BCC Minutes 02/07/1994 W (Strategic Planning)Reported by:
TELE:
ORIGINAL
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
STRATEGIC PLANNING CONFERENCE
February 7, 1994
9:00 a.m.
Collier County Museum
Naples, Florida 33962
Christina J. Reynoldson, RPR
Deputy Official Court Reporte~
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS
Carrothers Reporting Service, Inc.
20th Judicial Circuit - Collier County
3301 East Tamiami Trail
Naples, Florida 33962
(813) 732-2700
FAX: (813) 774-6022
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BOARD MEMBERS:
Timothy Constantine
Bettye Matthews
John Norris
Butt i. Saunders
Michael Volpe
APPEARANCE~
STAFF:
George Archibald - Transportation Administrator
Mike Arnold - Utilities Administrator
Paul Brigham - Court Administrator
Dick Clark - Community Development Administrator
Tom Conrecode - OCPM Director
Neil Dorrill - County Manager
Jennifer Edwards - Assistant to the County Manager
Bill Hargett - Assistant County Manager
Norris Ijams - Emergency Services Director
Bill Lorenz - Environmental Services Administrator
Mike McNees - Budget Director
Leo Ochs - Administrative Services Administrator
Tom Olliff - Public Services Administrator
ALSO PRESENT:
Professor Leslie "Pepper" Martin
Chris Stratton
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PROCEEDINGS
MR. DORRILL: Good morning. My only role here
today is to introduce Professor Martin who the Board has
selected and who has graciously given up his time,
probably more time than he ever thought would be
necessary, to prepare for today's session.
As part of Just a brief introduction of Professor
Martin, he is a professor meritus and formally with the
University of Wisconsin and they actually got to the Rose
Bowl this past year, which is great for them.
He's originally from Wisconsin and had worked with
the university there teaching marketing, management,
political science. He and another individual formed a
professional management company and he's been involved in
hundreds of seminars, training seminars for business
people, doing a lot of strategic development planning
activities for the private sector.
He retired in 1987 from the University of Wisconsin
and has been in Naples and is a friend and neighbor of
Jack Pointer's, which is how we first became introduced
to him. Affectionately known as Pepper }{artin, but not
to be confused with the old football coach at Georgia
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'Tech.
Pepper, I want to thank you collectively on behalf
of everyone who's here. We actually have a little
scenario and exercise for the class this morning and I
think in order to make it work we're going to have to
choose up teams. This won't be as bad as your old Sunday
School class where they made you pair up in teams and
whatnot.
The point of the exercise is Just to introduce the
concept of group decision making and the importance of
making decisions and reaching consensus in groups. For
those of you who thought you were going to be prepared
for this, you're wrong because they've changed the
exercise over the weekend. So nobody's ever seen this
one before.
I'm going to let Jennifer walk us through the
exercise instrument that we have and explain it to us.
(A discussion was held off the record.)
PROFESSOR MARTIN: I want to say good morning.
Well, I was going to say good morning. I can almost now
say good afternoon.
I probably should thank you for inviting me. This
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volunteerism is a very great thing, and I found that out.
I'm not sure I volunteered for this Job. I think there
are people in the audience who somehow conscripte~ me,
and all of a sudden I felt like a volunteer.
I nee~ to tell you the first time I volunteered was
in 1942. I was in the Army in California in the infantry
and one cool morning standing at reveille our sergeant
came up and after all this, you know, all present and
accounted for, all present and accounted for, all ~resent
and accounted for, he says, "Company, I want four people
who'd like to volunteer this morning to be truck
drivers."
I said, Boy, that's great, you know, 25 mile hike
planned, I can get out of that and so forth. So I
steppe~ forward, steppe~ forward, stepped forward. It
was a great day. We pushed the wheelbarrow with 60
pounds of gravel around a company area. So that's an
experience I forgot about.until Just recently.
I'm not a big part of this program. In fact, my
part is probably 95% done. I'm here really to -- I'm not
here to plan. I'm not here to set goals or objectives.
I really thought I would present to you in this written
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form the workbooks you have a road map to what I think is
a logical way for a governmental body such as this to do
strategic planning.
Because of the legal constraints on the people
involved, you have the commissioners with their legal
duties and responsibilities, you have the Florida state
constitution which is spelled out the kind of government
that you have, you have an ordinance that sets forth the
duties and responsibilities of the county administrator.
so I selected from my experiences and readings and
talking with many people over the last 50 years being in.
this business that I suggested to you, which we're going
to unveil and which you probably read about, I hope,
top down/bottom up planning, strategic planning.
And I have to make another remark that I think is
very apropos. We're not just talking about strategy
here, we're talking about tactics. They come from the
world of army and war. Those are war terms. Strategy is
how are we going to win the war. I don't want to liken
this to a war, but it's a very serious matter. And
tactics are how are we going to win the little parts as
we go along the way to winning the war.
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And the reason it
A strategy is the overall, which in this case would
be a strategic plan. And a tactic would be a goal or an
objective within the overall plan to achieve what this
group as.a group wants to achieve.
A friend of mine who I have great respect for by
the name of A. J. Hancock who's spoken all over the
country on communications, on this similar subject to
planning has coined the term, which has been used,
written about, talked about for years, called "shared
thinking."
And that's what I hope we can do today is for this
group to share their thinking in respect to long-range
planning and the goals and objectives for this county,
hopefully. And I've suggested in here five years, but I
notice in the Nesbit Study (phonetic) they're talking
about ten years. And I'm talking about strategic things,
very important things, the most important things that we
can put on the docket that will make this a beautiful
county to live in in Florida.
So Jennifer, this should be fun.
should be fun is because management and planning, for me,
is a fun activity. And why? Because it gets results.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER CO~TY, NAPLES, FL 33962
Without proper planning, without execution, without
follow-up, without evaluation, you don't get results.
And so I think that's what we're after today, I hope, is
results.
Now, let's see what else do we have here? What we
have done here is Just condensed a few thoughts today. I
don't want to go over this and I don't want to lecture.
It's not my Job to lecture. In just a few minutes
here -- I just want to remind you of some things I think
you already know. These should not be really new. These
should be things you already know, and maybe some of
these will stimulate your thinking.
There may be a new thought in here, but planning
comes from management, and management only really has
four major goals. The first one is planning and the
second one is organizing and the third one is leading and
the fourth one is controlling and evaluation.
Now, we're talking here in county government a
group planning. We're talking about people in groups at
various levels doing the type of planning that they're
assigned to do legally within the system.
And in group planning, two of those stand out as
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being more important than others. And, of course, the
first one is the plan strategically$ and the second one
is to control the plan as it goes through the system.
And if you don't do those things which are absolutely
necessary, you're probably going to falter and you're
probably not going to be successful. It's that simple.
Three levels of management which are most often
identified as top management -- I care not what you call
top management. In industry we call top manager a CEO,
Chief Executive Officer. Sometimes it's a different term
that's used. It doesn't matter as long as you identify
top management as the people that originate where are we
going.
And that's what happens in strategic planning. We
ask about four different questions. Where are we now as
we sit here today in Collier County? Number two, where
do we want to go? How are we going to get there? Who's
going to do it? And, how much is it going to cost?
You've got five questions there. And when you begin to
answer these questions in long-range strategic planning,
you start to get a pattern for success.
We have then middle management, which is the people
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who carry out the top management's plans and long-range
goals. We have operational and sugervisory management at
the lower level. Each one plays an im9ortant 9art in the
total picture. Each one should not try to usurp what's
hagpening at the ugper level.
To9 down means that top things come from top
management to middle management to lower management'and
in the process of. bottom u9 you get the reports up and
how's it working? Is it working? What are we doing?
What do we need to do? How are we doing? So we can
continue this top down/bottom up, top down/bottom up, and
the communication rolls and the success starts to
snowball.
You all have a wide range of roles as managers.
Within your role -- you have to know that as managers you
have to work through people. You don't work alone. You
all have responsibility and therefore you're accountable
Somebody's accountable u9 and down the
to somebody.
line.
complicated problems.
Number three, you all have to set priorities.
Number four, you have to be people who can solve
You have to come up with
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solutions. You have to be mediators, very important.
You are politicians. You need to get along with people.
You need to create public relations. You need to have
people like you. You have to be diplomatic at times.
And you have to make difficult decisions.
The strategio planning process is not complicated.
You need, number one, to set goals. You need to
determine policies and programs that will carry out those
goals. It's not strategic unless it's time related. A
goal has to be for a period of time in which we want that
goal to be reached. An operational year. Yes, Ootober
1st through the following September. That goal has to be
reached within that twelve-month period.
There are some goals that have to carry over to the
second or third or fourth year, such as road building,
such as waste disposal, such as water programming for the
great growth of these southwestern counties. So time
related is very important.
If it's not time related, I have a favorite saying
about that. It's blue sky. Some day I'm going to take
my wife on a trip to Hawaii and it never happens. But I
say to my wife, When we have our 35th wedding anniversary
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next year we are going to Hawaii for our anniversary.
It's in the plan. That's the difference between planning
and blue sky.
And, of course, you have to have a commitment to
understanding and dealing with people effectively and
understanding of their needs and the wants and the
problems of our area which are indicative of the climate
and the geography and the economics of southwest Florida.
Is there one more?
I have to thank Neil and the staff with helping me
tremendously to gather and get some of these ready for
you people today.
This merely shows the flow we talked about, the
hierarchy by structure of planning, which starts with the
electorate, the county commissioners, the county managers
and staff, additional managers and their staffs, the
department directors and employees. And the assignments
go to day-to-day work to the operational functions, the
administrative functions, to the master planning and the
expectations of the electorate.
And this is that thing that keeps going round.
communication must exist.
The
We've got to have our people,
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our electorate, the people that pay the bills in our
county, know what's happening and feel that they're
involved and feel that somehow or other they're getting
satisfaction.
Here's long-range organizational planning flow
chart. This is all in the book. The first year the
operations here must be specific, time related, action
programs. Of course, budget forecast methods~ control
and evaluation. Long-range, two, three, four, five. In
some cases you can add another five to that for
long-range programs projected. They're coordinated.
They're extensions. They must also be time related.
They must be budget related. They are advance plans.
You have to consider what's been mandated by state
government in order to fit into that program. And they
can all be in pencil because you can erase and update or
back date as conditions exist. Long range is not
indelible; short range is.
Actually, I don't think I need to tell this group,
this distinguished group, any more than that. This is
merely an introduction to this. I think what we can do
now is go to the goals.
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We've asked the commissioners, who are top
managers, if they would give us some of the goals that
they feel are necessary for this county. And at this
time if the commissioner whose goals are up here would
like to explain them, we'd be glad to invite you to
communicate with this group.
MRS. EDWARDS: What we'd like to do is for each
commissioner as we go through this to explain your goals
and then we will, with masking tape, ask one of you tall
people to place these on the wall around the room and
after each commissioner has discussed your goals we'll
then talk about how we can categorize the goals.
MR. DORRILL: And nobody -- I haven't seen any of
these and the staff hasn't seen any of these, so you'll
kind of need to walk us through these because Pepper and
Jennifer identified and prepared these without us having
a chance to see them.
MRS. EDWARDS:
discuss yours.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
months ago. And the vision that I have is I think a
fairly simple one that almost anybody can sign onto and
Commissioner Matthews, if you would
I put this together several
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that is that we make Collier County a premier place to
live with the most efficient government 90ssible in the
State of Florida. It's a real broad statement.
And the~ five goals by which I would like to try to
achieve that - I can hardly see that far, but number one
is to maintain the quality of life. We keep hearing
that, but in order to really do that we need to develop
some quantitative measuring devices, methods by which we
can decide what the quality of life really is.
Are we going to have -- are we going to have a
population of so many people per square foot of beach?
Then in order to do that we need to expand our beaches~
i.e., renourish them, make them bigger as the population
grows. Are we going to have X number of lane miles of
roads for the population? Quantitative methods for
measuring the quality of life. I don't know what those
are, but that's one of my goals is to try to tag that.
Another one is to increase our
industrial/commercial economic base in Collier County 40%
over the next five years. That s really not, I don t
think, a monumental feat compounded over a five-year
period. You're talking about something between a five
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and a half and 6% increase per year. I don't think
that's monumental per year, but it looks like a big
number, 40% in five years.
To maintain agriculture as a basic economic
industry in Collier County. Agriculture has been and
continues to be the number one commercial/industrial
component for Collier County. It's a major employer.
And I'd like to see that we maintain that for some period
of time, at least until number one agriculture is no
longer viable in Collier County, whenever that might be,
if ever.
Number four is to increase tourism by 50% percent
in the next five years. Now, tourism is kind of a loose
cannon that hangs out there. i've talked about that to
some people and they say, Oh, our winter population is
high enough now. But our winter population is a lot of
people who are permanent winter re~idents. They're not
tourists.
