BCC Minutes 02/28/1994 W (Strategic Plan)ORIGINAL
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
STRATEGIC PLANNING CONFERENCE
February 28, 1994
9:00 a.m.
Collier County Museum
Naples, FL 33962
REPORTED BY~ Ja¢lyn M. Ouellette
Deputy Official Court Reporter
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS
Carrothers Reporting Service, Inc.
20th Judicial Circuit - Collier County
3301 East Tamiami Trail
Naples, Florida 33962
TELE: (813)732-2700 FAX: ($13)774-6022
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33964
TIMOTHY CONSTANTINE
BETTYE HATTHEWS
JOHN NORRIS
BURT SAUNDERS
MICHAEL VOLPE
GEORGE ARCHIBALD - Transportation 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
MIKE $MYKOWSKI - Utilities Administrator
PROFESSOR LESLIE "PEPPER" MARTIN
STEVE HART
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
3396
MR. DORRILL= Let's go ahead and get started.
I understand Ms. Matthews is on her way. We will
presume Mr. Volpe is also on his way.
We thought that we would dispense with any
formal introductions or icebreakers since some of us did
so poorly last time on that.
Let's go ahead and get to work. The staff had
prepared a little hand out from our last meeting which
was sort of Just a recapitulation of the major goal
areas, the categories that are also on our flip chart
over in the corner of the room, and then in parenthesis
there lea vote tally for each one of the categories
that are on the hand out, and Just so that you will
understand, for example, the first one, Maintain Low
Costs To Consumer to Safe, Effective Environmentally
Secure Method Of Disposal as it pertains to solid waste.
In parenthesis, that Leans the commissioners from
district three proposed or voted for that major goal
category.
The one below that had two votes obviously
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 3~964
and those two votes from the commissioners from
District I and District 4.
Short of that, I thought that what we
wanted to do today would be to maybe have Pepper review
the categories that were there and then see if we can't
solicit some input and response from the commission and
also the staff as we are trying to complete the major
goal statements and perhaps work on some individual
objective areas under the major areas.
Pepper, we appreciate you being back with us
this morning. I will go ahead and turn it over to you.
PROFESSOR HARTIN: Once again, good morning.
Just a quick note, when we were discussing this
process last time, I mentioned probably a terminology
that hadn't been heard by these ears before, which is a
famous plaque at the University of Wisconsin's main
building called sifting and winnowing and Commissioner
Saunders used the term massaging aimed at the same type
of identification of what is happening here, so I
thought, someone over there -- there was a voice over
there that said somebody is going to have to teach us
how to winnow and I don't think I can teach you how to
. O,FICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
winnow but I will give you the definition, so I will do
that as professors are want to do at times.
It's an old term, comes from the 1880s, out in
Kansas, Nebraska, where they raised wheat. It was used
in thrashing the heart of the wheat away from the chaff,
that was called sifting and winnowing, which was a very
tough Job in those days. Later on adopted for other
definitions to sort out and to separate, to sift out the
facts to the basic essentials, to separate, remove and
eliminate the truth from a wordy report or falsehood,
and I like the last one, to feel a gust of fresh air,
and I think maybe that is pretty indicative of what this
group is undertaking at this time.
All we want to do is to remind you this is what
was on the board when we left, when we adjourned several
weeks ago. These are the major things discussed. We
were trying to pick out the major areas for long range
strategic planning.
You will all have a copy of that, you all have
a copy of all the commissioners' lists that were on the
board here at one time, and in keeping with the saying,
ladies before gentlemen, if Betrye Matthews is ready,
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
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she came with a magnificent hand-out this morning.
Are you ready to start the program,
Commissioner Matthews7
COKNISSIONER MATTHEWS: I guess.
What I did was to take the memorandum that
Jennifer supplied us with a couple weeks ago and tried
to take what I thought were four important areas and
develop them into a statement of goall and then try to,
below that, assign some tasks on how to achieve those
goals.
I guess I've got about ten of these things and
I can share them around. I don't know, I probably
didn't bring enough.
This is something that my husband does with his
classes in leadership, so I had a lot of his help in
trying to prioritize stuff and do some affinity
diagraming and get the stuff boiled down, but anyway,
what I thought is probably, in my prioritization,
potable water sources was probably the most Important
thing that we needed to look at, and some of the tasks
to do that were to preserve and restore the shallow
aquifer, to support all efforts to Increase aquifer
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recharge and one way to do that would be through the
Crew Trust Acquisition.
Other things we could do would be to sup9ort
the efforts to limit salt water intrusion and the South
Florida Water Nanagement District is building additional
structures in the Golden Gate Nain Canal, Faka Union
Canal and the Cocohatches River Canal system that would
stack water and add weight to the land and push the salt
water back out again.
Another thing would be the South Blocks
Acquisition, to support that and get it moving so that
it's finalized in the future.
