BCC Minutes 06/14/2000 B (Budget Workshop)June ~4,2000
TRANSCRIPT OF THE BUDGET WORKSHOP OF THE
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
Naples, Florida, June 14, 2000
LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Board of County
Commissioners, in and for the County of Collier, and also acting
as the Board of Zoning Appeals and as the governing board(s) of
such special districts as have been created according to law and
having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9:00 a.m.
in SPECIAL SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex,
East Naples, Florida, with the following members present:
CHAIRMAN:
Timothy J. Constantine
Barbara B. Berry
James D. Carter
Pamela S. Mac'Kie
ALSO PRESENT:
Tom Olliff, County Manager
David Weigel, County Attorney
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COLLIER COUNTY GOVERNMENT
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
FY 2001 BUDGET WORKSHOP SCHED~E (REVISED)
Wednesday, June 14, 2000 - 9:00 a.m.
General Overview
Ad Valorem Tax Implications
Debt Service Funds (200's)
Trust Funds (600's)
MSTD General Fund (111)
Special Revenue Funds (I00's)
Enterprise Funds (400's)
Internal Service Funds (500's)
Capital Funds (300's)
Friday, June 16, 2000 - 9:00 a.m-
General Fund (001) Overview
General Fund Operating Divisions:
Courts & Related Agencies
BCC
County Attorney
Management Offices
Support Services
Emergency Services
Public Services
Community Development/Environmental Services
Public Work~
Airport Authority Operations
Review of General Fund Supported Capital Projects
C0nsfimtional Officers:
Property Appraiser
Supervisor of Elections
Clerk of Courts
Sheriffs Office
June 14,2000
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Hi, and welcome to budget
season. It's June 14th, we are here for the purpose of reviewing
the proposed budget.
Item #8G1 - Continued from June 13, 2000 BCC Meeting
PRESENTATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL OVERVIEW REPORT
Mr. Olliff, we're going to do a little bit of leftover information
from yesterday first; is that right?
MR. OLLIFF: We are. And it ties in well, because in
preparation for this budget review, I thought it would be helpful
to provide the board with what I would consider an overview
report of some of the significant policy level type information
from the organization. And what follows will be a power point
presentation, that's sort of a snapshot, if you will, of the
organization as it stands today.
I'll tell you, internally we've been calling this is a vital signs
report. And we liken it to your trip to the doctor for an annual
physical. The doctor doesn't have to open a patient up in order
to tell the general health of the patient. And likewise, I think
from a board's perspective, there ought to be some key statistics
and numbers, indices, that you can look at to tell from an overall
perspective how is the organization and what do we need to
tweak here and there.
Unfortunately, unlike a lot of private companies where you
have, you know, price to earnings ratios or liabilities to asset
type ratios that are industry standards, we don't have those, for
the most part, in general government. But what we're trying to
do in this first-cut effort is provide you with some baseline
statistics.
I will tell you that we will build on this and will improve on it
as we go along, but we want to be able to develop some trend
and some comparative information for you, present this to you
two or three times during the course of the year to just give you
an overall feel about how Collier County government is.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Beth, who will start off with
the presentation.
MS. WALSH: Good morning, Commissioners. The first slide
that we have is from the community development --
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June 14,2000
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: For the record, of course, you
would be?
MS. WALSH: Oh, I'm sorry, Beth Walsh, assistant to the
county manager.
The first slide is from the community development division,
and it's from the building and review and permitting department.
And what we have depicted here is the construction value of
permits issued to the last three fiscal years.
I'd like to point out that the information is not overlaid, it's
stacked one on top of the other so you can view the trends. So I
don't mean to show that fiscal year 2000 construction value is
twice as much as fiscal year '98.
But we do see that there's going to be a 12 percent
estimated increase for fiscal year '99. The total construction
value is estimated to be $1.2 billion.
Next up we have the status of Golf Course Road impact
fees. The pie represents $2.3 million that's due, as identified in
the clerk's audit report. As you can see, about 66 percent of the
fees have been collected. We have about $663,000 outstanding.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What's the progress, or what --
what -- how are we working on collecting those? What's the
plan?
MR. OLLIFF: In a lot of cases, I think we're working with the
attorney's office on a case-by-case basis. We have to go through
each one of those, and from a timing perspective, based on what
the board's direction was, determine what we can collect, go out
with -- and send bills then to try and collect, in some cases.
I will tell you that some of the developers have paid in
protest, requesting alternative impact fee calculations, which we
are going back to the ordinance with the attorney's office to
determine whether or not they have a legal right to request that
or not.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: In the future, just a request for
both you and Mr. Weigel, perhaps the attorneys can talk to us
before they talk to the Naples Daily News about their legal
opinion on this or any other issue. Over the weekend I'm reading
what their opinion is on it.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: My other question about this is,
there were some large developers that comprised a great portion
of this. Are there -- you know, is there one or two developers left
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June 14,2000
who hasn't paid, or are there lots of smaller accounts?
MR. OLLIFF: That, I don't know. I think Vince can give you a
little better answer for that.
MR. CAUTERO: Vince Cautero, for the record.
There's approximately eight developers that we're dealing
with. The largest one of course would be WCI and Grey Oaks.
Grey Oaks is working with us right now to use a $700,000 credit
towards other developments. And they may be able to do that
pending a legal opinion.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I see.
MR. CAUTERO: So that 700,000 of that total would go away,
but you would never see the money, because they wouldn't be
able to get credits in the future.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Gotcha.
And WCI, what kind of a reaction are we getting from them?
MR. CAUTERO: They want to file an alternative calculation,
as well as Grey Oaks, and that's what we're working with legal
right now. And legal has informed us that they have to go
through a case-by-case and go through the correspondence files
to determine if they're indeed allowed to do that.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And so far, WCI and Grey Oaks
have not paid under protest?
MR. CAUTERO: Correct.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Don't you think somebody ought
to come talk to the board about that before you work too long,
since our direction was contrary to what you just said?
MR. CAUTERO: Yes, I do. And I can tell you that we have
been diligent in working with legal and asking legal to produce
that information.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I will tell you, I'm boiling right
now, because part of the way we get into this mess, a big chunk
of this was paid without going to the board, as required by law.
So now if you're going off and negotiating individual things
because somebody at legal has told you that without coming
back to the board --
MR. OLLIFF: Now let me stop you. We're not negotiating
anything, okay? They have come in and have requested certain
things from us. The attorney's office is trying to develop an
opinion, and we will get with you before any final decisions are
made on response to their request.
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June 14,2000
MR. CAUTERO: To complement what Mr. Olliff said and not
belabor the issue, legal has said that they want to look at them
case by case. They have not rendered one opinion yet on who
can come in and who cannot.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: And Mr. Weigel, perhaps you
need to come back, not now, but come back and talk to us about
that, because that's contrary to what the direction of the board
was.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: And also in that, I think that we
had identified or indicated, if they're not paying, there certainly
should be some sort of interest being logged against this --
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Right.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: -- like you would on any other --
MR. CAUTERO: That's part the research legal conducted.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Let us know on that because --
and otherwise, there's other people who just paid and did not
fight the process.
MR. OLLIFF: Part of the direction was interest and
penalties.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: If someone wants to file --
starting a new project right now, wants to file for alternative
impact fees, do they pay nothing, or do they pay under protest
and get refunded?
MR. CAUTERO: They pay under protest.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: So why then do these two
developers think they don't have to pay anything in the
meantime?
MR. CAUTERO: I can't answer that.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Perhaps we can ask legal to
immediately file something. That's just -- that's not okay. It's
been a year or two years in some cases and they're saying well,
tough, we're not going to give you any money. Great, let's stop
all the permits out there. Let's take some action and do
something other than hi-ho, hi-ho, let's try to work on it.
MR. CAUTERO: We have done that on golf courses. We have
not issued any new -- any additional permits on golf courses on
those developers. We have taken that action. Land
Development Code gives my staff and I the authority to do that.
And I have filed code enforcement action against those two
developers.
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June 14, 2000
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I bet there's legal action we can
do, too. But, I mean, let's not just stand around and hope it all
works out. If -- I suspect they're going to be very aggressive.
Well, they owe the public some money. We need to be every bit
as aggressive.
MR. CAUTERO: I only need one piece of information from
legal and that is that they have the ability to come before you for
an alternative calculation. If not, they will be in front of the Code
Enforcement Board.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Whether they do or not, they
can't wait until after the fact to pay anything. Even if they can
apply for alternative impact fees, you just got done telling me,
people pay up front under protest --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And then --
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: -- and file for their alternative.
MR. OLLIFF.' I agree. And let me go back. And Vince -- I
believe the latest information I got as of late last week was the
two large developers that we are talking about have actually
paid under protest already. Now, I'll go back and confirm that for
you and I'll get that to you in writing, but that's my impression.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, let's find that out, because
that's the critical piece of the pie. If they paid under protest --
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Am I mistaken, or were we just
told otherwise?
MR. OLLIFF: I think you were told otherwise. My impression
from the information that I got from Phil Tindall late last week
was that they have paid under protest. I'll get that confirmed for
you.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Maybe we could find that out
before this meeting's over even. I'm very anxious to know that.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Because that would answer a lot
of our questions. If they had paid under protest, then that's one
thing. If they haven't, then that's a whole other issue.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: If they have paid --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: If they haven't, we need to be
taking legal action.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: And if they have paid, who owes
that $663,000 that's looking at us on that pie chart?
MR. CAUTERO: About six other developers.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Okay, which goes back to
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June 14,2000
Commissioner Mac'Kie's original question, is this a bunch of
other developers or are these a couple of big ones, and the
answer before was?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Couple big ones.
MR. CAUTERO: It's about eight, but two of them are the
larger ones. About six mid-level or smaller developers.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE.' So obviously you can tell the
board's really interested in a detailed report on who's paying,
who's not paying, and what action we're taking to be as
aggressive as possible.
And frankly, I think what Commissioner Constantine is
saying, and I join him in it, is I understand, you know, the lawyers
have to tell us what's legal, and if we want to do something
that's not legal, they have to tell us that. And that's their
unfortunate position to be in, to tell their boss you can't do
something you want to do.
But we're saying we want to be aggressive, and if they have
defenses, let them raise them. But let's bring whatever action
we can bring, and then we'll defend ourselves.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Two things: It's not our job to
defend them. But also, when you get that opinion, if it is in --
indicates anything in any way contrary to what the direction of
the board was, which I think couldn't have been clearer, then we
need to talk about it here before any further action is taken.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Absolutely. What we are saying
is we want to see that 28 percent go away. We want it
collected.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We want interest.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: And then you can go through --
with interest, if it's applicable, and just then take it through -- if
they want to file an appeal and all that, fine, but we want the
money in the bank.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: So the question still isn't
answered then. The 663,000, if there's eight developers or six
developers or two developers, are they not paying but they're
applying? Why aren't they paying?
MR. CAUTERO: Those developers that have outstanding
fees on golf courses have not paid due to the problems that we
encountered that were uncovered in the audit.
The only piece of information I need from legal is to tell me
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June 14,2000
whether or not I have the ability to proceed with the Code
Enforcement case or if they can come before you. If the opinion
is that they can go before you, I will tell you that. That's the only
thing I'm lacking.
We have been aggressive. I have filed code enforcement
action. And I will go and collect the interest, if legal tells me. I
don't know what the exact amount of money is right now. I do
know that we're working on it day by day. And some checks
have come in, and some credits are being applied that we can do
administratively. And you will get a snapshot of that as soon as I
get that opinion from legal.
I cannot move to that next step and implement your clear
direction until legal gives me that opinion that I need.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And here's the --
MR. CAUTERO: I know that upsets you, but I cannot move
forward unless the lawyers tell me I can do so.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: But again, if someone is
applying for alternative fees, that does not give them the right to
pay nothing in the meantime.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So why can't we sue them today
for failure to pay, pending a decision on whether or not they're
entitled to an alternate calculation --
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: And we're under the assumption
they have all been notified that they owe "X" amount of money.
MR. CAUTERO: They've all been notified.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's the question. If the alter --
even with -- because it sounds like you're doing everything we
want you to do except maybe one other thing we want you to do
while you wait for legal, is if the ordinance requires, pay the
standard fee under protest, pending alternative. Then even if
they're entitled to alternative, which we hope they're not, they
should pay the base fee today. And if they don't, we don't need
code enforcement action, we need to just sue them for not
paying.
MR. CAUTERO: You need a legal action, and I can't do that.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I understand.
So David, that's what we need.
Does anybody disagree with that?
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: And while you said you're not
issuing other permits on the golf course, I bet there's probably
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June 14,2000
not a whole lot of activity on there. Frankly, if the same
developer is asking for other permits and owes the county a
bunch of money, I don't know why we can't put a hold on other
activity they're doing.
MR. CAUTERO: I will look into that, but I've been told that
that's not legal. In the past, I've been told that's not legal. I will
look into it again.
MR. OLLIFF: Why don't we do this: Since I know that the
level of interest is exceptionally high on the part of the board,
we'll be providing you weekly written updates on where we are
with this, okay?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Good plan.
MR. OLLIFF: Beth, if you'll move on.