So my idea is to try to solicit ideas and put them
into play. Things that will actually increase tourism is
people who come here for a weekend, a week or two weeks
and then go home.
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And then number five, it's a far reaching one but
it's possible, and that's to establish quarterly round
table discussions involving all the political
subdivisions of Collier County.
One of the things that's bothered me in the last
year is there seems to be -- there seems to be friction
sometimes between the various political subdivisions as
to what our goals are and where we're headed. Are we
really all rowing the ship at the same speed and in the
same direction? And I think one way that we can try to
pull together more evenly is to establish quarterly
discussions.
MRS. EDWARDS: Okay. Next we have Commissioner
Constantine.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I just said to Neil I
need to invest in glasses.
The number one is something I talked about a lot
during the campaign in '92 and we've done some of this
last year and that's Just streamline our government,
cutting out some of the nonsense or cutting out some of
the duplication and the waste.
Corporate America, you see all the major
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corporations, whether it's IBM had their first layoffs
ever in the last year, or you see many of the major
cor90rations streamlining. And after all the growth and
growth and growth in the 'SOs, they found some of that
had gone too far.
I think we've seen the same, either the
reorganization we Just looked at in Developmental
Services or the utilities audit we Just did where we
looked at ways to streamline that. I think we need to
continue in that vein.
We saw percentage-wise a tremendous increase in the
number of county employees between the mid '80s and now.
And I guess in the past year we've looked at -- we have
either cut or are in the process of cutting about 40
positions. And I think that's headed in the right
direction. We don't want to have performance or we don't
want our service to the public to suffer, but right now I
think there's some fat there, there has been some fat
there. We need to continue in that effort.
The roadway system, this goes along a little more
specific and in detail than what Bettye says. At what
point is the appropriate Level of Service? And I thi~k
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that may be different for different type of roadways. We
have a Level of Service and there are certain areas where
we address it differently.
There may be some of the major roadways as time
goes on and as costs continue to e~calate in that we
struggle for how we're going to pay for it. There may be
certain major roadways where that quality of life is
acceptable on some of the bigger roadways, a lower Level
of Service. And there may be other roadways where we
need to step that up a notch.
So I'd like to see us focus specifically on the
roadway system. That has consistently been one of the
concerns of the public and the survey and it's something
we've struggled with, but money-wise that was a real
struggle issue as well.
The environmental issues in the past, way back when
they always say geez we're sort of playing catch up
because the environment was ignored, but I want to make
sure at this point we don't go too far in trying to make
up for that. Does the pendulum swing too far the other
way now? And we had the presentation a few weeks ago to
the Board that divided the county into two counties and
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SO on.
Statistically we look as though we're going to be
by the next ten years putting away as much as 80% of our
county, either preserved or restricted in some way that
will never be used. And is that enough? A~d I know
we've debated that, but I'd like to set some sort of
specific policy that yes, it is or no, it isn't.
I don't think anyone argues that we don't want to
pave the county or anyone argues that we need to be
sensitive to the needs of the environment, but at the
same time as human beings we're a key to the whole
picture and we need to be sensitive to the needs of, as
Bettye talked about, the agriculture and the different
industries associated here as well. We don't want to go
too far and damage the economy. And at times I feel like
that pendulum has swung too far, and perhaps we can go a
notch beyond. So I want to try to get some sort of
balance on the environmental issues and see where the
public and the majority of the Board wants to head with
that.
And finally, the solid waste. This is something
we've got on the drawing board for this year, but I'd
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like to nail down exactly how we're going to do that not
only for the next ten years but long-term, whether we'll
split that with creating some things by composting or
whatever in the county and shipping some out of county or
having one specific landfill with a life of 50 years
somewhere in the county.
But we've got all the RFP'zone now and that sort of
thing, but I'd like to put that to bed once and for all
with a true long-term vision. We're looking not only at
five-year goals but beyond. And I see this particular
one as a 30-year goal or a 40-year goal. This is
something that we can address that can go well beyond
perhaps even our lifetime.
MRS. EDWARDS: Commissioner Constantine also shared
with us his expectations, if you'd like to elaborate on
that, please.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Frustrations I guess as
much as expectations. For probably the first six or
eight months with the three commissioners who were
elected in 1992, and part of this I'm ~ure is Just the
honeymoon aspect of new people on a board, but we seem to
work as a team, the five people work as a team.
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There was no pride in authorship or there was no,
Geez, I've got to get my two cents in or make sure I'm
heard here. It was what are we as a board going to do?
And at the end result -- it didn't appear anyway that
anyone cared that they got personal glory or personal
pride as long as the Job was accomplished.
By the fall, though, probably September or October,
somewhere in there, all of a sudden we're -- it's not the
idea of disagreeing. We're always going to disagree, but
people kind of -- and I'm as guilty as anyone, but all
five of us kind of tried to get our own words in
seemingly for the sake of having the quote or being "on
record" as something and we kind of lost that team aspect
of achieving what the goal was.
And I don't know, some of the meetings didn't run
as smoothly at that point. And I'm not sure what
happened, but in December for three or four meetings, two
or three meetings, I guess all three meetings in
December, we seemed to recapture that a little bit of
working as a team.
But I think we need to try to recapture that again
now and work with that because it worked very well. And
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I think both the public and the media recognized that
throughout most of '92. And if we can recapture that,
it's more beneficial as well.
And the last thing on there, it says, "Individual
commissioners need to respect the majority decision."
One of the things I find very frustrating -- and again,
we're probably all guilty of it, but is when things are
turned down by a four-to-one vote or passed on a
four-to-one vote and that one commissioner brings it back
again two weeks later and brings it back and we may see
those things two or three times and all we do is spend
another half hour and another week discussing it.
If there are new facts or something completely
different that we didn't know previously, that's fine.
But if there is nothing new, I don't know why we keep
bringing back a discussion over and over and over and we
end up still four to one over and over and over. And to
me, it's a great deal of wasted time dealing with
someone's ego oftentimes. And again, I'm not saying any
of the five. I think we've all done it. But it's just
wasted time.
I wish once something is done, unless there is new
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facts or a new reason that comes up, I wish we could just
move on. And you may not be happy with the decision, but
if we could Just move on with that.
MR. DORRILL: That's good.
MRS. EDWARDS: Would you like to take a 15-minute
break now, or do you want to continue?
MR. DORRILL: Why don't we finish with the
commissioner's individual things and then break.
MRS. EDWARDS: Commissioner Saunders.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I did not list a vision for
Collier County but I would subscribe to Commissioner
Matthews' vision that we want to develop a premier or
maintain a premier place to live.
And then secondly, to have a local government that
is as efficient as possible. Commissioner Matthews used
the standard of the best or most efficient local
government in Florida, and I would subscribe to that
also.
What I attempted to do is list six items, I believe
six, that I think --
MRS. EDWARDS: It continues on the next page.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: -- need to be accomplished
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in order to maintain Collier County as a premier place to
live. And these are not -- as noted on the top there,
these are not necessarily in the order of importance. As
a matter of fact, they are not in the order of
importance. They're Just six generalized goals.
The first one is to develop and implement
long-range solutions to the collection and disposal of
solid waste. That's an obvious one that I think
everybody so far has had that on their list.
Secondly, development and implementation of
programs necessary to protect, preserve potable drinking
water supplies, both surface and groundwater, for current
and future residents of Collier County.
Clearly in reference to one comment Commissioner
Constantine made on his list of issues concerning the
swinging of the environmental pendulum, clearly that
pendulum swings back and forth from great zeal to protect
to a little bit less zeal to protect. And that's
something that perhaps on a national basis I think the
pendulum has swung back and forth quite a few times
between the Bush administration and the Clinton
administration. That's something that's always going to
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be the case.
But I think there's one constant that we need to
keep in mind when we're dealing with environmental issues
and that is that as the population increases, which it
· will, we're going to have less and less valuable habitat.
We're going to have less and less areas that serve as
recharge areas for potable drinking water.
That ties into the tourism aspect that Co~missioner
Matthews mentioned. She wants to increase tourism by 50%
over the next five years or whatever. We need to have
areas other than the beach if we're going to increase
tourism. We're going to have to have areas like the
Corkscrew Preserve where people from all over the world
will come to see different habitats, not Just the Gulf of
Mexico and the beach, and not just golf courses but
things that they will not see anyplace else in the world.
So we need to -- when I start talking in terms of
protection of areas for potable drinking water supplies,
I'm thinking in terms of natural systems that will serve
that purpose but will also serve the purpose of providing
an eco-tourist destination.
Number three, development and implementation of a
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long-range strategy to deal with health care issues such
as county employee health benefits, indigent health care
and control of the spread of communicable diseases in the
general population. That, too, is critical if we're
going to maintain a premier place for people to live and
to visit in Collier County.
Commissioner Matthews talks in terms of increasing
the agricultural base in the community. That would be a
tremendous economic benefit, but with that economic
benefit there is a cost. That cost is increased indigent
health care. That cost potentially is increased problems
with communicable diseases as we have people from other
parts of the world coming to work for three months out of
the year. They're going to need health care. They're
going to bring specific problems with them.
We've heard in the recent media the problems
associated with tuberculosis as Just one area of
communicable diseases that if we don't take steps to
control those types of things now we're going to be
spending millions and potentially billions, not as
Collier County but as a country to deal with those
issues.
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Tuberculosis, we had the health department make a
presentation to us about three years ago. Doctor
Polkowski wanted 75 or $80,000 for a TB program that she
felt was critical if we were going to stop the spread of
tuberculosis through many areas of Collier County. We
turned her down. I did not vote to turn her down, but
the Commission turned her down.
Two weeks later there was a two-page spread in the
New York Times talking about the ticking time bomb of
tuberculosis an~ what it's going to cost the local
governments and the country as a whole. It's into the
hundreds of billions of dollars now becaus~ local
governments and the federal government did not spend
small amounts of money to control the spread of that
disease and control that disease early on. There are
other examples of that that are necessary. So I think
that to me is an issue of making sure Collier County's a
premier place to live.
Development and implementation of strategy programs
to aeal with Juvenile crime ana criminality in general.
It all ties in with the objective of keeping Collier
County a nice place to live.
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29
Development and implementation of strategies to
increase diversity in Collier County's economic base and
to ensure economic stability into the future. We have
been lucky in Collier County. The recessions have not
hit us as hard as they have in other parts of the
country. But we need to make sure that we do have a
better economic base.
Agriculture needs to be expanded and general
business needs to be expanded. And we need to react to
the opportunity of the 10th university as a stepping
stone to increasing the diversity of our economic base.
And number six, development and implementation of
strategies and programs to ensure increased efficiency
and cost effectiveness of all government programs,
policies and procedures. This is something that all of
us have been striving towards since the first day of
getting in office. It applies to all five of us on the
Commission.
We have different views as to what makes government
more efficient and more effective, but I think we all had
that as our generalized goal. And that was one of the
visions that Commissioner Matthews has for Collier
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30
County.
MRS. EDWARDS: Commissioner Volpe?
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Basic theme here is going back
to the Nesbit Study. Two deficiencies that were
identified in the community were a lack of leadership and
a lack of sense of community. And underlying those four
conceptual goals is the issue of the sense of community~
quality of life issues also in the context of either our
environment and some other issues.
Transportation, in my view, is not a quality of
life issue. It's not what brought all of us to Collier
County. It is obviously one of the things that will
cause people to leave this community if we have an
inadequate transportation network, but we all got here
when this community was virtually inaccessible.
As the community continues to grow, we have done --
we're working on our build-out study and we are trying to
identify as a planning tool the infrastructure that is
going to be required to support the population which has
been projected to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 400
to 500,000 people.
As a part of that quality of a life issue, safety
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31
in our neighborhoods and the protection of our
residential and commercial neighborhoods, in my view, is
a very, very important quality of life issue. And so for
the first planning goal I've identified the
implementation of the Safe Neighborhood Act as it relates
not only to our residential neighborhoods but to our
commercial neighborhoods as well as we begin to see our
infrastructure to continue to expand and the impact it's
having on the community overall. And that is not only
the North Naples Planning Community, but on Marco Island
and in the City of Naples and East Naples, throughout the
community. That's number one.
Number two, this is -- the establishment of a
four-year nationally accredited institution of higher
learning in Collier County. Sense of community. Most of
us have come from someplace else, obviously. The little
community that I was from, we had a very important
college in our little town. Population of the county was
160,000, but we had our own college. I think that exists
in most of our locations throughout the United States.
I realize we have the 10th state university. I
realize that we have the Edison Community College, but I
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
think there are opportunities for the community under
existing legislation through an educational authority to
augment what is currently being done by the School Board.
And I think there would be a real sense of community if
we could establish within our community for the long-term
future a four-year college which would be Collier County
based, which would not be a detractor to the loth state
university or to Edison Community College. I think that
does quite a bit for a sense of community.
