With the environmentally sensitive lands
acquisition and land management, where does that fit.
suspect, I mean, we've had one presentation earlier in
the year and we may very well have another presentation
later on in the spring.
122
MR. DORRILL: Commissioner Goodnight was at a
recent meeting, shets our representative on the Crew
Trust and the environmentally sensitive lands if you want
to tell us whatt s contemplated and where they're heading.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ It's my understanding that
there was a meeting sometime and I was going to be
invited to this meeting that was held at the conservancy,
were you there at that meeting, at that meeting, Bill.
MR. LORENZ
came up--
HR. DORRILr.
No, I wasn't I wasntt invited. It
They dontt trust us.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ It is my understanding
that they're going to come back some time this spring or
early summer and make a presentation to this board and
ask that this be placed on the ballot.
MR. LORENZ~ EPTAB had discussed it two weeks ago
and in their discussion there was a lot of undercurrent
that this is not the time to come back to the board, even
if it's the board's direction to be able to take a look
at the September 1st ballot.
Since that particular meeting my understanding
however it sounds like there was a little bit more thrust
123
to come to the boards with looking at referendum for the
September -- September, which we would have to come back
to the hoard with a referendum question by July 1st.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN= That's my understanding
also.
CHAIRMAN VO~.PE~ But the question is, who's working
on this? I mean, the program that was originally
presented to the board, there was some question about it
was deficient in certain areas and that was something
that your office had been working on and I understand
that there was more work that was required to be done.
You've not mentioned that in this presentation.
MR. LORENZ: Right, well that' s because EPTAB with
that previously --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Yeah, but that's an advisory
group, right?
HR. LORENZ~ Yes. And, from my perspective, from
the staff perspective, the priority is these particular
regulations because that's a mandated DCA, priority to Get
accomplished. That's not to say the lands acquisition
program is not important because in my mind it is very
important but for this particular year, from a staff
124
priority, I see this as a priority program.
MR. DORRILL~ These are required LDR's of the
growth management plan as opposed to, I guess,
conceptually is giving or indicating the preservation of
environmental lands is a policy or something that was
desired, but we have committed to do certain things here
that we need to finish.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE~ I understand that. I guess I'm
not getting my point across, the fact of the matter is
that we're talking about an acquisition program and a
management program which would be in the form of an
ordinance for Collier County and that's what's going to
be funded through the discussion that will take place or
may take place.
MR. LORENZ: You're adding about two or three
different components together. One is, to take you back,
by 1994 we have to have a 'comprehensive environmental
protection program' that's going to consist of
regulations, land development regulations and also
acquisitions strategies. So, that's the time frame for
that by an early growth management plan is 1994o These
particular regulations what I'm saying are of priority
125
or have been mandated for August 1st of '89, t90, '91.
So, in terms of the priorities, priorities to get
regulations in place. The land acquisition program
aspect that we were working on for the most part has been
developed and a lot of production work, most, 90 percent
of the production work is by EPTAB and that particular
advisory board put together all the material that you
saw, my assistance was basically packaging for executive
summary, to create for the board and present the items.
So, EPTAB is now looking at potentially this --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ So, are they telling you what you
should be doing or are you telling them what they should
be doing?
MR. LORENZ: Well, basically I'm saying that if
they want to get on the agenda with a particular strategy
they' re making those recommendations to the board of
county co~missioners. From the staff perspective, I'm
working with EPTAB to say, this our ordinance, this is
the priority and I'm trying to work them through the
adopting these sets of ordinances by the end of this
summer.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Your priorities may be different
126
than their priorities is what Itm hearing, though, Bill.
MR. LORENZ ~ Possibly so, yes.
CHAIRMAN V0LPE~ Thatts what Itm hearing. Their
priority seem to be different.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Does that mean wet re going to
be pre~ented with two different priorities?
MR. LORENZ= Well, I think thatts true and I guess
thatts working with an advisory board. Once you create
the advisory board, they begin to start taking off into
areas that is within their responsibility regar~Lng the
ordinance in terms of advising the board, and fashioning
and shaping the environmental program.
MR. DORRILL~ That was the case with some of the
LDC aspects. The Staff had developed a recommen~ation
for the land develo~nent code and the planning com~ission
wanted to see, in some instances, a reduced code or
reduced criteria and we may find this time that the
staff's ~raft or~Lnance is ~n d~sagreement with some of
the things that you~ advisory board wants to do. ¥ou~11
see two recommen~ations.
COMMISSIONER SHANANAN~ But, it's safe to say then
that the mandated priorities are being pushed by staff
127
and worked in by staff and secondarily, if EPTAB and CREW
are putting together an acquisition program for
referendum in September they will be putting that
together independently of staff and coming to us with
MR. DORRILL~ Somewhat, although we--
MR. LORENZ~ Not exactly independently.
MR. DORRIL5: We're represented there but in the
since of what we're committed to do in our growth
management plan, the higher priority for some of the
programs that we talked about concerning habitat
development and additional environmental land regulations
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I'll go back to where I started
and that is that you haven't even mentioned it in your
strategic planning. You haven't even mentioned that
aspect of it. So, either we're going to work with them
or we're not going to work with them. Either these are
our priorities or they're not our priorities. Somehow it
seems to me that that's an area that needs to be
identified. You didn't go to the meeting. We've heard
that may be coming to us this spring. Your priorities,
those were falling behind. We've got a recovery schedule
that.
128
we haventt kept. Their emphasis, EPTAB~s emphasis, seems
to be for whatever reasons on the develo~ent of the
acquisition of environmentally sensitive lands and the
land management program.
We talked about transfer of develo~x~ent rights, I
dontt know where any of that is and yet this is our
mission statement. These are our, the communityts, the
~ounty~s, goals, objectives and measurables so, itts
either itWs there or itt s not.
It's an advisory group that is presumably taking
it's direction from the board for whom they work through
our staff. So, somethingts missing here.
MR. LORENZ~ IWm not sure if the terms of direction
if the board was to say staff simply work on this, that's
one option and don~t work with EPTAB at all with the land
acquisition program. I guess where I~m, to some degree,
looking for some of direction from the board.
I feel that from, as I said, in the longer term the
land acquisition program is very important and is a part
of our total process. With regard to this particular
fiscal year in terms of what I am having my staff spend
their time on, it is the coastal barrier plan, the
129
regulations --
MR. DORRIL~.~ And not land acquisition. So, we're
little schizophrenic here. I mean, the Staff is working
on the things that we contracturally committed to do as
part of the Growth Management Plan. There is, if you
will, a competing interest in the acquiring
Environmentally sensitive lands but we're not
participating in that. I think that's fair to say.
We attend meetings when we're invited. Ms.
Goodnight represents us the CREW Trust but that is not a
stated priority Goal for the staff's work program. Now,
if we're wrong this would be a Great time for the board
to develop consensus in the other area and tell us that.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Do they have any input to what
you' re doing?
MR. LORENZ: Oh, yes, yes. We're working and
trying to -- my Goal is to try to make, develop, a
consensus with EPTAB on what the exact shape of this
Habitat Protection Ordinance and amendments we're to look
at. So, when we bring that to you, my Goal, again, is to
bring a consensus, one set of regulations.
With regard to the land acquisition program, I am
130
working with EPTA~, myself, but my staff is, theytre
deaicatea on putting these work products together.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ What happened was is the
CR~W Trust came to the county and asked the county about
putting a special referendum together for the March
ballot and we told them at that time that they needed to
EPTAB, and when EPTAB came back they had a recommendation
of a bunch of land for preservation and thatts when we
said, whoa, whoa.
So, I mean, the board did direct staff to work with
the CR~ Trust on this but when they came back there was
a number of pieces of property that they were talking
about instead of a CREW Trust.
Now, this board has pledged that we were going to
put in ten million dollars as our portion of the CR~f
Trust and this was one of the subjects that I was going
to discuss tomorrow as to how wet re going to come up with
our ten million dollars because Caroline, Carol Browner,
who I guess is the secretary of DER or whatever it is
that shets the secretary of, has said that there will be
no money sent to Collier County through any of the state
agencies until Collier County pledges their part. And,
131
you know, there was seventy thousana dollars that was
given to us by the Panther Preservation and that hasn't
gone in there and when they brought that, when they
presented that, I asked that that be part of the CRE~
Trust money.
We~ve all talked about it but we haven't really
done anything as to come up with our ten million dollars
that this board said was going to be our part the CREW
Trust or for this land that's going to be for a water
shed area for our future water cons~ption.
So, I think that's where Bill's coming from. And,
what happened, as far as I~m concerned, what happened
with him was that the board ~irected home to work with
the CREW Trust and come back with some recommendations
and when they came back with recommen~ations the board
kind of put it on hold.
But, as far as I~m concerned, I think the only
thing that this board has cc~mitted themselves to is the
CREW Trust. Now, if this preservation group wants to
come back and place something on the ballot and along
with that the CREW Trust can be part of it then I don~t
have a problem with that. But, if it fails we still
132
committed ten million dollars for portion of the CREW
Trust,
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ But, isn't it your
understanding that CREW is going to come back with is a
request for a referendum in relationship specifically to
the CREW needs.
understanding.
Not preservation needs. That's my
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ At this time, the CREW,
the CRE~ is not planning on doing anything until this
board gives some direction as to what they're going to do
because this board has pledged ten million dollars for
our portion of that and how are we going to do that?
(At this time, a break was had for the reporter to
change paper.)
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT ~
million dollars, since I didn't have anything to do with
it I had to fight for a position on the CREW Trust. It
was Commission Saunders that did this and there was a
resolution that was approved unanimously by this board
that we would place ten million dollars to buy our
portion of the CREW Trust if Lee County did their's
and Lee County did their's.
You're questioning the ten
133
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ Wasntt it a/so tied to the
one cent sales tax referendum.
COMMISSIONER HASSE = Yes.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: The resolution was not but
that was but thatts how we said we were going to, one of
the funding sources. But, it was not, the resolution,
was not tied to the one cent sales tax.
MR. DORRILL~ I~ll need to check and look at that
resolution. I do recall the resolution. I know that Lee
County pledged a tenth of a mill or something like that,
two-tenths of a mill.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ And, they've come forward
with their ~art of it every year.
CHAIRMAN VOr. PE~ Well, before we move on to the
next subject, Commissioner Goodnight~s refreshed my
recollection, the EPTAB and the CREW land trust came with
a program for land acquisition and land management for
the county, not Just for the CREW Trust properties.
MR. LORENZ ~ That~ s correct.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ To your knowledge, what is EPTAB
working on now? Is it that overall land acquisition
program?
134
MR. LORENZ~ Yes.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ And, is it your understanding that
that's what they're going to bring back to us in the
spring?
MR. LORENZ: Yes, and the reason is because EPTAB,
in looking at the county's total comprehensive program,
sees that that's what fits the overall intent of the
growth management plan. It's Just not CREW lands it's
all these lands that are called natural resource
protection areas.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: And, you're saying we don't need
that 'til 1994 under our growth management plan what we
need to pursue are the ordinances that you've identified
here in terms of the coastal --
MR. DORRILL: We're not changing our direction
because we're going to be in far worse trouble if we
don't finish the ordinances --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, we need EPTAB to help you
implement these ordinances and if EPTAB is devoting a
significant portion of their energies on something which
is not your priority then we need to give some direction
to EPTAB as to where the priorities should be..
135
MR. DORRILL= Thatts correct.
CHAIRMAN V0LPE: Okay. If wetve got com~eting
priorities and they're doing what it is that they want to
do, and being very well intentioned, someone needs to
give them some direction as to where we are looking for
that advisory group to assist us.
MR. DORRILL: I don't think there's subversive
here. I think the land preservation is a little sexier
than worrying with adopting Xeric Scrub Protection
Ordinances but wet re committed to seeing those things
through.
We had a concern the past two years with and the
Audubon's concern has been the same, that we dontt have
the staff resources and we haventt funded the necessary
number of positions but we are plugging away and I think
that youtll see the majority of these things go to public
hearing this summer.
CHAIRMAN VO~.PE= Then either wet re not going to
include it at all or wetre Just -- and leave it at 1994
or wet re going to say, yes, it's a priority as far as the
board's concerned but itt s a priority that falls in
behind the priorities that youtve identified and so these
136
are n=ber one and two priorities and if there is a third
priority, which is some time between 1992 and 1994, if
it's something that they're pursuing, either they've got
our cooperation or they don~t, so, I don~t knoww I guess
what I~m asking, should we add it to your strategic plan
or our strategic plan?
MR. DORRILL~ It's your strategic plan and that's
what I said, if you think the consensus of the board is
that it needs to be added but it needs to be done with
some relative priority here as to what we think is
important.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Yeah, but there's a cost to
all of this, that's the problem.
MR. DORRILL~ Most definitely.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: All I want is a conscientious
decision made either we~re going to add it to our
strategic plan or we're not. And, if we're not going to
add it, that's fine and wet ll pursue what we are under
challenge to complete by a certain period of time, wet re
talking about a strategic plan for this year.
If it isn't one of our priorities this year because
we~ve got -- we need to get our arms around certain of
137
these things because this is too much for us to try
undertake and we Just leave it out. Either put it in or
put it out.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: I look at it like this, if
we're supposedly have given a million dollar pledge, a
ten million dollar pledge, I sure than heck don't want to
go ahead with anymore than that. Not now, my God, I
don't know where we're going to get that from. It's as
Nobody wants to answer a question like
simple as that.
that.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ From ad valorem, a
referendum for ad valorem monies to support that
acquisition.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~
That's still ad valorem.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ Oh, absolutely, but you
know, the very fact that the preservation of land is
working actively to come to us with a presentation in the
spring, we certainly have to, I think we're obligated to
at least until now in what we're doing.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Are they bringing money with
them?
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ No, they' re not bring money
138
with them, theytre bringing certainly the request for
referendum.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ I think wet re saying simply,
they're working for us. If it's not here then they ought
not to pursue that--
COMMISSIONER HASSE ~ Absolutely.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ -- and they should begin to d~rect
all of their energies here.
HR. LORENZ: Remember the board did give EPTAB the
direction in November to continue working on the program
with a possible election referendum for September.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ All I*m saying is if we*re
committed to, by resolution, to support acquisition of
lands then certainly we ought to be working on it
concurrently with EPTAB and preservation whatever they
call themselves. If not, I agree with Hike, as far as
Itm concerned I~d like take it in October but I think
we're too far along, we*re too c~itted at this point in
time to do that
If the board has to make that as conscious decision
that we're not going to do it until we're mandated in
1994. That's not going to make CR~W happy or make
139
anybody else happy but we may well have to do that.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Do you see any other way out
of it?
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN ~ No.
MR. DORRILL: I think it's safe to say at the
moment that they're not working against us but we're not
working in concept with them because our sense of
priority is different from some of the preservation
groups.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Well~ I think maybe what I heard
then, I'm supportive then of identifying the authorities
that have been established by our staff and not picking
up on the priorities that apparently exist for EPTAB.
HR. DORRILL: That's not to say that someone else
may not want to bring those to you. It may either he the
CREW Trust or it could be the Rookery Bay, it could be
the state preserve at Rookery Bay but they're going to be
coming to you externally as opposed to be being developed
as part of our programs.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I guess we need to look at that
resolution. If we somehow, by resolution, committed to
funding some portion of the acquisition of the CREW --
140
~R. DORRILL~ I made that note and specifically if
there was an alternate source of funding outside of what
was our sales tax referendum last yeart whether you can
imply it directly or indirectly. That's the one note I
made for myself.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ Noww when it was passed in
February, January, or February because the first meeting
was held seemed like in March and that was before we
listened to full discussion of the sales tax. When we
discussed the sales tax we said that that would be one
way that we could fund it.
One of the things that I thought would be a way
funding it is because remember now, this is not necessary
a preservation area. This is going to be a future water
shed area and with the possibility of adding 25 or $0
cent to the water users of the county on a monthly basis
to help fund for our part of that because this is going
to be where the water is going to come from ~n the
future and that was the whole reason why it was done in
Lee and Collier County and it was set up.
Right now, we're not even going to be able to get
any money from South Florida Water Management because all
141
state funding has halted on it altogether. Even though a
majority of the monies from South Florida Water
Management comes from Collier County.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ I don't understand, we're not
going to be. able to get any money for what?
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT= To help buy anymore
land in Collier County until Collier County has pledged.
Now, another alternative that I see that we can do
is we can go to the Big Cypress Basin Board and tell them
that since they're managing our water supply for Collier
County, ask them to add it to their millage and pay for
it like that and ask them if they would take
responsibility of it since they are the ones that are
having the permitting agencies for all of the water.
I mean, I think that that would be a good way for
us to continue to support the thing but still, you know,
have it that Collier County's paying the share. But,
until Collier County is committed there's not going to be
any land bought in Collier County and that's what Browner
said.
As far as I'm concerned I'd rather see us do the
CRE~ as one of our goals this year as to finding the way
142
to fund it instead of taking on the rest because as far
as I'm concerned that's the only thing that we have said
that this is something that's important to our water shed
area and not a preservation area Just strictly water shed
area.
Do I have discuss this tomorrow now since I have it
in my notes to discuss it tomorrow?
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ I don't know if it's a good
idea to discuss it tomorrow.
CHAIRMAN VOLPR~ Well, I think if we have a
consensus, the consensus is that as far as the land
acquisition and land management program that we're
comfortable with the 1994 date, that we've got other
priorities which you've identified.
The issue about the CREW land trust and what
commitments were made and the context in which those
co~mitments have been made, we need some more information
from the manager in terms of what the commitment is.
Mrs. Goodnight says there isn't going to be anymore
land acquired for the CREW land trust within Collier
County until apparently we come up with some sort of
identifiable funding mechanism. Yet, I do recall Just
143
recently, it was reported back to us, that some lands
were recently acquired within Collier County as a part of
the CREW land trust within the last month.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ Well, that has been in the
workings. Alico is the one that gave that to the board
on the part of the county. It was part of the
Lee/Collier deal that they put together and South Florida
Water Management paid for that.
Then, after that is when they went to that Carl
Lenz and that's when Browner said that there will be no
more money for the state including South Florida Water
Management until Collier County had made their
commitment.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Maybe I could suggest with the
CREW lands, then, you seem to have some thought as to
different funding mechanisms that we might consider or
maybe that's something that should come during our budget
hearing. I mean, we're going to start our budgeting
process in March.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: I guess what I'd like to
see is that we direct staff to come back with some
alternatives and then give us the alternatives and then
144
we can proceed from there.
And, then in the meantime, if this preservation
group wants to come in and convinces the board to place
it on the ballot then we can be sure that the CRE~ has
its ten million dollars in there. Until then, I think
that we need to move forward as far as what weT re
obligated to do.
COM~IISSIONER SHANAHAN~ Frankly, I think somebody
ought to tell the preservation group that t94 is mandated
and it's not certainly timely for them to think that
theytre going to get a referendum and a tax ad valorem
here at this particular time. It's impossible. They
might as well forget.
If anyone wants to come in and make a presentation
relative to co~mitment to CREW, that's a different story.
Nobody~s interested in preservation of ad valorem at this
point in time when you've got a ~94 mandate. It's
ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense at all.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ But, then to take the
other half and debate you on that subject, of all of the
ad valorem taxes that has passed on the ballot the one
that has passed in every county has been land
145
preservation.