MS. WALSH: Next up we have pollution control and
prevention, who's collected 14,000 pounds of hazardous waste in
the first six months of this year. This is compared to the 7,000
pounds that they collected last year. The increase is due to five
collection events this year, as opposed to three last year.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's excellent.
MS. WALSH: The housing and urban improvement
department has reported that they're projecting 1,600 units of
affordable housing this year.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Click.
MS. WALSH: Oh, I'm sorry.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Beth, can I ask you a question?
What happens to that hazardous waste? Where does it go?
MR. OLLIFF: We take it to hazardous waste dump sites. The
closest one that I'm familiar with is in South Alabama.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: South Alabama?
MR. OLLIFF: Yes, ma'am.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Don't be taking any to
Mississippi.
MR. OLLIFF: I didn't say Mississippi. South Alabama.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: It runs over into Mississippi.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No, no, no, no.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Strike South Alabama for
vacation.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Thank you. I didn't mean to
interrupt you. But it just struck me. I mean, we collect it and
where do they take it? So we pass it on to somebody else.
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June 14,2000
MR. OLLIFF: And there are specially designed landfills to
handle hazardous waste.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That are permitted, big
complicated -- talk about your landfill.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: I bet that's an interesting place to
live.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Wait, go back to that one. I
wanted to hear that and I really didn't understand the point.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: It's going to be a long day.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Sorry, guys.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: It started out that way.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But this is a really good side, if
what we're seeing here is we're doubling the number of
affordable housing units in two years? MS. WALSH: Yes.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's awesome.
MR. OLLIFF: Yeah. We want you to know that there's some
affordable housing being built in this community. And one of the
things I think the board wanted us to be a little more aggressive
about. And I think you can see the result of some of your
incentives and some of your other actions.
MS. WALSH: From the Planning Services Department, we
see that the commercial square footage with an approved
planned unit development is reducing as time goes on. I think
this graph is one indicator of decreasing land availability for
large master plan developments.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: And along with that, we are
running out of really commercial space, if I understand it
correctly, commercial industrial space. Anyplace that --
MR. OLLIFF: I think industrial space, that's correct. I'm not
so sure on the commercial side, but I do believe that --
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, let me rephrase it.
Industrial, our inventory is getting very low. And I guess that
leads to the question of what we will do in the future. Do we
have other areas in the county that can be designated and
designed industrial parks? Or commerce parks, I prefer to call
them.
MR. OLLIFF: I've been talking with Susan Paragus and I
think your community development staff to schedule an
economic development workshop in the first quarter of the next
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June 14, 2000
fiscal year so that we can talk about that and some other issues,
I think, in terms of just us having a consolidated plan for
economic development in this county.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE:
included.
MR. OLLIFF: Exactly.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Thank you.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: But there is -- is this where you're
talking about running out of commercial space?
MR. OLLIFF: Industrial.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Really--
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Industrial.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: -- commerce industrial, not
commercial.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Industrial. No, no, I'm sorry. That
was wrong. No, but industrial space?
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Right.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: For the EDC types of--
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Well, yeah, I know, but I'm --
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Like the Shaw Aeros, and like --
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Oh, absolutely. I'm very familiar.
But my question is, how is this -- this may certainly have an
impact on the urban boundary--
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Ugh.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: -- when you start looking at these
kinds of things. Well, Pam --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I hear you.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: -- all you have to do is drive around
the county and take a look.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I hear you. I mean, there's not a
lot of giant --
COMMISSIONER BERRY: I mean, when you got -- when
you've got the percentage of land that you have already in
government ownership, which is way over -- if you look at all of
it, is way over 80 percent, and you're telling people that you can
only build on "X" number of percentage, and at the same time
you're crying about you need more of this and that, now, guys,
there's only so much that's going to fit in that toothpaste tube,
okay?
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Right.
Including availability of industrial
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June 14,2000
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Interesting.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, I'm sure Dover/Kohl will
have an input on that, too.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I'm going to make the following
request as we go through the rest of this item. If you have
questions or comments, why don't you jot them down and we'll
do them all at the end, instead of slide by slide by slide.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Okay, Mr. Chairman. I
understand your message.
MR. OLLIFF: Okay. Beth?
MS. WALSH: Next up is the support services division. The
information technology has experienced a lot of growth since
their inception in 1995. Here we see that in 1995, three IT staff
supported six applications. In the year 2000 it's nine IT staff
supporting 38 applications.
The same for work stations. In 1995, four members
supported 315 work stations, which was a ratio of I to 78.
Currently in fiscal year 2000, six staff members support 625 work
stations, which is a ratio of 1 to 104, while the industry standard
is actually I to 75.
Emergency services has experienced a growth in their EMS
9-1-1 calls, averaging about 9 percent last year, and they're
estimating about 9.1 percent increase this year.
This pie chart is an analysis of the turnover by job type in
the human resources department. We can see that the largest
pie piece is the professional and technical fields, at 39.5 percent.
MR. OLLIFF: That helps to point out, I think, the argument
that we were making that a lot of the engineering information
technology type positions are where our turnover problems were,
and I think you've made some steps to fix that with part of the
pay plan adjustments, which will take effect in October.
MS. WALSH: The real property department performed 207
land transactions this year in the first six months, as compared
to 101 land transactions last year at the same time. Land
transactions is defined as road, utility easement, parkland
purchase.
Next up we have some of the current capital projects that
are going on through the facility's management department. First
is the sheriff's operations building. It's estimated completion
date is November this year.
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June14,2000
MR. OLLIFF: That's the on-campus building you see when
you drive to work every day.
MS. WALSH: And here's a during and after slide of the
Building A demolition project.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Roll out that grass. That's
amazing.
MS. WALSH: Next up is Domestic Animal Services. The
project's well underway. A lot of the buildings are covered, and
the estimated completion date for that is November as well of
this year.
Next is EMS Station No. 17. It's estimated to begin on June
30th, with a completion date of November of 2001.
And we have the Golden Gate government complex, which
will have offices for the tax collector and property appraiser.
This project started at the beginning of June and is in the
permitting process.
MR. OLLIFF: This is, Commissioner Constantine, as he's
referred to as the Dulles Airport.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Is this the design for this building?
MR. OLLIFF: That is the design that the architect, Victor
Latavish, has come up with and worked with the advisory board
in Golden Gate, who apparently is okay.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Did we okay this?
CARTER: Yes. I mean, we approved the
COMMISSIONER
project.
COMMISSIONER
understand that, Jim.
BERRY: Oh, I know the project. I
But I'm -- did we approve the architecture?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We don't generally look at the
architecture as a board.
MR. OLLIFF: You don't generally look at the architecture.
This is one of those more community design kind of projects. I
can check--
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay, well, then don't blame the
Board of County Commissioners.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Who -- who approved -- did the
community like it?
MR. OLLIFF: Yes. We've run this through a number of
different community advisory boards, and while there was some
discussion, they have approved it.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Looks like an air scoop on a car.
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June 14,2000
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, that's what it looks like.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Give the folks what they want.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: I guess the beauty is in the eye of
the beholder.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: It said on the slide, but when is
that scheduled for groundbreaking?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: 30 days, completion in
November. Skip Camp.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: November 20th?
MS. WALSH: Okay, from the Risk Management Department,
there's a graph showing the health insurance claims incurred
from the last five fiscal years. I know you've seen this
information before, but we feel that it's important enough to
bring it back to review again.
This is a graph, the annual cost of health claims. And as you
can see, every year for the past four fiscal years, costs continue
to climb.
MR. OLLIFF: I think what we're trying to tell you there is
that while the number of claims don't change dramatically, the
cost that we are experiencing does. And that's just attributable
to the rising cost of healthcare at 15 to 20 percent a year. And
there's not much that we can do about that, but we just want you
to keep that in the back of your mind as one of those expense
items.
MS. WALSH: As you can see from the next graph, this
depicts the actual dollar amount of the average cost for health
claims. You can see that it's risen every year. The annual
claims cost per employee this year is at 3,900 -- I'm sorry, last
year, $3,965 per employee.
Two year's worth of data on the number of prescriptions
filled. As you can see, those costs -- oh, I'm sorry, those number
of prescriptions is rising as well, and the cost of the
prescriptions is rising.
Hopefully, as we continue to present this report, we'll have
more data available.
MR. OLLIFF: A lot of that is blood pressure medication.
MS. WALSH: Thank you.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We were thinking maybe some
mental health issues, but--
COMMISSIONER BERRY: We think we can account for that.
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June t4,2000
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And we understand why.
MR. DUNNUCK: Good morning, Commissioners. For the
record, John Dunnuck, the other assistant to the county
manager.
I'm going to take you through some of the finance and then
some of the other capital projects and finish it up with Mike
talking about transportation.
Impact fees. Year to date we're at a 35 percent increase
from last year, in 2000. Some of that's attributed to the
increased construction, and the other part of it is we've raised
impact fees this year. That comes out to about 22,154,000, year
to date.
Grant revenue. This is actual grant revenue received so far.
1.2 million was in -- you can see the trend. In '98, we had 1.2
million. '99 dipped a little bit. It's up again this year so far.
Gas and sales tax revenues. This is -- this kind of shows you
that we don't -- it's not consistent how you collect it month by
month. You can see that in fiscal year '98, at a six-month
snapshot, we'd only collected 36 percent. Fiscal year '99, we're
up to 43 percent. And of our budget amount this year, we're up
about 45 percent.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So the point of that is just to tell
us that the money comes in but at an unreliable schedule?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Exactly.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: We receive monthly disbursements from
the state and sometimes they vary. If something came in late, it
may be remitted to the county in the following month, so the year
to dates don't always flow consistently from year to year.
MR. DUNNUCK: Debt service. This is one really worth
looking at. We only run about a 3 percent debt service, which is
really outstanding. I think in future analyses, we might even
show what other counties run to show that comparison.
This is another interesting slide to show. This is TDC
revenue. You can see in '95 through '97, you can start seeing a
nice upward trend. But through '98 through 2000, at six-month
levels, we've really leveled off. So the revenues really aren't
being produced; are growing at the rate of the county at this
point in time.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And certainly not at the rate of
Page t5
June 14,2000
the number of hotel rooms, because we're building hotels by the
day.
MR. OLLIFF: It will be interesting to see over the course of
the next couple of years, because you're right, there have been a
couple of large hotels come online, with the new Ritz-Carlton on
Vanderbilt.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: It depends on what their rates are
and then the tax based on that.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: They ain't cheap though.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Of course, you've got to have --
well, of course they're not cheap. And that's good.
MR. DUNNUCK: I'm going to run through some capital
projects.
Water utilities first. This graph shows that the water
department expansion is driven specifically by percentage of
use, and they monitor it on a monthly basis. And when they hit
an 80 percent threshold, then we have to go into -- automatically
by state statute into the design of a new future site.
As you can see over the period of this last few months,
February and March, we did break that threshold. So we're
currently in the design of a future site at the south water
treatment plant.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Wouldn't it be nice if roads were
the same way, we get to 80 percent of capacity and we're
required to build more.
MR. DUNNUCK: You can see over on the right-hand side,
I've kind of brought up a little graph here, shows where it will be
located. Circle there.
And right now it's under -- you know, they're scheduling it for
design this summer with completion December of 2002. It will
be a $30 million project, and it will provide service -- right now
it's to provide service out to about 2010. But we're in the process
of doing an update of our master plan, and that figure might end
up moving up, depending upon the growth.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Where will we be at the north
plant?
MR. DUNNUCK: I believe -- I couldn't answer that question
right now.
MR. OLLIFF: We just recently completed an expansion of
the north plant, so I think the south plant is the next one online.
Page16
June 14,2000
So I think there is several million gallon a day capacity
availability at the north plant.
MR. FINN: If I may, Edward Finn, utilities administrator.
The water system is actually connected together, so it's an
overall plant capacity, not one plant versus another.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Thank you.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Great graphics.
MR. DUNNUCK: Wastewater reclamation. We're in a similar
situation. Right now we -- we do it on a three-month basis, and
it's a 75 percent threshold. And you can see January, February,
March and April we exceeded that 75 percent. So we began
construction in the south district -- or began design. And that
would be the south wastewater plant expansion. It's under
design. It's a $35 million project. The completion is expected in
2003. And it should double the capacity of the district.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That will do us for awhile.
MR. DUNNUCK: Solid waste disposal. Currently right now
we process 237,000 tons. That's up from 221 in 1999, 189 in
1998. That's about a 12 percent average increase.
At this time the useful life for the Naples is October of 2004,
and Immokalee is March of 2003.
What we can take from this graph or from this depiction is
the fact that it takes us about two years, if we're going to do
something, as far as if we're going to expand the existing facility
or find a new location, depending on which way the board wants
to go. You know, if they want to expand Cell No. I to make it
Cell No. 7 and put the lining in. So that that will be coming up
within the next year and become a very important issue, which I
think the board's already aware of.
Recycled materials. You can see we've been -- the increase
of recycled materials has jumped from '98 through 2000, is
leveling off a little bit. Right now we recycle about 25 percent of
material received. The state goal is around 30 percent. Very
few counties have met the state goal, from my understanding.
But we're trying to get there.
