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BCC Minutes 03/07/2000 W (Transportation)March 7, 2000 TRANSCRIPT OF THE TRANSPORTATION WORKSHOP OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Naples, Florida, March 7, 2000 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Board of County Commissioners, in and for the County of Collier, and also acting as the Board of Zoning Appeals and as the governing board(s) of such special districts as have been created according to law and having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9:00 a.m. in WORKSHOP SESSION in Building 'F' of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRMAN: Timothy J. Constantine Pamela S. Mac'Kie Barbara B. Berry John C. Norris James D. Carter ALSO PRESENT: Michael McNees, Interim County Administrator David Weigel, County Attorney Page I COLLIER COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS AGENDA Transportation Workshop March 7, 2000 Introduction: Defining the Problem. Fixing the Problem: A.) Immediate Acceleration Efforts 1 .) 24 Hour Construction Report 2.) Signalization Management Report 3.) County Wide Computerized Traffic Signal System · Phase 1 Status Report · Phase 2 Acceleration Proposal 4.) Deputy Assisted Traffic Control 5.) The Procurement Process B.) Short Term Acceleration Efforts i.) Intersection Improvements & Acceleration Efforts 2.) Major Roadway Construction & Acceleration Efforts 3.) Grade Separation Program Update C.) Road Acceleration Policy & Planning Issues (longer term efforts) 1.) Roads Capital Needs Analysis a.) Project Timing Policy b.) Funding Authorization 2.) Road Right-of-Way Acquisition Acceleration a.) Adopt Typical Roadway Cross Section b.) Accelerated Right-of-Way Acquisition Report c.) Condemnation Policy 3.) Level of Service/Roadway Congestion Discussion 4.) Future Roadway Closing Policy 3. Public Comment March 7, 2000 CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Good morning, and welcome to the March 7th, 2000 workshop on transportation issues. If you'd join me in standing and saying a pledge to the flag. (Pledge of allegiance was recited in unison.) COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Mr. Chairman, would it be appropriate to have just a moment of silence for the girl who was killed on Immokalee Road? I understand that the funeral service is this morning, and -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: (Moment of silence.) CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Mr. McNees, good morning. Absolutely. Thank you. MR. McNEES: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, commissioners. My introduction will be short. I think we all know why we're here. The level of congestion on our roadways has become something that has led the organization to declare to a degree transportation issues as our number one priority. And you've sent staff out to develop a list of options for you, things we can do in the immediate and the near term, and in the long term to advance construction of our major road segments. That's actually a complementary effort to one that staff was already engaged in, which was to look big picture at our transportation organization and how we were doing those things to bring back to you some recommendations for the long term, how we could make improvements and how we could manage our transportation function a little bit better. So the two efforts have actually worked very well together and allowed us to be probably a little more prepared on short notice today than we would have been had we not already been well down that road. Today we're going to focus mostly on a two-year time frame; things that we can accomplish within the next two years. And we're going to give you some immediate things. In fact, we're going to tell you about some things we've already done. But we're going to focus on the two-year time frame for two reasons: Because we think that's manageable, and it's -- and that given the short time frame we had, we didn't really have the Page 2 March 7, 2000 opportunity to completely redo a 10-year plan. And additionally, two years is a time frame in which we can handle the funding with your existing revenues and with the bonding of your existing revenues. And we know that the larger scale long-term capital funding issues are a much different question we'll be addressing over the course of the summer. So we're going to focus -- for the purpose of roads, we're going to talk about two years today. And we're not really going to talk about money until we get to the end of the workshop. We're not going to stop with each individual project and each individual discussion, necessarily, and talk about all the dollars, but we're going to aggregate them at the end and tell you what all this is going to cost. Now, if you have specific questions along the way, we'd be happy to answer them about what a particular improvement might cost. And I know some of that's going to be part of the equation as we go. But generally we're going to talk about how do we pay for all this at the end of the session. We're going to try to focus today on nuts and bolts, what are we proposing, how long will it take, what are the improvements, what are the traffic improvement expectations for that. We're going to try to stay away as much as possible from engineering detail and long histories and that sort of thing. We want to kind of get to it. Frankly, we want to get you nodding and we want to keep moving. So that's the -- that's the way we'd like to approach this today. Now, we are, however, prepared to answer any questions that you have on engineering detail, on necessities, on improvements, so we're prepared to do that. We're prepared to go into any level of detail that you wish. But for your purposes, we feel like keeping to the larger scale, and exactly the nuts and bolts of what we're accomplishing is probably the best way to be effective today. Before I turn things over to staff, you're aware that Neil Dorrill has come into my office to do some work regarding transportation, and it was somewhat coincidental that his engagement began about the same time as you all scheduled Page 3 March 7, 2000 this workshop. He has done quite a bit of work. And I hope you'll forgive me, but there's a -- seems to be a misunderstanding that I hired Neil for his transportation expertise. And Neil's a lot of things. I don't think he's ever professed to be a transportation engineer or anything of that sort. But what we did hire him for was his facilitation expertise. As you know, we have transportation related employees in at least six departments in this organization, maybe seven. And we had already identified some time ago that that was really one of the hurdles that we had in trying to do things efficiently, given that the public works administrator's job is vacant, the assistant county manager is busy at the moment being interim county manager. But he'll be free in a couple of weeks, so maybe he can get back to some of this work. We needed somebody. We needed a body to facilitate some of this effort. So Neil's done a great job for us kind of cracking the whip, and frankly scheduling meetings and getting people in the same room and getting things accomplished. And I have to say, your staff has taken a public beating over the last six months because the roads are crowded. And frankly, for the most part it's not their fault that the roads are crowded. And they have done an amazing ]ob of removing the bureaucratic barriers, getting the work and bringing to you what I think is an incredible laundry list of things they can accomplish in a short term to make some progress. The only thing we needed to do was tell them all right, the rules are off that we've constrained you with, now go do your work. And they've done an incredible job. And I think you're going to hear that today. And I'm real proud of the effort that they've done, and thank Neil for his help. I think Neil had a couple of comments he wanted to make -- there he is -- before we turn things over to Mr. Finn and his staff. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Good morning. MR. DORRILL: Good morning, ¢ommissioners~ Neil Dorrill. I just don't want to reiterate much of what Mike said. I do appreciate the opportunity to be back here on a very short-term Page 4 March 7, 2000 basis, and that for no other reason than we collectively spent 323 million dollars on capital improvements during our watch here over the course of 10 years. Don't know how to engineer roads, but I do know how to spend money to stay ahead of or equal to the growth curb. I'm impressed with your staff. I've not previously met Mr. Bibby. And also, in working with Mr. Kant in trying to organize the key issues for you today, I think there are three. And I think that I'd have to start with traffic management and traffic control to include working with the Sheriff's Department for some urban traffic management concepts and incident management concepts. Part of your integrated traffic management system to computerize and through close-circuit television cameras that major intersections throughout town, moving that project forward in advance of the FDOT time line would be money well spent. And I think some decisions involving Livingston Road and trying to accelerate Livingston Road in particular and do it and construct it in a way to be a very high efficiency expressway road with some frontage roads and evaluating that will take tremendous pressure off of Airport, 41 and Pine Ridge. And other than that, your staff has done a good job here today. I think they are willing, through both Mr. McNees's leadership and continuing with Mr. Olliff, to do and undertake some of the types of things that they traditionally have not done in order to show the community that they have the resolve, with your blessing, to move these issues forward. And we'd be happy to answer any questions, but I don't have any other opening comments. Good to see you. MR. McNEES: The last thing I need to say would be unfortunately Mr. Kant's mother passed away in the last couple of days, and he's not able to be with us this morning. He's actually attending her funeral today. And on a whole other level, it's too bad Ed can't be here with us today, because if anybody has followed your direction and worked his ever-loving tail off to bring forward to you in a very Page 5 March 7, 2000 short time a good laundry list of projects, it's Ed Kant. And frankly, once we got out of his way and said Ed, here's the money, he's done a great job. And he deserves a lot of accommodation today for the effort he's put in in leading a lot of this transportation, particularly on the capital projects and with the -- Jeff Bibby and his staff. And we can't thank them enough for the work they've put in. So with that, I'm going to turn the floor over to Ed Finn. I guess Jeff Bibby is going to talk to you first about what can we do immediately to get cars moving. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Good morning, Mr. Bibby. MR. BIBBY: Good morning. Jeff Bibby, public works engineering director. I'd like to start off by bringing everybody up to speed in where we are with 24-hour work schedules. We currently have two projects under contract; one that's about to be and two that will be advertised in the next two months. The two under contracts, we approached the contractors and asked for proposals to work 24-hour work schedules. A copy of their letters are in the package. Specific to working 24 hours, they're more than willing to work with us. However, as a result of manpower restrictions, they're not in a position to offer proposals specific to that right at the moment. They did offer an alternative, and I'll talk about that in a second. For the project that we have advertised, we did sent out a bid addenda requesting a proposal also for a 24-hour work schedule. And in the event that that did not work out, also an expedited schedule to be defined by the contractor. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: And I think -- and I promise we won't interrupt a lot here, but I think our goal, whether it's a 24-hour schedule or some other variance of that, we just want to make sure there's an accelerated schedule -- MR. BIBBY: I understand. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Whether it's that exact thing or not, I don't know that any of us really care, as long as the job gets done. Page 6 March 7, 2000 MR. BIBBY: And that's why we went to the second item on the bid addenda, so that if the 24-hour schedule did not work out, propose something to us as an expedited schedule. COMMISSIONER CARTER: And it's my understanding that these contractors were willing to sit with us and look at opportunities to -- MR. BIBBY: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER CARTER: -- expedite the construction of roadways; as you have pointed out in the letters, that 24 hours is out of the question for them because of their manpower equipment situations. MR. BIBBY: Right. For the Golden Gate Boulevard project currently advertised, we'll receive those bids tomorrow, so we'll have a better indication on that project in a very short term. For the two projects upcoming in the next couple of months, as well as our future plans, we'll continue to include in the bid package bid alternates for specifically 24-hour schedules, and again, expedited schedules where that doesn't make sense as defined by the contractor. We'd also like to take a harder look at the incentive clause we've used on Immokalee Road. Immokalee Road was our first project to have an incentive clause in it. It's a no excuse incentive clause. If the contractor is able to bring this project in within 300 days, versus the base bid of 365 days, he has the opportunity to pick up $195,000. This is the precluded cost of the county of additional inspection time, et cetera. This -- depending on what we see tomorrow and what we see in the future bids, this may be our best alternative for this point in time on ensuring expedited work. We'd also like to consider utilizing a different base material. And you'll see in the package, both from APAC and Better Roads, they're both proposing going to a black base or an asphalt base versus a lime rock base. And the issue here is during the rainy season we are very much susceptible to conditions where we'll have to go to all stop waiting for the lime rock base to dry out and incur delays as a result of that. Page 7 March 7, 2000 COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Is lime rock only cheaper? I mean, is that the only advantage to using it, that it's cheaper? Or are there others? MR. BIBBY: Primarily it's cheaper. The material costs themselves are two and a half times greater for the asphalt base. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But other than -- other than cost. I mean, cost is of course important. But there aren't any structural advantages of lime rock over asphalt base? MR. BIBBY: That's right. COMMISSIONER CARTER: And you've given me a material cost. What am I losing in labor because I've got to wait for these things to dry out and do that? Can that be factored into this? Because I saw a number of $700,000 difference, but that's only one piece, one variable. So I would look for the whole picture on that. MR. BIBBY: We've got firm proposals from APAC. This is on Immokalee Road. And the bottom line is there will be an additional 1.2 million dollars on this 9.1 million dollar project. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, what Commissioner Carter asked you, is there another piece of the bottom line? That's only part of the bottom line, that's the cost of materials. Are you going to save something in labor costs that we might be able to subtract? MR. BIBBY: It all adds up to this overall increase of 1.2 million dollars. MR. McNEES.' That is the bottom line number. That is the real bottom line net of COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: everything. COMMISSIONER CARTER: I'm hearing? So it's 9.1 plus 1.2 more is what MR. BIBBY: Well, it's 9.1 plus 1.2 million dollars more. The incentive clause that we do have on Immokalee Road complicates it a little bit. This is a no excuse incentive contract. If we add work to their contract, the expectation is that they would still have to meet the 300 days to get it. The counter situation that we'll get into with this is that we would still open the incentive for working 60 days quicker. So Page 8 March 7, 2000 it's actually the 1.2 million plus another 200,000, 1.4 million. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Thank you. MR. BIBBY: So in this case, what we would end up -- actually, the bottom line is we would save March and April of next year as a result of going to this option. And it would cost us $20,000 per day to achieve that savings. This is probably not the best situation for going this route. MR. McNEES: The variables that we looked at in these acceleration projects are essentially three: How much money does it cost to save how many days, and what time of the year. And our analysis, county came down that to spend $20,000 a day to save time in May probably wasn't worth that to us to spend that 1.2 million. Now, if that had been January and February, perhaps the equation would be different. But staff's recommendation would be 1.2 million dollars to save 60 days in April and May on this project is probably not worth the money. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And how-- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: But there's merely an incentive there. There's no guarantee they're going to actually meet that schedule. I mean, if they go to 301 days, they lose that incentive. So if they're not pretty darn sure they're going to beat it-- MR. McNEES: I'm talking about the acceleration schedule, not necessarily the incentive. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I understand. But what I heard there was the primary, and that's your word, the primary piece of acceleration is the incentive. MR. BIBBY: Correct, right. MR. McNEES: And we still have that. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: That's as good as -- yeah, but which takes me right back to my question of a moment ago. There's no guarantee. If you have an incentive, that's not part of the contract; that is golly gee, if they do it, great, but we can't count on that. MR. BIBBY: There's no guarantee. Our past track record here, specifically on the lime rock base, it really depends on the Page 9 March 7, 2000 weather conditions. So we may or may not incur a delay. It's -- there's no guarantee on the schedule. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Just so I'm clear, when you're talking about our primary method of acceleration as an incentive, is that strictly for this contract, or is that what you're going to carry over to the entire presentation of all our roads? MR. BIBBY: We'd like to use this on an ongoing basis on the future contracts. Our plan up until now is we would use it on Immokalee Road -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: That's not my question. Is that the primary method you're considering -- MR. BIBBY: That is the primary method -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: -- to accelerate? M R. BI BBY: -- yes. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I don't know that that's going to meet -- MR. McNEES: There are other methods, though. And again, it's back to the variables for each specific project and whether or not -- we need to separate probably what are some of the immediate projects that have already been bid and what have we been able to do for that, and what will we try to do for future projects. The 24-hour-a-day issue is not something that looks feasible today for bid projects in today's market. Now, as we all know, the construction industry is a real dynamic thing, and over time those things will change and we'll continue to evaluate as we go. But I think-- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Just by curiosity, if we set a time line out there -- and it's possible this might happen. But if we set an accelerated time line, instead of a -- I'm picking a number out of the air. But instead of what we anticipate right now to be a 12-month construction calendar, and we just put it out there as eight months, however the contractor can do that, but that's the time line we want the ]ob done, not an incentive, but that's the time line we want the ]ob done, would we get no bids on that? MR. BIBBY: I think there's a good chance we would get no Page 10 March 7, 2000 bids on that, yes. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE.' I have another question. Because I understand -- that's a disappointing answer, but I understand it's a realistic answer in the market that we're in for employees. But I'm back now on the asphalt versus lime rock question. I didn't understand how it comes to cost us $20,000 a day. I need you to -- MR. BIBBY: Well, the overall increased cost on this project is 1.2 million dollars. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE.' Or actually 1.4. MR. BIBBY: But the only thing close to a guarantee that we have is that they will agree to reduce the contract time by 60 days, assuming the -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: They might. MR. BIBBY: -- savings is 60 days. We save March and April by the current schedule. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What Mike is saying is based on what 60 days that is in our calendar year, it's not really worth it. But the asphalt versus lime rock question is going to continue to come up. It may come up and it may be worth the money for a different two months on the calendar. MR. BIBBY: Right. And on a going forward basis, what we'd like to do in each of the bid documents is include this as a bid alternate and then evaluate it specific to the conditions. I think what we're seeing here with this particular proposal, asphalt prices are increasing, there's unknowns there. We've asked them after we've established a contract. We may get a different answer the next time around. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: One other just general question is when you talked about the three things that you're evaluating on this expedited, I didn't hear neighborhood impacts as one of them, and I'm worried about that. For example, with Golden Gate Boulevard, probably with others, too, but that one screams at you because of the residential homes out there. I know Commissioner Berry's talked to them, met with them till they're all purple in the face. But how are we evaluating -- I understand 24 hours is not Page 11 March 7, 2000 going to happen. But if we had some long work day and the noise and those issues, how are we communicating with neighbors or evaluating that? MR. BIBBY-' Well, first specific to the boulevard, we'd like to see what comes in tomorrow. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm sorry, I can't quite hear you. MR. BIBB¥: I'm sorry. The bids for the boulevard are due in tomorrow. We will have the alternate bids in there for an expedited schedule. We'd like to see what we receive first and what the options are at that point and then carry forward to the community. MR. McNEES: Commissioner, that was my fault. I said there were three variables. We actually talked about four, and the fourth being at what impact to what kind of a neighborhood. A commercial sector, nobody cares if it's 24 hours a day. A residential area like Golden Gate Boulevard, people will care, and that has to be the last variable that we -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. MR. BIBBY: So just to recap, for these two specific projects we have under construction right now, probably 24 hours -- and probably our 24-hour schedules do not look to be a feasible option. However, we'll continue to put this as a bid alternate in our bids, along with other expedited schedule options. If we find this isn't working out, we'll go to the incentive clause and then consider and also include as an alternate bid the asphalt base and evaluate it on a case-by-case basis. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So basically yeah, what we're getting is we might be able to use asphalt and we're going to ask them can they build it faster and how much will they charge us, but that's about all there is. It's not very encouraging, is it? COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well -- MR. BIBBY: We're going to talk about -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: But in the letters, I hear that they're willing to sit and look at other alternatives. I don't know what those are. What I'm hearing the contractor saying is don't get hung up on 24 hours. There may be some other ways to expedite the process. Page 12 March 7, 2000 And if I look at all of Livingston Road or I look at any of these corridors that we're trying to do, that's where I think that we need to start with concept to concrete and find out just exactly what they can do and can't do -- MR. BIBBY: Agreed. COMMISSIONER CARTER: -- so that we don't get these little pieces dropping in here along the way. MR. BIBBY: Agreed. Well, specific to the two under contract, further follow-up discussions with both APAC and Better Roads, the asphalt base was the only other alternative that they had to offer right now. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And I guess what -- MR. BIBBY: When we put it out for bid and asked four options as part of this bid addenda, then hopefully we'll get more thought into it and our options will increase. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Rather than put out a specific 24-hour add alternate and have them say no, we're not going to do that, why don't we just put out a bid on one of our projects that requires a shorter time frame and see who responds and what the price tag is. Because if you simply put an alternative out there and say gosh, wouldn't it be nice, then they're going to say well, we'd love to, but we can't do it. MR. BIBBY: Sure. But the downside -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: So I suspect everyone in the industry will not walk away. And if they do, great, we've found that out. But why not -- what's the downside to doing a single project, having an accelerated schedule, letting them figure out how to do it, because what I read here is not only lime rock, but other time-saving proposals are certainly possible. I don't care what they are. Let them figure that out, it's their business. MR. BIBBY: I agree. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: But if we give them the opportunity to come back and do that and simply give them the accelerated schedule rather than try to tell them how to do it -- MR. BIBBY: Well, first of all, we are doing that. And that's the alternate to the ultimate. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Right. And I'm not saying do an Page 13 March 7, 2000 alternate. I'm saying why not put a bid out with an accelerated schedule, period. MR. BIBBY: The downside is if we arbitrarily define something that is not reasonable and we don't get bids, then we've lost the opportunity to get the other contract out, so -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It will cost us a year or some period of months to rebid it after we finally don't get bids. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Wouldn't that cost us 30 days or 60 days as opposed to a year?. And in 30 days, wouldn't it be worth it to find out if there are some alternatives, rather than just assuming there aren't; putting it as an alternate bid and having people say no, sorry, we'll just respond to the standard bid? MR. McNEES: The other downside -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Isn't 60 days what you're trying to save in the first place, so if you squander that by screwing up -- MR. McNEES: The other downside, Mr. Chairman, would be CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Let me answer your question when you say what have we gained by losing 30 days, is if we lose 30 days, we know that's not an alternative. If we find it is an alternative, then we pick that up on every single contract from that point forward. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE.' want to -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: separately. But Tim, I think that as much as I Each contract has to be bid CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: No, we know it's a possibility on every contract from that forward. I mean, it may or may not -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: The circumstances may be different on each contract. You don't know that. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: You're right, let's not even try that. Mr. McNees? MR. McNEES: There's another significant downside. That would be without the add alternate you have no basis to judge how much of a premium you're paying for how much of a time Page 14 March 7, 2000 saving. You have nothing to compare what -- the price on a conventional schedule versus the price on an accelerated schedule and how much are you saving. You have no basis to analyze whether you're paying a premium that's worth paying. So that's one of the reasons to have an alternate. COMMISSIONER CARTER: But can't we frame these bids in a way and tell them what we're looking for? So let's say they work seven days a week, let's say they work six days a week, let's say that they pave from 7:00 p.m. in the evening to 7:00 a.m. in the morning, depending on the neighborhoods and the situations. Isn't there some way to frame this that says -- and I think what Commissioner Constantine is trying to say, here is a basket of opportunities. You tell us how we can accelerate a schedule to get a road done, what are the variables, what would it cost us to meet our criteria. MR. McNEES: I think that's what Jeff's telling you they're doing on the bids that are coming. We're asking the contractors. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yes, but what we're hearing, though, and if you're telling us -- okay, you could tell from Commissioner Constantine's press conference that he's frustrated enough with this process that he's trying to be a creative thinker and coming up with an idea. Well, God help us if it's the five of us who have to come up with the creative ideas. It's got to be you guys who are the experts who can come up with these ideas. Our shot in the dark -- Commissioner Constantine's was the 24-hour schedule is a good shot in the dark. Okay, 24 won't work. You're telling us honestly that in your creative minds there's only change to asphalt base, give some incentive, which we should have been doing forever anyway-- MR. DORRILL: Commissioner, you're going to hear a couple -- let me tell you a great example. You have just authorized early work on Livingston Road from Radio to Golden Gate Parkway. And that contractor is there today clearing and grubbing what will be the full corridor for that new road. And one of the things that we're exploring is to go ahead and negotiate a change order or a supplemental agreement with that subcontractor and tell Page 15 March 7, 2000 him keep going. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And that's -- MR. DORRILL-' Go north of Golden Gate. Let's clear the corridor so that we don't spend three months clearing it when we finally get ready. Another thing they're evaluating is historically this county has only done work with two primary road construction companies, APAC and Better Roads. Utilizing Mr. Constantine's suggestion that if we can develop some accelerated schedules, let them bid the profit and the incentive that they need to meet your schedule. That is the genius of the private sector. In addition to that, you're also going to also hear we are exploring doing certain work under separate contracts or with separate subcontractors that is -- has higher bonding limits. There are other construction companies in Southwest Florida who do not historically do work for the Board of County Commissioners because they don't have asphalt plants, but they build fine roads. And the two that come immediately to my mind are Harper Brothers, family-owned large construction company in Fort Myers, and Naples Road Building, who do a lot of private development road building work. They don't typically do work for the Board of County Commissioners because they don't own an asphalt plant. You're going to buy asphalt from one of two companies, unless you arrange to bring a portable plant in, and we haven't had time to evaluate a portable asphalt plant. Very difficult things to do. But there are any number of things that we can do by raising the ceiling on bonded work capacity, negotiating supplemental agreements with different subcontractors, and all of these things have been explored with the staff. So don't think for a minute that we're just down to one proposal there. About a half dozen different proposals that we'll either negotiate work or do it under change orders or we'll come back with the purchasing director and ask you to waive certain aspects of your purchasing and procurement ordinance to allow to us do things that would otherwise be the traditional sealed bid Page 16 March 7, 2000 take forever charge sort of process that -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But Neil, all of those things you just described, I mean, we've seen those because they're in our packet, but they're all in there under long-term. MR. McNEES: Let me jump in here. Let me clarify what we've said so far. All we've said is for the two projects, we are already under contract; that our ability to accelerate has been somewhat limited, and that the only method that we could come up with didn't look like it was economically feasible because of the months we would save on those two projects weren't worth the money. On the other projects that we are out to bid, staff is telling you they have added to those bid packages the ability for the contractors to be creative and bring accelerated schedules, we will continue to work with them to find whatever viable alternatives are out there on those. We've also told you that for middle and long-term projects, we will continue to pursue the feasibility of a 24-hour a day construction, and any other -- and Neil makes the good point, the private sector, given the economic incentives, they'll come up with creative ways, too. So we pledge to continue to do that. Now, we've got 19 items on the agenda today, many of which are innovative and near-term solutions. All of your first two items are short-term -- for A and B are all short-term issues -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right. MR. McNEES: -- and we're getting a little ahead of ourselves because there are a lot of those others that we want to talk about, so-- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Well, let's move on. We've got a couple of things here. I don't want to get hung up on 24 hours. That was an idea. I think what everybody wants to see is an accelerated schedule. I asked specifically why -- it wasn't just the two bids we talked about. I asked specifically, when we talk about all road, are we saying the only thing we have is lime rock are the only things we have in the bidding, and Mr. Bibby said yes. MR. McNEES: I think that was a misunderstanding of the Page 17 March 7, 2000 question. MR. BIBBY: Yes, I shouldn't have responded that way. The primary thing we'll have is the optional bid in each of the packages, looking for ways to expedite the schedule with input from the contractor. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Fair enough. Let's move on and let's -- obviously if there are things that aren't going to work or things we can't do, we want to know that. But I'd like to in each of those move on to what can we then do. If something specific doesn't work, what will work. I want that to be the focus today. MR. McNEES: And I can tell you that's how we prepared yesterday, tell you what we can do. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Good morning. MR. BATHON: Dale Bathon, transportation services. There's been a lot of public input and discussion on how we manage and control our traffic control systems for Collier County. Currently we maintain almost 130 traffic signals throughout the county. On our major arterials, such as Airport Road, Pine Ridge Road, we check the timing and major components for each intersection on at least a weekly basis. We've been upgrading these systems, adding new controllers and adding modems to the controller cabinet so that we can access the controllers via phone lines. And that way we can determine and assess minor problems with these intersections without having to commit field personnel to each intersection response. Right now the biggest problem we have is Collier County does not have an interconnected traffic control system. Everything we do with timing patterns is based upon time-based coordination; based upon the speed of the traffic and the distance between the signals. With the lack of this coordination of interconnectivity, it is difficult -- once the plan is in place, it's difficult to implement changes to it. That's the one thing that will come aboard when we get the computerized traffic control system county-wide for Collier County. This will allow us to monitor each of the intersections Page 18 March 7, 2000 remotely, and it will be a traffic responsive system; that is, the timing plans will change automatically in response to the traffic that is out there, whether it be a.m. peak, p.m. peak, or whatever it may be. Now, we have developed some plans to advance the second phase of this, and I'd like Ed Finn to tell you about that, how we can accomplish that. MR. FINN: Thank you, Dale. For the record, Edward Finn, interim public works administrator. I'm going to talk to you just a little bit about the county-wide computerized traffic signal system. This is in fact Ed Kant's baby, and it's really unfortunate that he is unable to be with us to talk about it. He is committed to not retiring until this is in place, so one way or the other -- I don't know if it's that good if we get it done fast, but that's our plan at this point. The board is probably aware that we've been working with the state DOT to get this program moving on a fast track. In fact, the board in 1997 entered into an agreement with the state to advance design money to move this thing forward. The build-it phase of this effort is not in the state's plan until the 2005-2006 range. Staff is recommending today, and we'll be coming back to you with a regular agenda item to formally get the board's authorization to enter into negotiations with the state for another joint participation agreement to advance the build-it phase or the construction phase for this from the 2005-2006 range to the 2003 range. What that's going to entail is the county providing advanced funding of 7.5 million dollars. That money will need to be put into the '02 county budget, and subsequently be paid back from state funds in '04 or '05. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Mac'Kie. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Great idea. But basically what you're telling us here is that if we put seven and a half million dollars and loan that to the state, more or less, instead of 2005-2006, we will get this in place in '02-'03? COMMISSIONER CARTER: No. MR. FINN: I'm saying '02. Page 19 March 7, 2000 COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: '02. Okay, so that's three, four years of -- that sounds like it's clearly worth it. I mean, I don't know what it does to the rest of the program. MR. McNEES: And we get that money back. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And we get the money back. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you. MR. FINN: Thank you. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Let's do it. MR. McNEES: We think that's a really good one, too. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's a huge one, too. That's great. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Mr. Dunnuck. MR. DUNNUCK: Good morning, commissioners. For the record, my name is John Dunnuck, assistant to the county administrator. This issue is exactly what the title states, it's an effort to relieve traffic congestion during times of heavy volume; i.e., evening rush hour. The Sheriff's Office has made available six community policing officers to be trained by county traffic technicians so that they may manually manage the timing of lights during these times of heavy traffic. This will occur at intersections where there's a definite traffic need. We're talking the no-brainers, around 1-75 interchanges, areas like that. I do want to point out that it may take a couple of deputies to work one intersection, and that -- you know, so we might not haue six intersections with this all working at the same time. There's also a second area of concern that we want to address at this time, and that's when there are minor traffic accidents, we hear complaints from the public that A, it takes too long to clear the road, and B, there are too many emergency response teams responding to that one scene. AlthouGh the Sheriff's Office is already taking valuable measures to identify traffic accidents on-scene and subsequent emergency response units, such as fire and EMS, both parties concur that there's an opportunity to be more efficient with emergency response efforts. Page 20 March 7, 2000 In this regard, we'd like the board's blessing to also proceed with a study of EMS, fire district and law enforcement response effort. This goal is to just keep the traffic moving, to get the minor traffic, you know, accidents off the road and keep it going. I don't know if the Sheriff's Office has representation here. They were going to talk a little bit about some of their continuing efforts. I think they might have gotten tied up in another meeting. But-- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Traffic. Had to be said. MR. DUNNUCK: But they were also working on some additional efforts on their own that they kind of briefed me on a little bit. One of which is they're planning on having sheriff's officers out at certain intersections to make sure people aren't running red lights so that we can actually keep the traffic management flowing the way it needs to. And I think that one of their also concerns was also payment for the overtime for these community policing officers. They were asking the board's authorization to go ahead and proceed with paying for these officers to be out on scene. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Mac'Kie. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What do they physically do? I mean, if they're not going to be out there directing traffic, they're going to be adjusting something on the box? MR. DUNNUCK: We have a manual control mechanism that allows them to go ahead and manually change it from green to red and to change the length of time. We would have our traffic engineers work with them to coordinate that so that they're not haphazardly going out there and doing that. There would be a little training curb in there. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Explain to me the training curb. Because I remember as a kid the Bangor Brewer Bridge, where in peak beach season they would put a policeman out there. And I swear to God, when they put him out there operating the traffic signal, traffic would be five times worse than if they just left it. So I assume there's some sort of training here so that they don't just get out and -- MR. DUNNUCK: Yes, yes -- Page 21 March 7, 2000 CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: -- look arbitrarily one way and then switch it. MR. DUNNUCK: Yes, we would definitely have our technicians who understand traffic patterns out on site with the deputies, until they feel comfortable with how that system would work. You know, and we would do it on a trial basis, obviously. We don't want to make traffic worse, we want to keep traffic moving. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Berry? COMMISSIONER BERRY: Just a question. Be a little more specific in terms of the intersections. I would hope that there is something being looked at in terms of Wilson and Golden Gate Boulevard because of the growth. Actually east of Wilson. MR. DUNNUCK: And that's part of what -- when we sit down with the Sheriff's Office we want to determine exactly what are the most -- you know, for the amount of traffic technicians or deputy policing officers they provide us, what the most -- you know, where the most need is. We haven't determined. We haven't said this, this and this is the most need. What we do as a variable look at is if the traffic is flowing in one direction more than another. If we got up to an intersection like Pine Ridge and Airport Road where there's traffic coming from all over, we probably wouldn't be helping ourselves, because we would just be holding up one more than the other, and traffic would back up to the north side more than, you know, from the southbound to the east. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Well, John, are we determining the intersections, or is the Sheriff's Department determining the intersections? MR. DUNNUCK: Our staff will be determining the intersections. MR. McNEES: And we can tell you that the one you just mentioned is on our list. We think it's a great candidate, because it's two lanes each way. But then again, the Sheriff's got some expertise, too. It's early in this discussion. We would love to have been able to tell you today that at this and this and this intersection they'll be there in the morning. But we haven't Page 22 March 7, 2000 been able to advance it quite that far. But we can tell you, we're going to continue to work it with the Sheriff's Office. They're committed to providing the resource, they just want you all to be willing to pay for some overtime. And hearing no objection to that, we'll continue to get with it, and when we get it more firm, we'll bring you some information on where -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: What is the realistic time frame to have them out there on the street? MR. McNEES: I would like to think within -- we're talking a week. MR. DUNNUCK: Yeah. The Sheriff, he's authorized it so it's -- you know, they're ready to go. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Can you give us a projected budget for the overtime? Can you give us some -- MR. DUNNUCK: Not at this time. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, when you do all this, I think we need to know that. MR. DUNNUCK'. We'll bring it back in the form of an executive summary. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Perhaps in time for next week's meeting, if possible? MR. McNEES: We'll sure try. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Mr. Carnell, good morning. MR. McNEES: Mr. Carnell is going to talk about waiving all the purchasing policies. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, he loves that. MR. CARNELL: Yeah, from my jail cell. For the record, Steve Carnell, purchasing and general services director. Just want to reiterate a few things we've already touched on and then follow up on a couple of points that I think some of you have already latched onto in your comments this morning. We are -- from a purchasing perspective, we are looking at two different elements of trying to assist in this effort. And one pertains to enhancements to the existing sealed bid process. If you looked at your backup, you saw the executive Page 23 March 7, 2000 summary. We have a state law that dictates that road projects are to be procured through the sealed bid process. Now, there are some caveats in there, some limited caveats, that allow for emergency situations, for exemptions for emergency situations. However, in discussing this with the County Attorney's Office, we believe that the same statute that allows you for -- to declare an emergency also prescribes the method of what you do in the event of an emergency, which is to use your own forces. Now, that is an option we have not looked into, be honest with you, other than just to think about it very preliminarily. Obviously there'd be gearing up time to make something like that happen. So there will be a little more consideration to that given. But we don't at the present time believe the state law allows us to use alternative measures. Now, I say at the present time. We're going to continue to look into that and try to get a little more of a handle on that to be certain. If we find that there are other alternatives, then we may be able to entertain other processes, such as the design/build process or the construction management at risk. But at this point in time that's a maybe at best. And really, I think the position of the county attorney at the moment is that that's really not lawful under the statute. And I would concur with that, based on my non-legal reading of it as well. Now, in terms of the sealed bid process, a couple important points. I wanted to mention that first point in response to your question, Commissioner Mac'Kie, because we really have looked at other alternatives in terms of trying to be creative. And we're running into legal issues, and there's some business issues there as well. But we're continuing to work through those. And we may have some alternatives in the future on those processes. In terms of the sealed bid process, though, I want to touch on -- just briefly, I won't try to be overly redundant here; try to stay and just add to what's already been said. Mr. Dorrill made a comment a moment ago about possibly being able to contract out what I would call pre-road work, if you Page 24 March 7, 2000 will, the clearing and grubbing activity and those types of things. And that is something that we can potentially pursue. The challenge there, though, is you have to get out in front of it early to get the time benefit. You have to hire that contractor before you're in design and construction. Because all the general contractor's going to do if you leave it in the general contract, he's just going to sub it out himself. So the only time benefit is if you hire them out early while, say, you're in design of the road in that phase. And as Mr. Dorrill alluded to, we may be able to do that for the Livingston Road segment, go ahead and get those northern segments cleared and grubbed early. There is an opportunity there potentially to contract those services. A couple -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE'. Steve, is that for Livingston only, or is that something you think we could continue to do? MR. CARNELL: Oh, I think we certainly could continue to do it for others. I was just talking about the ones that are sort of on the list and -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: And I think that just gets down to the issue of good project management, that if you're going to do that and you get out in front of it and know what your critical path is, there's no reason why you can't do that. And I think it's a great opportunity to implement that kind of thing. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And just at the risk of lumping ahead, I'm just going to say this, that the problem, what I think is the most broken in the system is, that there's not one person in charge of the management of the whole process so that they can be creative and come up with here's what needs to happen pre-contract. But hopefully that's something we're going to hear from Mr. Dorrill as one of his proposed fixes, but -- I hope so. MR. CARNELL: Well, there certainly are ways systematically to enhance that, Commissioner and members of the board. But I will tell you, a good deal of thinking in those areas is occurring already and has been. And one caution, though. We're all focused this morning on expediting and expediency and what can we do to be faster. But Page 25 March 7, 2000 there will be some trade-offs on some of these things. For example, the clearing and grubbing option. It's a great idea, we get work started early, but we also have two contractors working the same site. And you set yourself up for potential finger pointing as to the preparation of the grade and the site. Contractor A comes in and grubs and does what allegedly they're supposed to do, and Mr. General Contractor comes in and says, "Wait, this wasn't done correctly." We don't have that issue now, because it's all one contractor. So those are some things you have to bear in mind as we go through this. Just a couple other points. The chairman's point about how we solicit the work; do we go out, in effect call the contractor's bluff and say we're going to give you an exs (phonetic) schedule, if you will, an expedited schedule. And again, we've given serious thought to that. That's a very real and legitimate idea to consider strategically in terms of how we approach the market. Our concern, I think we've hit on them already, some of the thoughts. Mr. McNees pointed out the fact that you'll lose sight of your cost variation if you don't have alternates. And plus the fact that it is my belief at this moment, based on my conversation with the industry, that based on their level of activity and demand, at least initially we will not get bids or we will get a reduced number of bids. Now, having said that, I don't think we should give up on that idea. What we are looking at as one alternative that we've just given some initial thought to -- and I don't know that this will help us with the projects that are on the table now. But in the future projects, we may be able to aggregate large projects. This is something we have not typically done because we've typically tended to bid to our market. But when I say aggregate projects, what I mean is take two or three large projects and put them together as one package. Now, again, you normally would scare the existing industry off, if you're talking about the local regional industry, by doing that. But if we can find sources in the marketplace that are bigger than our area, so to speak, for example, the contractor Page 26 March 7, 2000 who did U.S. 41 for the State of Florida, these are people who have the resources potentially to bring in, such as Mr. Dorrill was alluding to, the mobile asphalt plant. And if we put a big enough carrot in front of them, three projects, something like that, there may be enough money there to entice somebody to broaden the market, opening the competition. But again, you -- the five of you have to brace yourself for the fact that we do something like that, you may get a call from a constituent, local contractor, "Gee, you guys are knocking us right out of the market." I mean, that kind of thing. And so again, you have to be prepared for the other shoe to drop -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: I think we've got enough work for all of them, so -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: But you can -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Count on that. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Because it's already happened, okay? We've been accused and we haven't even gotten into a project of this magnitude. And I will guarantee you, your phones will ring. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So be it. COMMISSIONER BERRY: So, I mean, it's easy to sit up here and say yeah, go ahead and do it, but when the reality strikes and it hits a business community, you're going to have every single local contractor right sitting at your doorstep wondering why you're shooting him out of the water. That --just as long as everybody's aware that that's going to happen and you're ready to take the fallout from it. But it's going -- there's going to be a lot of pressure. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: But it's our responsibility to the 225,000 people that live here to -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: Tim, it's easy to sit up here and say that, and you're going to be the first one when they come knocking on your door to start questioning what we're doing. So it's easy to sit here -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: No, I don't think that's true, Barb. Page 27 March 7, 2000 COMMISSIONER BERRY: Well, I do. MR. CARNELL.' Well, let me just add to your -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, let's roll with the ideas and we'll have to evaluate what can happen in the process. But I think it's a great idea. MR. CARNELL: Well, we're going to give it some more thought. I think your suggestion, Mr. Chairman, will carry more weight if we can do some market research and find some alternatives before we go and lead with an overly bold position. If we think we've got people out there that will respond to it, that will keep the market honest. And we may get exactly what you're after, but I don't think we're in a position to do it today, based on our market conditions at this point. Any other questions on anything at this point? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I have one. Just I guess maybe a comment. And that is, all of this -- all of this will unfold as we look into these more creative ideas, but it may also be that a particular local contractor loses some employees to this new national company that comes in and does a big project in Naples. I mean, so it might not be that the economy fails as a result of a more creative approach. It might be that some particular companies suffer a hit. And for that we have to be willing to take the heat. I mean, that -- we have a responsibility to the overall economy that we have to continue to carefully balance, but not to particular local contractors, as much as they may be our fishing buddies. We just can't do that. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Agreed. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Just a couple of things. In reading through what you have just presented, I'm sure that none of us want to compromise quality, safety or default processes, no matter what we do. The other linkage I think here is the Clerk of Courts writes the checks that pays the bills. I would not leave him out of this process as we explore this. I would want him on board with me as we go through this, so that later he doesn't come back and question the process. Page 28 March 7, 2000 MR. CARNELL.' And we're intending to do that, Commissioner, as we develop the process. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: One other thing I forgot before, and that is I would never -- I want to be very careful about recommending any changes in the bid process in the legal restraints within which you have to operate. But as you go through those, if you see items that you think we should be, as a board, proposing to our legislative delegation as modifications that would allow us to have some more flexibility that wouldn't compromise the honesty of the process, hopefully you'll make those recommendations to us, too. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you. MR. McNEES: I've got to thank Steve for all his years as our purchasing bureaucrat and all his efforts to keep us honest and in compliance with state law. He gets it and he's really been working hard to find creative ways, and we really appreciate his help. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I think Steve Carnell is one of the best things we've got going in this county. He's doing an awful -- awfully wonderful ]ob. MR. CARNELL: It's amazing what $10 can get you. Thank you very much. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Steve, one final thing you -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: Steve, what -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Hang on just a second, Commissioner Carter. You mentioned that more market research would be necessary. Can I safely assume that that market research will happen? MR. CARNELL: Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you. Mr. Bibby, welcome back. MR. BIBBY: Thank you. Jeff Bibby, public works engineering director. Intersection improvements gives us an opportunity to make some relatively short-term changes, short-term relief to some of our congested intersections. Page 29 March 7, 2000 COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: we talk about it? MR. BIBBY: Sure. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: that. Can you focus us in on these as I'm too old to be able to read MR. BIBBY: Right now we have about a dozen improvements either underway, about to be underway, or just recently completed. Up on Immokalee Road we've got the intersections with Wilson Boulevard, Randall Boulevard and Oil Well Road underway. We've recently completed Lake Boulevard, Weber and 951. This is in advance of the work we'll be doing on the boulevard. It helps us provide some relief during the construction of that project. We're underway looking at Davis Boulevard and 951. Recently completed improvements at Shirley Street and Pine Ridge Road. We're looking to advance the intersection work at Goodlette-Frank and Pine Ridge. We're underway at Shadowlawn and Davis. We'll be working with the state with Davis, Brookside and Commercial on realigning and reconfiguring that intersection. Probably the best example of where we've had success here is with the work completed, the Airport Road and Golden Gate Parkway, completed last year. This gives us an opportunity, and this gave us an opportunity not to relieve the amount of flow of course on the road, but to improve that intersection in advance of other things we'll be doing. So we've got about a dozen underway right now. We'll look for other opportunities to do that. Again, it gives us a good short-term opportunity to relieve some of the critical intersections. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Are there any intersections commissioners can think of that don't appear on that list that we think ought to be; you've got either complaints or personal experience with? COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, we have a problem at Airport and J&C Boulevard, and then we've got Trade Center Page 30 March 7, 2000 Way. And one idea was presented to me, I don't know if it's feasible, is there any way to develop a small north-south road between Trade Center and J&C Boulevard? Is there any -- MR. BIBBY: There have been discussions on that. We are in the preliminary stages of taking a look at it. But correct, we are looking at some opportunity just beyond -- just west of the Nations Rent area, and that could be a good solution to it. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Is there any time line exploring that, bringing it back as from concept to concrete, as I like to say, so that that might become a reality? MR. BIBBY: We can commit to being back in a month. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Thank you. MR. McNEES: Mr. Chairman, if I have a criticism of Mr. Bibby at this moment, it would be that he's not patting himself and his staff on the back quite enough. What you heard sounded kind of mild, but this is actually an extremely aggressive effort to get intersection improvements on the ground. I'll tell you, there's one they already did. They didn't wait for today, they went out and actually put the pavement on the ground. Now, I'll warn you, we can't win the public relations war, because the newspaper headline, when we added a turn lane at Shirley Street and Pine Ridge Road was, "Road construction hurts business." And the entire gist of the story was not that now all those people exiting J&C Industrial Park will have an easier route to Pine Ridge Road, but rather that business was severely damaged for the day that we were up there getting in their way. So we've got a public relations war that it's hard to win. But I can tell you, they got out there, they put that lane on the ground, and that's a better intersection today. And that was through their aggressive efforts. And that's where they're headed, and that's what these are about. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Berry. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Question in regard to future planning up in that Pine Ridge area, but on Airport Road at the J&C or the Trade Center Way area. MR. BIBBY: Okay. Page 31 March 7, 2000 COMMISSIONER BERRY: Is there any thought of an intersection and then somehow having another road that would go on out and access Livingston? Been any thought given to that? MR. BIBBY.' Going east from Airport? MR. DORRILL: I can comment on that. I do know that the Trade Center Way property owners association has retained a traffic consultant to do an evaluation of linking J&C with Trade Center Way. And I would tell you as part of that, they have had preliminary discussions with the Pulling family on the east side of Airport Road who own that several hundred acre orange grove. And Mr. Pulling has said preliminarily that he would be willing to explore, as part of an overall intersection design, to reserve a future road right-of-way that would run east from the Trade Center Way intersection all the way to the new Livingston Road. And it would run through the southern and southeastern ends of his orange groves. And that's one of those huge wins, if you can work through your staff and the Trade Center Way transportation consultant to reserve a right-of-way corridor through that major new roadway. Again, it's one of those things in furtherance of assisting Pine Ridge Road. And so some of those discussions have taken place within the private sector for which they have their own traffic consultant, and should be done or anticipated as part of your six-laning project of Airport Road that commences at Cougar Drive and goes up to Vanderbilt that will take place sometime late this -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: That was my point in mentioning this. Because I don't want to lose out -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: No way, Nellie. COMMISSIONER BERRY: -- on an opportunity here if we have an opportunity to do and look ahead. I don't know how many of you've been out on Trade Center Way or in that area recently, but the old idea of a bunch of warehouses there isn't there anymore. You have some beautiful Page 32 March 7, 2000 COMMISSIONER CARTER: You're absolutely -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: -- office buildings out there. COMMISSIONER CARTER: -- right, Commissioner Berry. That -- I mean, that could get into a whole redesign of that industrial park of connecting those roads up, so that people are not bending all over the place. But that's another discussion on another day. But can we get this all integrated, Neil, so that as we look at what we're doing with Mr. Pulling, as we look at what we're doing at the connection, so that we come back as a part of a total plan, that we know that in effect that this can happen along with the six-laning of Airport Road? MR. DORRILL: That's on my list of things to explore. We had a preexisting improvement and taxing district for both what I call the Pine Ridge Industrial Park and the J&C Industrial Park. And the way to do it would be to incorporate and fold in Trade Center Way, and needed through that existing taxing district go out there and acquire through purchase, gift or condemnation the bisecting lot that would link J&C and Trade Center Way, and then issue a change order to your existing civil engineering agreement with whomever that is, as part of anticipating. And then frankly, the county has a poor history of working with Mr. Pulling. But in this particular case, if Mr. Pulling saw some long-term benefit to participating in a full four-way intersection there, as opposed to the type of three-way "T' intersections that unfortunately we see on Pine Ridge Road, in front of Forest Lakes and in front of Shirley, those don't work. And Trade Center Way and J&C today do not work. But we do have that as one of our task items, and to see if we can't do that, and extend the opportunity to the Pulling family to reserve that new corridor through that orange grove. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Fantastic. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's fantastic. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Anything else on intersection improvements? COMMISSIONER CARTER: There's one other, and I guess it's Page 33 March 7, 2000 just an impossible situation. But that is up at Ooodlette-Frank and Pine Ridge, as you look off into -- if you're looking to the north, there's a -- it's a very short distance before you get to the stoplight as you come out. And I know that community has always asked, is there anything that can be done with that intersection? And I don't know in the future if we can do anything. It's too short of a place to put a signal in there, because you're bumped right to the next one. But how do we really get traffic in and out of that neighborhood? Is there any thought been given to that thought process as we're studying all this? COMMISSIONER BERRY: Where exactly, Jim, again? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Forest Lakes. MR. McNEES: Northgate, I believe is the -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, it's on Ooodlette-Frank, just south of Pine Ridge. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay, so it's Northgate. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Northgate. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Northgate, that's it. Thank you. It's Northgate. And it's a real difficult situation. And I don't know what can be done to correct it. But that is an intersection that gives us a lot of trouble. MR. McNEES: I think the simple answer may be when the intersection improvements are eventually made as part of the four-laning of Goodlette Road north of there, it's conceivable that that left turn southbound median cut may go away. Because I don't think your access management plan allows for an intersection that close to the major stoplight at Pine Ridge and Goodlette. So there are probably changes in the works there. Whether those changes necessarily make it easier for those people to get in, coming southbound remains to be seen. But that will certainly be an issue on the table. It's going to be a difficult problem to serve the flow of traffic and -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And the timing of that, Mike? MR. McNEES: -- ease of access. So -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The timing on that, Mike? Page 34 March 7, 2000 MR. McNEES: That's one you just approved, so I -- you approved the cross-section of that at your last meeting. MR. BIBBY: We're going to talk about that in a minute. Currently it's in the program for 2002. But that is one of our opportunities to move it up, so -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Good. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Let's go to the next item, ma]or roadway construction. MR. BIBBY: We're entering the period right now where we're going to have four or more ma]or roadway construction projects ongoing at any particular time. Here is the three-year window as it is currently in the program. We talked earlier about the first segment of Livingston Road and Immokalee Road currently under contract. We'll receive the bids tomorrow for the Boulevard, and that will be underway. Clearing and grubbing is already underway for that project. And Pine Ridge Road and Airport Road, getting ready to advertise those. The Livingston Road corridor was set up, so we're doing each of the segments in subsequent years. And the blue line here is where it's established in the budget. What we're looking at now is an opportunity to pull up that last leg, Vanderbilt Beach Road to Immokalee, and to be able to at least be in a position to contract that out with the Pine Ridge Road/Vanderbilt Beach Road segment, so that we would be able to take out on what was discussed before with more of a major contract. That's underway. Also, with Vanderbilt Beach Road, from Airport to Logan, we have initiated design on that right now. And that will also put us in a position to be able to move up to that 2002 construction schedule. And with Goodlette-Frank Road, from Pine Ridge to Vanderbilt Beach Road, the decision's now made, particularly in the area of Calusa Bay, we can move that up. We've been working with the engineer and asking him to submit a more expedited design schedule on that. So the main message there, as currently budgeted, quite a bit of construction ongoing at any particular time. And our focus Page 35 March 7, 2000 at this point will be more of a management in traffic concern as we have this work underway. And in addition to that, opportunities particularly with that last segment of Livingston, Goodlette-Frank and Vanderbilt Beach Road. COMMISSIONER BERRY: I have a question. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Sure. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Currently we're planning on doing two lanes on Livingston Road; is that correct? MR. BIBBY: For that segment north of Immokalee. COMMISSIONER BERRY: North of Immokalee. What about south of Immokalee Road? MR. BIBBY: Everything will be four-laned south of Immokalee Road. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Everything south of Immokalee Road. MR. BIBBY: Designed for six, constructed for four. The whole cross-section will be designed for six lanes all the way from Radio Road, all the way up to the Lee County line. Our plans currently are to construct four of those six lanes all the way up to Immokalee, and then with the agreement we have with Long Bay Partners, two lanes are going in from Immokalee up to Mediterra. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Why don't we go ahead and do the other two at the time that we're building those two lanes -- or that they're building those two lanes, instead of having the area completely torn up again? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Twice. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Twice. I mean, it just -- as long as they're doing their part of it, why don't we join in the fun and get the rest of it done? MR. BIBBY: There are discussions going on with the Ronto group that might give us an opportunity. Remember, we accelerated this section of Livingston Road, not from an overall need point of view, but the opportunity was there with the developer to get it in early. COMMISSIONER BERRY: I understand. MR. BIBBY: That's what drove it to -- Page 36 March 7, 2000 CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Let's rephrase that. I think what Commissioner Berry is saying -- or let's even go a step further. Is there any commissioner who objects to doing the four-laning on that northern section, rather than having them two-lane and going back two or three years later and tearing it up again? COMMISSIONER CARTER: COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: COMMISSIONER CARTER: get it done. No, I think that's -- No. -- what we ought to do. Let's just CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you, Commissioner Berry. MR. BIBBY: We will take a look at it. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Norris? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: This is a good time to talk about something I suggested a few weeks ago. When we did Collier Boulevard from Davis to 41, it was originally scheduled to be done in two sections. By combining it into one section, if I remember correctly, we saved six million dollars and a lot of time. We've got five sections here shown for Livingston Road. Why don't we look at combining this into all one road project? You were mentioning earlier that, you know, maybe it's time to get into bigger projects. MR. BIBBY: Right. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Why don't we look at doing this all in one project, see if we can't save some money and some time at the same time. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Amen. MR. BIBBY: That's exactly why we're looking at pulling forward that last segment from Vanderbilt Beach to Immokalee, with the Pine Ridge to Vanderbilt Beach Road segment. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Jeff, why are they five separate projects? MR. BIBBY: Because of budget reasons. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Budget reasons. Tell me what you mean; I need more. MR. BIBBY: When we came before you back -- this was really last year, to accelerate Livingston Road in general, the Page 37 March 7, 2000 plan was to establish each of these segments in the subsequent years. We forward the plans to build Radio Road to Golden Gate Parkway this year, next year the Parkway to Pine Ridge, the year after that, Pine Ridge to Vanderbilt Beach Road. Because of the life cycle, we can't react that quickly to pull it all together. We're already committed, we're already under construction on that first segment from Radio Road to Golden Gate Parkway. We do have the opportunity to link up Pine Ridge Road to Vanderbilt Beach Road, and Vanderbilt Beach Road to Immokalee. And we're going down that road right now. For us to also include in that the Parkway to Pine Ridge piece would mean we would have to delay what we're currently introducing starting first part of next year with that segment. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Why? MR. BIBBY: We can't get the design of the other two segments done in time. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Why? MR. BIBBY: To exercise that option -- because of the design time and permitting time we are -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Is it because you would need another consultant, you'd need somebody else to do the design work? MR. BIBBY-' Well, the group that is already contracted to do that work is working an expedited schedule, design schedule. This is a consortium of AVB and Johnson Engineering. They are working an expedited design and permitting schedule on that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But do we need to add another design team? Would that make us be able to make us combine this into one project? I mean, is that a question that makes sense? It seems to me it does. MR. BIBBY: We definitely can accomplish that, putting that fourth and third section together. And whether or not we go to a separate design or not, we're trying to work that out right now. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Let me jump way out on a limb here. What if we talked to the folks from AVB and Johnson and they tell us they can do that faster? Might be some cost Page 38 March 7, 2000 associated with it. I'm just -- this is strictly hypothetical. But what if they tell us they can achieve that faster? MR. BIBBY: That would -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Because under the -- what Commissioner Norris' initiative was a few years ago, it did save, I think it was, six million bucks. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: '96. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: So even if there is some additional cost in speeding up the design, that would likely be more than made up by Commissioner Norris's idea of savings if you do that all under one contract, so -- COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Well, the other thing too is what we're looking at here is an entirely new -- not an improvement to but an entirely new north-south corridor that's going to relieve a lot of the pressure from Airport Road, in particular, but even from 41 and Collier Boulevard. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: So humor my assumption for a moment, that we can get done to speed that up. Then are there any other hurdles to actually doing those construction contracts together? MR. BIBBY: There's a normal time of permitting. If we can work through that, then there are no other hurdles, no. MR. McNEES: Commissioner-- COMMISSIONER CARTER: There's another situation here. You have eight and nine, Immokalee Road. I see there's a gap between a time that we finish 1-75 to 951 and then from 951, or Collier Boulevard, to Oil Well. Isn't there any reason that we could push those together again, look at that as one project, so that we don't have a lapse period where we stop construction, then we go back out there and start again? It looks to me like we've got a couple of quarters in 2001. MR. BIBBY: We're just about to award the design contract on that. The selection committee has chosen the particular individual and we'll be coming forward in the next meeting with that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: For the two? For both? COMMISSIONER CARTER: To bring both together so we Page 39 March 7, 2000 don't have a lapse? MR. BIBBY: No, this section from 951 east. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So why don't we combine those? MR. BIBBY: We can look to expedite that. Understand with all of these that they all come together with a lot of common firms. We've already asked Johnson Engineering to expedite Goodlette-Frank, that section of it. We're already accelerating Vanderbilt Beach Road. There are definitely options here, but we need to know the priorities within the options. We can do some of them probably -- I doubt we can do all of them with the current design contracts. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You know, God bless using local contractors and local design companies, and that's what we want to do, but not at the cost of, what is that, three-quarters of a year to keep -- to avoid combining that Immokalee Road piece, for example. And the better example even is Livingston Road, because we've got five segments. There are other design companies outside of Collier County. MR. McNEES: Commissioner, the best possible direction perhaps on let's talk about the four remaining segments of Livingston Road would be let us continue all speed ahead with the two segments that are currently in design; at the same time, accelerate as much as possible the other two segments. If that means we can get to a point to have them all ready for construction at the same time, it may. But what we don't want to see is that in any way the two segments that are already further down get slowed so that we can catch up the other two. We would rather keep all of them going forward as quickly as possible, so rather than direct us today to make that one project, perhaps direct us to get all four segments done as quickly as possible, whatever that means. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Berry. COMMISSIONER BERRY: I have one further question. The section of Livingston Road from Immokalee, as it goes up and it veers off around Imperial Estates, kind of makes that -- it's the east -- Page 40 March 7, 2000 MR. BIBBY: The east-west connector. COMMISSIONER BERRY: -- west part of that. Is that also four-laned, Jeff, or is that just the two-lane? Because someone told me the other day they thought it was going to be two-laned. MR. BIBBY: It's designed for six lanes, is that -- four-lane design. Now currently in the program for the two lanes, however, there are some developers there that we're talking to right now to see if we can enter into a developer contribution agreement with them. So it's not being driven by a need. But we could get into another opportunity, but the developer will help us out, COMMISSIONER BERRY: Could we then go to four lanes? MR. BIBBY: It would depend on your direction on it. It will not be driven by an immediate need. However -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay. My only point being, if you're going to have a four-lane roadway that's going to go up and dump into Bonita, and then you've got this other little spur going off, coming over to 41, 41's going to be a six-lane highway. It seems awfully strange that you're going to take traffic off of a six-lane highway, put it on a two-lane road to bring it down and then have that connect up to a four-lane highway. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. If there's some way we can do it, if the board concurs with this, I would certainly like to see it at a minimum of a four-lane roadway up there. And again, the same situation of having to come back and revisit it again in a few years and disturb the area up in there. COMMISSIONER CARTER: I would agree. Because I look at Livingston as not just a north-south but that east-west connector, and seeing that being a four-lane, as you have pointed out, Commissioner Berry. And to me that should be in a master plan. And whatever you can work into this process, I think that's where we need to be going so that we don't keep getting this stop and start, stop and start. And if we can get this linkage to a big contractor that can do all of this, then that's what we need to do, CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Final question for me on this Page 41 March 7, 2000 page is No. 6, Pine Ridge Road, Airport to Logan. Single most congested area, with the exception perhaps of the Boulevard. It shows the beginning of what looks like on this map about November 1. Is there any reason why we couldn't contract that to begin sooner? MR. BIBBY: We're getting ready to go out to advertise that this month. It is in there for budget reasons. There's probably an opportunity there to pull it up. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: And just the two thoughts there. It shows about 12 months. MR. BIBBY: We'd have to work through the right-of-way issues. But if there are savings, we're talking weeks versus months. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: And maybe it won't make a difference, but it shows 12 months, which is November to November. MR. BIBBY: Well, with all of these -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: We started in July. It's still going to go all the way through season. I'm just wondering if there's any way under all these other scenarios to accelerate that so you finish it up -- start it in July and get it done in January or February, that's better than having it torn up in February, March and April next year. MR. BIBBY: Right. With all these, we're going to look for options through the bid alternates, working with the bidders to see what we can do to expedite the schedules. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: How complex are the right-of-way issues, or how realistic is it to expect that that could begin sometime this summer, as opposed to almost Christmas? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Where are we on right-of-way acquisition I guess is the question, right? MR. BIBBY: We're currently well in the process, yeah. MS. TAYLOR: Sandy Taylor, your real property management department director. Currently all the files are in the County Attorney's Office. The last order of taking, if I'm not mistaken, is sometime in May. Page 42 March 7, 2000 COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So we will have right-of-way by May. MS. ASHTON: Yeah, the order of taking here -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: You are? MS. ASHTON: -- is for most of the parcels. Heidi Ashton, assistant county attorney. The order of taking here for most of the parcels is April 5th and 6th. There's one that because of the number of condominium unit owners that were involved, we had to delay that one parcel until May. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: So the right-of-way issues will be taken care of in time for the beginning of summer construction. Are there any other hurdles to doing that? MR. BIBBY: Sounds like not. COMMISSIONER CARTER: I have -- MR. BIBBY: We advertise this month and pull it forward. Of course, the hurdle is the budget issue that we're going to talk about later. But other than that, I don't see a real -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Recognizing money's an issue with all of these. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Mr. Chairman, I have one other item on this sheet and that's No. 12, 111th Avenue, north of Vanderbilt Drive. For a long time that has been a discussion point in that community. And the alternative that is strongly recommended by the community is to four-lane Wiggins Pass Road and not touch 111th, because if we do that, we're going to be going right through some people's living rooms. MR. BIBBY: Understood. We do understand that issue. Before we move forward on this, we are planning to come back to you to discuss these issues. As noted on the update sheet here, we will be talking about a roundabout perhaps as part of that -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: That intersection improvement there, I know you're getting creative and going to do some good things with that. But hope -- you know, again, let's go to Wiggins Pass Road -- Page 43 March 7, 2000 MR. BIBBY: Right. We're not going to be surprised if you -- if we take this out of the program, so -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: Thank you. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thanks. Let's move on to grade separation program update. MR. FINN: For the record, Edward Finn, interim public works administrator. I think I want to say first of all, on the last item I appreciate the input from the board. I think there's some good discussion going on there. I'm going to be cautioning you that I hope staff is not over promising here in this forum, and I'm going to urge them to take a hard look and provide a written report on several of the items we've -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: We hope so, too. MR. FINN: -- provided before we fully commit to expediting projects six, nine, 12 months at a time. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No, no, you're fully committed. MR. FINN: This is just a very brief update on the grade separation program. In the FY-'00 budget, the budget we're working on now, the board authorized some funding for an intersection grade separation study. That study -- the contract for that study is presently underway and is expected to be complete roughly by the end this year. In our update of the road, overall road program that we're going to talk about in a minute, we have included funding in FY-'02 to construct as many as two grade separations at the highest -- at the intersections that need those the most. That will be determined by the study that I just mentioned to you. The cost of those two separations is 18 million dollars, and that is only an estimate at this time. I think I'm going to speak a little bit for Ed Kant here, because again, this is one of his key efforts, and he is the expert on this. But in general, when -- we talk about the real aggravation that takes place day-to-day is at the large intersections, and those intersections are largely constrained, they can't grow out any more, that leaves only fairly expensive Page 44 March 7, 2000 options to fix them. And in our view, it is one of the most important efforts in our road program. So with that, I'll move on, unless there are some additional questions. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Question. If you -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Go ahead. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: If you had to -- it sounds like you're thinking already about what the two intersections are likely to be. What are you thinking they're likely to be? MR. FINN: I am not. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. It was worth a shot. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, I suspect Golden Gate Parkway and Airport as a prime candidate. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The man's poker faced. COMMISSIONER BERRY: I think you could look at a number of intersections up and down Airport Road that might be candidates, plus looking at one perhaps even one out on 951. So I don't think there's any big surprises there. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I assume, and I realize all this is speculation, and Mr. Finn is going to get a letter -- a word to his credit. But the other thing we're going to have to deal with of course is when the Golden Gate Parkway interchange opens. That's going to considerably overload not only the four lanes there, but the intersection of Airport as well. MR. FINN: And the impact of the Livingston Road segment emptying onto Golden Gate is going to have an impact at that intersection. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I prefer to think of it as relieving off Golden Gate, but okay. MR. McNEES: Mr. Finn wisely recognizes we're paying a consultant a lot of money to tell us which will be the best ones to do first. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I understand. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And when do we expect to get that report? MR. FINN: End of the year, ma'am. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: End of the year. Page 45 March 7, 2000 CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Next item. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, let me ask a question on that. Will that give us enough time to react to whatever they suggest we do this in conjunction with everything else that's going on in our road network system? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Do we need to pay them more to make them do it faster? MR. FINN: That contract is under negotiation. We do have the ability to hopefully affect the schedule. You may rest assured that as a result of this meeting, as well as the overall renewed emphasis on roads over the last several months, our staff is going to do everything in their power to get that done -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Who are we negotiating -- MR. FINN: -- as soon as possible. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: -- that with? MR. FINN: That is with, I believe, Kimberly Horn. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you. MR. McNEES: The important factor is the money to actually do improvements will be in the budget for the next couple of years. So once we know which one we're going to do, we've got -- we'll have the money already set aside to do it. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Okay, thank you. MR. FINN: And I will say, and it's the item that I'm going to talk about next, is the overall capital needs analysis. In my experience here, we have a lot of hard-working folks that work on roads, as well as many of the other projects we do. And while the board may not clearly see it, I can see and I can tell that their productivity, their ability to stay focused and their ability to push those projects forward and make them happen as timely as possible is affected by the budget and whether or not that money is going to be in place. The item that we're going to talk about is in fact an expedited road schedule that Mr. Kant has spent many, many hours looking at. That expedited road schedule is going to allow us over the next two to three years to do a substantial catchup on our road network and make significant improvements in that network. Page 46 March 7, 2000 Yes, sir. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I'll tell you what. Before we get too far into that, let's give our court reporter a break. It's 10:29. Let's come back in 10 minutes. (Recess.} CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Let's return. We'll move on to the road capital needs analysis that Mr. Finn had started. MR. FINN: Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Edward Finn, interim public works administrator. We've taken another hard look and updated the road program. This update is really part of our strategy to get the overall road program clearly on track with the board's new direction. The program that we're going to talk about today emphasizes the need to get roads built over the next two years. As part of this item, we're asking the board to adopt as a matter of policy that road construction will be planned to occur at or immediately prior to estimated deficiency dates. We're also asking the board to recognize the need to Design and construct separated -- grade separated intersections. Over the next two years, our accelerated roads capital program totals about 125 million dollars. The next item, which I think I'm going to blend the two together here, in your agenda package, it discusses how it will pay for the road program. In general, the existing road revenue sources, include the updated impact fees, will generate about 95 million dollars over the next few years. Bond and loan proceeds, as you might know, in the amount of 17 million are already a component of the budget year we're in presently. The bad news is just based on the program that we've established, without considering some of the direction the board has discussed today and the changes the board has discussed, we're going to need to get additional funds of 25 to 30 million dollars to get through the FY-'01 project list that we've established. And that may or may not include everything the board has discussed today. And to get through '02, which includes several other accelerated efforts, including that 18 Page 47 March 7, 2000 million dollars I mentioned earlier for grade separations, we're going to need about 95 million dollars. At this point in time, we believe that gas taxes can be bonded to generate the funding we need. We'll be returning to the board in the near future with a funding approach that may include both short-term interim commercial paper financing to allow us to get through the next -- essentially the year we're in now and the next year, as well as some long-term financing alternatives, focusing on bond and gas taxes, with a secondary pledge of impact fees. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Questions for Mr. Finn? COMMISSIONER BERRY: Well, yeah. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman? I have a question. It seems that there's various numbers that are bandied about as to how much money we have available for roadway funding. Do you -- can you tell us that -- MR. FINN: Yes, ma'am. COMMISSIONER BERRY: -- as we speak? MR. FINN: Based on the current impact fees and the current gas taxes that are in place, the average annual new revenue is about 25 million dollars. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay. But what do we have on hand right now for road building? MR. FINN: On hand? COMMISSIONER BERRY: Uh-huh. MR. FINN: It's kind of difficult to say. Let me see if I can explain it to you this way: The year we're in now, we have projects totaling 70 million dollars. We have revenue, including accumulated funds that we typically call carryforward, of 72 million dollars. So we're at a wash right now. The -- I think it's -- let me try it this way: Over the next two years we've identified 124 million dollars in projects. We have new revenue of about 50 million dollars. If we went year to year, we can see the shortfall. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I think what the board is looking to do here, the whole purpose of this workshop, is to do some acceleration on our work program over the next three to five Page 48 March 7, 2000 years. So we obviously are going to have to consider some short-term bonding to cover the cost of that acceleration. We might as well get it out on the table and start talking about it, because that's what's going to have to happen. COMMISSIONER CARTER: And for a page of reference, Mr. Finn, do we go to Page 9, which shows us the amount of revenues streams? And then the bottom line says surplus or shortfall. It seems to me in each given year, I see a fair amount of shortfall. If I looked out here over a 10-year period, it looks to me like I've got 112 million, 496 as a shortfall, looking at, I guess, every anticipated project that we want to do. If this is a proper page and this is where I need to be focused, then maybe we could get at the revenue streams and issues that we have to deal with. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Mr. Finn. MR. FINN: Yes, sir, thank you. Page 9 is in fact a very good page to discuss this matter. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Let's go to Page 9 then, shall we? MR. FINN: I'm looking at it. I'm willing to entertain any questions the board might have. COMMISSIONER CARTER: And it says in the year 1999 to the year 2000, it looks like we were in a positive picture. But if I look at 2000 to 2001, I see almost a 28 million dollar shortfall. MR. FINN: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Am I right on that? MR. FINN: Yes, sir. Further, I will say that the fiscal '00 budget, you're looking at that looks like a positive 18 million dollars, 17 million of that positive 18 million is in fact loan proceeds plugged into the budget. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Okay. MR. FINN: So there is no positive -- a nominal one or two million dollar positive there. What the board is looking at is the result of staff taking the board's direction, taking it very seriously in trying to address the crying need to get roads completed before they become deficient Page 49 March 7, 2000 and before they create traveling problems for the public. That is the thrust of what you see here. In year '03 -- I'm sorry, in year '02, you have a substantial hump in projects without a corresponding revenue source. What we're looking at is borrowing somewhere between 95 and 100 million dollars in the short run; that taking care hopefully of most of the shortfall over the longer range as well. I will caution the board, some of the things they were discussing today may well add to what we're looking at here. When we start talking about Livingston Road east-west and some of these other new segments, first step is we need to get them into the network so that they qualify for impact fees so that we can then work with a proper approach to getting them done. Those roads in some cases are not even in this 10-year program. COMMISSIONER CARTER: But if I go back and look at the very first part of this workshop and all the things that we're accelerating and needing to do, I showed that we had about 115 million dollars in projects. Now, is that all factored into this, or is that in addition to? MR. FINN: Yes. COMMISSIONER CARTER: That's all factored in. MR. FINN: Yes. MR. McNEES: Commissioners, what we're asking for today is fairly simply your direction to bring back to you the mechanics to borrow not just short-term but long-term revenue bonds against your gas taxes to fund the '01 and '00 deficits that we have. In the longer term, as you know, we're looking, based on our new revenue of the new impact fees on roads and our overall capital needs, that we'll be coming back to you this summer with an overall capital plan, recognizing that this additional bonding of your gas taxes takes money out of the pay-as-you-go stream in the out years, and that we need to take that into account as well as we develop an overall capital plan that you'll be seeing in the next few months. But We're trying to address the immediate acute road issue, and all we need from you today is your assent to go forward and Page 50 March 7~ 2000 begin to develop the bonding for those projects. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Any objection from the board? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: COMMISSIONER CARTER: MR. FINN: Thank you, sir. No, Please go forward. Go forward. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Road right-of-way acquisition acceleration. Mr. Bibby. Keeping you busy today. MR. BIBBY: Okay. Back on November 9th, during the discussion of that point on ways to enhance our overall roadway means, we talked about the right-of-way acquisition process as a process that was requiring more and more time on projects. As a result of that, we went out, we formed a 19-member task force, represented by groups of -- wide diverse group of individuals. We came up with a standardized typical section for a six-lane urban highway. What we have on the agenda for next Tuesday is a resolution that's on the visualizer here. I'm going to ask you to adopt that as the standardized design for six-lane urban highways. What that will allow us to do is to start the acquisition process earlier. Right now we develop the specific road design to 60 percent, we write our legal descriptions, and we coordinate with real property to acquire needed right-of-way. What this will allow us to do is get that process going just as soon as we can lock in on the alignment. So this can take a matter of months off of a project schedule. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Berry. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Jeff, I have a question in regard to -- I know Commissioner Mac'Kie and some of us had some trips around looking at different roads, or different concerns, particularly on Immokalee Road. Does this design -- I'm not a traffic engineer, so I could look at this all day long and it looks fine to me, but I don't know if this is the best design in the world. That's not what I know much about. But have we taken into consideration dealing with some of Page 51 March 7, 2000 the concerns that we had in Immokalee Road in terms of the banks and -- I'm talking about banks. What do you call them? MR. BIBBY: As generically as we can, now -- now, what I'm not asking to you do -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: Berm, whatever. MR. BIBBY.' -- this is the standardized design that we can come up with. This is not going to lock us in. We're not asking to you lock us in to using this design for every future six-lane road we do. What this does accomplish, though, is that this provides a basis for going to acquire 150 feet of right-of-way. Now, the downside is that we may find, as a result of an instance you discuss, we may need 160 feet of right-of-way in certain areas. We'll have to go back out and acquire it. But on a balanced going forward basis, this should provide us the means to get ahead of the right-of-way acquisition curve and get the process rolling. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: At a better means than what we're doing right now. MR. FINN: Right. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But we still have to be so attentive to the individual needs. And that's why in our contracts that we bid design, we have to continue to put in the community input. Like you went through on Golden Gate Boulevard, but we didn't do, for example, on Immokalee Road, because it was perceived that developers aren't, quote, community. And, frankly, developers are the community members that we can get something out of and could have gotten something prettier out of on Immokalee Road than what we ended up with as a design. MR. McNEES: And Commissioner, what we're going to need from you is as much as we pledge and have tried to continue to have community input, once we have received that input and decisions have been made about a cross-section, we need you all to get with us and get moving. Because what has tended to happen at times in the past is we've allowed that community input, when it's divided, to become a hurdle and a roadblock where we don't get things done. So we need -- that's where we Page 52 March 7, 2000 need your help, where once we've had the impact, once we've made a decision, once we've made the best possible compromise that we can, that you all help us move forward. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: One other question here that has to do with where there is -- like on Immokalee Road, where there was the Big Cypress Basin canals, how does this propose to deal with the existence of those canals? For example, where on Immokalee Road we should have in my judgment shifted the design. MR. BIBBY: Absolutely doesn't. And that's not the intent. We're not trying to lock into a one design fits all circumstances. This is strictly meant to provide a basis to get real property going quicker in the acquisition process. COMMISSIONER BERRY: In other words, you're just showing us a segment and you're saying that this is generally what it's going to look like. This has nothing to do with the enhancement in terms of if you're working with the developer to try and make one side pretty or whatever. MR. BIBBY: Absolutely correct. COMMISSIONER BERRY: This has nothing to do with that. This is just strictly the road bed and how you're going to address drainage and so forth. MR. BIBBY: This is a way to get to any -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: Fine. MR. BIBBY: -- 450 feet of right-of-way. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you. MR. BIBBY: And moving on to the next item, here's what we plan to use. With Immokalee Road, this upcoming section, we currently have 100 feet of existing right-of-way. We need 150. Here's an opportunity of where we could use this. We'll pursue that just as soon as we get the alignment finalized. Livingston Road, that next section, Vanderbilt Beach Road, Santa Barbara Boulevard, south of Davis. Now the alignment is established, we can use this as the basis for doing acquisitions. And the last section of Goodlette-Frank Road. So we definitely have opportunities. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Because in the past, Jeff, we Page 53 March 7, 2000 didn't have a standard. You didn't know -- you would get 100 feet sometimes, 150 feet sometimes, and 120 feet sometimes. And what we're basically doing with this is telling you, our roads are going to be 150 -- the right-of-way needs to be 150 feet at a minimum, go out and get that much. MR. BIBBY: Right. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's an improvement. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Which moves us right along to? MR. McNEES: The condemnation issue, which we're past. The next is response to Commissioner Mac'Kie's suggestion. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay, before we go to that, there was a couple -- I didn't know that we were doing these executive summaries sort of in summary. I just wanted to be sure that whatever you need from the board as far as endorsement of having, for example, real property get involved, real property department get involved earlier in the process, that's one of the things on 2-C or some -- 2-C-2 that's in here, condensing the right-of-way acquisition process, using independent title companies. Are you telling us you already are going there, or do you need some endorsement from the board to do that? I liked the idea of having some designated people in the County Attorney's Office, or maybe even sitting in the real property office for some period of time. MS. TAYLOR: Sandy Taylor again, your real property management director. We already consult all our title work, we consult all our appraisal work. Basically the real property management department reviews the appraisals, makes sure they're, you know, basically justifiable for the court process. And then we negotiate. And what the executive summary that David and I prepared states, that if you don't want to negotiate to shorten that time, we can do that. But there's a cost and then there's also a legal concern associated with that decision. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But as far as the recommendation that you have designated a county attorney who perhaps even sits in your office, I can't find -- put my hand Page 54 March 7, 2000 on it here, but I know I read that in preparation for this meeting. MS. TAYLOR: I'm not aware of one. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Is that something you guys are considering doing as a part of speeding up the quick take process? MR. WEIGEL: Thank you, David Weigel, county attorney. What we're doing, following the board's previous discussions in this regard, is one, we looked at this in terms of where we are in the process. Obviously we're late in the process subsequent to negotiations that's occurred. And our role, of course, is to convert the files that come over to us into case files to go over in the court. We have been meeting -- have been meeting, will continue to meet -- the schedule and volume that's been coming to us at the present time. Now, in the executive summary that you have, and with the little handouts I'm providing you right there, there's certainly significant constraints under the Florida Statutes which are changing even effective as of this July 1st in regard to abilities of the county attorney to reduce the time frame of going to the quick take, which we've been doing for years. That's all we do are quick takes. We get into court relative quickly, getting advanced on the court calendar, and we've never yet lost on a quick take hearing that we've had. We have a very good record that way. Now, how do we achieve that record? Well, obviously it takes kind of a symbiotic relationship, particularly real property and the County Attorney Office, because they have to provide us not only the material that we review for update to make sure it's not stale and that we can reprocess and get it into court. If it is stale, because of question or negotiation over time, things of that nature, we have to go back, dot the I's, cross the T's on the title work of the appraisal so that it's fresh and available to stand any kind of challenge that we make when we go to court. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: David, excuse me for interrupting you, but it's just that I think I've caused this whole discussion to happen here, and it isn't the question. The question that I had was -- Page 55 March 7, 2000 MR. WEIGEL: Putting a county attorney or an attorney in the real property department office. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You got it. MR. WEIGEL: Okay. And I'm discretely negotiating right now with outside counsel with significant experience in eminent domain that would come to the county. We have yet to negotiate the kind of contract to bring back to the board. But the fact is that that person would come in and provide an additional presence, both for the County Attorney Office and for the real property management department. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Sort of outsource a portion of that work in addition to the appraisal and the title work, I guess is what I'm hearing. MR. WEIGEL: I guess you could say so. But that attorney would be an attorney employed through the County Attorney Office. I'm really not at any point looking to have attorneys independent in other offices getting involved in the eminent domain process. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I don't care where they sit, they have to work for you. But I think it -- I hope that you're considering where they sit and being open-minded to that. MR. WEIGEL: Well, I'm considering it very seriously, because we really have no place for them to sit, but we're going to find a place for them to sit. It's not going to stop us from bringing someone on board. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That addresses my question. MR. WEIGEL.' Okay. I know part of the question had to be the ability to respond to the questions that come up in the day-to-day operations of the real property department. We've endeavored mightily to further address those things. And even with our outside counsel have set up weekly conference calls for that arrangement. And I think you've all been copied on a memo that shows that that's been done, too. We've tried to be responsive to the issues and questions that come up. At the same time, I feel very proud of the fact that we've met the volume that we have right now, and we -- as this county snake swallows the road calf and it comes through to the Page 56 March 7, 2000 County Attorney Office for a lawsuit, I think we can meet the volume as it comes our way in the future, too. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Since the next item is this traffic congestion index, i have to say, I was disappointed to see that there isn't anything as far as staff report in here. Just basically says, you know, one of you has brought this up, do you want to talk about it. I have talked to staff members about it and have heard that, for example, Mr. Cautero believes that if we had a local level of service, the state would hold us to it for concurrency measurement. And that that concept, therefore, of having a local standard different from the state standard is not likely to be useful in avoiding this stick for this state to be a stick. I do, however, have a different idea that I'd like to put out there for everybody's consideration today that has to do with the -- is what we were just talking about with Mr. Finn. We're so used to hearing it, it doesn't strike us as odd, and it should, that we're considering doing a radical thing of beginning construction of roads when they become deficient instead of three years later. Everything we've heard this morning has to do with the short-term solutions that we hear. We've been told that we're going to have -- at least for the next two years the problem is going to be the same, if it's not going to be worse, as we continue to issue building permits on a daily basis. My question is whether or not the board would authorize the County Attorney's Office to research the question of building permit quotas on currently deficient road segments. In other words, there are six currently deficient road segments: There's Airport, Davis, Golden Gate Boulevard, portions of Goodlette, three segments of Immokalee and a portion of Pine Ridge Road. What has been done in other counties in Florida, and has also been done in other states, is building permit quotas are established where there are current deficiencies. We -- I think what we've learned over the last few months is that there is a glitch in the state system that says you can continue to issue building permits for deficient roadways, so long Page 57 March 7, 2000 as you have a budget three years out to correct the problem. What I'm suggesting -- I don't think our economy in this community could handle a moratorium on deficient roadways, because too much of our economy depends on the construction industry. But we could manage the construction of new residential and new commercial development that impacts currently deficient roadways by establishing quotas for a maximum number of building permits on deficient roadways. And I'm hoping there's an interest in having the county attorney at least research that. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I don't know enough about it to support or reject. I think it would be a great idea if we could get some information back. I know there -- great idea to get a report. I think there are two or three states I know of that do this, including a couple of communities in Florida, and so it shouldn't be that hard to track down the pros and the cons and what its real impacts are, and maybe we could -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: Is this what -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: .