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EAC Minutes 06/07/2000 RJune 7, 2000 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL ADVISORY COUNCIL Naples, Florida, June 7, 2000 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Environmental Advisory Council, in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9:00 a.m. in REGULAR SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: ALSO PRESENT: CHAIRMAN: M. Keen Cornell Jack Baxter Ed Carlson Michael G. Coe Thomas W. Sansbury Alexandra Santoro J. Richard Smith Stan Chrzanowski, Senior Engineer Barbara Burgeson, Senior Environmental Specialist Bill Lorenz, Natural Resources Director Tom Palmer, Assistant County Attorney Page I June 7, 2000 CHAIRMAN CORNELL: We're all set to go? Great. Welcome to the June 7th meeting of the Environmental Advisory Council. Do we have a roll call? MS. BURGESON: Carlson? MR. CARLSON: Here. MS. BURGESON: Sansbury has an excused absence. yet. Cornell? CHAIRMAN CORNELL: MS. BURGESON: Coe? MR. COE: Here. MS. MR. MS. Here. BURGESON: Smith? SMITH: Here. BURGESON: I apologize, we don't have the name plates MS. SANTORO: Allie Santoro, here. MS. BURGESON: Santoro? MS. SANTORO: Yes. MS. BURGESON: And it's Jack-- MR. BAXTER: Baxter. MS. BURGESON: Baxter. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: So we have a quorum? MS. BURGESON: A quorum, yes. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: I just wanted to say, in view of John DiNunzio's death a few weeks ago, let's join in a moment of silence to honor John. (Silence.) CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you. And you mentioned that we're advertising for -- MS. BURGESON: Yes. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: -- the two vacancies that we don't have? MS. BURGESON: The two vacancies were advertised, or at least Bill Hill's vacancy was advertised recently, and we had no applicants for that. I wasn't aware of that until last Thursday that they needed to be in by Friday and I was out of town, so I was unable to contact anyone that might be interested. But if anybody is aware of anybody that's interested in filling that position, I believe that we have just put that advertisement in the paper, and it will be a three-week period before that will close, and hopefully those two positions will be filled by the next Page 2 June 7, 2000 meeting. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thanks. The agenda all right, or anybody care to -- I guess we need a motion on that, though. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: We do have one small change on the agenda. Jim Weeks has a problem with the well field in Golden Gate lowering one of the canals. He has decided to pursue it through the Water Management District and the Board of County Commissioners. He's talking to his commissioner before he comes in front of this board. So he called and gave his apologies for not being able to make it, but he's taking other channels. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay. Any other changes? (Mr. Sansbury enters boardroom.) CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Ah, there he is. Tom Sansbury has joined us. The minutes of the meeting of May 3rd. Do we have a motion of approval or any changes to the -- MR. CARLSON: Move to approve. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Have we a second? MS. SANTORO: Second. MR. COE: Second. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: All in favor?. Any opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay, we have a presentation on the county's transportation network. MR. JONES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name's Gavin Jones. I'm the MPO coordinator. I'm also at the moment the transportation planning director in the newly formed transportation division. Good morning. I'm going to give you a snapshot of where our road network is today and where it's going. The display that's on the visualizer, on the monitors, on the dais, and also on the handout that I gave you, has the existing road network. And it's color coded as a -- we've chosen a minimum level of service standards for all the roads in our county, and the actual letter grade that we've chosen varies from one road to the next. On most of them it's D, on some of them it's C, on some of them it's E. There's always a traffic volume that corresponds to that, to the upper limit of that particular level of service grade. And that map is colored in such a way that facilities whose counted traffic Page 3 June 7, 2000 is less than 60 percent of that minimum standard volume are green. Anything between 60 and t00 percent is yellow. And the facilities who counted traffic in t999 exceeds the traffic volume that corresponds to the minimum standard service that's being chosen for that facility are colored in red. Now, that's an important -- sort of an important trigger. It triggers a three-year window in which state law and county ordinance says we're required to have an improvement program for construction and start construction within that three-year window, where we're bound by state statute and county ordinance to declare a moratorium on development around that facility. So that's a picture of where the system was at the end of 1999. We're required by law to preserve that acceptable level of service, minimum standard level of service in the peak hour. We do our counting on an average daily basis. We do counts four times a year, and that leads to an average daily traffic count. But we do have some knowledge about the relationship between traffic in the peak hour, as we've defined it, and the average day. And so those service volumes would attempt to preserve the level of service that corresponds to them in the peak hour. So that's where we are. And each year when we look at that information, it guides the -- any shifting of project start dates within the county's work program. And it guides the unfunded priority-setting process in the state work program that the MPO is in charge of. So that's where our system is right now. We have a work program. The construction start dates are labeled alongside the facilities. So in most cases there is an improvement that's programmed to start construction within three years of all the facilities colored red. There are some exceptions to that, that are on state facilities. 1-75, north of Immokalee Road, is a notable one. There's also a short stretch of Davis Boulevard, out between the juncture of Radio and out to Collier Boulevard that's colored red, for which there's no construction program. But the ones on Pine Ridge Road, there's construction programmed to start for that. Immokalee Road, North 4t. Airport Road, the deficiency between Golden Gate Parkway and Radio Road, that will be alleviated by the construction of Livingston Road. So in most cases, we're doing what we need to do. Page 4 June 7, 2000 The construction program -- county's construction program fell behind over the last couple of years, and there's going to be an aggressive effort to catch up in that regard as far as county projects go. State program is a little tougher. There's really no way to really move those funds along any faster. There are funds that can be used on -- for improvements to 1-75 that the MPO does not really have a say in, in their programming. They're programmed at the state level. But there has been a lot of recent lobbying efforts within this county. Southwest Florida Transportation Initiative, in particular, is sort of going after those funds the best way that you can, which is to go straight to Tallahassee and lobby lawmakers to get more of the pot from which those funds come spent in our area. So there was an article in the newspaper this morning that pointed out that there's construction, that it's in the state's work program using those funds, but it's several years out. And the deficiency is there today. So groups like the Southwest Florida Transportation Initiative will continue their lobbying efforts. Looking quite far out into the future, Stan handed out something that looks like this with the PUD boundaries superimposed on it. That network and the facilities that you see in it, some are existing facilities, widened out to six lanes. Some are facilities that aren't on the ground now. That network was prepared in t 995, and it was built to serve the 2020 population forecast at that time. And for that reason it became called the 2020 needs assessment. There was no consideration given to the cost of the network, or even the popularity of the facilities that needed to be on the ground in order to serve that population. But it was just built to serve, to provide acceptable level of service, as this community has chosen it for the 2020 population forecast at the time. That is the largest, most expensive network that we've ever produced, that the MPO has ever produced. Since that time, the 2020 population forecast was lowered. And what we tend to work with most of the time, both in the long-range plan and also in the transportation element of the Growth Management Plan, are networks that are built to serve a population for a particular point in time and are financially feasible. Page 5 June 7, 2000 So that network -- that network was pruned of many facilities and lane falls on certain facilities, and actual facilities came off it in order to serve the reduced 2020 population forecast. That network was deemed to be affordable with the revenue forecast we had in our hands at the time in t995. And that became our financially feasible network. And because it was fully affordable, it also by definition was our needs network. That put us in an unusual position, compared to most MPOs around the state who have discovered that they cannot afford, with the revenue streams they have, to pay for the network that they know they'll need. And, you know, most counties are dealing with we have a needs network, we know what it costs, they have revenue streams that don't reach that far, and there is a shortfall. If you look around the state and the sum of all those shortfalls, the last estimate was around $25 billion accumulated shortfalls around the state. We apparently were not in that position. Part of the reason for that was that although we had a network built of arterial facilities and it appeared affordable, there were several intersections throughout that network where we knew there were simulated crossing volumes in a future year that suggested that they would not function well as signalized intersections. At the time in t 995, it was difficult to start a discussion about grade separated intersections. No one wanted to hear about it. You know, there were quotes of, you know, not in our watch, et cetera. So it wasn't, you know, politically the right time to talk about things like that. Roll forward a few years and now finally there are intersections within our county that are experiencing those traffic volumes and people now finally understand firsthand what it means when peak season we see traffic volumes, some of both legs totals over t00,000 vehicles a day. We know where those locations will be as we move out into the future. What we have not done in any financially feasible plans in the past is summed up the cost of doing that to those intersections. As we go, five years have elapsed and now we're in the process of updating our long-range plan again. Our 2020 population forecast is still far short of the population that generated the need for the network in front of Page 6 June 7, 2000 you. We're looking out to, I think, 380-some thousand in the year 2020. We're going to create a network built to serve a 2025 population. But that 2025 population will still be far short of the population that required that network in order to provide it with acceptable level of service. But we are, finally, going to include the cost of grade separating the intersections that will likely need it, based on