Public services. Capital projects. Obviously you're aware of
Rover Run. It's been a very successful project. And I think the
board did a very good job getting its bang for the buck. In that
case --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's Luke.
Paget7
June 14,2000
MR. DUNNUCK: -- the picture speaks for itself.
Clam Pass Boardwalk. Construction began around June 1st.
Completion scheduled for September 1st, with a full use of the
parking lot available on December 1st, 2000, in time for season.
They needed a little bit of a staging area, so we've granted part
of the parking lot.
Just to let you know, the staff has placed a park ranger at
the site on the weekends to allow people to direct them to other
locations in the area, you know, so the people -- you know, as a
kind of public service type.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We had hoped to try to work with
I think it was WCI, who's doing the Seagate development, and we
were going to get some increased parking spaces and see if
maybe we could get some additional parking at that location.
MR. OLLIFF: We did. That wasn't possible. But I will tell
you that from the statistics that we've kept, the Seagate lot has
never filled up since we've started the construction project, even
with the existing number of spaces that were there.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I've been there and had to turn
around and come home.
MR. OLLIFF: Oh, did you?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE:
occasion.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE:
a better phrase.
I have, on more than one
Almost never, I guess would be
MR. OLLIFF:
Commissioner Mac'Kie went.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE:
around twice.
COMMISSIONER CARTER:
head.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE:
when it fills up.
Almost never have been full, except for when
Because I have had to turn
There's a little cloud over her
Check at sunset. I mean, that's
MR. DUNNUCK: With that, I'm going to turn over the
transportation projects to Mike McNees.
MR. McNEES: Thank you. Good morning, I'm Mike McNees,
the other guy from the county manager's office.
Just two weeks short of three months ago we met in this
room to address a concern, I think largely driven by a perception
that we were having increasing traffic congestion problems and
Page18
June 14,2000
the county, quote, wasn't doing anything about it.
I stand here very proudly today representing your new
transportation services division to tell you, one, not only was
that perception probably a little bit overblown, but even the
worst cynic in Collier County could not continue to make the
case today that nothing's being done.
John? And I thank John for doing a great job with the slides
you're about to see to iljustrate what I'm talking about.
Major road projects that are currently under construction in
Collier County. We are building one of the middle segments of
Livingston Road, a $9 million four-laning project that is
underway, under construction, from Radio Road to Golden Gate
Parkway, is on schedule with a completion date of December,
2000.
John, if you've got that picture.
You see that strip right down the middle, that is turned dirt.
That is construction underway. You don't have to take my word
for it, there's a picture of it.
The next slide, an $8 million project, Golden Gate Parkway
to Pine Ridge Road segment of Livingston Road is being cleared
as we speak. The construction contract will act for the hard
construction of the road, will begin in December of 2000, with a
completion date one year later. We're not waiting for the -- for
the construction contract to be -- John, if you'll show that
picture.
You don't have to take my word for it. We're turning dirt,
we're clearing that right-of-way as we speak. So that work can
be done, that road will be ready to be built. COMMISSIONER BERRY: Four lanes?
MR. McNEES.' Yes, ma'am, four lanes. We don't do two
lanes anymore.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: I know. But I keep hearing this
two-lane roadway that we're going to build from Golden Gate
Parkway to Pine Ridge, and I just want you to say it, Mike.
MR. McNEES: No, ma'am. They don't do that anymore.
MR. OLLIFF.' As a policy for major arterial roadways, Collier
County does not build two-lane roads.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay. That's all.
MR. McNEES: The next project, Livingston Road from Pine
Ridge to Immokalee Road. We are working hard on the
Page19
June 14,2000
right-of-way acquisition. The design is more than halfway
completed on this one. Construction on this segment doesn't
begin until 2002, 2003, but we are working hard on that design.
This is a $10 million project.
The other thing I wanted to say in the beginning was you all
were accused of raising a bunch of money and sitting on it. Well,
let me tell you, we're not sitting on it anymore. I've already spent
30 million of it in the last 30 seconds just telling you about these
projects.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: You just go, boy.
MR. McNEES: The next segment is the only two-lane
segment under construction, because it's actually being
constructed by a developer as we speak. They need the road.
They're doing the two lanes. You're going to see, I believe, on
your next agenda, a contract amendment to -- for our portion to
design into a four-lane road. So we're going to move that one
forward as quickly as we can.
But the two-lane road is under construction. Completion
time, I'm not sure I can tell you. Late summer, I believe, of this
year. That two-lane completion.
John, if you want to show that picture.
We'll be doing the four-lane expansion, completed within
2002. There you go. There it is. That's a picture. That's turned
dirt. That's construction underway. That's not my promise.
The next project, Golden Gate Boulevard. Phase I of Golden
Gate Boulevard, an $18 million project. Construction is
underway for the segment from 951 to Big Cypress, I believe.
MR. DUNNUCK: Yes.
MR. McNEES: John, if you want to show the Phase II, which
is designed at this point. And we're acquiring the right-of-way for
Phase II, which is Big Cypress to Wilson. The next picture, John.
$18 million construction project. That is turned dirt. That is
construction underway. That's not my promise. You can see the
picture.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Is that a house?
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What is that? It's a house.
MR. McNEES: The last project I'm going to tell you about is
the Immokalee Road, the four-laning of Immokalee Road from
Page 20
June 14,2000
1-75 to Collier Boulevard. That's construction underway.
Estimated completion date of April, 2000 (sic). This is one where
we were able to get in there in time and we have a significant
incentive with a contractor if we can complete early ahead of
April, 2001. If we can shave a couple months off that project,
that will help us for that season, of the 2001 season.
And there's another picture. That's actual construction
underway. Another $9 million project.
In the last two minutes, you just spent $54 million worth of
that money that you've been accused of sitting on. So I think it's
very clear that we're not saving that money for our retirement.
The other thing we promised you we could do were some
short-term things regarding the improvements of some
intersections to improve traffic flow. As I stand here today, I can
tell you that additional turn lanes have been installed at the
intersection of Shirley Street and Pine Ridge Road.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We need them.
MR. McNEES: That additional turn lanes have been installed
and have been completed at the intersection of 951 and White
Boulevard. That traffic signal and turn lane improvements have
been completed at the intersection of Immokalee Road and
Wilson. That the intersection of Shadowlawn and Davis, right
around the corner from here, has had turn lane improvements
already completed; the asphalt is on the ground. That at the
intersection of Airport Road and Golden Gate Parkway,
northbound dual turn lanes have been lengthened to allow for
better stacking. That improvement has been completed. And at
the intersection of Oil Well Road and Immokalee Road, the traffic
signal and the turn lanes and some sidewalk improvements have
been completed as we speak since your last workshop.
My last editorial for the day is you're about to see a budget
that's probably the most aggressive road building schedule
you've ever seen. Your permission -- or your policy changes that
you gave us three months ago to do two things: One is leverage
your gas tax; two is to not use concurrency as a delay
mechanism, but rather to build the roads as you need them. You
gave us that policy direction. And you're going to see the result
of that.
My editorial is this: We're already beginning to hear it, and I
know you're already beginning to hear it. Every road that we're
Page 21
June 14,2000
building right now, someone is saying that either the
construction is too noisy, the road is too close to their
neighborhood, the road's not needed, the road's too narrow, the
road's too wide, we've got the wrong corridor, the asphalt's too
black, you name it, you're hearing it. And we're here to tell you,
your staff's going to continue to work as hard as we can to
please the residents and to make people satisfied with the
design. But we can't please everyone.
I say three words of horror story to you. Golden Gate
Boulevard, where you had severely divided residents, delayed
that project probably the better part of two years. And I'm going
to tell you, we may have the black hats on for the next two or
three years, but your staff is going to be in a position
consistently to recommend to you, keep these projects moving.
Let us do the best that we can, but that's all that we can do. We
can't please everyone.
So my tip is, if you're in Collier County and you're out in the
woods and you see a bulldozer coming, get out of the way,
because we're probably building a road.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Go just do it. Build as many of
them as you can come up with.
MR. OLLIFF: In closing, I promised John he could get a slide
of his dog in there, so that's Mr. Dunnuck's family dog.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What's your dog's name?
MR. DUNNUCK: Pippin.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Pippin and Luke. The official
county dog.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: That's a nice-looking dog.
MR. OLLIFF: I need to thank my office staff for putting
together the presentation. But we would like to come back to
you two or three times again, like I said, in the middle of the year
and just give you some updates about where we are.
There is no decision required as a result of this report, but
we would like for you to review this. We're going to give you
hard copies of it later in the day. Then if there's some other
pieces of information that you think are important for us to
include, let us know that.
We are working with Jim Mitchell over in finance, who will
be including, I think, some little better financial information for
you,
Page 22
June 14, 2000
And I need to give Mike a lot of credit. I think he's really
kept us on board in terms of the transportation projects. Their
new motto in transportation is they are kicking asphalt and
taking names down there. And he is really trying to stay on an
aggressive schedule. And schedule is the most important
priority that we've got.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I just have to say, this -- I feel for
the first time since I've been on the board now, almost six years,
that here's the beginning of some information to help me be a
policy maker. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: That was a great presentation.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Great presentation, I agree.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: I really enjoyed that. Thank you. I
think it's good for the public to see this.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: We're just going to take about a
five-minute break for the court reporter. And to get squared
away on the budget, I would like to see Mr. Weigel and Mr. Olliff
in my office.
(Recess.)
BUDGET WORKSHOP SESSION
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Hi, we're back. Mr. Olliff, let's
move on to the budget.
MR. OLLIFF: I'll turn this part of the presentation over to
Mike Smykowski.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Good morning. For the record, Michael
Smykowski, budget director.
Before we get started, what I'd like to do is just introduce
my staff. We have some new faces. I'd like for the board to be
familiar with who they are. Let me start, Gary Vincent.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Old face.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Old face. Senior budget analyst.
Some of the new faces, Wynonna Stone.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Familiar face.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Familiar face, Gary. I didn't
mean it like that.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Old face.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Wait, we've got to go back
again.
Page 23
June 14,2000
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Wynonna gets introduced again.
Christopher Dublis, Tony Gambino and Randy Greenwald.
And last but not least, I want Pat Lehnhard to come up. Pat
is responsible for doing all the copying and putting the books
together.
(Applause.)
MR. SMYKOWSKI: And I wanted to be sure and recognize
her, because she is a superstar for our office and we're very
pleased to have her.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Copymeister.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Copymeister, yep.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: I'd like to welcome you first of all to the
fiscal year 2001 budget workshops. The presentation format will
be similar to last year, with the board in a board of directors
capacity, with an exception basis of review presented on a fund
basis. That seemed to work better for the board from a clarity
and understanding point.
The books are arranged. A summary books include
summaries of tax rates, the proposed tax dollars for the
upcoming year, as well as the revised preliminary property
values we got from the property appraiser as of June 1. We will
get final certified values as of July 1.
They include summary data for the general fund, divisional
and agency summaries for the general fund, summary by major
fund type, and summaries of proposed expanded service
requests.
Detail books include program summary information,
performance measures, individual fund or departmental
spreadsheets, and budget highlights.
In terms of the financial budget overview, personal service
budgets reflect the pay plan implementation that the board had
discussed during budget policy. We used again the 4 percent
attrition rate. $3 million in gas taxes, pursuant to our budget
policy discussion going to road and bridge maintenance
activities. We feel that's a more appropriate use of gas tax, as
well as reducing general fund support of road and bridge
maintenance activities.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What percentage of gas taxes is
that three million? I mean, half? More than half?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: No, maybe 20 percent, but I'll get you a
Page 24
June 14,2000
definite number.
And the budget also reflects the decrease that the board
recently approved in county water sewer rates for the upcoming
year.
Overall, there's 2,751 positions in the county. As you would
expect, the county manager's agency is the largest employer,
followed by the sheriff.
General fund, which we'll talk about on Friday, provides
government services to all county residents, inclusive of the City
of Naples, Everglades City and the City of Marco Island, with the
primary funding source being ad valorem taxes, as demonstrated
in the pie chart here.
The MSTD, or unincorporated area general fund, provides
municipal type services to the residents in the unincorporated
areas. Obviously Collier County has a large unincorporated area
population. This would exclude the City of Naples, Everglades
City and City of Marco Island. We'll discuss this a little later this
morning. Also funded primarily by ad valorem taxes.
Major revenue sources, as I just indicated, primarily ad
valorem taxes. Other major operating revenues include cable
fees and transfers. Examples of services provided to the
incorporated area include code enforcement, long-range
planning, and parks and recreation.
The tax impact of the unincorporated area budget as
proposed is a -- excuse me, millage $84.67 proposed. The
adopted was $52.03. Now, that may seem like a large increase,
but one of the major recommendations and changes in this year's
budget includes the -- we're recommending consolidation of the
three road MSTD's.
And that's for a number of reasons. One, there actually used
to be four, which coincided with the County Commission
districts, outside the boundaries of the City of Naples. Over time
one district was consolidated, so there are only three. And due
to annexation and et cetera, they no longer correspond to
commission districts. And frankly, the largest component of
expenditure within these funds is for median beautification and
maintenance. And we really see that as something that is more
of a regional issue as opposed to a localized issue. So we feel
beautification efforts are benefitting the unincorporated area as
a whole, as opposed to these very small pockets with widely
Page 25
June 14,2000
varying millage rates.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But that was a specifically
adopted budget policy by the board, wasn't it? I mean, when
would be the appropriate time to ask questions about that? Is it
now or is it later?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: We'll actually review the budget and --
shortly on those road MSTD's and the unincorporated area. At
that point it would be the time.