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ I understand that.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT.' That has been in the last
two years. Their argument to you is going to be, you
know, give us the opportunity to show you because it is
something --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ And, my argument to them
is going to be unless they've got a plan.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: I'm not arguing that point
at all but I'm just saying they're going to say that they
believe that the will of the people of Florida is to
pay for land preservation.
So, I mean, I think that we've got to say that, you
know, that we're willing to place it on the ballot but
we're going to have to have a plan and everything as to
what they're going to do and if that takes place then the
ten million dollars for the CREW should--
COMMISSIONER SHANAHAN~ That's what makes a good
debate, they telling me that it passed in another county
doesn't mean one thing. Timing is everything, when it
happened in other counties, et cetera. That's not now,
that's not today and that's not next September.
146
They don't have a chance in my opinion, in this
community to pass a land preservation acquisition program
and that just happens to be my feeling. With the CRE~
Trust, possibly, possibly, two-tenths of a mill or
something like that's a possibility but even that might
not make it. So, that's Just my opinion and that's how I
feel about it.
On that happy note, I got to go.
(At this time, Commissioner Shanahan leaves the
board room and proceedings continued as follows~)
MR. DORRILL~ I was Just going to ask you, it's
noon, we're a little more than halfway in terms of the
number of divisions. Bill's a little more long winded
than some of the others.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE~ He's had a lot of
interruptions too,
MR. DORRILL~ Not knowing how far y'all want to go
you can either break for lunch and come back and then we
can complete Bill. Bill wants to talk about storm water
and utilities funding and solid waste and then the other
four divisions that you have are emergency service,
public services, utilities, transportation and the
147
Courts.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ They're basically shorter
presentations or as you said about Bill, I wouldntt
repeat it, in any case, cases perhaps we have a couple
other divisions could move through in a hurry then they
can go back to work. That's a horrible thought isn't it?
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I thought we'd try to be finished
by 3:00 o'clock at the latest which is really what I'd
hoped to able to do. If we take an hour for lunch, we
won't be finished by then.
Ideally, I'd like to try to finish today rather
than trying to reschedule because I think that we can get
through all this.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Let's go. I ate two donuts
anyway ·
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Mrs. Goodnight, is that all right
with you.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Well, my only meal during
the day is lunch.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Eat another donut, Ann.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, why don't we let Bill finish
his presentations and take a half an hour and then we'll
148
come back, whatever time, half an hour from whatever time
you finish, Bill. Just come back and we'll try to finish
up this afternoon, by 3:00 o'clock at the latest. Mike,
did you want to say something?
MR. MCNEES: No.
MR. DORRILL: With that, for those of your y'all
can go ahead and hit it, go hack to your office, check
your messages, grab something to eat. We should be back
here ready to go by quarter of one.
(At this time, the remaining division
representatives left the board room to return at
12:45 p.m.
MR. DORRILL: Go ahead, Bill, we'll talk about
stormwater ·
MR. LORENZ.- Stormwater. I can make these brief
because basically you're going to be hearing Just a
little bit of headsup for you for the 20th of February
we'll be bringing to you the consultant's final report
for the rate study and also a resolution to allow us to
have the window open so that we can have the stormwater
utility charge for the next fiscal year.
What I would like to present to you here, you
149
should have a page that says establish a stormwater
utility rate schedule.
I think we want to recognize that Collier County
stormwater program has been relying upon stormwater
utility and its planning for the past two or three years
and we have, in the past six years, basically have
millage rate your fund 110 has been reduced 46 percent.
The expenditures for the bulk of the water management
department has been increased from one million dollars to
1.2 million dollars over those six years.
We basically have been living on borrowed money and
the infusion of capitol in t84, ~85 that we have been
using and drawing down for all these years and wetre
really looking at the stormwater utility or some funding
source to set our program up for the next year.
If we dontt pass the stormwater utility then the
board is going to have to decide as to whether you want
to continue ad valorem and if you continue with ad
valorem to recognize that we may be looking at some
increase in millage rates from the past year to continue
to fund the stormwater program with regard to the
existing service levels.
So, that was basically, I was kind of raising my
hand here alerting the board that we are bumping up to
this particular kind of decision.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Are we required under our Growth
Management Plan to have a stormwater utility in place.
MR. LORENZ: Yes, it's a requirement of the growth
management plan. It's an amendable requirement.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ What's the City of Naples done?
MR. DORRILL: They at one point were about equal to
where we are. They've tabled any fur.ther discussion of
stormwater for the year. They don't have any current
stormwater projects that they're pursuing at all is my
understanding.
LORENZ:
it.
MR. DORRILL:
Right, they've basically Just tabled
That was part of the transition
problems and having new administration but they have
nothing that they intend to do this year at all.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Then, as a part of that discussion
their concerns as I recall had to do kith the amount that
they were paying to their consultants for this program,
for the rate studies.
II
IL
MR. LORENZ: There was some discussion, I know
that it was brought up.
CHAIRMAN VOLP~.~ We now have, like a phase one,
phase two, phase three and four for our rate study. Are
we through phase two yet?
MR. LORENZ: We are basically ~rough phase two.
On the 25th you will see phase two. On page four of the
handout, on stormwater utility, what we have asked the
consultants to do is to put together for the board's
consideration are five different scenarios that he has
based his rate recommen~ations on.
Scenario one, basically being the existing level of
service with some startup dollars for a stormwater
utility. Scenario five, is the scenario that the master
plan recommends that you adopted bac~in August of t90.
The rates that, wet re still checking the final
numbers but youtll be seeing the rates, the rates
basically are in the range for the urban area of $2.47 up
to three dollars and I think itt s tw~ty-six cents, in
the urban area.
We expect that if you go to the~next phase which is
the finalization of the rates, we~ve tried to be somewhat
152
conservative in that range. We figure the number wtll be
probably closer to two dollars and a*~alf which would be
the worst case rate for the various benefit units that
you have established for the purposes of these special
assessment districts for stormwater utility. So, that's
the range that you' re looking at with regard to
stormwater utility rates.
That next phase would be authorization for staff to
come up with the final detail rates, coming up with a
master account file, to then start to send the notices
out to the public for purposes of public hearing and for
next year's billing if you so desire to move forth with
stormwater utility.
MR. DORRILL: If not, then wha~ if anything,
you'll want to do as an alternative, now? Ms. Goodnight
might be able to help me here. There~s a northern
Florida county that is being sued and challenged over a
non-ad valorem county wide assessment. I want to say
it' s Calhoun County or Washington or%'.Ocaloosa, something
like that. There's some pending litigation about this
type of funding mechanism that would,prevent a county
commission from using a county-wide assessment type
153
method and that's essentially what a stormwater utility
is.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~
I think it's Madison.
MR. DORRILL~ I'm not sure. But, there is some
pending litigation and I think this is going to have a
factor of what we've determined that we're going to do.
Then, this gets back to my original comment
concerning the MSTBU's was as an alternative, we may
adopt or even in some instances require referendm~s that
would create MSTBU's and what we'll say to the public is,
you know, if you live in East Naples and you're part of
that district six drainage basin problem, we're going to
give you an opportunity to create a taxing district and
then through a taxing district or a special assessment,
we'll fix your drainage but otherwise we're not going to
spend and we don't have county wide ad valorem dollars to
spend to build the district six drainage system or in
North Naples, the Cocahatchee system or way off the east
trail, the Henderson Creek system.
That's sort of my fall-back plan in the event that
we don't move forward or the litigation blocks us from
moving forward with the stormwater utility system.
154
CHAIRMAN VOLPE= That's the Lee County approached
isn't it? That's the way that I think that Lee County
has handled it.
MR. DORRILL= They waffled around. Then, they went
to a district system and the first one that came up was
in Bonita Springs and then they had 300 people come to a
public hearing and say, no, we don't want our taxes
raised to fix our drainage. We want county wide taxes to
pay. I don't know what the Lee County Commission is
doing at this moment.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Right now, everything's
tabled.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ It would seem better to me you
know, if we see what Lee County does or has done and not
do it.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT:
Evidently, they were doing
something like $7.00 or $8.00 a month for their drainage.
MR. DORRILL~ Yeah, and that was the first district
they had.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~
This included agricultural
land and everything and agricultural land was Just, you
know, was not causing a problem.
Then there were some large public hearings on the
thing and there was so much opposition to the thing that
they went to this district thing and now it looks like
that the district thing has gotten so much opposition
that --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Well, the fact that it's been
tabled in the City of Naples and the fact that it's been
tabled in our neighbors to the north would suggest to me
that we've got a reasonably homogeneous group of people
and I think we're going to hear the same kinds of
conce ms.
MR. DORRILL.. We' re headed the same way and what
it's going to come down to is well, if it floods in
Naples Park you shouldn't assume that the county general
fund is going to come fix your draining problem in Naples
Park. Or, if you live in what I call Old Lely and until
we improve the Lely Canal you shouldn't assume that the
county general fund is going to come and improve the Lely
Canal.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT.. If you will recall when
Naples Park had the drainage problems a couple of years
ago, we had the stormwater thing on the table and we were
156
discussing it and they said that until the county came up
with an overall plan that they didn't want to go in there
and fund just that area until they saw what --
HR. DORRILL~ Well, we did have a referendum as I
recall and the referendum to create -- no, we didn't have
referendum, we had a public hearing and the people turned
and said overwhelmingly we don't want a special taxing
district in Naples Park. We want to wait and see what
the plan is for a stormwater utility.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE= In the meantime they had funded
though the engineering portion of that.
MR. DORRILL: But, that's all but we haven't done
any permitting or any final design plans. We did a
design report for what it would take --
MR. LORENZ ~ we' re going into final design now.
That was the authorization of the board was put
everything together and hold up until final instructions.
HR. DORRILL.- Did we use district funds to do that?
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ I think that was a special
taxing district.
fund.
HR. LORENZ .' I think we used the water management
157
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT= The ones who did, they
paid for it through a special taxing ~hing for that fund.
It was like 70 or 80 something thousand dollars.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Neil, I think that MSTU is in
place for the drainage within Naples Park.
MR. DORRILL.' It is. I couldn't remember whether
we used a combination of their money or what.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: It was only for the
engineering work and they came back and we said how much
it was going to cost and that's when they all got
outraged over it.
MR. DORRILL = They freaked out.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ They said let's wait until
this stormwater master plan is done and see what the
plans are for that and then we'll decide whether or not
we want to go forward with that.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE:
recollection as well.
it a different way.
Well, the point is that, that's m~
Obviously, Willoughby Acres took
I think we're headed in the same direction as the
City of Naples and Lee County and we've had discussions
on that. We've got like $400,000.00 committed to these
158
consultants and I think we need to take a look at where
we are with them.
MR. DORRILL~ Bill says you'll have the opportunity
to do that in two weeks?
MR. LORENZ: The 25th.
MR. DORRILL~ I think thatws where we're headed.
Things are going to come to a screeching halt~ what wetre
going to say is if you live in a part of the community
that has a drainage problem, a demonstrated problem and
youtre willing to pay to have it fixed, fine but the
county cc~mission is not going to use its county wide
funds because there arentt any.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ And, the other part of that is the
last we discussed that at board level I remember we were
talking a dollar a month. That's what they're paying in
Sanibel or thatWs what they're paying in Cape Coral.
MR. DORRILL: Tallahassee.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Whatever. Now, you're talking
about $2.50 on average. People are still suffering rate
shock from water and sewer and I~m not sure they're going
to be able to separate this. This is an additional
$28.00 or more a year. It's going to be a problem.
159
HR. DORRILL~ That's why we've been developing our
fall-back plan. It's going to have to come to you on a
petition type basis from these areas that have drainage
problems.
MR. LORENZ = The other aspect of it is next year's
budget, just to look at how we're going to funding
existing current level of service funding on ad valorem.
MR. DORRILL~ Bill, why don't you touch on the
solid waste thing again. That's something where you've
got your report.
MR. LORENZ: These items are really action plans
that come as a result of these reports. This basically
is to let you know that the Materials Recycling
Reclamation Facility or MRF, will be coming to you on
next Tuesday, not tomorrow, and it will be providing you
information for how much it's going to cost to do a MRF
versus curbside programs to meet our recycling
requirements.
Also some sense of recommendation of the type of
MRF and I won't go into any detail but we'll be
discussing terminology such as a Dirty MRF, Clean MRF and
you will be seeing the cost analysis for these items.
160
I think the thing that you need to be aware of is
that in any of this analysis you've got certain
uncertainties, you've got technological uncertainties,
you've forecasting market uncertainties in terms of
revenues, also, the biggest problem right now is the
legislative uncertainty. Basically, if the legislature
modifies the formula for recycling we basically can meet
our recycling requirement.
MR. DORRILL: There is a bill to do that that's
being contemplated on the house side. I don't know if
there's a companion bill on the Senate.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: They have not done
anything. It's not been discussed or anything.
MR. DORRILL: There is a bill that's Just sitting
in somebody's committee. There's no comparable bill and
what we're saying is there's no imminent change that's
expected concerning solid waste.
COMMISSIONER BASSE: What is this fellow Corkran
suing about?
MR. DORRILL: That's a different issue.
Concurrency issues as opposed to solid waste. What Bill
is saying is that your current residential curbside
151
recycling program can not meet the state mandated
recycling goals. A MRF type facility can but a MRF is a
high risk alternative for which we don't have a better
alternative at the moment. Nobody's going to pursue in
their right mind, an incinerator.
A landfill only type analysis will not again give
you the result required recycling percentages. So,
you're going to have to sort this stuff somewhere and try
and find markets where none exist.
MR. LORENZ: Right now, we've got ten years of --
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: How long do we have before
we have to meet that mandate?
MR. DORRILL: When's it due?
MR. LORENZ: Oh, sorry, '94.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT:
It's my understanding that
Polk County is in the process now of permitting a Dirty
MRF operation.
MR. LORENZ: I~m not sure what kind but I now it
was some kind of MRF.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: And, it's supposed to come
some time this spring. Why don't we see what happens
with them before make some decision. We've got until '94
162
why don't we give it a little more time?
MR. LORENZ.. The consultant has said we would not
be to able to make the '94 deadline in terms of the lead
time to put it in place. But of course, I wouldn't be so
worried about that because once you're putting it in
place I think that's--
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT.- That's how Polk County got
the deferment with the DER or IkNR or something?
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.. That's what we talked about doing
and applying for an exemption, right?
MR. LORENZ.. Now, I'm not sure about how they did
that either because if you look in the little scheme that
I showed you, both the alternatives of the Clean MRF or a
Dirty MRF basically your land clearing and yard waste is
not going to go through the MRF anyway. So, I know we
had that discussion but --
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Yeah, and on the plane to
Panama City I talked to their chair about the thing and I
was told that that was the reason why that they got the
extension was because they've got this MRF operation and
it was fixing to come into operation in the spring and
that's the reason, that's how they got the deferment on
163
the thing.
So, we talked great length about the thing and, you
know, but that was my question too, but he couldn't
answer the question.
MR. DORRILL~ Nobody knows yet.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ I wasn't going to pressure
him on it.
MR. LORENZ = As Neil pointed out, one of the items
is that we are recommending that we continue with the
landfill based strategy for solid waste disposal in
Collier County.
The map that's attached in your package is showing
that we have been acquiring land to the north of the
landfill according to the board's directions we received
back in August of '90.
The consultant's report has basically steered us in
this direction because the consultant is looking at
there's a lot of problems with that 300 acres to the west
of the existing landfill site and the cost of acquiring
land right now to the north of the landfill site is
around $4500.00 an acre at most and the last offer we had
received to the west of with us was around $2300.00 an
164
acre.
so, it looks -- we've been moving in this
direction.
MR. DORRILL~ We've been buying land north of the
existing landfill cheap at almost a fifth of the cost of
what the land next door to us to the west is available to
be purchased. So, we've been buying land where we could
negotiate an inexpensive sale.
You'll see that we're in the process of having
contract talks with majority of the land owners but this
is to buy long-term landfill capacity where we can.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: What's in that Maloney
property?
MR. DORRILL: What's in it?
COMMISSIONER HASSE: What's on it.
MR. DORRILL: There's nothing on any of these.
It's all undeveloped property. There are some houses
further to the north there. That's the first house,
that's at the tail end-- what's the name of that road
there. It's the road that runs north and south.
MR. LORENZ: I don't know.
MR. DORRILL: We're not buying any land that's --
165
COMMISSIONER HASSE:
here cross-hatched.
No, I mean, you've got this
MR. LORENZ: The cross-hatching means that we've
got verbal agreements from property owners that they're
willing sell. The open area with the bow around it is
the lands that Collier County owns.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Why are these white when you
say it's county owned?
MR. LORENZ: We have acquired that property,
MR. DORRILL: We've already bought that.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Why are the names on them?
MR. LORENZ: That's Just a part that's outlined in
the bold.
MR. DORRILL: This is the piece that we already
owned. This is the piece that we're not having any
success with at the moment.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Oh, I see.
It's the same
color.
MR. DORRILL: Right, and I think that we've
determined the one that says Saunders is no relation.
COMMISSIONER HASSE:
couldn't we?
If it is we can dump on it,
166
MR. DORRILL: Not yet, we don't have a permit.
MR. LORENZ ~ So, our master plan said that we were
going to have by 1992 create a committee, another
advisory committee investigate alternative technology,
waste to energy technology incineration. The staff would
recommend that we don't do that and if that's the
consensus by the board then--
MR. DORRILL~ If for no other reason, then, Lee
County's stands to loose, I'm talking about physically
loose, 70 million dollars worth of cost and interest and
penalties in terms of their resource recovery facilities.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: As a matter of fact, I
think the it would probably be in Collier's best interest
if we passed a resolution saying that there was going to
be a moratorium on any type of burning plant in Collier
County in the next five years so we don't have any bio
waste or medical waste or tire burning or soil burning
plant to come in here on some industrial property until
they find out exactly what's going to happen with the
environment.
COMMISSIONER HASSE ~
MR. DORRILL =
I thought we had that.
No, we don't. If you read and follow
167
the news, there's a state wide moratorium at the moment
while they look at air quality issues.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: The state wide moratorium
does not include soil burning, hazardous soil burning
plant or tire burning plant and both of them can come in
on our industrial lands and open up.
As far as I'm concerned, in the soil burning alone
there's a chemist that tests the soil that from the time
that that truck leaves the site until it gets to the site
where it's burned there's no telling what's placed in it.
There's nothing on the site of the plant where it's at
actually burned.
MR. DORRILL: There's one in Glades County where
it's physically under construction.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: And, it's supposed to open
up some time this week and Glades County Commissioners
were not even informed that it was taking place because
it zoned industrial property.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ We wouldn't have pass on that?
MR. DORRILL: It's a permitted use.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: No, because it's an
industrial zoned property and it's a permitted use.
168
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ Oh, boy.
MR. DORRILL~ I think that Ann's making a point
that maybe we ought to consider. The other thing that
tickles me is that most of the community's not aware that
there is a bio-medical waste incinerator that's downtown
as part of the hospital.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE: It's all in the newspaper this
morning. I go by Johnson's Funeral Home there and I --
MR. DORRILL: It's been there for several years.
MR. LORENZ: We've got our animal waste incinerator
too.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: My problem is not burning
Collier County's waste. My problem is burning waste from
the southeast region of the United States and that's
what's being discussed at the plant.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.. Why don't we pursue that. That's
a good suggestion and maybe we can bring that up.