We've all talked about we're now developing the
economic element of our Growth Management Plan. And I
think that the implementation of the economic element of
our Growth Management Plan is critical.
Commissioner Matthews has identified agriculture.
My view is that agriculture, although it is the largest
single industry in Collier County, second tourism and
third construction, agriculture in terms of sense of
community and what agriculture itself contributes to the
community, I think that we need to begin to look at
tapping some of the entrepreneurial enterprises that
currently exist here and through the economic element of
the Growth Management Plan implement that.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAP~
33
Four, direction of the mission of the -- actually,
it's the health department. I think health care --
commissioner Saunders has touched on it. Our health
department currently is really providing primary health
care. And my view is that that should not be the mission
of a public health unit, to provide primary health care.
And with the discussions that are taking place at
the state and national levels, I think that we as a Board
of County Commissioners can do more steering and less
rowing and that we should really be redirecting some of
those health dollars that are currently going into our
health department and directing them away from primary
care and perhaps looking to the "quasi-public sector" to
provide the primary health care because as I think we all
know currently our health department is servicing only
pregnant women and children under eight years of age.
And Commissioner Saunders makes the point about
communicable diseases, and that is obviously public
health. And so I think that that long-term should be
something that we should be viewing as a community.
Health care and courts and courts administration,
those are the somewhat silent organizations that we fund
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
34
significantly; the health department and our courts and
courts administration. Courts administration ties back
to the concept that we've discussed and that has to do
with privattzation in part. It has to do with
privatizing our Jail and our correction system to see
whether there are opportunities for the private sector;
under the control of government, b~t actually the
operational aspect of the jail in particular perhaps
being handled by the private sector. Those are the five.
MRS. EDWARDS: Commissioner Norris.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Once again, these are five
ideas that I brought forward not in any particular order
of importance, Just numbered to keep them separate.
I think some of them -- most of them actually have
been voiced by other commissioners, so we seem to be on
the road to consensus on several of these in the first
place, which sounds encouraging for our discussions here
today.
The first one, to develop and implement a plan to
accommodate the solid waste needs. And I put in 25 years
in order to stress the point that I think we need to look
way out in the future. Twenty-five years may not be the
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
35
appropriate time scale, but just to make the point that
we need to look long-term. I put 25 years on that.
As Pepper has pointed out, you do need a number or
else you're not really setting the goal. You do need to
put the number in there. So I put 25 years in there.
And I think we're all familiar with the issue and the
different parts of it. But we need to go ahead sometime
this year if possible or it looks like we're on track for
that, to go ahead and make our long-term plan and get it
finalized.
The second one there is to develop the information
necessary to use in our decision-making process. And
this ties right in with the one that Commissioner Volpe
just mentioned concerning privatizing the utilities
division as well as any other division or department that
would be both economically and practically feasible.
And what I mean by that is Just let's take a look
in-depth at everything, put everything on the table,
essentially, and see if it's appropriate to privatize.
If it is appropriate to privatize, what does it mean to
us? What does it mean to the operation of our
government? And what does it mean economically and
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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36
practically?
And if at the end of all that information gathering
the decision process leads us to privatization, then
that's what we will know by the time we develop and
examine all that information.
Number three there is to develop and implement
plans to accomplish continued downsizing of economic
efficiencies in county government. And that ties in with
number two, of course. The thrust is, as mentioned by
some of the others, to continue to make our government
run as efficiently as possible.
And whether or not we privatize different portions
of our government, that it still remains that weprobably
have the opportunity to make some more economic
efficiencies and some more downsizing as we've done in
the past year or so.
Develop and implement a process to simplify and
condense legislation. For example, the LDC. I wouldn't
put this at this point in time on the front burner, but
it's something that over time I would like to see us at
least address. It seems that portions of the regulations
that we deal with are unnecessarily complicated and
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
37
perhaps there's some room to simplify some of these. If
there is, that would help us operate in a more efficient
That's something I would like to look at over
manner.
time.
And number five has been mentioned also by some of
the others that we need to make sure that we have a
long-range plan to develop and identify our future water
sources, what are they going to be, where are they going
to he, how are we going to protect them, that sort of
thing.
We do need to -- I agree with the others that have
brought this forward that that's something that, of
course, is going to involve everyone. It's of the utmost
importance that we have that for the future. You can't
live without it.
So with the work that we do now we'll have
long-term, very long-term implications for Collier
County. Those are some of the things that I think we can
work on immediately and put them into effect.
Jennifer?
MRS. EDWARDS: Thank you. I think now what we need
to do is take our little break and then we'll come back
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
38
and we'll continue talking about this.
Let's take a ten-minute break.
(A break was had from 10=40 a.m. until 10=50 a.m.
and the meeting continued as follows=)
PROFESSOR MARTIN= Well, thank you very much. You
know, this is an extremely interesting open discussion,
which is exactly what I had hoped we could generate here.
A. J. Hancock would be pleased because he would see
shared thoughts and ideas being shared.
I was quite interested to find out that we have a
lot of areas of consensus. We find that you are thinking
generally in the same direction. And I had mentioned
before philosophies. I think if we can get the key
planners in our county government to philosophize~ your
philosophies are the same, that you can negotiate those
things that Tim Constantine talks about that are
difficulties where you're not always going to think
alike. And that's normal. There's nothing wrong with
that. It's just a matter of background and experiences
and your own constituencies and so forth.
I'm very pleased. And I think if your philosophies
can generate in the same direction that you will be able
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
39
to negotiate successfully and come to many happy
conclusions and long-range plans that will be excellent
for our county.
We'd like to hitchhike on Commissioner Matthews'
vision. She seems to be the only one that came up with a
mission statement. And I think it would be well for us
to take another look at her statement and see if we have
some other input, some other thoughts, in regard to that
statement so that we can maybe come to a consensus of
opinion that this is the kind of vision we ought to be
creating for our governing body and the people that
execute the things here in the county.
Would you care to expand on that, Commissioner
Hatthews?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Well, to me the purpose for
a mission statement is an umbrella type of statement that
should be a fairly easy statement, a concise statement,
and one that's easy to buy into. And that's why I put
that up.
I can't imagine that we would not want Collier
County to be a premier place to live, nor can I imagine
we would not want the most efficient government in
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4O
Florida.
PROFESSOR MARTIN:
and --
COMMISSIONERMATTHEWS:
PROFESSOR MARTIN:
think it's important.
And that's -- it's a fairly simple statement.
But it's a very strong statement
Yes, it is.
-- it does have vision, and I
Commissioner, would you care to add anything or
have any --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Well, I think it's a
statement of the obvious, and maybe that's okay. Maybe
we don't need to be stating things that are not
necessarily obvious, but I think that's a statement of
the obvious. We want this to be a premier place to live.
I agree it's an umbrella statement. And if that
becomes our vision statement, we then need to figure out
what are the components necessary to accomplish that
vision, which I guess is strategic planning as you
pointed out.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Right. In other words, if the
vision statement is kind of a consensus of your thoughts,
then you fill in the blank spaces with your strategic
planning to support that statement, which is, you know,
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
41
terse and to the point and well taken.
Would you like to add anything to that or are
you --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: No. I.think for my
purposes in terms of going through all the goals and
everything would be the ways to get to that. I think
that's a fine statement. Perhaps we want to modify it as
we go through the meeting, but I don't have any desire to
add to it.
PROFESSORMARTIN: Co~missioner Volpe.
COHMISSIONER VOLPE: I agree. I mean, that states
the obvious. And that has been our mission in some of
our earlier strategic planning sessions. My view is,
though, that we as the Board of County Commissioners need
to provide the leadership to get us from where we are to
where it is we want to be.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Leadership.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: And, you know, it's fine to
say that, but who's going to get us there? And it seems
to me that it's really a question of leadership that can
emanate from the five members of the Board of County
Commissioners.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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42
PROFESSOR MARTIN:
Nesbit Study.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
PROFESSOR MARTIN:
talked about there.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
Yeah, which was mentioned in .the
Um-hum.
It was definitely mentioned and
That's what everybody wants in
this community, I presume. And, you know, as
Commissioner Saunders says, it states the obvious. But
our goals should be and our mission should be to
implement that. And we'll flush that out as we proceed
in this session this morning.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Commissioner Constantine.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I concur that it states
the obvious. The one thing that I would add to it, which
should be equally obvious is not only the most
efficiently run local government but also the most
responsive and efficiently run.
Maybe that's part of being efficiently run, but I
think being responsive because the desires of the public
are going to change if we're looking at long-term goal
setting. There are certain things that are going to
happen now and ten years from now there will be goals
33962
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
43
that we may not have thought of or may not be a top
priority now. As that changes, I think the government
has to have the wherewithal to respond to that.
PROFESSOR MARTIN= Very good. That's why I stated
that the second and the third and the fourth and so on
years are what we call pencil years. You pencil in those
things that at that time seem to need to be done and are
part of the long-range program, and they are changeable.
And as the economics and the other aspects of
living in this county change, they can be changed in
order to accommodate that rolling, planning process. And
this is what really has been happening in major
industries today.
rolling budgets.
It's called rolling planning and
You've used that term, haven't you?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Oh, yes.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: And I think that's an important
aspect of the planning process that you keep rolling them
over and rolling them over from the operational year to
the longer range years to accommodate what's happening
today. Where are we today? And we'll be someplace else
next year today.
Commissioner Norris.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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44
COMMISSIONER NORRIS= Yes. Well, I agree that it's
stating the obvious. This seems to be a statement to me
that we need to keep in mind as a guiding statement to
help with all of our decisions because I think Collier
County is a premier place to live right now, but we want
to make sure that we keep this in mind with all of our
decisions that we ensure that Collier County remains a
premier place to live.
And I saw consensus with the other -- the lists
from the other co~issioners that we seem to have
consistent consensus already to make our government run
efficiently and responsively. I think we're all on the
right track on that.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS~ I'll raise one question to
Commissioner Matthews. In terms of defining Collier
County as a premier place to live, as we were going
through some additional discussion the thought came to my
mind that Collier County is a premier place to live right
now for a lot of segments of our community. It's not a
premier place to live for other segments of our
community.
So maybe we need to define who are we talking about
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY~ NAPLES, FL 33962
45
when we say Collier County's a premier place to live?
Are we talking about the wealthy retired people? Or, are
we talking about young people with young families moving
here to start a life? Are we talking about the indigent
farm worker, migrant farm worker, ~o's come here to
assist in developing an agricultural base? What segment
are we talking about?
segments of people?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
or, are we talking about all
In my drafting that
statement, I'm talking about all segments because
"premier" has a different definition for whoever's
reading the word. It's
whoever's reading it.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
the case also.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
like beauty. It's in the eye of
I would presume that to be
Expectations are what's
going to define what that word means.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: And various levels of our
constituencies have different expectations.
MR. DORRILL: I like the aspect from a staff
perspective -- and let me encourage, you know, the staff
people here to speak up in addition. That division thing
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
46
is important to me because it helps with the sense of
ownership, and it also helps a little bit in terms of
what I call the esprit de corps of the staff, the team
approach to trying to deliver on that vision. And I
think it helps in terms of ownership.
I'll be honest with you, though, I'm a little
guilty in terms of what Burr said about, you know, making
it the premier place to live. I think at least from a
staff perspective we're real focused on the registered
voter or ad valorem taxpayer in terms of who it is that
we're trying to make happy.
And I think sometimes from a staff perspective our
customer may not be that new family, you know, who's
moved to try and come to town and may be living in a
duplex apartment in Golden Gate City. Or it may not be
the Guatemalan farm worker in Immokalee because from a
staff perspective maybe we're a little too focused on
registered voters and ad valorem taxpayers.
So I thought it was interesting you said that
because there may be a little difference in terms of how
it is that we do define "premier."
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE= I think just to expand
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
47
on that a little bit, when you point out you want to try
to address everyone, I think we want to give everyone the
opportunity to take advantage of a premier community.
I don't think it's up to us to make sure everyone
is on the receiving end of that. It's up to them to take
advantage of that opportunity we provide. And I just
want to differentiate between that.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I wasn't suggesting that we
need to create a humongous welfare state in Collier
County. I was just pointing out that --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I didn't thin~. you were,
but --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: We can all sit here and say
we have a premier community in which we all live and
enjoy, but there's some people in the community that
would not agree with that statement. And we need to be
mindful of what it is that's made that happen and is
there anything we can do to --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Exactly. If those
opportunities are lacking, how can we provide them.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Mr. Clark had a thought.
MR. CLARK: Sometimes. I think that I'd like to
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
48
follow up a little bit on what Nail said, and perhaps
what all of you are saying.
We do have many segments and in fact we have a wide
range of lifestyles and perhaps availability of funds and
access to life's goods and lifestyles in Collier County.
And from that perspective, I think it important that you
do, and you always have, this commission always has been
very responsive and I think the listen attentively to
staff people when they bring such issues before you
because as Nail has said, they're in the field. They see
those conditions.