So after you net out the average of the road MSTD tax, it's
only a slight increase over a dollar, $1.60 or thereabouts. So it's
a relatively small impact, and there are a number of expanded
service requests as well in code enforcement, et cetera,
benefitting. And we'll have an opportunity to walk through those.
Special revenue funds that we'll talk about today include fee
supported -- the community development fund, which is
supported primarily by building permits and development fees,
special taxes, such as TDC, ad valorem taxes, fines and
surcharges.
Therefore, specific purposes, such as community
development, regulation of the building industry in town, tourist
development obviously is very localized. And we have a number
of special purpose taxing districts: The road maintenance
MSTD's, beautification MSTD's, fire control districts, Golden Gate
Community Center, and street lighting MSTU's.
Restricted use funds that we'll also talk about today in
summary are things like ADA compliance, the 800 megahertz, the
enhanced 9-1-1 system.
Internal service funds used to account for operations
providing services to other county departments which operate on
a break-even basis. Following the county manager's
reorganization, there would be five remaining: Are three
self-insurance funds, property and casualty, group health, and
workers' compensation, our fleet management fund and our
motor pool capital recovery fund.
Enterprise funds operate like a private business. They
include utilities, the county water and sewer district, the
Goodland water district, the Marco district. The board had given
policy direction regarding the transfer of that operation to the
City of Marco Island. Solid Waste Management.
On the revenue side, it's primarily user fee funded, including
Page 26
June 14,2000
water and sewer fees, solid waste tipping fees and mandatory
garbage collection fees. Other revenues include utility
assessments, solid waste franchise fees, and recycling grants.
Enterprise funds on the expense side primarily is water and
wastewater operations, utilities debt service, utilities capital
improvements, solid waste collection and disposal, and the
recycling program.
Enterprise funds, this graph just shows changes in major fee
revenues. It's interesting to note that for both water and sewer,
they reflect decreases. And that's a function of the board
approved rate decreases that was approved six, eight weeks
ago. So the budget actually reflects less revenue in those -- in
those funds. Which intuitively doesn't make sense, but a
function -- there were pretty major rate reductions, and the
budgets reflect the impact of those rate reductions.
Capital improvement program includes growth-related
capital improvements in the CIE and non-CIE projects per
department need. Typically replacements, renovation. 200 --
almost $206 million. As you would expect, roads are the
dominant area, as Mike McNees alluded to earlier. We're
recommending an aggressive road building campaign.
The next area is water plant construction. As John
indicated in the opening presentation, we had hit that 80 percent
threshold, necessitating construction of a new facility as well.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: At what point are we going to
talk about the stormwater is 1.3 percent of that? Is that a policy
decision that we'll have a chance to discuss later?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, we will. On Friday -- actually, from
an agenda standpoint, just so it's clear today, what we will cover
on our fund base, we're essentially covering all the non-general
fund items today and then Friday's discussion would be limited to
all the agencies that are either directly in the general fund or
receive general fund support via transfers, such as road and
bridge, EMS, and capital projects that are funded, of which
stormwater is one of those.
With that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Olliff. He has some opening
remarks from his perspective as county manager, just priorities
for the budget.
MR. OLLIFF: Real quickly, I think Mike was giving you the
overview about what the budget is. I wanted to try and indicate
Page 27
June 14,2000
to you what I think from your policy direction and from my
perspective what the highlights are.
The budget proposed does not increase the millage rate.
Even though the increase in assessed value and new
construction was about 1.4 percent less than it was last year.
So the increase was significantly smaller this year than it was
last year.
The budget attempts to address several suggestions that
have been made in prior budget reviews, as I sat through them
over the years, by the greater Naples Civic Association. In
particular, we took a much harder look at carryforward revenues.
As a result, the fiscal year '01 budget increase is your estimated
carryforward amounts by $3,389,000, assuring that we're not
levying taxes to fund programs or projects, and we have
sufficient revenues on hand.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's great, Tom.
MR. OLLIFF: On the other hand, the projections and
assumptions that we've made I still believe leave the county in a
position where reserves are adequate but not excessive. The
primary reserve balance for which the board is generally
concerned is the general fund reserve, which is budgeted to be
$6,097,000.
New tax revenues are generally not available until the
second week of November. And the six-week expense estimate
for that same period is approximately $22 million. So you do
have to have some cash on hand in order to be able to start your
fiscal year and carry forward your operations. And we believe
your reserve established within your '01 budget is a reasonable
figure.
In addition, we believe that a reserve, which in this coming
budget represents 5.3 of your general fund, given Southwest
Florida's recent hurricane damage and also associated fire
related issues. This is a great picture. I just wanted to show you
this. This highlights the good work that they did as part of the
recent fires in Collier County. This is what your fire districts do.
That's the structure in the middle of what was a big blazing wall
of fire, and they were able to save the single-family home.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's amazing.
MR. OLLIFF: But given those kind of occurrences, we think
that the reserve amount needs to be conservatively healthy.
Page 28
June ~4,2000
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Why don't you send that to the
newspaper so that they could do a picture on that to show how
efficient we are in dealing with catastrophes.
MR. OLLIFF: We have a number of pictures just like that,
too, to show the other houses in the area.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: I think they would like to cover
that. I see they're in the back of the room. I'm sure that would
make a very good story.
MR. OLLIFF: To highlight some of the board's major policy
priorities in the last two years, which have been transportation
and stormwater. In addition, the budget puts $1.25 million
towards a GIS system, the bulk of which is being accomplished
by Abe Skinner, the property appraiser. However, your agency
has now reached out and is making this project a joint
coordinated effort with a cross-agency team, if you will. And
we're working with him collectively.
The budget reflects the organizational changes that were
approved through a new transportation and public utilities
division. The transportation engineering and administration side
of the house has increased its staff from 15 to 31 in your
proposed budget.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Which side?
MR. OLLIFF: The transportation engineering and
administration side. Which I told you earlier there was a total of
somewhere of between 12 and 15 total employees, including
secretarial support to do your road construction projects.
While we've also added crews dedicated to the maintenance
of sidewalks, there is currently no crew available to do any
sidewalk maintenance. And from our perspective, that is a
liability issue for you. And as well a paving crew, which there's a
misconception that we have a crew that can do paving work.
And there is no paving crew within your road and bridge section,
so we are adding a paving crew.
Key change again being recommended in this budget will be
the collapsing of the different road districts into the 111 Fund,
and we'll cover that when we get to 111.
To answer Commissioner Mac'Kie's question, the budget
also provides an improved stormwater management department.
After years of continuing, in my opinion, to chase progress
towards major stormwater projects, with an administrative staff
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June 14,2000
of only two people, four additional persons are being added to try
and show some real progress to what we consider to be a real
area of need in county government.
Operationally, from what I could see, our organization was
under-resourced in both information technology and human
resources. These two internal service departments were
elevated by the entire management staff as a budget priority.
You've seen by the slides the increase and demand on the IT
side. And while we're also dealing -- I want you to know, on the
support side through IT, we're also dealing with the demand side.
We've created a committee internally to review all requests for
new software to make sure that there is a legitimate business
reason and application for that so that we don't have to continue
to enhance your IT staff to provide support for things that are
unnecessary.
We're also in the process of providing some increases to
your HR staff, because it's one of the areas, frankly, I think that
needs some additional resource.
The budget provides the sheriff with funding to implement
the pay plan changes that I think will help to address what were
130 vacancies in his agency. The budget also supports the tax
collector's efforts to continue to extend his services out into the
community with the Golden Gate satellite office. And we're also
trying to work with him to support his efforts to provide
additional driver's license services in some of his satellite offices
as well.
Finally, on the capital side, the funding for ad valorem
supports -- supported capital projects continues to be an issue.
There were $63.3 million in requests this year. And within the
millage neutral budget, I had $8.95 million to work with.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You have 50 million requested
but not permitted.
MR. OLLIFF: Right.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: 63; is that right, Tom?
MR. OLLIFF: $63 million in requests. And I had just under
$9 million to work with.
However, within this year's capital budget, we are able to
recommend a million dollars in associated architectural work for
the first building in the county space plan, which you see as the
courthouse annex building there. It's tied into Building J, and
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June 14,2000
would be located in the old --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Show us which one, John.
MR. OLLIFF: -- the old footprint of Building A. It's the dark
building in the middle of the campus, directly tied into I..
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, okay.
MR. OLLIFF: I.-1.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: L-1 there. Gotcha.
MR. OLLIFF: Right. That building is called the courthouse
annex, designed to provide space for constitutional officers and
court-related agencies, such as the state attorney's office, public
defender and clerk of courts, to bring the clerk out of the leased
space and allowing us to quit paying the lease payment for that.
That building, which will require a new parking garage on
this campus, has got an estimated cost of $29 million. And it's
got to be a multi-year project for us to be able to pull that one
off.
A new EMS station is in this budget plan to meet both
Growth Management Plan requirements and call volumes. It's
located -- we tried to show you a picture there. That is the
property just south of the entrance to Poinciana Elementary
School. That's property donated by the Grey Oaks development
as part of their original project development approval. That
project is scheduled for construction this fiscal year.
The budget also includes the construction for the new north
regional library, which is going to be located on the old DAS
property, if you're familiar with that, on Orange Blossom on U.S.
-- I mean, on Airport Road.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE'- The horse stables.
MR. OLLIFF: Clearly, I think that--
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Are we just going to retrofit
those buildings right there?
MR. OLLIFF: Right, we've got some shelving on order that
will fit in those buildings.
As part of that building, there's also a materials collection. I
had to throw this picture in. There's a materials collection of
over $1 million associated with that new building project, and
that's part of this budget as well.
That construction project will commence immediately
following the completion of the DAS project. And if you've not
had a chance to see that construction out on Davis Boulevard,
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June 14,2000
you need to swing by there. It's going very, very well, and I think
will be a doubling of the size of the number of kennels that we
have.
In the budget is also $1.2 million to continue to provide
airport enhancements. And while that's the amount of money
that we're providing from the county budget standpoint, because
of corresponding aviation grants, there's actually $3.9 million in
construction planned through both the grant and the county
contribution.
Through boater improvement trust funds, boaters will
receive a major new boat ramp and park project on the Goodland
community.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Now, what kind of funds?
MR. OLLIFF: Boater improvement trust funds.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Which comes from the state?
MR. OLLIFF: They actually come from boater registration
fees paid by local boaters. It goes to Tallahassee and is returned
to Collier County.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Do we get it all back?
MR. OLLIFF: I think there's some administrative and
handling charge on the Tallahassee side. Usually that's about 3
percent, if I remember right.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But that's not bad. I think it's
one of those that we get --
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- more back.
MR. OLLIFF: This is one of those areas where you've had
some public coming to you saying we pay this money, yet we
don't really see any direct improvement as a result. So we're
trying to tie a capital project directly to that funding source.
That's the project on Goodland.
In addition, the final phase of exotics removal from the
county's existing park system is in your budget so that we can
stand up and even though we're not required by code, we've gone
above and beyond the code in removing all the exotics from your
county parks.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Does that mean like beaches
with Australian pines?
MR. OLLIFF: Unfortunately, from my perspective, yes.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Unfortunately. When do we get
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June 14,2000
to talk about that? I don't want you to dig out those Australian
pines, if we don't need to.
MR. OLLIFF: Frankly, from your beach park perspective, it's
too late.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And I'm the environmental
whacko, but I don't.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: I was going to say, here she is,
folks.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: She's the DEW.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: And she doesn't want to take
those trees down.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yeah, I'm the designated
environmental whacko.
I like those Australian pines at the beaches.
MR. OLLIFF: Lastly, on the park side, your budget includes
construction money for the new regional park on North
Livingston Road. It also includes a major utility project in the
way of an eight million gallon per day south water plant
expansion.
And then so you know, that we are walking into that project,
understanding that from a design perspective, we're going to
have to keep the community and surrounding neighborhood in
mind from the very beginning and try and make that a public
relations project as we move along.
Transportation funding will be addressed separately, as you
get to that. But the budget does provide the continued funding
for major road improvement projects that you saw this morning,
including Golden Gate Boulevard, Immokalee Road, Pine Ridge
Road, North Airport Road, Goodlette Road and Livingston Road.
So from my perspective, I think it's a budget that tries to
address what I think were all of your priorities that we have
heard from you, as well as what I think were some internal
organizational issues that needed to be addressed. And we've
done it all and tried to maintain a millage neutral budget for you.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It sounds to me like the -- I mean,
the biggest flag I heard waving there was that capital project
requests may be underfunded. But other than that --
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Or over requested.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Or over requested. I mean,
somewhere in the middle. But $60 million in requests?