MR. LORENZ= I've got it down.
MR. DORRILL: Do y'all want to break for a little
lunch?
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ While, I'm thinking, Jennifer, you
had said something, you have a new committee organization
169
having to do with our franchises?
MS. PIKE: Yes.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE: Cable vision and with waste
management, I guess, were there any others?
MS. PIKE~ No.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.. Is that something we might
consider as one of our goals with respect to -- we get an
awful lot of discussion about these regulated industries,
cablevision being one of them. I'm not sure where we
intend to go with that, Jennifer, I mean, what --
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: The rate bill passed the
Congress and I guess it's being placed on the President's
desk to be signed.
MR. DORRILL: I didn't know it had got through the
Senate.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: I'm sorry, passed in the
Senate.
MR. DORRILL= Yeah, the Senate. It's not in the
house and he's threatened to veto it is my understanding.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Just two seconds, Jennifer, that
group or that committee, what is it that you are hoping
to do with those two franchises?
170
MS. PIKE: We're going to be begin on the citizens
committee. The subscribers are receiving the service
that we want to receive or that they want, desire. The
committee is just now in the organization stage and
that's our first goal. From there we don't have any
established goal.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Nell, that's obviously something
that's of concern to any number people within our
community. I'm talking about some standards for the
cablevision industry. I don't know whether there's any
thought about it. Is that too narrow of a focus do you
think?
MR. DORRILL:
priority of the greater Naples Civic Association because
Brad Estes came and talked to me about it and this is
their stated number one goal is to try and develop their
own analysis of what's wrong with cable television
regulations, what we can and can't do and that's why we
put together this sort of ad hoc committee.
It hasn't been formalized by our board. It's not
officially board recognized. That might be a first step
if y'all were interest in doing that because right now
Well, I know that it's the number one
171
they're just sort of ad hoc status trying to give my
office some indication as to what the public's concerns
are.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Well, we're talking about these
franchises that operate within the county whenever we
talk about the cable television there's cry out there and
people are looking to their local government to provide
some sort of --
MR. DORRILL: If y'all are interested maybe y'all
ought to bring it up under board communications instead
of an upcoming board meeting and we'll tell you what
we've got contem-- we haven't really done anything with
them yet.
We'll tell you what we have contemplated.
Jennifer's responsible for that in our office and we'll
let you know what we do.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Okay.
MR. DORRILL~ See you back here in about 20
minutes?
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Yes.
(A break was had from 12530 until 1~00 p.m.,and
proceedings continued as follows in Volume II.)
172
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 171,
inclusive, is a true record of my Stenograph notes taken at
said proceedings.
Dated this 2nd day of March, 1992.
ORIGINAL
COLLIER COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
STRATEGIC PLANNING WORKSHOP
(VOLUME II, Pages 173 - 310)
February 10, 1992
1:00 p.m.
Building H, Room 216
Collier County Government Complex
Naples, Florida 33962
Reported by:
Christina J. Reynoldson, RPR
Deputy Official Court Reporter
Notary Public
State of Florida at Large
TELE:
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS
Carrothers Reporting Service, Inc.
20th Judicial Circuit - Collier County
3301 East Tamiami Trail
Naples, Florida 33962
(813) 732-2700
FAX: (813) 774-6022
- APPEARANCES -
BOARD MEMBERS:
P. Anne Goodnight - County Commissioner
Max A. Hasse - County Commissioner
Michael J. Volpe - Chairman
George Archibald - Transportation Administrator
Mike Arnold - Utilities Administrator
Peter Bolton - Emergency Services
Paul Brigham - Court Administrator
Nell Dorrill - County Manager
Bill Griffin - Emergency Services Administrative Manager
Mike McNees - Budget Director
Tom Olliff - Public Services Administrator
Jennifer Pike - Administrative Assistant to County Manager
ALSO PRESENT:
John Norris
- INDEX -
Emergency Services ....... · · · · · · 175
Public Services .... · · · · · · · · · · 214
Utilities .......... · · · · · · · 239
Transportation ......... · · · · · . 275
Judiciary ....... · · · · · · · · · . 294
General Discussion ............. 306
174
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
175
PROCEEDINGS
MR. DORRILL ~
Emergency Services.
two-week Air Force Reserve requirement.
for that.
Peter is here today and Peter is going to talk
about the first two items and I thought that I would talk
about the third.
COMMISSIONER HASSE ~ Emergency Services?
MR. DORRILL: Yes. We're at the Emergency Services
Division.
So with that, Peter, I'll let you take over.
MR. BOLTON: First item we have is the I~okalee
health care program and I'm going to let Bill Griffin
deal with this. He has been with this program since its
inception, and you do have a handout on that.
MR. DORRILL~ This is our aspect of the program
that includes Naples Community Hospital where we're
operating the emergency room in conjunction with Naples
Community Hospital.
MR. GRIFFIN: For the record, I'm Bill Griffin.
Okay. I think we've gotten to
Dave is playing Army as part of his
He's out of town
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33962
176
I'm the adkninistrative manager in the Emergency Services
Division.
As Peter said, I've been kind of keeping tabs on
this whole program since it started, and the board gave
us direction back in April of 1990 to go ahead and
provide this service as a result of Collier Health
Services no longer being able to provide these services
due to their lack of federal funding.
At that time in April the board made a commitment
to fund this urgent emergency care walk-in clinic for up
to two years. As of March of this current year, March of
1992, the county will have met that first two-year
commitment.
Currently, Naples Community Hospital has been
working on this project to determine the long-term
solution of the possibility of building a satellite
hospital facility in the Immokalee area and we have been
in contact with staff at Naples Community Hospital and
the problem they're having currently is the availability
of the necessary funds from the state and federal level
that they're seeking. And they've indicated that the
earliest funding may become available would be April of
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
177
1992 but more realistically would be more like November
of 1992.
And then just to bring the board up to current
information on what this walk-in clinic has done since
the board gave direction to fund it in April of 1990 and
through December 31st of 1991, this urgent walk-in care
clinic has seen and treated 7,630 patients. And the
county has also paid $377,200 to the Collier Health
Services for this patient treatment.
Initially when the county began this program, we
contracted with a local taxicab vendor to provide the
shuttle transportation service of bringing patients who
came into the walk-in care clinic in Immokalee and seen
by a physician, that physician determined that this
patient needed to go on into Naples Community Hospital
for further treatment, evaluation or follow-up, was not a
life or death situation. So, we got into contracting
with the local taxicab vendor to shuttle these patients
back and forth between Immokalee and Naples.
At that time, the taxicab shuttle made 607 trips
bringing people back and forth from Naples to Immokalee
at a cost of $37,150. Then in May of 1991 we approached
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
178
the board and received a direction to provide this
taxicab shuttle in-house, meaning that the county is now
providing this taxicab shuttle service that we provided
through the Emergency Medical Services Department by
utilizing a vehicle from the county's motor pool fleet
and then we used a part-time EMT from the EMS Department
to be the driver.
And since we started doing it in May, we've made
341 trips from Immokalee to Naples and Naples back to
Immokalee at a cost of $14,600. Now, that cost to the
county includes the part-time EMT salary and the
operating expenses of operating the vehicle for fuel,
repair and maintenance and insurance and things of that
nature.
Also as part of this program, two years ago when
the board was approached by several groups from the
Immokalee area, they pledged at that time that they could
raise approximately $75,000 on an annual basis in private
donations or contributions to help defray the cost of
this program.
To date, since this program has started or through
December of 1991, we've only received $34,955 in
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
179
donations. So that is falling well below what was
indicated to us approximately 18 months ago.
So as I said earlier, the county's initial two-year
commitment to fund this program will be ending here in
approximately two months or March 31st of this current
year. Now, if the board makes a decision to continue
funding this program, we would need about another
$150,000 from the general fund to operate from April
through the end of the fiscal year, last six months of
this current fiscal year.
And if the county or this board decides they want
to go another year down the road providing funding for
this program, we will probably need another $300,000 in
the 1992/'93 budget year to operate this program.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Of the patients that have been
treated, do we have a profile of those patients by age
group, by occupation and the like?
MR. GRIFFIN.' I don't have that available to me
right now. I could probably have one done if you'd like.
COMMISSIONER HASSE= Somebody must have that;
right?
MR. DORRILL~ We have -- Bill has that information
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33962
180
off of the run sheets because there's a run sheet for
every transport that we do and you could get a fairly
good profile. You may not get it down to the employer
level because typically we don't get that level of
information.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I was looking not only at the
transport service but as well the actual, the patients
treated, the 7600 patients that were treated. Something
about who those people are.
MR. DORRILL: Yeah.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Is that --
MR. DORRILL ..
MR. GRIFFIN~
It's obtainable.
I can get the age.
As far as
occupation, I'm not sure I could get that or not.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Do we get any return from
those patients?
MR. GRIFFIN: Does the county?
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Yeah.
MR. GRIFFIN: Not that I'm aware of. The health
clinic sets up some sort of a payment program based on
their income ability to pay that they pay Collier Health
Services back.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Here's where I'm coming from:
Number one is we're talking about Children's Services
Council and presumably that's a health care program for
children, in part, so I'd like to see whether -- what
percentage of the 7600 were children, however that is
considered. And I would assume that if the Children's
Services Council is successful that this would be one of
the groups that would be funded through the Children's
Services Council.
MR. DORRILL: Partially.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I don't know if that's been
discussed or not, but it seems to me that --
MR. DORRILL: That would be a fairly easy thing to
do is determine what number of the patients are under the
age of 16.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE = Okay.
COMMISSIONER HASSE ~
you're using, 16 and down?
MR. DORRILL= I don't know.
Tom, do you know?
COMMISSIONER HASSE .-
which is 18 and below?
Is that the age scheduling
Or do you consider a minor,
· OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
182
MR. DORRILL: I don't know what eligibility
requirements are in terms of Children's Services Council.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ I don't know either.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, they talk about children and
I don't know either. That would be one issue. The
other, I'm looking for the funding mechanism for the
balance of the fiscal year.
Immokal ee trials?
MR. GRIFFIN:
This weekend there's the
Horse trials; that's correct.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Is there any possibility of funds
being made available through that foundation for --
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: I don't know.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: -- the funding?
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: I know there's been a
foundation set up called Immokalee Foundation and I know
that there's supposed to be -- they're saying there's
going to be about 60 something thousand dollars that's
going to be donated back to the community but it's going
to have to go through this foundation the same, I guess,
as they go through --
MR. DORRILL: I'm assuming you'll make application
for the funds --
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33962
I I I II 311 II II I1"1~1 I I
183
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Yeah.
MR. DORRILL: -- and they'll have some review
criteria and you've got to assume that this particular
project would be near the top of the list, the fact that
it's --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, in anticipation of not
taking the money out of the general fund, you know, if
this is a possible -- if there's something that we would
need to do as a community to apply for some of those
funds --
MR. DORRILL: Or either have the hospital apply for
those funds but under this program.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Right.
COMMISSIONER RASSE: Wasn't there a time this was
going to peter out or terminate?
MR. DORRILL: This program will terminate on April
the 1st, Bill, or March lst?
MR. GRIFFIN~ March 31st.
MR. DORRILL.' April the 1st of the current year
that we're in, unless there's some supplemental
appropriation that's given to this program.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT.- Well, what we had said was
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLESw FL 33962
184
we would give them a year and a half or almost two years
I guess from the time that it started to come up with
some different alternatives and I guess the hospital -- I
have seen the plans and there has not been any
indications to me in what you said, Bill, that the money
was not there.
No one has said anything to me that there was a
holdup with money at all. I was under the assumption
that this thing was going to proceed and that they were
going to be opened up for service sometime in the late
fall. Now that's -- that's Just what I had been led to
believe, so--
MR. DORRILL= What's the name of the community
steering committee in Immokalee? I forget what they're
called. Bill Price is chairing it. The PIE group or --
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: PIE.
MR. DORRILL= And the last word that I had was a
number of them had been to meet, have lunch recently with
the governor and there were no promises made but there's
no money in the current state budget and until the budget
is determined, the one that's currently being reviewed,
that they won't know until July whether there's any money
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLESv FL 33962
185
for that particular project, the Naples Community
Hospital satellite facility in Immokalee. They won't
know that until July.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE: But haven' t you --
MR. DORRILL: At this moment it's not funded.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Haven't you had someone from your
office, though, working with representatives of the
Naples Community Hospital?
MR. DORRILL: Yeah. They've been in touch with me.
Then there's -- in addition to this PIE group, there is
on the board of directors at the hospital Parke Wright
who is Vice-Chairman of the Naples Community Hospital and
is the one that's been the contact person for this
project.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.' I heard that they were going to
announce their plan quite soon.
MR. DORRILL: We had heard at one point that it was
imminent but I've heard that it's not in the state's
current budget which would run through the end of June
and that unless or until it's approved by the legislature
-- I don't know whether there's a line item in there for
this project or whether it's a discretionary fund, but I
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33962
186
was told they don't know, that the announcement might be
imminent but at this point they don't know.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGBT: But this is for CHSI and
that's part of the federal thing. That's where they get
their money from. They don't get any state money. They
get all their money out of Atlanta, which is federal
and --
MR. DORRILL ~ Correct.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ -- it was my understanding
that they already had the money in hand to proceed with
their building. So I don't know.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, I guess that's -- this is a
number one priority and we're talking about funding the
medical community's commitment, so I think we need to --
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ And when they came to me
and showed me the plan, well, I said to them, Well, I
think what you need to do is, you know, let's put it on
the agenda so that the commission can see this and let
the time frame -- because otherwise on the 31st of March
~he money's ~oin9 to run ou~ a~d I'm ~ s~xe that the
· 'boar~ 'is go'ing "to "be w'ill'ing to refund this because if we
haven't done -- you know, if the community hasn't done
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
187
the job they said they were going to do.
MR. DORRILL~ Well, we'll have to check and see
because our two years runs through April 1st and if there
is no announcement or there's no funding -- my
understanding was, though, that it was coming from the
state because it will not be part of CHSI. This will be
a Naples Community Hospital owned and operated satellite
facility that's in Immokalee. They're not going to do
anything with CHSI.
This is the one that's going to be built up on the
north end of town and --
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Let me ask this question:
What is C~SI doing? I heard they had money and that's
what Dr. Polkowski was so upset about was the fact that
they were moving to the north end of town and they were
going to leave her there at the health department and
that she was going to have to transport all of these
people that she works with up there such as -- because
they share records with and things like that and she was
real concerned about that.
You need to check into that, Mr. Olliff.
MR. OLLIFF.- Yes, ma'am.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
188
that ?
COMMISSIONER HASSE.- That's your Job now, Tom.
MR. DORRILL: Bill, do you have anything else on
MR. GRIFFIN: That's all I have, unless you have
any more questions.
MR. DORRILL:
As I understand it, the current
program, the Naples Community ~ospital has an emergency
room physician that is there. What are the time frames,
just so the board will know? They're not there on a
24-hour basis.
COMMISSIONER HASSE .. No.
MR. GRIFFINs Like 8~00 to 5500 Monday through
Friday type operation, closed on weekends.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT= It's not 8:00. They get
there at 10:00 and leave at 8:00, isn't it?
MR. BOLTON: We can find out.
MR. GRIFFIN: The reports they turn into me that I
see shows opening the facility up at 8:00 a.m. and they
close it down about 5:00.
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ They may open the facility but
they don't -- the doctor might not be there.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIG~T: I thought the emergency
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
-j
189
room -- now this could change. I thought the emergency
room was opened up at 8:00, at 10-.00 a.m. and closed at
8:00 p.m. and then they were open half a day on Saturday.
MR. GRIFFINs Not to my knowledge.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Isn't there some program in the
State of Florida that allows retired physicians to
continue to provide certain services on a limited basis?
MR. DORRILL.. There is and they do it in
conjunction with the --
COMMISSIONER HASSE:
MR. DORRILL:
with the hospital.
Hospital.
-- facilities. No, it's not even
But there is the facility downtown
across from City Hall that was in the former Baptist
church and I'm not that familiar with that program. It's
a separate not-for-profit operation. I don't think they
have anything to do with hospital. But it's retired
physicians that operate that facility.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ I was looking for some -- I'm not
sure. I heard the discussions about the hospital
currently has a physician out in Immokalee that's there
part of the day and --
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Either a physician or a
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLESv FL 33962
190
physician's assistant and they all work under Dr. Tober;
is that correct?
MR. GRIFFIN~
a daily basis the physician, a nurse practitioner and
like an aid. They pay for three people.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ So the county -- that's part of
the program that the county's currently funding?
That's correct. They are paid for on
Correct.
That and the transport.
The shuttle transport, and the
CHSI was supposed to
They had to
MR. GRIFFIN'.
MR. DORRILL:
MR. GRIFFIN'.
medical staff.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT:
provide the equipment--
MR. DORRILL: And the facility.
designate a space within their facility for the emergency
room and they also provide the expendable supplies, the
medications, you know, I don't know, the gloves and the
sutures.
MR. GRIFFIN: They provide the supplies Just like
Nell said, but we pay them like $7.50 per patient that
they see back.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, at last week's board
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
191
meeting, or maybe it's tomorrow, we're talking about
putting a roof on the building that CHSI is in.
MR. DORRILL: Right.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE: We're talking about putting a new
roof on that facility. Commissioner Goodnight's saying
that the hospital's moving to the north and -- I mean,
does that relate to any of this discussion?
MR. DORRILL.- Sure does because I wasn't aware that
(lqSI was moving with Naples Community Hospital. But if
they are, then we need to reprogram our needs for that
building or consider selling it as we are, you know, some
of the other spacial needs.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: You need to talk to them
because the last I talked to Cheryl Thomas, Cheryl told
me that Dr. Polkowski was extremely upset with the fact
all these years they've been sharing records with the WIT
Program and with the health services and now with the
health services moving they're not going to be able to
share the health folders and everything and she doesn't
know how they're going to handle this.
MR. DORRILL .. Okay.
COMMISSIONER HASSE= Maybe you ought to check with
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS~ COLLIER COUNTX, NAPLES~ FL 33962
192
Dr. Polkowski. She woula know.
MR. DORRILL~ We can ao that. There's going to
have to be analysis of this before the end of March.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Whose responsibility is this?
Who's the point ~erson? Is it EMS? We~ve been providing
some funding mechanisms, but who~s going to coordinate or
who is coordinating what's happening with the hospital,
with CHSI?
MR. DORRILL~ They've been coordinating with our
office.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE= With you?
MR. DORRILL: And I was invited and I attended a
meeting in Immokalee and then I attended the meeting
downtown at the hospital and I was shown some of the
conceptual plans and drawings for the facility, but I was
told it was based on, dependent on some state funding as
well and then a bunch of them went off to Tallahassee to
have lunch with the governor.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Where's Frank? I was in a
meeting just last month with our Planning Services people
trying to get this thing on the fast track, the building
and everything; that there was some problems with
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLESt FL
33962
193
easements and what they were going to plot and everything
because it's part of that PUD.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.' And that was when Tom Brown came
before the board and they're looking for the waiver of
impact fees and we were talking about Immokalee Water &
Sewer didn't have any impact fees and as a part of that
discussion, you know, relating to what it was that the
hospital was going to do out in the Immokalee area.