- at least have a report back. COMMISSIONER BERRY: -- they do in the Keys? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's what they did in the Keys. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Is this the same thing that they've done -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But the state required them to do it in the Keys because of the water/sewer deficiency. What I'm suggesting is that we would do it to ourselves because of existing road deficiencies. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, I would say I would carry that to the total infrastructure. Can it support the new development? And if it can't in these constrained areas, then it's got to be there before we do it. Now, what is the legal implications is what you're asking. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Mr. McNees and Mr. Weigel, how long is a realistic time frame? Is sometime in the month of April? We're at the first week in March. Sometime in the month of April a realistic time frame to bring that back? MR. WEIGEL: Yes. Page 58 March 7, 2000 MR. McNEES: Yes. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Good. COMMISSIONER CARTER: It would in effect then in future PUD approvals, we would then incorporate that language that that structure had to be in place before we started turning the first shovel of dirt. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Exactly. To get us where we have been talking about wanting to go within a manageable framework. Instead of just a slam dunk moratorium saying the roads are deficient, we would say we are willing to live with the deficiency up to this amount. We're establishing the existing deficiency and we're willing to live with more trouble on this road, but only some percentage of -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: So direction is to look at both the practical aspects and the legal aspects, and have that back in the month of April. MR. McNEES: Recognizing just now, I'm making promises Mr. Olliff is going to have to keep we'll do that whenever you want. COMMISSIONER CARTER: I notice Tom was dying over here to my left, but that's all right. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Go ahead, Mike. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Is that why I heard you say, yeah, we'll have it by next Tuesday? MR. McNEES: I would like to answer Commissioner Mac'Kie's question about why there's not a staff report on our level of congestion index. Because it kind of became a moot point. What you have here is what I'd call a quiet revolution in how we deal with roads in terms of your Growth Management Plan. The concurrency management system has historically in Collier County been used as a tool to defer the spending of money to the last possible minute. Because prior boards would never give us the authorization to bond your gas taxes, we were on a completely pay-as-you-go system, which required that we defer every single project that we could, as long as we possibly legally could. And that was really what your system was built Page 59 March 7, 2000 around. Through your efforts and your decisions over the last few months, we have now changed the practice to let's build them as quickly as we can, let's build them where we need them, let's borrow the money that we need. So really, the need for some other index other than the level of service has become somewhat moot, because we're going to build as much as we can, as fast as we can. Now what needs to happen is Mr. Mulhere and Mr. Cautero and Mr. Jones need to take what is now our new practical reality and fold that into the concurrency management system in whatever way they in their planning wisdom believe is appropriate. And I'm sure that will be coming back to you as the plan updates are -- come to you in time. And that's why you haven't seen really the -- I would say that concept's overcome by events. We're so much radically changed the way we're looking at these issues that it's become moot. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Understood that. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Just to clarify one point. I know you said leading up to today one of the primary concerns was that there'll be no improvement at all in the next two years. And it sounds like by some of the things we've laid out here, there will indeed. We've still got a big picture to deal at, though, between the intersection improvements and the deputy assisted traffic control and accelerating some of the projects. The good news is we're not going to have to wait two years to see some of those improvements. And I think that's been a productive part of today. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And just to be clear about what I was saying is the roads are likely to remain deficient for -- CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- the next two years. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: And no way minimizing your suggestion, and I think they've got that direction. The final item on the printed agenda is future roadway closing policy. MR. McNEES: And this one's pretty simple. As part of your Page 60 March 7, 2000 traffic calming system, you offer an option at different times under different circumstances for specific roadways to be constrained, closed, speed bumped, whatever it might be. We're going to ask you today, in the absence of a more formal policy and a more comprehensive study on traffic impact related issues that you declare, call it a moratorium if you wish, a ban, a suspension, on closings of any public roads until we can bring back to you, if you wish for us to, a more comprehensive policy on when those would be appropriate. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: And I assume that's on through roads. And the example I think of is a couple of years ago Royal Wood, which there's one entrance into their community and one out. It doesn't impact anybody except their own resident. There's nobody that I know of pending out there, but if some community came in and wanted -- and it had zero impact on any other road, I assume we don't care about that. But anything that would impact any through roadway. MR. McNEES: We certainly care about them, but we wouldn't ask to close their road. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: In this particular item, that would not apply. MR. McNEES: No. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you for the clarification. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Would this include Carica? CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Any changes, I assume you mean. MR. McNEES: We have direction on that one already. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But we've got to vote on it yet. I mean, we're going to have to formally vote on it. I just think it's a big mistake. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: That's fine. Let's not get into specific roadways today. That's -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: I think that's a problem. We begin to micro manage from the dais, and I think what they're looking is for an overall direction. And I think we need to set the policy, and then we'll make the other decisions accordingly. So let's stay a policy, and I think that's what's being asked here. Page 61 March 7, 2000 And this commissioner says yes to that request. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: The direction you're looking for is let's for the time being stop any specific neighborhood management type things in time for a policy on any through roadway. MR. McNEES: More specifically not that you eliminate the traffic management options, but rather that you take closing off the menu. Speed bumps, fine, whatever other calming mechanisms we can come up with, fine. Only that you take off that menu the option to close the roads. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: And in the meantime, our staff will be working on a policy to deal with that some way, shape or manner. MR. McNEES: And probably an extremely restrictive policy. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Anybody object to that? COMMISSIONER BERRY: No. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Before we go to public comment, I just wanted to mention, we have former secretary of the DOT, David May with us today. David, I didn't know if you wanted to share with us anything. He was our district secretary for years. I asked him to come down. And I've been picking his brain a little bit. And of particular interest is some of the work he did on I-4 and how accelerated that schedule. And many of the things, kind of similar to what you had said. And also, while why they didn't do a 24-hour work program, they did a 16-hour work program, just doubling up. Didn't know if you wanted to address this and just share a couple of ideas along the way, anyway. MR. MAY: Yeah, couple of -- thank you very much for inviting me down. I-4, there's an interchange being constructed. It started six months after the adjoining section of 1'4, and got done nine to 12 months before the adjoining section because there was an incentive-based bid. And the cost came back. It wasn't really that disproportional compared to what they did. They could not work seven days a week, and they could not work 24 hours a day, because they could not find staff and supervision. Especially supervision. Because it takes a lot of Page 62 March 7, 2000 supervision to get these roadway projects done. They also had trouble in construction management, getting the inspection done 24 hours a day. So it was much more cost effective and time effective to get it done 16 hours a day than 24, and six days a week instead of seven days, because everyone needs a little rest. It works much better from a supervision and from a labor standpoint. The results were outstanding. They did this job in 14 months, when the original schedule was something like 30. And they did it on an insensitive based project. Just basic incentive. And let the contractor come up with his creative ideas and how to better facilitate this work and get it done. It takes a very cooperative effort on the part of the client, as well as the construction management team to make sure it all happens. But it can be done. And you're on exactly the right track to get these things done. If you pursue a bonding scenario, nothing can get done until the -- all the right-of-way's purchased. It's a -- eye of the needle is right there on the right-of-way in the legal department, and so he's going to need some help, that's for sure. And it's going to be tough to get it all done like that. Working with Polk County, and they have gone to outside counsel to try and help out with several different firms to spread out the load, as well as outside experts, and there's several ideas we have along those lines. The standard typical section is an excellent idea to go purchase right-of-way. One thing, when you implement that, a good alignment choice is required. And a good alignment choice needs to take into account the imminent domain impacts that that alignment's going to have. And so we're working on planning, expert witness, the engineering expert, as well as cost experts, before we give the alignment to an engineering firm to design the roadway segment a typical section, to cut out quite a bit of money and quite -- in terms of right-of-way, you're not spending any additional money, but you cut out quite a bit of time. You can really accelerate projects that way. Early permitting is another thing that we've talked about a Page 63 March 7, 2000 little bit over with some of your staff. Can be done. You just have to press the issue. You're going along a lot of different avenues at the same time, and they're all very, very good and they're worthwhile. I commend you for doing that. It's going to take a continued don't give up effort. There's a lot of these ideas, well, we can't do this. Yes, you can. It's been done other places and will be done. You just need to keep pursuing until you get the answers you need to get. There's so many things you can do. You just have to look at them and evaluate it. I really commend you for your efforts and will be glad to assist you in any way I can. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you very much. How many speakers do we have from the public, Mr. McNees? MR. McNEES: You have three. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Great. Commissioner Berry? COMMISSIONER NORRIS: You've got four now. COMMISSIONER BERRY: There's been some concern raised about -- and I don't know that today's the appropriate time, but tell me when's the appropriate time -- some further discussion about Miller Boulevard in the overall traffic scheme of things for Collier County. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Can't be too soon for me. Can we talk about that -- is it realistic to talk about where we're at on that next Tuesday? MR. McNEES: Sure. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: He likes writing checks you have to catch. COMMISSIONER NORRIS: We are where we are. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: We are where we are. MR. McNEES: I think I still have to cash that one next Tuesday. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you. Let's go to the public speakers. We have four. Page 64 March 7, 2000 MR. McNEES.' The first would be Tom Conrecode, who will be followed by Aubrey Rogers. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Mr. Conrecode? MR. CONRECODE: My apologies. I thought I would be the last speaker. COMMISSIONER BERRY: No, the first shall be last. MR. CONRECODE: Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Tom Conrecode, and I'm speaking because of my intense interest in transportation issues. I would like to do two things: First of all, applaud the commission, the leadership, staff, on dealing with an enormous issue, and dealing with it I think in a fairly aggressive way. I would encourage even more aggression and even better management, and even more effort. And I'd like to focus in a couple of specific areas. Those specific areas are planning, execution, funding and management. And I've hit on a couple of points for you. I see some effort, and I see an area or a need for additional effort in the planning for the before the construction surge starts in the next six months. And there are some specific things. And I just by way of example cite Vanderbilt Beach Road and Golden Gate Parkway, which are going to be severely impacted by Pine Ridge Road. We need to be prepared to remove all the impediments along those roads, because they're going to be sought out as alternative routes. We're going to have an additional surge of traffic up Airport Road between Pine Ridge and Vanderbilt Beach Road or between Pine Ridge and Immokalee Road, and we need to be prepared to address that. And it could be things as simple as special events, a golf tournament, in making sure that the management of the flow of traffic from that event is taken care of a specific way; managing accidents and the response. I applaud that effort from staff, because it certainly is necessary, particularly during the surges. And the second thing under the planning umbrella is to set those priorities. Those that are the catchup priorities. I heard the list, fairly comprehensive today. But I would encourage staff Page 65 March 7, 2000 and the commission not to accept anything as a given. Always question the right-of-way acquisition and the permitting time lines and everything, and don't accept that as good enough. Just keep pushing those projects. Immediately on the tail of those 14 projects that were identified today is a second level of priority which I will consider as additional catchup. Because by the time you finish this huge construction surge, you're still going to have to have those other projects in way, so let's not lose sight of those. And then the third level of priority, which really gets us back on track and what I hear from staff is that we will build those roads before they become deficient, and that in fact is the way that 9G5055 is supposed to work. But it does give you some latitude to extend two and three years into a project. Second area, and under execution, this program needs to be intensely managed. I don't think we can afford to accept any excuses from staff, not that there is, or from consultants or from contractors or from anybody. We need to be able to demand performance. I will tell you on the private side, the demand performance and the gift performance. And we need to be in the same position on the public side, to respond to a previous speaker's comments about advancing the permitting, and I applaud Steve Carnell's efforts on the procurement arena. I also applaud under the category of management your sense of urgency in addressing these transportation problems. One other thing under management I would encourage to you do is let's not waste time on any t .w.o-lane roads anymore. If we're going to build a corridor, let's bu,ld it as a four-lane road, let's get it done, and then let's take a picture into the future; what are the impact of those four-lane roads going to be? We need to address flyovers now. We can't wait for consultant reports forever. We know we can all identify two or three or four flyovers that could be built today and it would really dramatically improve the flow of traffic. Under funding, I would ask you to look beyond the local options that you have for funding. There are certainly a number of things we can do locally, for instance. And I know this is Page 66 March 7, 2000 controversial, but I'm going to say it anyway. I would encourage you to pledge all of your gas tax money through capital program. Look for ad valorem sources and MSTU districts to provide as much funding for maintenance as you can. You need to be prepared in the future, in the next couple of years, to see a reduction in state revenues coming down for your local road building program. That is going to happen. The state's going to commit additional dollars to the interstate highway system, and the people who are going to suffer are the local MPO's. They're going to meet their statutory minimums, but it's going to mean a reduction of amount of funding available to you on an annual basis. You need to prepare for that in your financial plan as you address it in the near future. I would encourage you, without referendum, to renew the nickel local option gas tax. I would encourage you to support the gas tax indexing bill that is before the legislature currently in the session that opens tomorrow. Can I have another 30 seconds? CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Sure. COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: To support the gas tax indexing bill. It's not a lot of money, but for a penny a sales tax, it's tied to the CPI, and it will just mean that that revenue source continues to grow as your cost of construction goes up and your need for road building goes up. In addition, there's a number of bills in the legislature this session that ought to be embraced by the commission and by staff. And I would encourage you to do things now in preparation for their passing; specifically Senate Bill 862, which will be introduced on the Senate floor tomorrow, is likely to pass within the week, provides for 1.6 billion in additional state-wide transportation dollars, of which 450 million dollars of that is tied to Dudley Goodlette's bill, the local incentive bill. His bill was intended to generate between 52 and 58 million a year. What they've done is they've come up with additional revenues. And our program to get 225 million next year, 225 million the year after that, you need to be in line right now to get those dollars. We should be doing some corridor studies on Page 67 March 7, 2000 Livingston Road to show that it takes an impact off 1-75 and improve your opportunity and your eligibility for those dollars. They're huge dollars. I can tell you that Tampa and Orlando, the I-4 corridor, 1-95 through Fort Lauderdale and Miami are going to be after those. But we need to be in line, we need to be doing things now. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I need to you wrap up, Tom. MR. CONRECODE: Okay. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: point. What would we be doing? getting in line? MR. CONRECODE: Well, we need to identify what the application process is. It's fairly clearly defined in the bill. We need to recognize that it's going to be -- there are some appointments to the state-wide committee that will review applications for this. But in addition to that, we need to be doing the research work now that makes our projects look better than everybody else in the state. Because I will tell you, there's a lot of people who are sleeping on this, but there's great funding opportunities. And when you're looking at a couple hundred million dollar shortfall, you know, a few 20, 30, 40 million dollar projects are a big help. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Berry. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Is this the same funding source, Tom, that -- or similar that they used in Lee County for the Hendry, the La Belle thing? MR. CONRECODE: That's the fast track application. COMMISSIONER BERRY: That was the fast track. But this is other funding. MR. CONRECODE: Well, in fact, the Governor's fast track program was incorporated into the same bill. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay. MR. CONRECODE: And it is specifically codified in law this year. And that too is another application that you'll be able to apply for next August. And again, I'd encourage you to do that now if we're going to work on some projects jointly between Lee I have a question for him on that What would it look like if we were Page 68 March 7, 2000 and Collier County, like the connection of Livingston Road between the two counties, or we're going to be looking -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: What about the connection of 9517 MR. CONRECODE: 951 is an ideal candidate for that. So there's a number of projects that are out there I would encourage you to just get in line, certainly read the bill and -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: And Tom, internally, who does that? Is that our MPO coordinator? MR. CONRECODE.' I think your DOT staff and your MPO staff need to work together on that and certainly tie in with some local people, if they're backlogged on that. David Plummer & Associates I know who has done a lot of the traffic modeling; I think Wilson-Miller's done some of your traffic modeling as well. So it's not solely an in-house thing. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you. MR. McNEES: I'd like to clarify one issue, if I can. Because in Mr. Kant's absence, we probably gave it short shrift. Regarding the grade separation study, Mr. Finn and I probably could tell you which intersections are most likely candidates. But the study also isn't just where, but what configuration is going to be the most effective and most appropriate, which is really what we need the experts for. And, you know, you can't just throw up an overpass and say that's going to work. So that is really the key part of it. And we -- Mr. Kant would have told you that, but we forgot to. MR. CONRECODE: Thank you. I would agree, by all means, do it right. Thanks, Mike. MR. McNEES.' Aubrey Rogers will be next, followed by Donald Campbell. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Good morning. MR. ROGERS: Good morning. For the record, my name is Aubrey Rogers. I live in Parker's Hammock. I just have two or three questions here. First I'd like to commend the board on having this workshop and tackling this problem, trying to do something for Collier County and our traffic and road problems. One thing I noticed in reading the agenda packet, and I realize there's been so much it's hard to keep up with, but the -- Page 69 March 7, 2000 no indication whatsoever of Santa Barbara hooking up with Van Lilly Drive, which was a focus of this thing from many meetings, that it was a way to move traffic from Marco north and vice versa. There is no mention whatsoever of that. I know that there is considerable opposition to connecting this up. Where it will go, I don't know. I know that we in some of the meetings we've had and some of the -- out in the district meetings, Commissioner Berry, for one, maybe more, is stated they didn't believe in taking people's property. If you wasn't going to connect in there and you was going to just have a dead end with all that traffic poured on Rattlesnake-Hammock Road and no place to go, I'm concerned maybe staff has got a plan, maybe just didn't come up today, but I still feel that's a mistake to do it, if you don't have a way to do something with that traffic, especially at the expense of taking people's homes. There's also a notation in there of a major increase of over six million dollars for Santa Barbara for the right-of-way, including relocation and mitigation. I don't know what that means, because I don't think we've got the -- I haven't seen any other changes other than the Route C that you've indicated, so I don't know what that means. But the packet also states that the design alignment study is complete. I've talked to the staff. They say no, that it's not, and it's still about eight months down the road. So apparently this was in error. And the staff, I talked to them. That's the main thing that I'm concerned. I'm still concerned with people losing their houses. Lot's been said about me losing mine. Mine's not the only house. There's a lot of other people out there. There's people that's in lots worse shape than I would be in trying to relocate, because my home's paid for, and I've got my retirement. Nobody's going to fire me. So a lot of them's got troubles and I'm concerned with the whole thing. But I just wanted to bring that to your attention in the meeting. Thank you for your time. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you. MR. McNEES: Donald Campbell, followed by Jack Pointer. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Good morning. Page 70 March 7, 2000 MR. CAMPBELL: Good morning. I'm Donald Campbell, and I am chairman of the county productivity committee, which was created by your own board. This committee has itself identified transportation as a top area for our work in the year 2000, and we are pleased that it is receiving this high level of attention in the board itself. I think this workshop is a great start. And there have been some unusually productive comments made this morning about how to move ahead. The workshop does come very early in our own look in this issue, and we are not today ready to present any hard recommendations to you. Still, we do want to share with you views which we have formed and several areas for thorough examination so that these can be part of your consideration from the very beginning. And of course one of the problems in appearing late in the agenda is that some of the things that I'm going to say have already been touched on. I'm going to say them anyway, and perhaps there will be some additional perspective in the way we're looking at it. First we think the right place to start in transportation, that there needs to be a high quality understanding of exactly what the situation is today, and what is expected to be three or four years hence, including the effect of all that new construction that's going to come. What is the level of transportation quality that we want to have, both for safety and for convenience in the county? We suggest that the board take a very critical view of the current traffic situation, and a skeptical look at the current rating of several ma]or roads, and of their likely rating three years down the way. It's really that A to F scale I think that needs to have some work. The county needs to have a solid way to measure where we are today in traffic, and then to measure the progress that's going to come. I think we all know that you get what you measure, and when you don't measure things, you take what you get. Page 71 March 7, 2000 Let's consider three roads in particular, all of which have been mentioned here this morning. Citizens who travel on Pine Ridge, between Goodlette-Frank and Airport or on Immokalee Road between Airport and 1-75, or on Golden Gate Parkway from Goodlette to Airport, especially during peak times, likely would say that these roads and the interchanges at 1-75 are failing right now, that they're really F's, in spite of how they're categorized. Backups are often endless, with several cycles of the lights needed to cross just one intersection; yet these are giving passing marks and forecast to be sufficient until the year 2004 or even 2008. Have we got this grading right? Are we allowing properly for the differences between peak loads and day long averages of the traffic? The official MPO target for the county is to have a D rated system of roads. Citizens here take great pride in Collier County, and very probably think of this as an A community. Why should we settle for D roads? Next there needs to be a hard look at the master plan for fixing the problem well beyond the three years that we're looking at. We have looked at the last three-year plan -- or the next three-year plan for 2000 through 2002. And much of this of course centers on Immokalee, Pine Ridge, Golden Gate and Livingston, which have been discussed here. These have been in the plan for the last two years, and there's not an awful lot to show for it so far. Our review of the budget says that about 28 million dollars was budgeted for these three roads in 1999. And about three quarters of that money wasn't spent. That's part of the reason for that big carryover that's shown in Exhibit 9 that we looked at earlier. These same roads are now the priority for 2000 and 2001, and they carry the bulk of east-west traffic; we know that. We suspect that the current way of doing business won't get the job done. Even if this three-year plan actually works out and we guess that the overall situation of the county, not just on the roads we're talking about for the county in total, three years from Page 72 March 7, 2000 now won't be much better, and quite possibly worse than it is today. And why is that? Simply because the likely pace of growth and the greater than -- will be greater than the modest new contribution to capacity, which the transportation network will get as a whole. Commissioner Mac'Kie had I thought a very interesting comment earlier, that you find some way to ration the development of new construction until the roads can catch up. And of course a lot has been said about we're going to move from repairing a problem to trying to get the road development done coincident with the deterioration of the quality. But actually we need a get ahead of that. We need to do some of this development ahead of the roads becoming a problem in order to average out at the no problem situation. We would urge that a good approach would be for you to lay out for everyone in the county to see an eight-year program, including adequate continuous flow interchanges at 1-75 and overpass -- may I finish? CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Take about another minute and wrap it up. MR. CAMPBELL: Okay. Your own notion of a 24-hour work schedule could be a very good part of that time compression. And much was said here today about how to achieve that. I applaud that. And this is a way to catch up with the demand. Then there needs to be a feasible plan to get it all done, to include both the physical resources and the cash. Can we learn some good how-to, some other Florida counties, by studying what their successful programs could teach us? Are there things there that we could reapply in Collier County? We need to have some benchmarks of how good counties get good projects finished so that we may be able to reapply them. We offer that you consider new bonded debt to finance roads much faster than impact fees and gas taxes allow, and you seem to have nodded to that this morning. You can let citizens choose between some tax increase for roads faster, on the one hand, or no new tax and continued Page 73 March 7, 2000 traffic jams on the other. And I think people could understand and respond to that if it's laid out in that fashion. It makes sense that a rapidly growing community would borrow to finance the infrastructure today and for tomorrow. Pay as you go simply isn't going to get the job done, because you start behind, if you pay as you go, you ali's going to be behind. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I need you to summarize there just -- MR. CAMPBELL: I will right now. Early in the 19th century, 200 years ago, the Congress authorized a thing called the new national road. There weren't very many roads in America at that time. This was going to stretch from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. There weren't a lot of people in those five states, there weren't any 18-wheelers on the road. Instead, it was the vision that the population was going to grow and that they would need to have opportunities for good transportation. 100 years or so later, in the middle of the last century, President Eisenhower led the idea to create an interstate express highway system. A growing and more mobile population is going to need freeways to get places in reasonable time. Imagine without them what it would be like with all that traffic on 1-75 moving on Tamiami Trail instead. Now early in the 21st century, you have the right to imagine what roads Collier County needs to be an A community in 2005. And then let's get them done. You have printed copies with these comments and some far more expanded areas, which we think are worthy of consideration. There are several members of the productivity committee here this morning, in case you have questions for them. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you very much. MR. CAMPBELL: Thank you. MR. McNEES: Jack Pointer. And your last public speaker would be Gordon Vandertill. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you. Mr. Pointer? MR. POINTER: Good morning, commissioners. My name is Page 74 March 7, 2000 Jack Pointer. I'm a resident of North Naples. Recently the question of the eastward extension of Piper Boulevard, a frontage road along the north side of Immokalee Road, has been before you. On January the 25th, you determined that it was not a practical matter to extend Piper Boulevard from Livingston Road to Strand Boulevard for various reasons. However, since that time a distinguished gentleman from Collier County suggested to me that maybe we shouldn't put two lanes going eastward from Livingston Road to Strand Boulevard but only one lane eastbound; that westbound traffic then could come out on a right turn onto Immokalee Road. So I would like you to reconsider your last January's decision of not having an eastward extension of Piper Boulevard. Consider one lane eastbound and see if that can possibly be done. Thank you very much. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you. And our final speaker? MR. McNEES: Mr. Vandertill. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Good morning. MR. VANDERTILL: Good morning. I will be brief, I promise you that. This is a little one-pager that I drafted yesterday. Most of the items have been addressed. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: For the record, you are? MR. VANDERTILL: My name is Gordon Vandertill, with the Naples Area Chamber of Commerce. The Naples Area Chamber of Commerce, in view of what appears to have been a hiatus in new road construction during the past 24 months, wants all to understand that we endorse and support efforts to improve the current situation. While we endorse the acceleration of current projects, we -- whether using 16, 20 or 24-hour continuous efforts, we ask you to not lose sight of the longer term projects extending out as long as 20 years. Concomitant with the need for future planning is the equally vital consideration of revenue source that has been addressed. And the rest of my little one-page summary says -- has a couple Page 75 March 7, 2000 of questions at the end. And I guess perhaps the most telling is the last one, when the current self-imposed additional motor gasoline tax ends, will the county propose to renew the levy or seek other revenue sources. That's it. Thank you very much. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Mr. McNees, you want to wrap us up? MR. McNEES: Thank you. And most of all, thank you to staff for all the work they did. We've got your direction. We'll stay with it. I'll respond I guess to the comment that all of this needs to be aggressively managed. You can county on that. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Commissioner Carter. COMMISSIONER CARTER: I think we've made a big, big step forward this morning in what we're trying to do in this workshop. What I think overall, looking at the vision for where we're trying to go, what brings to me from all the speakers and everything I've heard is we need organization effectiveness. And that really says I think we've got to consolidate all our functions that affect road building; that we need to stay focused, in other words, follow through where we're going with our priorities, better utilization of personnel, I'm going to call it solid project management and decisive leadership. And I think the challenge as we go in the transition to Tom Olliff is as we find and select a public works director, and perhaps we even need to think about a transportation czar, to make sure not only do we do what we say short-term, but we have the vision long-term, not only for five years, 10 years, 20 years, that's what we've got to keep looking at, so that we have an integration of all our road development activities, and guide ourselves in this process that everything we're talking about. So I don't want the public or any of us to think that we're doing a short-term let's put a Bandaid on this thing. We have to have the longer range direction of where we're going to go with all this. And I think five years probably tells us what we can realistically do, but that we need to look at those 10 and 15 and 20 year projections in order to accomplish everything we need to do to have the community that we want. And bottom line would get to all of this is how do you Page 76 March 7, 2000 finance what you're going to do? And the community will have to help us think through what our options here are to accomplish that which you want. There's no free lunch, it all costs money, and there's a lot of ways we can do it. And I would hope that the media out there, instead of being negative on what we try to do, will take a positive leadership role and help us every time that we bring forward these opportunities by supporting the fact that the Board of County Commissioners, our staffs, our citizens, are trying to build an A-plus community, and not nitpick us to death when we come up with suggestions or possibilities and preempt where we're trying to go. So it's got to be a community effort in terms of where we want to be. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you. With that, we stand adjourned. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 11:40 a.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL TIMO~' ~. ~ON~TA~NE, CHAIRMAN ,ATYEST: "' DWIGHT.E. BROCK, CLERK Attest as to Chairman's signature only. Page 77 March 7, 2000 These minutes approved by the Board on ~.~//~//~o~ , as presented / or as corrected . TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC., BY CHERIE' R. LEONE, NOTARY PUBLIC Page 78