Page 33
June 14,2000
MR. OLLIFF: $63 million in requests. And a lot of that is for
-- were for future sheriff's substations. Some of that was the
large number for this courthouse annex building as well. And
that's just something that you need to keep in the back of your
mind, that as this county grows and continues to grow older, the
cost of capital maintenance and some of those things that are
non-impact fee eligible, that number is going to continue to rise.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We may need to be thinking
about a designated source on a long-term basis for --
MR. OLLIFF: Well, some of that I want you to keep in your
mind and tie it back to the graph that John showed you about the
total indebtedness figure for this county as well. And for an
operation of this size, I think there is a reasonable amount of
debt to carry. I'm not sure that we've ever really looked at it
from that perspective.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Yeah, I would like to look at that,
Tom, because we do have very low debt. And I'm looking at a
five-year capital program which -- you know, I always have said it
had to be facilities, stormwater management and roads. And I
would like to revisit particularly the facility side in a five-year
plan, that we have to look out here and really anticipate and
build what is necessary.
MR. OLLIFF: Without any more delay, let's get into your
budget.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Imagine.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: If you'd turn please in your general fund
tab, we'll just look at Page B in your summary book, which
reflects the proposed tax rates for fiscal year '01.
Just to give you an overview, general fund reflects a slight
millage decrease. We will talk about that in detail on Friday.
Pollution control does reflect a slight increase. We do have
some proposed expanded services in that area that are Growth
Management Plan related.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Great.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: The next area identifies the three road
MSTD's that we're recommending the collapse of. And then you
see the corresponding increase on the unincorporated area
general fund side, due in large part to moving all those median
maintenance costs from the road MSTD's into the unincorporated
area general fund.
Page 34
June ~4,2000
We think from not only the from standpoint of medians being
more of a regional benefit, it also just frankly simplifies the
budget. You have three less taxing units, three less separate
funds to operate, and that's kind of a direction we're headed.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: How is that -- I'm not sure I'm
understanding that. Then how do we fund that? I mean, how
does that work?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: We're funding it through -- right now, in
the current year budget, we're funding that through ad valorem
taxes in three localized taxing units -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: -- of the county. We're simply saying the
benefits from median landscaping are a regional basis; therefore,
we should tax for those on a regional basis in the unincorporated
area general fund, and simply eliminate the road MSTD's.
So what we're recommending is --
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: -- transferring the residual cash in those
funds to the unincorporated area and -- COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: -- then taxing on the regional basis for
that.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay, I see.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Golden Gate Community Center reflects a
tax increase, $16.70. But there is a proposed annex building
replacement as part of the larger scope project that will be
underway there shortly. And that's the reason for the large
increase there.
Frankly, the balance of the districts are things like fire
districts which will levy an annual -- which levy a constant
millage. In other words, in Ochopee they levy four mills, Isle of
Capri levies a constant one mill, et cetera. The only one of the
fire districts that does not do that is the Goodland Horr's Island.
That's a service contract with the City of Marco Island. And as
the value within those areas grows, the millage decreases
accordingly.
Within the median beautification areas, those also levied a
constant millage. Bayshore, three mills. Radio Road, a half a
mill. Lely Gulf, one mill -- one and a half mills, excuse me.
Forest Lakes Roadway, one mill.
Page 35
June 14,2000
So those are constant millages. The budgets are based in
large part on the recommendations of the citizen advisory
groups.
It's also important to note within that area there's a couple
of projects that we'll be kicking off shortly. Radio Road is
currently out to bid, that beautification project. And the
Bayshore project has kicked off with some smaller -- smaller
components initially. But that project will be well underway this
summer as well. So we're going to see the fruits of that effort as
well, and that should hopefully stipulate some further business
activity in that triangle area.
That's it kind of for the macro overview. What I'd like to do
now is just kind of turn us to our core agenda for the day. And
we'll start with debt service funds. And there's a -- your second
to the last tab in your summary book.
G-1 identifies your -- there's a summary of the proposed debt
service budgets for the upcoming fiscal year. There's really not
policy decisions involved for the board in this area. In fact, the --
probably the most striking item is the lack of outstanding debt.
And of the debt that we do have, the relatively short-term
nature of that existing debt -- for example, the only general
obligation debt supported by taxes is the parks GO debts, which
is Fund 206, which it will be retired in July of '03. The race track
debt is July of '03. The revenue sharing debt is October of '03. I
think you see the regular recurring pattern here of relatively
short-term nature of outstanding debt.
The ones that are larger are special assessment projects for
like Naples Park and Pine Ridge Industrial Park.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Any questions on the debt
service fund?
COMMISSIONER BERRY: No, I just have a question. Do we
share money of the race track funds with the school system?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, we do.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: We receive $446,500 on an annual basis.
Of that, the -- we have to cover the debt -- the outstanding debt
service initially, and the balance after debt service is recovered
is remitted to the school board.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Right. Okay, thank you.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: One issue here, if anything, we had built
Page 36
June 14,2000
the budget for the purchase of the helicopter, assuming a 50/50
share between general fund and EMS impact fees as the
repayment source. There's been much back and forth
discussions about eligibility of that to be paid with impact fees.
At this point, the attorney's office, County Attorney's Office,
and our impact fee consultant, Tindale & Associates, have taken
a conservative approach on that and said that should -- we
should not use any impact fees whatsoever toward that
helicopter. As a staff, we're not completely comfortable with the
logic of that decision, so that's something we're going to
continue to wrestle with a little bit.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Maybe the board could get a
written summary on that opinion?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That's fine.
From a debt service perspective, that's really the only issue.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Aren't impact fees, though, isn't
that for expanded service?
MR. OLLIFF: If it's for new and expanded service.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: For new and expanded.
MR. OLLIFF: And the argument we were making was that
this provides additional service capacity. You can significantly--
the same argument that we made with the Golden Gate
Community Center. We did a refurbishment and an expansion.
The expansion we paid for out of impact fees, refurbishment we
paid for out of taxes.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Right.
MR. OLLIFF: And all we're telling you is that we need to go
try and get that to hold still a little bit and it may make an
adjustment to you -- to this debt service budget before we get to
the end.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That concludes debt.
I'd like you to turn to the grants and trust fund summaries,
which are on Pages D-2 and D-3. Really, the only thing of note in
the grants, obviously, within grants and trust funds, that's a
function of whatever money we may be eligible for through
programming, et cetera. And on the trust fund side, that's going
to vary widely from year to year, based on donations that are
received, et cetera, confiscated property that the Sheriff's Office
may take during investigations, et cetera. So the numbers here
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June t4,2000
are going to vary widely from year to year. That's not
necessarily a bad thing, it's just a function of the nature of the
beast, so to speak.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: In other words, like confiscated
property, it just means that perhaps they haven't taken as much
property --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yeah, if you had a big seizure in one year,
you're going to have a lot more money, obviously.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: And that's used to supplement the
sheriff's budget.
On the grant side, the big thing, we're reflecting two major
grants on the CDBG side, a 750,000 neighborhood revitalization
for road construction in Immokalee, and 350,000 for road
construction in Harvest for Humanity.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Where are those? I can't find it.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Fund -- it's Section 8, HUD. It's the
second grant down. There's a fairly big increase there. Those
are the two grants that we're hopeful to receive.
Another grant with a large increase on a percentage basis is
the parks and rec's summer food grant program, which is
reflecting a major increase, but that's a function of really the
success of that program. The state has just simply allocated us
more money. And Jim Thomas works miracles with some fish
and loaves of bread to feed the hungry all summer long on the --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's kind of a sad thing that we
have so many children who don't have lunch unless they get it
from the state. but --
COMMISSIONER BERRY: I think it's breakfast as well, Pam.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's breakfast and lunch?
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Breakfast and lunch.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But the good news is that the
state's responded to the need in Collier County.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Right. We've gone from like 278,000 to
466, and that's really a function, I think, of our success with that
program and administering it well, and we've been rewarded.
And it is unfortunate that it is needed to that extent, but we're
grateful that we're able to take advantage of that program.
On the trust funds, not much --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Before you leave the grants,
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June 14,2000
what's the MPO? It's almost a 250 percent increase.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, that's for transportation
disadvantaged programs. There's, you know, for-- a match for
buses, et cetera.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's great. Good.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: On D-3, in the trust funds, as I indicated,
typically these are going to vary widely from year to year. And
as the note indicates, in the library trust fund, we received a
donation to fund a literacy program this year. That's why there is
a position that was added specifically for a literacy program
coordinator. That was a bequest for $75,000 to the library. So
that's an example of the nature of the type of funding that would
be received on an annual basis.
We'll now move to the MSTD general fund. The summary is
on Page B-2 and B-3.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: This is the unincorporated?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, this is service provided to
unincorporated area residents. Again, as I indicated in my
opening remarks, this would exclude Everglades City, Marco
Island and the City of Naples.
The proposed millage does increase. Again, though, you see
the impact on the first line on the spreadsheet on the expense
side is the road and landscape maintenance, which is simply the
transfer of the amounts that we were spending within those
three road MSTD's. And frankly, what it also does, it really
shows you how much we are spending on an annual basis for
maintenance and/or construction of median beautification
projects.
You see a million and a half dollars almost in expanded
services as well. That's for new projects, construction and
maintenance of projects that are underway. So we feel not only
from a simplification standpoint, it's also good just identifying
how much it is we do spend.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You know, when we -- at some
point, I don't know how or where it's possible to do this in the
budget process, but I wish that we could -- and probably
somewhere in one of your pie charts -- see from a priority basis
how are we choosing to spend the flexible money in the county's
budget. I know there's a lot of money that's dedicated and can't
go to any other place.
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June t4, 2000
And please don't get me wrong, I'm not -- I'm a big advocate
of this median beautification program. But when we say that
we're spending five and a quarter million dollars annually on
medians, and then you look and see what are we spending on,
you know, just the Healthy Kids, zero. Immunizations for
children, what, 400,000? It tells you something about the
priorities of local government. We've got to think about it.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Well, where's -- but I think, too,
where does the money -- where does this money come from?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Plain old ad valorem taxes, right
here.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: The 5.2 is strictly ad valorem
taxes?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, ma'am. But it was in the road
MSTD's as well, you also need to recognize that.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: It was ad valorem.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay. But was it a separate --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: It was just in three separate pots. Now
we're just saying put it in the larger pot with the other things
that we tax for in the unincorporated area.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: But it was my understanding on
the landscaping -- road and landscaping maintenance, that this
was money that, say, couldn't be used for what Pam's talking
about.
MR. OLLIFF: No.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: That's not true? It's never been
true?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Huh-uh.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That cannot be used for Healthy Kids.
MR. OLLIFF: Under the old system, you're correct. Because
it was a special -- it was a taxing district for road maintenance.
By doing it this way, you're actually putting it into a pot where it
could be used --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It was just bookkeeping before.
It was just by virtue of bookkeeping that it couldn't be before.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: I -- well, I don't know. I didn't
understand it that way. It wasn't just -- I thought it was
definitely designated.
MR. OLLIFF: It's still ad valorem money you were raising
Page 40
June 14,2000
specifically for landscaping maintenance. These were old, old
road maintenance districts that used to be associated with
maintenance in old commission districts, almost as if you had an
antiquated type, you know, road maintenance type program that
was done by district. Now it's much harder, because the major
expense there is landscaping beautification maintenance.
To make the argument that because somebody lives on the
north end of Airport Road versus two miles south, and the
median runs right through Airport Road, that that person gets a
benefit that's different from the other person, it's hard to make
that argument anymore. We think the arterial roadway median
beautification system is a county-wide -- or an unincorporated
benefit that everybody ought to pay for.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: So it's all ad valorem taxes,
we've consolidated it and said this chunk of money here now
goes for a road district beautification maintenance. Is that what
we're saying?
MR. OLLIFF: We're saying --
COMMISSIONER CARTER: We're taking that chunk of money
out of the general fund, not ad valorem taxes, to pay for this.
MR. OLLIFF: Right.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Okay. Because I do understand
what Pam's saying. I always thought before that you couldn't do
that with some of the dollars. But once you throw this into this
mix, then I think you are looking at a whole different approach.
And, I mean, I've got a concern. Maybe you can help me here,
Mike.
MR. McNEES: Two things I would clarify. One is that the
landscape portion of this five million is actually 2.3. The 5.2
million is road and landscape maintenance. So -- and a couple
years ago, staff began to make a concerted effort to lump all of
that landscape money together so you could see the cumulative
impact from year to year, because it becomes a pretty significant
piece of your budget. But that number today is only 2.3 million.
The change is simply to stop calling this MSTU by individual
road district names, take that tax money, put it in the MSTD
general funds, just for ease of dealing with it, actually. And it
would give you ultimately more flexibility with that level of
taxing. But the road maintenance support is still going to have
to be done.
Page 41
June 14,2000
I think perhaps you -- it's been represented to you that
somehow that road MSTD money was painless money or just
money that was out there every year that could be used to
maintain these medians. It was always general -- it was always
property tax money. And it is our opinion that doing it this way is
actually clearer and is a more direct way to say this is what
we're taxing you for and this is where the money's going, as
opposed to having this shadow tax out there that nobody really
understands, where they're paying a half a mill or three-quarters
of a mill for median and road maintenance but not really
understanding where that money goes. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: And I'll tell you, while I'm sure it
will be fun rhetoric to say, you know, gee, that's $2 million for
little flowers and shrubs, the truth is, when we have Leadership
Florida here in Naples this weekend, we had 200 people that, you
know, are head of corporations and everything all over the state.