And when they bring those images before you and
they bring those conditions in front of you that they're
talking about on those issues such as -- and I'll give
you a good example. In 1989 this Commission was asked,
and a lot was brought up on the Commission's own
initiative, to bring a minimum housing code in which the
Commission then and this Commission supports very
strongly that no citizen, no resident of Collier County,
should be expected to live below a certain minimum
lifestyle.
And those things obviously are the obvious, but
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49
they shouldn't be allowed or mandated or required to live
with raw sewage on the floors and electric wires sticking
out for little kids and so forth.
so probably following up a lot on what Chairman
Constantine said, that government, from many of our
viewpoints, has a role to say that the minimum floor --
that we have a minimum floor of which no one should be
required to live in conditions below this standard. And
this Board has been very supportive in providing funds
for enforcement to go out and enforce those kinds of
regulations by which people should
live below.
MR. CONRECODE:
not be required to
I think that brings up an important
point in the sense to that when you look at a particular
issue like transportation or like parks and recreation
keep in mind like Commissioner Saunders said who all the
constituents are that use that, whether it's the wealthy
retired person that likes to walk the beach at sunset
picking up shells or whether it's combining pathway
programs with the transportation program.
And we have certain constituents that only have a
bicycle for transportation and others who use it more for
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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50
recreational purposes. And certainly if we keep that
broad perspective it may help in developing programs that
really meet all the needs.
MR. DORRILL= So what you're saying then, what some
of others are saying, we don't want to have an elitist
approach to community standards or service. We need to
recognize that the community is very diverse in terms of,
you know, where they're coming from and what's important
to them.
MR. OLLIFF= That's one of the things we've always
struggled with is when we talked in here about what is
premier to one person or one group may not be premier to
another group. And we've always struggled a little bit
with trying to define what is what the co~unity wants?
What does the community decide that they -- what level of
service basically is how that relates. What is premier
to the community?
And I think what we've historically done in a lot
of cases, I know at least in Public Services, is we as
staff have sat there and tried to decide what it is that
the people out there want in terms of services. And
we've not had a good way of having a good ear to the
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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51
community to hear from them what is it that you really
want from your park staff? What is it you really want to
see in your library system?
And one of the things we're struggling with now is
how do I get a better grip on what the community actually
wants in terms of services as opposed to us Just
sitting -- I'll give you a gooa example in the parks
department.
On the recreation side, I think for years we've got
people who were brought up in recreational programming
through the university system where they taught primarily
youth and adult athletic kinds of recreation programs.
But if you look at the makeup of this community, it is
probably 50% elderly population. So our rec staff has
been sitting over here gearing all of our programs
towards children, young adults.and teens.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: What is the median age in
Collier County? It's in the low 40s, isn't it?
PROFESSOR MARTIN= Thirty-seven or thirty-eight, I
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
think.
So to say most of the
is not correct.
people are elderly or retired
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33962
MR. OLLIFF: It's getting younger, but I thir~k
there is a group, a'large group, a larger group in our
co~unity than in most communities. I think an elderly
population that our rec staff is probably not really
focused on at all.
So in terms of what programming do we offer, I
think we probably missed it a little bit, you know. I
think we've done a good Job on one end, but I think we
just sort of missed that by not listening to what the
community really wants.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: To handle something like
that, though, we know that in like St. Petersburg whose
median age is very high for our rec staff to be in
contact with their rec staff, what are you doing with the
elderly? And sometimes it's trial and error.
MR. OLLIFF= I think that's that whole change in
our perspective where we're trying to get where we're
more customer oriented. And no matter what it is that we
do, it's not what do we want to provide them, it's what
do they want us to provide them. That's what we're
trying to change.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS=
Sometimes they don't even
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
53
know.
MR. OLLIFF: That's true.
MR. CONRECODE: Kind of like the shift from
McDonald's playgrounds to McShuffleboard.
MR. OLLIFF: Exactly.
MR. CONRECODE: I saw an article in the newspaper
this weekend where McDonald's is actually putting in a
shuffleboard to support the elderly population.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: I think what we've done here is
kind of come to a consensus thought again. We have these
levels of management responsibility within the system and
we have levels of needs and wants and desires and
expectations of the public and the county which vary.
And as a result, you have different levels of which
to address the overall planning for the county, to try to
satisfy those groups within the county that are your
responsibility, whether it be library books or park
recreation or traffic or water or solid waste management.
People need to be served. And it all comes from those
three things I mentioned, needs, wants, desires and, of
course, their expectations at that lifestyle level,
income level, where they live level. So we have -- it's
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
a tough problem.
MR. DORRILL= Are you suggesting that as part of
what we're trying to establish today for the future it
would be a good thing for us to have a vision statement?
And we've kind of started with Bettye's.
Are you encouraging us to buy into or to adopt a
vision before we get into the individual goals?
PROFESSOR MARTIN= Well, I think the suggestion was
made here is let's see if we can get some kind of
consensus thought on a vision for the county, recognizing
that our problems that would have to be further refined
as this is discussed in smaller groups and with your
division people having more specific input.
And that's what I talked about, this goals down and
planning down and up and planning down and up. I think
you need a vehicle eventually, a simplified universal
vehicle of some kind, to send the plans down through the
organization and to have the organization respond back up
through the organization so the commissioners are well
informed of what's happening.
And I don't want to know what's happening four
months later. I'd like to have more input on a more
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
55
regular basis, simplified, that doesn't require hours of
my time in order to understand it. These things
happening in here that we're talking about today that we
think are important for the county as far as operational
years and long-range planning.
And that's one of the things I haven't had a chance
to get into. This was a mammoth Job as it was in two
months without -- with very little direction from
anybody. I did have some help, don't get me wrong. But
I had to do a lot of digging, and I haven't seen what
kind of paper flows.
I think the paper flow here is very important
because you need to be informed, number one. And you
need to make it simple so you can absorb it quickly and
not take hours of your day, your busy days, and respond
if you have other suggestions or thoughts or
disagreements or even a pat on the back and say, Hey, you
guys are doing a good Job, keep it up.
Now, do we want to move on to some consensus? It
seems like this is pretty well etched now as a consensus.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: It's etched in pencil. We
can always come back.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
56
PROFESSOR MARTIN:
MR. OCHS: Pepper?
hairs.
That's a good idea.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Yes.
MR. OCHS: Just one quick comment without splitting
I find that as we look at the vision statement,
it doesn't speak to effectiveness as well as efficiency.
We may be missing the boat just very clinically defined.
You know, we all know efficiency is the cost to produce a
unit of output, and that's very important, but
effectiveness, going back to the Drucker (phonetic) --
PROFESSORMARTIN: Yeah, the Drucker statement.
MR. OCHS: If you're not doing the right thing, you
could be doing a lot of things efficiently but if they're
not what the constituency identifies as being the things
that are the right things to do, we may be missing the
boat.
And that goes back to Commissioner Constantine's
statement on responsiveness. When I think of what is an
effective program or service, it gets into those areas of
quality and customer satisfaction, responsiveness and
accountability.
So I would Just encourage the Board when they do
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33962
adopt a vision not to forget about the effectiveness as
well as efficiency of whatever service or product.
PROFESSOR MARTINI
statement is very true.
Well, that's an -- that Drucker
If you read into that, what he's
talking about, it's a terrific thought.
Do we want to move on to try to consolidate some of
these major goals from this statement? Everybody in
agreement?
Okay. What we are looking now for is some
consensus, so anybody can lead it off.
All of the goals
As
are there.
Do you want to start out?
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'll give it a try.
I looked, I jotted down as well as -- I can't see them
behind me, but I jotted down notes from all four.
There were three things that seemed to Jump out
immediately that all three of us were comfortable with.
One obviously is solid waste. I think all four or five
of us put that down as something.we need to set a
definite direction on. And John said 25 years, and I had
said some sort of long-term. So I think we're all in
agreement on that that we've got to set that one in
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
58
particular. We can actually look at long-term.
There seemed to be a general -- we all worded it a
little differently, but a general consensus of somehow
reducing the size and the role of government.. And I
think that we can do that a number of ways. I talked
about streamlining, and I think John talked about
privatization. And I think that can play a part.
The third one I had was expanding the economy. And
I think those two go hand in hand. I think if we
downsize government and make things a little simpler, I
think it was John again that said simplify the LDC and
that type of thing. I think that goes hand in hand with
expanding some of the industry and some of the commercial
business that Bettye had mentioned.
So those were the three things that jumped at me we
all seemed to have mentioned in one way or another.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Bettye.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Based on the stuff that
we've looked at, I think we're all in pretty much
agreement with some of the direction or some of the tasks
that need to be accomplished in order to fulfill the
vision.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, 'NAPLES~~ FL
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59
I guess you're all aware by now. I did mine a little
bit differently in that I looked at establishing places I
wanted to be five years from now. The tasks by which to
get there, in my mind, are economic problems, solid waste
problems, the potable water, the health care, the crime.
All of these things, to me, are tasks and Jobs that need
to be accomplished in order to reach goals that we set
for four, five or however far out we're going.
so I can sign on easily to the task, but I would
like to try to group the tasks into the function that
we're trying to achieve; i.e., describing how we're going
to maintain quality of life issues. We keep hearing
quality of life.
What are we going to do? Solid waste certainly
falls into that category. Potable water falls into that
category. Economic development, we all say that yes, we
want to improve the economy. What are we going to do to
do that? We've formed an airport authority so far.
We're renourishing beaches. That's going to help the
economy, and that's going to help our tourism.
So I think I'd like to try to group these into
goals that we're trying to achieve and take the tasks and
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
60
group them into goals rather than trying to deal with
what could be 20 or 30 or 40 or in the end 200 individual
tasks.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE~ You think we're being-too
specific?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Too soon.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE= I guess probably when we start
trying to identify more of a subject of what is quality
life, and I think solid waste and the environment, those
are quality of life issues. Crime obviously is a quality
of life issue. Publi= health or health is a quality of
life issue.
The other thing that -- I'm just trying, as we're
discussing this, to identify the role of government in
this process. Tom's talking about providing some sort of
a program for the -- recreational program for the
elderly. Well, so is the YMCA trying to do exactly the
same thing. And so does the hospital have their own
program for the elderly and rehabilitation. And the
question of networking and whether, you know, we're
talking about getting a little less involved in the
operational aspect of it.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLESv FL 33962
61
Maybe it's not something that our parks and
recreation people should be doing. Maybe we should be
providing the overall structure in te~s of governing and
implementing it through the third sector, which is the
voluntary not-for-profit organizations - public, private,
profit - and then the third, voluntary not-for-profit
organizations that are out there providing some of these
services that maybe government, you know, provides -- the
governance issue, but the operational aspect of it is not
done.
That ties back into this whole idea of downsizing,
right-sizing, privatizing. It really becomes getting out
of the operational aspect of it. But government has to
provide some of the basic governance forthose issues.
You can't take -- in my opinion, you can't take essential
services like utilities and say we're going to privatize
them, we're going to turn it over to some other
non-political group of people. It isn't going to work.
If you want to take utilities and have the
operational aspect carried by someone else under the
aegis of government, that's fine. But I'm just trying to
define in my own mind what the role of government should
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL * 33962
62
be as we go through the process. And really, not getting
too specific is what yoU're talking about?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS= Yeah. I think we're down
to task organization a little bit too soon. We seem to
have accepted the fact that we should have a vision. Now
what are the four, five or six things that we're going to
do to achieve that vision, and then take each goal under
the vision and assign the tasks to those goals.
PROFESSOR MARTIN= Now you're getting to the point
of top down/bottom up management. This is exactly what I
hoped would come out of this meeting. We don't need
forty-five different goals. We need seven or eight major
categories of long distance, long-term policy that you
five can set and send that information down to the lower
levels for their input and their day-to-day operations
and bring it back in and say is this what we meant and
how can we improve?
we'd like to do.
I'm very happy.
How are you doing? And that's what
We're on the second rung or the
third rung of the ladder now. We're getting up here into
major planning, long-range areas, which we have
identified here as quality of life. And now we need to
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
63
put under quality of life those things that are a part of
that and what's part of one that Co~issioner Volpe would
have and what part you might have, Commissioner Saunders.
Now we're getting someplace.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Don't we really -- we're just
a small part of the overall picture, and obviously the
issues that are important to the public, as least today
as they've been identified to us are crime, education and
health care.
I mean, those are the issues that seem to be
important to everybody. And really, kind of in terms of
the global sense, those are the kinds of issues that all
of us have identified in a little different way. But,
you know, I don't know whether we're out there looking at
what should be our goals.
I mean, I think those goals, at least as we sit
here in 1994, you know, are there in those three subjects
and how we get to implementing them.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Looking at what our goals
are is precisely what we're trying to do, so I disagree
completely when you say that that's not necessarily what
we should be doing. I think that's precisely what we
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
64
should be doing.
