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DSAC Minutes 06/07/2000 RJune 7, 2000 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE DEVELOPMENT SERVICES ADVISORY COMMITTEE Naples, Florida, June 7, 2000 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Development Services Advisory Committee, in and for the County of Collier, as the governing board of such special district as has been created according to law and having conducted business herein, met on this date at 3:50 p.m. in REGULAR SESSION at Conference Room "E", Horseshoe Drive, Naples, Florida, with the following CHAIRMAN: NOT PRESENT: STAFF MEMBERS PRESENT: members present: Dalas D. Disney Charles M. Abbott Marco A. Espinar Brian E. Jones Dino J. Longo Thomas Masters Thomas R. Peek C. Perry Peeples R. Bruce Anderson David C. Correa William P. Dillon Robert L. Duane Blair Foley Sally Lam Herbert R. Savage Vincent A. Cautero Edward S. Perico Robert J. Mulhere Tom Kuck Page 1 June 7, 2000 Michelle Arnold PUBLIC PRESENT: David Ellis Phil Tindall Jeff Purse Bruce Siciliano Page 2 June 7, 2000 CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay, we'll call the June 7th 2000 meeting of the Development Services Advisory Committee to order. First item is approval of the agenda. Are there any modifications to the agenda? No? Tom? MR. PEEK: Page 9 and Page 10. On Page 9 -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: On the agenda? MR. PEEK: Oh, excuse me. No. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Agenda? No? MR. MULHERE: Michelle, under staff announcements, has some information on the citation ordinance that she'd like to communicate to the committee. So make it C, I guess. Or I don't know what B is but -- miscellaneous. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: So C will be what? I'm sorry. MR. MULHERE: Citation ordinance information. MS. ARNOLD: That's under staff announcements? MR. MULHERE: Yeah. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: It will be 3-C, citation ordinance information. Okay, seeing no other modifications, is there a motion to approve the agenda? MR. PEEK: So moved. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Second. MR. ESPINAR: Second. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: All those in favor, say aye. All those opposed, same sign. (No response.) CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Hearing none, next is the approval of the minutes of May 3, 2000 meeting. Are there any modifications to those minutes? Mr. Peek. MR. PEEK: On the first page of the summary sheet under the excused absences, Herb Savage is listed twice. And one of those should reflect Charles Abbott instead of -- MR. ABBOTT: That's what I was going to say. MR. PEEK: On Page 9 of the detailed minutes, about three-quarters of the way down the page where Mr. Kuck is speaking, it says the natural grade, the thought being as it decays, the 24 inches will -- and it says battle south, and it should read settle down, I think is what was intended. Pa~e 3 June 7, 2000 On Page 10-- MR. ABBOTT: He's been known to talk nonsense before. MR. PEEK: -- about the sixth or seventh line down, Mrs. Arnold is speaking and says yes, this you've also seen in the grafting four. And I think it should be the drafting form. And then about three-quarters of the way down the page, I'm speaking, and it says I was on it. Bob Lange, and it should be Bob Duane. Those are the only comments I have. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Very good. Any other corrections to the minutes? No? Is there a motion for approval? MR. PEEK: So moved. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Second? MR. MASTERS: Second. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Abbott? MR. ABBOTT: One comment. I would like to get these lightly earlier, if we could. And I realize that's the way I kind of work, but I was hoping the county was better. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We'll have additional comment on that in just a moment. Thanks, Charley. All those in favor of approval of the minutes, say aye. Any opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN DISNEY: No? Thank you. On the subject that Mr. Abbott brings up of the packets, they were out late -- MR. MULHERE: You mean yesterday. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: -- this month. Yes, late yesterday afternoon. All that could be done to get them a few days in advance so that we could read them would be greatly appreciated. MR. MULHERE: No, that's duly noted. And I think the problem -- and I'm speaking I think for Connie, Vince's administrative assistant. I think the problem is we were trying to get the final budget information before we distributed them. But that was an evolving process and just completed, but duly noted. And I think we need to get them out a little quicker than a day before. MR. ABBOTT: It would be when you're already budgeted for certain things time-wise and then you get this too, so -- Page 4 June 7, 2000 CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Good. 3-A, staff announcements. Summary of ordinance amendments. MR. MULHERE: We've got that in your packet under the -- I guess it's the second lavender page. Just really doesn't require any discussion. We'll continue to try to update that before each of your meetings. And just going to be used as a reference point for you all. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Very good. Any questions on that summary? MR. JONES: Is it appropriate to discuss like LDC amendments at this time? MR. MULHERE: Yeah, I was going to do that under miscellaneous. It's coming up next. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Speaking of that, we'll go to Item B, miscellaneous. Bob? MR. MULHERE: Since I did note that the LDC amendments didn't appear really as a separate issue in the subcommittee reports since the very beginning on the LDC amendments, seemed like this would be the appropriate time to talk about it. One -- the board held their initial hearing. It was extremely brief. I think it lasted about 23 minutes. Board of County Commissioners. And that was last Wednesday. And really, the only issue of any discussion, there were two issues, one was the gopher tortoise amendment, preservation amendment, which really had support from a pretty broad spectrum of environmental groups and DSAC and the EAC. And so there really wasn't a whole lot of discussion on that, except that we were encouraged to also continue to look for perhaps better or different ways to protect the gopher tortoise and specifically looking at maybe some preserve opportunities to work with the state government agencies to create some habitat areas. The only other issue that was discussed -- I was not at this meeting, so if I misspeak, let me know. But there was brief discussion on the parking. MR. KUCK: Yes. I'm going to get Stan, because I think Jeff wants to discuss that a little bit more. And Stan's just waiting for -- MR. MULHERE: And I'll lay out the foundation for it. As you know, at the last amendment cycle the staff passed an Page 5 June 7, 2000 amendment which revised the typical cross-section for parking spaces, and inadvertently and legitimately that -- well, inadvertently that caused some difficulties in design. Those are legitimate difficulties. In fact, we met with -- about the last week prior to the board hearing the LDC amendments, the staff met with Jeff Purse and Dalas Disney and specifically looked at -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Tom Masters was there. MR. MULHERE: Yeah, Tom was there. We looked at some specific examples of how that impact -- unintentional impact, but nevertheless legitimate concern would arise and how we might address it. And Stan and Jeff I think pretty much worked out a compromise that addressed those issues. (Mr. Chrzanowski enters room.) MR. MULHERE: And that's what we presented to the board. So Stan, I've laid the foundation, or Jeff I've laid out the foundation. Do you want to add some -- MR. PURSE: Yeah, I -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Jeff -- we've spoken, and just in the way of background, additional background, you all received -- should have received a fax from my office on the same subject. We did meet, and I thought had a resolution to the issue. But there is another one in one instance that Jeff has brought to our attention. I know Jeff and Stan have spoken more about it. And Jeff, if you could lay out the particulars of it for everybody on the one remaining issue, maybe we could bring this to conclusion here. Thanks. MR. PURSE: Thank you. For the record, Jeff Purse. My main concern now is -- in receiving a call from an architect, that in the industrial area, and that's why where I guess Stan's main concern is about the landscaping, is the tightest place to build in. Because normally the lots are 100 foot wide. And there's always a problem in designing in there. And the way we have this worked out on the right-hand side of the drawing, we show an 18-foot parking space, and then a two-foot I call buffer preserve area, and then you go into your landscape buffer. So what that basically is doing is creating a seven-foot landscaped buffer in the industrial area. So instead of -- it goes from a five-foot to a seven-foot buffer, which would mean then there's a 14-foot buffer between the two lots. Page 6 June 7, 2000 My concern is, and Stan and I have always been at odds at this, that I believe that in an industrial site, that it should only be an 18-foot space. The 18-foot space allows for a two-foot overhang. And it always has. If we include that two feet, it takes away-- it could have the potential of taking away four feet away from an industrial lot. And I guess where the argument is, is Stan's belief is that the overhang is four feet and I'm saying the overhang is two feet. It's always been two feet. And it's not as big a problem as -- I don't believe it's as big a problem as Stan does. So I'm proposing that in industrial -- even we say for the five-foot buffer only that you can only use an 18-foot space, you would be allowed to have a 16-foot space and try to utilize some of the landscaping area as we did in the past. An industrial area in the past, we could have a 16-foot space and two-foot overhang. Take away the 16-foot space or even an 18-foot space. Because if you include that two foot, we've now made the 20-foot parking space. MR. MULHERE: Well, let me just ask a question. It seems to me then you could still leave the option under that scenario, you could still -- I'm not sure why anyone would choose it, but maybe there's something I can't foresee. You could still leave the option of an 18-foot space, which with the bumper stop would give you a two-foot overhang. Or a 16-foot, but if you do the 16-foot then you would have to put the two foot additional. MR. PURSE: Right, correct. MR. MULHERE: And I don't know why one would choose one over the other, because I don't know if one might be a little cheaper or better for some design instance versus another. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: If I'm understanding this correct, and I think I am here, we're talking about an 18-foot space in industrial areas, period, not 18 plus two foot overhang. Is that right, Jeff? MR. PURSE: That's what I'm advocating. MR. MULHERE: But I've got to give Stan a chance to -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. So Stan, you're up. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: I guess our position is we went to architectural graphic standards. And if you want to pass that around. That tells you what the different overhangs are. They're greater than two foot. It says on a large car rear overhang is up to four foot five, four foot eight. Medium car is up to four foot. Pa~e 7 June 7, 2000 And that's the design standard. Jeff's position is that we shouldn't go to the design standard, we should go to the average vehicle. When you do that, you end up with shrubs being knocked over. And this is all industrial area. I've done away with all the others. Vehicles overhanging quite a bit into landscape areas. And you end up with situations like this where the trees are right against the edge of the landscape, that five foot. I just think it's unacceptable. MR. PURSE: I think where we have the disagreement is the four-foot overhang in effect that Stan is backing his car in, and I never back in. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: I'm not the only one. Those pictures are cars that were not county vehicles. There's people back in all the time. And all you really need is one out of 10 to back in and hit the landscaping. You know, it's not like every car is doing it. Granted, maybe it's only one out of 10. So one out of 10 cars that go down the road has an accident. Do we design for the nine that don't or the one that does? MR. PURSE: Or in that respect, because we're trying to improve the landscaping in the industrial areas, which I agree with. Is it not more appropriate that we attack that issue from the landscaping code instead of the parking code? Is there some enforcement issues that -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Next go round, if you want to attack it from the landscape code, we can do that. What size lot -- we're talking 60 foot is the 18, 24 and 18. And then you have 64 foot is the two and the two. Five more foot on both sides is 69, 74 foot. So this would only really impact you in a lot that's narrower than 74 foot. Your 100 foot lot doesn't get impacted at all. It's -- 74-foot lot gets impacted. If you bought a lot that's narrower than 74 foot, you just have to do something else. MR. PURSE: The minimum lot is 100 feet. And we've always had -- putting water management in, putting landscaping in, putting in the parking, the sidewalk requirement, so everything starts getting shrunk up to -- and what hurts is the building. Yes, we're here to get -- maximize the industrial lot. If we can't maximize the lot to get the fullest square footage we can, then it's not viable to do the building. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: I don't see where your 100 foot lot is Page 8 June 7, 2000 that impacted. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: lots. And we are discussing just industrial MR. PURSE: CHAIRMAN DISNEY: five-foot buffer impact. MR. PURSE: Right. 20-foot space. Right, I'm-- That's the only area we have with a I'm just trying to get away from a MR. MULHERE: Potentially. Anywhere where you only have a five-foot landscape buffer adjacent to parking, which to our knowledge really only occurs in the industrial district. Used to occur in some other places, but I think we've gotten away from that now and -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: The larger buffers -- MR. MULHERE: There's room. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: -- landscaping has conceded that if you back a car into -- (Mr. Cautero enters room.) MR. CHRZANOWSKI: -- that there's room in the larger buffer to hold the landscaping away and just put grass. So even if you do have a four-foot overhang, you're not hitting anything. It's in these smaller buffers that there's not enough room, vehicles tend to hit. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: The graphic standards exhibit that you have here, that you highlighted, I haven't seen that yet. But that's -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: It's the same as your book. It's a different addition. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: -- highlighted for what, the front overhangs or the rear overhangs? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Both. I highlighted both. MR. JONES: I think this is probably an older site by virtue of the -- MR. MR. MR. MR. of-- CHRZANOWSKI: No, that's brand new. JONES: This is new? CHRZANOWSKI: That's brand new. Just finished. JONES: Usually there's a space beyond the wheel stop MR. CHRZANOWSKI: If we don't absolutely hold you to certain standards, you'll find a way around them. Page 9 June 7, 2000 MR. MR. a five. MR. JONES: Well, also by design. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: That's why we've changed our standards. MR. JONES: They had the option. There's a five-foot landscape buffer and a five-foot V-swale for water retention. By design they could have put the buffer on -- they could have reversed the two of these and it wouldn't have been -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: We've gotten a lot of these designs lately where they've put in the wheel stop without the two foot of asphalt behind, because they say you really only need a 16-foot space -- MR. JONES: On your front -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: -- and you can overhang the back. MR. MASTERS: Well, your front yard buffer, this should be a 10-foot -- I believe it's a 10-foot buffer, is it not, Stan, on the frontal setback? Type A buffer? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: I don't know. MULHERE: I would think so. JONES: It's supposed to be a 10. This is definitely only MR. CHRZANOWSKI: But then again, we sometimes allow five foot of water retention in a 10-foot landscape buffer. That's a concession on our part. MR. JONES: Okay, maybe that's what's happening. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Which holds that even closure to the parking. MR. JONES: So the landowner or the person that's going to build would be affected by potentially two feet of the loss of his building. MR. MULHERE: If he had double parking, it would be four feet. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Four feet. MR. JONES: The other issue that I would tie into that, which is part of the LDC is now a predominant amount of the lots are these narrower, long, skinny lots. Trade Center; almost all the new developments that I'm familiar with. And you're severely impacting those. Two feet over here doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but then now we're taking away the zero lot line. And for example, Trade Center, which I think is kind of a model, virtually the majority of the buildings are on a zero lot line, one Page 10 June 7, 2000 side or the other. I understand -- I think the intent is to try to beautify, to add some landscaping on -- to do away with the -- I think the code says 0 or 10, and now it would be -- now they're saying no, it's 10, 10 or nothing. It's flat 10; is that correct? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: I don't know. MR. JONES: I believe it's 10. MR. MULHERE: Minimum of 10. But it's 20 percent of the width of the lot. MR. JONES: But it's on the other side, so that's moot. MR. MULHERE: Right. MR. JONES: So they were all zero on one side and you had greater than 20 percent on the other. So the proposed ordinance affects -- he you're losing 10 feet on one side and two feet on the other. You're losing 12 feet. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: On the total width of the lot, that's right. MR. JONES: On the total width. MR. MULHERE: Well, you shouldn't really be losing any, because -- as far as that goes. Because as I understand the setback -- now I'll have to go get the set of LDC amendments, you know. But the setback, taking away the zero, even though you've got a 0 on one, you still have to provide the entire required setback on the other side. MR. JONES: That's correct. But when you have a narrow lot like that, there's only one way to play the card, and -- MR. MULHERE: Okay, but hear what I'm saying. If the setback -- if you had a 100-foot lot and 20 percent of the lot, which is 20 feet and you had a 0 lot line and you had to put 20 foot on the other side, now you can go 10 and 10. We're not requiring any greater set-aside for setback than we were before. We're simply not letting you do it on a 0 lot line. MR. JONES: But that wasn't a rational way to do it. Because you would have your driveway and your parking and your landscape all in one, which met -- MR. ABBOTT: All on one side, which helped with the 20, yeah. MR. PEEK: If you have a 75-foot wide, if you had a 0 and 20 percent, which is a 15 feet total setback, now you've got to go 10 Pa~e 11 June 7, 2000 and 10 so you've got 20 feet. MR. MULHERE: Well, no, you can -- it would still be 20 percent, or 7 and a half and 7 and a half. MR. JONES: What they've done -- MR. MULHERE: But I understand what they're trying to say. MR. JONES: What they've done in the code is to make up for the takeaway of the 10 feet on the side, they've said instead of a 50-foot front setback, we will now allow a 25-foot front yard setback. Which we did the 10 to try to add landscaping. I think we're maybe doing more harm with letting that front encroachment or the changing the setback. I think that's going to have some adverse affects; maybe more so than what the side is. I would rather have the buildings farther off the street, not pushed up on the street. I think it's a bad trade. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: But isn't that a separate issue than this parking? MR. MULHERE: Yeah. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And if we could -- MR. JONES: Well, they're LDC. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Well, they are, but refocusing back on the parking, I mean, we're -- the whole question that Jeff is bringing back to us is look, the potential is we're losing on these narrow lots four feet additional to the standards that we used to have. And so if we can come back and try to resolve this. Tom, you had a question or a comment a few minutes ago? MR. MASTERS: Yeah. I mean, having sat through the previous meeting as well and looking at this before, I think Stan's pictures today do an excellent case. Even if that car that was backed in in that case up against the tree was brought forward in that lot, it would still be up against the hedge, and the hedge is already dead in the space next to it. I think that's a reasonable example of what is occurring today. And I don't think anybody here can disagree that something ought to be done here. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: I can take you out in that parking lot and show you the front of Shirley Nix's mid-sized '90 something Buick, and it's got a three-foot six-inch front overhang. If you think that's where the problem is, I can show you vehicles out there with that kind of front end overhang. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Perry? MR. PEEPLES: I'm just trying to come up with a way -- I Pa~e 12 June 7, 2000 guess my primary question for both of you guys, does the total length need to be 18 feet or does the total length need to be 20 feet? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: You know what the problem is? We allow a 9 by 18 parking space. Now, I can show you a picture of Randy Casey's pickup here that really kind of sums things up good, because when you park the vehicle in there, his front tires are very close to the front of the vehicle. And his rear tires are fairly far from the back. When you pull in, the front tires being close to the front of the vehicle forces the pack of the vehicle out into the traveled way. Everybody makes their cars differently. Some have the front tires very close to the front bumper, some have the rear tires close to the bumper with a large overhang. With a 9 by 18 space, you would have to stagger your parking bumpers, and everybody would have to know -- MR. PEEPLES: Pick the right bumper. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Yeah, you'd probably have to label, you know, if you're a 1942 Buick, park here. Because that's the only way you're going to get centered on the 9 by 18 space. Okay? Other people, when they pull up to the bumper, the front overhang, the rear overhang, you know, sometimes you got two foot, sometimes you got four-foot. All the cars are made differently. It's why in the old days the parking spaces used to be 10 by 20. But then to save asphalt, we don't like to put down more asphalt than we have to, we changed to the 9 by 18. I think Tom can remember when all the spaces were 10 by 20. The rest of you are probably too young. MR. PEEPLES: But Start, what I'm driving at, you think that the parking space because of this problem with different sized and shaped cars, do you believe that parking spaces need to be 20 feet long? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: No. No, I just don't want you overhanging into the landscape buffer. MR. MULHERE: What he's saying is -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: I don't want to see a 20-foot piece of asphalt. MR. MULHERE: -- in the narrow circumstance that you only have a five-foot landscape buffer, which is pretty much only on the side of an industrial, that, you know, we need the extra two Page 13 June 7, 2000 feet to protect the landscaping. And Jeff's point is -- or the extra four feet, actually. Because the bumper stop will buy you two feet in an 18-foot parking space and then an extra two feet beyond the curb. Jeff's point I think was if we restrict it to 18 feet, you'll always get a two-foot overhang, which will minimize the impact on the industrial property owner. And maybe we ought to look at the landscaping. There's just not much room in a five-foot landscape if you have to move the landscaping too much further. Even if you put it in the center, you're still pretty darn close. And, you know, we can ask Herb Savage to comment on little soldiers in a row, but -- trees in a row. You know Herb. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: If his front tires were a little farther back, he wouldn't stick that far out into the traveled way. MR. MULHERE: Right. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: But if he backed in -- MR. MULHERE: But perhaps the compromise -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: -- he'd be fine. So everybody's car is made differently. MR. MULHERE: -- since we're designing this to pretty much the worst case scenario, or as much -- as close to the worst case scenario as we can get, 4.4, 4.5-inch overhang, right, on that graphic? Perhaps one foot splits the baby in half, which gets you a three-foot, which meets most of the overhangs that you're going to have, but doesn't necessarily meet them all. And we look to offset the landscaping further back in the five-foot scenarios, too. So that instead of having trees in which in this case are within two foot of the edge of the landscaping, they would be at least three feet off the edge of the edge of landscape buffer. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: I'm hearing compromise here? MR. MULHERE: Yeah. You're always going to hear compromise from me. Because, you know, compromise is the name of the game. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Charley Abbott had a comment first, and then Dino. MR. ABBOTT: For the last month or so I've been otherwise detained, and so I've spent a lot of time watching Channel 54. And if you get a good dose of how much government and how petty we can really be, I think you would think that less Page 14 June 7, 2000 government is better and our citizens' rights. And maybe we don't need to mind everybody's business to the degree that we do. That's just a general comment that -- I've had lots of code enforcement, lots of planning boards, all this kind of stuff. And you get to watching two or three times even, so you really make sure what the people said. And it doesn't put the county, in my opinion, in a very good light. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Charley, that's because you're not the one that deals with all these complaints from the private sector people, wanting to know why we don't have more laws to stop people from doing what they're doing. MR. ABBOTT: There are a bunch of new residents who are always out to cure the neighborhood that they bought into. And they absolutely bought into it with both eyes open, but now that they're there, we're going to all get by with their morales and their standards. Too bad. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you. Dino, you had a comment? MR. LONGO: I actually have two comments. I kind of agree with Charley. But if there's a compromise, simply stated, why couldn't we have the two-foot pavement ahead of the car stop with a requirement that landscaping can't be planted within two feet of the edge of the pavement? MR. CHRZANOWSKI: In effect, you're getting a three-foot landscape buffer then right? MR. PEEPLES: Well, two feet of grass and three feet of -- MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Well, that's a two-foot grass strip and a three-foot landscape buffer. That's not the purpose of it. MR. MULHERE: Well, it's kind of what you get anyway. Because even in a five-foot landscape buffer, Stan, there's a foot or so on either side that's grass, and then there's shrubs and trees pretty much in the middle. Because five foot's not much to work with. You've always got about a foot of grass or mulch, don't you, on either side? I mean, look at those pictures. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Sure. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: Depends what you put in, yeah. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And in the industrial application we're talking about, we've got five feet both sides, so we actually have 10 feet there that we're dealing with, five on each property. MR. MULHERE: Well, now you bring up an even better Page 15 June 7, 2000 thought. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And you're buffering against a buffer is what it amounts to. So I'm not sure where this is all going to. I mean, I'll pick up Herb's mantle here and say okay, fine, I've got a double row of staggered plants on two sides that are buffering each other from the adjacent property. MR. MULHERE: Well, that probably gets you what you need, which is 10 foot, so I agree with you there. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. So what are we trying to do, and especially in an industrial zoning? MR. ABBOTT: By definition -- MR. MULHERE: I think that Dino's suggestion probably would get the same thing, especially where you do have landscape buffers back to back. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Right. MR. MULHERE: But we were talking about a situation where you only have a five-foot landscape buffer. MR. LONGO: Well, even if you only had a five-foot landscape buffer, you could require the plantings at the edge of the pavement. So you don't have to change anything, just tell them to move the plants back. MR. MULHERE: So we'll have to -- so what you will be recommending, or sounds like what you might be recommending is a minimum of 180 foot parking space with a note that where the landscape buffer is five foot, the plantings shall be set back at least two foot from the edge of pavement. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: At least two feet from the edge of the pavement. MR. MULHERE: Now, I'm not committing you to this, Stan. We can talk about it outside of this meeting. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: I'd just as soon go to the board and throw it up in front of them. I'll make the same presentation I made with Jeff. MR. MULHERE: Well, we'll talk about that outside here. We've got to get a recommendation from these guys first. MR. ESPINAR: Not to be the wet blanket here, but you're assuming that the tree is going to be -- the shrub is going to be a stick figure. You know, your minimum height criteria is what, 36 inches? So that means that shrub -- yeah, you might have two foot, but that shrub is going to be sticking out two feet on the Page 16 June 7, 2000 other side. MR. MULHERE: Yeah. Not much room to grow. MR. CHRZANOWSKI: We'll talk about it outside. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: So what's our pleasure here, gentlemen? Jeff, you brought this back to us. Do you have an additional comment? MR. PURSE: It's just my position, and so I can sleep at night that I defended the honor of the community, that I just want an 18-foot spot. I don't want to be subject to a 20-foot spot. That's CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Understood. Okay. Dino? MR. LONGO: One more additional comment. I'm along the lines with Charley, that the more we start taking away from our landowners and things like that, as far as potential building spaces and things -- they brought property, property was rezoned and they plotted certain sizes, based on rules back when. We need to be really careful about continually -- MR. ABBOTT: Eroding. MR. LONGO: -- eroding, thank you, Charlie -- the private citizens' rights to build and do their businesses as they started out to. And this may not be a big issue for a lot of people, but I think there's a simple compromise where you're not taking the land away, the potential buildable space with the land away from the owners, that we should do that. So if you want that in the form of a motion, I guess I can. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Please. MR. LONGO: I'd like to see it go to a minimum distant planting requirement off the edge of pavement, however that might work out to be with staff, and maybe some input from people like Jeff. MR. PEEPLES: Would it be a distance from the parking block to any vertical plantings? MR. LONGO: Well, according to this, they're showing, it looks like, six inches from edge of pavement to the back of the parking stop. So you could define it as two foot, six inches from back of stop or two foot from edge of pavement. MR. MULHERE: No, that's the curb is six inches. MR. LONGO: I'm sorry. MR. MASTERS: It's two feet beyond that. Page 17 June 7, 2000 MR. ABBOTT: Well, 18 and then -- or 16 plus the two. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: What you're speaking of, Dino, is an 18-foot parking space, period. Whether it's 16 feet of asphalt or 18 feet of asphalt, it's 18-foot parking space. And then you move your plantings a maximum of two feet off of the edge -- MR. LONGO: Correct. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: -- and a five-foot buffer only. MR. LONGO: Correct. MR. PEEPLES: So if you hang beyond the asphalt, you're hanging over grass. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Correct. MR. ESPINAR: Mr. Chairman, we're trying -- it seems to me we're trying to take one solution and apply it to so many different projects. Couldn't we sort of like adopt this with a caveat that says some type of thing that if your lot is such and such a width and you can't accommodate this, then we -- you know, I mean, could we have some type of clause or caveat in there of some type? MR. LONGO: Then you might as well go in and find out how big every lot in the county and city is. I mean, you'd have probably 100, 200 cases out there. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: If you look at your drawings on the right-hand side here, I think you've almost got it there. You're talking about an 18-foot parking space with our without a wheel stop. The two feet that's iljustrated on the side would be the grass area where you don't have plantings, and it only applies to a five-foot buffer. Your 10, 15 and 20-foot landscape buffers don't even apply. And you could further clarify it here and just take away the iljustration of the 16-foot stall in here, couldn't you? MR. MULHERE.' I think we can work on some language. Because I think you raise an issue, in most of the cases these are side yards, and in most of the cases we are talking about a 10-foot landscape buffer, because it's five and five. When you take that and take two feet away from it on each side, you've still got a six-foot planting area in the center, and -- THE COURT REPORTER: Could you slow down, please? MR. MULHERE: -- we can cause those property owners to develop landscape plans that force the plantings to the center, we will have enough room. So I think it's really only a few cases. Page 18 June 7, 2000 MR. ABBOTT: Well, why don't you say that? Why don't you -- MR. MULHERE: We will. MR. ABBOTT: So that would accommodate. A good suggestion. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: So where did we end up with our motion now? MR. LONGO: To have an 18-foot space, asphalt space, with a maximum two foot planting requirement from edge of pavement. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. We've got a motion. Do we have a second for that? MR. ABBOTT: I'll second it. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay, any further discussion? MR. JONES: We're eliminating the 16-foot space. No more allowed, that's what we're suggesting? MR. ABBOTT: A flat 18. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Well, we're just talking about -- MR. JONES: It's currently allowed and we're saying 18's the law. MR. PURSE: No, we're eliminated in an industrial zone. In a MR. JONES: MR. PURSE: a 16-foot space. MR. MASTERS: In that example on the exhibit. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: All right. Call the question. Oh, just for industrial. Only a five-foot landscape buffer. You can't put in favor, say aye. All those opposed? (No response.) CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you. Okay, where are we? All those Hearing none, passes unanimous. We're still on -- MR. MULHERE: That concludes my report on the LDC. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you very much. Thank you, Jeff. You're welcome to stay, if you wish. MR. MULHERE: Well, there was one other thing. With respect to your issue, I would suggest, since the subcommittee already made a recommendation, the planning commission already made a recommendation, the board's already heard it once, your issue may be -- I think you -- my recommendation Page 19 June 7, 2000 would be -- of course, it's up to the committee, but I think you should get with Ron as quickly as possible before the board's second hearing, discuss your issues with them, and we can take it from there. I think, you know, it's going to be too much for this committee to rehash here. MR. JONES: Okay. It's already over and done. MR. MULHERE: Well, you still have a shot. The board hasn't had their final hearing. You could talk to Ron about whether or not it makes more sense to gain 25 foot of buildable area all the way across the frontage and give up potentially some side flexibility. If that's your issue, I think you need to probably talk to Ron. MR. JONES: I think the intent of what he was trying to achieve was buffering and landscaping along the side yard, but it's going to be at the expense of the front yard, which I think is a bad trade. MR. MULHERE: Yeah, but the fact of the matter is no one uses 50 feet for landscaping. It's used for parking, water management and other things. They only use the 10 or 12 foot for landscaping. You still can do that with 25 feet. I'm going to come back and ask a question of Bob. On our parking issue -- Jeff, before you leave? On our parking issue, now, am I to understand that staff is going to support what we're talking about with the Board of County Commission meeting here in the LDC modifications, or do we need to mount a campaign and come forward with our own comments? MR. MULHERE: I don't know the answer to that yet. I mean, I need to meet with Vince and I need to meet with Start. I don't have a problem at all with respect to the side-by-side landscape buffers with 10 feet. I'm still not convinced on the strictly five-foot landscape buffer area. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. I would like to know because -- MR. MULHERE: Yeah, we'll -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: -- I will come to that meeting, and I would let anybody else here know when that is. If you want to come in and support this cause, great. MR. MULHERE: By the end of the week, I think we can let you know one way or the other. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: All right. And that board meeting is when? Page 2 0 June 7, 2000 MR. MULHERE: June 14th. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: June 14th. MR. MULHERE: But recognize -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: 5:05, right? MR. MULHERE: -- we always strive I think to reach compromise, but we will not always reach compromise. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: That's understood. And I just want to understand where staff is so that I know what -- MR. MULHERE: I've got to chat with Stan first. MR. ABBOTT: Listen, I need to interrupt here, because Stan was doing this parking stuff in front of some board, I don't recollect what, but in my 54 excursions, I saw it. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Planning. MR. ABBOTT: So he's already done this song and dance to somebody. MR. MULHERE: Yes, we know. And that's why we revised it since then, yeah. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Planning board and Board of County Commissioners. MR. ABBOTT: Both. Okay. MR. CAUTERO: There was no discussion at the board meeting on this issue. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: It was a Planning Commission meeting. Okay, so you will let us know before the end of the week. Let me know, and we will plan accordingly. Thank you, Bob. Thank you very much. Okay, 3-C, citation ordinance information. MS. ARNOLD: You all had asked for me to put down a list of possible things that could be included in the citation ordinance. The request that I was making is to open up the ability for us to cite to all of the ordinances the codes that we enforce. The top list reflects what we currently can cite for. The bottom lists are some ideas of what we could possibly add to that list. Today alone I got a call from EMS inquiring about a vio -- or informing me about a violation that they had with their particular ordinance, an automatic exterior defibrillator, which is that machinery that you can revitalize people. And they've installed it in different commercial locations throughout the county. They have a particular violation, and they were calling me to Pa~e 21 June 7, 2000 fine out what we could do to help them to enforce it. Because one of their -- one of the local commercial establishments is not abiding by the code. And I explained to them that the only thing that we could do -- well, beyond what we would do with all our cases is notify them of what the violation is and give them sufficient time to comply. If they didn't comply, their question was what can you do? Well, in this case the only remedy we would have is taking it to the Code Enforcement Board. And I informed them of our citation ordinance, and they said that would be something that they would be in favor of. But the reason I'm bringing this up is that we have so many ordinances that we enforce, and I can't give you all of them. I mean, every ordinance that's on the books is -- they look to us to enforce it in code enforcement. And there's some situations that it would be helpful to cite, and there are other situation that we wouldn't use it, because it wouldn't prove effective. But I can't list them all for you, because the circumstances are always going to be different. I asked my staff to help me come up with some ordinances that would be helpful, because you all requested that, and that's what I've provided for you today. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. Thank you very much. And this is information sharing? MS. ARNOLD: Yeah. You've already taken a position on it, and you've denied our request. And I haven't done anything to forward it. I don't know -- I know that it's something that I'd like to go ahead and bring before the board. So -- MR. ABBOTT: Can we question some of these? I just want a little bit more clarification. Like the sea turtle protection. What would you be looking for there? MS. ARNOLD: Right now when we have -- when it's during sea turtle monitoring season, we go out and we assist the Natural Resources Department to inform the public as to the regulations with the lighting, sea turtle lighting. And you're not supposed to have direct light onto the beach and all sorts of things. And for the most part people comply, but there are always a few that even after we've provided notice, they still -- MR. ABBOTT: Well, that's not going to be like a ticket to that letter to the editor of the chair on the beach or -- Pa~e 22 June 7, 2000 MS. ARNOLD: There was no particular letter to the editor. MR. ABBOTT: Oh, I don't know about it. I'm just responding to that. That's bad press, but nevertheless, you get it that way. MS. ARNOLD: Well, I'm used to it. MR. PEEPLES: Michelle, doesn't part of the sea turtle section ordinance include those things on the beach, whether they be vehicles on the beach or other things set up on the beach? Because we're doing that right now with the Ritz. MS. ARNOLD: Right. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Any other questions for Michelle? MR. ABBOTT: Tell me about the structure numbering, because that's always been picked up on the final building. Typically are you talking about places that don't replace their numbers? MS. ARNOLD: MR. ABBOTT: MS. ARNOLD: Enforcement -- MR. ABBOTT: MS. ARNOLD: Buildings with no numbers on it whatsoever. How is that handled now? Well, we have to bring them to the Code MR. Board. MR. Does the 9-1-1 ordinance cover that? Yes, that's one of them. CAUTERO: The remedy is through Code Enforcement ABBOTT: I understand. I'm just curious as to -- MR. CAUTERO: That's where we get most of our complaints from is emergency services agencies. MS. ARNOLD: Right. They can't locate-- MR. ABBOTT: Right. Well, that's perfectly obvious if they don't have a number on it. MR. JONES: The citations~ what penalty do they carry? From what range? MS. ARNOLD: The intent of it is a repeat violator, so it's a situation where we've already been out, we've given sufficient time, they've corrected it and they're doing it again and again. And it's $105 the first citation, and it increases. If it's a second violation, then it's 250. And then -- MR. JONES: So if they correct it, there's no the first one's free, is that it, and then if they -- is that how it works? MS. ARNOLD: Yeah. And typically we don't cite -- I mean, I provided this committee with information as to how many citations we've issued since its inception. And we didn't have a Page 23 June 7, 2000 lot. We'll just do that when we feel that it's going to correct the problem or -- it could be that we cite them at the third occurrence, because, you know, we'll want to give them another opportunity to correct the violation. MR. JONES: It's not being used as a fundraising mechanism? MS. ARNOLD: No. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Mr. Peek had a comment. MR. PEEK: In regards to the question about where to go from here, in view of this list that's been provided, I would recommend that you modify the proposed ordinance and put it back through the system and send it back to the subcommittee and let us look at it again and bring it back. MR. LONGO: Michelle, you're asking for citation ability on all 90, basically to be able to cite -- MS. ARNOLD: Right. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: So it's all 90, not just this short list. MS. ARNOLD: Right. I brought this short list to you all because this was requested at the last time we had discussion. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Charley? MR. ABBOTT: Quick question. How are these handled if you didn't cite them? Do you end up taking them to court or to -- MS. ARNOLD: Right, Code -- MR. ABBOTT: Like a Code Enforcement Board? MS. ARNOLD: -- Enforcement Board. MR. ABBOTT: What's wrong with that? MS. ARNOLD: There's nothing wrong with that. In some situations, the example that I gave at the last meeting, like a building number, the cost that it costs the county to prosecute somebody in the -- through the Code Enforcement Board because of all of the preparation that we have to go through, you know, I don't know, I mean, why can't you just cite somebody because they refused to go down to the hardware store and get, you know, numbers for his building that's going to cost him five bucks? MR. ABBOTT: Oh, I understand the thinking. It's just that I think we have to be very leery about giving people citation abilities as opposed to we do have a remedy, and it's the court, which is the ultimate one, which is the one the constitution addresses, as opposed to giving a more -- strengthening our Page 24 June 7, 2000 police function. Which is again one of the things that I think that we might possibly be already over the line on that in the public perception. MR. JONES: I think you can get to that in committee. And I second Tom's, that you revise the list, which was I guess the directire that we wanted. And it should go back to committee. I second what Tom says, and then we can discuss the -- MR. ABBOTT: Sounds good to me. MR. JONES: -- constitutionality of it. MR. ABBOTT: Constitutional advisability of it. It's legal to do it. Is it wise? There's a world of difference. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Dino, you had a comment? MR. LONGO: Yeah, typically I'm in agreement with you, Charley. But if we're going to have ordinances, especially these types of ordinances, I'd have to really take a look at -- my gut tells me it that it does cost a lot to take somebody to court for four numbers on a house than it does to issue them a citation, and they still have -- MR. ABBOTT: Right. But the fine should recover the cost then, if that's the case. If Michelle takes them to court, burn him. MR. LONGO: Well, my point being is that I think it's more cost effective and faster to be able to cite. And maybe not everything is citeable, which we need to take a look at as to what really is important to cite. But to have that ability to do that and then ultimately take them to court at the end, if they still don't respond to the one or two violation requests or fines or whatever, then they're still going to go to court. But this makes it faster for her to at least get to that point to start with and to possibly collect the revenues or the costs for at least those people going out there and making citations. I understand your concern about-- MR. ABBOTT: I'm not anti any of this. It's just that I think we need to step slowly. MS. ARNOLD: A part of our concern, too, is -- I mean, the only time that we will use this or we have used this is when we find that it's going to result in quicker compliance, too. I mean, that's the other side of it. We're trying to get the fastest compliance, because there's always somebody that is bothered by whatever that violation is. And it just bothers people to no Pa~e 25 June 7, 2000 end that it's going to take four months to resolve a simple situation that it shouldn't take four months for. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Good. Thank you very much. So we'll -- you'll prepare some information and we'll bring it back through the process here? MR. LONGO: You have a motion and you have a second. MS. ARNOLD: What other information are you all requesting me to present to the Land Development Committee? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: I didn't know this was information. I thought it was just a suggestion for staff to come back through and not necessarily needing a motion and a second. MR. JONES: That's fine. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: As I heard it, Brian was supporting what Tom was talking about. Is that -- MR. LONGO: Well, what Tom was saying is that in light of our last meeting, that we told Michelle basically no. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Right. MR. LONGO: But in light of what we're hearing today, that we might reconsider that, based on her bringing all 90 to us real quick and taking a look at it. There might be one in there that's really -- they should all come under one citation ordinance, but there might be something in there that we need to take a closer look at. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: No problem. So if you want to bring it back to the subcommittee and go through it again, great. MR. LONGO: That was Tom's recommendation. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Great. MS. ARNOLD: Too -- your option too is just stick with your previous recommendation. I mean, this has been before this committee since September. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Right. Four or five times. MR. PEEPLES: But you're making headway. MR. ABBOTT: It says only 16 are citeable at the moment. We've got another 13 listed here, but then it says 90. You're asking for all 90; am I correct? MS. ARNOLD: That's the request. MR. ABBOTT: Okay. MR. PEEK: My recommendation is, don't bring it back to the subcommittee if you're still asking for all 90. If you're willing to reduce it to the number specified on this sheet of paper, I'm Page 26 June 7, 2000 recommending you bring it back to the subcommittee and let's look at it again. MR. ABBOTT: That's a good point. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. MS. ARNOLD: And I'm still asking for 90. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. MR. ABBOTT: Okay. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: The bali's back in your court then. I mean, we've done our thing and we've commented about it, so it's back with you. MR. ABBOTT: Another question now. So if she's asking for the 90, she appeals directly to the County Commission for it, correct? Okay. Then that calls on a lobbying effort on our part. So an advisability here. I would suggest that you bring it back to the committee, because I think we can do a terrible sales job for this and won't get it. But some of this, I believe, you need strengthening on. It's just that not all 90. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Small bites, rather than the entire apple. MR. ABBOTT: I mean, the way you explain stuff like house number and stuff like that, it absolutely makes sense. MS. ARNOLD: So you all want me to -- well, no, the comment was that -- so you want me to bring this list, whatever the number is, 12 or additional things to explain to the Land Development Committee what those ordinances are? MR. ABBOTT: Well, I think that would help. But what I would say is maybe go through your 90 and see how you can thin the list. Cut it way down so that you give your people something that we could probably approve. Or bring all 90 and do a bargaining session with them and go right down the list. And don't worry if they knock one of them away. You might get more than 13 out of it. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We've already told you, Michelle, that we're not going to support the entire thing for citations. And Tom's just suggested to you that this list might be much more palatable. So you need to decide whether you're going to make a compromise or not. Okay, so it's back with you. Okay, our next order of business is the rural assessment update. Pa~e 27 June 7, 2000 MR. ABBOTT: Bob's out. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Bob stepped away. Maybe we can come back to that. We'll go to uniformed building code. Item B. Mr. Perico, is that you? MR. PERICO: Okay. As far as the uniform building code -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Just going to give us an update on that issue please. MR. PERICO: Nothing to give at this point other than July 1, of 2001 it will be effective, our Uniform Building Code. And as soon as we get the documentation back, what we're planning on doing is having workshops with CBIA, everybody. If we have to, we'll rent the Naples Beach Club. Whatever it takes. And we'll have one hell of a workshop on it. It's going to be a learning experience, not only for us, but for everybody. But we've got an edge up on it. You know, we've got a separate building code, which it was a spin-off of. So it's not going to be that much tweaking on that, I don't think. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Good. You'll keep us informed on that. I know that I would like to pass that on to the architectural community. I'm sure engineering would like to do that as well. MR. PERICO: And based on talking with the state just in the last couple of days, we're not even looking for books until the end of the year. MR. ELLIS: Mr. Chairman, I'm Dave Ellis, CBIA. A couple of things in regard to that. If you're interested at all in the political process that's taken place, the chief lobbyist of Florida Home Builders Association is speaking at our CBIA two weeks from tonight about that process and what's happened. If you asked him specific questions about specific instructions, then he's probably not going to know the answer, because I don't think anybody's figured out the design criteria and how they relate to code. But some of the basics of what is happening, he's going to talk about. If anybody's interested, I can give you information about that. We also met today with Edison Community College in regard to the meeting that we're planning between CBIA and the Development Services in relation to code. And we're working right now to get that approved for continuing education hours Pa~e 28 June 7, 2000 and get that done. MR. ABBOTT: Continuing education hours. MR. ELLIS: So Edison's agreed to kind of coordinate getting that all approved for us. Just as part of a general update, I said at the last meeting I'd could back with some like two-page summary of all of the stuff code's going to do to you, and even the people that developed the code can't type that up. It's quite frustrating. MR. ABBOTT: That course would not be available before August, this current renewal cycle. MR. ELLIS: It was my goal to have it by August. But I'm afraid -- if you'd asked me a month ago, I'd been more optimistic. We can still get it approved, but I'd have to have criteria in the next two weeks. I have people to teach it. I have a few people who even think they know what they're talking about. But I think we're better served to wait until we really have some good stuff and get into it. The most important thing about this code isn't just what's going to be written down, but it's what happens when Ed Perico reads it -- MR. ABBOTT: And interprets it. MR. ELLIS: -- and interprets it, you know, in terms of what happens to Collier County. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: So if the documentation is not available until after the first of the year, we're probably not going to be able to do any of this until after the first. MR. PERICO: And unfortunately what we're feeling is it's going to be a last minute crunch. By the time you get everybody in there -- you know, July I comes around awful fast. Looks like we've got six months to play with it, but in reality we're probably going to have a couple of months. MR. ELLIS: And it may be in terms of some of the materials that may be necessary to get. And Ed, maybe you all have to make some judgment calls in what can happen, what can't happen. MR. ABBOTT: And even trying to rent a room in Naples before April is always a hassle. MR. PERICO-' We'll keep you posted on everything as it's going along. MR. ABBOTT: Are there supposed to be meaningful Pa~e 29 June 7, 2000 discounts on your insurance for things like shutters and stuff, that are included in this? That's what I'm eagerly awaiting. Because before if you did all this kind of stuff and put shutters, then you'd find out your insurance company only gives you like a three percent discount, which is a joke, when it needs to be 15. MR. ELLIS: Those are all the terms along those lines that have yet to be defined. MR. ABBOTT: Right. I understand that. But I think we're in for a screw from the insurance part of it. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Abbott. MR. PERICO: I'm sure most of your insurance companies are going to tell you that you can get 15 percent on flood insurance, too. MR. ABBOTT: But wait a minute. The lobby and the legislature showed it all. But wait to see if it makes the final document. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay, we're going to back to Item A, rural assessment update. MR. MULHERE: Okay, good. I can make that pretty brief, considering I know you've been busy with other issues. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you. MR. MULHERE: Briefly and slowly at the same time. You all are familiar with the rural assessment. Both of the committees continue to meet regularly, and we've completed an evaluation matrix that we'll use for both of the committee's work. It's got 12 major evaluations factors. I won't go into it in detail. The objective is to apply the current comp. plan to that evaluation matrix and then apply any alternative land use matters that are developed by either the fringe committee or the Berry committee, far eastern lands, to that evaluation matrix. And then to be able to fund that, perhaps pull out a hybrid development scenario that addresses the issues in the final order which predominantly we're talking about Natural Resource Protection, protection of prime ag. and opportunities for future development. So that's where we're at right now. I would optimistically think that the rural fringe may complete their task sometime within the next -- I think it's optimistic to say the next 12 months. As far as the other far eastern committee, it's going to take Page 30 June 7, 2000 a full three years. And I don't think there's really anything else to report. Pretty soon we'd like to be able to begin -- we are working aggressively at a public information campaign and means to get more public interaction with both of those processes. And I can report back to you as we develop some. We're working with Jean Merritt, who's the public information manager for the county, and we're looking at some -- again some technology, wet boards and things like that to try to get some public access. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you, Bob. Next item is C, Library and EMS impact fee update. MR. TINDALL: Yes, I -- a couple of things we were asked to do the last time we presented this to you was to give you a comparison of the existing fee schedule relative to the fee schedule that's being proposed by the consultant. And that's one of the things I handed out prior to the meeting. Basically what we show here, obviously I think most of the discussion would probably be with the EMS impact fees, being that it's a little more complicated. We find this adds quite a few land use categories. What's really different in this study versus the one that was done in 1991 has to do with the fact that the study that was done by Henderson, Young and Company back then was based upon historical statistics of ambulance runs on a per land use basis. The way Tindale-Oliver has done the study is they're taking an approach called a functional residence approach. And what that does for you is that it's aimed at spreading out the burden among the various land use categories a little more widely. And if you look at Page 18 of the study, it explains it a little bit in terms of the concepts and some of the prior publications about it. But that's really -- the basic approach is aimed at kind of spreading out the burden a little bit more equitably among other various land uses. What you'll see in this fee schedule is considerably more emphasis on the residential land uses. Obviously those fees there have gone up considerably. Whereas, you'll see in some of the commercial land use categories, they've actually gone down. But the reason for it is the whole approach is really different than what was done back in '91. And it is aimed specifically at spreading out the burden a little more equitably. Page 31 June 7, 2000 What we're going to be presenting to the County Commission on June 27th, and our -- what we're going to be asking to do is to provide a recommendation to the board, just as you did with the road impact fee update. And our recommendation will be that the fee schedule will take effect October 1st. And the reason we're asking for October 1st is if the board adopts it at the end of June, that will be basically a three-month time period between the date the ordinances are adopted and the fee schedule goes into effect, which means that builders would have a three-month run at it to get those permits in prior to the fees going up. And also, October 1st is obviously the beginning of the fiscal year, so it's a nice neat time period. MR. PERICO: Thank you. MR. TINDALL: And it gives our staff a little more time to prepare for it, too, obviously, which Ed is happy about. But obviously we presented this all before. And I'm sorry Steve Tindale could not be here today. He had an unforeseen schedule conflict, which I found out about :3:00 today, so -- but he could probably get a lot more into the heavy details than I can in terms of the actual studies. But there was one other question that came up, and I just wanted to make sure we responded to it that came up back in April, and it had to do with the persons per household figure. I remember Bruce Anderson had a question about the persons per household figure that we used -- or that consultant used in this study was quite a bit higher than the figure that was used by the comprehensive planning staff back in 1998 on a report they gave to the County Commission. And there's a reason for that. What they were -- the basis for their number that they used had to do with persons per total dwelling units, and which is actually different than persons per household, persons per total dwelling units. It's like a total number of all dwelling units in the community. Persons per household is really only the occupied dwelling units. Typically we have about 30 percent unoccupied dwelling units in the community, which is why -- and that explains the disparity between the two numbers. Yes, sir. MR. LONGO: On your weighted population change, I'm Pa~e 32 June 7, 2000 assuming this is the additional amount of people you're expecting to move into the county over the next five years? MR. TINDALI.: I honestly can't tell you that for certain. MR. LONGO: The reason why I ask that is because your impact fees can only go toward new stuff, by law. MR. TINDALL: Right. MR. LONGO: So my question is, you come up with a $3.4 million projected revenue. Is that based on new people moving into the county, with new impact fees? Because you can't use impact fees for EMS for the existing population. MR. CAUTERO: You can't use impact fees to make up for deficiencies or ongoing expenses. You have to use it for new capital expenses or expenses that are attributed to growth. MR. LONGO: Correct. So my question is, is this the new growth? MR. CAUTERO.' I believe it would be. That's my recollection. That's my assessment. MR. TINDALL: It's the new growth and population, but it also takes into account persons from outside the county who are commuting into the county like down from Fort Myers for occupational purposes. MR. CAUTERO: Steve Tindale talked about that the last time he was here before you. There was a question on that. It's not just people who live here, it's people who work here as well. MR. LONGO: Don't we ride the line on that by statute to a large degree? MR. CAUTERO: No, I don't believe we do. After spending some time talking with him about it, I believe that that's permissible, based on what he's told me, based on what's allowed under impact fee case law. MR. TINDALL: Right. Because what we're really talking about is the commercial land uses when we're taking those numbers into account, not the residential. And the commercial land uses, you know, it's on the -- what we're calling an equivalent to residential basis. But it really has to do with persons occupying the facilities. MR. CAUTERO: And that is the functional population. It's the population that is causing the impact. It's not just the residents of Collier County. Seasonal permanents that are causing the impact to EMS and the library system. So you're asking an Page 33 June 7, 2000 excellent question, but I believe -- MR. LONGO: It should be going towards future impacts. MR. CAUTERO: It is. MR. TINDALL: And it is. All these numbers are based upon growth related figures. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Dino, what page are you on? MR. LONGO: I'm on Page 19 of the growth management analysis. I just looked at the 40,000 weighted population change. And I understand because -- I recall a little bit from the meeting before that you were including people coming in, and I'm just wondering if that's -- if we have legal opinion on that. I mean, Tindale-Oliver says yeah, that's okay, but do we have county -- does the county attorney say -- MR. CAUTERO: That's why we hired an attorney to work with Tindale-Oliver to review this. So that's -- we're getting the whole package. We're getting technical analysis and legal analysis from them. MR. LONGO: So you have done an executive summary, per se? MR. CAUTERO: No. But the legal -- he wouldn't give us -- correct me if I'm wrong. He wouldn't give us a document that was not passed off by the entire consultant team, which consists of impact fee experts that are engineers and lawyers. MR. TINDALL: Right. But the law film of Icart and Maryland and Associates was subcontracted out with this project to be part of the management team -- MR. CAUTERO: There's two firms that are putting this together. And the county's paying for that legal expertise, as well as the technical expertise. MR. TINDALI.: And even though Mr. Tindale is not an attorney, he has some, you know, experience with legal cases. In fact, that's why he had a conflict today is because he was used as an expert witness in a trial having to do with some land use issues. So he's got quite a bit of-- MR. LONGO: I just got this as I walked in the door. But just to make it clear, again, you're using historical data and the new studies for household averages and stuff like that to project the existing cost and what the new costs are going to be over five years, based on the new weighted population change. MR. TINDALL: Right. It's all based upon measuring the Page 34 June 7, 2000 impact of growth. MR. ABBOTT: Has Mr. Tindale, since he couldn't be here today to educate us, has he written anything about this that's, you know, a couple three pages or something, a little bit of a -- MR. TINDALL: More of a summary, like an executive summary? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Yeah. I mean something that would help us out. MR. TINDALL: We could certainly request that and do a separate mailing out to you. MR. ABBOTT: Well, E-mail it. I mean, make it painless. But I really think that we need a little bit of education. I think it's good to see that multi-family and such has approached single-family on this. I like all that idea, because it never made sense to me before. MR. TINDALL: Obviously the first couple of pages represent an executive summary. But perhaps something in a little bit more detail of that. MR. ABBOTT: Something more towards the theory of it, what they thought about and why they recommend its approval. MR. TINDALL: Okay. I'll contact him and see if we can put something like that on paper for you. MR. JONES: Phil, has anyone had opposition or have an argument with their category that they felt was unfairly burdened or -- MR. TINDALL: No one has contacted me, you know, as far as the folks on the -- THE COURT REPORTER: I'm sorry, I can't hear you. MR. TINDALL: No one has contacted me with any specific concerns over any of the specific land use categories that were, you know, showing fees on the fee schedule. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Well, no one has contacted you, but how far has this gone? MR. TINDALL: Well, I mean, it's been sent off and approved by -- I sent the report to David. Has anybody from CBIA had a chance to review it? MR. ELLIS: We submitted it to our governmental affairs committee. And we did have a meeting with you four months ago? MR. TINDALL: Yeah, right. Page 35 June 7, 2000 MR. ELLIS: Where we met with EMS people and the library people and they explained kind of their capital needs in regard to this. And that all kind of-- that math made sense. But yeah, I don't know, does the general working man know about this, the contractor? I doubt it very seriously. Although, I, you know, put it in the builder's paper a couple of times. You know, at least that would assume that people that are part of the industry read that. So I don't know. I don't know. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Charley, go ahead. MR. ABBOTT: What is your opinion then, David, since you paid more attention to it than a lot of folks, I guess? MR. ELLIS: I'll start any discussion about impact fees. I think it's a lousy way to fund infrastructure in the long run. But in terms of the way these -- these fees are much easier to calculate in terms of how you take capital costs and divide them out into this process as opposed to the road impact fees. That's a much slipperier process than trying to evaluate what the true costs are. It's pretty easy to figure out what a library cost based on the historical data that we use to build libraries and divide it by the population than the way we've done it. People I've talked to about this, they're pretty clean cut. Some of the categories, as they are broken out, I truly don't understand the science. And I've talked to Tindale-Oliver about it, you know, why some of these categories and why they break them in certain spots. I think we're trying to back ourselves into a uniformed system on some of the categories, you know. MR. TINDALL: That's part of it. MR. ELLIS: We can talk rhetorically all day, and I don't want to bring it up, but yet under library-wise, their commercial fee, don't want one. But you can make an argument that businesses have an impact on the library, but we don't try to make that argument. MR. TINDALL: Well, the consultants studied that and they felt that they this was, in terms of the statistics out there, available enough basis for them to justify it and legally defend it. MR. ELLIS: But if you ask the people from the library, they get a lot of calls from businesses. So there's a lot of question marks. Based on these, I feel much more comfortable with how they got to these fees than I did with the road impact fee. Because there's much less -- there's a lot less moving parts in Page 36 June 7, 2000 the calculations. MR. ABBOTT: So what do you think of the fairness of, let's say, in particular this EMS fee, that at least bring they bring the multi-family units into the same single-family residentials and mobile homes out there and all that kind of stuff? MR. ELLIS: I think all that makes more sense. I mean, you can get loony talking about these fees. They just struck down a fee in Volusia County because it's a senior citizens community and senior citizens don't affect the schools, and they're not going to have to pay school impact fees anymore. We could get crazy and say, well, EMS may have a greater impact and we ought to raise that fee. But we can -- you could almost go crazy trying to over analyze these categories and how they're seen. So, you know, I don't know. I mean, I have a hard time conceptually trying to focus it all in. But yet I feel much more comfortable with the process and what happened with this than I did with the roads. Now, I would never come to you all and say I think this is a great idea, let's just keep raising them, but -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you. I had a question, and that was one on the timing, the effective date of October 1. Makes good sense beginning the fiscal year, three months. I've had a horrendous time keeping up with the submissions on the road impact side. I know it's been a horrible review process in here, and you're still not finished with it. These will not be as large a dollar impact to most projects, so there's likely to not be a great rush. But some people will always want to beat a fee increase. I'm going to ask the question again, you're sure that we've got enough time with this in an effective date of October 17 MR. PERICO: That's -- I think that's more than fair. MR. CAUTERO: I just want to reiterate that that's a policy decision by the board. We can move that up or move it back. MR. TINDALL: That's going to be our recommendation. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: That's understood. And I guess that leads to the second comment that I wanted to make, and that was our comments here prior to the meeting on the subject, and that is thanks for bringing it here, but the County Commission is going to do their thing with it. And what -- are we really having an effect on this with all of our comments? MR. TINDALL: All I can say-- Page 37 June 7, 2000 MR. ABBOTT: It has zero effects on the roads. MR. TINDALL: -- it's my observation that there was a certain sense of urgency related to the road impact fees simply because of the problems we're having with building roads. I think that adds another dimension that we don't have with these two programs, library and EMS specifically. I think generally speaking, just from my, you know, experience and observations, the board is interested in what its advisory committees have to say. They were just -- yes, they were pretty much want the improving of the road impact fees and getting it into place as soon as possible. I don't think you have quite those same issues in place for these particular fees in terms of the urgency. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thanks. Any other comments? No? What are you looking for on this, Vince? MR. CAUTERO: Some type of-- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Motion and a second? MR. CAUTERO: Yeah, some type of motion and second for an action. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Anybody care to make a motion regarding the EMS and library impact fees as presented? MR. PEEPLES: Well, I'll make a motion that we vote to approve these recommendations. MR. PEEK: I'll second. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Second by Mr. Peek. Any further discussion? Hearing none, I'll call the question. All those in favor of the motion, say aye. MR. PEEPLES: Aye. MR. LONGO: Aye. MR. ESPINAR: Aye. MR. MASTERS: Aye. MR. PEEK: Aye. MR. JONES: Aye. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: All those opposed? Aye. MR. ABBOTT: Aye. I'll be -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Two of us oppose. Okay, thank you. MR. ABBOTT: But I think it's a good step compared to what we had. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And I might say that I'm just opposed Page 38 June 7, 2000 to impact fees in general, so I'm going on principle. Next item on our agenda here is subcommittee reports, land development regulation. And Bob Duane has an excused absence today. Did we have an LDC meeting, anybody out there? MR. PEEK: We had no meeting. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: No meeting? Construction code? MR. LONGO: We had no meeting. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: No meeting. Utility code. Mr. Peek? MR. PEEK: There was a meeting. Okay, so no report. I was absent. Mr. Kuck has provided the minutes, which are included in your packet. I think that unless he has something to add, they will stand as our report. If anyone has a question, we're happy to respond. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Excellent. Any questions for Mr. Peek then before we move on? No? Okay, new business. Fiscal year '01 budget. Mr. Cautero? MR. CAUTERO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know the hour's late, but I'll go as quickly as I can. I'm only dealing with three pieces of paper. It's the last three pages of your packet. I want to talk to you for a few minutes about the budget. As I promised I would do -- I need an engineer to help me turn this on. Let's see, I don't think we -- okay, what I want to do is talk about the community development fund, for those of you who are fairly new to the committee, or as a refresher for some of our veteran members. The community development fund is numbered 1.1.33. You will hear staff say 1.1.3. That's what we're referring to. This is the fund that was created, I assume, a little over a decade ago, based on history I was given in Collier County. By the way, I was here five years Monday. Seems like yesterday, doesn't it? The community development fund is the entire building, permitting and development review fee fund. All of the monies go into that fund. And what you have here is probably one of the most exciting pages to me in our entire budget document for Collier County, because it talks about in budget terms how much money we have in the various line items, if you will. When I say line items, I'm referring to these revenue sources on the far left-hand side of this table. Page 39 June 7, 2000 I have the pleasure of also having an impact fee coordinator, who used to be a senior budget analyst, so he's going to help me if I trip up on some of this stuff. It's Phil Tindall. But I'm going to try to keep this to a macro level, if you will, rather than getting into -- involved some of the gyrations. What I want to talk to you about is our revenue picture, what we're looking at spending for expanded services next year, which are new services. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Yes, I moved over here. MR. CAUTERO: Where's Dino? MR. PEEK: I don't know. He's somewhere. MR. CAUTERO: Because I'm going to need a vote on this. I'm sorry, that's why. MR. ABBOTT: We'll drag him in. MR. CAUTERO: The expanded services, which are services for the next fiscal year, you'll see terms like forecast -- adopted budget forecast, current service and expanded. The adopted budget is self-explanatory. The forecast is what we anticipate spending from the day our budget went into the budget office. So the day we started working on the numbers to the end of the year, which is September 30th. The current services are additional services, Phil, that we're going to have in this current year? Is that -- MR. TINDALL: Well, what it's just the -- MR. CAUTERO: Or next year? MR. TINDALL: It's just the current level of service based upon this year's budget. MR. CAUTERO: Okay, based on this year's budget. MR. TINDALL: And next year's -- MR. CAUTERO: Chronological service -- THE COURT REPORTER: Excuse me, you're both talking at the same time. MR. CAUTERO: I'm sorry. It's -- let me say that again. Thank you for the clarification. It's maintaining the current level of service in the next fiscal year, based on the numbers that were adopted here. And expanded are the new services that we anticipate in the next fiscal year, which is '01, which begins October 1st of 2000. That's the '01 budget. The adopted budget is the year we're in right now. Page 40 June 7, 2000 Our reserves have always been very helpful, and you know that, based on the fee revenue. As a matter of fact, when I came here, steps had already been taken to do a 15-percent decrease across the board for all the permit fees, which the board entertained in late 1995, based on a recommendation of this committee, and adopted that fee decrease. Since then we've tinkered with some of the fees. We've had some minor increases with the new fees, based on discussions with this committee, and so forth. Couple of lines I want you to concentrate on. Carryforward right here. This is our carryforward, which is really the reserve fund, if you will. We are estimating some major projects over the next 18 to 24 months, and even longer, which will whittle away at that carryforward, the reserves, if you will. These are things that we've talked to this committee about and had your approval of and the board, and the board approved them. They include an expansion of this building and GIS, or geographic information system, which has been on the table for several years now, which we believe will come to fruition. A few comments about that in a moment. First let me talk about the building expansion. We are stretched to the max in the building. The county manager sat down with senior staff over a year ago -- former county manager. And the current county manager sat down with senior staff recently and went over the space plan again. He has a plan in motion to move people around from building to building on the campus and house as many people in the departments or in the sections where he believes that they should be located. His direction to me was to revise a portion of the county-wide space plan so that we can live in this building for at least another decade and have the space we need. We have devised a plan to push out the walls in this building and take up half of the parking lot and build on Lot 9, which is behind us, which is where the county vehicles are located. We have not purchased Lot 10. We cannot purchase Lot 10. The owner of the park, Lund (phonetic) Enterprises, will not sell us Lot 10. We are planning to put a parking garage on Lot 9. I will tell you some good news, though. We are in negotiations with them now for long-term lease agreements on Page 4 1 June 7, 2000 Lot 10 and a long-term lease agreement with us on Lot 9 for a building that they would build and then rent out, a spec building, and a parking garage on Lot 10. So the lot would be parallel to this building, rather than perpendicular to the building, or perpendicular to South Horseshoe Drive. The board has already approved the funding for that. We have estimated $9.5 million, based on our architect's review of the project and our facilities management department review of the project, and our finance committee's review of the project. The county has a finance committee. All three entities have reviewed it and estimated that the entire package of the project would cost $9.5 million. That includes expanding this building and constructing a parking garage. How we do that and how we work out an agreement with Lund Enterprises is yet to be determined, but that is the plan. If we do that, we estimated that we would spend up to five million in cash and up to 4.5 million through loan proceeds to be paid back over a 10-year per. So we're going to have debt service for possibly 10 years. That's where the reduction in the reserves comes in. You'll notice that this figure is approximately $4.1 million lower than this figure here. What that means is our reserve and the carryforward is reduced. Still very healthy, very healthy, at 6.6, but reduced. Now -- MR. ABBOTT: How much is the GIS? MR. CAUTERO: Charley, I was just going to say. You're one step ahead of me. In GIS, what we're talking about -- the numbers for the GIS are not in here yet. Our first year for the GIS expenditures was two years ago when we hired staff. We hired one manager. But the project didn't go anywhere. For a variety of reasons. Probably some of that I shouldn't get into. We had difficulties with other agencies in the county, elected officials. I am pleased to tell you that those differences have been resolved. We have a plan of attack with the property appraiser's office. We have engaged the services of Wilson-Miller to serve at least temporarily as our contract consultant, that is guiding us through the process. We are working parallel with the property Page 42 June 7, 2000 appraiser. The property appraiser is the lead agency. The plan now, and this is why we hired Wilson-Miller, to watch out after us. We know what the property appraiser's doing. He's already hired a vendor. We need to play ball, if you will, so that we don't have to spend $2 million after he's done and hands over a turnkey project. Our first year budget next year will include some staffing and consulting -- and payment for consulting services to Wilson-Miller, $278,000. That's a county-wide figure. And half a million dollars for MAT building to compensate the property appraiser's budget. That will be split between Community Development and Public Utilities, which was Public Works. That was always the agreement that we had with the County Commission, that it would not be borne totally by our fund, the Community Development fund. That was never the agreement. It would be a pro rata share. So therefore, this division's share next year is 378 or :3 -- let's see, 250 plus 140, just under $400,000. About :390. That would come out of here because we never again envisioned the GIS coming out of new permit fees. It was to be used from reserves. The Board of County Commissioners asked me two years ago, "Vince, what are you doing with all this money?" I told them about the building expansion and GIS, and I told this committee that we would rightfully use reserves. And you knew that the money was in reserves for future use for that project, because you said we want the service, this is the way to do it, use that money that was built up in reserves. That's what it's there for. $9 million is a very healthy nest egg. We don't need that unless there's lean times. That's an incredible amount of money to spend. So what we're doing is putting it to good use to better the system. And that's what the money's there for. But that's a recurring cost. And the cost may be in the neighborhood of 4 to $500,000 per year per this division. It could get upwards until the system is built somewhere in the million dollars. But I don't have good numbers on that yet. So this is all appropriation. I want to put up the revenue and then we'll be able to get into it. This is the revenue, excuse me. I need to put up the appropriation. Page 43 June 7, 2000 MR. ABBOTT: A quick question. MR. CAUTERO: Go ahead. MR. ABBOTT: How come we would do -- pay the -- what was it, five million we would pay? And you say this number reflects it. We've got 10 -- MR. CAUTERO: It's up to five. MR. ABBOTT: -- and the whole building's -- MR. CAUTERO: It's up to five. MR. ABBOTT: -- going to be 9, right? MR. CAUTERO: 9.5 is the entire project. MR. ABBOTT: Why wouldn't we pay more? Because that's business. The thought of this committee all along is when they paid the building off as quickly as they could -- MR. CAUTERO: The board did not want to do that. They didn't feel it was good practice to dwindle down the reserves. And I'm glad they didn't, and you'll see why in a minute. MR. ABBOTT: Okay. MR. CAUTERO: Now, what this means is, in terms of our revenue, we were very conservative. Look at the forecast. Look at Ed's adopted budget in the building permits. 