our estimate of future traffic volumes as we have them now. So we may wind up in a situation similar to most MPOs around the state in that we will identify a needs network that will include intersections that will be candidates for grade separation. And the total cost of that network will exceed the revenue forecasts that we have in our hand. That will include the impact fee revenue stream, given that it was recently revised, it will include gas taxes, but only the ones that are not due to sunset. Typically in -- you know, for the purpose of being conservative, if there's a gas tax that's going to sunset, we assume that that revenue stream will not be available when we add it to the other revenue streams. So we'll look at that and we'll look at the state dollars and federal dollars that are going to be spent on facilities in our county, and that will include some of the new money that's coming from the state DOT through things like Mobility 2000. Mobility 2000 was quite a splash back in January. It's sort of gone through several iterations since then, and there will need to be eventual agreement between state and -- or I'm -- House and Senate versions of the bill that will actually put all that funding in place. But there are going to be new funds spent on 1-75, and we'll include that in our revenue forecast. So we're going through all that in the coming year. It's a requirement of federal law that we do that every five years, and we will do it and we will wind up with a financially feasible network, and that network will show up as an amendment to the transportation element of the Growth Management Plan. At the same time, because there are facilities that appear on this map that appear in no other place, because every other map is built -- every other network is built to serve some population short of what this one is built to serve, county staff have gotten into arguments with landowners when it comes -- when we go after a piece of land that's needed for a facility that doesn't show Page 7 June 7, 2000 up anywhere in the Growth Management Plan, because the Growth Management Plan only shows facilities out to a certain point in time. At the moment it's 2020. We'll send that out to 2025. But there will still be facilities that will be needed sometime beyond 2025. It's staff's intention to try to figure out what road network will serve our build-out population as part of the MPO budget for the coming fiscal year beginning July t. And we intended -- we intended -- we do intend to include that as an amendment to the transportation element of the Growth Management Plan to halt arguments about why, you know, why is right-of-way being required of me when I don't see it in the Growth Management Plan? We'll have a network that will be built to serve a build-out population. It will include every facility that we'll ever need. There won't be a time -- a point in time or a price tag attached to it. That's sort of a different effort and that will occur at different times. But it will guide us in preserving right-of-way. As, you know, the last land is developed in the county, we'll need to preserve that right-of-way for future roads. That's an ongoing battle on the part of staff. You know, these -- that network has existed in that form since t995. And yet some facilities on it are not possible already because the right-of-way is gone. And so as we go through our plan update process, we will, you know, be forced to reconsider other configurations that don't include some of the facilities that are no longer possible. Or we'll have to attach a much heftier price tag to them, because now it will involve going after developed properties, rather than just making use of right-of-way that's being kept undeveloped. So that's where we are. Any questions? MR. COE: Yeah, I got one. Why do we set the minimal standards, you know, the A, B, C, D thing? Is that to keep the state off our back, or is it to -- what's the reason? MR. JONES: It's a requirement of state law that we choose a standard that we are going to seek to preserve. And we have some flexibility on what standards we choose. And the county has taken advantage of that flexibility by altering the minimum standard from D to E in some cases, and waiving it completely in the case of Vanderbilt Beach Road. We provided recommendations years ago that Vanderbilt Page 8 June 7, 2000 Beach Road needed to be widened from U.S. 41 over to Gulf Shore from two to four lanes. There was considerable opposition by the residents in that neighborhood. And what the county chose to do in that instance was declare that road policy constrained, which says as a community we have chosen to live with unacceptable level of service on that road rather than widen it. And you can do that on a link-by-link basis. And in places on the East Coast and Broward County, they've just thrown a net over the entire downtown area and called it a concurrency exception area. That's a way of saying we're just -- you know, we can't do it; we can't preserve the level of service standard that we've chosen. And that's a way of avoiding a requirement to declare a moratorium. So as a community, you pretty much get to choose, do you want to be firm about the level of service standards you've chosen, do you want to halt development when you cannot provide acceptable level of service when that development comes on-line, or do you just want to, you know, toss the standards out the window? MR. COE: Who makes that decision? MR. JONES: That would be the Board of County Commissioners. MR. COE: So each time we -- in other words, each time you want to change the traffic or change the lanes that are available, you've got to go to the County Commissioners? MR. JONES: Well, no, the County Commission tends to understand when road projects show up in the work program that's before them, that it is to preserve the level of service standard that we, you know, as a community have chosen. When a four-lane road's traffic exceeds the maximum traffic volume for Level of Service D, and D is our chosen standard, then that starts the three-year clock ticking, and county staff, you know, puts an improvement project into the work program. MR. COE: See, it sounds to me like when we decide, whoever we is, when we decide well, it's going to look rough out there, we'll change the standards so that now the clock will start ticking for our three years. Is that correct? MR. JONES: Well, that was -- that was -- essentially that surfaced as the notion, you know, are we aiming too low just to preserve Level of Service D? Should we aim higher?. Should we Page 9 June 7, 2000 preserve Level of Service C? The county has already -- the commissioners have already looked at the price tag for getting caught up on preserving Level of Service D over the next few years. They were almost, you know, willing to sort of keep out of the MPO's work program for the coming year a study which would attempt to quantify just what it would cost to preserve Level of Service D. There's a way of doing it. We'll -- you know, at the end of the plan update process when we have designed and attached a price tag to a network built to serve a Level of Service D, we'll turn around and turn the simulation model again -- on again and we'll start adding facilities until the same traffic volumes are, you know, achieving a Level of Service D for the facilities they're on. And in some cases that will mean turning four-lane roads into six-lane roads, and in some cases it will mean turning six-lane arterials into expressways. But we have the tools to do that. So we'll build a network built to preserve Level of Service D, we'll attach a price tag to it, and probably will be in a position to say okay, we've been before you with a plan update, we've showed you a needs network that costs so many millions, we've showed you revenue streams that don't get there, we've had to take some facilities out so that in some cases you won't even be able to preserve Level of Service D. And then on top of that, we'll show up with a Level of Service C network that will have some price tag, you know, in excess of the Level of Service D price tag. So at least, you know, that will be the starting point for discussions like that. Can you do better?. You can. And there's a price tag attached to it and we'll figure out what it is. Are you willing -- you know, but where's the money going to come from? And the impact fees-- MR. COE: I guess maybe I don't understand. I spent the last few days up at a fishing tournament up in Lee County, and while I was up there I had the opportunity to ride on their roads. And, you know, you get out on Daniels Parkway or Colonial or any of these. I mean, they've already been widened. MR. JONES: Yes. MR. COE: In many cases their bike trail is wider than our highway. I look at Livingston Road here. I mean, we already know it's going to have to be done six-lane. What are we Page 10 June 7, 2000 planning, four?. MR. JONES: Well, we're going to build it as four. Ultimately it will need to be six lanes. MR. COE: Why don't we just build it at six and be done with it? MR. JONES: Well, the money is needed elsewhere. It costs less to build it as four and you need the money elsewhere. You just can't afford to build -- MR. COE: How can other counties do it and we can't? MR. JONES: Well, Lee County's not doing it as well as we are. Lee County's been in trouble for years with their level of service standards. If you're enjoying good traffic now, you know, I'd point out the season's over, and they have seasonal traffic fluctuations. But they have problems in their county. And it was the severity and the scope of those problems that led them, you know, t 0 years ago to sort of dodge the moratorium requirements that a link-by-link analysis that we do would force them into, and instead go to like an area-wide kind of concurrency system where you average the performance of-- or you sum the performance of all facilities within certain zones and declare yourself okay as long as the sum of all their performances is okay. And we could do that, and it would take a lot of the red facilities off the map. But, you know, traffic congestion -- you know, people stuck in traffic don't really appreciate the fact that it's better somewhere else. And so we've -- you know, this county has chosen to go with a link-by-link analysis and we identify congestion right where it occurs and we put the money towards improving that facility or building something that will help that facility. But Lee County's been in trouble for years. And really, they're talking now that business of doing averaging or summing over an area, that was like a t 0-year agreement with the Department of Community Affairs. The t0 years has come to an end. They're, you know, looking again at their facilities link-by-link. And they're initiating discussions again on well, maybe we should all be moving towards some kind of area wide averaging. So, you know, they're not in better shape. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Excuse me, we also have Ed Kant from Page 11 June 7, 2000 the transportation department. You may want to listen to him before you ask any more questions. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: You want to do one, or-- MR. SANSBURY: I just want to do just a quick question. Maybe Ed, or maybe one of you. Is there a link -- I've read the traffic engineer's definitions of level of service. Is there a layman's definition -- okay. MR. KANT: I was going to address that. MR. JONES: I can handle it. Is there a what? MR. SANSBURY: A layman's definition of level of service. MR. JONES: Okay, change -- yes, call it a level of stress. There's a method, and it's set out in the Highway Capacity Manual, for calculating level of service on all different types of facilities. And you need to -- it's always -- the goal is always to try and quantify the stress level that motorists experience when they're driving the facility. The actual thing that you measure varies from one facility to the next. On arterials, which is what we deal with most, the thing that you would attempt to quantify is the average travel speed for motorists using that facility. The notion is that if average travel speed on a facility begins to slow down, that's what's going to affect motorists the most. And so, you know -- and we use methods that would attempt to give us a handle on what's happening on travel speed. You know, we rely on tools that would tend to correlate average travel speed with certain traffic volumes. We don't measure travel speed. It's very expensive to do it that way. We tend to measure traffic counts, because we have an understanding of sort of the correlation between certain traffic volumes and travel speed on that facility. As an example, on a freeway facility, the thing that you're attempting to measure is not average travel speed. Studies have indicated that even as traffic volumes increase on a freeway facility, travel speeds don't tend to decrease. It's just that the gap between cars tends to shorten. Well, that's a little stressful for motorists. So the measure that you chose on freeways is the number of cars per lane mile. And again, to measure that, you know, directly requires aerial photos. But you rely on knowledge of the correlation between Page 12 June 7, 2000 traffic counts and in density per lane. But you're always attempting really to, you know, meet a certain target stress level for motorists. And it just varies as to what it is you're going to measure in your attempt to do that. So we have level of service letter grades, A, B, C, D, E and F, and there's a traffic volume connected with each one which says that, you know, up to this traffic volume you're achieving Level of Service C and as soon as you are over it you're in Level of Service D. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions for staff? MR. SMITH: Yes, I had a question. Mr. Kant may be able to answer this as well. I'm not sure. I went and attended several of the community character functions. The thing that impressed me the most of all of the things that they had to show was the difference between the thinking that what they call last century, which was the one that we're all used to and this century, which is perhaps hopefully a new way of looking at how to build our communities, and they're talking about, for example, looking at changing the zoning thinking so that instead of having all of your residential in one area and your commercial uses in another area, that you mix those uses and so that you can by doing that end up having a situation where you have a lot less need for people to move from one part of the community to the other. And that by that, reducing the traffic. Is that kind of thinking entering into the picture now when you're planning for your roads? MR. JONES: Well, we're certainly eager to explore, you know, just how much acceptance that kind of thinking is going to get, you know, on the part of the public and at the commission level. At the moment, you know, the development proposals that are showing up are not in that pattern. And the development proposals that are showing up are probably, you know, about the worst that you could create from a traffic standpoint. There is a market for it. People are buying those homes. But, you know, this may be the time to point out that there are other ways of developing and there are buyers that are willing to buy that style of development as well. Celebration in Florida is a great example. You know, within our own state. It's a different style of development and people lined up and had to join the Page 13 June 7, 2000 lottery in order to get ahold of the houses there. They were really eager to live that kind of a lifestyle. And that was -- that's exactly what Dover/Kohl's talking about. You know, the actual point in our history when, you know, that development pattern was prevalent, I'm not sure exactly where it fell, but they're talking about neotraditional neighborhood design. And you're absolutely right, if you can develop in a way that eliminates the need for people to get in a car and drive on the arterial network, then that's one less car that you'll count. MR. SMITH: In the Livingston Road area, they had stressed that quite a bit in terms of possible rethinking of our way of zoning, yeah. MR. JONES: Yeah, it would just -- it would require a major sort of see-change on the attitude of the community. You know, if staff is going to show up and start rejecting development proposals that, you know, don't conform to that kind of a pattern, then there has to be some political support when it gets in front of the board. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions for Gavin? MS. SANTORO: I have some other questions, but I'd like to wait until the end. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: I just wanted to ask you, I'm sorry to say I've never been to an MPO meeting yet. Is it a regional thing or is it strictly Collier County, or -- MR. JONES: Well, the MPO's jurisdiction is the entire Collier County, yes. But what that body exists to do is to program the funds that come through the state DOT's work program, so -- and the staff function at the MPO is funded by federal grant dollars. And those federal grant dollars are -- you know, exist in order to ensure that the money that's spent in the DOT work program is the result of something called a planning process -- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Yes. MR. JONES: -- and that's what the MPO exists for. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Is there a dialogue with Lee, or how does that -- MR. JONES: Sure, yes. The Lee County MPO director is part of the technical advisory committee that reviews everything that goes before the MPO. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thank you. Page 14 June 7, 2000 Ed, may we hear from you? Thank you, Gavin. MR. KANT: Good morning. I'm Edward Kant. I'm the transpor -- formally transportation services director, and we've now been renamed the transportation operations director. Same job, same department, basically. Structured somewhat differently. I just wanted to add on a few things to what Gavin had to say. Gavin gave you basically the big picture, the overall network view. My view for this meeting is a little bit more down at the rubber meets the road level. One of the things that we are trying to do and have been doing for a number of years now is recognizing that there are going to be constraints on the arterial network, and so we've begun a fairly aggressive program of looking at intersection improvements. There's a lot of emphasis -- as Gavin pointed out, there's an awful lot of emphasis on the level of service. And the level of service, this A, B, C, D grade, if you will, that's given is a level of service that refers to the links, the actual piece of roadway between intersections or between a series of intersections. Where -- and that is measured in terms of relative speed, except again for the expressway issue. Whereas, when we get to the intersection, and you have to do something at the intersection, if there's no signal there and there's no stop sign, no other traffic control, you just move through the intersection. If there's some type of traffic control, you may or may not have to stop or slow down or do something that affects your speed. And it becomes very difficult to measure speed through intersections. So when we talk about intersections, we have a different measure of level of service, and that measure is delay. Sometimes it's zero, you catch the green or there's no traffic control and you keep moving, and sometimes it's significant. And those degrees of delay are also given letter grades, A, B, C, D. But when we talk about level of service from the network perspective, we're talking about the links. My emphasis is more on the intersections at this point, because we found that by tweaking the intersections, by doing a little bit of work at certain key intersections, we can facilitate Page 15 June 7, 2000 movement through those intersections and it becomes a little bit less stressful overall. For example, one of the ones that I'd like to point out to is right up the street here at Airport Road and Golden Gate Parkway. If anybody has had to travel northbound on Airport Road in the last couple of years, especially any time after roughly 2:00, 2:30 in the afternoon, you know it can be very difficult to continue to go north past Golden Gate Parkway, especially if there's a very heavy left turning movement going onto Golden Gate Parkway, as there almost always is. And so what we did last year, earlier this year, was we lengthened the turning bays. That's all. Didn't take out any trees, didn't reconfigure anything major in the intersection, just tweaked the intersection to lengthen the turning bays so that those northbound left turners, if they're waiting for their light, are no longer backed up into the through lane holding back people who would otherwise just want to be going through on the green light. We've begun to look at a number of intersections. I had about 35 or 40 major intersections on my list back in 1995. And we've so far been able to go through about a dozen of them. We get three or four a year. Again, part of that's based on funding and prioritization, part of it's based on just how much work can you do in a year. And we've got a fairly aggressive program coming up that I think is going to continue that trend. We've also got to deal with a number of other issues that are operational issues. For example, the landscaping in the medians. That's part of what gives Collier County the character that it has. The gentleman earlier was asking about the community character study. The Naples streetscape master plan that the board adopted in the mid-Nineties eventually will call for t44 miles of landscaped medians and edges. Right now we have about 30 -- not quite 40 miles of that overall program. And over the next t0 to t5, t 7 years, depending again on funding, we'll be implementing that program. Then it will be turned into basically a maintenance issue. A number of projects are going to get retrofitted. That begins to create a different set of problems. Because once you get that stuff out there, you've got to maintain it. And it doesn't do us any good to build all these extra lanes and then have to keep Page 16 June 7, 2000 blocking them off to maintain them. So we're trying as best we can to work with the landscape architects and allow for maintenance issues, as well as for the construction issues. The one last thing that I wanted to mention is again, somebody earlier, I believe Mr. Coe, expressed a concern about why aren't we building six lanes. It is a funding issue in what do we -- how much bang for the buck can we get in any given year. But one of the things that we have been doing, well, for at least the t 0 years that I've been here, that is with the -- I've been here for 2t years overall, but I've been with the county for almost t 0 now -- is we are looking at what is the ultimate build-out on that roadway going to be. And if it's a six-lane roadway, we set the project up for a six-lane road. But what we do is we build the outer four lanes, and when the time comes, as we did a couple of years ago on Airport Road, this section of Airport Road, we put the fifth and sixth lanes into the median. It's much more efficient, much more cost effective that way because we've gone for right-of-way only once. We don't like to take two bites out of the apple, because the second bite is almost always much more expensive. We then have the right-of-way, we have the infrastructure in place for the drainage, and we have to do a minimum disruption to traffic when the time comes to put that fifth and six lane into place. So we don't necessarily