I think Commissioner Matthews is a hundred percent
correct. We've got three levels here. We've come up
with a tentative vision statement which is the top level.
Second level is what are the five or six or seven
elements of that vision. Obviously if we're going to
have a premier place to live it has to be a place that
doesn't have tremendous amount of crime. That's a very
important element of it. You mentioned that. That's a
major issue that people are focusing on today.
You have to have adequate health care for the
community. I mean, if you're sick and you can't get
health care, you're not living in a premier place.
There's something wrong.
You mentioned education. We're not about
education, so there's not a whole lot we can do about
education. But that would still be one of those major
issues.
The economy. If we don't have a robust economy
helping to provide Jobs for the young people in the
community, then we don't have a premier place to live.
I think we're at that rung of the ladder now where
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
65
we're talking about the big general headings like crime.
After we finish that list of six or eight things, which I
think is all we can accomplish today, then we get into
the nuts and bolts of how do we deal with the crime
issue. What are the elements that we can do? Do we
attempt to get more Judges in Collier County? Do we
attempt to get more police in Collier County?
MR. DORRILL: Those are the annual type objectives,
you know, --
COHMISSIONER SAUNDERS: That 'would come for a
different day. I'd like to see us focus on say six or
seven major issues like Commissioner Matthews Said, which
are the real goals. The real goal is to deal with -- one
goal we've all talked about is potable water; making sure
we have enough water for the future. That's a good
generalized goal. In coming weeks and coming months we
can put meat on that skeleton.
MR. DORRILL: The goal might be an overall sense of
water resource supply and conservation. A~ objective
then might be to evaluate the aquifer storage and
recovery program in 1994, an indicator -- indicators are
at the staff level. A~ indicator, I think as Bettye said
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
66
earlier, you have to have some deadlines and some time
sequences in here because then we're Just blue skying.
An indicator becomes the staff responsibility to do this
by this date in order to determine if we've met the --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: That's correct, but we
should not focus today on aquifers.
MR. DORRILL: I agree.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: We should not focus on any
of those types of sub-issues, just the big five or six or
seven.
MR. DORRILL: I agree.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
done.
let's get the big goals
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Let's get this on paper today,
the six or seven major categories of strategic planning,
and then you can fill in the spaces under those in future
meetings and future conferences and in talking with your
staff people and put this on paper.
Another aspect of strategic planning, it must be
written. It must be documented and approved. And all
those people involved in strategic planning must
understand and somehow agree with the major aspects of
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY,' NAPLES, FLi-33962
· the plan, otherwise'it's n0tgoing to work~,~ So'that's
what we need to do today. '~
If we can concentrate in the last half hour before
noon and let's get these categories on paper as you come
up with a consensus.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS= Could I suggest a process
that might work to facilitate that?
We have five commissioners. Why don't we go around
the room, each commissioner pick an item that we feel has
general consensus in terms of a major goal and see if we
can come up with five different ones that way.
PROFESSOR MARTIN= Major categories.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE=- And we can bicker and
Somebody might have two.
We could consolidate some
argue over those five.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS=
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS=
I don't agree with that at
I'm afraid that's just too nebulous. How are we
of those into larger goals where they become subgoals.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Well, we have one already.
Would you agree you want to put down quality of life as
number one goal?
COMMISSIONER NORRIS=
all.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY,
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68
going to accomplish that?
other things. '~
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS :.
statement, also.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
That just
involves a thousand
That's part of the vision
That was my point in
determining measurable methods to establish what quality
of life is. We keep hearing about it, but yes, it's a
nebulous term. How are we going to describe it?
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: I think that's what -- I guess
maybe I'm -- we agree, Commissioner Saunders, that crime
and safety in the community is an important quality of
life issue?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
quality.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
issues.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS:
too nebulous.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
I would agree.
Our environment, water
Those are quality of life
That's what I mean, it's Just
Important quality of life
issues. Are those the kinds of things -- we're trying to
get those five or six goals out there.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
69
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think so.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I think the direction we
were headed in before as Commissioner Saunders said is
the direction I'd like to continue with. If we try to
pinpoint what is quality of life, the five of us can't do
that let alone 180,000 people in the county. So I think
if we break it down as to -- use that as a vision, as the
overall umbrella as you called it, and then try to within
that, whether it's the economy or crime, --
COMmiSSIONER SAUNDERS: Let's each pick one and go
around the room, even if we need to go around the room
twice.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I think the type of category
that you were trying to elicit from us would be the
potable water sources for the future, preservation and
that sort of thing. Is that what you have in
protection,
mind?
MR. DORRILL:
up later.
MR. HARGETT:
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Precisely.
Throw it up there. We can mess them
Since there's only about maybe three
of those, you might want to say future service needs,
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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70
which is water, roads. , You talked about..solid waste.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS= I think water is so
important let's not bury it with the other stuff.
PROFESSOR MARTIN= I think it's a major category.
In fact, you have a meeting coming up in two weeks on
water, don't you?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS= ¥eah.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I think Hargett's right,
but nobody else does.
I had two actually that I'm going to throw up
there. One is the economy. I think everybody has talked
about geez, how are we going to expand that when you talk
co~mercial, industrial, agricultural or whatever it is.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Expand the base, period.
MR. DORRILL: Economic base.
MR. CONRECODE: Economic development.
PROFESSOR MARTIN= Economic development, yeah.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: The other one is the
role of government. We talked about the downsizing or
privatizing or all the different terms, but I think you
said --
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Disbanding.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
71
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: What is the role of
government? What are our goals as a government body of
Collier County? The role of government.
PROFESSOR MARTIN= Reminds me of the engineer who
said, You know, three weeks ago I couldn't spell engineer
and now I are one. And we've got to be careful. I think
you all understand what your role is. It's a matter of a
consensus opinion here where we need to be going. Where
are we now? Where do we want to go? And how are we
going to get there?
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I don't mean in the
literal sense of what our role as a commissioner is or as
a staff member is, Just the role -- you were saying parks
and services, what should we provide for and those type
of things.
PROFESSOR MARTIN:
Okay.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: I guess the other issue -- I'm
not sure how to describe it and what our role is in that
regard, but having to do with the issue that I identified
in terms of Safe Neighborhoods Act. I'm talking about
crime. We fund our courts and courts administration. We
fund the sheriff. I mean, it's a large part of our
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
72
budget. And it is a veryimportant quality of life
issue. I don't know how to define the goal or how --
MR. DORRILL: Crime or public safety.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Isn't that something that the.
County Commission is only indirectly involved with?
Should we only extend our efforts here on something we're
directly related to?
MR. DORRILL: But you're the sole appropriator of
money, whether it's the sheriff or the courts.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: But we don't develop their
budget at all.
MR. CONRECODE: But you can convey your vision to
the sheriff's department.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
it.
But we can't make them obey
MR. CONRECODE: That's true, but we have the youth
detention juvenile boot camp thing that I think is going
to be coming to the Board probably --
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Which is an issue. And I
think -- I mean, courts and courts administration, that's
our responsibility.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I'm by no means saying it's
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
73
something that's not important. I'm Just saying it's
something that the County Commission itself is only
indirectly, in most cases, involved in.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think we're very directly
related to it, involved with it, because there's more to
crime, fighting crime and criminal Justice, than, you
know, the sheriff's budget. There's a lot more.
Just as a very minor example, we were Just handed
out a packet of information that dealt with types of
architectural design for streets and street fronts,
set-backs and things like that that are designed to
discourage criminal activity. So there's a whole wide
range of activities that we are very directly related and
involved in.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE= If we talk about public
safety, maybe that's in terms of -- I think that's an
important goal.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Public safety is very
broad.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Very broad and includes
response to hurricanes and -- I mean, it's --
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: You mean that's too broad as
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33962
opposed to "crime"?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think so.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: All right, fine.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
74
Public safety embraces your
police and your fire, --
PROFESSORMARTIN: Health.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: -- your Jail system. It
embraces the whole thing.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Commissioner Norris, do you have
any others?
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I put the first one up.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: I know. Do you have any more?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I didn't put one up at all
yet. Excuse me.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Okay.
MR. DORRILL~ Jump in there quick.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS~ Tourism.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Doesn't that fit under
economic development? I mean, that's just an aspect of
that.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I don't see tourism and
economic development as being quite the same. They're
33962
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, 'FL
75
two entirely different tasks.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I wouldn't say they're
the same, but they're not entirely different. I think
they go hand in hand.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think it's a subelement
of economic development.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I agree.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Somebody said we don't have a
role in education. There is existing in the Florida
statutes something called an educational authority, which
is an augmentation of the school system. Just as we can
get int6 the aviation business, we may be able to do some
things as a community to augment education. And I think
that's a real quality of life issue.
MR. CONRECODE:
It's part of your Growth Management
Plan.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Well, we haven't made schools
a part of our -- it's an optional element of our Gro%~h
Management Plan. But under the ELMS III legislation, it
ties back into what Bettye Matthews said, Betrye, in
terms of, you know, the coordination between the various
governmental entities, whether they be the'School Board
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
76
or the City of Naples or the independent fire control and
rescue districts.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Yeah.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Let me just remind you what the
Nesbit Study said. First of all, months when they came
out with continuing issues here, health care, services
for children, protecting natural resources, economic
development, roads and transportation, education and
financial resources.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
health care issue.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
room yet.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
certainly a part of that.
We don't have, I guess, the
We haven't gone around the
Butt hasn't said anything.
I think the health issue is
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
that education should be -- I didn't agree.
if the others --
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I didn't agree either.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I don't know that's one
we need to be getting into as a major priority.
Did we get consensus
I don't know
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
77
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
priority right now.
to do with --
PROFESSORMARTIN:
education.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
I don't think it's a major
Number one, we have nothing at all
Put a question mark after
-- higher 'education.
now we have a community college. We have a four-year
college that's trying to spread its wings, and the
International College. And then the loth university is
only three or four years away. I would say until these
things kind of coalesce that we want to encourage them
and help them, but as something major I don't see it.
But that's the point,
Who is "them"? That's the
International College,
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
encourage them, help them.
whole issue of leadership.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
Right
Edison College and the 10th university. But to list
education as one of our big, major goals --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Could we do this?
continue listing and we'll list six'or eight or ten,
whatever the list comes out to, and then we're likely to
cut some out. But I thought if we Just went around the
Could we
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
room and list them first --
PROFESSOR MARTIN= ¥eah, because you'll sift and
whittle this. I think what we should be doing with you
is give you a transcript of the proceedings here today
along with these and have you sift and whittle them and
come up with your choices for major long-range planning
categories.
And then the next step would be to place under
those major categories subcategories that could filter
down into the seven administrative departments of county
government.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE=
do sift and whittle them today before we leave.
PROFESSOR MARTIN= Get your knife out.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS= Solid waste. Let's put that
down there. We're starting around again, I believe.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: In the same way that I think
commissioner Saunders mentioned and maybe ~ome of the
others as well, potable water. The whole issue of our
environment --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS=
that way (indicating), though, aren't we?
I think we'll be able to
We're going around the room
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
79
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: It's a hodgepodge.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I'm Just kidding.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Are we getting too
specific, though? Like Hargett said, services, future
services. You look here at the voter survey from last
year, road improvements is one of the top four things. I
think road improvement, solid waste, all those type of
things are future services we're providing. And I think
we might be better suited to lump that under one heading
rather than start breaking those down.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: You're saying take solid waste
out?
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm saying, yeah, put
that under -- that would probably become a subcategory.
Instead of putting down now roads after solid waste, I
think we're getting too specific again if we do that.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: I was trying to make the point
that if we put environment, somehow that does tie into
the potable water and to the extent that there are other
issues related to the preservation of some of our natural
resource protection areas and things like that.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Do you have a term for that that
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
8O
you'd like to use to consolidate some of these quality of
life issues?
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE= Future ~ervices.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Future services?
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
said, Bill?
MR. HARGETT:
Isn't that what you
Develop and implement a long-range
plan to efficiently and effectively meet --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Future services.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
services.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah.
Those are closer to essential
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
services.
MR. 0LLIFF:
Maybe that's essential
That's good.·
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Essential services.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Okay.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: If I may make a co~ent on
that, if you'll look at your own number four, you
specified solid waste. If you say we nee4 a plan to
develop and implement for our future services, well yes,
but that becomes such an obvious goal. It's one of those
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nebulous things again because that's what we do. That's
the whole purpose of county government.
So, you know, without having the specificity, where
are you going? You already know that we need to plan for
our major -- for providing these major services.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: It seems to me, though,
that solid waste -- I mean, we've all sai~ that the solid
waste situation that we are currently in and whatever
direction we eventually head in, it's a primary task that
we need to address and accomplish. But I Just don't see
solid waste as an all encompassing goal. It's a primary
task, yes. And a very important one.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE~ Environment -- I mean, if
we're talking about recycling programs, it all does tie
back into the overall -- that's more o~ -- it's the
environment, but if you're trying to get away from the
specifics, both I think you and Commissioner
constantine --
COMMISSIONER NORRIS=
specifics today, Pepper?