So I guess--
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: But John Madajewski,
whatever his name is, said that -- and I told him that
the first available was the deadline and they're trying
to fast track this thing through Community Services so
that they can have it and have it on line or at least
have it out of Community Development, so you need to
check on this because --
MR. DORRILL: We're going to have to check with
Mr. Cronin's office because I don't have any of that
information. The last time I went and met with Mr.
Cronin was back in October and then one subsequent
conversation to that I was told that they.were
withholding their announcement because they didn't have a
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTYv NAPLESv FL 33962
194
firm commitment.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Isn't this part of the areas where
what we committed to do was provide the leadership? We
committed to provide the leadership.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: For so long.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, apart from the issue of
funding, we said, Yeah, we'll fund it for a period of
time but in the meantime what we can do as a board is we
can provide the leadership to try to address this area
and it sounds like --
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: That's what we've done and
now -- you know, your information has got to be out of
date because, I mean, why would they be pushing this
thing through Community Development if they don't even
have the funding in place?
MR. DORRILL: We need to find out.
And my other note is whether or not the federal
health clinic CHSI is going to be part of that and are
they physically contemplating moving.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Is that another one of the goals
that we have under our executive in terms of that, one of
the subheadings in terms of --
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
195
MR. DORRILL~ That one being --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: -- addressing the medical needs of
the Immokalee community and providing that leadership?
MR. DORRILL: Probably indirectly. I don't know if
that was reduced to writing or actually assigned to
anyone in my office other than the extent that I met with
this PIE committee in Immokalee and also Mr. Cronin had
asked me to attend a meeting at the hospital.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: It's just that it's an important
issue and we' re going to hear a lot of it, I'm sure, as
we get closer to March 31st.
So it seems to me that maybe somehow we have to
keep that issue out in front of us, Neil, and maybe it
should be one of those if not one of the primary goals
that needs to come in under that and we are responsible
for providing certain leadership.
MR. DORRILL: Okay. That's fine.
MR. BOLTON: Second item is the Emergency Services
Center. I hadn't planned to do anything on this because
this item was scheduled before the board some three weeks
ago and you indicated then that you wished to come back
to a workshop.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERSt COLLIER COUNTYt NAPLESt FL 33962
196
We can by all means talk about it, but I know Jay's
been in touch with Capital Projects and I hope a date
will be forthcoming when this all will be presented to
you.
MR. DORRILL: You had asked us to prepare a number
of things. You wanted to see an analysis of the current
lease agreements because as you'll recall the Emergency
Services Division, to my knowledge, does not own any of
its current facilities. We rent or lease all of our
current facilities.
And you wanted to see an analysis of the rent and
the current spaces that we're renting and what was
projected including the emergency operation center
located in the bottom of Building F that would be housed
in this proposed new facility.
And the proposal being done in conjunction with the
airport. And I think Jay has something contemplated in
March sometime based on his most recent conversation with
me and he has worked with Tom Conrecode to see what the
space program needs would be for up to five years and
they are putting together that workshop.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Have you looked at the old
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health building?
MR. DORRILL: We haven't. I don't know in terms of
the space required-- if you look at the space currently
for EMS and medical examiner's office and the fact we
only have a short term contract at the airport for the
helicopter hangar. I'm not sure that would be adequate
for all of those needs, but it could factor into one of
the options even though it would only be a partial
solution.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.. What's planned for the remainder
of the third floor here?
MR. DORRILL: None is currently designated and
that's one I've talked specifically to Jay about. That
would not resolve the medical examiner's needs. We would
probably look for some other long-term program with that.
At the moment they' re in some rented offices that
are downtown that are owned by the hospital but scheduled
to be demolished as part of the hospital expansion plan.
And there again, we don't have a better or more permanent
medical examiner's facility or more beyond that
short-term contract that we have with the hospital.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.- Where is that facility now, do you
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know, Nell?
MR. DORRILL= Across the street from the Sutton
House Pizza Restaurant. But other than that, --
COMMISSIONER HASSE:
home there?
MR. GRIFFIN:
Isn't that the old funeral
It's an old --
C~AIRMAN VOLPE: Pittman's old funeral home.
MR. DORRILL: It's owned by the hospital now and
scheduled to be torn down as part of their renovations.
COMMISSIONER RASSE: Don't they feel any
obligations to work with us on something like this?
MR. DORRILL: Well, they have, but the hospital has
a real aversion by having the medical examiner's office
and all that entails being physically inside the
hospital. And typically you don't find morgues or
medical examiner facilities that are built as part of a
hospital complex.
COMMISSIONER HASSE.. What better place?
MR. DORRILL: They're not in the business of --
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Killing people?
MR. DORRILL: Or doing that type of work and they
just -- the aspects of all that that entails, they have
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199
told us before they don~t want that part of the hospital
comp1 e x.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ Well, is that an expensive
proposition to have a medical examiner's facility?
COMMISSIONER HASSE: I would think so. I mean,
youtre not only talking medical examiner, you're talking
all these other departments here.
MR. DORRILL: In Lee County they built a separate
medical examiner's facility as part of that and they
obviously have special plumbing requirements and
ventilation requirements and they have big, you know,
chillers in rooms and special X-ray equipment and yeah,
itt s very expensive.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Well, you can put them over in
this health building. You've got chillers next door to
them.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Is that an issue then that wet re
going to have to address as a community in the next year?
MR. DORRILL: Well, it has been one of these -- it
is a CIE eligible project as it relates to governmental
facility requirements. It's in the CIE. Itt s not a
concurrency driven CIE requirement, but it is one of
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
2OO
those CIE eligible projects and this, you know, that in
combination with the fact that this division doesn't own
any of its current facilities is the reason it's Deen
driving the need for this project.
What you all wanted to see was this functional
analysis and space analysis as to what was contemplated
and understand a little more about whether it needs or
should have to be on the airport property before we, you
know, you authorized any architectural contracts, and
that's where we're at at the moment.
COMMISSIONER HASSE-- Don't we have property
available to us in the north end?
MR. DORRILL: They have some. They've been talking
about to be in conjunction with the landfill reclamation
project that they have planned and they wanted us to do
some landfill mining to reclaim airport property that was
previously the county's first landfill.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.. I guess what I'm -- in my own mind
I'm separating the EMS issue from the medical examiner's
office. And you said--you know, Co_m_~issioner Hasse
asked about the old health building and I asked about the
thirO floor here. You said those are alternatives for
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
201
the EMS.
The medical examiner, is that something that would
be a proper subject of an interlocal agreement between
Lee County and Collier County in terms of facility?
MR. DORRILL: I don't think so because the way the
state statutes are written, there are district medical
examiners throughout the state, and we're required-- and
there is -- Collier County is its own district. And I
don't know enough about the statutes to know -- county
commissions are obligated to provide the space and
operating requirements for the district medical examiner.
Now, the district medical examiner is an employee,
an office of the state and part of the department of law
enforcement, but we have the sole obligation to provide
the operating and facility costs for --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I don't mind the administrative
aspect of that, but if you need a laboratory or if you
need some high tech equipment to do what you were saying
in terms of X-ray machines and plumbing and chillers and
all that, I would think that there might be an
opportunity to explore that, you know, have our medical
examiner use the facilities of Lee County. I mean, if
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202
they've spent a lot of money for it and they're --
MR. DORRILL: That's one of the things we'll have
to check on.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: The only problem is I think
Lee County is in pretty much of a mess as far as I can
figure out, if they want to get involved in this kind of
a thing.
MR. DORRILL: And I don't know whether they could
even entertain those. I don't know--
COMMISSIONER HASSE.' I don't know, either.
MR. DORRILL: -- physically the volume of work, the
number of autopsies on an annual basis. I don't know
whether they can even accommodate those types of things.
But we have come a long way from the days when Dr.
Schmidt who was the former medical examiner and actually
performed an autopsy in his garage down in Port Royal
before we had a --
COMMISSIONER HASSE: That's a good idea.
MR. DORRILL: -- before we had even the facilities
that we do now, which frankly are very poor.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: That's a thought.
MR. DORRILL: The last one we had under Emergency
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Services was to determine the direction from the
commission's perspective on completing or finalizing the
fire consolidation feasibility and what, if anything, is
going to be done.
The commission had engaged the services of the
International Association of Fire Chiefs last year. The
citizen's advisory committee is scheduled to take up this
matter in one final series of meetings.
There are two bills that are currently filed with
the legislature that would force or require
consolidation. So this is a matter that the legislature
has taken into its hands because of a perceived problem
throughout the state.
I'm told that one of the bills has the possibility
of getting to the floor of the legislature for action,
the other one does not. The one bill that is most likely
to reach the floor would require some type of interlocal
agreement to consolidate independent districts or put the
burden to do that on the general purpose government in
this case, which would be the county commission.
Obviously the independent fire districts and chiefs
are in a state of apoplectic fits over this bill. And if
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 339~2
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204
we continue to monitor it week to week -- but at this
point, this is a project that needs to be wound down and
some final decision made as to what, if any, position the
county commission wants to take.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT.' They're so upset over the
thing that they've accused Collier County as sponsoring
the bill.
COMMISSIONER ~ASSE: That's right.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, I was going to bring that up
last Tuesday and I forgot to do it and I was thinking of
bringing it up tomorrow because our county manager has
written a letter, a copy of which I've not seen,
supportive of the bill.
And so it's one thing, you know, for the manager to
do that, which is all fine, well and good, but the
question is does this board -- do we have a position as
it relates to that bill which is presently pending in the
state legislature and I think either we do or we don't.
COMMISSIONER ~ASSE:
address this?
CHAIRMAN VOLPE:
To what extent does the bill
Well, I've not seen the bill.
I've had some conversations with some people who are more
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLESt FL 33962
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familiar with it and essentially as I understand it it
would consolidate all of the independent fire districts
within Collier County. It would essentially --
COMMISSIONER RASSE: In other words, the people
don't have anything to say about it?
CHAIRMAN VOLPE:
legislative fiat.
COMMISSIONER RASSE:
Apparently this would be done by
Fiasco. I wouldn't want to be
facing those people when you do that.
MR. DORRILL'. Well, and there's been a concern
expressed by the number of counties that if you go back
and look at this original sheet there's a lot of counties
in this state that are already at or near their ten mill
cap and they can't afford under the county commissioners'
side of the slate to incur the additional ad valorem
millage to run independent fire districts.
So there is either going to have to be an exemption
for small counties that are at or near the ten mill cap
to exempt them from that if they' re -- or they inherit
fire provision or there's going to have to be a local
option for small counties, and "small" is defined by the
state to be under 50,000 population, to opt out of the
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
206
program.
The sponsor of the bill is a legislator. His name
is C. Fred Jones, and I think he's from Seminole County.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGRT:
Polk County.
MR. DORRILL:
Oh, no. Orange County or
Middle of the state somewhere.
What I'm told the rationale for the bill is is the
fact that there are over a thousand independent districts
in the State of Florida and C. Fred chairs the Community
Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives and
he's sick and tired of having to review all of the bills
that determine local initiatives for independent
districts and he wrote the bill and he sponsored the bill
and that's what I'm told the rationale for it is from the
Florida Association of Counties.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: What I'm suggesting, though, is
that either we are or we are not going to take a
position. Commissioner Goodnight said someone is
suggesting that we've sponsored the bill.
CHAIRMAN GOODNIGHT.' Yes. I've been told in
Immokalee that our fire chief said the county
commission --
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
207
COMMISSIONER HASSE.' That's not true, though.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: I know that, but they
said-- our fire chief says a lot of things that's not
true.
But the other thing that took place was during the
meeting in Tallahassee there was great discussion on
Collier County and its county manager and how he was
trying to take over the fire control districts and --
which just absolutely appals me because Neil or our
county manager hasn't done anything that this board
hasn't directed him to do and the reason we even started
fire consolidation to start off with was because the
Greater Naples Area Civic Association came to us asking
us to investigate it.
And that's the reason why that we're at where we
are and I mean, it's not been instigated by the, by the
manager or the commissioners. But if they want to mess
with me, I'll mess with them.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.' Don' t you think, though, that
under the circumstances that we then ought to if there is
this bill presently pending in the legislature that we
periodically do pass resolutions either supporting
33962
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
208
certain bills or not supporting certain bills?
Do we support this bill or don't we?
COMMISSIONER HASSE: It has to come before us in a
vote before we can do that.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I guess what I'm suggesting is
maybe we can get a report from--
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: That's what I was telling
you, Mike, is if it hadn't been for the fact that the
local fire chief ran up to Tallahassee complaining about
Collier County, I'd probably say no, we shouldn't support
the bill. But now that they've done that, I think we
ought to support it.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Why, because you're mad at
them?
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: I'm not mad.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I'd like to see a copy of the
letter, Neil, so we can --
MR. DORRILL: I' d be happy to and I can report that
tomorrow. We received a request on like a Friday
afternoon from the Florida Association of Counties asking
us if we were aware of or could support this type of bill
and they needed a response faxed by and for a Monday
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
209
morning committee meeting for Mr. Jones's committee and
so we wrote the letter and I signed it and indicated
that, you know, the board hasn't taken a position, there
was no resolution and it went out under my signature and
was there in time for the Monday meeting, but that's what
caused their apoplectic --
C~AIRMAN VOLPE~ But since then I've gotten a many
number of phone calls from a many number of people who
have said have you or have you not taken a position and
so on, so I'm prepared to take a position one way or the
other as a board.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Well, go ahead and take your
position.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, I think we need to be
brought up to date and we need to have some information
about the bill, what it proposes, how it will be done.
When the manager sends off a letter on our
stationery or on Collier County stationery, in my view he
can say whatever it is you want to say, that somehow has
got to be reflective of what we' re doing because as
Commissioner Goodnight just said, he doesn't do anything
other than what we tell him to do, so --
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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that.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Well, we didn't tell him to do
Did you?
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: No, sir, I did not.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Okay.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I'm just asking we do that now and
we kind of back that up.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: No, I'm not going to. It's
wrong. I don't think we should consolidate completely.
There is a way of working this out so we all cooperate
together, but you have three independent districts here;
that's north, east and Golden Gate that are separate
independent districts that are very strong and very
self-centered in what they're doing there and if you're
going to blow them out of the water just because you want
to consolidate all the others, let's work something out
where we can cooperate in all ways for buying and this
sort of thing, you know, the gas and all that sort of
thing.
MR. McNEES:
is that those districts become districts of the county
commission. It doesn't say they all consolidate.
I think that's one of the things he's trying to
I think the bill -- what the bill says
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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figure out, what would happen in the county commission's
discretion for consolidation and could they leave them
separate and operate separate districts, so that's --
COMMISSIONER HASSE: But the county would operate
them then.
MR. DORRILL.' That's what the current bill --
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Well, that's no good.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, this is one of the three
goals that's been identified in Emergency Services and it
seems to me very topical now, so if not tomorrow, perhaps
at a meeting which is going to be held and maybe too late
then we ought to at least take a position.
MR. DORRILL: We can inquire today as to what the
current status of the bill is. If there's some reason to
have an added discussion item for tomorrow, we will. If
we can wait an extra week, then we can prepare an
executive summary and have included as part of the agenda
package a copy of the bill and some of the information
that came from the state association.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, it seems to me that we are
providing EMS through a centralized division throughout
the county and we have got arrangements now with Golden
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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Gate, East Naples, you know, so it makes some sense that
we need to try to coordinate those activities.
And what we're hearing, and I'm not sure whether
there's any substance to it, but the discussions that
have been taking place about each one of the independent
fire districts now giving some consideration to providing
their own ambulance service?
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ That's coming through this.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: They're already doing
that. They're now the first responders to the scene.
MR. DORRILL:
service.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT:
But they're not providing ambulance
Every fire district in
Collier County now has one of those little ambulances
that runs around with these little EMT's in there that
runs in there and they didn't even have a neck brace to
put on Jackie when Jackie fell out of the tree.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: No, but that's not the same.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: That's not the same thing?
COMMISSIONER HASSE: No. Absolutely not.
a full medical service our ambulance provides.
you could put it on the back of a station wagon.
This is
Otherwise
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
213
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ But it sounds to me as though
there may be some duplication of effort here and I assume
it's different from the rates of --
COMMISSIONER ~ASSE: It probably is.
MR. DORRILL.. There are no rates.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: They don't have no rates
at all. All they're doing is publishing in the newspaper
about how fast their response time is.
MR. DORRILL: They' re precluded from transporting
or even loading someone into their own units, and that's
why I've reminded the newspaper that it takes a
Certificate of Public Need and Necessity from the county
commission in order for somebody to do this.
We'll be happy to talk about it either tomorrow or
a week from tomorrow.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: I think a week from tomorrow
is the better -- we have a heavy agenda for tomorrow in
every sense of the word and I'd like to give some time to
that.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE .. Fine.
COMMISSIONER RASSE: Enough to notify the fire
department.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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MR. DORRILL:
Public Services?
COMMISSIONER HASSE
service.
MR. DORRILL .-
Thank you.
There isn't any public
There's one, two, three --
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Oh, I didn't see Tom there.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT.. Bill, while he's putting
that up, I just want you to know that even our ambulance
didn't have a large neck brace to put on Jackie.
MR. GRIFFIN.' When was this?
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT.- When he fell out of the
tree Tuesday or Wednesday, two weeks ago. They had
smalls and mediums but they didn't have no large neck
braces to put on him.
COMMISSIONER HASSE:
at that age.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE:
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~
makeshift thing.
places.
MR. McNEES:
problem.
He shouldn't be climbing trees
What' d they do?
They made some kind of a
I mean, he broke his neck in two
He says that's the budget office's
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
215
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Well, you'd better be sure
that Immokalee has a large neck brace.
COMMISSIONER HASSE.. How's he doing?
COMMISSIONER GOODNIG~T: ~e's doing a lot better.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.. Okay, Tom.
MR. OLLIFF: You'll have to excuse me a little bit.
This is my fourth week here and I'm still trying to make
sure I can spell my secretary's name let alone give you a
complete planning update of the Public Services Division,
but --
COMMISSIONER HASSE: No excuse.
MR. OLLIFF: -- the three items that we've listed
are a little more project oriented than they are from a
planning overall conceptual standpoint and the first
is -- what I tried to do is put these together the week
before I actually came over here and was trying to
outline some of what I knew were front burner issues of
this division that I know at least the board has spent
some time on in recent history and were first on probably
your list of important things for me to accomplish when I
came here, this being sort of a strategic plan for the
remainder of this fiscal year. These are the project
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
216
related things I think you would have us focus on.
The first was the Lee/Collier Barefoot Beach
project. And while it's kind of difficult to see from
where you're at, this is the conceptual plan for what is
the joint Lee/Collier County beach park. This is Bonita
Beach Road. This is our existing parking lot on the
Collier County side. This is the Lee/Collier County
line, and then this is all of the Lee County portion of
that park.
There have been two outstanding issues that have
kept this project from moving along and the first was a
sewer line issue which related to our ability to be able
to provide sewer service to actually the Lee County side,
and there is a restroom facility that was tried to be
located here so it would be centrally located between
both Lee and Collier County, but it is on the Lee County
side of the line. And the question was whether we could
provide sewer service to that restroom facility without
suffering a certain amount of review and regulation from
the Public Service Commission.
Since then we've requested and received a staff
letter from the Public Service Commission telling us that
" · OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
217
they don't regulate governments and they wouldn't even in
this' case even though they've not taken a normal PSC
position.