The fourth thing was the continued
investigat~on of the ASR irrigation water system. We
heard a talk on that at the city council meeting last
month.
I'm having some conceptual problems with it,
but I'm sure that these guys are more intelligent about
it than I am and I'm Just looking for some answers to
what I thought were some fairly basic questions. I'm
sure that they are answered, I Just haven't heard them
yet.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
The next item, the next goal that I had listed
wee to encourage economic development that will increase
utilization of commercial/industrial floor space 40
percent in the next five years.
Some tasks to do that would be to increase
corporate headquarters being located here in Collier
County, and to do that we could provide incentives and
we could increase and find ways to improve the work
force that would entice headquarters to locate here if
they knew we had the work force to do the work that
needs to be done.
Method B, Item B would be to develop the
enterprise zone in Immokalee.
C would be to increase tourism. Two ways to do
that that immediately came to mind is get the beaches
renourished and to introduce special attractions, either
in the shoulder season, off season or in the season -- I
don't know much we can do in the season, though, there
is not many hotel rooms left -- and then something new
that has come to my attention in the last, I guess three
or four weeks, is the concept called empowerment zones
and we are in the -- I'm in the process of getting more
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
9
information on that, as we put this together.
The third goal that I saw important was to
promote the most efficien~ and responsive local
government in Florida, and this was probably to me the
hardest one to actually put together, because I thought
a lot of the tasks that Jennifer had listed that we were
concerned about came under efficient and responsive
local government. For me, the first and most important
task was to develop a quantitative measurement to
determine what is efficient. We don't know.
The second thing was, and I think this is very
important, to encourage the State of the Art Solid Waste
Collection Disposal System. We need to look at the
landfill location, we need to look at recycle programs,
the tertiary markets for the recycling, the secondary
markets, and something that Collier County has been
doing but maybe not extensively enough is landfill
mining and the reclamation of recyclebias from the
mining.
Item C that we all seem to agree on is to
support the sheriff's crime shopping efforts.
There is a lot of things that are going on in
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
10
this area. Community awareness is one of them,
neighborhood enhancement is another. The safe
neighborhood act is part of the first two, the Juvenile
boot camp and then extended Jail and prison terms for
the clearly definable criminal element that Just doesn't
want to make a change.
D kind of ties in with the earlier one of
increasing and improving the work force and that is
increasing the level of education available in Collier
County, to support the snhancement of the academics, to
support Job training programs, to encourage increased
enrollment in the local community college system, to
encourage the rapid growth of the local university
system, tO encourage endowments to be established in the
new Tempe University and to encourage expansive approach
to the availability of scholarships.
E is to improve essential services.
Now, I separated essential services from public
services, and my reasoning for doing that is that
essential services to me come under the health, welfare
and safety concept and public services don't
necessarily. E.M.S. is a health, safety and welfare
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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issue where a library may not be, public parks may not
be, but under both of those, the enhancement and
improvement of them to me are very similar.
The first method is privatization where
feasible and, important word, where feasible, and number
two is to establish coalitions with other political
subdivisions, be it bi-county, multi-county or within
our constitutional offices concept.
Under public services, the third item is to
improve volunteerism. Collier County is truly blessed
with a lot of people who want to be a part of this
system, and to do this I think we need to create
volunteer systems that are friendly, they are easily
accessed, they provide recognition and we could even
provide incentives or something like that once a year
with a picnic in the park for volunteers or what have
you, like that, something that provides something
special.
The last goal I have is to assure an acceptable
quality of life is maintained into the foreseeable
future. Tasks to do that again, to develop quantitative
measuring methods, and Item B would be to balance
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
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economic development and growth with environmental
preservation, and some ways we can do that is to
encourage reduced densities, encourage conservation
easements, to do further investigation into the transfer
of development rights and to investigate marketing of
development rights.
Item C would be to develop affordable health
care availability, and under that I have HMOs and PPOs.
Those are Just my rearrangement of the thoughts
that Jennifer gave US and I'm sure we'll come up with
lots of others that either supplement, add to it or are
totally different, but it's a starting point.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Betrye, I want to thank
you. I think it's excellent, it's more than a starting
point.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Could someone make
additional copies of those?
HR. DORRILL: Some of us didn't have copies,
we're getting one for everybody.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I hadn't figured to be
ths first one up on this meeting, but anyway, as I say,
I Just took the numbers that Jennifer gave us and took
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 3396,
13
the highlighted items and tried to group them.
I saw in the memo and I saw in the individual
goals attached that we have a lot of very common
concerns and common goals. We may not agree on the best
way to get there, and that's what the tasks and the
affinity diagram would do, is help us to agree on the
most appropriate method that will get us to the goal
that we are trying to achieve.
So, if I had known, I would have run off 30
copies.