PROFESSOR MARTIN=
Are we not interested in
What are we trying to do?
I think what ~e're trying to do
is get eight or nine major categories of long-range
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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planning. Maybe what you're talking about here is a
major category being the environment and putting solid
waste as part of the environment.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I agree with Commissioner
Norris that solid waste should be a goal in and of
itself. And the reason is that, you know, necessity
sometimes makes us change what our goals are. And right
nor; transportation is -- I know George may disagree with
this to some extent, but I think we're in fairly good
shape with transportation. We've come up with a way to
fund it and we've got a ten-year plan that's almost
balanced.
Solid waste, though, is an issue that we don't have
a clue what in the world we're going to do. We know that
we have a very short time frame to solve a very complex
problem. It's not like transportation where we've dealt
with transportation consistently for many years and we're
in pretty good shape. It's not like parks and recreation
where we've kind of dealt with that.
Solid waste we've all put -- at least three of us,
I think, mentioned in our major goals solid waste as a
specific issue because I think we recognize that we don't
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know where we're going with that. We need to really
focus on that. I'd like to see that as a separate goal,
whereas trans9ortation I would argue the other way.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Or you could list that as a
number one priority under a major category of the
environment and deal with that first. When you
prioritize, you deal with number one before you deal with
number two and you prioritize down your list. So there's
all kinds of ways.
MR. DORRILL:
It's just a matter of consensus.
What you're saying is group them
under conservation or natural resources but then say the
number one objective under that for the next five years
or twenty-five years would be solid waste management.
PROFESSOR MARTIN:
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
Yeah.
Potable water supply.
MR. DORRILL: Well, I think that's what Bettye's
saying is they ought to be a little more generic but then
we can have a number one objective under some of the
goals.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: It just seems to me that
probably when you take that approach, that's already been
done. I mean, we all know these categories. We know
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
84
that solid waste is part of the future essential services
and so are the roads and so are the water lines and all
that.
COMmISSIONER MATTHEWS:
COMMISSIONER NORRIS:
write it down? I don't know.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
I Just~think --
Are we getting anywhere if we
I Just think it makes a lot
more sense to come up with a half dozen or so very
generic goals and then start grouping our individual
programs under these goals. I mean, certainly we have a
government here that's got seven major divisions and they
can all be working on a primary program all at the same
time.
I mean, just because we take solid waste as a
primary doesn't mean that we can't address crime also at
the same time and, you know, direct staff to get these
problems solved and bring us back whatever information we
need to solve them.
MR. OLLIFF: One of the advantages of doing a
general header like either essential services or
environmental services and listing in priorities, one of
the things we as staff look to you for are what are the
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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priorities of the Commission in terms of"iBome of those
services. It helps us, I think, to know on a ranking
almost what's most important to you, because you're sort
of reflecting the commu~ity for us too.
So it's good to know under environmental or
essential services what's top of the hit parade for you
now. We know where to put our energies and things when
we do it that way.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
That's what we're doing.
Trying.
One of the complaints that I hear from the citizens
a great deal is that we get bogged down in minutiae so
easily. And with the ranking process of grouping, almost
in an outline form, hopefully we can get away from
getting bogged down in that.
We've said that these are the categories that we're
going to address and these are the ways that we're going
to address each one.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: The whole process of strategic
planning is goals, objectives and measurables. I mean,
we're trying to establish our goals and then what our
objectives are, and then how we measure that.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Exactly. Eventually we're
going to have to decide how we're going to measure the
goal. So I mean, if we're getting caught up in task
orientation and not being able to get ~e tasks, to
separate the tasks from the goal, eventually we're going
to have to measure the completion or the achievement of
the task. And we're nowhere near ready to do that.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Are you suggesting that we
should have a general category that says environmental
protection or natural resources?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Well, the goal can be to
maintain our environment to a certain level, and then we
have to develop measurable methods by which we're going
to accomplish that goal.
I mean, the goals are five year~ from now you want
to be somewhere, Just as if you're taking a road trip
across the U.S.A. and you say, Gee, next week I want to
be in Kansas City. That's the goal. Or, that's a goal
in the vision. The vision is to go across the country.
The goal is next week to be in Kansas City. The subtask
is which route am I going to take to get there.
And so the solid waste, the health, the crime,
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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these might all be.routes'by which we're'going to get to
Kansas City.
MR. DORRILL=
go to Kansas City.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS=
John was Just saying we don't want to
He's been there.
Well, we can go to Oklahoma
City. But I mean, that's --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
I think what you're doing
basically is putting another layer between this list that
we have and the general vision that we have.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: But the problem that I'm
seeing where we're going -- and I don't know --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Well, we're not sure where
we're going. This may be the entire .list.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I don't think it will be
because as we go down the list we're getting in more and
more minutiae as we go down the list. We're beginning to
pull more and more tasks rather than goals.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
else would go on this list.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
Give an example of what
Well, the way the
discussion is going, we could get any one of the 20 or 25
items.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
COMMISSION~-R MATTHEWS:
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
might go on the list.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
neighborhoods.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
Give an example.
Give an example?
Yeah, of something that
We could get to safe
That would be under crime.
Maybe not.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Absolutely that would be
under crime. I don't know where else it would go.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: We seem to be resisting the
general category of conservation and environment. I
don't know why we're resisting it. It was on your list.
You said the pendulum may have swung too far. And
Commissioner Saunders said --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm not resisting.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: We talk about potable water.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
general categories.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
I'm trying to look at
That is a general category
that we're trying to identify. And it's actually
environment as it relates to solid waste, as it relates
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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to potable water.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
COMMISSIONER VOLPE=
issues. I mean, --
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS=
That's -- I guess that's --
Environmental issues.
Those are envirormental
Fine, environmental issues.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: I'm Just
there -- I think your concern was that we're getting too
thinking one and five
too specific. These seem
task oriented and we're getting
to be --
PROFESSORMARTIN:
as another category.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
Write down environmental issues
And the other issue, and maybe
we've said it already, is role of government.
Well, that's the identification for myself what our
purpose should be. But you picked up on that' before and
I think -- I mentioned, you know, the cooperation between
I
the various governmental entities within the county.
mean, maybe that's a category. I mean, we're all
servicing essentially the same population.
I don't know whether that's a major category, but
obviously we know that under the ELMS III legislation
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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that intergovernmental coordination, cooperation', is
mandated. So that's going to be something we're going to
have to work at to interface with the City of Naples, to
interface with the School Board, et cetera, et cetera, et
cetera.
That seems to me that somehow -- maybe that's a
role of government, but it seems to me that's an issue
that we should be focused on in terms of --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Can we put down on that
list of major categories -- it's part of the vision
statement, but I think it needs to go on the categories
is effective, efficient, responsive government. And
then, you know, when we start talking about governmental
cooperation, that's a subpart of that.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: That's fine.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
role of government, though.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
role of government.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
Both of those fall under
They may very well.
I think it expands on the
I think role of government
is a part of what you're talking about.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: You can have government
roles that we might determine is'not particularly
efficient. . ~,
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE= I'm just thinking --
hard to believe. I don't know that we need to create a
new heading, that was my point.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS= I think we do.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
hand, role of government and --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Okay.
Those two go hand in
All right.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Could I make a suggestion?
I think role of government really ks an issue of
governance, the issue of governance. Is that a fair
statement?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
it.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
saying the same things
government.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
what type of government you have.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Yeah.
think it's all part of
Instead of -- maybe we're
as governance, the role of
And you're talking about
It all falls out of
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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that.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
and effectiveness.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
there, I guess.
PROFESSOR MARTIN:
That's part of efficiency
Those become subtopics
Very easy subject, isn't it?
Just flows right out like water out of your tap.
It's a difficult task. And I think that probably
as much as you'd like to see it settled before lunch
today, I don't think you will. I think what you need to
do is put as many things here as you think are essential
and then sift and whittle these in your offices in the
next week or so and then make a list of these with
subtopics that you think are appropriate in your way of
thinking and then try to get together with those lists
and come up with a consensus.
MR. DORRILL: Let me throw my top five out Just for
the heck of it. Flip your chart over and let's write
these down. And these are Just very broad, but then I
kind of thought you could go back and plug everything
that the Board mentioned into one of t~ese major goal
areas.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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First one I had was natural resources and
conservation. The second one I had was economic
development, with an emphasis on growth. .Third one I had
was public safety with an emphasis on crime prevention,
you know, be it the Juvenile aspect or Mike's safe
neighborhoods aspect.
MRS. EDWARDS= Crime prevention?
PROFESSOR MARTIN= Yeah.
MR. DORRILL: Fourth one I had was government role,
with an emphasis on efficiency. Last one that I had was
one we didn't touch on but earlier people alluded to it
was public health. And I don't know if four and five are
the same there, but --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS= I think the only difference
in Nell's list and the list, if we flip it back, is that
instead of having solid waste and potable water as two
major categories you have natural resources.
MR. DORRILL= I'm lumping them and then I'd go back
and -- remember I said I'd make your number one objective
and it'll either be water or solid waste.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I have no problem with
that, but the one I meant left off is education.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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Everything else is essentially identical to what we had.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Natural resources and
conservation, are you including such things as solid
waste and potable water in there?
MR. DORRILL:
to --
That's right.
You'd have to go back
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Don't you think you'd need a
category called essential services or something like that
to cover those rather than natural resources? Almost
everything we do interfaces with natural resources and
conservation. Almost everything. So, you know, to try
to use that as -- you could use that as a single category
and cover everything, if you want.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Under what, for example,
does transportation fall under?
MR. DORRILL: Government --
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I don't know if your intent
was to -- the thrust or the intent was to Just focus on
protecting and preserving natural resources.
MR. DORRILL: No. I think your major goal
statements need to sort of be broad as Betrye has said,
but then I think at your objective level you've got to go
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
95
back and determine what your number one, two and three
objectives --I'm trying to group the broad categories
and come back and get priorities within the --
COMMISSIONERMATTHEWS: Something that might handle
Commissioner Norris' question is number four,
government's role.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Lump it into there?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Well, call it government
services, and then all of these quote unquote public
services outside of public health and public safety.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Lump it into that.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I guess I see it a
little different. When I think of government's role,
we're trying to determine a couple different things,
whether we talk about privatization, where we should go
with that, or to what extent we should take the park
services or those things. I see that as completely
different, I guess, than transportation needs.
We know we're going to have to continue to work on
the road network and so on.
falling under any of those.
couple of those, publio safety, roads.
I don't really see that
You could force it under a
In government's
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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role you have our'role"as to .the tra~s~ortation network.
But those are -- it's kind of a forced fit. I
don't see that as a natural fit. But I think you're
96
right, there may not need to be one more category out of
those that are there as either essential services or
something.
MR. DORRILL:
So maybe trade' public health with --
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE:' I'm not saying you have
to limit it to five. You couldadd a sixth category.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: I would suggest that for our
purposes perhaps we could use the list on the preceding
page that the Commission did.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'd like to whittle a
little on the one on the preceding page before we go.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: This is to be, as I
understand it, to be presented to us so that we can
whittle and winnow --
PROFESSORMARTIN:
COMMISSIONER NORRIS:
us how to winnow.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
I don't think we had consensus there in education.
Sift and winnow.
You're going to have to teach
Education, for example.
I
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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know Commissioner Volpe brought it up, but I'think all
four of us said that's not really a role we can play.
It's too bad to spend time pursuing that at all if four
of us at this point don't think that's something to do.
This gets into efficiency.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Once we develop this list,
and maybe we have developed it, but once we develop the
list we need some time to consider that. I hadn't
thought about education.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'm sorry. I ~hought
you were the first one to speak against it.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I said that I don't think
we have a role in education. I've been educated on that
point that we do have a role in education and --
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: I think that all ties into the
economic development, frankly.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
at it.
I'm willing to take a look
They're all'broad
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
categories.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Why don't we Jr:st have him
present us with this list for our winnowing and take a
33962
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
98
look at it from there?~
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Do we want to add to it?
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: On the question of the
transportation and essential services, have we
satisfied -- the two of you seem to think that we don't
have that under any one of those major goals.
COMMISSIONER NORRIS: Solid waste, I believe that
particular line was expanded to say future essential
services.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: And you're talking about the
transportation network and solid waste, utilities, --
COMMISSIONERNORRIS: Exactly.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: -- the kinds of things
government is about, to provide essential services.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: For example, parks and
recreation's not an essential service.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Exactly.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Sorry, Tom.
MR. OLLIFF: No, but I'm a little confused because
I think sometimes we're putting some of these things up
here just because it's what government does andwe think
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
99
we should, but that's not one of the major goals that the
Commission's ever listed up here.