The County Attorney's Office feels comfortable
enough with the response that we've gotten that they feel
that issue's been resolved. So we will -- and if you'll
recall, there is Bonita Beach & Tennis Condominiums here
we're currently serving and we can actually go straight
across the road and provide sewer service here at the
Bonita Beach facility.
The other outstanding issue was actually a location
issue and it is location of the entrance on the Collier
County side. The entrance that is currently used is the
one that is also shared by the Barefoot Beach Development
and also by the Barefoot State Preserve and the entrance
is right here off Bonita Beach Road and you turn
immediately to the right and go into our existing parking
lot.
The board's last discussion and direction on this
issue was for us to continue to pursue leaving that
entrance where it is rather than trying to move it. The
problem that we encounter is that this property which is
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
218
deeded to Collier County as part of the Barefoot Beach
develo~ent project has reverter language in the actual
recorded deed which says if we ever have a second
entrance into this parking lot the property reverts back
to either the developer or home owners' association.
By joining this parking lot with Lee County's,
there is a second entrance and by way of doing that, we
would actually lose the parking lot and the home owners'
association has made it clear to us that they full well
intend to stand by that language in the deed.
So the previous board's direction was to try and
maintain those entrances. If we maintain those entrances
we simply cannot tie in with the connecting park, and
that's where we stand.
We had a meeting the last week in January where I
asked for the three parties that are involved in this
project, the first is the Home Owners' Association of
Barefoot Beach; and the second is the CABB Organization,
which I still couldn't tell you what CABB stands for -
it's a Bonita Beach citizens group that deals with the
beach supposedly on both sides of the line; and also the
Bonita Shores, Little Hickory Home Owners' Association.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLESt FL 33962
219
We met with all three of those groups to try to come up
with some reasonable solution to that.
I think this item has been festering long enough.
It's difficult to get these groups to come to a
consensus, but the proposal that I laid out to them, and
also after a meeting with George Archibald's staff, was
actually a relocation of this entrance.
There is an entrance located at about here on
Bonita Beach Road which is the one currently being used
by the Beach & Tennis Association. The concerns
previously were: One, cost from both the citizens and
the CABB organization; and secondly, safety.
So the proposal we've laid out was to leave the
entrance where it is while the road's two laned but at
the time the road's four laned, we would plan on moving
this intersection and the main entrance of the park
further to the north and the west along Bonita Beach Road
and build some turn lanes and signalize that intersection
so it actually lined up with the park entrance here and
the entrance to the Beach & Tennis Club here.
The transportation staff was able to tell us that
they could design a safe intersection there which was the
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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first concern of the residents. They always thought
previously that this couldn't be done. I think it can be
at the same time the road's four laned.
Their second concern was cost. The Lely t{ome
Owners' Association and developer have agreed to pay or
actually move their obligation for allowing the
intersection from here to there where they'll actually
pay for the cost of the light and installation.
So with those two issues aside, hopefully we can
get that resolved and get that intersection moved and get
an interlocal agreement approved between Lee and Collier
County and get this under construction.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.' Is that an acceptable alternative
to all the people who were at that meeting?
MR. OLLIFF: I'm almost positive it is acceptable
to the Barefoot Beach Home Owners' Association. I had a
meeting with the CABB group this Thursday night at their
meeting where they've committed to take another vote on
the issue.
I think the driving forces of that group were Dave
and Marge Ward who seemed to at least be willing to
listen and I think by the time we get here on Thursday
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
221
they'll probably be willing to support this compromise.
I've told them that we would like the time to come
to the commission, which I've tried to schedule for the
18th of February to have all these groups stand there at
the podium and say that while this isn't the best of the
options available, it's what they would recommend that
the board do and I think we can get them to that point.
If we can, Lee County's chomping at the bit. In
fact, they were telling me I was doing a lousy job in my
new position before I even stepped down here saying we
couldn't get this resolved and they're ready to go back
out and redesign their project and forget Collier County
and I think that's a shame.
I think it's a good opportunity we can take
advantage of and I'm trying to work with their attorney's
office to stave them off from going out and doing a
redesign until I can try to get this back in front of you
hopefully on the 18th. That's that issue.
COMMISSIONER RASSE: Does it look like you' re able
to do that, Tom, get them to hold off for a little while?
MR. OLLIFF: I think so.
COMMISSIONER ~ASSE: They' re not anxious to do
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
222
that, you know.
MR. OLLIFF: Actually, they are. To them, they're
making concessions in order to find parks. They've got a
much bigger and aggressive beach construction program
than we do. Our total project is somewhere around a
hundred thousand dollars and that includes the
engineering and design.
in excess of $800,000.
in construction costs there.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT:
On their side of the park it's
They're pushing a million dollars
They're not going to start
construction on the thing until the fall.
MR. OLLIFF: I'm just relaying to you what I get
from both Ray Judah and --
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Have you talked with Ray
or just staff?
MR. OLLIFF: Just staff. The commission actually
discussed this particular item, directed their attorney's
office to call us and then basically asked us to get off
the dime and do something because if not they were going
to bring it back in front of their commission and
recommend it be redesigned.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Also in that meeting it
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was discussed about the fact that they don't want to move
in there during the season that the beach is being used
and they want to wait until August and September before
they actually start construction on it.
MR. OLLIFF: I agree.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: They agreed -- we agreed,
basically, I think, with the entrance being across from
the condominium complex there. And wasn't the Barefoot
Beach Property Owners' Association going to pay for the
light and everything else there and the turn lane?
MR. OLLIFF: The last direction the board gave me
was not -- didn't give me, the last Public Service
Administrator, not to move this intersection, to leave it
here. That was at the request of the CABB organization
and home owners' association. They wanted it left here.
I'm just telling you you cannot leave it here, join
that park and keep your lane. That's just not an option.
So if you want to keep that parking lot, then either
we're going to have to work out some way of moving this
intersection or not having a joint park.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Were those property owners so
adamant about that entrance being moved and so on? I'd
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rather leave it there, too, but here we have a~
opportunity to have restroom facilities and a much larger
park, parking lot.
MR. OLLIFF: A couple things I think that swayed
this to where the compromise will work is one, the home
owners' association doesn't want traffic through this
main intersection. They just don't want that, this home
owners' association in Barefoot Beach. That's the same
one they use to go home.
They are willing to change that deed language so we
can have two entrances and maintain the property if we'll
relocate the entrance here. That's what sells them. For
the Bonita Shores and the other people, the Lely people
are also going to give the county this property that was
used primarily just as an entrance road in order that we
can build more parking spaces in the parking lot.
And I've had our capital project staff give me
evidence on how many more spaces we can fit in there and
they're saying anywhere from between 20 and 40 depending
on how I wanted to try and maximize those spaces.
so with the addition of 20 to 40 parking spaces,
with the ability of us to safely design an intersection
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there at no additional cost to the taxpayers, I think
everybody will agree.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: And the ability for them to
hook into a sewer system.
MR. OLLIFF: You don't want to say that you've got
a trump card in your pocket, but --
COMMISSIONER HASSE: We have, though.
MR. OLLIFF.. -- when you negotiate with Lee County
and they continue to want to go out and redesign when
you're holding the card that allows them to have sewer
service there, it makes it real difficult for them.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: As I understand, they're not
able to dump their sewage any other place.
MR. OLLIFF: They would have a real -- in fact, I
don't know if they can possibly get a septic system at
that location. It is basically the same kind of
situation we've got at Clam Pass Park restroom facility,
and I don't think we'll be able to expand that current
septic system.
The second issue is the Vineyards soccer field
construction. That's a project we've got a pretty short
time line on and the budget was approved for that and the
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project and concept was approved by the board about three
weeks ago.
Last week the board approved the engineering design
contract with Wilson, Miller to go ahead and do the
designs for that project. They were on our road paving
list at the end of the year so we can do that quickly.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Tom, did you get with the County
Attorney's Office about the ordinance that's going to
require amendment to the ordinance in order for us to use
those recent park impact fees for this?
MR. OLLIFF: I haven't specifically. I'm assuming
that they are, but I'll follow up after this meeting and
make sure that they are.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Okay.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Does this have anything to do
with the schools or anything?
MR. OLLIFF: Well, it does. It's adjacent to, in
fact, --
COMMISSIONER HASSE: I know that.
MR. OLLIFF: -- Vineyards School. We are sharing
the land that they currently have their softball fields
on. The design that we had showed to the board when you
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approved it actually showed two smaller sized soccer
fields which is good for the Optimist Junior League
fitting into the outfields of those existing softball
fields and then the county actually building three more
regulation-sized fields.
The next step that we want to have is to have a
sit-down meeting with not only the engineer before he
actually starts putting pen to paper to design the road
but just a conceptual meeting with both the manager's
office and those people from the Vineyards who have a
vested interest in the location of those fields.
So we want to try and get an understanding amongst
everyone where those fields will be located, if and when
they'll be lighted and all that so that we know that
there's no stumbling blocks to get the construction done
by September.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: We' re looking at five fields?
MR. OLLIFF: You'll have a total of six, actually.
There's a field which exists in regulation size.
MR. DORRILL: It's already there.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: You' re prejudiced, too.
MR. OLLIFF: I can't be accused, I have no kids.
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COMMISSIONER ~ASSE: I still accuse you.
MR. OLLIFF: I think that project is on schedule.
Capital Projects will actually be doing the job of
getting them built. Their target is to get them built by
the end of August, beginning of September when the kids'
soccer season starts, and I think we can make that.
COMMISSIONER ~ASSE'. The only problem is the
location of two fields, isn't it?
MR. OLLIFF: To my understanding, that should be
the only outstanding issue. The land is basically
correct to be able to do a fast track project on it.
It's already cleared and it has drainage available to it.
It has an adjacent school facility with restrooms and
we' re going to try and negotiate an agreement with the
school board. I don't see any real problems unless we
run into the home owners' association.
COMMISSIONER RASSE: You're not going to use the
same restroom as the school, are you? You' re going to
build a new one.
MR. OLLIFF: That's what the board went ahead and
told us to do, go ahead and try and execute an agreement
with the school board to be able to use the existing
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restroom facilities that are there.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Are they outside?
MR. DORRILL: Yeah.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: They've encouraged us to try to --
MR. DORRILL: And they've done -- the irrigation
system was subbed out in anticipation that we coRld do
that.
COMMISSIONER ~ASSE: That' s good.
MR. OLLIFF.' The last item I've got is sort of a
follow-up on the CO of the two new buildings. You
authorized several years ago the construction of two new
buildings within this division. First was the new
Agriculture Building which is located out on Immokalee
Road.
You've not had any type of a ribbon-cutting or
grand opening for that as yet primarily just because that
building was a large part assisted by state funding and
so the Agriculture Department has tried to wait until the
state session is over with so we can have some of our
state representatives with you to cut the ribbon on that
building.
COMMISSIONER HASSE.. We can handle that.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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MR. OLLIFF: It's scheduled for April -- the Ag
Building was built at a cost of about a million two. The
only outstanding issue with that building is a portion of
that was designed to be leased to the Soil & Water
Conservation District.
And I've, I think, got that resolved, that issue
resolved and final lease agreements will be brought back
to you for execution sometime in February. They should
move in the first week of March given there are no
problems about those leases.
COMMISSIONER RASSE: They financed a good portion
of that, didn't they, the state?
MR. OLLIFF: Yes, they did. We've got some grant
monies through the state to do a certain part of that
construction. That's just the first nice good central
facility agriculture's had since it's been here in
Collier County. If you haven't seen it before we have
the grand opening in April, just give me a call and we'll
set you up.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGRT: We have a problem, though.
We don't have any furniture out there and we can't use
the main room.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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MR. OLLIFF: They were running that project really
tight to the budget and they did not want to bust their
budget on that because of some of the changes that
occurred with Soil & Water Conservation moving into that
building. They were hesitant about doing some of that
kind of stuff. They've actually got three different
types of chairs there now that they're looking at and
they should be ordered this week and I would expect
delivery on those within four to five weeks.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Does that mean that
they'll be here in time for June for the 4-H banquet,
because Corkscrew's supposed to host the 4-R banquet this
year and they're either going to have to go to the Big
Cypress Elementary School or even to Immokalee, and we'd
really like to hold it at the ag center.
MR. OLLIFF: The other building is the library. If
you haven't had a chance to see that, it's open to the
public on February 3rd. You should have gotten an
invitation for a grand opening February 13th.
We've had a lot of assistance from the Friends of
the Library and I think we've prepared some thank you
letters from the county to them. I think they've
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contributed everything you'll see that's in excess of
what you consider basic library standards.
You'll see a lot of sound equipment and a lot of
plants when you get there and a lot of technical
equipment that assists those that are blind or legally
blind and there's some of those reading areas, and those
machines were all provided by the Friends of the Library.
That building for all the heat it took for its
architectural exterior's going to be a gemstone for us in
terms of our kind of buildings and offices. Inside it
makes a lot of sense. It's a great improvement at almost
three times the size of the original library, and our job
now is to make sure it runs and works.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Tom, parks and recreations, more
global issues. Our relationship with the City of Naples
as it relates to certain of those park facilities. I
don't know what issues are there, but there's some
outstanding issues that have existed. I'm thinking
particularly of Seagate. I'm not sure where all of that
stands.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: I thought that was settled.
MR. DORRILL: There are three city parks or county
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parks rather that are actually inside the city limits of
Naples. There's Seagate Park where we have a small
investment in a softball complex, basketball, tennis
courts; Bayview Park and the Bayview public boat ramp is
inside the city limits; and the last one is what I call
the Naples Bay, Park Shore Beach access site. Again,
that's inside the city limits of Naples.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I don't know what type of a
relationship we have with the city as it relates to those
three areas. I think Horizon Way, that's issue's been
resolved, right, in favor of the city.
So I'd like to, you know, somehow work on those,
those issues.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: We worked on the Bayview Park
to great length a number of years ago and I thought it
was settled.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE.. Maybe they are. Maybe they are
settled. I'm not sure.
MR. DORRILL: The only one that I'm aware the city
has an interest in is Seagate Park and I think for no
other reason than the new mayor was the former principal
of that school. And our present agreement at Seagate
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Park has us leaving that site by 1994 or 5.
MR. OLLIFF: '94, I think.
MR. DORRILL: It will become then a city park site.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: I thought it was before then.
MR. DORRILL: He wants to see it renegotiated, but
we don't have any basis to do that at the moment.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: The other, and I don't remember
how we finally resolved the issue, but we were talking
about through the vehicle and interlocal agreement
between the City of Naples and the County of Collier that
we could begin to take some credit in our Growth
Management Plan for certain recreational facilities
within the City of Naples. We had talked about that.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: I think, frankly, we lost --
MR. DORRILL: We had talked about it and I'll have
to ask Frank because --
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Somebody said that we
couldn't take credit for it and them take credit for it,
too.
MR. DORRILL'. We got an opinion from DCA, as I
recall, that said that. In the case of recreational
regional park lands, though, we got a different opinion
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because we can in fact take credit for state facilities,
and the one that comes to mind is Collier Seminole.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: And we've done that. So, the
issue with the city, though, we're not able to take
credit then for--
MR. DORRILL: I recall us having an opinion from
DCA that said that, but we can check it and see.
MR. OLLIFF: For the city, they have their own comp
plans as far as their level of service and we cannot use
and take credit for theirs without reviewing their
inventory amounts. So on the state side, however, they
don't have that opinion and they're trying to keep up
with the growth management.
credit.
COMMISSIONER HASSE:
at Bayview Park, though.
We can't use theirs to our
I think you might want to look
I think we should be able to
take credit for that because that's completely taken care
of.
MR. DORRILL: We do, and that's a county facility
and --
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Well, that's what I'm saying.
But it's in city property.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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MR. OLLIFF: In fact, I think the addition of those
state parks that Nell mentioned there primarily has
reserved lands and things.
There are still some facilities requirements that
we will be required to do, but from a land perspective
that amount of 500 plus acres or whatever we were looking
for at the inception, it's basically gone away. It's a
number game, honestly, and we need that land that was
here when we adopted the plan and it's not added to the
additional regional park acreage, but our level of
service requirement went away.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE: And so does the bonding
requirement for 10 million dollars, 17 million dollars
for a regional park.
MR. OLLIFF: Correct.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: The social services aspect of your
division, there are a number of areas that we've
discussed. In fact, the discussion that we had earlier
about the Immokalee Urgent Care Center really comes under
your department.
MR. OLLIFF..
CHAIRMAN VOLPE:
Correct.
And I guess as well those issues
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as they relate to the homeless, that's an issue.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: That's your baby.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: That's within your division, some
of the other social services that are being provided, so
we don't -- I realize that you're new in that position
but it seems to me that we really need to have as a
community some sort of goals in terms of those social
services issues.
So I don't know what they are, Tom. I'm not sure
in terms of priorities, but if we've got a steep decline
for the balance of the fiscal year, I'm not happy with,
you know, just these project-oriented goals.
MR. OLLIFF: I'll tell you, there are two major
issues occurring on the social side of Public Services
Division. One is the proposed reorganization of RRS at
the state level and I know Ann as well as Martha have
been keeping very close tabs on that because the affect
on county is going to be enormous.
I think the general intent is to restructure HRS
and try and eliminate a lot of what they don't have to do
but on the other hand try and force down a lot of their
services down to the local government and probably going
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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to fall on county and city governments.
We are trying through the Florida Association of
Counties to stay as close to that as we can, but even
since I've taken over this job there's been four
different bills they've looked at, none of which even
closely resembles the previous bill.
So it's real hard to try and stay on top of where
they're heading with that one, but it's going to have an
impact on us.
MR. DORRILL: My note here says that you might like
to see some alternative goals for this division that
would include an inventory or accounting of social
service's indigent program.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Yeah, I think so. That's a fair
way of characterizing that.
On that bill, as I understand the bill talking
about restructuring HRS, I thought it was progressing
through the legislature.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: No. We're now in our
fifth or sixth rewrite. Every time they sit down to
rewrite it, they're just rewriting the whole thing.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, I for one am supportive of
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the idea of separating public health and putting public
health over here and then putting the environmental
issues someplace else other than in the area of HRS. I
mean, whether HRS should be talking about testing septic
tanks and water quality and those kinds of things, you
know. I'm not really upset about the fact that that may
get moved out of HRS. And I don't know enough about --
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Well, that was part of --
that was part of the governor's reorganization, but this
bill is touching on everything as to, you know, what
social service -- what social programs that the state
should be funding and which ones the county should be
funding and just all of that and not just what Dr.
Polkowski's talking about. That's just what the
governor's proposing to do. But this is a complete bill
reorganizing all of HRS and the funding mechanism for it.
But Martha and I will keep abreast of what's going on.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE ~ Utilities.
MR. ARNOLD: For the record, I'm Mike Arnold, the
Utilities Administrator.
Our three goals this year focus -- two of them at
least focus on our capital program and the third gets
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into some capital projects that are related to our
private sector utility acquisitions and our strategy
directed towards those acquisitions.
First goal is the East and South Naples Sewer
project. At long last we are in the homestretch, I
guess, of this project in that we will focus our goal to
complete and close out all remaining actions by the end
of this fiscal year.
This one most affects the county commission in
terms of the final public hearings that we will have to
have and schedule hopefully this summer. We are
targeting as early after June 1st as possible to go ahead
and hold the final public hearings on this project.