PROFESSOR KARTIN: Batrye, I think you have
overwhelmed the group. There isn't a peep out there.
I think this is a fantastic presentation of an
organized method of thinking about this, and I think
what we are after now is all the input from the other
commissioners with regard to how we can organize this
and possibly put it to work in the ensuing weeks and
months, so whoever wants to start, why, this is very
informal, I think anybody who wants to speak should
speak up, raise their hand.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
ahead.
I'm going to go
I will skip the first topic only because I think
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that is one we'll disagree the most on, and it would
probably be easier to start off on something we agree
As far as economic development, there is a
number of thAngs that eeem to be headed An the right
directAon, that Betrye has outlined here and seem to be
headed in that direction but I think it's up to perhaps
the Board to encourage and make sure those things come
to fruition.
The Immokalee enterprise zone we can do more
with than we are now, we can a do a lot. I think
particularly today is the first day at work for our
airport authority executive director, I think we need to
make sure he realizes what a priority that is going to
be.
TourAim, I think we have got a good handle on
that and particularly with T.E.C. and where they are
headed doing that, but as corporate headquarters, I
think we can perhaps create some incentives there.
I will give you an example. One thing that --
there is someone, actually three or four people in town
working on right now, is Gary Player manufactures golf
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clubs, golf equipment, golf clothing under his name.
Right now his headquarters is out of Palm Beach in the
U.S., but everything is manufactured out of the country
and he is looking for a place, preferably in the State
of Florida, to manufacture golf clubs and clothing and
those types and there are at least two locations right
now in Naples or in Collier County where he is looking
very seriously at and I think what we need to do is if
there is a way in which we can encourage that, either
through tax structures or through something, those are
the kinds of things we need to get on board and try to
make happen here.
There are certainly a number of communities in
Florida that are going to be able to serve the need. We
are one of several that will serve the needs he has, he
and his company have, so I think those are the types of
~hings. I think those all go right along in line with
what you are saying here, but those may be some specific
examples.
I'm not sure what empowerment zones are.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I'm not either right
now. I have about a quarter inch document back at the
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office that is the Federal Register and there is nothing
I hate reading more than the Federal Register, but I
believe Michelle Arnold went to a workshop up in Atlanta
1set week and hopefully we'll have some information on
empowerment zones.
MR. DORRILL= Ie thie what was contained in the
President's State of the Union message --
CO~ISSIONER MATTHEWS: Yes.
MR. DORRILL: -- and kind of sounds like
enterprise zones but it mixes in some community
developLent block grant concepts?
CO~ISSIONER MATTHEWS= There ie community
development block grants involved in it. It's not Just
economic developLent like the enterprise zones do, it's
a developmsnt that encompasees residences as well and
the residential area and bringing the entire
neighborhood up into a blossom.
COMmiSSIONER SAUNDERS: I have an article that
was in the New York TiLes that talks about empowerment
zones and even the people that have sponsored those have
indicated there is not much likelihood of them being
successful and it goes through a whole myriad of reasons
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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but eseenttally they were to be established in ghettos
and in city centers. We don't have that, we don't have
a city center here that we are dealing with and maybe
the concept could work but the way the government has
structured it, it is not anticipated that they would
work.
I have got Just one quick comment and I
apologize, I will quiet dowm. I distributed a memo this
morning that should be on everybody's desk. We were
talking about encouraging economic development and I had
suggested that we might want to consider the
establishment of an organization and for lack of a
better term, I Just referred to It as council of
economic advisors, just to give it an Identity, and the
purpose of that organization would be to gather business
professionals from chambers of commerce, some from the
banking industry, someone from the hotel/motel industry
as an example, and have this organization advise the
County Co~lssion on ways that we can take advantage of
the economic opportunities that are now presented to us,
primarily presented to us from the establishment of the
Tempe University. It's going to be a tremendous
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
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opportunity to attract high tech business.
I think one of the key elements that we have
been looking at in Collier County is an educational
opportunity to attract high tech industry. We have that
opportunity presenting itself to us now, so there is a
neno that talks in ter~s of that.
Also the council would advise us on developing
our economic element to our comprehensive plan and
reform, so that business doesn't have to Jump through
endless hoops to locate here.
I think, Betrye, that is all part of your
concept in terns of increasing utilization of commercial
and industrial floor space, I think that is all part of
it, so that Is on your desk right now.
COK]~ISSIONER CONSTANTINEt Do you see them
putting together some sort of specific blueprint for us
to at least try to follow?
COMMISSIONER $AUNDERSc Exactly, because they
are the professionals, they know what types of
incentives are necessary, and they know what is going on
in the other communities and they can advise us and
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that's the purpose of this. I have asked that it be
d~scussed on March 8th.