Nobody ever mentioned sewage service or
transportation in any of your major goals up there.
Should it actually be a major category that. we're
focusing on? i
If these are the major goals that our Commission
feels are important for our community, nobody ever
mentioned those things. Do they really belong on this?
Is that where you want us to put our focus? You didn't
say that on these lists.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE=
a transportation network in Collier County, you're
questioning if that should be a major goal?
MR. OLLIFF= Here. That should be our -- what
you've told us is the major focus. I think yes,
obviously it's something that we should be doing and
making sure that there's sewage service for all the new
customers that come in. But was that one of the most
important focuses that anybody listed? You didn't list
that.
MR. DORRILL=
Creating and maintaining
Bettye and I were coming down on
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
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those as being part of the role ofgovernment. And, you
know, maybe objective number two would be the continued
implementation of the county Capital Improvement Element
or the Capital Transportation Element. But that's, you
know, the objective in order of priority. That's the
most important.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: For what its value might be to
you, I have a legal description of your duties and
responsibilities from the legal department to the Board
of County Commissioners is the legislative and governing
body of Collier County. Nobody has mentioned legislation
or governing in this school..iNow, ~I don't know if they
have to fit or not. I'm Just bringing this point
forward.
Then they list, "They are responsible for providing
services to protect the health, safety, welfare and
quality of life of the citizens of Collier County." I
think they're listed here except for the governing and --
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Role of government.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Role of government, yeah. And
legislative. You need to pass those legislative things
that will bring to fruition the long-range goals that
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
lol
the place.
$500 fine.
garbage disposal on our highways and byways.
know how you can control that, but that's --
you're trying roachisys.
One of the things that bothers memostly about
where I live is the garbage that I see throw~ out of
windows and out of the back of pickup trucks damn near
every day, cans and fast-foodwrappers and that all over
And there's signs all over'the place that say
I have yet to see the courts fine anybody for
I don't
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS= Well, there's -- it's a
criminal violation, and we have crime up there. It's a
matter of enforcement.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE= It's also an environmental
issue as well.
PROFESSOR MARTIN= That's right.
Well, I tell you you have a beautiful park there on
Golden Gate Parkway. If you turn into the park and you
drive all the way past the 9ark, it's a dead-end street,
and you go back there and you'll see a beautiful city
dump, including furniture and automobile parts and palm
and other garden waste.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE= You haven't seen a '?2
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
102
Buick back there, have you?
PROFESSOR MARTIN= I haven't been back there today.
HR. OLLIFF= Will one of our goals be eventually to
have statements that come out of each of these?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think what we're going to
do is take each one of these and list the subheadings
under each one that we think are important and try to
expand on the list as subheadings or subcategories.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Could I offer up a thought
that we ask our staff over the next week or ten days
until we get together again their concept of what the
tasks are that need to be accomplished over the next
three or four years so that then we can begin to arrange
those tasks?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think, you know, one
thing that you mentioned and we haven't really discussed
at all is the top down/bottom up flow of information.
I don't know if there's a some major category that
needs to be developed for getting this input from the
bottom floating up as well as going the other way. Maybe
role of government gives us that category where we can'
list it, but I think we need to generate some procedure
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY,
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33962
103
to make sure that we have that type of information.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: That's the paper flow I was
talking about; a system, a simplified easy-to-read, quick
reference system from top to bottom.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: It's probably a subcategory
of efficiency. How do we develop that flow of
information?
Neil, maybe you have some ideas.
MR. DORRILL: I don't. Beyond that, though, when I
talk individually to commissioners one of the most
frustrating things about being a commissioner or a staff
person is how should we communicate certain things
individually as commissioners and being sensitive to the
sunshine law but in terms of, you know, even a simple
complaint resolution.
Should we have as Commissioner Matthews called it
the other day a little protocol, you know, in terms of
what is our method of communicating?
And that may be a whole other issue that we want to
talk about in terms of team building at a staff level but
making sure that you don't frustrate us and we don't
frustrate you in trying to minimize the friction within
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
104
the communication process. And that's --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: That has to
MR. DORRILL:
get to today.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS .'
the efficiency in government.
be part of it.
But it's not something we're going to
That has to be a part of
And I think Co~issioner
Matthews is right that we need to develop some way of
having that flow of information so it can be more
efficient.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE= At what level, Commissioner
Saunders, in terms of the flow of communication?
I mean, for example'the manager never gives us the
state of the county message. You don't -- Neil, in terms
of communication, in terms of that's the issue, you
communicate with individual co~issioners, but don't
seize the moment to communicate generally with us in a
public forum about general issues.
I mean, you should be our primary source of
communication from the staff level. You meet with your
staff people on a regular weekly basis. You always know
what's going on. But in terms of that dialogue to
communicate at one time to the five of us, I think, is
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
105
one level of communication that we don't necessarily have
good communication, in my view.
MR. DORRILL:. And then to pick up on something that
Commissioner Saunders says, we're not particularly
effective or efficient, I don't believe, in terms of
communicating.
We have a very~crude, limited public affairs
activity here. But even some of the more formalized
things that we do, like we produce a county manager's
staff report that comes out once a month does not appear
to be very widely read or a useful tool at communicating
major upcoming events or activity from the preceding
month.
Improving on our public affairs aspect is one of
our internal goals to try and restructure, redevelop
public affairs activities in the coming years. I don't
disagree with that. I don't think that that's -- I think
that's beyond a major County Commission goal. I think
it's -- Butt, you said it's probably the role of
government.
We need to be more efficient an~ more effective at
public affairs and getting our message out. But I do
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
106
agree that you need to look primarily to the
administration to be doing that because that's kind of an
operational matter.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: One of the things that
brought this protocol idea to mind to me is that there's
oftentimes that I'll talk to a citizen of the county
that's not in District 5 and they're having a problem and
for one reason or another they're talking to me instead
of their commissioner. Should I handle the problem?
Should I notify a commissioner that a constituent has
contacted me? You know, what do we do?
Right now we don't have a procedure, so to speak,
for that. We also don't have a protocol, so to speak,
for how we're going to communicate with the county
manager, or he to us, or us to the staff, or the staff to
us. It seems to be a hodgepodge of methods being used.
And it would be nice Just to have a protocol amongst us,
an agreement this is the way we're going to do things.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Remember I passed out that
rules of procedure from Brevard County. I mean, that
really is what all of that was. I mean, it does have an
s.o.P. for those kinds of minutiae in terms of how we
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES,.FL 33962
107
interface with each other.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS= Brevard County has one.
Several other counties have one. And in the course of
gathering information for their privatization discussions
coming up, I've gathered information now from about 30
different counties. And several counties have that, and
I think it's something we may want to look at.
PROFESSOR MARTIN= Called a policies and procedures
manual. And every company that I've ever worked with,
six or seven hundred, have a policies and procedures
manual. And that's what you're talking about.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS= Do we have an
administrative code for Collier County? Is it codified?
I'm sure we've got it in different memos floating
around.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: There is an administrative
code. It probably hasn't been looked at in 20 years.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Well, as we update that
or develop that, I want to be careful we don't get so
administrative that we lose the purpose like when someone
calls in I don't care if they're from Distr~ct 3 or
wherever, the last thing they want is, Well, geez,
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
108
Commissioner Volpe isn't due in until tomorrow morning so
I'm sorry, you have to wait 'til then.
We have to be careful of who we address.
Regardless of who's calling when, that their problem is
addressed immediately. And then how we co~unicate
amongst ourselves is --
COMMISSIONERMATTHEWS= That's what I'm talking
about.
MR. DORRILL: You want to be responsive but you
want to give Co~issioner Volpe the courtesy of knowing
that there's an issue in hi~ district that he needs to at
least acknowledge or be aware of that other people are
participating in.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Or to get back to the
constituent at a later date and say, Gee, I'm sorry I
wasn't available when you called, and*is the matter
solved?
COMMISSIONER VOLPE= That's what we should be
really looking at. I don't know what happened to that
S.O.P., the rules and procedures, because it hasn't
really been an issue. But in terms of who gives
direction to our staff and how is that direction? Does
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
109
it come from this process of strategic plan~tng, or is it
me giving direction to Mr. Clark to go out and pursue
something? I don't think -- or, is it one of the
individual members of the Board giving direction to the
manager to pursue, you know, a certain activity.
How do we get to make sure that before one of our
staff embarks upon that mission that we've got consensus
or we've got a majority of the five of us that believe
that that's something that is time being well spent
rather than the complaint'comes in to ne and I decide for
myself that that must be an important issue and therefore
ask, you know, the manager to work back through the staff
to get some flushing out of a particular problem.
MR. DORRILL: It's so important we had a real
serious conversation recently at a staff meeting about
the perception that on occasion the staff is dumping
complaint resolutions back into the'Boa~d's office. Do
you remember that?
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: I do.
MR. DORRILL: The concern is that things go beyond
our ability to solve them. And it becomes an issue that
needs to result in a change in policy. What. should our
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33962
11o
response be rather than Just dumping it back into the
Board's office and saying, Well, we can't. help. It's the
Board's fault, or you need to go get a commissioner to,
you know, agree to amend the ordinance or amend the
policy.
That may get back to part of this -- maybe we ought
to look in terms of co~unication, having some Standard
Operating Procedure or an administrative code that says
this is generally the way that we will communicate these
types of things.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: It's well spelled out anyway in
the ordinance and in the duties and responsibilities that
the five of you are top planners and the plan~ flow from
you without watering down any of your individual
authorities to Neil's staff and Neil parcels them dow~ to
the seven administrative departments~ they handle the
work and it comes back through the syste~ to Neil back to
you.
In fact, we tried to explain that on page 14 in
here if you get a chance after the meeting to study that
because the idea behind that is all legally documented.
And this is what I'm proposing. That's top down/bottom
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
111
up.
It goes through this protocol. A~d maybe you need
to write that, Commissioner Volpe, so that everybody
understands it be=ause you should not be handling
administrative duties. It's not within your Jurisdiction
or your time constraints. You don't need to be handling
administration. That's Neil's Job. A~d he needs to get
the information back to you that you are satisfied that
that was handled to your satisfaction and to your way of
thinking.
Is that how you see it, Neil?
MR. DORRILL= I do. It's never that simple. We
live in a community where people are very apt to want to
call their commissioner~ their commissioner being in
their mind's eye the person who can, you k~ow, bark an
order dow~ to the staff to get garbage picked up on the
street or to resolve a building permit problem or a
utility bill problem.
I think the commissioners are a little bit
overwhelmed with that or either it becomes the
secretary's duty to contact this department head or find
out, get me some information back. I think maybe that's
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERSt COLLIER COUNTYt NAPLESv FL 33962
112
something we do need to look at.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Can you screen your calls before
you take them? Is that an acceptable alternative?
MR. DORRILL:
secretarial level.
I think they are at the Board's
I Just don't know how well that
works. And I don't know how good we respond back to the
commissioner's office to tell them that something has
been fixed or it will be fixed by this and this day.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: But even at that, once a
constituent has called the commisstoner's office,
regardless of whether it's been fixed or not, how do you
not call them back?
PROFESSOR MARTIN:
COMMISSIONER MA'i'"2~EWS:
back?
PROFESSOR MARTIN:
Do not call them back?
How do you not call them
Well, somebody needs to respond
to the complaint, there's no doubt about that, or you've
got a very unhappy voter out there. That's what the
protocol is sugposed to handle.
If you have a 9roblem from one of your constituents
and you turn it over to the administrative people,
someone along the line should get a report back to you,
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
113
We investigated it, we handled the problem, we called the
constituent and this is what happened, so that you at
least know at the end of a major complaint that it was
handled and it was handled properly according to the
protocol you're talking about, Co~missioner.
MR. DORRILL: Well, it sounds great in theory but
the problem, you know, is the guy that lives on County
Barn Road who suddenly over the course of the last four
months finds his property being inundated with water.
You Just can't go fix things like that. Sometimes you
have to have a public petition and sometimes you have to
give the Board an overall sense of where George is and
John Bolt's crew's working now because you don't want us
to pull them off that to go make this guy happy. And
that's why I said it's not always easy.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: It's not easy, but you can
communicate that problem back to the -- I've called the
sheriff a couple times when I had people drive through my
yard and knock down $500 worth of evergreens and things
and they said, Oh, it's a drunken driver. It wasn't
vandalism. They didn't want to agree with me. Somebody
has to tell me whatever happens.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
114
Mr. Clark.
MR. CLARK: I agree with basically what everybody's
saying, but Neil hit on a good point. If you formalize
every communication to the point that you go through this
protocol and you have 14 sheets of paper -- to give a
good iljustration Just in code enforcement, they get like
50,000 complaints a year. And I'd say probably
conservatively probably a thousand or two come from the
commissioners' offices.