We have a window that's established by statute for
us to hold those hearings and the window first opens, if
you will, June 1st and ends on September 15th. That
window is established because of the need to get these on
the tax bills for being collected with ad valorem taxes.
We will be scheduling that hearing and sending out
notices of that hearing in the very near future and we
will also nail down a time frame and we recognize that we
always have a lot of things that are going to occur
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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during that and we're going to be attending the budget
workshops obviously and the commission meetings where we
can schedule them around your leave of absence or your
vacation during the summer.
We'll try to work around that, but I think it's our
recommendation and behooves us all to get those held and
conducted and completed as early on as we possibly can
because at the conclusion of the hearings we have a
considerable bit of work we have to go through in order
to get the roll finalized and a format that's acceptable
to the tax collector and get those on the tax bills.
I've enumerated here about six steps, though, in
which the hearing -- six steps we're going to go through
to complete this and close out the construction contract.
And for all practical purposes, those are complete.
All the pipe's in the ground and we're pretty much in the
wrap-up phases and final consideration and final paving
issues and things of that nature, so that'll be wrapped
up probably no later than March the 1st.
Still, approximately 4,000 of the-- roughly 7,000
notices to the property owners in this district to be
sent out yet. We have not sent many of those out for the
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last two months primarily because the area's not been
ready for the property owners to connect to. So you can
expect that we will be ready.
What we' re going to try to do within the next
several months here is to have a display type ad in the
Naples Daily News, a full page ad where we try to get as
much of the information regarding this project as
possible condensed and make it very understandable and
outlined in a full-page ad where it's maybe a pull-out
and they can take it with them and use that for the basis
for knowing how the assessments were arrived at and
what's the use of the impact fees and et cetera.
We're also suggesting, and Neil and I've talked
about this, too, that perhaps we try to hold some staff
conducted informational sessions prior to the formal
hearings that you have2
And in the interest of maybe defusing what might be
some very sensitive hearings and also to perhaps ferret
out, if you would, some issues out there we' re not aware
of, -- I mention that because it was a project one of our
neighboring counties to the north -- it was last year or
the year before whereby the residents opposed it, built
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243
up a real antagonism on unresolved restorations of
driveways, mailboxes and things of that like and just
came out in a flurry in the final public hearing and
staff and consultants and everybody was totally caught
off guard by it.
So it would be our intent to do a few of these
sessions in advance and maybe get a sounding board
somewhat and ferret those things out. We're prepared to
get some responses to those at the final hearings.
I would ask -- I was involved in looking for means
whereby we can dedicate these costs to property owners
and spread the impact fee payments out, reduce the
assessments, et cetera. If any of you have any further
thoughts on that, please share that with us so we can
look into them prior to getting into the hearings.
My concern there is as I said we need to conduct
the hearings quickly and be able to give us enough time
to staff and our consultants after those hearings are
completed to put all that information in the proper
format.
If you'll recall, our initial hearings on this drug
out about four months. And again, there are some
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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sensitive issues that may be brought up in those hearings
that may suggest that you need to hold further sessions
on that, and that's perfectly okay, but I would suggest
that we again try to condense, at least wrap those up to
the very least within the month of June.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Are the final assessments that are
contemplated by some been below what was said in the
preliminary assessment roll?
MR. ARNOLD: I'm hopeful. This has been a very
successful project from my perspective, particularly
given the complexity and the size of it, which is further
compounded by the issue of having the federal funding
involved in it.
It's -- I'm pretty much amazed myself again as
we're pretty much on schedule with all the contracts are
within or slightly over or below budget, so overall the
initial costs of the construction we told residents seem
to be holding pretty true. The one biggest mitigating
factor in the assessments, of course, was grants. And as
you know, we' re very successful in getting grants.
it?
COMMISSIONER HASSE: That was eight million, wasn't
Pretty close to eight million?
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MR. ARNOLD: For this project it was 6.8 million
for East and South Naples. Now, we've got another 11 or
12 million for the regional system plan and et cetera and
then, of course, we've got another 14 million dollars low
interest state loan funding also which helps fund the
assessment side, too.
So I kind of lost track. What was your question?
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, my question is really when
we get to the final assessments, the final assessment
rolls, if it's going to be less, the final assessment's
going to be not more than what was set forth in the
preliminary assessment roll would make the whole issue a
bit more palatable for the customer.
MR. ARNOLD: I kind of try to avoid getting nailed
down when I go out and talk to civic groups. I've always
said the upset figure is roughly $60 a front foot, but
it's going to vary across the various districts. I'm
hopeful it's going to be down around $50 a front foot or
maybe even less. And we' re in the process of doing those
final calculations right now.
Be reminded that we do have five districts and
there will be variations as to the cost per front foot
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES~ FL
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across the five districts, so be prepared for that.
Any other questions on that project?
North county regional water treatment facility's,
of course, our new membrane plant that we' re building and
in the companion facility that goes with that. There
really is no further significant action to be taken on
that project that would involve the county commission
unless we get into some change order issues and things of
that nature. The contracts are all proceeding.
We will be bringing to you additional awards in
terms of contract awards in terms of lines, our deep well
injection, our deep injection well in up there, et
cetera. But for all practical purposes, we're pretty
much over the hump on the public perception issues on
that. Our target date, of course, is to be on-line
sometime the early part of this coming next season in
'93.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: How far have you gone
physically with that, Mike?
MR. ARNOLD: Physically, the contractor is Just now
moving on the site for the plant.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: You haven't built the
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overpass, the canal?
MR. ARNOLD: Yes. We' re just wrapping that up
right now.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: You're wrapping it up?
Because I didn't see much there last week.
MR. ARNOLD: Well, there's not much to see.
There's some pipe culverts that have been put in there
and a temporary road that comes in.
MR. DORRILL: We had to build a construction
access. If you'll recall, you didn't want us using the
Estates for construction access purposes until we had
under a separate agreement with Mitchell & Stark
(phonetic). They came in and built the canal crossing
over the 951 canal and the alignment is straight off of
Vanderbilt Beach extension. But that's in and I guess
he's actually on the site or will be moving to the site
and have been doing some preliminary clearing and
grubbing activities the first thing.
MR. ARNOLD: If you'll recall, our provisional use
land use process that prohibited using Weber Boulevard,
the one paved access to that. I was sorely tempted to
let the contractor sneak some equipment in there this
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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week to get this project moving, but we remain sensitive
of the issues the residents brought up out there and the
position that we committed to.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Did we finally reach some sort of
agreement with the developers of the Old Florida Golf
Course there in terms of the shared expense of that?
MR. ARNOLD: Not really. As a matter of fact, I've
heard -- I don't see Frank here, but someone in his
department recently said that that project is gearing up
in terms of them --
COMMISSIONER ~ASSE:
MR. ARNOLD:
MR. DORRILL:
development plan.
They' re what?
Gearing up or heating up again.
They filed a preliminary site
They're either at the point where they
want to be with their pre-sales memberships or something,
but they -- the question there was participation in the
further construction of permanent Vanderbilt Beach
extension that would run past our property out to I guess
their property which is I want to say a half mile east of
where we're at, maybe --
MR. ARNOLD: More like a mile.
MR. DORRILL: It's that far?
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CHAIRMAN VOLPE: As part of the approval, I thought
that there was some cost sharing, they were going to
provide some -- there was a question about an easement
and other things.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: I thought so, too.
MR. ARNOLD: Well, there was and there wasn't. I
guess it was pretty much dependent on whether or not,
based on their readiness to proceed now.
Just between us here, I think they probably held
off until they've seen the county has had to make a
commitment out there in terms of getting that road built
at least out to our parcel and get the right-of-way
issues resolved at least on that section of the road.
Then, of course, they'll be coming after us. Now
the monkey is put on their back in terms of road
right-of-ways that you -- they promised -- as a matter of
fact, I think they said the time they actually have hand
in hand all the quit claims they need to perfect that
right-of-way all the way out to their parcel, and of
course they had to attempt also to build the roadway.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Was that culvert supposed to
be a permanent culvert? I thought it was supposed to be
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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pulled.
MR. ARNOLD:
semi-permanent.
COMMISSIONER HASSE:
culvert?
MR. ARNOLD:
the ultimate--
MR. DORRILL .'
a --
COMMISSIONER HASSE:
I would probably characterize it as
What is a semi-permanent
Well, it's probably not going to be
Ultimately I think you'd like to see
I thought we weren't going to
put anything over there and these things were supposed to
come out of there. That's what I thought.
MR. ARNOLD: Well, we're characterizing our usage
and the transportation director concurs with that,
characterizing that as just an access road.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: That's right.
MR. ARNOLD: It has lesser standards and not a
full-blown neighborhood or collector or whatever you want
to refer to it as because our traffic is not going to be
that great.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Now, when that reaches a
situation, they're going to have to put the box culvert
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in there, are they not?
MR. ARCHIBALD: We're going to catch up--
COMMISSIONER HASSE: What? You have to speak up,
George.
MR. ARCHIBALD: We're going to catch up with the
Old Florida Golf Course at about that time. If we can,
and we are able to make them responsible for making
that --
MR. DORRILL: What he's saying is the golf course
developer will be responsible for participating in a more
permanent roadway crossing. The crossing that is there
is semi-permanent to the extent that it's to be
construction access, but it's not planned to be--
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I thought that was part of the
approval of their Old Florida Golf Course development,
that that was one of the commitments that had been made.
Are you saying that it is not a commitment, it's an
issue to be addressed, George?
MR. ARCHIBALD: I believe the way the stipulation
finally fell out was written in such a fashion as to
require that if in fact they were the first ones that
needed it. Those kinds of problems we're seeing time and
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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time again.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE:
it.
So we' re the first ones that need
MR. ARCHIBALD: What Mike has done is gotten by
with the least expensive route and we're going to wait
our turn and our turn will come about and Old Florida
Golf will want a permanent roadway.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: We'll have our say later on.
MR. DORRILL: Our crossing is only considered to be
a temporary crossing for purposes of providing
construction access. They're precluded from using Weber
for their permanent access. They're going to need to
come straight back to Vanderbilt Beach is my
understanding of it, at the point in which we'll hit them
up to participate in the cost of a box culvert or some
type of bridge crossing at Vanderbilt Beach extension.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Okay.
MR. ARNOLD: Probably a pretty significant amount
geometrically and I guess in conjunction with the
lighting we get at that point also. There will be some
costs there.
MR. DORRILL:
Mike, I had just one question on this
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because I wasn't aware of this. We're still awaiting a
permit for the deep well injection, or they issued an
intent to permit?
MR. ARNOLD: We' re on the verge of getting that,
that whole project which was the deep well itself.
think we estimated 18 months and even up front we
estimated that at least 12 months of that be taken up by
the permitting process. That's a pretty lengthy process
and gets all the way up to the state level and goes
through a technical advisory committee at the state level
in Tallahassee. So the permitting process is the more
time consuming than the simple drilling and sinking of
the well.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Yeah, but suppose these people
get up on their high horses and say no deep well
injection?
MR. ARNOLD: I think we're beyond that point. I
think we're at a point where there's just some little, I
don't know, administrative items with them. But the
basic permit hurdle's been overcome. And that's
basically trying to prove there's no detrimental effect,
so
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MR. DORRILL: And we' re --
COMMISSIONER HASSE: You're sure of it then?
MR. ARNOLD: Well, as sure as you are about those
things.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Well, that's what I'm just
saying. Where are you going to move to?
MR. ARNOLD: Pardon me?
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Where are you going to move to
if it don't come to a--
MR. ARNOLD: Into the water plant.
MR. DORRILL .. Pinellas County.
MR. ARNOLD: Any other questions on that
particular -- we have the plant to build and we have the
deep well to put in and also we have the wellfield
expansion ongoing and we've got that broke into phases
and having difficulty of getting easements out there. We
have the wells half in and another half to be put in, and
the pipeline connections with regard to the raw water --
COMMISSIONER HASSE: You've got the pumping
stations all in place?
MR. ARNOLD: For the most part, yes. Our raw water
station was put out there last year as you know, and
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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that's all done and completed and that's patched in to
serve those plants.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE: Mike, before you get to goal
three, you don't have any goal-related to the new waste
water treatment, the expansion of the waste water
treatment plant up in North Naples?
MR. ARNOLD: No. And again, being constrained here
I guess to three areas and as Tom Olliff said, these are
the things that are on the front burner here for the
upcoming fiscal year.
The plant, you know, we Just completed an expansion
up there and we do have an engineer on board already and
has been awarded an engineering contract for the next
expansion. So in my mind that's moving right now and
there are issues associated with that design that need to
come to your attention we would certainly bring those to
you, but in my mind no issues are associated with that
project that would warrant discussion here as a top goal.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Okay.
MR. ARNOLD: Finally, goal three here relates to an
overall subject, that is the private sector utility
issues and what actions we are initiating and taking in
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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regard to our stated goal here regionalizing water and
sewer service in the county and we're well along with
some of these.
Some of them are in the early stages and some
totally undecided or we don't have any clear direction
right now from the county commission of where to go with
some of these.
I've enumerated I guess the five or six here that
we are moving ahead on. The Pelican Bay system obviously
their plan of dissolution, et cetera, we are for all
practical purposes operating that utility and we need to
do some final things during the budgeting process this
year to make more formalized arrangements.
We do have one key thing to accomplish this year
and that's refunding or restructuring of some of that
debt up there, and we will be bringing that to you
shortly for your consideration in conjunction with our
findings and discussions in terms of bonding and et
So that's the key issue, I think, with Pelican
cetera.
Bay.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: At last week's board meeting we
talked about maintaining a presence or maybe it was at
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Wednesday evening's meeting we were talking about Mr.
Ward and his responsibilities vis-a-vis that division.
You have people who are actually -- the people who are
actually -- the field crew there, are they working under
your division?
MR. ARNOLD:
Indirectly. Mr. Ward is still up
there as the figurehead, so to speak. We run our
construction crew through him or in lieu of that we do
have people on site that give specific day-to-day
instructions to those field crews.
MR. DORRILL: The plan, though, is that the utility
side of the district will move over at such time that the
permanent facilities are in place and that they will then
be regional utility employees and what remains then will
be the district employees responsible for street lighting
and landscaping.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Drainage?
MR. DORRILL: And their storm water will remain as
part of the district, not part of utilities.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, that's why the discussion on
Wednesday I sensed that Wayne Young was talking primarily
about fertilizers and he was talking about --
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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MR. DORRILL: Yeah. I think they recognize that
our plan from the beginning on this thing was to
incorporate the utility aspects of the district into the
regional water and sewer system and they haven't had any
problems in that regard.
MR. ARNOLD: As a matter of fact, some of the prior
board members have come up to me and said on several
occasions that things seemed to be working out well up
there.
MR. DORRILL: And it's even gotten down to the
point where they had sort of an expensive color scheme
and whatnot on their trucks that they had up there. And
recently we've been converting some of the trucks as
they're coming through our repair facilities and we've
painted them county white and put the county logo on the
side of the vehicles because they had sort of a cream or
metallic paint job on some of their vehicles and so as
they' re coming through we' re having them converted over
so that they resemble county fleet and equipment and
having them properly marked that way.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: When is it going to be
completely separate from us; the sewer system I'm
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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speaking of now.
MR. ARNOLD: The question is when are we going to
be fully incorporated. The overall promise up there was
at some point in time that sewer plant will be taken out.
Our target date for that, which is kind of floating, will
probably be a '95 time frame.
very old facility up there.
totally demolish it.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE:
Obviously that's not a
You don't want to go in and
Well, if you're talking about
refunding the bonds, you're not going to do it by 1995.
MR. ARNOLD: I'm sorry?
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, you just mentioned, you were
talking about refunding the bonds for the Pelican Bay
Improvement District, what was the Pelican Bay
Improvement District.
MR. ARNOLD: You're saying the bonds are --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE:
I mean --
MR. ARNOLD:
If they're part of the refunding,
They're there for the construction.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Yeah. They're there for the
construction of those capital facilities there. It
doesn't seem to me that you can do it within 1995.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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You're talking about another 10 or 15 years.
MR. ARNOLD: That might not be true. I can't
recall if that debt relates to specifically the plant or
outstanding utility debt that relates to the pump station
and pipelines and et cetera. I don't have the details.
MR. DORRILL: The finance committee, though, is
looking at that because I asked Mike and also Mr.
Yonkosky to put PBID, former PBID debt refunding on an
upcoming meeting and have that evaluated against whatever
it was that they built or used the proceeds of the bonds
for.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE .. Okay.
MR. ARNOLD: I don't want to drag it out here, but
just to quick run down and to give you an answer to your
question, the plant is still treating sewage up there.
However, the overflow, the access flow will be billed
directly to the county or North Naples plant right now.
The only component that remains to be done is the
completion of the one missing leg of the effluent line
which reclaims the water back to Pelican Bay, and that's
under contract right now, that construction.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.. As long as we're talking about
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
'that area of the county,' we' re talking about a new water
line that's being installed down on Carica.
MR. ARNOLD.. Yes. There's a Carica new storage
tank and repump station that's under construction right
now°
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I understand that. And there's an
item on tomorrow's agenda having to do with the
supplemental agreement on the Carica engineering
cont r act.
MR. ARNOLD: Yes. There's an agreement to the
engineering contract which covers both the design and
construction and we recommend --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: But there is a water line now.
There's a vate~ line that's goin~l to curt through Pine
Ridge out to I think Vanderbilt Beach Road?
MR. ARNOLD: We need to get another main or --
MR. DORRILL: There's one there now. We' re going
to have some parallel main that will have to be done in
conJ unction.
MR. ARNOLD.' That comes out of Carica and they hook
up and takes them to Pavillion Shopping Center and that's
basically where we tie into the other feeder lines that
· ' OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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run to the north end of the county and we're
contemplating getting some other feed lines and maybe --
CHAIRMAN V0LPE= Well, in my conversations with
Fred Fletcher (phonetic), I thought that was contemplated
and the work was going to begin shortly for that new
water line. And there's going to be a three-inch -- I
mean, a big one, a 36-inch water line.
MR. ARNOLD: It's not imminent. I don't think we
have -- I know we don't have any designs on it or
anything of that nature. And we -- I don't think -- you
might know. We also had in inquiries from residents of
Pine Ridge in terms of doing water assessment projects up
there, so there may be an opportunity to combine --
C~AIRMAN VOLPE= Well, that comes up in that
context because I thought Fred had indicated that there
were a certain number of people within the Pine Ridge
subdivision who may be able to connect up to the county
water if you ran a four-inch water line parallel to this
new water line that I thought was going to run down
Carica.
MR. ARNOLD: We make a practice of not allowing
connection directly to a transmitter.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLESt FL 33962
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CHAIRMAN VOLPE: But that discussion seemed to me
that it wasn't -- it was something in the next six to
eight months.
MR. DORRILLI I don't think so, but we can check
and see what the water management plan calls for.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Four-inch main?
MR. DORRILL: For domestic purposes, yeah.
MR. ARNOLD: What's your particular concern with
that?
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, we're Just talking about
Pelican Bay and we've got a transmission line that runs
through Pine Ridge but they don't have sewer, they don't
want sewer within the Pine Ridge Subdivision.