5.665 million. Thanks, Bob. And look at the 6.5 over in current service. We believe that's a good number, because this year we estimate we're going to bring in over 7 million. We are very comfortable with that, because we're $900,000 over last year's pace. But we just don't know, with interest rates. And if we keep estimating too high, we're probably not going to see those numbers. And we don't want to be disappointed. We have not been disappointed in the five years I've been here -- MR. ABBOTT: But you never know. MR. CAUTERO: But I don't know. Same with Bob's situation. Actual revenue in '99 was 2.9, but he went conservative, 2.1. And we forecast 2.8, but a factual budget of 2.5. You can whittle with these numbers, but you're only talking a few hundred thousand dollars here and there. And that seems like a lot of money, but it's really not, in the scheme of things. The bottom line is we're budgeting 10.34 million, and we have some money coming in in internal reimbursements from some other departments, a very small amount of money $68,000, for a total budget of 2.4 million in terms of revenue. Okay, so hold onto that number for a minute. We're going to Page 44 June 7, 2000 put it back up, but let's talk about appropriations now. Under the appropriations we have a current service budget where we're showing additional services that are going to be applied next year to maintain the same level of service that we have this year, plus expanded services, that I want to talk to you about, which total $1.456 million. That is our problem. 672-9 is debt service. Now, we are going to collect rent from the agencies, but I don't have really good numbers on that. I don't know if we're going to collect that much or less. My thinking is we're going to collect less from the other departments that are in this building that are in this division that are not part of this fund. Reimbursements to these two funds, and this was done a few years ago and I brought this issue to the committee. And for those of you who are fairly new to the committee, you won't know this. But the Board of County Commissioners several years ago said we believe more of the departments in the other division should be -- THE COURT REPORTER: Please, if you could just slow down. MR. CAUTERO: Did I talk too fast about that? I'll say that again. I'm sorry. Several years ago, the board said we want to fund more of your department -- your division's activities, excuse me, from the Community Development fund, because we believe that a large majority of their functions are attributed to growth and development. We went through this entire exercise. Those of you on the committee remember that. I recommended a number of something like $400,000 could be shifted. The board raised that to 750,000, and the monies going to different funds. Two of the funds that are on this sheet from the budget office show 71-8 goes to the general fund MSTD, which is unincorporated, and 34-7 goes to the general fund, which is county-wide. Plus positions that we're recommending to be expanded. And that is on one of the sheets in your packet, and we'll talk about that specifically later. We're asking for 12 new positions. Those are spread out up at the top in the expanded -- Bob, if you could point that out. Those are spread out in the expanded column down here. Those are positions plus equipment, plus Page 45 June 7, 2000 supplies; everything we need to provide an expanded service to support the operation of this building, the physical building, and the 12 new staff members. So that's 677 plus debt service, plus monies we have to kick out to other funds, for 1.456 million. Okay, no problem, we have six million in reserve, right? And I'm going to get some rent, but I don't know what that's going to be. In a static world, even with anticipated revenue increases over the past several years, we've seen increases even in our budget. Even though they've been conservative, that number that I put up a moment ago, the 6.6 million, will evaporate in five years, based on the calculations I've made. That's not a definite. It depends on how much money we take in in permits, how much activity there is, of course, how much money really goes out to the other funds. That could change. It depends upon those numbers here. They could be higher, they could be lower. It's an estimate. There are several options in order to cure this. The county manager wants a recommendation from you very badly. I do, too. He does not want to do that. He does not want to dip into those reserves every year for the next four or five years, plus GIS. GIS should come out of the reserves. It should. It's the right thing to do. This committee is going to be behind it until the system is built and up and running. Now, when it's up and running and it's fully operational, then the people who are using this system I believe should pay or could pay a pro rata share in a building permit fee like we're doing with the optical scanning that we brought forward to you several months ago. The committee was adamant, and rightly so, that for all the work that's in the records room that you want to scan, you should use reserves. You shouldn't put that on the backs of the new people walking in the door. Once you get caught up, then maybe a surcharge is needed for the new scanning that will take place. That's where we're at right now. That's why I advise to go with GIS. I don't think that the people that are coming into this community tomorrow should pay to build a GIS system that we should have built five years ago. And now we're building through reserves. We're letting all the users of this system pay for something that should have been in place four or five years ago. Pa~e 46 June 7, 2000 Kind of the opposite of impact fees, we're talking about a deficiency we're trying to make up for, but we're using reserves money, and everybody in the community knows about it. And believe me, a lot of citizen organizations know about it, because they know about how much money is in this reserves. And they pinpointed it in recommendations they've made to the board. I will tell you that the community character study that's under way, the underpinning of that recommendation that went to the board was created by the Greater Naples Civic Association and some other organizations. The original recommendation had GIS in it. I asked them to take it out. Because this committee had a very good handle it. We didn't need to have another committee toying with that. We're more than capable of handling it with this group. That's the situation right now. The last page of your budget packet, if I may, Brian -- excuse me, the third to the last page, contains the expanded service requests. You'll notice that the top five of those, before you get to the line, it says building inspector, one in each trade, customer service rep I and customer service agent 1, those are in the mix for Ed in the building department. They've already been approved by the board, because of the permit activity. We went to the board and asked them to approve them. So Ed has asked for -- he asked for a total of nine people. The county manager approved six, with a caveat. He approved five now, and -- the board approved them, so it's done, it's a done deal. But I'm including them in those numbers, because I have to show you. I'm including them here in this expanded, because you need to get a good picture of -- they're in this 354,000. I have to put them in to show you what the impact is going to be. MR. ABBOTT: We need the 12, though, right now, right? MR. CAUTERO: Yeah, but I'm only going to get 7 in October. I'm getting to that. MR. ABBOTT: But wait a minute. How come the county manager cut you back? If your request was for how much? MR. CAUTERO: We're talking apples and oranges. Let me finish, and I hope I can put it into focus. The 12 is division one. The county manager -- the county manager brought forward my recommendation to have five of Ed's nine that Ed requested alone approved now. The board Page 4 7 June 7, 2000 approved that a couple of weeks ago. He asked for four more. He asked for a plans review specialist in electrical, which the county manager has recommended approval of, but we're holding it to the budget workshop. And then he asked for three inspectors. Now, additional, on top of the three the board had gave us now. However, what we're going to do, he approved that tentatively and said let's wait and see what happens with the uniform building code and the housing initiative we're working on in Immokalee, and said if you need them, we'll go to the board at any time and get them. So I know they're out there if I need them. But Ed said we can get by, until we know more about the building code, with the three new ones that he's brought on now. They're all working except for maybe one. He's got them. We hired them as temporary and the board made them permanent. These five people were basically already on the payroll, or four of them were. So those were nine that Ed asked for. The county manager in essence approved them all. But he said let's wait on those three until you can give me more information about the uniform building code. Because we went to him and told him that. And if this housing program in Immokalee doesn't take off, the board says well, we don't know if we want to do it anymore -- we're trying to work with substandard homeowners get them to upgrade their homes -- we may not need to have more people to ship out there to Immokalee. Planning asked for three, and the county manager recommended approval of all three. Bob asked for a customer service supervisor, a planner 2 and a principal planner, all to work in the Development Services area. And I have a new office, the office of financial and records management, which is on this sheet. And that consists of the cashiering function, impact fees and the records room. The fiscal analyst you see and the customer service representative would be working for Phil in the impact fee area. He cannot handle the work alone. And that actually is a reimbursement from impact fees. So even though we spend the money, it comes back from impact fees, so it's a little bit of a misnomer up there. Pa~e 48 June 7, 2000 And a revenue supervisor, which currently works -- well, up until June 1st worked for the revenue department. And that department's been broken up. The revenue supervisor now works for me. We're going to be doing our own cashiering. So in the appropriations area -- let me go back to the revenue side. You see these permanent positions? There's the 12 I'm talking about. County manager was good to us. He basically gave us everything we asked for, but said if this number needs to go to nine, I'll entertain it and we'll bring it to the board. We asked for 15. We got in essence all of them. 12 definite and five of them right now. And we know we can go back and ask for the three. So the bottom line is to provide the service that we want to continue to provide and to do the job that we want to do, you expect to be done, I need an additional source of revenue, or we're going to run out of money in five years. 4.465 next year, without GIS. So add another 250 on top of that. But I don't want to make up the 250. MR. ABBOTT: You said 400, didn't you? MR. CAUTERO: 400. Excuse me, 400. MR. ABBOTT: So that rounds that up to two million. MR. CAUTERO: But I don't need to raise two million. Because the GIS should rightfully come out of reserves. That's the number I need to raise. I have a couple of handouts I want to give you. I think we can probably go with the lights now. One of the options is to look at the permit fee structure again and raise them. Another option is to in essence raise them. This is the percentage rate. Keep in mind that one of the (Mr. Mulhere exits boardroom.) MR. CAUTERO: What I'm handing out for you is some analyses that we've done on permit fees. Based on new valuation tables from the Southern Building Code Congress. We're using old valuation tails. And what we've also handed you is an analysis of a potential fee increase. The only reason why we use the 15 percent is because that number seems to work very well because it was what -- the committee has reduced -- recommended reduction for five years ago. And also, I think it's estimated that that 10 percent raises Page 4 9 June 7, 2000 somewhere between I and 1.2 million, based on our current fees right now. What we've tried to do here is run you through a couple of alternatives, just a couple of options for your consideration. If you look at the top page, we have given you a breakout of some of the square footages of single-family homes, showed the value, the permit fee by trade, and the total now. The column that says total is what the fee would cost today if somebody walks in the door and applies for a building permit. The plus 15 percent is self-explanatory. If you look at the second page -- MR. ABBOTT: Real quick, on the first page, electric you figured at 800 amps. Surely you mean 200 amps. MR. PERICO: No, it's still a $36 fee up to 800. MR. ABBOTT: Yeah, you have to 800. Okay, sorry about that. MR. CAUTERO: The second page shows the valuation tables. And Ed's going to have to jump in here and help me out a little bit. But it shows the valuation tables if we raised them to the levels that the SPCCI is recommending today. And after looking at this, we don't think we need to do that. Because if you look at the single-family home on the bottom, they break them out into good and average in terms of I assume character and pricing. The SPCCI does that. There is some criteria associated with that that I am not familiar, but Ed can explain it in more detail. But look at the numbers for a minute on a 2,500 square foot home. If you were in the $125,000 price range, the building permit is $558. And if we raised our fees, it would be 572. Not a significant difference at all. $14. But ours are -- our prices in this community are a lot higher than that, the new single-family homes. So even if you took their good, which is 175,000, you would jack a permit up from 498 to $708. Whereas, even if we had a 15 percent fee increase, ours would still be under $600. And that's -- you know, that's where the rubber hits the road. So why bother entertaining their tables when we can probably find a solution to our problem with our own free structure. MR. PERICO: And basically what that is, these were the fees that were in effect back five years ago when they had the 15 percent reduction. What we're asking for is to put it back the Page 50 June 7, 2000 way it was five years ago. MR. CAUTERO: So I guess -- I know you have a lot of questions. We have more discussion. In summary, I have a revenue problem, because even though the reserves are very healthy, if we do not see any changes to the permit numbers -- to the permit numbers and the associated fees with those numbers -- and how much higher can they get? I mean, we did 23,000 building permits last year. We did 130,000 building inspections. They'll probably be higher this year. But I don't know how much more that's going to go up. I can't estimate more than 7 million in good conscious. The budget office won't let me. I think what we have here is yes, I'm giving you averages in the numbers. We know the 6.6 reserve is real, based on the plan the board's approved for the building expansion. It's going to go down with GIS, we know that, next year. It's going to be 6.2. Those numbers I'll show you are real for next year's budget. GIS has to come out of that reserve, so it's 6.2. I'm going to get some money in rent. Let's say for argument sake that offsets the debt service. I still have then on my sheet 1.4 minus 672. I still have about $770,000 that I have to make up that's not coming in. So without the rent, you're probably looking at in less than 10 years if the building activity stays the way it is and doesn't increase. If it decreases, then the situation's different, but if it stays the way it is, which is a real possibility, we're going to run out of money in less than 10 years. Sir. MR. PEEK: Question, if it's time for questions. MR. CAUTERO: Yes. MR. PEEK: Question. In the appropriations summary, you show a debt service beginning next year of $672,000. Is that debt service on the 4 and a half million dollar loan proceed that you show on the revenue side? MR. CAUTERO: Yes. MR. PEEK: And if so, my question is, I don't understand the thinking of why we pay nearly $700,000 in debt service and still maintain nearly a $7 million reserve fund. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Thank you. MR. ABBOTT: That was my original -- Page 51 June 7, 2000 MR. CAUTERO: That 672-9 is spread out over two years. We had originally spread it out over five years, but we lowered that so that the expanded wasn't as high as it is. That's just a preliminary I wanted to make before I answered your question. The recommendation of the Finance Committee, and I'll have to turn to my budget analyst for some help -- MR. TINDALL: Part of reason they're spreading it out is because of reserves, but it's also a pretty low interest rate that they're taking advantage of. And spreading it out over a 10-year period instead of five. But if it was a higher interest rate, they would probably be less willing to do that. MR. PEEK: I'm still -- it still boggles me why we are borrowing. And I assume we are planning four and a half million dollars -- MR. CAUTERO: We're going to spend up to five in cash. MR. PEEK: -- why we're borrowing four and a half million dollars when we will have $6 million in reserves. MR. CAUTERO: Because they didn't want to deplete the reserves any further than that. MR. ABBOTT: We used it to pay off this building before. MR. CAUTERO: I don't mean to be argumentative. I'm answering your question. MR. ABBOTT: I understand. MR. CAUTERO: The Finance Committee said they do not believe it is wise practice, nor did the county manager believe that they should spend all the reserves. That's all I can tell you. MR. LONGO: What about three-quarters of it? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: What is the reserve amount that needs to be there to keep us healthy? MR. CAUTERO: Well, it can go down. We can spend that 6.6 million. And I'm going to spend that 2.6 in reserve. You take the four and a half million out of that and we have a -- what's 4.5 million from 6.6? 2.17 That's gone in three years. I have no money in three years. MR. PEEPLES.' But I have the same question Dalas does. You didn't answer it. And that is did the Finance Committee say we want a reserve of approximately one million, two million? MR. CAUTERO: No, because they don't know what GIS is going to cost. And we're going to pay at least half of the GIS. They were trying to be conservative, knowing that I may have Page 52 June 7, 2000 other costs associated with the expansion if we're under budget, which I don't think we will be. I think if anything, we're going to be over budgeted. And secondly, GIS is an unknown. When we went to the Finance Committee, we hadn't even talked to the property appraiser yet. We didn't even know if we were going to get hit with a $4 million bill next year or a $1 million bill. So keep that in mind. They made the recommendation prior to GIS discussions. MR. ABBOTT: Are we paying more than half of the GIS? MR. CAUTERO: We're paying exactly half. MR. ABBOTT: Exactly half. Why don't we take 51 percent and control it? MR. CAUTERO: The property appraiser is controlling it, sir. MR. ABBOTT: Well, guys, we're paying a big chunk for other people to decide things. MR. CAUTERO: I don't want to go there. MR. PEEK: Good point. MR. CAUTERO: Please don't let me go there. MR. ABBOTT: That's a lot of money. MR. CAUTERO: Off the record I'll go there, okay. MR. PEEK: First of all, let's put it on the table. You know, I feel like this whole committee will support whatever increases are justified in order to see the expansion that's needed to continue to serve the public. Enough said on that. Understanding the numbers in here I think will be beneficial for all of us in order to give us -- give you our unquestioned support on that matter. Now, the question I still have is that if we're talking about borrowing four and a half million dollars, I presume then we're taking -- we're right now at the end of this current year showing a carryforward of 10.7 million. So then we're taking the balance between the four and a half we're borrowing and the amount, the 9.5 required, we're taking that out of the carryforward so that it comes down to 6.6. Is that what happens with the numbers? MR. CAUTERO: Yes, that's what's happening. It would be cash up front and borrow at the end. However, the budget director is recommending to the county manager that the debt service be set up every year, even before we borrow the money, so we don't have a big hit of $3 million down the road. Page 53 June 7, 2000 MR. PEEK: -- that we will spend all of that $9.5 million in the next fiscal year. MR. CAUTERO: No, it doesn't. We're going to pay as we go, but they want to use the cash first and borrow at the end of the project. Help me out here. The reason why the budget director put in the debt service, even though we're not going to borrow the money next year -- my understanding we're not going to borrow next year -- is to budget that money so that we wouldn't have to get hit with a big loan payout. MR. TINDALL: It will be reflected in the budget you're essentially reserving a certain amount of money of carryfoward each year. MR. CAUTERO: Right. So he's reserving -- THE COURT REPORTER: Excuse me, one at a time. MR. TINDALL: It's essentially a reserve for the purpose of debt service. MR. PEEK: From my understanding of these numbers and accounting practices, we're then not getting the benefit of the -- of the 4 point something million that they're taking out of our reserves, nor are we getting the benefit of the $672,000 worth of debt service you're charging us and we're not paying anybody. MR. CAUTERO: We're paying people cash, we're not paying back the loan. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Dino? MR. CAUTERO: We're paying cash. That doesn't pay the architects and contractors cash until the end of the project, I assume when we take out the loan. But as Phil indicated, the budget office has recommended that that debt service be put into its own mini reserve account so that we don't get hit with that huge payment at the end. MR. LONGO: That doesn't make sense to me. MR. CAUTERO: I know. And I can't answer it any better than I have. I'm not a budget expert. I'm sorry. MR. LONGO: Sound business practices, we would borrow money at today's interest rates and pay cash when needed later. Because your interest rates, you can't project what your interest rates are going to be a year from now, two years from now. It could be costing you more than $672,000. MR. CAUTERO: A commercial paper loan -- Page 54 June 7, 2000 MR. TINDALL: Which is -- THE COURT REPORTER: Excuse me, I'm hearing you both at the same time again. MR. TINDALL: The commercial paper program is a variable rate, but it's a -- it's set up specifically for government entities, and it's a very low interest rate. It's somewhere around the two, three percent rate. MR. LONGO: Okay. So I've got to kind of be in agreement with Tom that if we have the opportunity to reduce debt now by dipping into the reserves a little bit more -- I mean, has it been calculated as to where you would have to be on the reserves in order not to be at the deficit that Vince is talking about? We're looking at a million two-five-seven-two deficit right now based on existing projections today on this piece of paper. So how much more would we need to dip into the reserves in order to reduce that debt or wash it out before any increase is diminished or required? MR. CAUTERO.' I don't know. I assume it would be a wash, but I don't know. I mean, if we borrowed the money up front, that 672-9 would be gone when the bill came due. But the Finance Committee recommendation to the board that the board approved already is to pay cash up front and then pay the debt service at the end and borrow when we need it. Now, we were going to pay it back in five years, but that expanded number then increased about another $400,000. So my expanded number next year would have been between 1.8 and 1.9. So the county manager asked the budget director to go back and try to expand that payment over 10 years, with the proviso that we might pay it off earlier. And I've got to go back and tell the Finance Committee that we need to draw the appropriate papers and resolutions from the board. You know, I'm sorry I can't answer your questions to your satisfaction in this area. I'm not a budget expert. Thank goodness I have Phil here, because he is. MR. TINDALL: Unfortunately I wasn't involved in this particular financing. I can only speak to it in general terms. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Perry, you had a question? MR. PEEPLES: How does an interest rate of 10 -- I'm sorry, two to three percent on a four and a half million dollar loan come up to $672,000 -- Pa~e 55 June 7, 2000 MR. PEEK: MR. PEEPLES: MR. TINDALL: MR. PEEPLES: principal? Debt service. -- of debt service in a year? It's -- Is that debt service and repayment of MR. TINDALL: Principal and interest, yes. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Charley? MR. ABBOTT: I have a comment here. I think that the Finance Committee of the county is counting on our big healthy reserve for the fiscal -- they're basically borrowing against our reserve. That's why they're leaving it as high as it is. Because good prudence, if we were a corporation and we were doing our own business, we'd pay off that damn building right now. And so something else is happening. There's a variable here that we don't know. And the Finance Committee certainly knows it. And I think it's in the overall fiscal health of the county. They're laying our extra $6 million on the positive side. County reserves. MR. CAUTERO: If no fee increase is approved, if nothing happens, say best case scenario we raised that much money in rent, which is the debt service over a long period of time, we're going to be dipping into those reserves every year to the tune of 1.4 million or more. MR. LONGO: As it's currently structured. MR. ABBOTT: I think you can take a vote on this committee. I will vote to increase these permit fees. It's just that I just don't think it's good thinking to borrow so much money on our new building when we have a healthy reserve. MR. CAUTERO: Quite frankly, that's the last thing I thought I'd hear this committee say. I thought you were going to beat me up on the permit fees. Because I have -- I should have brought the chairman of the Finance Committee with me. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Let me ask you a question, and it's kind of flipping it around a little bit. GIS versus building. We know what -- we nearly know what the building's going to cost us. You don't know what GIS is going to cost you. Why don't we take care of our building and borrow against the GIS? I mean, you've got to take care of it one way or the other. You take care of what the known is, and when it comes up, then you deal with the GIS as soon as you get the numbers. Page 56 June 7, 2000 MR. CAUTERO: I'd be happy to bring that recommendation to the board for you and the county manager. My prediction is that they would not follow that recommendation, but that's what you're here for, to make these kind of recommendations to the board on those issues. I just want to give you a forecast as best I can, and I really appreciate you listening to me on this as to what I think's going to happen with this fund in the next five to 10 years. Unfortunately, on June 7th, 2000 I don't know who's going to acquire -- excuse me, I know who's going to go into what space and how much the square footage is going to be, but I don't know what rents we're going to ultimately charge and what I can collect each year. And I have some unanswered questions about some constitutional officers in this building as to whether I can charge them rent or not. And the Health Department, I've been told I can't charge them rent, which is something that sticks in my crawl. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: They weren't part of the original funding for this facility? MR. CAUTERO: I've been told statutorily required that we provide them space. I've been told that. MR. ABBOTT: Well, I think there's something wrong. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Well, that's a separate -- different issue. MR. CAUTERO: But that's an issue I'm looking into. But those are the kinds of issues that are important, because it determines how much money I will bring in. And then next year when we have this exercise, I will show you on the revenue side rent to the Community Development fund. I'm saying best case scenario I'll wash on the debt service. If I do, then I'm looking at between 700 and -- I'm looking at over $800,000 every year. And that's going to go up in expanded service to maintain his positions, Bob's positions, and Judy Miller, my revenue supervisor's positions. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: I want to echo what Tom Peek said, and that is that I certainly for one am going to support whatever is necessary to keep this facility and staff functioning at an adequate level to take care of the needs of the public. But at the same time, I'm going to be as diligent as I can be in protecting the reserves that we have for their proper purpose. Page 57 June 7, 2000 MR. CAUTERO: Let me, if I may, just ask the committee a general question, and anybody can answer, of course. What do you think the reserves should be? Do you think we should have a reserve? MR. PEEPLES: That's what I asked you before. MR. CAUTERO: I didn't hear that come out of your question. MR. PEEPLES: Yeah, what should the reserves be? Three million, two million? What is a comfortable, prudent level of reserves to try to maintain over the next 20 years? MR. CAUTERO: I'm sorry, I didn't glean that from your comment. I should have. MR. PEEPLES: I thought you asked that. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Yeah, I did ask that. MR. CAUTERO: Four million, based on unknown needs in GIS and building construction. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: But GIS is a separate issue, and that's MR. CAUTERO: No, it's not. Because I know I have to fund it. It's not a separate issue. I've looked at that -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: But it is a funding line item, it is not a reserve. MR. CAUTERO: Yes, it is a reserve. This committee had always recommended that the reserve funding be used for GIS. Since I've been here we always said we were going to do that. And the County Commission has planned on that. It's always like why do you have such a big reserve, Vince? Every year they ask me that. And I said Mr. Dorrill, Mr. Fernandez, now Mr. Olliff are working on a GIS proposal. And that's where it's going to come from. I'm not going to charge people walking in the door an enormous fee increase to pay for GIS. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay, thank you. MR. CAUTERO'- I believe that to be true. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Perry, 9o ahead. MR. PEEPLES: I just want to make a point, and I think it has something to do with what a lot of people are saying. Vince is surprised we're not really challenging the increase, but we're challenging how some of these things will be paid for. If the county can get a loan of two to three percent interest, in business I would borrow money at two to three percent before I would spend my cash. I mean, if it were at the market rate, Page 58 June 7, 2000 that might not be true, but I can understand why the Finance Committee is doing it that way. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Marco? MR. ESPINAR: Please excuse my ignorance, but could you reiterate, the Health Department is not paying anything into it right now? So in essence, isn't like the community, the development community then in essence paying -- MR. ABBOTT: Subsidizing the Health Department. MR. ESPINAR: Subsidizing the Health Department? MR. PERICO: My understanding, when this was all put together years ago, it was part of the agreement with the state that they would be housed in here at no charge. Otherwise, they would have their own facility, and everybody would have to go to another building to function. And that was all part of the original agreement. MR. ABBOTT: Right. But listen, I've been on this committee long enough. And you were one of the original members, weren't you? MR. PEEK: Yeah. MR. ABBOTT: And who else here was one of the original? We're long-term at this. And our reserve used to be like 2 or $3 million for the longest time. And we voted to use it to pay off this building. And lots of gnashing of teeth and such, but that's where the money went. And then I guess we started over, and good God, we're up to $10 million, or whatever. And so 1.t.3.1.3 is a peculiar fund to this building department and this building, and I don't think that we particularly have the obli -- yeah, I understand this Health Department thing, that makes a little more sense now, because I remember that was part of the thinking. But we had a pretty tough fight in here about them cramming the Department of Revenue on us and then us paying for their remodel too. And I thought that was -- MR. CAUTERO: You didn't pay for it, but based on your recommendation. MR. ABBOTT: Yeah, but that's the kind of stuff that the county manager's office brought to us, which just made absolutely zero sense to pay for it out of 1.1.3. MR. CAUTERO: I think part of the reason why we're seeing that now, because everything was going great and all of a Pa~e 5 9 June 7, 2000 sudden boom, Mike McNees threw out a number at the budget workshop that kind of floored us because we just didn't have the Building Code at the time and he did. He said that there's been over 40 employees, I think 45, added to -- in the Development Services area, which is the current planning development review area, engineering and all of Ed's department in the last seven years. MR. PERICO: Not even. Five years. MR. CAUTERO: Five years? Since I've been here then. Well, we haven't had our significant fee increase. That's the reason we haven't kept up. MR. ABBOTT: One reason I'm not objecting to the 15 percent increase, I remember when permits were that. That's not a bother to me in the least. We're responding to market trends and prudent financial planning. But that's why I think we still ought to pay more for bigger cash in our building. MR. PEEPLES: I just want to make a point. Again, we're borrowing money to pay for a building -- part of the building -- at two to three percent, which is fantastic. And when we look at that $672,000 a year number, that's mostly principal paid out. So we are paying for it out of reserves. That's where that -- you know, that's principal paid out. And there's very little interest in that. It's amortized over 10 years, is that what it is? 10 years at three percent? And there's just not much interest payment in that. That's-- MR. ABBOTT: Listen, all I would love to see is a confirm of that number. Two to three is easy to see. MR. TINDALL: I'll see if I can get you that. MR. ABBOTT: Okay. I agree, it makes excellent sense, if that's truly the case. But invariably we're always surprised, it's something else. MR. PEEK: But on the other side of this, if we were -- our private businesses could borrow money at three percent, we wouldn't use our $10 million to build it, we would invest that at about eight or nine percent -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Right. MR. CAUTERO: Which the county did. MR. PEEK: -- another side of income showing off of our -- MR. ABBOTT: Yeah, and take the float. Pa~e 60 June 7, 2000 MR. reserve? MR. MR. MR. it. PEEPLES: What does the county do with the 1.1.3.1.3 Is it invested in a secured -- ABBOTT: It's borrowed, I bet you. PEEPLES: It's borrowed from the county. ABBOTT: I bet you. That's why they're all griping about MR. LONGO: Well, you don't have a line item showing your interest on your reserves -- MR. PEEK: You do. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: One at a time, one at a time, please. MR. CAUTERO: Yeah, it's on the top. Revenue summary on the top. 350,000 in interest. Next year, current service. It's on the revenue summary sheet. MR. ABBOTT: You remember how much trouble the county got into with investing its money in derivatives. MR. CAUTERO: I don't know where they put it and how much it earned, other than if you do the math you could figure out what percentage. Phil might be able to answer that better, because he was a budget analyst over three years, and he worked on this. MR. ABBOTT: Well, we won't ever get market interest, but we'll get something relatively close, because being public money, we can't invest it in risky type of stuff. MR. ESPINAR: But it looks like we're borrowing at three percent and we're gaining at three percent. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Tom Peek, you had a comment? MR. PEEK: What do you want from us today? MR. ABBOTT: Good point. MR. CAUTERO: Any recommendation whatsoever you wish to make related to this issue. MR. PEEK: What you would like is for us to approve what you've put on the table -- MR. CAUTERO: Well, sure, I'd like that. MR. PEEK: -- is that the short answer to the question? MR. CAUTERO: I'm sorry. That's the short answer to the question. But, you know, the county manager, believe me when I tell you, he's very interested, as I am, in what you have to say on how you think we should proceed. And if you believe that we are not funding the expansion in a way that makes the most sense, then I'll carry Page 61 June 7, 2000 that message forward. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Charley? MR. ABBOTT: I still don't like the GIS, when we're paying 50 percent of it and everybody else is being -- it's like they're deciding with our wallet, and I'm just not happy with that. MR. CAUTERO: I will tell that you some of the community organizations that have targeted GIS's that have had projects over the past few years, have asked to be totally funded by the community development fund, and I have fought that. MR. ABBOTT: I understand why you would. It's just that if we're going to pay half of it and not decide on how to do it, I don't know that that's good thinking. MR. CAUTERO: That's why I said I didn't want to go there. MR. PEEK: Do you need a recommendation from us today? MR. CAUTERO: I need a recommendation from you today. Because the first budget workshop is Monday. MR. PEEK: All right, let me try to -- MR. CAUTERO: Wednesday. MR. PEEK: -- frame a motion. If the -- what's it called, a budget committee? MR. CAUTERO: Finance Committee. MR. PEEK: Finance Committee. If the Finance Committee's reserve requirements and recommendations for debt service cannot be changed, and we therefore would come up with the shortfall that has been projected, based upon that parameter, then I would support the increase and the fees of the 15 percent that you have proposed. The second part of that is that I would like for the budget committee or Finance Committee to perhaps answer the questions that have been raised today as to what the reserve requirements are. And if there's any way to reduce the impacts on the 1.1.3.1.3 fund by rethinking and thereby lowering the reserve requirements. Period. MR. ABBOTT: Now, you're saying there that we do have a reserve requirement of a certain amount? MR. PEEK: Apparently we do. That's what -- we don't know what it is. MR. CAUTERO: I don't know. MR. PEEK: But apparently the Finance Committee has established on some basis some reserve requirement they're Page 62 June 7, 2000 saying that we should have. MR. PEEPLES: Otherwise, we'd spend it all? MR. PEEK: That's right. MR. CAUTERO: Which they're not willing to do. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Dino? MR. CAUTERO: I know there's a maximum level set by statute. MR. ABBOTT: Which is what? MR. CAUTERO: I think it's -- let me see. I think it's no more than 12 percent of what one year's revenues might be. Something like that. I'll have to check with Mike. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Dino? MR. LONGO: I'd like to know on that reserve fund, where is this as far as how does it gain interest? You have $350,000 interest revenue from that, I assume from the reserve fund. And what are the chances of that being increased? I mean, you could put it in a typical savings account tomorrow and it would be six percent, or thereabouts. And I'd just like to know how that's working. Where are we getting the interest from on that reserve fund? And if it couldn't be increased to offset some of these other things. I mean, this just doesn't seem like a prudent business opportunity. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We had a motion. Is there a second? MR. MASTERS: I'll second the motion. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay, we've got a second. Now we can do a discussion. MR. MASTERS: And I think I have the same questions that Dino was just looking at, too. I mean, we would ask to have our questions investigated and see if there isn't a better way to do it. Barring there not being a better way, I would be in support of it being done this way. MR. ABBOTT: Ed had a good comment that I thought concerning our amount of our reserves. Made sense to me. MR. PERICO: Basically, like I say, the reserves, just from my department alone, 1.1.3.1.3, not counting planning and everything else, is approximately $4 million a year. And if we don't have a reserve and we do take a little bit of recession, and our revenues drop off below that number, we've got to stop dipping into reserves; otherwise, we've got to start cutting people. Page 63 June 7, 2000 And all the projects that are out there full bloom right now, even though there's no permanent revenue coming in, we still have to do that function, which could take as much as a year or two years on something like this. And slowly you're picking away at that reserve without anything coming in the front door and bingo, we're in trouble. MR. ABBOTT: Well, this gives us an idea that we need to have a minimum of five million. MR. CAUTERO: I said four a minute ago, based on Perry's question. I'm just pulling that out -- MR. ABBOTT: I understand. But I thought this was a good number to at least give us some thinking room here. MR. PERICO: Right now the -- MR. CAUTERO'- I think the Finance Committee may have had the same thought in their mind. And why they said five and four and a half, I don't know. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay, we've got a motion and a second. MR. PEEPLES: Could I hear the motion one more time? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Yeah, I was going to -- I wrote down some of it here, but -- MR. PEEK: I'll try to say it basically the same way, but it's really in two parts. Number one is that if the parameters set forth by the Finance Committee for the need to -- for the amount of reserve is the parameters that we have to deal with, which would then result in a shortfall in the future years, thereby requiring some adjustment in income, then we support the increase and the fees of 15 percent, as shown on the two-page hand out that was distributed to us. Second part of my motion was that we ask the Finance Committee to tell us the basis of their reserve requirement, really to justify this -- why we should have 6.6 million in reserves. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Good. Okay. Clearer for everybody? MR. PEEPLES: I think so. I think that's really -- we're supporting this but there is a fundamental question that Tom has posed. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Excellent. Okay, we'll call the question. All in favor, say aye. Any opposed? (No response.) Page 64 June 7, 2000 CHAIRMAN DISNEY: There were none. Okay, Vince? MR. CAUTERO: One more piece of business on this. And I'd like a recommendation on the expanded positions, including the three of Ed's that we're holding in abeyance, whether we concur or not with the county manager's recommendation or not on that. I would like a recommendation on all the expanded positions so I can carry that to the board at the budget workshop. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. Marco? MR. ESPINAR: I see one position was eliminated. Being the sole biologist here, the Environmental Specialist I for Michelle Arnold? MR. CAUTERO: Oh, that was -- that's not in Development Services' fund. I included those in there erroneously. I apologize. But I will give you the answer. Michelle asked for four staff members next year, two investigators, an environmental specialist and an operations coordinator. The county manager is recommending two of the four, but he's bringing all four to the board. He wants the board to have full disclosure. We recommended approval of the operations coordinator and one of the investigators. All of those would be funded through the tax fund, the -- it's called the MSTD general fund, 1.1.31. Those aren't on here, but I was dealing with your building permit fund. But he recommended approval of two of those four. MR. ESPINAR: Was one of those ElS positions one of those that was recommended? MR. CAUTERO: No, he did not recommend approval of that, but he will bring it forward to the board. MR. ESPINAR: If I might just comment. It always bothers me that we make all these rules and regulations that we have to adhere to, but yet the compliance end of it is the weak link. And it's funny how the people who try to do things legally, you know, get stuck with all these things. And all these people who try to do it illegally, there's not the enforcement arm to do something about it. And it hurts me to see that that ES I position was eliminated. I think that's a necessary position, especially the way we're growing. And also that we're under the microscope with the rest of the state. Page 65 June 7, 2000 MR. ABBOTT: You're questioning the adequacy of a code enforcement person to make a biological assessment? Since they eliminated that position. MR. ESPINAR: Well, this is a specific environmental specialist in the Code Enforcement department. MR. ABBOTT: Right. MR. CAUTERO: So if I may, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, the work then will be spread out amongst the two environmental specialists. Even though more and more regulations are coming on board, it would seem that we're going to be that much more behind in compliance. It's not that an additional untrained code enforcement investigator would handle that work, it's -- there are two people doing the work instead of three. I think that's what Mr. Espinar is saying. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: We need to get back to -- we need a recommendation. MR. PEEK: I'll make a motion -- CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Or a motion, please. Thank you. MR. PEEK: -- that we support the expanded position that had been requested and contained within our agenda packet. MR. LONGO: I'll second it. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Okay. Any other comment? All those in favor, say aye. Any opposed? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: There were none. Okay, excellent. Thank you. Vince, anything else? MR. CAUTERO: One other thing, I know the hour's late, but just bear with me. Because I was at the county manager's staff meeting. I just wanted to say a few words about that parking issue that you talked about, which was part of your LDC amendment discussion. And then today I think you took it under miscellaneous, but that's not significant. Let me apologize to the committee for some of the things that happened in that area. This started out as an issue that we believe to be an important one. And we should have told you that. I thought my staff was getting that message across during the subcommittee meetings and even these meetings. Apparently we did not. We realize Jeff Purse was upset and brought some issues to you, and you thoroughly evaluated them Page 66 June 7, 2000 for your subcommittee and this full committee, and then you made a statement. And $tan Chrzanowski several meetings ago was in this very room, like he was today, giving you his side of the story. And you made recommendations and we carried that recommendation forward. But at the Planning Commission meeting, the staff made a very strong recommendation the other way. And we should have put you on notice for that, because I know how strongly you feel the other way, or at least you -- Mr. Purse felt very strongly and you made a recommendation to support that. I'm sorry about that. I apologize. That's not our style. We usually don't operate like that, and we don't want to throw you a curve ball. I think the committee is aware of the fact that sometimes we're going to disagree, but in this particular case, after talking with Dalas in private about the matter, I thought about it a lot, and I think I know where the breakdown came. The breakdown came between this committee's meeting and the Planning Commission. And the staff had an agenda. And I wasn't going to hold back their professional recommendations, but we could have handled it better. We could have told you this is a big deal. And we probably should have brought your recommendation forward with as much vigor as we did ours. And I'm sorry about that, and that won't happen again. MR. ABBOTT: Jeff, you know, was the lone wolf at that meeting that I saw on 54, speaking his side of it. And it was -- and I thought -- what I knew of it, I thought it was a poor showing. MR. CAUTERO: Well, I wasn't at the meeting and I didn't watch the tape, but I talked to Dalas afterwards and talked to my staff, and I thought the staff was strong in their recommendation to this committee and got the message across that it was a big deal for us. But maybe we couldn't didn't. But even if we did, even if every one of you left this room thinking that the staff -- it was a big deal for the staff, we could have handled it better at the Planning Commission meeting. And up until this moment today I thought there was a compromise. Apparently Mr. Purse had a change of heart on an issue or changed his mind or saw something he didn't like in the Page 67 June 7, 2000 compromise. And I was shocked to see him here and shocked to see you guys talking about it. I thought the issue was dead and buried After the first board meeting on May 31st. So I was shocked. But I think we'll get past that and we'll go beyond that. But I just want you to know that's not our style and we're not going to let that happen again. We're going to tell you when we disagree and carry your recommendation forward and ours. We do that with the Planning Commission all the time. I guess we're not used to it with this committee. Usually we're in lock step. MR. ABBOTT: Well, I remember they've run right over us before on road impact fees and all sorts of stuff. MR. PEEPLES: They're supposed to. There's their job. MR. PEEK: From my perspective, I appreciate you saying that, because I think that helps to let us know in this instance what happened and to understand the -- your position as we move forward. So I appreciate you saying that. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Absolutely. Thank you very much. And in the way of additional brief comment on that, I'll tell that you at about 3:30 the day -- 3:00 the day of the planning board meeting, that Jeff made his comments, I got a call from him, and it appeared as though things were going to go the opposite direction from a staff recommendation, and it puzzled me greatly. So we had had a conversation afterwards with Vince. Unfortunately, I couldn't rearrange my schedule to be there to support our comments on behalf of this committee. But that's primarily why my comment earlier. And Vince again, for me, echoing Tom's comments, thanks very much for your statement here. I'd just for future like to understand very clearly if staff has a different position, just let us know. MR. CAUTERO: Okay. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And then we can decide what to do. We're all of us big guys in the business world and we can rally our forces, if we need to, both directions. Okay. Good, thank you. The only thing left on our agenda is member comments. We'll just run around the table real quick. I don't see any. Thank you very much. MR. CAUTERO: Is this type set acceptable in your minutes? CHAIRMAN DISNEY: Yes, it is. Thank you. Page 68 June 7, 2000 Motion for adjourn? MR. PEEK: So moved. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And a second? MR. LONGO: Second. CHAIRMAN DISNEY: All in favor, say aye. (Unanimous vote of ayes.) CHAIRMAN DISNEY: And there were none opposed. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 6:10 p.m. DEVELOPMENT SERVICES ADVISORY COMMITTEE DALAS DISNEY, CHAIRMAN TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC., BY CHERIE' R. LEONE, NOTARY PUBLIC Page 69