Now, if we're going to generate -- and I'm saying
minor things, somebody dropped off a washing machine in
somebody's front yard or something, a piece of trash.
But if you formalize that to a piece of paper, we're
going to be drowned in paper work if you have to follow a
protocol~ whereas their secretaries now pick up the phone
and say it's taken care of and say it's done.
But if you have to formalize that protocol every
time any complaint comes in, you've got 14 pieces of
paper going back up through Neil and everybody else.
MR. DORRILL: At some point, though, I think they
do need to be logged in, or not so much that we create a
bureaucratic paper monster but automated as part of our
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
115
all-in-one system. So if it's important enough for a
commissioner to mention it to me or you want a response
on something, somebody has got to track the response or
the problem resolution, even
months.
And we do our division heads now.
if it ultimately takes three
If it's
important enough for me to mention to you where I need
you to do something or respond by a certain date, we log
it in and it gets a number and you and I agree and you
work it back through Bill. But we agree as to when it is
that we're expecting something to be, you kzlow, resolved
or completed.
And maybe we need to expand that to the Board level
as a commissioner. If it's important enough for you to
know and to get some feedback and it needs to be logged
in, at least if it's an automated process --
HR. CLARK: That's good.
HR. DORRILL: -- so that a commissioner or their
secretary can call it up on the screen and find out --
you promised us something by February the 15th and it's
the 21st and we haven't heard from you. That's your
fault.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
116
MR. HARGETT= A good example of that is
commissioners usually get bombarded by some citizen
complaint and they all get a copy, they all react
differently. Some go right directly to your department
head, others come to Neil, to me, to you.
In the meantime, the department head's responded to
a commissioner, you've responded to me back and we
duplicated and spent probably a couple hours more than we
needed to. And what Neil's saying is maybe there's some
more efficient way to handle that complaint.
MR. CLARK= That all-in-one would be a good idea.
MR. DORRILL: And the poor division head, he's
catching it from a commissioner, another commissioner's
secretary, the Assistant County Manager and me two weeks
later at the one-on-one, you know, when there may be,
like Bill said, a more efficient way of getting everybody
in track of what's happening on that particular complaint
or that particular request for information.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Can I raise Just one other
issue?
up.
And that is, we're talking about, top down/bottom
We need to consider how we can tap the resources
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
117
that exist within our staff to get more from bottom up.
Obviously we've got the citizenry that are telling us
certain things about whatthey want. It's the staff that
can provide us, to some extent, with the guidance as to
how we go about implementing the goals and objectives.
I hate the expression, but it is empowering the
individual. And, you know, somehow either through the
budgeting process, which is one way of getting that, you
know, getting the various division administrators and
their staff, but to somehow get the flo~ of information
coming up from the staff up through the hierarchy. And I
don't know how you do that.
PROFESSOR MARTIN= Well, the real benefit of top
down/bottom up is that the bottom responds according to
the rules and regulations of operation in their
department. And if they don't respond ~lpwards, then the
whole thing is in the garbage can.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE= But my point is I understand
that the staff should be responsive to %~at the policy
makers have identified as being those p~iorities in terms
of implementation.
By the same token, I'm suggesting that there's got
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES~ FL '33962
to be a mechanism,.whether it's pay fo~.performance,
whether it's through the new budgeting concepts in terms
of how you give a division administrator a certain fund
of pool of money to work with in terms of certain
programs that they may see, some opportunities with. I'm
just suggesting that we do a little bit more perhaps in
terms of encouraging staff to provide more bottom to top.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: We're not inventing
something new here. There are organizations that have
top down/bottom up flow of information.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: That's right.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: And we're not talking about
that flow of information occurring once a year during a
budget process. We're talking about it occurring
periodically on an ongoing basis.
And I think we all agree that, Mr. Dorri11, you
need to help us develop some sort of mechanism, not
today. Mr. Martin may already know what it is, but we're
not going to be able to figure it out today. But I think
we all agree you need to help us get that flow of
information.
MR. DORRILL: I'm glad we got off on'that.
I don't.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
119
know that it has anything to do with major goals, but I'm
glad that improved communication kind of got slung in
here.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
Efficiency.
MR. McNEES: So it's not missed here, you've
already seen the fruits of one structure you've already
created from bottom up communication. You saw the group
from the water department tell you what their research
told them about back-flow prevention. And that's a
structure that you already paid for and it's already in
place to bring bottom up communication from the staff to
the managers and in this case all the way to the
Commission. So that's one thing.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Perfect example of
necessity for that, Commissioner Norris mentioned
identifying a process to simplify and condense some of
the legislation, such as the Land Development Code.
Well, if the staff and the Community Development
Division understand that we want to eliminate duplicative
regulations, we want to eliminate regulations that are
nonsensical - and we have some of those - t~en it's our
staff people that can tell us which of those regulations
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33962
120
we need to eliminate.
MR. DORRILL: I know that we're g~ing to fast run
out of time here today in terms of -- ~epper, don't let
me steal your thunder, but should we as a staff take the
major categories and then draft maybe ~ome goal sentences
or maybe a two-sentence goal statement for each one of
the categories and bring that back to the Board?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: My guess would be that the
commissioners should take those lists and we should
massage those and come up with items under each category
as opposed to dumping that on staff to do it for us.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: I agree. Can we get, though,
this information? Can someone reproduce that for us so
that we can see --
MR. DORRILL: We'll prepare a summary document from
all of this and maybe almost like a little -- not a
transcript, but maybe, you know, some of the major themes
that were hit on today and produce kind of a summary
report or --
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Not only looking at that to
help flush out the major goals but to get what the others
have been thinking. And I think as we begin to talk
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
121
later -- they do somehow help to provide the flesh for
those various goals.
MR. DORRILL: What the Board said originally was
that you wanted to try to meet and work and develop this
on a quarterly basis through the remainder of this year,
but I would hate to think that we're not going to do
anything with this until, you know, three months from
now.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We also talked about the
fifth Tuesday, and I think March has a fifth Tuesday. I
don't have a calendar in front of me.
MR. OLLIFF: It does.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That wight be an
opportunity to jump on this right away.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I myself kind of envisioned
the fifth Tuesday as a strategic planning maintenance.
My preference would be that while we're hot on the
subject to stay fairly close to it until we have it
fairly well accomplished and then quarterly, on the fifth
Tuesday, do the maintenance.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: But if we don't have the
strategic planning, then the maintenance doesn't become
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLESt FL
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122
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: No.
COMMISSIONER V~LPE: So what Commissioner
Constantine said is Tuesday is the next available date.
I'm just suggesting -- I agree with you that we
need to keep whatever momentum we've got going, but this
is the formative process.
aside on that Tuesday.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
So we've got a whole day set
though, from where we are right now.
away.
That's six weeks away,
¥eah, six weeks
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Oh.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Almost.
I think it's too long.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I agree that's too long.
We probably need a relatively short session like this to
put bones or flesh on that skeleton there after we
massage it ourselves and come up with suggestions.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Why don't we pick a date for
ourselves and we'll get a list.
What are we talking about in terms of time, two or
three weeks?
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962.
123
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
to us?
MR. DORRILL:
A couple weeks.
Can you get that information
We'll do that by the end of the week.
The only other suggestion --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Nell, you may not agree
with this, but I think what's really important in terms
of your report on this meeting is that list and that
list, but a lot of the discussion and summarizing the
discussion I don't think is important because we're
brainstorming right now.
MR. DORRILL: Nor is our trying to editorialize
your two lists. I think you all need to develop the list
a little further into some absolute -- more statement or
more sentences, you know. We have individual word
categories. We need to get where we've got an actual
goal statement or a goal summary for each one of the top
five.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
we've had and based upon the major categories that we've
come up with, plus what each of us have kind of
individualized. We're trying to build consensus to come
Based upon the discussion that
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
124
up with what we think based upon our own thoughts and the
other's input.
MR. DORRILL: I think it needs a little more input
from your level as opposed to us trying to force the
thing.
The only other comment that I have for today is I
like the informal aspect of meeting outside of the
Board's chambers. I think this room is a little
claustrophobic and is hard to move around in. There's a
meeting room down at the downtown --
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: That's what makes it good.
MR. DORRILL: Maybe we ought to meet in a room half
as small as this.
I was just going to suggest the central library
meeting room because it's about two or three times the
size of this and you're not trying to squeeze behind
people, but I'll leave that up to y'all. If y'a11 like
meeting here, it's easy for the staff to meet here.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I don't have a problem.
COMMISSIONER VO~PE: What about the health
department?
MR. DORRILL:. The health departmont has a room
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
125
that's similar.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: This is fine, I think,
in a room so you don't need microphones.
MR. DORRILL: If y'a11 are happy here, we'll
continue to meet here.
I presume you want to do that fairly quickly, try
to meet within the next two or three weeks rather than
six weeks.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
Yes.
I'd like to ask once again
if we could as we develop our tasks into groupings that
we ask our division and department heads who know what
the regulations are and what the mandated regulations
coming down on us are that we get some input from them so
that we know what is out there that we don't know yet
about but they know about it.
I'd like to kn~w more about what fn environmental
services what the EPA, the federal EPA is coming down
with that's going to be mandated upon us in two years or
three years or what have you because if we're looking at
a five-year planning process, admittedly years two
through five are penciled in, but I'd like to know what
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
126
the pencil marks are going to look like.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: So the objective of the
next meeting will be to put under each one of those major
categories the items that are of significance in some
order and staff will hel9 us with that. I assume that's
what we're doing.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I would hope so.
MR. DORRILL: In more of a sentence type structure
where you might have, you know, a two-sentence or a
one-sentence goal statement on potable water protection.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
do to potable water.
MR. DORRILL:
Yeah, what are we going to
I think we would be remissive --
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
hand for 20 minutes.
MS. STRATTON:
Chris has been raising her
If I may, this has been very helpful
and very informative and very interesting to sit in on.
One thing that I would like to share with you is
the third item you have listed is the role of government.
And as I look at the list, the question that keeps coming
into my mind is these are laudable categorY. es, these are
appropriate categories, these are issues that must be
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33962
'!27
faced in this county, but I keep'saying is this the role
of the County Commission to address, specifically
economic development.
I think we need to do a great deal to enhance the
quality of life for a lot of people. We have to look for
other economic opportunities. But I'm not sure -- and I
guess as you think about what that means as you define
that goal, what is the role of the County Commissioners
versus, you know, -- I would hate to see an economic
development organization in county government or
something like that.
I think these are laudable goals. But the question
is, you know, is this something that the county
government should be doing or should it be establishing a
communication link or encouraging somebody else to do
these?
The Nesbit Study had people from throughout the
community, not just county government. So, you know,
that's -- that's my only concern is that.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I'd agree, and I think
as we flush these out, or massage these as Commissioner
Saunders says, I think-- Lee County contributes to a
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33962
128
group right now that spends a great deal of money every
year in the name of economic development. And I'm not
sure how much of that -- I agree with you there. I'm not
sure that's how we want to do it. But if we can alter
some of our codes to encourage --
MS. STRATTON: Sure.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: -- that, that's
important.
MS. STRATTON: That's the only thing, Just any of
these topics as the goals are articulated is, is this
really appropriate?
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: The point I was trying to
make, Chris, is the difference between steering and
rowing.
MS. STRATTON: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: We can steer and let someone
else do the rowing.
Development Council.
doing it ourselves.
And so it could be the Economic
We don't necessarily have to be
And I think that that's the
distinction that I made in my own mind.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Before we go, I guess I
just wanted to be sure and thank Pepper. He has put a
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962
129
lot of time and effort in on this. I hope you'll stick
with us through this process and keep working with us.
And we'll get together in two or three weeks at a date to
be set, I guess.
MR. DORRILL: I'd like to thank the staff as well
and have the record indicate that both Butt and I thought
that aqua-socks should have been a lot higher than number
nine on the list.
(Meeting concluded at 12:35 p.~,)
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY~ NAPLES, FL 33962
III II
130
STATE OF FLORIDA )
COUNTY OF COLLIER
I, Christina J. Reynoldson, RPR and ~eputy
Official Court Reporter, do hereby certify that the foregoing
proceedings were taken before me at the date and place as
stated in the caption hereto on Page i hereof; that the
foregoing computer-assisted transcription, consisting of pages
numbered 3 through 129, inclusive, is a true record of my
Stenograph notes taken at said proceedings.
Dated this 11th day of February, 1994.
c~ris~ina '/~../R~ynoZds6n,- CP, RPR
Deputy Of~ial Court Reporter
20th Judic~ial Circuit
STATE OF FLORIDA
COUNTY OF COLLIER
The foregoing certificate was acknowledged before me this
/~. day of February, 1994, by Christina J. Reynoldson,
who is personally known to me.
~6tary Publio ~
State of Flor a' r
~ C~lSS10N EXP~ MAR.28,199~ "'"
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33962 '