MR. DORRILL: They can't afford it.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: But they do want water and there
are now -- as I understand it, there are water lines on
all sides of the Pine Ridge Subdivision, along Pine Ridge
Road, along Goodlette-Frank Road. There's one along
Hickory and there's one along U.S. 41 and now we've got
one that I thought was being proposed to run from U.S. 41
to Goodlette or to Carica, along Carica Road.
So I was thinking about as part of our, you know,
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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talking about providing water service to that partic~lar
area of our community, whether that's one of the goals
that we should be trying to address.
MR. ARNOLD: Yes and no because that's an area that
doesn't currently have or has very little county provided
water lines up there.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE= Water quality is a real problem in
that area.
MR. DORRILL~ It is. Within that community not
only do they have increasingly high chloride levels but
there are some areas there where I call it the iron
water, whether it's that or whatever's in the water.
It's worse in Pine Ridge than it even is in Golden Gate
in some instances. And water quality in the shallow
wells that are there have been a problem for years.
For what it's worth, I think I'm scheduled to speak
at the next District 2 association meeting and that might
be a good thing for me to touch is the extent to which or
whether the Pine Ridge community is interested in some
type of taxing district or special assessment project to
provide water. They don't have any interest in sewer,
though.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I understand that. I think there
is a certain level of interest for the water and I Just
think in terms of what we're trying to provide to the
community for that particular area --
MR. ARNOLD= As you might recall, I attended a
civic association meeting with that group up there just
last year and we put together preliminary costs and took
a little map up there and et cetera. The group was real
divided on this at that time, and in fact the nays had it
over the ayes at that point in time. Now maybe there's
more declining water quality up there and maybe that's
pushing the ayes over the nays now.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE .. Okay.
MR. DORRILL.. Okay. Touch on your last one.
MR. ARNOLD: Off Pelican Bay, North Naples
Utilities obviously we've had that before you and had
discussions with the county commission previously and I
don't think I need to expand on that anymore.
I will say that we've still got the completion of
the connection is targeted to be completed by July 1st.
Wyndemere, that's in the private sector system that
we've recently taken over the sewer service on and we
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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have under -- close to getting under contract a water
main to be constructed on Livingston Road that will come
down from Pine Ridge that will give us the water
connection and we'll complete the transition and total
transition of Wyndemere, both water and sewer, to the
county system.
We're also getting close on the Vineyards. There
was one remaining developer contribution or developer
impacting credit agreement that we are trying to finalize
in that area that will complete the last segment from
basically Airport Road that ties into the Vineyards, and
that will trigger and be out of any prior agreements we
have with them and then we would have them on sewer
service also. We provide the water but we don't provide
the sewer service right now. So that will probably be
done and at least trigger that connection by August 1st
of this year.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: So does this sewer come off of
Vanderbilt Beach Road extension; is that where it comes
up?
MR. ARNOLD: The sewer line comes across--yes.
MR. DORRILL: That's where it will be. I don't
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTYw NAPLESw FL
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267
think that it's there now.
east side of Airport Road.
Vanderbilt Beach.
MR. ARNOLD:
The fourth main runs up the
I don't know that it runs out
We've got it up Airport to basically
Orange Blossom Drive, I think about 1500 feet south of
Vineyards. We also have a developer agreement again and
we presented that scenario to you sometime back and
another developer is going to continue to build that all
the way out to the Livingston Road and that will trigger
the Vineyards. I think they have the remainder. So
those dominoes are going to start falling here pretty
shortly.
This also gets into, again, the double impact fees
as someone in the community brought that to our attention
in terms of the fairness of that or not. That probably
goes to some overall comments that we'll hear in regard
to these private sector utilities.
You obviously know we're in the Naples Sewer
Company/Don Arnold litigation, and as a matter of fact
you discussed this I'm sure at your last or prior to that
board meeting. That's regarding the MSTU project up in
Naples Production Park. That hearing is scheduled for
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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Thursday, I believe, and we're posturing ourselves and
preparing ourselves for that hearing.
Again, it's the consensus, I guess, of our legal
counselors right now that we'll win that action in terms
of questioning our ability to take over that utility.
COMMISSIONER HASSE.. Is there a figure that you're
looking at there?
MR. ARNOLD-. Pardon?
COMMISSIONER HASSE: How much?
MR. ARNOLD: The transition agreement or I want to
call these purchase agreements. The agreement we brought
to you last week was $800,000 to buy out and close out
this utility lock, stock and barrel.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: That's on our agenda for tomorrow
as well and there's -- there's been some further analysis
of the current financial status?
MR. ARNOLD: Yeah, with a little finer review, if
you will, of the costs and also come back with some
feelings of where this action's going to go.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: That's what you're
recommending, 800,000.
MR. ARNOLD: Well, I think it's my opinion shared
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
269
with my staff and the County Attorney's Office and
outside counsel if we go through the full course of
litigation on this that we will spend $800,000 that we've
already recommended to you as the purchase.
This goes to an issue that, you know, we do indeed
need to look at those utilities in terms of litigation
cost avoidance. I mean, that's a factor that we always
entertain a factor into the cost of the utilities.
we'd also like to be able to choose our opponent
and choose our battle ground, so to speak. Some of these
issues the county attorney informed me that they're not
all that cut and dry and we feel pretty comfortable that
our position is solid on this issue but there's always
the uncertainty when you get into court.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: You started out with twice
that, though.
MR. ARNOLD: Yes. He's still insistent that
utility's worth a couple millions dollar up there. So
we're far away below that figure.
Nothing else has happened with the Rookery Bay
Utility. That's located on the East Trail and a little
further out but they've also filed a suit on the same
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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issues. So we'll continue to explore settlement options
and other issues as that continues.
Regarding the two large, I guess, remaining private
utilities that's Avatar/Golden Gate and also the Marco
Island system, we have done a couple of preliminary
studies, analyses of these for you and presented those to
you.
We don't feel comfortable nor do we think you do as
to what direction to take on those yet. I think we have
characterized to you the Golden Gate utilities probably
being very doable from a financial standpoint and perhaps
doable with any rate impact out there. Of course as you
know, there's your basic notice and general rate increase
right now that's--
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Well, --
MR. ARNOLD.. That's doable and we probably need to
get back to you and hatch out some final issues and make
a decision one way or the other on that one.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Well, I mean, you don't have
any figures, do you?
MR. ARNOLD: We had figures that we presented in
our preliminary report. I'm drawing a blank right now as
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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to what the total dollar amount we came up with.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE~ I think like 15 million dollars,
10 or 15 million dollars.
MR. ARNOLD= Ten was sticking in my mind, but I
think it was seven, water and seven, sewer~ total of
fifteen or --
COMMISSIONER HASSE= Something like that, but you
should get something concrete together on that, concrete
as you can get it, because I got news for you: When this
thing starts hitting the fan in regard to the increase of
their fees, boy, you're going to hear that out there.
They've got a meeting I think in another week or so
out at the community center. I think I got to go to
California at that time so I don't hear it.
guess particularly in the Golden Gate utilities, is if we
go in there and buy it out and we take it over and we run
it, then it's going to be coming up on us to start
running water and sewer lines down the streets that don't
currently have those.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: That' s correct.
MR. ARNOLD: That's exactly what we're going to do
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272
with the Vineyards out in East Naples project and
although the headache that is for both you and us because
therets some real costs associated with that.
MR. DORRILL: Well, that's been the problem that
that utility has had is they don~t have the wherewithal
to put in and expand in particular their sewer, --
COMMISSIONER HASSE~ I know that.
MR. DORRILL: -- and the balance of Golden Gate
City is not sewer outside of what I call old Golden Gate,
which is that area up in the northeast corner.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Well, they cantt insist on it,
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Max and I would like to
take the system over before we retire.
MR. DORRILL: Wet re working on it.
COMMISSIONER HASSE= We~d like to do what?
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT~ You and Itd like to take
the system over before we retire. Wetve been talking
about it now for eight years.
MR. DORRILL.. Conversely, I don~t know that we'll
ever get to the point where we can afford to take over
the --
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTYt NAPLESt FL
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273
COMMISSIONER HASSE ~ Marco.
MR. DORRILL~ -- utilities on Marco, but that's
still in the analysis phase.
utility on Marco.
COMMISSIONER HASSE ~
let's go on.
MR. DORRILL:
MR. ARNOLD:
That's an awfully expensive
Well, seeing Dick isn't here,
Okay.
I guess that's it.
Overall, this
issue's with regards to or relates to Just some clear
direction on our overall strategy or continued support of
what we've been working towards, what we've been taking
on and taking over as we go along and that's been our
focus and we're intending to do that aggressively.
Aside of dealing with these issues, the issues of
private sectors, I will say we put an extreme amount of
time and energy and effort into those, but they aren't
easily accomplished. With staff time sometimes we can
ill afford to give that up.
So that's why I think it's important for us to get
some better feeling from you that we're on the right
track and we can move ahead with the program as a whole
or if you wanted to deal with the utilities on a
33962
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
274
' segregated basis as I've started to sense a little bit of
that here and we'll be seeking clarification on that.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Other than Pine Ridge, is there
any area of our community that's within our service area
that we're not currently scheduled to bring water or
sewer to within our service area, within the county
service area?
MR. ARNOLD: None other than the Estates. That
area of the Estates that lies within the urban area
boundaries of the Comprehensive Plan we do not have plans
to provide water or sewer service to; however, should
they request the assessment project methodology, then we
will certainly entertain that.
COMMISSIONER HASSE.' Are we talking Wyndemere area
and through there?
MR. ARNOLD: Yes, wraps around Wyndemere and
through the north end of Golden Gate City and the rural
Estates as we'd classify them. Because of the costs we
don't think that's a possibility and those aren't
targeted and for the other reason, of course, those are
large lots and the septic systems can function and do
work very well on those large acreage tracks as opposed
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to a 50 by 90 foot lot down in East Naples.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: We've got water up in Bonita
Shores, Little Hickory?
MR. DORRILL: Um-hum. Throughout.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Throughout. So we just --
MR. DORRILL: Sewer, also.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.. Pine Ridge is the only area other
than Golden Gate Estates?
MR. ARNOLD: Yeah. There may be pockets here and
there, but that's the big area.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Okay.
MR. ARCHIBALD'. For the record, George Archibald,
Transportation Services.
I've got some, very briefly some external and some
internal challenges but in each case we're dealing with
the same issue of funding, funding, funding.
The first funding concern deals with our capital
program. What the AUIR has indicated to us is our
shortfall and it's been well publicized. Not only have
we gone ahead and tried to address our capital shortfall
by reducing our capital improvements but obviously trying
to pump up impact fees. That effort is still underway,
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and for the board"s information, wetve got a series of
workshops and meetings set up.
The first workshop will be the 26th of this month.
The evening workshop will be handled by the CAC, the
citizents advisory committee of the MPO. That meeting
will be followed by an afternoon meeting of the 27th.
That will be followed by a meeting of the following
evening of the CCPC taking a look at the ordinance thatts
being prepared~ and that in turn will be followed by a
public hearing before the board March the 10th.
so in a relatively short time frame --
COMMISSIONER HASSE= You~ re going to send us notice
of these things? I don~t have them.
MR. ARCHIBALDt Yes, we can confirm that in
writing.
There will be roughly four meetings between now and
March the 10th, the meeting wherein wetll make attempts
to explain to the people the process that we~ve gone
through and information that wetve assimilated, the
systemts'approach to taking a look at impact fees and
obviously some of DCA~s new provisions in this proposed
rule that may give us a larger window to look at.
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To the board members that are here, my approach
will be again to recommend the larger of the fees but to
explain how we developed the two fees; one fee on the 70
percent saturation, the other fee on 100 percent
saturation and a third fee which will be a discount fee.
Typically most impact fee ordinances state-wide you have
a discount provision.
The superseding ordinance which we Just got through
drafting up, very similar to what we have in place now
except for the affordable housing section will have a
section of being able to adjust the fees if any revenues
come into play.
Obviously revenues either in gas tax or sales tax
or ad valorem or assessment come into play. All of those
have a tendency to reduce the impact fee by changing the
credit side.
But anyway, to make a long story short, in the next
two weeks there will be a series of meetings where we'll
attempt to go over with as many people that will listen
to the facts and figures.
While we' re here, the board members should also be
aware of the opposition building up relative to the
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higher fee. And what we're looking at to try and correct
that may be an assessment fee approach, an assessment fee
in which we may accept the lower of the two fees for a
period of time and then increase that to the higher fee
or to the higher fee discount within a given period of
time and all of that still being contingent upon us
coming in with a financing plan that still meets the
intent of the AUIR on concurrency.
The concurrency issue may be met in ten years
rather than five, but in fact I would expect that the
plan that we would be recommending to the board would
have an element of stepping fees up, possibly starting
off with a lower fee and having a discount fee.
Those were some of the elements that were discussed
at the last meeting in which we brought before the board,
and that isn't going to address the complaints and
concerns of people.
Staff has not gone on record yet, has not made a
big to-do about our strongest position, which is one that
we feel we can support whichever fee the board chooses
and recognize that the board can choose any of the nunnber
of fees. That will be important that the board directs
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staff to create another fee schedule. But again', to make
a long story short, I think what you'll see is a fee that
will have a step approach.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: We're going to be fixing a date
tomorrow for the hearing on our amendments to our Growth
Management Plan. And that's the one where we have got
the CIE element which is funded by a county-wide special
assessment district. I don't know what the staff has
been doing since that matter was brought before the board
back in, I think, October, but presumably you'll come up
with or you will have some alternatives that we'll be
able to consider as a part of that amendment.
MR. DORRILL~ At the hearing we will because of our
concern that the assessment method is too expensive to
perform the annual administrative costs, certify the
roll. And by the time of the hearing we're going to have
to show you what the alternatives are and they're not
going to be very good.
off.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: But that hearing is not too far
I think that's a fair statement. You're talking
March 10th, and, you know, that's all going to come
together about the same time.
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COMMISSIONER HASSE= You're talking 75 million over
5 years is what you' re looking at?
MR. ARCHIBALD= That's what the AUIR calls for. As
you know, we've scaled the expenditure size down and
increased the gasoline tax at the state road site so our
shortfall we're looking for is more than that. That's
based upon the data that's in that report that was
submitted to the board and also part of our impact fee
analysis.
I'll be the first one to admit we're having a
difficult time explaining to people the system approach
and system concept. Even traffic engineers have a hard
time of transferring their historic analysis approach
from the road corridor to a system, but I still feel and
DCA somewhat confirms it by proposed legislation.
The system approach which makes so much more sense
and all of the rules that we've seen today and all of the
Growth Management plans you've seen to date relative to
the level of service on a road segment do not make a lot
of sense when you take a look at it and compare it with
the system approach.
I'll give a very good example of one. There's no
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use to us going out and six laning Bayshore Drive when
the service level changes as a result of one car, and it
may not ever change and it may not ever grow beyond that.
So, when you run into artificial problems such as
that from a concurrency standpoint, the systems approach
takes into consideration how the entire system is
operating makes much more sense than just isolating each
individual road segment out and looking at how it
operates and not considering how it measures with the
rest of the system.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: This is outside of transportation,
but it does relate to our transportation network. We
should be hearing from DCA on Sewell Corkran's challenge
to our Growth Management Plan within a fairly short
period of time I'm told, probably within 30 to 45 days.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: That should have a lot to do
with this.
MR. DORRILL.' It should. My information was a
little different than that. Since you-- response,
because you asked me that two weeks ago at our meeting on
Thursday. And the hearing officer had indicated that
because of his backlog of cases that it could be as long
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as six months before he would render his proposed order,
if that's the correct term, hut I sent you a note Friday.
It's probably in your mail.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I thought he had to render a
decision within a certain number of days after the
proposed briefs were submitted.
MR. DORRILL: That's one indication that I have.
If that's incorrect, I'll leave it to you to tell me that
or that that's not consistent, hut we sent you a note on
that Friday.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Okay.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: In the case that this is
successful, what happens to the whole thing?
MR. ARCHIBALD: I think that will give more
credence to exactly what we're doing.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: That's what I'm saying.
That'll take us a little off the fire, won't it?
MR. DORRILL: And into the incinerator.
COMMISSIONER HASSE.' Well, maybe so. Maybe so, but
that's according to how you look at it.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: At some point we ought to have
someone from your staff, Neil, kind of update us. I'm
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not sure at what point in time, just what the
implications involved there are in terms of the
transportation network and whether it's through Ken
Cuyler's office or through Bob Blanchard because that
could have some significant implications and it will give
credence to what I think we' re trying to do in terms of a
system line approach but it may also cause us to do some
things a lot more quickly than we had anticipated and --
COMMISSIONER ~ASSE: I don't want to do it.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Well, --
MR. DORRILL: I've got that.
move us onto the next one about your access management
poli cy.
MR. ARCHIBALD.. If I can while I'm on funding, I
Just wanted the board to know from an operational
standpoint we have a lot of needs that aren't being
served by simply gas tax; needs relative to some major
bridge repairs that are needed out there that don't
present a hazard of any kind but things that begin to
build up and we've got an infrastructure out there over
three thousand lane miles worth over a billion dollars
that we've got to maintain from not only the standpoint
George, why don't you
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of keeping it properly repaired and maintenance but
there's a lot of things we can do to make our road system
more efficient and a lot of things we can do to make our
road system safer. And right now funding is a
constraint.
So not only do we have bridge repairs out there, a
lot of traffic improvements, the loop systems we've
talked about putting in and installing that may need
funding. There is a series of safety equipment,
quantities of improvements, roadway lighting improvements
and some of those, particularly those on state roads
we're going after state grants to implement those.
On the county road system I think I need the board
members to know there are a lot of needs out there that
relate to the maintenance of that infrastructure and most
of those we've been handling through our road and bridge
operation, but there's a few of them out there that are
going to be brought back to the board as separate items
to be addressed as a safety issue or because part of our
infrastructure we have to do something about.
MR. DORRILL: Give us an example.
MR. ARCHIBALD.' A very good example is the work
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system to the Marco bridge is Just about to fall off the
bridge.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: The what?
MR. ARCHIBALD: All of the piling that support--
the columns that support the bridge. The entire work
system that goes around the bridge itself.
Now, it doesn't affect the integrity of the bridge,
but it doesn't meet Coast Guard requirements for having a
fender system on the bridge and lights and so on and so
forth. So that's an item-- that entire system, what
hasn't fallen into the Marco River already is about to.
It's something that's going to be very, very expensive to
design and replace.
There's roads out there that we would like to put
guardrails on for a safety standpoint. There's some road
sections out there that need lighting because we have a
lot of pedestrians that use it. You all know we have a
number of roads that need signal systems and what we call
close looped together to work and function more
efficiently. And those items we' re working at behind the
scenes, but they're starting to build up and you'll see
the staff try to implement those from time to time.
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In addition, we've got a lot of roads out there in
the rural area of the county that need to be widened.
Some of those programs are a five-year time frame, such
as having the money.
C~AIRMAN VOLPE~ Do you have a number for all this
maintenance program that the state is --
COMMISSIONER HASSE: You mean the amount?
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Dollar amount.
MR. ARCHIBALD= Taking a look, we're --
COMMISSIONER RASSE: I'd rather he didn't.
MR. ARCHIBALD: -- talking somewhere in the
neighborhood of a million dollars a year to be able to
address that.