Whether it's them or Florida Association of Counties, you know,
you talk to the other commissioners around the state, you talk to
anybody around the state, this helps formulate the opinion of the
community. And I hope nobody is suggesting we cut that.
I'm glad it's a bigger picture. But I just -- I know when we
talk about different priorities and all, it's easy to pick on this, but
it really does help create that imagine that is our community.
And you need drive no further than one county north to see the
difference when you look -- you know, you get on 41 up there or
you look down here and there's a huge difference in appearance
of the community.
MR. OLLIFF: We won't argue with that at all. I think what
we're trying to do is just make sure that when we make these
decisions, we're sort of making them with eyes wide open, and
this is a better way to do that for us, we think. And Mr. Chairman
COMMISSIONER CARTER: And I think this helps us
communicate to the community that this is a lump sum of money
that goes to the total beautification and maintenance, and that's
why we are a premiere county, and that's why people come here,
that's why you enjoy living here. So we're not saying, well, you
paid this much and over here you only paid this much. Everybody
pays.
Page 42
June 14, 2000
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And keep in mind, this is the
maintenance money. This isn't the capital money. We'll see that
later.
MR. OLLIFF: Right. Correct.
MR. McNEES: The last point I would make would be even
beyond the quality of life, the perception issues, the business
equation is the argument would be that this investment of the $2
million for the medians and the beautification actually comes
back to you in ad valorem property assessments.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's true.
MR. McNEES: And actually comes back to you in real
revenue. Now, that -- the reason we want to show this
separately is we want to continue to an -- to be aware of that,
and to make sure we don't get to a point where we're spending
more on the beautification than we actually feel like we could
legitimately say comes back to us. So it's just something for us
to be aware of year to year.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: There's a list of proposed expandeds
beginning on B-6 for the various departments. And I'll just
entertain any questions you may have regarding those.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Are we also going to see a
request of a not-recommended list at some point?
MR. OLLIFF: Yes.
Next fund.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: I'll tell you one thing I'm pleased to
see in here is the maintenance -- stepped up maintenance for the
cemetery and Lake Trafford out in Immokalee. That's been -- as
you well know, you've all heard from me, because I get the calls
from the concerns of the people out there that --
MR. OI. LIFF: That's something we just have to do better.
It's just --
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Looks good.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I wish you'd get us -- I guess
there's nothing -- okay, never mind.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Okay, that brings us to Page C-2, in the
special revenue section. Mr. Dublis will walk us through those
quickly. Again, there's really not a policy-making role for the
board. This is simply a fee and find revenue that we get that are
dedicated for specific purposes.
MR. DUBLIS: Revenue supporting, intergovernmental radio
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June 14,2000
communications --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And your name?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Your name, too, please.
MR. DUBUS: Name for the record is Chris Dublis.
Revenue supporting the intergovernmental radio
communications program is generated by a surcharge on moving
traffic violations. The decrease in fund total is due to additional
maintenance cost as a result of the warranty which has recently
expired.
The ADA fund for handicapped access improvements,
special need equipment is funded through fine revenue from
handicap parking violations and a cut from the Subway gross
sales.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I have thoughts on the 800
megahertz system that Mr. Olliff has heard already. But where
are we going to be hearing about the necessary improvements to
the 800 --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: We'll discuss that as part of our capital
budget on Friday. That is one of the recommended projects in
the 301, which is the county-wide capital, supported by general
ad valorem taxes.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I will save my story for there.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, this fund is simply maintenance. We
get traffic surcharge money to apply toward the maintenance of
that system.
MR. OLLIFF: Short answer is it's in there.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That moves us to community
development, Fund 113. Mr. Gambino will walk us quickly
through that discussion.
MR. GAMBINO: For the record, Tony Gambino, budget
analyst. Community development, Fund 113, is basically funded
by building permit revenue. And the major item for this year is
the building expansion on Horseshoe Road. And that's $9.5
million. And the funding will come from $5 million in cash and
4.5 mill that was approved through -- by the board through a loan.
On Page C-5, you can see the effects of the five million. You
can see carryforward decreasing.
We also have expanded requests of 1.8 million, which will be
funded by a 15 percent across-the-board fee increase, which was
approved by the Development Services Advisory Committee. And
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June 14,2000
that's to fund 13 new positions, as well as 672,900, to pay back
the loan, which will be paid over 10 years.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: In those 13 new positions, is this
what we had asked for to step up individuals over there to help
people get through the permitting process and all that a little
faster? Is that --
MR. OLLIFF'- Yes. And in fact five of those were recently
already approved by the board two board meetings ago, I believe.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yeah, for the additional building
inspectors, due to the need there as well.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Right, okay.
MR. OLLIFF: Just a result of permit volumes.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: It's important to note, as Mr. Gambino
stated, Developmental Services Advisory Committee reviews
these and is on board with the proposed requests, and the
proposed fee increase as well.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE:
to spend it.
COMMISSIONER CARTER:
enforcement's request?
This is their money, if they want
Where will we see code
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: General fund stuff?
MR. OLLIFF: Code enforcement is under 111. And we
actually just covered that already, and I think we had some
expanded service requests as part of code enforcement.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, I need to go back to that
then. Where was code enforcement? We covered it?
COMMISSIONER CARTER: I missed it.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Me, too.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: B-11 were the expanded service requests
for code enforcement. There were two positions: One for a code
investigator, one for a general operations coordinator.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We're adding two positions to
code enforcement?
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: We had added two during this
existing fiscal year as well, right? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: We talked about four, two of
them immediately and then two of them coming later.
MR. OLLIFF: You're adding four total positions.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: And that was -- as a part of the
Page 45
June ~4,2000
sign ordinance to be able to step up the enforcement. MR. OLLIFF: Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Okay, fine. Thank you.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Not enough, not enough, not
enough. I'm just going to keep saying it. It's not enough. My
opinion.
MR. OLLIFF: Noted.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I'm sorry, what was your
opinion?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's not enough.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you. Next item.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: I'm a wait-and-see guy. Let's see.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Page C-9, there are some special revenue
funds that fall under community development. Mr. Gambino will
walk us through those quickly.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Say the page number again?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: C-9.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Thank you.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: These are the pollution control fund, the
SHIP fund and the pollution cleanup fund.
MR. GAMBINO: Pollution control, Fund 114, the millage
rate's increasing from .0355 to .0447, which is a 92 cents per
$100,000 increase, which was largely due to the expanded,
which is driven by the Growth Management Plan.
And on Page C-10 you can see what the expanded is. It's a
request for update wellfield protection zone, it's a request for
monitoring of sediments, the estuaries of Collier County.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: This is a very good thing. And
this is a tax that was voted in by referendum. People indicated
their willingness to pay for this. So we're finally --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That's correct.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- using it.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: And we're not even halfway to what the
total one-tenth of a mill allowed is.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Again I ask my question: When
we monitor sediments of estuaries, walk me through the
monitor's day.
MR. OLLIFF: I think you're testing exactly what it says.
You're testing sediments to find out, like in Pelican Bay's issue,
whether you had fertilizer runoff that are affecting some of your
Page 46
June 14,2000
estuaries and bays. You're also looking for mineral content,
you're looking for pollution.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I understand the generic
purpose. But $88,000 is a lot of money. Do we have two --
COMMISSIONER BERRY: In other words, what do I do?
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: -- full-time people out there
digging in the mud every day, or do we have, you know, an all
day, eight hours a day, or do we have one person in a really
expensive lab that they send the sediment to and then once we
have answers for what we -- what's in the sediment, what do we
do with those, put them in a book on a shelf? You know, what's
88,000 bucks buy us?
MR. CAUTERO: Vince Cautero, for the record.
Our intent is to outsource as much of this as possible so we
don't have to hire existing staff members that work through
existing contracts with Florida International University and the
Water Management District. I do not want to add additional staff
members to the payroll for that very reason.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Help me understand, though. I
mean, I understand when you say, you know, gee, we're trying to
test for minerals and stuff. Great. But, I mean, you could put
$22,000 in there or you could put $200,000 in there and give me
the same explanation.
Where do we come up with $88,000, and what do we get for
$88,000? Very specifically. I mean, every single day they're out
there for four hours a day digging in the mud, or once a week
they're there doing that and it's just very expensive to take it to
the lab? Or what is 88,000 bucks? Where did that number come
from?
MR. CAUTERO: It came from a consultant's estimate on how
long it would take for them to give us the data that we need.
And the data that we need will be used to be able to generate
our data base. And specifically what we will use it for -- and this
is a question that you asked about three budget years ago that
we weren't able to give you the answer. When we have a project
like the Army Corps ElS and we rely on local data and we're
striving to have that data that we don't have and we rely on the
federal government, that's exactly what the information will be
used for. Or the Everglades restudy, when we're going to work
with these agencies and we hear that they want to spend more
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June 14,2000
money for more federal programs, if we have that local
information, we believe it will be better and it will be able to
used for local regulatory purposes. That's the reason why we
want it.
The Growth Management Plan says we'll do it. We have
been behind in a portion of that, the sediment sampling. As we
urbanize the Naples area quicker and as growth continues in our
area, we're going to need that information so that we can have
that when we come to you with new regulations, rather than rely
on the federal government or the state government.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Vince, when you go to the state,
for example, when we were fighting with the state over the
comp. plan this last time, one of the things that they complained
about -- because it's when I was up there -- was over the
business about the wellfield monitoring, you don't have data to
support that you're doing it adequately, you don't have data
analysis, you don't have data analysis. If you don't want the
state to do it to us, we have to do it ourselves, because it's the
state law.
MR. CAUTERO: That's one of the reasons. We never had
that data and everybody says use the data that the state agency
or the federal agency has. This is our attempt to try to overcome
that.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: And I guess I would see some
other internal things. Just as one example, if we ever did a
reconnect between Vanderbilt and Pelican Bay, it's always the
studies of the water and all these issues. And in order to
convince the community that it's not damaging something, you
have to have data, you need it from a reliable source that says
we've tested it for, here's the period of time, there's A,
significance, B, there's no significance, and we can connect an
estuary. But if you don't have that, you'll always have people
yelling and screaming that we're ruining something.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And we might be.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: And we could be.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Don't know.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: I don't know.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Next, please.
MR. GAMBINO: The only other thing on that was the SHIP
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June 14,2000
program, requesting two part-time positions, as the increase in
applications, process loans.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That's been a successful program for Mr.
Mihalic. As we continue to get more money, obviously they'll
have more loans to process.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I would just comment quickly
about that, that I get a lot of -- not a lot. I have gotten several
telephone calls complaining about how difficult the process is,
the reimbursement process. I think that's SHIP money, where
you pay to have the sink fixed. And apparently it's very
bureaucratic and very complicated. And I just hope that if
there's anything you can do to make that better and simpler, you
would.
MR. MIHALIC: I'm not sure. When we give a down payment
and closing cost assistance loan per the state regulations, we
also have up to $2,500 for small fix-it repairs.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's the one that --
MR. MIHALIC: I'm not quite sure. We demand that that
money be used within six months. That's been a problem with
some clients who want to hold it longer. We do want an estimate
from a contractor ahead,of time.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'll tell you real quickly what the
kind of complaints I hear is you can't go to Home Depot and buy
a refrigerator and install it yourself. You have to go to a fancy
place and have -- because it has to be professionally installed
when all you really have to do to install it -- a refrigerator, almost
anybody can do, but the county requires it to be done by a
professional, and that means you have to pay the higher fees.
And this is probably too much detail for this particular meeting.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Yes, all those in favor of that,
say aye.
MR. MIHALIC: Let me respond to that. A person can
certainly go and buy a refrigerator from Home Depot, but they
can't go and buy the tile and the grout and install it themselves.
We have to have --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We'll talk about it more --
MR. MIHALIC: -- a contractor that does that.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE'. -- not in this forum.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Page C.14 is the listing of the various
small taxing districts that the county has for road construction
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June 14,2000
maintenance. Again, those are recommended for collapsing into
the unincorporated area.
The street lighting districts, there's a summary --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Before you go to lighting, as
much as I like what you were telling us earlier about the
landscaping on the road district maintenance, there's one policy
problem I have with collapsing these road districts, and that is,
hadn't the theory been that if you live in Road District 2 you pay
for maintaining the road within those boundaries as opposed to
paying county-wide road maintenance? If you collapse them,
then if I live in East Naples, I'm paying for road maintenance in
North Naples, and vice versa.
And that's a policy decision, it seems to me. If the board
wants to support it --
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: I'll tell you the other worry
there, too, is individual commissioners have actually had some
influence in their own road district up until this point. Which is
good, because they usually have more familiarity there than the
balance of the board. And he's going to know his district more
than I am, and the specifics there. I hate to see all that get
mingled.
I like the accounting end of it and where you were talking
before, but, you know, I don't know want to have to go struggle --
my road district has "X" number of dollars left over this year,
there's some place appropriate to put that. You know, the
community can often share that with their commissioner. But if
it's out of a lump sum --
MR. OLLIFF: And appreciate, too, that all the commissioners
don't have a district.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But we could, instead of lump
them, we could re-divide them. I mean, that's another option.