tear the road up. Now, some of the older sections of four-lane road are not going to be quite that easy, but by and large, that's what we try to do. And I might point out, back in February -- no, I believe it was in January the board adopted a more standardized cross-section for major roadways which will enable us, again, with a tool like the map that you have here and with the tool of the standardized cross-section, to work with the development community and to be able to identify those areas where we're going to need more right-of-way. I'm not sure how much more detail -- I mean, there's so much going on. And one last thing I will point out, this grade separation. Gavin's group had identified 2t candidate locations. And we believe that there are two or three that are going to shake out as being the prime locations. And some of those are Page 17 June 7, 2000 probably going to go away as the network builds out. But I don't -- my crystal ball is no better than anybody else. I can't tell you which ones might or might not. However, we think that, for example, Airport and Golden Gate is going to be one of the prime candidates. Airport and Pine Ridge is probably another one of the prime candidates. Possibly U.S. 4t and Pine Ridge. Those are the types of intersections that right now have about t 00,000 vehicles a day crossing in both directions during the peak season, and those are the ones that we're going to have to focus on. We're trying to hold off. We have been holding off. And the time has come where we're going to have to meet that challenge. So if you have any questions, I'll do what I can. MR. CARLSON: You brought up median maintenance. And I see some pretty sophisticated medians out there with manicured turf grass and sprinkler systems. What are we paying to manage the medians? MR. KANT: Quite a lot. MR. CARLSON: Do you know what that number is? MR. KANT: Yeah, we spend about right now with -- given what we have a little over $3 million a year on maintenance. MR. CARLSON: Of just medians? MR. KANT: Of the improved medians, yes. MR. CARLSON: Has anybody talked about perhaps just xeriscaping those, and getting rid of the turf grass and mulching and using native plants and having a much less expensive grass? MR. KANT: We have some which are -- which do not have grass on them. We have -- one of the issues that we've had, I think, has been this -- a rush to do this. There's been a -- up until recently, frankly, there's been no coordinated effort to try to make sure that we get a consistent look. I think we're starting to get around that. We still have one or two of the landscape architects in the county that get these projects and they just landscape them right out to the gunnels. I mean, we get grass all over the place and we wind up cutting most of it down or having to move trees. But little by little, it's a constant process. We have to educate ourselves to some of the horticultural issues and, frankly, they have to educate themselves to some of the maintenance and traffic issues. So it's still -- I think we're still in Page 18 June 7, 2000 that learning curve. MR. CARLSON: Yeah. You know where I'm going. It's like pulling teeth getting turn lanes and good traffic lights and -- MR. KANT: Yes. MR. CARLSON: -- we're spending $3 million a year on -- MR. KANT: I hear what you're saying. And again, this is not something that the transportation department or the planning department has said hey, we think it's a good idea. This is an expression of community desire. And again, it's done through the democratic process; that is, people bring these issues up and our elected officials act on them. MR. CARLSON: I have one more question. On your future map here, the 95t extension north of Immokalee Road, has that right-of-way been acquired? MR. KANT: No. That is presently under what's called a -- or a planned -- it's not under-- it's in the program. And I don't remember, you'll have to help me, next year, year after?. Couple of years out for a PD&E, preliminary development and engineering study, which is the first phase. Which is when we go out and we find out where all of the snakes are and we find out if we're bigger than they are and we can kill them or they're going to kill us. And that's the technical expression for doing the preliminary engineering, to make sure that we have a viable project. And that's -- that effort will start in a couple of years. There's been no alignment laid down. The alignment that you're looking at is what we think is our best guess of where some corridor could go in the future, based upon the development patterns. I think you'll notice that it goes through what is called the Tamoshanter (phonetic} development. Frankly, there is a significant amount of wetlands in there. There may be -- there will be problems with mitigating that. They may become insurmountable, but I wouldn't want to make that prediction right IIOW, MR. CARLSON: That's kind of why I'm wondering why that's not represented as potential road link instead of a -- MR. KANT: Because that is shown on the network. That is shown on the network. The potential are what staff and the other inputs that we've had have said, you know, it probably would be a good idea if we could get a link over here or we could make this link happen. But the ones that are not shown as Page 19 June 7, 2000 potential are already on the network. They were determined to be part of the build-out network. And that link has been on there a year. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions for Ed? MS. SANTORO: I have several. Do you have a map of the current and future planned bike paths that correspond with the roadways? MR. KANT: Excellent question. Yes. I have to give a lawyer's answer on that one, with all respect to my colleague over there. Yes and no. There is a map. It is -- what is it now, four, five years old? Yeah. But I was speaking with the bike path head coordinator, Beth Young, and she has indicated that she's getting ready to publish a new one, which will be out this fall. So that -- so there's one there but it's kind of obsolete and they're going to publish a new one. MS. SANTORO.' Obviously I'd be interested in getting one. The other thing, is there a map of current traffic lights and future planned traffic lights? I find that we look at developments in a hodgepodge manner, and it would be nice to know where the intersections are to look at ingress and egress. MR. KANT: Okay. Yeah, we review every development that comes along. We do have a map that shows where all of our signalized intersections are. That was done as part of the county-wide computerized traffic signal system project which is presently underway and which we'll get under construction later this year. As far as future signals, without getting into a lot of the engineering nitty-gritty of it, traffic signals are not put up without a fairly thorough engineering study. It's very difficult to predict at random where they may be. Typically it's fairly easy to predict, if you have a major intersection, it's probably going to be signalized at some point in time. But when you get a new development, we look at the traffic from that development, we look at the background traffic, we look at the existing signalized system. And frankly, we're very reluctant to install signals unless they're absolutely needed. Signals are not always an answer. MS. SANTORO: The other question is, then, for instance, on 4t North, one of the ways that they control the traffic into a main Page 20 June 7, 2000 access road is the parallel access road where you have several developments coming together and then -- MR. KANT: Trail Boulevard? MS. SANTORO: Excuse me? MR. KANT: Are you talking about Trail Boulevard? MS. SANTORO: Well, it's right up -- you can see it as you go 4t North near Pelican Bay, opposite Pelican Bay. MR. KANT: That's Trail Boulevard. MS. SANTORO: Okay, yes. Is there a promotion to do that? I'm looking at as you go out in Golden Gate Estates, for instance, you have all the driveways coming out into the road. Is there any promotion of any kind of parallel access roads in your planning? MR. KANT: Well, if I was king, but I'm not -- I mean, if I were king. I don't believe that there is. However-- and again, Gavin can probably address this better than I. I believe -- because I think there is a Golden Gate traffic circulation study that's underway or about to be underway. I was -- somebody mentioned Lee County earlier. And back in the Eighties, I was the Lee County capital projects and design manager for a number of years. And prior to the t 985 Growth Management Act, Lee County was basically taking the monies that they were getting for roadways and sticking it in the bank. And in t987, which is when I started with Lee County, I had -- they wrote me a check for $450 million and said go spend it. We did. But what Gavin said is absolutely true, Lee County is going to be a lot tougher for them working their way out of their problems, I think, than it is for us because of this area-wide approach that we chose to take. They're finding now that if the state does not permit them to renew that approach and they make them go on a link-by-link basis, they're going to have some serious problems in certain areas of the county. Whereas, I don't think we're going to experience even that level of problem with implementing our plan. That's an excellent idea, the idea of frontage roads or parallel roads or backage roads. We've tried to promote that. As a matter of fact, for example, with the new interchange at 1-75 and Golden Gate Parkway that is presently under design by FDOT, they were going to put the frontage -- or they're planning, and I Page 21 June 7, 2000 think they still are, for whatever reasons -- to put the frontage roads right up against the existing Golden Gate Parkway. We suggested that perhaps they should be moved back further to allow for better traffic circulation from the adjoining neighborhoods. And frankly, the people out there didn't like it. The state's got some problems with how far away from the arterial they can get and still be part of the interchange under federal guidelines, so we don't know whether that's going to work. But it's not a bad idea, if it can be made to be implemented. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions for Ed? MS. SANTORO: I had two more, if you don't mind. On the medians, are they watered with treated water?. MR. KANT: Yes and no. MS. SANTORO: In other words, is that your goal? MR. KANT: Where effluent is available, we use effluent. However, one of the problems we have is that we have a limited supply of effluent, and if you --we had a recent problem, notwithstanding the design on Davis Boulevard, but that's an effluent irrigated project. We had some problems. The south county plant could not supply us with effluent for a couple of weeks, and so we did not have an alternate source. I consider that a design problem. And I have given, where I can, instructions that from now on we're going to do effluent watering, that we're also going to have an alternate source. Typically we're going to try to put some wells down. That enters other permitting problems, so it's -- MS. SANTORO: I can see where the goal is. MR. KANT: -- but yeah, where we can, we use the effluent. MS. SANTORO: And one last question for my education. Could you describe a graded separation intersection? MR. KANT: Interchange. MS. SANTORO: As? CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Flyover. MR. KANT: Flyover. Yeah, pick what you like. Grade separation is simply is where you've got everything coming in at the same grade, and in order to facilitate the traffic movement, you take one of those, one direction or another, and you move the through lanes over so they can keep moving. Anybody that needs to turn right or left has to get off on a short frontage road to get Page 22 June 7, 2000 underneath that. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Let me just ask if there are any questions from any of the attendees here that might like to -- Bill? MR. LORENZ: Yes, if you don't mind. I want-- Bill Lorenz, natural resources director. There are a couple of items here I'd just like to bring to the EAC's attention as it relates to the Growth Management planning efforts in our rural assessment. What I'd like to be able to do, I believe you were handed out the map that's over on the bulletin board. I'm just going to move to the board here for Channel 54's sake, and they can show that map on the screen. This map here, there's -- to some degree, following up on Ed Carlson's comment, this area is in -- is identified as the fringe. So the fringe committee, in its evaluation of the -- or recommendations for proposed amendments to the Growth Management Plan, is going to be dealing with these areas with regard to natural resources and obviously how those areas are to develop out. Part of our evaluation matrix is to look at the additional need for facilities, whether they be transportation facilities or other public facilities. So this particular area is going to be somewhat addressed or needs to be addressed as part of that fringe plan. Another area just to bring to your attention here, because this particular area is a source of very much discussion. This map here shows a potential road link, I guess, coming down Wilson Boulevard, I imagine bridging 75 here and then linking up to Sabal Palm Road. Remember that this area here is a Natural Resource Protection Area that the County Commission has recommended to DCA. Of course, all the Natural Resource Protection Areas, through this rural assessment process, the areas are to be refined. Perhaps we'll have different standards. But I want to bring to the Environmental Advisory Council's attention that environmentally this is an NRPA. This area here is the North Belle Meade, which at the moment the Board of County Commissioners recommended that that be a -- not a Natural Resource Protection Area, but it be a study area to look at a higher level of scrutiny as we go through Page 23 June 7, 2000 the rural assessment. So this plan here shows a link from Wilson Boulevard along the -- I'd say the eastern boundary of the North Belle Meade. I imagine this is to some degree where North Golden Gate Estates is located. But again, this will be an area that we'll have to look at as we go through the rural assessment. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Questions for Bill on that? MR. COE: No. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Any questions from anyone attending? Nancy? MS. PAYTON: Nancy Payton, representing the Florida Wildlife Federation. Good morning. I came expecting more discussion of environmental issues as they pertain to roads and wildlife issues, and so I'll bring them up for consideration, and I have some questions, probably for Gavin, comments. First just a few factoids, is that the only place that kills more animals in this country than a road is a slaughterhouse. Wildlife is killed in significant astounding numbers on our roads. And therefore, I bring up the issue of what sort of planning design is being explored or taken into consideration for wildlife and wildlife issues? The insurance company will tell you, they've told me and there's documents, that in single car accidents it's number two, avoiding running over or impacting an animal. Number one is drunk driving. Number two is swerving to avoid an animal and hitting a tree or another car, whatever. Also, wildlife rehabilitators -- I called The Conservancy -- will tell you that the majority of animals that are coming in there, it's collisions with cars or some sort of impact with cars. So what sort of designs are we as a county looking at to make those roads more driver friendly as well as wildlife friendly? For instance, we have curbs. I drive Golden Gate Parkway every day and some other roads, and we have these curbs that come in and just trap tortoises, turtles and other small animals, and there really is no way for them to get out of there. And that creates of course death for them and driving issues for us as drivers. There's an issue, I believe, on Immokalee Road for underpasses or some sort of wildlife crossings. There have been Page 24 June 7, 2000 a high incident of bear hits with automobiles on Immokalee Road near Wilson. These issues ought to be looked at. That Wilson extension down through North Belle Meade and into South Belle Meade, is that the 1-75 bypass? I think you ought to know about the 1-75 bypass. Ed, if 95t gives you heartburn, the 1-75 bypass is going to send you to the hospital. And Gavin, maybe you can address that. That's an MPO recommendation. It was initiated by then-Commissioner John Norris. There are issues concerning our roads with mitigation. Where are the mitigation monies going for the roads? For instance, a portion of the Livingston Road extension, the mitigation monies aren't going to CREW lands, they're not going to that watershed. They were proposed to go to South Belle Meade, Picayune Strand, to remove exotics, a one-time effort. It seems as though we can be doing better with our mitigation money, particularly since this county pledged $t 0 million to purchase CREW lands and hasn't put up one penny. At least they ought to be throwing their mitigation money that way for impacts they're having to that watershed. Then there are also the issues of roads and panthers. There is a federal action out there -- and I'm not the person to address the specifics of that, but I'd be glad to arrange to have somebody to come and talk to you about that -- that there's a lawsuit that has been brought by a variety of environmental organizations, Florida Wildlife being one, it's spearheaded by National Wildlife, dealing with federal monies that are coming to Collier and Lee County without any consideration for those roads impact -- the impact of those roads on wildlife, most specifically panther. And North Belle Meade, it's documented panther occupied area. South Belle Meade is Priority I Panther Habitat. And a good portion of this county is significant panther habitat. There are panther issues along Immokalee Road and the issues of expanding that road. And the 95t extension goes through Priority I Panther Habitat. Those are just some issues, some thoughts and some concerns. And I would like to have Gavin address the 1-75 bypass and issues of is there any consideration from this county in their planning efforts for wildlife and wildlife habitat issues and driver safety issues as they pertain to impacts or collisions with Page 25 June 7, 2000 wildlife? MR. JONES: I'll talk about the map again briefly. Most of the facilities on that map came from the network that I described that was built to serve our 2020 population forecast back in 1995. Some of them have been added only recently, and just at the staff level. And they wouldn't see the light of day as an adopted network unless one, it was verified through a modeling process that, you know, they actually serve the purpose that, you know, they're intended which is to help facilities somewhere else on the network. And also, they wouldn't appear if the lands -- you know, if it was going to be impossible to build them. So that's a process that we go through. As we update the plan, we'll sort out which ones are, you know, feasible from that perspective and which ones aren't. Now, we've been directed to explore the possibility of an Interstate 75 bypass to take traffic volumes off of 1-75. The substantial -- there are substantial volumes on 1-75, particularly when you get north of Immokalee Road. However, a bypass, if it, you know, syphoned off the 1-75 volume somewhere on the northern edge of the county, maybe even in southern Lee County and took them out conceivably out to where State Road 29 intersects 1-75, the only trip-makers that would probably find that advantageous to, you know, use it to avoid the urban area would be ones that are actually making a trip that originates or, you know, ends east of State Road 29 and has another trip in north of -- you know, north of the other juncture. The volumes on 1-75 out past State Road 29 are about t2,000 cars a day. We have traffic calming issues in Collier County that sort of involve numbers larger than that. So we will investigate it. My suspicion is it's not going to do what it's intended, which is to help the Interstate 75 volumes. 1-75 is being used as an inter-county commuting facility. That's why those volumes are there. But we'll explore whether a bypass will help it or not and what are some feasible possibilities for that. As far as, you know, the danger to animals from the roads that we plan, we don't do design work, and there are opportunities during the design phase to do things differently as far as animals are concerned. But basically we don't set policy. Staff doesn't set policy. And it's true that if we didn't build any more roads, that would probably help the wildlife. But it wouldn't Page 26 June 7, 2000 do a lot for the economic development of the county. And those kind of decisions rest in the hands of the County Commissioners. MR. SMITH: Can I make a comment about that? I find myself agreeing with Nancy Payton, that what we really need to perhaps consider when we do the development of necessary roads is to take into account the environmental concerns, including wildlife, rather than simply taking the approach that we need to remove lands from the private sector and placing them into public sector as a solution. I think there are better solutions. So I thank you, Nancy, for that idea. MR. KANT: Edward Kant. I just want to make one quick comment with regard to the design issue. When it comes to the design and permitting and construction of a roadway, the regulatory agencies, including our own county level regulatory agencies, treat the -- that project as any other development project. We're required to provide mitigation, we're required to meet the standards. Frankly, we sometimes feel like sometimes we're held to a higher standard because we are the county and we have to set an example. Now, I don't think that's necessarily true, but I know some of my staff does at times. So I don't think that it would be a fair statement to say that what we do we do in a vacuum with respect to environmental issues. I think that, first of all, Florida is probably one of the if not the most regulated state in the nation. We deal with about 20-some odd permits or permitting agencies at the federal and state levels, plus whatever we have imposed upon ourselves at the local level. So I think that it is not unreasonable for me to stand here and say that we do have a keen sense of environmental issues. We have, as a matter of fact, in our engineering design department, one project manager whose sole function is to assure that we are aware of and meet the environmental issues. And so I think that that's important for this board, for the public and for anybody else that's interested to know, because, as I said, from the regulatory point of view we're just another developer. MR. SMITH: Mr. Kant, I was -- when I'm listening to you, what it appears to me is that there are certain criteria that have been established to take care of environmental issues as they Page 27 June 7, 2000 stand right now. I think what Nancy Payton was pointing out is that there may be some areas where those standards may not be to the level that are necessary to protect certain endangered species and some other issues. MR. KANT: She may be entirely correct. MR. SMITH: The thing that I was wondering about is when Bill Lorenz was talking about the rural assessment and the using of the studies that are being done now for thinking about the future in terms of what development will happen, whether in that study if it is determined that any new developments that would