MR. DORRILL: That's his item No. 3. He sort of
skipped ahead to three and he's saying there may be
upwards of a million dollars a year worth of, you know,
establishing a sinking fund for some of these longer term
bridge replacements, intersection improvements, safety
improvements being not only signals but streetlights,
guardrails. I know we got a call in our office the other
day about our long-term program to put a guardrail along
the length of Airport Road. And I told the lady we don't
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have a long-term program to put guardrails along any
county road where there's an adjoining canal unless the
proximity or the distance between the road and the canal
Just warrants it from a state design standard
perspective.
MR. ARCHIBALD: There' s about -- we' re spending
about $250,000 this year on road resurfacing and road
widening. So there's already some money in the capital
side. We're allocating towards those. But the point is
that there could be some bigger dollars spent that would
produce some big efficiencies in capacity and safety.
Those are things that are difficult for the
taxpayers to put a dollar on, but they're important when
you look at, particularly look at capacity. And I'll
probably use that to get into the third item, the last
item and that is the transportation issues that relate to
land use and the importance of that; the importance for
not only ordinances such as access management but what
that relates to in dollars.
We' re looking at about a minimum of five million
dollars a year that we can go after. And when I say five
million dollars a year, I mean developer commitments.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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Every time we approve a land use action of one kind or
another, we do a fair job of trying to identify what
their share is from a site specific nature.
And I think the county has shown some foresight in
trying to get those commitments because the fact we have
a road system out there that network roads and has been
identified and people recognize that and people are
willing to make donations of rights-of-way.
What I'm saying is not only under access management
but under our Land Development Code is that you're going
to see the staff get much much more specific and the
reason being is that each time we ask for something, the
developer has to pay for that. Re's going to need some
way to get reimbursed or some kind of credit.
The new impact fee ordinance that supersedes the
old ordinance has provisions just like that. We take
away his right-of-way as a commitment that he makes and
then he gets credit for that right-of-way back. And
every time those relationships occur, and they do occur
every time you approve regulations, you have to end up
establishing another policy or another rule to get that
commitment back and not have to end up paying for it.
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And that commitment can easily mean over five million
dollars a year to the county in terms of not only
rights-of-way that are due to the county but also in
terms of capacity improvements.
So all of those things that we're going to be
requesting from developers, the staff has to be more
precise in addressing those so that everybody realizes
that some of those are going to be with credits and some
of those are going to be without credits. We're going to
do the best Job we can of better identifying those in the
agreements that we ask developers to sign when they have
a PUD or rezone.
And actually, we need to take it one step further.
We actually need in our ULDC to have some verbiage as to
how staff is going to look at that and how staff is going
to be asking for commitments and what commitments will be
subject to credit and which commitments by developers
will not be subject to credits.
And because there's such a large dollar to be
gained by the county, I think we need to pursue that in
addition to pursuing access management and so if your
staff is -- you'll see us pursuing that more and more.
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Even from the standpoint of putting provisions into our
new access management rule, that not only assures we
maintain capacity, not only assures that we end up
controlling median openings and require them to have all
turn lanes but actually one step further.
We want to know that we can control capacity of our
road system. We also want to make sure that developers
can only develop to the extent that they have driveway
capacity. So we're going to be taking access management
one step further on these and making sure the development
provides safe access but also access that has a capacity
that relates to the traffic that development will
generate.
And we've been doing that for years, but I think we
need to do it a little more precisely than we've done in
the past. And typically what we' re having are people in
the Transportation Division working very closely with
people in Development Services to make sure that we can
include that kind of language or those kinds of
commitments and requirements and any land use changes
that come before the board or before the CCPC.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: I thought you were looking at
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that all the time with development people and so on.
MR. DORRILL.. We are, but what he's saying is that
we're going to need and we should have a more defined
policy that's part of the Land Development Code.
A good example would be the new Home Depot on Pine
Ridge Road. We required them to do a number of things in
terms of decel lane and shared access with the new space
and widening of that side street and how you get in and
out of their internal driveways.
They even have some obligations to do a traffic
study in conjunction with the land owner behind them that
will determine when and how we should signalize that
intersection, how it should relate to this traffic light
at Pine Ridge and Airport, and Pine Ridge and Forest
Lakes Boulevard and make that their obligation.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Aren't we doing that?
MR. DORRILL: We are, but George is Just saying
that this is one of the goals that we actually need to
refine those policies in our Land Development Code and
make that more of a sophisticated stipulation.
MR. ARCHIBALD~ You're going to see staff and let's
take for example, two recent approvals at the
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intersection of Pine Ridge and Airport. Everybody agreed
to giving exactly what the county needed there. The only
thing we didn't have in there was a time frame and we'll
see staff being a little more precise in not only making
requirements but tying it down to the form it's to be
dedicated in and the time frame for the commitment to
occur.
Those are the kinds of stipulations that we haven't
been real precise on because we've had such good
cooperation from the development community for so many
years. Now the development community feels like their
back is up against the wall from a cost standpoint and
they're looking at ways to get around those commitments
or get paid for them or get credits for them.
So we have to respond to that by dotting our i's
and crossing our t's when it comes to stipulation for
development commitment.
COMMISSIONER HASSEz I was hoping you were doing
those things, but--
MR. ARCHIBALD: We are.
COMMISSIONER HASSE.- -- if we weren't strict enough
on them, we'd better start doing it in a big hurry
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because when I see these figures, they frighten me and I
look at the Grey Oaks and other places like that and I
worry about them, if you want to know the truth. We've
got developments on every corner up along Airport Road
there.
MR. ARCHIBALD.. I should also note from a good side
that we are getting a lot of new type commitments from
developers that go even further and are even more
important than right-of-way, and that is environmental
mitigations and use of private developments' rear water
management system for the road water management system.
Those kinds of commitments don't appear like much but
from a dollar standpoint they're worth big, big dollars.
So, we' re getting a lot more in the way of
commitments and we' re asking for a lot more. And again,
I think because of the represented dollars it would be
more important for your staff to qualify and quantify
these commitments even more so than we have in the past.
MR. DORRILL.. Okay.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: George, other than the three goals
here, I'm reminded about some sort of a commitment to
airports. I don't know whether that's a goal that's
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before us in 1991/'92.
MR. ARCHIBALD: It is. It didn't make the list,
but I think it's about fifth on the list.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.- What' s fourth?
MR. ARCHIBALD.- Fourth has to do with some -- not
access management but regulations relative to interfacing
communities with the commitments we make.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.. So you're saying the. airport then
is on your internally --
MR. ARCHIBALD.' Yes.
MR. DORRILL.' And we track that as what we call a
short-term goal or project assignment in my office, and
I'm scheduled to be in Tallahassee in two weeks to try
and meet with the new DNR executive director about the
Marco Airport in particular; and in fact, we continue to
operate the facility without a lease and what are their
desires and that type of thing.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE~ I was thinking of Marco and, of
course, Immokalee and Everglades City and so on.
MR. DORRILL: Okay. Moving to the courts.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: They've been waiting all day long.
MR. BRIGHAM: It's very important that I wait all
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day long because in 18 to 24 months some of these issues
you've talked about here will end up in the courts.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE:
department.
COMMISSIONER HASSE:
Hopefully not the probation
Don't be so damned optimistic.
MR. BRIGHAM: In the last couple weeks when I
talked about goals with the Judiciary, we kind of came up
with three on our own for the Judiciary and then the one
thing I'll pass out, the ones in your booklets are the
ones for the county-funded departments. And they're
distinct in terms of funding, emphasis and who controls
what.
For the Judges, as their civil case loads go up and
the criminal case loads have fallen flat, their number
one goal is timely judicial service. Any attorney here
would know that it's very difficult to get ahold of the
judge's calendar at the present time the way things are
operating. And so they're doing things to increase court
dates and back trials.
Number two for the judges is some sort of revenue
enhancement and control of expenses. The Judges would
like to see some kind of user fees introduced for the
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services that are provided by the county.
For instance, with the Guardian Ad Litem program
that we're allowed by statute now to introduce a user fee
and so that's just one of those areas that the judges
would like to see something started.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: That's a volunteer program, isn't
it?
MR. BRIGHAM: The volunteers do a lot of the
casework but the county supplies the coordinator and at
nearly 30,000 plus benefits and office space and it's
growing and growing. So in a sense it's a volunteer
program, but we do have a lot of money invested in it.
So those are the kinds of things, and also the
judges would like to see something done about fine
collection and that's a problem to be worked out not only
with the probation department but more importantly with
the clerk's office.
COMMISSIONER HASSE.. Isn't that being done now?
MR. BRIGHAM.' They' re trying. They' re trying.
Continued discussions.
For the county-funded departments, one of my themes
during my first six months with the county-funded
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departments is that we can't do things the way we always
did them.
Probation case loads have gone up to such a load
that traditional probation just doesn't work anymore. We
need to examine and look and develop other ways of doing
things. And one on the scale would be intensive
probation, is on page two of there, and the other scale
and simple probation we have to, for the pesky little
stuff, come up with a new method of dealing with them in
court and getting rid of them and not seeing them again.
MR. DORRILL.' Why don't you give us an example of
that as well, because that's something that I'm not even
that familiar with.
probation"?
MR. BRIGHAM:
What do you mean by "simple
I would like to see for the person
who comes into court for no valid driver's license, a
simple case like that or suspended driver's license, to
get the folks, get the probation officers and do a quick
assessment, help the people get their license and pay
their fines and get out and never see them again.
MR. DORRILL: No continuing probation as part of a
business or anything, it'd Just be a one, you know -- and
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somebody who's otherwise a first-time offender, something
like that?
MR. BRIGHAM: Yes, first-time offender that doesn't
need any follow-up.
Presently we' re assigning them to probation which
means an awful lot of clerical work is involved and they
might be assigned for two or three months to probation to
pay all these fees and fines and it doesn't do the people
any good and it doesn't do our employees any good.
So I'm saying our probation system has to be looked
at during the coming year and design a graduated
probation system from very loose to very intense. And
it's a serious and important project that was begun by
the development -- strategic development project for
corrections that the county paid for and endorsed last
year, and the Correctional Planning Committee endorses
this idea of graduated intensive probation and so that's
one of the things we're going to try and carry out.
In the Witness Management Department there's a --
they need to take control of all the action of calling
all the witnesses to court and the juvenile court, that
is still controlled by the clerk's office. And Just for
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efficiency and dealing with things in a similar manner,
we need to bring that into that department.
Finally, with the Guardian Ad Litem program this
year we wanted to bring up not an Advisory Board but
maybe a better word is a volunteer Board of Directors to
help with the training and help with the public relations
and the speaking. In other words, get more people from
the community involved in the program.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Who funds the big billboard there
advertising the Guardian Ad Lttem program?
MR. BRIGHAM: Lee County.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I thought I saw --
MR. BRIGHAM: Lee County Board of Directors. They
have a separate non-profit organization called Guardian
Ad Litem of Lee County and that is the same title as the
court program and many of the same people are involved in
it, but they--
CHAIRMAN VOLPE:
MR. BRIGHAM: There may be a sign.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Isn't there a sign on U.S. 41 in
North Naples promoting the Guardian Ad Litem program? A
huge billboard I thought I saw yesterday or the day
Isn't there one in Collier County?
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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before.
MR. BRIGHAM:
CHAIRMAN VOLPE:
the county?
MR. BRIGHAM:
I'm not sure. I'll check again.
You're saying that's not funded by
No, that's funded by the circuit.
That would be funded by the circuit level program, not
the county level program.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE.- It seemed to me there'd be a
better use of your money than a big billboard for the
Guardian Ad Litem program.
MR. BRIGHAM: Right. I didn't say I put it there.
So in other words, the final line for the courts is
as we continue to grow, we'd like to come up with new
ways of doing the old things so we don't have to keep
turning to the county for more and more money at every
single turn. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: How about the--
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Are --
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: I'm sorry.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT.. There's a couple things
that I'd like for y'all to look at in the coming year and
that's the pre-trial release program.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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I really think that the courts and the county
manager or through the county manager needs to take over
the pre-trial release program. Currently it's in the
sheriff's preview, and the State's Attorney and the
Public Defender seems to feel like we have got a person
that's actually doing the arresting that is also doing
the pre-trial release or the investigation for pre-trial
and the sheriff has now come back and said that no one is
eligible for pre-trial release if they have had -- if
they've got any kind of a contact with an illegal
substance or drug, even alcohol that's been involved.
So, you know, to me that causes me a problem
because if it's the first offense and we can release them
and get them into some kind of a program depending on
what the offense is, then, you know, that's something
that we should do because otherwise it's costing the
taxpayers money by keeping them in jail, and so I'd like
for the manager and Paul to look at taking over our --
MR. DORRILL: Are you saying something similar to
Volusia County where they determine the classification of
people when they're booked in and arraigned and the
criteria would be established then through the court or a
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
302
cooperative relationship as opposed to that individual
just sitting there for three months waiting to go to
trial?
COMMISSIONER GOODNIG~T.- What this individual would
do is as soon as they're booked into the jail this
individual will go back and look at their records and go
in there and talk to them and when they appear before
that judge and it's my understanding- you may know
better - they have to have an arraignment within 24
hours, then at that 24-hour arraignment this individual
will hand to the judge what he has found out about that
person and therefore the judge can release that
individual on his own recognizance without having to go
through bond or either placing him back in jail for us to
pay until he can go to his court date or whatever.
MR. DORRILL: Otherwise who's doing that at the
moment, the sheriff?
COMMISSIONER GOODNIG~T: At this time the sheriff
is doing it, but the sheriff is doing it on a random
basis and he's setting the criteria and the criteria has
been set by the state.
MR. DORRILL~ Otherwise then-- because I'm not
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
303
that familiar with this. Otherwise the Judge is just
basing his decision on whether to hold or not based on
the arrest report?
COMMISSIONER GOODNIG~T: That's correct.
And also what is taking place is the individual in
the sheriff's department is not giving the information to
the state's attorney or to the public defender to see.
If they want the information, they've got to go and see
them.
So what I'd like to see take place is that during
the next year that y'all investigate this to see if this
will be something that's cost efficient for the county to
take over.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: There's a bigger issue out there
that has to do with the monetary bail system. I mean,
the only way you can get out -- if these had money, they
could get out no matter what.
Presumably these people aren't able to post a bond,
and that's our monetary bail system which is, you know --
and I'm not sure where all of that is, but these are
people who would be released without bond on their own
recognizances.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
304
MR. BRIGHAM, Correct. These folks are the
misdemeanor offenders and the third-degree felony
offenders. According to the new statutes or proposed
statutes that they have the right to release; that we
don't really have a right to hold them any longer than
absolutely necessary to process them.
And the difficulty at the present time is that the
sheriff changes the criteria for who gets released and
who doesn't.
COMMISSIONER HASSE ~ How?
MR. BRIGHAM: Well, he recently said that -- he
began saying that, I have a zero tolerance policy for
drugs, so anyone who's picked up for any kind of drug or
alcohol possession does not get referred for this
pre-trial release.
That makes no economic sense, it makes no Judicial
sense, it makes no criminal sense to keep someone that's
picked up for an open container violation in jail any
more than we absolutely have to. You know, Just his name
and get him out of the building or let him sober up.
But to have someone checked into the Jail for an
open container violation and spend 13 days or 14 days is
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
305
just -- will never make any sense for us. And the same
for a small amount of marijuana possession. Wouldn't it
make a lot more sense to get the person in contact with
a -- someone like the Court Counselor or the David
Lawrence Center and get them in an education program.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: As long as they follow it.
MR. BRIGHAM: Yes. And these people under
pre-trial release, we would be in contact with them on
some regular basis to be determined.
But I know that all these other folks like the
state attorney and public defender are all wound up about
this simply because the rules are so strict under the
sheriff's department.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: They also sound like they're
contrary to state statutes.
MR. BRIGHAM: Well, the statutes are changing, too,
so there's this great area of flux.
So yes, we'd be interested in pursuing that, also.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Is that one of your goals, maybe?
MR. BRIGHAM:
Mrs. Goodnight.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT:
That was one of those that came from
That's something I'd like
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
306
to see the figures on. And I think that, you know, now
that we've got a court administrator that's interested in
that, there's been a lot of precedents that have been set
in other counties, Volusia County and Orange County,
Alachua County, and so, you know, of how this operates
and I think we now have something to go with where we
might end up being able to save money.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Sounds like a good idea.
MR. DORRILL: Anything else?
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Well, yeah. I'd like for
us to take over the jail, too, but I won't start that at
this time.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Don't do that now.
MR. DORRILL: Strike that from the record.
Mr. Chairman, that'll do it. I appreciate your
indulgence. This went a lot better than last year. Last
year it took I don't know how many sessions, six or seven
different discussions.
What we do plan to do is come back with a completed
document with individual indicator dates for each one
goal. I made 15 different additional points or questions
that you all were interested in, and we'll have a
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
307
mid-year review date to see where we're at.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: When do you think, Nell, we'll get
an actual document back?
MR. DORRILL: I would think within two weeks. And
then you'll have that and that will be the basis that
we'll measure our progress then for the rest of the year.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Okay. Good.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: I think also maybe we
ought to go ahead and put our vacation on the agenda to
discuss it and that way staff will have a little more
time to plan.
In looking at the calendar, it looks like we' re
going to have some excellent days. There's five Tuesdays
in June this year and so we could take off the last
Tuesday of June and the first two Tuesdays of July.
MR. DORRILL: Do we have a budget calendar all
ready or are we waiting, pending some decision on that?
MR. McNEES: We'll build it around the vacation
schedule.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Then in December Christmas
is going to be on a Friday and we could meet on the 22nd
and then take that fourth vacation week on the 29th and
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
308
then come back to work on the 5th of January, which would
give us our four weeks again and we wouldn't be off as
much as we were this year with the two weeks in December
like we were this year.
COMMISSIONER HASSE: Did it ever occur to you you
might not be here in January and December? I just
thought I'd mention that.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Apparently it's occurred to him.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: No, it's not occurred to
me at all.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Is that six meeting dates that
you're talking about?
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: I'm talking about four
meeting dates.
MR. DORRILL: Versus six of last year.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: Christmas is on a Friday
and we will meet on Tuesday the 22nd.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: Christmas is on a Friday.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT: See, we would have
Wednesday and then Thursday off and Friday we would have
off and then we would take the next week off, which would
be Tuesday the 29th, and then we would come back .to work
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
309
on January the 5th, which would still give us four
meeting dates in December and four meeting dates in June.
And then only two meeting dates, three meeting dates --
two meeting dates in July.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE: We can bring that up.
COMMISSIONER HASSE:
to 52 Tuesdays of meetings.
COMMISSIONER GOODNIGHT:
get plum ill.
CHAIRMAN VOLPE:
I would like to look forward
That's all.
There is no way. You'll
Well, we've got a meeting tomorrow
morning at nine o'clock.
(Proceedings concluded at 3:40 p.m.)
* * * *
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33962
February 10, 1992
There being no further business for the Good of the County, the
meeting was adjourned by Order of the Chair - Time: 3:40 P.M.
310
STATE OF FLORIDA )
COUNTY OF COLLIER )
I, Christina J. Reynoldson, 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 175 through 309,
inclusive, is a true record of my Stenograph notes taken at
said proceedings.
Dated this 2nd day of March, 1992.
l. ': '~ ........... '" · . ~.:Y..",.":'..:.!.~.
Christina /~~'R?R.~, ': :i
Nota~ Publi~/ ~~' ,'.~"
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962