MR. OLLIFF: I think you're going to have a hard time making
that justification that the real benefit is limited to the area of a
commission district boundary. And I don't think the ability for
commissioners to hear from constituents and tell us that there
are potholes in areas that need to be fixed is going to be affected
by this. But Mike, you may want to add some --
MR. McNEES: Well, I'd say a couple of things. One is you
could make the same argument about a park. You know, we pay
for parks throughout the unincorporated area, and each of you
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June 14,2000
has had individual interests in different parks, and you certainly
don't lose your ability to make -- to tell staff you have a priority
with a particular park, any less than you lose that ability to tell
us you have a priority interest in a particular segment of a road.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Of course, the people in East
Naples are more likely to drive on a North Naples road than they
are to use a North Naples park, and they're already paying for the
North Naples park and its maintenance in the same way that
they are East Naples park. So it probably is just a more
straightforward, honest way to go.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: And it doesn't remove from the
capital side where you can get private participation in doing
these things. That's a different issue. All we're talking about is
maintenance.
MR. McNEES'. Correct.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Other questions on the
transportation page? Thank you.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: The only expanded there was Radio Road
beautification maintenance proposed on the upcoming year on
the project that will soon be underway. On Page--
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Let's go on to enterprise funds.
MR. SMYKOWSKI.' We're on C-18, the fire districts.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Sorry, I skipped ahead. Sorry.
MR. DUBUS.' Chris Dublis, for the record, again.
In Isle of Capri, additional revenue to pay for expanded
service is derived from growth in Fiddler's Creek.
In Ochopee, there are no expanded services and the millage
rate is still four mills.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Any questions on emergency
services?
COMMISSIONER CARTER: No.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: No.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Tourist development, on C-22. Simply
what we'll do there, these are the budgets, frankly, that you saw
in your executive summary yesterday, with money just reflected
in reserves in each of the respective funds. Based on your
direction and decisions made yesterday we'll simply--whatever
you approved will be reflected in the budget. That's the beauty
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June 14,2000
of this revised process in that the budget will be reflective of
policy decisions made.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Questions on tourist
development?
COMMISSIONER BERRY: No.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: No.
MR. SMYKOWSKI.' Page C-25, there's a kind of a catchall of
miscellaneous special revenue funds. The museum, again, that
will reflect the policy decision made yesterday.
The Golden Gate Community Center, the millage is
increasing there, but there are three expanded services
identified on C-26. That's the driving reason behind the millage
increase. Again, primarily the replacement of the annex building.
And then there's three small funds, courts and related, for
guardianship. There's no proposed expanded services there.
Public records modernization, there's filing fee revenue. The
clerk is proposing to use that money toward purchase of an
imaging system, as well as a partial payment on a new financial
system for the county.
The sheriff, the E 9-1-1 budget. The board had approved
about two weeks ago the proposed rate for the E 9-1-1, so there's
not --
MR. OLLIFF: Two things I need to point out on this budget.
One, this is where we answer your question about the museum's
original TDC request versus what the actual number that you
saw yesterday at the board meeting was. The original number
was actually prepared by budget, and it was prior to the
museum's annual budget actually being put together. It was
before what we call green bars and everything else were even in
place. So they were making their best estimate at the time.
As they finalized the budget and knew what exact
retirement rates and all the other issues were, that number was
adjusted by the actual budget request by $8,000.
Second thing here is on the -- the Clerk of Courts, that
financial management system, I just -- you need to be aware of
that. That is a big deal. That is a financial management system
that we have currently is, I believe, a 1983 vintage, and is not a
very good financial management system. It has been tweaked
and reprogrammed so many times that the clerk will tell you, it
doesn't do what he wants it to do, and it certainly doesn't do,
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June 14, 2000
from our agency's standpoint, what we would like for it to do
either.
It's probably in total a 2 to $3 million project. It's going to
be done over a couple of years in phases. It's a joint project
where he's actually using some of his own trust fund monies and
combining it with some of your monies in order to be able to do
that project.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Golden Gate Community center
here, the original structure was built out of special tax? MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Some of the additional things on
there have been paid out of either impact fees or other various
sources. This expansion here you indicated was due to the
replacement of the annex. Does that mean the annex will be
owned fully by the special taxing district and not by the county?
MR. OLLIFF: Yes.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you. Any other questions
on miscellaneous special revenue?
Now we go to enterprise funds.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, sir. We're on Page E-2 and E-3. Mr.
Finn's going to cover the highlights there, as the interim division
administrator.
MR. FINN: Thank you. Edward Finn, utilities administrator.
Just to start off, I want to give you an idea of what the focus
is for next year. Our first focus for water and sewer utilities has
to do with competitiveness. The board's already seen a rate
reduction last year. That's a clear reflection of our intent to
remain competitive with the private sector and with the other
private utilities that we compete with.
Our second focus for next year is going to be a continuation
or an upgrade of our good neighbor policy as it involves both odor
control and noise control. Of course, in the community we live in
we always need to be responsive to system growth. And
particularly in utilities, that's important. This budget reflects
that as well.
As you know, our system is aging. It's not a young system
as it once was. As a result of that, we have considerable
enhancements in our maintenance function reflected in this
budget.
And the final thing is enhanced and modernized automation
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June 14,2000
throughout our system. And that's part of remaining competitive.
That's kind of the overview of what went into establishing
this budget. The specifics there deal with the reorganization.
And you'll see some big adds and some big subtracts in the
percentage change column. And those reflect the movement of
positions from DOR into the utilities fund itself, as well as a
streamlining of the administrative section from nine people to
three people.
There is no rate increase associated with this budget. There
is considerable capital funding for next -- for this year's projects,
which include, as you know, a $30 million water plant expansion
and some other substantial projects.
If there are any questions, I'll be happy to try to answer
those.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Questions? Thank you.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That will move us to the miscellaneous
enterprise funds on Page E-7. Very simply, that's --
MR. DUBLIS: Chris Dublis, on the public record.
MR. SMYKOWSKI'- Chris, hang on a second.
Miscellaneous enterprise funds: Debt service, really no
policy decisions there. That's simply outstanding debt on
existing bond issues. Marco water and sewer district, we've
turned over operations to the City of Marco Island pursuant to
the board's policy direction. The residual cash will be split
between the portion going to the City of Marco Island, with the
balance going to the general fund.
Goodland water is simply a status quo budget. No
expandeds, no rate increases down in that district.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Mike, may I -- Mr. Chairman, may I
go back to Mr. Finn just for a moment? MR. FINN: Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: On Page E-5, he's got a situation
where they have a large meter maintenance crew to perform
testing and maintenance. I don't quarrel with that, but have we
established some returns on investments? Otherwise, you must
have been doing something different before, and therefore, you're
trying to upgrade or do something different?
MR. FINN: Yes, that's a very good point.
Frankly, with the system growth, our large meter
maintenance crews have not been as effective as we would like
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June 14, 2000
them to be. Our meter -- meter -- regular meter maintenance
hasn't been done on the schedules we were looking for. These
additions you're looking at are going to allow us to get back to
the schedule that we feel is appropriate both from a revenue
standpoint and from an overall maintenance standpoint.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Okay. Well, there's a key to me,
to make sure we don't lose revenue. MR. FINN: Yes, sir.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Okay, thank you.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Two quick questions in the
same area, Ed, both under water operations; one for distribution
and one for lab. Request for an additional vehicle. Couple of
different questions. One, are these people -- are these two
supervisors non-existent right now? And if they are existent
right now, how are they getting around?
And on the second one, same question, if it's the lab staff for
collection and analysis of tests in the field, how are they being
transported right now?
MR. FINN: Both very good questions. Both questions I
asked. The distribution maintenance -- distribution folks are
currently sharing a vehicle, and as a result they're not as
efficient as they should be. We took a hard look at that and
we're recommending approval of that one.
The lab is a similar thing. We have changes in our
requirements to do monitoring, as well as system growth. The
only way to continue to stay current with what we need to do
testing on is to add a vehicle so that staff will be able to get to
those sites. We did take a hard look at both of those before
recommending them.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: And what's the difference
between the two vehicles that cost $4,000?
MR. FINN: The distribution folks will be using -- will have
trucks, have normal full-sized trucks, and the lab people will
have smaller trucks.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Public utilities and solid waste funds are
summarized on Page E-9. The expanded services are identified
on E-10 and E-11.
MR. VINCENT: Good morning. For the record, Gary Vincent,
office of management and budget.
Page 55
June 14,2000
On Page E-9 you will notice that there are four solid waste
funds. In Fund 470 there is an addition of personnel from DOR,
which is for scale operations. And in Fund 473, the mandatory
assessment fund, personnel from DOR as well are now at Fund
473.
The expanded requests are on Pages 10 and 11. Are there
any questions about those requests?
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Why do we have $100,000 for
public relations campaign? I would like some more information
on that. What are we getting for $100,0007
MR. FINN: That's a very good question. If I may, generally
solid waste was -- the solid waste budget was put together with
some focuses in mind. One of our key focuses is improving our
recycling and waste reduction efforts. And to that end, staff is
convinced that we need to provide more education to the public
on the need to do recycling in an effort to reduce the overall
waste stream.
We came up with a program, a set of funds that are going to
allow us to do that. I think next year you're going to see a
renewed effort, a serious effort, and a serious improvement in
our overall recycling as a result of this expenditure.
MR. OLLIFF: They put this in there at my request. I -- we are
at 25 percent, we're supposed to be at 30. I'm working with
Waste Management, the current collector, on what they call
slicks recycling, junk mail recycling. And we wanted to provide
some additional public education as well. We're just trying to get
to that 30 percent number.
In terms of the expense versus the size of this program,
$100,000 is not a lot of money to put towards a public
county-wide education program, if we can achieve that -- some
significant changes in our actual recycling rate.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And again, this is money that
only can be used for garbage related issues.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Okay. And so we have some
benchmarks to show, if we spend $100,000, at least we feel that
this is where we were and this is what we're able to achieve.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: With our hundred grand.
MR. OLLIFF: If it moves up from 25 to closer to that 30, then
we'll be able to see some return on that.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Could we red flag that and just
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June 14,2000
get more detail on that before we wrap up? MR. OLLIFF: Sure.
MR. FINN: If I may, on Page E-11 there's an expanded
request for $129,000. That request is going to drive a small less
than 2 percent rate increase in the mandatory collection fee next
year. That program involves the replacement of lost, stolen or
damaged receptacles. It also funds the repair of private
driveways that are damaged by turnarounds made by the large
waste collection trucks.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Shouldn't Waste Management
be picking that up? If they do the damage, shouldn't they be
paying for the repair?
MR. FINN: It's not covered by the contract. And they have
been nominally covering the repairs over the last year or two.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: When is their contract up? Next
year, isn't it?
MR. FINN: As you know, we're returning to the board in
October with an RFP that the board hopefully is going to approve
us moving forward with. I believe it's in mid-2001 that contract
is up.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: That will give us a good
opportunity for the negotiation process.
MR. FINN: We're recommending approval of this. It's going
to give us more flexibility in actually making those repairs in a
timely manner. And frankly, our goal is to minimize the impact
on the customer.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It has to be done.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: I don't disagree with that, but it
just triggers in my mind a negotiable item when we review the
contract.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Final question is, where is the
recycling van going?
MR. FINN: The recycling van is going to continue to be with
us. It is -- that truck is inappropriate for use at the landfill. They
simply need an appropriate vehicle that's going to allow them to
travel around the landfill as they need to.
MR. OLLIFF: It says it won't be available. It won't be
available to the director and the coordinator because hopefully
we'll fill that recycling position that is currently vacant is the
reason I think they're able to drive the van now.
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June 14,2000
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you.
That concludes enterprise. We'll go to internal services.
MR. SMYKOWSKI.' There's one more miscellaneous
enterprise on E-15. Short and sweet, it's the First Responder
training. We received money from the fire districts for
performing trainings.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Any questions on that?
COMMISSIONER CARTER: No.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Internal service.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Internal service. Pages F-2 and F-3.
MR. DUBI. IS: The DOR was eliminated as part of the county
manager's reorganization. There was nothing budgeted for that.
The three self-insurance funds are all actuarially sound. In
particular, the property and casualty fund reflects an increase in
auto insurance rates. This is after no rate increase in over eight
years. These revenues will fund additional properties, such as
new buildings, such as the domestic animal building and the
helicopter.
The overall increase in the health fund is due to an increase
in billing, based on an increase in estimated claims costs.
The Workmen's Compensation fund has an overall increase
in the fund reserves. This is due to one-half million this year and
400,000 next year from the special disability trust fund
reimbursements. Expandeds are on F-3 to F-5.
The fleet management overall increase is driven by fuel
costs. In the motor pool capital recovery fund, the size of the
fund grows as the number of vehicles increases. Expandeds are
on F-6.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And I just need to understand the
-- I think this is a great idea, this wellness program. That money
-- I get confused every year on these internal service funds.
That's ad valorem money transferred into this fund?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Partially. It comes from all the various
operating funds. So there's utility money in there, solid waste
money, community development money, as well as general fund.