occur should take special account of certain portions of the environment that need to have some special protection and build in to the requirements for any road building or community building, those things, so that we have sort of a gelling of the different interests as opposed to having, you know, one against the other type of thing. MR. KANT: I can cite as an example the section of Livingston Road from Immokalee Road North of the county line. It's a three-mile section of road. We -- as part of our mitigation, we bought over 400 acres of land. Now, what that land -- whether or not it was put to the correct use, whether anybody believes it was, is at this point not an issue that I'd like to address, because we do what we're told to do. And when I say we do what we're told to do, we weren't taken kicking and screaming to it. We said okay, what do we have to do to mitigate this. We were told this is what you have do to mitigate it. If in fact those mitigation measures or the way we mitigate is something that needs to be examined, then that's for those folks who do that type of thing to do. When we're talking about designing a roadway, we have to take the posture that our mission is to design a roadway that is safe and efficient, that meets all of the codes, standards and regulations that are in place, federal, state and local, and is consistent with generally accepted sound engineering practice. And all those other fancy terms that we use. In doing that, we do address these issues. However, unless there is some other driving force, it is not -- I don't believe it's a good use of public funds to go above and beyond what is required. We will do what is required. Just as any -- the gentleman that was sitting here earlier, a developer gentleman, Page 28 June 7, 2000 they'll do what is required. Now, unless they have some reason -- maybe there's a marketing and they want to make it fancier or they want to do more, that's fine. But I don't think that it is unreasonable to say that the county certainly does its share, and I think in many cases it does more than its share because we are the county and we do have to set an example. Thank you. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Any other questions for Ed or Gavin? MR. BAXTER: Yes. Is the runoff monitored for pollution? And how much is there? MR. KANT: Yes. Part of the design -- we cannot discharge directly into canals. We have to have pre-treatment stormwater detention. For example, on Golden Gate Boulevard, which is now just going under construction, we had to go out and buy 28 acres of land separately for detention ponds alone. We also had to go down t4 of the side streets and do ditch improvements with ditch blocks in order to pre-treat and handle the water prior to its discharge into the canal. So we do have to take care of those issues. As far as what the criteria are and what the -- how much the fore versus after, I have no idea. I don't get into that level of detail, sir. But if you really want to get those answers, I can give you the name of somebody that would have that and we'll get the information for you. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions? MR. KANT: Does that answer your question? MR. BAXTER: Yes. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Anything else? Thank you very much, Ed, Gavin. We appreciate your joining us very much. Bill, do you want to do a Growth Management update, or-- MR. LORENZ: Yes. For the record, Bill Lorenz. Yes, the fringe committee, of course, as I noted before, has been actively working on the evaluation matrix. At their last meeting they basically agreed substantively to all t2 factors. At their next meeting they'll see the language of one of the factors. I'm sure that we've got their intention correct. Thereafter, their effort will then be worked on what they call Area B, which is the Immokalee Road -- let's call it the Immokalee Road Corridor, where staff will be taking the information and the Page 29 June 7, 2000 evaluation matrix and apply it to the current comprehensive plan. And then we'll evaluate the current comprehensive plan's impact on a number of these issues that are embodied in the evaluation factors. So that's basically their next step. We figure that we should be able to have something for them to look at in two months. At the same time, the committee will also begin to start brainstorming alternate land use strategies, especially for this particular area, because they have prioritized these areas. They will be meeting -- their next meeting is June 2t st at 4:00 at Development Services center. And the meeting after that scheduled is June 28th. That June 28th meeting is at 4:00. It will be here in this particular meeting room. And the topic of discussion there will be school siting. The school board staff will be presenting the committee with a number of -- a large body of information concerning what their siting needs are and where some of their sites may be so that the committee can then take that into account as it does its planning. Thereafter, the committee will be meeting the second and fourth Wednesdays at 4:00 at Development Services center. The Rural Lands Committee also had met a couple of weeks ago. We presented them with the evaluation matrix. They would like to spend at least another two meetings themselves on getting up to speed with the evaluation matrix. And that will occur -- I think they've scheduled their meetings for June t 9th and July t 7th. Both of those meetings, I believe, are at 6:30 at the Agricultural Extension Office at Orangetree. Assuming we can get through the evaluation matrix in two meetings with them, they would like to then hold a joint meeting with the rural fringe committee, perhaps iron out any discrepancies or differences in the evaluation matrix with the rural fringe committee. And that will probably happen in late summer, early fall. And at the same time in the rural lands area, Wilson-Miller, who is consultant for the Eastern Property Owners, have been updating information, land cover information, ground truthing some areas, and will be plugging that information into the methodology that the Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission utilized in their Gaps Report. Basically they'll be updating some information in the Gaps Report. And that's the ongoing data Page 30 June 7, 2000 activities that Wilson-Miller has been performing in the rural lands area. That's pretty much it. Although, there was one topic, and I think I'll bring it up to the EAG as well. The fringe committee is also interested in developing a more aggressive public awareness campaign. I have talked with Jean Merrick, who is the public information office coordinator here for the county. She's going to be addressing the -- we've made arrangements for her to address the fringe committee. I believe it's going to be their January-- their first meeting in -- excuse me, their first meeting in July that she'll address the committee with some ideas for a public awareness campaign, solicit the committee for some of their input, and then thereafter will develop a little bit more of a detailed schedule and set of components for more enhanced public awareness. Because we're at the stage now where we will start dancing out the evaluation of the current plan and looking at some alternative strategies, which we'd really need to get some public input. A lot of the effort to date has been, if you will, fairly dry in terms of putting together an evaluation matrix. But I think we're moving to the point where we need to have some additional public input. So she'll be addressing the committee with some ideas in the July time frame. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Questions for Bill from the board? From any attendees? Nancy? MS. PAYTON: Nancy Payton, representing the Florida Wildlife Federation. I'd like to address the issue of public participation in the rural fringe and public attendance at those committees. And one, that the rural fringe committee's been meeting at dinnertime. It's a very difficult time for a lot of the people in the public to attend, 5:00, so I'm glad it's being moved back to 4:00. I think that's a better time, at least for some of the folks that we represent and the Collier Audubon people, that that's a better time. Dinnertime's tough for a lot of folks. The other issue is that the county can't have two important environmental meetings at the same time. They've had LDC hearings at the same time the Rural Fringe Committee has been meeting, and it's been difficult for folks that wanted to attend, they sort of have to make a choice. And therefore, I think the Page 31 June 7, 2000 county's got to be sensitive to not piggybacking issues that are of concern to the community and the environmental community who seems to be the ones that show up most from the public. The Rural Lands Committee, I've only been to one committee meeting. That was the one that was held here at Mary Morgan's office. And based on my looking at the minutes, that's the one that was most well attended of all of them. And it's only -- they've only had one meeting there. And I don't know if they intend to have another meeting there. But it's far better that they meet at Orangetree than way out beyond Immokalee. Because most of the people that have been attending, based on my observation of the minutes, have been folks -- or want to attend are folks that are more coastal. And having them, even if it's permanently, at Orangetree is kind of a halfway point between both. And I think that their meeting after dinner is far better than 5:00 or 4:00. So all in all, I think you're moving in the right direction and it might explain why some folks like me haven't attended some of the meetings. Plus they've been incredibly dry for the rural fringe with the matrix. MR. SMITH: If I might comment. The county, Vince Cautero, took the ball in his own hands and attended a meeting at the Golden Gate Estates Area Civic Association at the Estates library at their last meeting. It was packed. We had citizens that were very, very interested in this project. So this isn't something that the people are not interested in. And I applaud you for taking that into account. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thanks, Bill. We're all set. Next item, we have a land use petition. Do you want to swear in anybody that is going to testify. (All speakers were duly sworn.) MR. BADAMTCHIAN: Good morning, council members. My name is Chahram Badamtchian from planning services staff. This is a land use petition. The applicant -- the agent, Mr. Tim Ferguson, is requesting a rezone from agricultural and the PUD to PUD for a travel trailer park or motor home -- motor coach home. The parcel consists of 93.5 acres, located on the south side of Immokalee Road, almost half a mile east of 95t. They are proposing to build the travel trailer park for 420 Page 32 June 7, 2000 recreational vehicles. The density is 4.49 -- approximately 18 acres of preserve they will have, which will contain boardwalks and nature trails. This project will generate t,327 trips, vehicular trips, a day on Immokalee Road. This petition is consistent with the requirements of the Growth Management Plan. Staff recommends approval. Our engineer and our environmentalists are here to answer your questions. MS. BURGESON: For the record, Barbara Burgeson with planning services. This petition is actually Steve Lenberger's. He's on vacation, so I'll do my best making the presentation for him. The environmental consultant, Marco Espinar, is here. So if you have more detailed questions, I'd prefer that you ask him. The 93-acre parcel, native habitats found on site, were mostly pine flatwoods, cypress pine, cabbage palm mix, and an area of cypress that was located on the northern half of the property near the Immokalee Road portion of the property. Approximately 68.6 acres of the 93.5 are potential jurisdictional wetlands. A lot of those, according to Steve, were fairly highly degraded with exotic invasion that shows the 73 percent total of the site that were by wetlands of one quality or another. Petitioner proposes to restore and preserve t5.t8 acres of the wetlands on-site, and proposes also to preserve 3.47 acres of uplands, and retain or replant a total of 4.98 acres of uplands in the buffers around the perimeter of the property. This meets the 25 percent native vegetation retention requirement within the Land Development Code, and also the listed species survey that was done on-site, both last August and September -- I'm sorry, August and September of '98, and this past January, 2000. Identified no threatened or endangered species on-site or utilizing the site. Staff's recommendation is for approval of this PUD, with no additional stipulations. Steve felt that the stipulations that were included in the PUD document were adequate to support staff's position that everything was being properly addressed through the PUD document. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Questions for staff? Page 33 June 7, 2000 MR. CARLSON: Why are we putting the word "potential jurisdictional wetlands" on the 68.66 acres of wetlands? Is that yet to be determined if they're jurisdictional wetlands or not? MS. BURGESON: Marco, if you could answer that, please. MR. ESPINAR: Good morning. For the record, Marco Espinar, Collier Environmental Consultants. Both the Corps and the Water Management District, Ed, have done jurisdictionals out there. A little history of this project. This project originally was approximately 80 acres, and we added to this about t 5 acres for a total of like 95 acres. They came out and they did a jurisdictional for the first 80. So when we say potential, they still haven't looked at the new addition of t 5 acres that we've added to them. And I can show you real quickly what I'm talking about. The original project included this piece here. And it was severed like right down here, going down like this. And this is what we had the Corps and the Water Management District look at the jurisdictionals, and they agreed with my jurisdictional line. The new area that we've added is this piece in here of which you've got two huge upland portions in here, and then the rest of it is consistent with the type of habitat we're dealing with here and that is cypress/melaleuca mix. Does that answer your question? MR. CARLSON: Yes. So my understanding then is the majority of the wetlands have been designated as jurisdictional and there's just that one piece left. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions for staff or petitioner?. We don't have much of an audience left. Did you have one? Oh, sorry. MS. SANTORO: Yes. When I looked at this and read the soil types and so forth, it sounds like most of it is a wetland. Now, I realize that a lot of it has been filled with exotics, but basically the report said you had 68 acres of wetlands, minus the ones that you're going to preserve. That leaves 53 acres of lost wetlands. Also, the report mentioned not only on-site but off-site mitigation, and I didn't see anywhere where it discussed the off-site mitigation. MR. ESPINAR: Right now we're asking for a rezone of this parcel of land. During the permitting process with the Water Page 34 June 7, 2000 Management District and the Corps, we will negotiate an off-site mitigation. At this point we don't know what ratios we're going to be at. A lot of things are considered into the equation of off-site mitigation; i.e., the quality, the impacts that we're proposing and what we're proposing to do with the preserved wetlands. So that element has not been calculated yet. It will be calculated during the permitting process with the Water Management District and the Corps. And we do recognize that we will have to do off-site mitigation on this project. MS. SANTORO: The other thing is the ingress and egress. Does -- do they own -- does it abut the side road there? I was trying to find the name of it, but I can't. Do they own up to the -- not Immokalee, but do they own up to the side access road? There's no access showing on the map at all, only into Immokalee Road. MR. BADAMTCHIAN: May I answer that question? Travel trailer parks are considered commercial, and our Growth Management Plan prohibits access to residential roads. And that's considered a residential road. It's called Woodcrest or-- Woodcrest. And it's considered a residential road. So they cannot have access to that road. MR. CARLSON: I have a couple more questions. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Sure. MR. CARLSON: The preserve areas proposed satisfy the 25 percent requirement for the county. I should know this, but there is no other element of our Growth Management Plan or Land Development Code that protects wetlands above that minimum? I mean, it's up -- it's the option of the applicant to decide whether he's going to preserve uplands or wetlands, but there's no incentive to preserve wetlands -- MS. BURGESON: At this -- MR. CARLSON: -- above and beyond the 25 percent requirement? MS. BURGESON: I wish that Bill Lorenz was still here. Part of the Land Development Code and Growth Management Plan requirements for the county has included a habitat protection ordinance which would have addressed -- we actually had about t 7 drafts of that, and several presented to the Board of Page 35 June 7, 2000 County Commissioners over the past -- hi, Bill -- over the past maybe seven years. That would have addressed staff being able to prioritize habitat protection, because we were looking at the highest quality of habitat on-site, and being able for us to direct the property owner to protect that particular type of habitat. Unfortunately, I don't believe that we had any support for any of those habitat protection ordinances, as they were presented to the board when they were presented. What that leaves staff with is the ability to require 25 percent. Now with the gopher tortoise protection language in there, the ability to direct and prioritize gopher tortoise habitat in the rare scrub habitat, but without a wetland ordinance, per se, or that additional protection directed towards the wetlands, we do not have on staff level the ability to do that. We talked a couple months ago about having a wetland workshop in July. However, I probably will not be in town for that meeting. So I'd like to ask if it's at all possible to have that in August. And we had talked about trying to get someone from Martin County here to make a presentation as to how their wetland ordinance functions, maybe being able to incorporate some additional protection or direction. I'm not sure that we'd be able to do that above and beyond the 25 percent, but there still may be some direction for us to strengthen protection of what might be highest quality wetlands on-site. MR. CARLSON: Well, you know, here's my basic problem. I mean, there's no doubt, we all know the value of wetlands. You know, they help recharge the groundwater and here we are on water restrictions, and they help buffer us from wildfires, and, you know, they improve water quality. And wetlands do all this great stuff for us. And you know, we have this wild fluctuation here from one year to the next, floods and fires and poor water quality and all this. And it just seems like we ought to be doing more to preserve more wetlands in this county. Could you -- I mean, you're going to face other agencies that do have wetland protection rules. And I know that one of the things they're going to ask you to do is to show how you avoided impacting wetlands with this project. Now, when I look at this and I look at the gerrymandered preserve areas and the wetlands, you know, and I go through the exercise of coloring in the wetlands that are being lost, the Page 36 June 7, 2000 yellow on my -- for the camera. Could you just sort of walk us through your logic and how you avoided impacting wetlands with such a huge amount of wetland impact in here and such a small amount of preservation of wetlands? MR. ESPINAR: Yeah, sure, Ed. I do take those things into consideration. When I'm looking at this project, I am looking at the clients', you know, bottom end and that is money-wise, what he's going to have to spend for off-site mitigation on this project. Saying that, when I looked at this project, what I tried to do is target some of the best restorable wetlands that I can find on site. The site has got how many acres, 68.66 acres of wetlands. Not all of them are really that good of quality. The areas that I saved towards the eastern perimeter actually had some beautiful big cypresses with big buttresses on them. And that's what the areas I was trying to target precisely, so when the Water Management District or the Corps goes out there, they can see, okay, we're saving the better quality wetlands and we're impacting the more impacted wetlands. And thus when we're looking at mitigation and off-site mitigation costs, they take that into consideration so our cost might--will be minimal. And the flip side, if they saw me haphazardly impacting wetlands, they will consider them all impacted and we'd have to mitigate them for all of the wetlands out there. The -- like I said, the better quality wetlands are on the eastern perimeter. There's actually a little depressional cypress head on the northeast area of the parcel. We incorporated that into our preserves. Like I said, we've tried to look at the best habitat. We wanted to save some uplands, too. As you can see, we did try to save some uplands in there. Even though we didn't find any endangered species out there, we try to think of potential species such as fox squirrels. Even though we did not find them out there, the potential is there. So we went ahead and tried to save some uplands adjoining the wetland areas, too. Does that answer your question or -- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Other questions for the petitioner?. MR. CARLSON: I would just like to support Barbara's comment, that we had another county's wetland protection ordinance presented to us. I don't think we ever really addressed that or discussed it or -- and if other counties are protecting Page 37 June 7, 2000 wetlands, I don't see why we can't. I mean, it's as plain as day that we have a problem here with fluctuating water tables, fires and water quality, and I think -- I'm sorry, Marco, but, you know, I just think this is a bad deal for Collier County to lose this much wetland and only preserve 15 acres or 14 acres on-site. I just think it's a bad deal for the county. MR. ESPINAR: If it's any consolation, we will be mitigating and probably panther island mitigation area, which will be in the same watershed area. So the impacts that we are proposing, we will be mitigating them within that same basic watershed. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: I think we'll be talking more about wetlands shortly. Any other questions about this project? What is your pleasure as to going forward? MR. SANSBURY: Move approval, with staff comments. MR. SMITH: I'll second it. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: All in favor?. MR. BAXTER: Aye. MR. COE: Aye. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Aye. MR. McVEY: Aye. MR. SANSBURY: Aye. MR. SMITH: Aye. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Any opposed? MS. SANTORO: Opposed. MR. CARLSON: (Indicated.) MS. SANTORO: May I make a comment? I totally concur that -- and I had read all the minutes about the fact that you're looking at wetland ordinances. If ever we had an example of a problem, this is it. We just lost 53 acres of wetlands, without any description as to whether it's a good wetland, poor wetland, et cetera. Definite need for it. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: I appreciate your point, and I think we'll -- let's jump right into that. In old business, I wanted to give you a brief recap of our report to the Board of County Commissioners. Tom Sansbury joined me a few weeks ago, and Bill Lorenz had suggested that the commissioners would perhaps be most interested in our future plans and directions, and so we talked mainly about that. Any further discussion on the motion? Page 38 June 7, 2000 And I -- that is to remind you also that in our top three action areas, one of them is indeed wetland impact and mitigation. And we are putting together a wetlands subcommittee, and I think the idea of launching it, launching the effort sort of with a workshop at the August meeting sounds like a good one, if that meets with your pleasure. And the other areas for this coming year, as you know, being some role in the assessment process and getting a little bit more involved with habitat and species protection. And then we also talked about the areas that were more of a -- more on a study category, sewage systems and property rights and so forth and so on. And I think the report was well received. There were a couple of -- we invited their feedback as we looked ahead at our future work. And we got some. And I wanted to share the couple of comments that we got. Now, these are just from individual commissioners. There were no motions made or anything like that. But as far as our role in the assessment process was concerned, I think that one of them said don't be too aggressive about that, we see your role perhaps as reviewing it when it's pretty well along. Under our plan to talk about individual property rights or study that area, they wanted to make sure that we involved the county attorney. They were interested in our -- in the fact that we would be reviewing our own processes towards increasing our efficiency, and they said by all means, let them know if there are any glitches that we identify. And finally, in talking about the Item RMK, establishing a close relationship with the South Florida Water Management District, they just -- one of them said make sure you don't skip over the Big Cypress Basin board in that discussion. Anyway, Tom, unless you had any other -- MR. SANSBURY: No. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: -- recollections of how that went, that was my report on that. But wetlands is definitely one of the three things that we had chosen as an action item. And I think if it suits you, we'll get that started in August, at the August meeting. Let me ask you, on that subject, or looking ahead, about a Page 39 June 7, 2000 couple of things. One is, would you like to try to make more of an effort to involve the public in something like this wetlands discussion? I mean, it's something that I know, Richard, you had expressed some strong feelings about earlier, that we should make more of an effort to reach out to people and involve them in some of these issues, and whether people would be interested in attending such a session, if it were advertised, let's say. Is that a direction that you'd be interested in going in, or is this something that we -- MR. SMITH: I think getting public involved is always an important thing. I was thinking in particular with the rural assessment, that the direction from the Governor and Cabinet is to make the public -- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Yes. MR. SMITH: -- a hallmark -- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Right. MR. SMITH: -- of that effort. But, you know, other-- in general, I just think it's always a good idea to have as much public input as possible. MS. BURGESON: Being that it's two months out from this meeting that we're planning on having in August, it would be fairly easy for staff to put together some type of a notice that we could at least put up on the public properties and send out to the organizations that we feel would probably be interested in attending. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Organizations. Would that-- people -- would individuals see it and be able to attend, or is that -- MS. BURGESON: Oh, definitely. CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Okay. Does that meet with your approval? MR. SMITH: You know, it's always good. I think one of the things that we ought to consider in that process is that in addition to the organizations that are -- that are dedicated to environmental issues, that we ought to perhaps take into account, you know, people generally who have perhaps issues that are also important to be included. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Uh-huh. Okay. Fair enough. One other housekeeping issue is our next meeting is set up for July 5th. We're a little understaffed here, so are we all -- does Page 40 June 7, 2000 anybody have a vacation schedule conflict there, or will we expect to have a quorum for that meeting? Okay, great. There's a provision here for a subcommittee report on the Growth Management subcommittee. Richard, I know you've been following that most closely. MR. SMITH: Bill Lorenz did an excellent job of giving an overview of what's going on, and I've commented about Vince Cautero coming up. And other than that, I really don't have anything else to add. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Okay. Any other comments or-- MS. BURGESON: If you've got just a couple of minutes? CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Sure. MS. BURGESON: The brief discussion that I had earlier on the habitat protection ordinance, Bill could really give you maybe a couple of minutes of an overview on how hard his staff and his group has worked to try to accomplish that. And I can see that some of the members of this board probably aren't aware of what happened maybe five to t 0 years ago -- CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Sure. MS. BURGESON: -- and what staff was trying to accomplish. So if you've got just that time. MR. LORENZ: Yes, what's known as the Habitat Protection Ordinance, basically, was a -- the ability to recognize that certain habitats have some greater functions or, let's say, greater values, and we forced ourselves into a prioritization process than other habitats; both considerations of uplands and wetland habitats. The underlying structure of the ordinance was to take a -- for instance, take the plan that you currently were looking at and each of the -- each of the habitats that would be mapped out would be scored, and those scores would be based upon the type of habitat. For instance, there are certain habitats that are in Collier County what we would consider rare, unique. For instance, a scrub habitat would have a higher score than just a -- let's say a pineland habitat, unless there were a listed species on-site. In which case then that would get an additional score. So we added a scoring system such that as you took each of those mapped habitat units, you would score the habitats, and you'd be required to set aside as part of the 25 percent preservation requirement the highest scored habitats. There was some flexibility built into the system whereby if Page 41 June 7, 2000 you -- if the developer chose not to utilize that highest scored habitat, he could go to a different habitat, but at a ratio basically which would be prorated on the scoring system. One of the places -- if you will, one of the criticisms of it from an environmental standpoint, however, it still was within the 25 percent requirement. We did not go beyond the 25 percent requirement that the Board of County Commissioners has set in the Growth Management Plan. Such that perhaps in many cases, as you can see on-site, the jurisdictional agencies may require -- federal and state requirements may be greater than 25 percent simply because of the amount of wetlands on-site. So that we did not go beyond the 25 percent requirement because that was the board's policy -- prior board's policy decision. We utilized that, if you will, as a constraint to work that ordinance within. The final -- the final order from the Governor and Cabinet recognizes that everything that we've done to date still does not address wetlands and listed species protection in the county. So we're going to have to look at some kind of wetlands and species protection strategy that is different than we currently have in the Growth Management Plan. That's still part of what the two advisory committees are going to have to come to grips with. Because when we finally go back to DCA, we're going to have to show that we have a wetlands and listed species strategy that makes sense that they can buy off on. So to the degree that the EAC gets involved with some of these more technical issues, like looking at gathering information on wetlands, what are -- what I'm going to say, what gaps exist that you will identify between the federal and state process, and what you would as a body like to see occur, perhaps in those -- plugging those gaps could be helpful in our ability to get through the final order requirement. Not only on the wetlands side of the house, but also on the listed species. Because I noted, those are the two areas basically of deficiency that everything we've done to date in our remedial amendments will not have addressed the wetlands and listed species issues. And that needs to come about in the year 2002. And basically there's two ways of doing it, or maybe a combination of both ways: One is identify areas in Collier County where you basically do not allow development to occur, because that would be incompatible development for either a wetlands Page 42 June 7, 2000 perspective or a listed species perspective. And/or if you allow it to occur, do you have the appropriate performance standards or guidelines or permitting standards in place that if it were to occur, it would be sufficiently -- the impact would be sufficiently mitigated. So that's really the -- that's what we're faced with, and that has to be all effective June of 2002. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: So it's an opportunity for us to get involved. Any questions or comments? MR. CARLSON: I have a question for Mr. Legal Counsel. Since we have identified wetlands as something we want to get involved in on this board, are we violating any sunshine stuff if some of us speak individually outside of this public forum about the general topic of how to save wetlands and how -- what other counties are doing? MR. PALMER: No, you're free to do that. What you cannot discuss off the record and in private are quasi-judicial matters that affect the rights of applicants that you know or suspect will come before this board for a decision by this board. General matters like legislation, what should go into ordinances, general forward-looking policy decisions that are not specific to a particular case that you're contemplating, you can do that, discuss that at your will. MR. CARLSON: Thank you. MR. SMITH: And that discussion is between the members themselves? MR. PALMER: Yes. As long as it doesn't involve a matter that's going to affect the rights of an applicant that you know are going to come before the board or you suspect are going to come before the board. General discussions about policies, the way you view things in general, whether or not you think the ordinance is less restrictive or more restrictive than you would personally like and so forth, those kinds of discussions are fine. Those are legislative matters rather than -- as distinguished from quasi-judicial. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Thanks. Other questions or comments? Thanks, Bill. Any other issues or reasons why we should not adjourn? Page 43 June 7, 2000 MR. SMITH: I move we adjourn. CHAIRMAN CORNELL: Hearing none, we will adjourn. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 10:45 a.m. ENVIRONMENTAL ADVISORY COUNCIL KEEN CORNELL, CHAIRMAN TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC., BY CHERIE' R. LEONE, NOTARY PUBLIC Page 44