And it's in there in proportion to
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE:
the number of employees --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Right.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE:
wellness program?
-- who will be tapping into the
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June 14, 2000
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Correct.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And -- okay.
MR. OLLIFF: And again, this is just one of the things that
we're trying to do to address that increase in healthcare cost
line that you saw.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Question on the Department of
Revenue. I know we dismantled it and moved these people into
other divisions. Does this end up being a situation where we're
just netting out whatever it took to operate that division and just
moving the people and dollars into other divisions -- MR. OLLIFF: Yes.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: -- or did we end up saving some
money by doing this?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We were supposed to save
money by un -- the first time, so --
MR. OLLIFF: I think what we've done is when we unbundled
it, we left the expenses where they were. We will go back and
see how our collection rates are. There's -- there's -- each of the
separate areas has got collection rate information that they need
to collect, and we'll see what our cost per collection is at the
end of the next year, once we've moved it out into the operating
departments.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Say that again?
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, you know, I'm glad we did
that. And I believe the point of service and all that should be
where it is.
Just a general information question on my part, because it
was mentioned. We were supposed to save a lot of money doing
it the other way, which I don't think ever materialized. So maybe
we just became more efficient by getting rid of it.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Any other questions on internal
services?
That takes us to capital.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes, sir. I'll turn it over to Mr. Vincent,
the senior budget analyst, who will be discussing the impact fee
supported capital today on the gas tax on the roadside, as well
again Friday we'll discuss any capital supported by ad valorem.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And where will we see the
breakdown on what was requested but not recommended on
capital? Today?
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June 14, 2000
MR. OLLIFF: I'll hand it out to you at the end of the
workshop so you can have it.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay.
MR. VINCENT: Good morning. Gary Vincent again.
On Page H-2 and H-3 is the gas tax fund on 313. And that is
pretty much the summary of the entire fund. And that's there
because this year, or FY '01, we are adding the engineers and
project managers that were in the public works engineering
department. Those personnel that are moving to transportation
will now be shown in Fund 313. So that's why you're seeing
those first three lines there in Fund 313; the personnel, the
operating and the capital costs for those positions.
If you turn to pages --
MR. McNEES: One little item while we're on this page, if
you'll forgive me. Mr. Olliff graciously and somewhat mistakenly
patted me on the back for all of that road work you saw a little
while ago. These are the guys who did it and it's your
transportation engineers, that are now engineering department.
They deserve the credit for what's going on out there, and I
wanted to recognize them for that.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You both do.
MR. VINCENT: Pages H-4 and H-5 show the forecast for road
projects this year. This is a little bit different than what you've
seen in the past in that I've sorted them with the largest projects
first, and then I've grouped like projects together, such as
Immokalee Road and Livingston Road so that you could see them
all together.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Thank you.
MR. VINCENT: And then also on the far right, we show
pretty much what phase each one of these projects are in.
If you have any questions about these projects, I'd be happy
to answer them.
I would like to mention, though, down at the bottom, it
shows loan proceeds of $8.6 million. Based upon a cash flow
analysis, we don't expect to really need that loan this current
fiscal year, but we will need it next year.
The total where you see 49.9 million in projection expenses,
that will be under contract, but not necessarily paid to the
contractors by the end of the fiscal year. That's why we're not
forecasting to actually need that loan prior to September 30th.
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June 14, 2000
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So I don't understand why it's on
here then, if we're not going to use it this year.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: We will need a commitment or pledge to
borrow funds. The last time -- the last expansion to Immokalee
Road, we were able to manage that with a pledge to borrow if
needed, but based on cash on hand. Obviously we don't want to
borrow funds if we have cash in the bank. So it's simply a
budgetary tool to allow us to award a contract, but based on the
actual timing of the payments to the contractor, we may not
actually need to draw down --
MR. McNEES: To say it another way, Commissioner, to open
a contract you need an appropriation. To have an appropriation
you need a revenue. That's your bond issue, your debt.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I get it. Thank you.
MR. OLLIFF: Gary?
MR. VINCENT: The following pages, 6, 7 and 8 are the FY
'01 requested budget for road projects. And you'll see that the
loan proceeds there are budgeted at 58.3 million. If you add the
8.6 million, we're talking about $62 million, basically.
MR. OLLIFF: That's shown on Page H-8 in your budget book.
The third line from the bottom, there's a $58 million number
there.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Where --
MR. OLLIFF: Where are the surprised looks?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What was your question?
MR. OLLIFF: I was waiting for some surprised looks of a $58
million loan, but I guess there aren't any.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: Shouldn't be.
MR. OLLIFF: Then we'll keep moving.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: No, we talked about it.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: We talked about it, and we gave
you the direction and you're doing it.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: No surprises here.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Which is a pleasant change.
MR. OLLIFF: Okay, we're ready to go then.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: You can't tell somebody to go do
something and then complain about it it's going to cost money.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The question I had on here is, I
think this is the point in the process where we usually talk about
where we are in the transferring gas tax from capital to
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June 14, 2000
maintenance?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: How are we on moving that back
to where it ought to be?
MR. OLLIFF: We added another million dollars this year, as
the board's policy has been, to add another million each
consecutive fiscal year. And we're up to $3 million this year.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: As a percentage of total, that's?
MR. VINCENT: I believe it's about 20 percent.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: How many, 20?
MR. OLLIFF: 20.
MR. VINCENT: Yes, ma'am.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And at what -- would it be budget
policy next year when we would discuss the possibility of
increasing that? I mean, if I'm interested in proposing that that --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Yes. Our policy has been on an annual
basis to increase it with three million, four million, five million, et
cetera. So you would expect to see four million, obviously,
unless you were interested in accelerating that.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm interested in accelerating it.
So I just hope next budget policy time, you'll help me remember
to talk about that.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: You also need to recognize that some of
your gas taxes are limited in their nature. Some have flexibility,
can go maintenance or construction. Some are specifically
dedicated to construction, so you do not have the flexibility.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Let's save next year's budget
policy talks for next year.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay, but my question here, then
the 20 percent answer, is that 20 percent of the total or 20
percent of the available? That's a this-year question. MR. OLLIFF: Total.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: That's of the total.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: So can you tell me what
percentage of available? If not, would you tell me to wrap up?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: I'll get that for you.
MR. McNEES: The other big picture thing you need to keep
in mind, and as the guy who originally recommended you start to
peel that money back into maintenance, I'm going to stand up
and talk about the other side of it.
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June 14, 2000
Now, that gas tax is getting pretty popular. You know, we're
taking part of it to go back to maintenance. But you're also
peeling somewhere between four and five million of it off the top
to fund that bond issue that you're talking about, that 50 million
a year, or 45 million a year right off the top. So that money starts
to get kind of thin. And in the absence of any kind of other
capital revenue, we're going to have to bring back to you the
longer term.
How do we deal with that? You can't continue to borrow
against it and transfer it back to maintenance and use it for
maintenance and capital. That money only goes so far. So that's
the big picture.
COMMISSIONER CARTER: Thank you, Mike.
MR. McNEES: And that bogeyman is in the background and
you need to not forget about it.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And where I think it ought to go
is that it ends up that the part that's capital is the borrowed, and
the part that -- and everything else is maintenance.
MR. McNEES: But you've got to pay that debt service with
something, and that debt service on a $50 million issue is pretty
big.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And so it may end up being 50/50.
MR. OLLIFF: We can have that discussion in February of
next year when we set budget policy.
COMMISSIONER BERRY: I'll watch it on TV.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Somebody send me a memo.
MR. VINCENT: Water projects are on Page H-9. And again,
with water projects I sorted them so that the larger projects
appear at the top. And you can see that the south county water
plant is the number one project there.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE.' Couldn't read it.
MR. VINCENT: Wastewater projects are on Page H-10.
If you have no questions on those, H-11 has the solid waste
projects. The first one, the $15,000, are our follow-up costs for
partial closure of Cell 6 and the fan system that they are
currently working on.
The next one, reserves, is Fund 471. And that is reserve
money in case the board decides to opt for the early out contract
with WC, Waste Management. And then the board would be
responsible for closing that cell entirely and the post-closure
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June 14, 2000
costs.
On Page H-12 is the library impact fee fund budget. And the
biggest part of that budget is the new north regional library.
You'll notice that that library, in order to fund that library, we
have to take loan proceeds in the amount of $5.4 million, and
we'll be repaying that over 10 years.
MR. OLLIFF: Out of impact fees.
MR. VINCENT: That's correct, impact fees.
MR. OLLIFF: Go ahead, Gary.
MR. VINCENT: Parks impact fees, Page H-13, Fund 345, is
the incorporated regional park impact fee. We are dedicating all
of those impact fees toward the debt service of the north
regional park, so there will be no projects in that fund.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But that's regional?
MR. VINCENT: Yes. That can only be spent on regional
parks.
Fund 346 --
MR. OLLIFF: That's the fund we're bleeding down, since
we've combined those two, and we're just getting rid of that.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Good.
MR. VINCENT: Fund 346 is the combination of regional and
community park impact fees in the unincorporated portion of the
county. And that's where most of our projects will be funded
from in the future. Again --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Anybody know what the Lely
amphitheater is but me? I don't know what that is.
MR. OLLIFF: Yes, you do.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I do?
MR. OLLIFF: You do.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: What is it?
MR. OLLIFF: That's the property being donated by Lely to --
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Oh, yes, I do.
MR. OLLIFF: -- the county where we have to put some
facility on it within the next 12 to 18 months in order to secure
the property. The plan is --
COMMISSIONER BERRY: What's the location exactly?.
MR. OLLIFF: Directly adjacent to the Edison Community
College property.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Out by Edison, that land that we
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June 14,2000
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: It's an 18,000-seat
amphitheater.
MR. VINCENT: Another addition in this year's budget is --
you'll see on Page H-16, there is a description of each project
that hopefully should answer any of your questions.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: There you go.
MR. VINCENT: Then on Page H-17 is a summary of all
capital parks projects that shows all funds and what the total
cost would be for each project across all the funds.
MR. OLLIFF: Just a note, a good department. If you look at
the right-hand columns, they've got a lot of numbers in the
forecast columns and not a lot of corresponding numbers in the
'01, meaning they don't carry forward money. They spend their
money and they build their projects.
MR. VINCENT: If there are no questions about parks, on
Page H-19 are the TDC beach renourishment projects. And you
saw those yesterday. They are not different from what you saw
yesterday.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: This does not include the ones
that were renewed by the TDC?
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And by the board yesterday, so --
MR. VINCENT: I can't answer that question. It does -- it
includes all the projects that were presented to the TDC.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Mr. Olliff, will you remove -- if
there are any items here that were rejected by the TDC and/or
rejected by the board, will you make sure they're removed?
MR. OLL. IFF: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you.
MR. VINCENT: On Page H-23 is the EMS impact fee fund. We
have two EMS stations which are budgeted next year. The East
Naples Station 19 and Station 21, Grey Oaks. We are showing
loan proceeds in order to be able to pay for those projects of
$835,000, and the corresponding debt service of 398,000.
If there are no questions, the remaining capital funds, the
Ochopee Fire and Isle of Capri, those impact fee funds are there
for the eventual purchase of capital equipment or buildings.
There is not enough money in there to do that at this time.
The correctional facility impact fee is also building reserves
for the eventual construction of a correctional facility.
The road assessments receivable fund on Page H-27 is used
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June 14,2000
to make intrafund loans for things as the Bayshore District and
the Radio Road Beautification District.
And if there are no questions, that concludes the capital
portion.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: Thank you.
Mr. Olliff, or Mr. Smykowski, anything you want to wrap up
with?
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Only to say this year, I apologize to the
board in terms of getting your packages -- you're used to get
them a little earlier. This year we were impacted dramatically by
the fact that the constitutional officer budgets were not
submitted until June 1. In prior years they were submitted on
May 1. Therefore, we had a general fund roll-up and know the
millage picture much earlier in the game. This year, it did not
come until after that period. And as a result, we were making
changes up and until last Thursday.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And we gave them that special
permission, just --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Right, because--
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- to remind you, so that next
year's, those of us who are here --
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Next year we could probably fall back to
the May I submittal date. We've already had -- you know, you
made your pay plan decision and talked about the two-year
implementation, so that should be much simpler next year. That
was the primary reason that we held off this year.
COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's right.
CHAIRMAN CONSTANTINE: On Friday, 9:00 a.m., we'll do
the general fund. When we work our way through those, then
we'll do the constitutional officers. Unless there's anything else,
we'll go and we'll see you all at 5:05 today.
MR. SMYKOWSKI: Thank you. Appreciate your time today.
Page 66
June ~4,2000
There being no further business for the good of the County,
the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 11:30 a.m.
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX
OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF
SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL
TIMOTI:Ff J. COI~STANTINE, CHAIRMAN
.., ,. -...~ .... ATTEST.
:?.?i.!~/?~:.~ii~WI,~GHT E. BROCK, CLERK
These m~tes approved by the Board on c~'////~
presented or as corrected
; as
TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT
REPORTING SERVICE, INC., BY CHERIE' R. LEONE, NOTARY
PUBLIC
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