COHHISSIONER MATTHEWS: One thing with
incentive committees, and I'm not sure what we as a
local government can do, to provide the incentives that
would cause corporate America to want to locate here, I
know that states do it a lot, but local governments,
what is the limitation and how do we get around it? I
mean, can we go to the state and ask for them to create
these little pockets of things that we can do special
things with?
COHHI$SIONER CONSTANTINE= The other thing we
may want to do, and this may be a role for these
advisory boards, is to talk to some of the companies who
like Gary Player's company, go out and talk to them,
what are they looking for, what do they need?
COH]4ISSIONER SAUNDERS: We have the economic
development counsel that is kind of running off on its
own doing certain things and I don't think any of us
fully understand what they do. I think we all
understand what the chamber of commerce does, but we
have a lot of professionals that are exploring business
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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incentives and trying to attract businesses here, but
they are kind of doing it on their own and I would like
to bring them under some county sanctioned umbrella to
tell us what we need to do to make those things happen.
I discussed it with some of the members of the
Chamber of Commerce and with the E.D.C. last week and
got a good reaction in terms of trying to get some
professional organization advising us on how we're going
to accomplish this goal, so I would like to list that as
one of the steps in terms of increasing business
activities and attracting corporate headquarters and all
that, that we develop a counsel of economic advisors to
assist us in all of the issues associated with economic
development.
CONIIISSlONER VOLPE~ Just a couple things.
In my view, the place to begin obviously in
this discussion Is with the development of the economic
element of our growth management plan. I'm concerned
with what has happened with development services, that
this Is going to assume a lower priority and so as we
begin to map out our plan for the next year, critical in
my view, the cospietism of the economic element of the
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21
growth management.
As a part of all of that, I think that the
things that are being discussed hare kind of fall under
that -- as I think soma of you are aware, I have written
and solicited from the business community input from
them as to what type of symbiotic relationship can be
developed between the private sector and the public
sector and I will share with all of you the responses
that I have received.
I think Commissioner Saunder's suggestion of
having some sort of an advisory group kind of fits into
all of that. The key to me, though, is that we need to
coordinate that effort because I think that the point is
being made, what I have heard and I think what we are
aware of is the fact that there are those who are
already working on different aspects of the same issue,
and if we can provide, we local government can provide
the top of the pyramid to kind of coordinate that
effort, I think that that will all fit under the
economic element of our growth management plan.
Commissioner Matthews, I have obtained from
Cape Coral, Cape Coral Just recently enacted an
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ordinance as it relates to business incentives where
they are deferring impact fees for new businesses that
relocate up in Cape Coral. What I have found and as I
think we all have learned, as you think it's your idea,
you think it's new but someone has already done it
before, and the same thing is true in Sarasota County.
first.
COKMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
COHMISSIONER HATTHEWS:
Someone had to be
I think it's great to
be second, third or even a hundredth as long as we do
something.
COHMISSIONER ¥OLPE: Absolutely, and I think
the point to be made is that we can learn from the
experiences of some of the other local governments so
collecting that information and sharing it I think is
important.
I, too, am familiar with those empowerment
zones, I have seen the Federal Register. David Land has
spent an awful lot of time on it. I think it's
primarily focused in the Immokalee community, is
probably where it would be most opportunistic.
I agree with Commissioner Saunders that the
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
likelihood of empowerment zones working in the urban
areas are probably not as great.
The enterprise zones that we have at the
Immokalee Airport, what I am told is that that has
really kind of worked as a disincentive to some extent
as it relates to those people who are trying to get
credit for affordable housing.
Has anyone else heard that?
CO~ISSIONER MATTHEWS: No, I have not heard
that. I'm not sure why.
COKNISSIONER VOLPE: I'm not sure either, and
I was looking for sharing of information but somehow
because of the fact that the Immokalee Airport is an
enterprise zone, that when they give certain credit and
the like when they determining how you rate for the sale
loans, that that ---
COK~ISSIONER HATTHEWS~ We might need to find
out if that enterprise zone compromises getting sale
loans and so forth. My understanding of this enterprise
zone, because it's both federal and state enterprise, is
that there are tax incentives that are offered mainly in
terms of sales tax when a business is going to be
OFFICXAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
24
building out there. Sales taxes are not assessed on the
building materials, there is incentives in the Jobs
program. I believe that businesses located within the
enterprise zone are exezpted from a certain proportion
of federal unemployment taxes.
HR. VOLPE: I realize those are incentives for
businesses that locate here, but as it relates to people
who are trying to qualify for loans, maybe we can get
some more information.
COHHISSIONER MATTHEWS: The surrounding area
you are talking about?
COKHISSIONER ¥OLPE: Yes. I Just have one
other comment, and I think I know the answer to the
question, but at one point we did an evaluation of
assessments of available industrial land within Collier
County. My recollection is that we concluded that we
did currently have sufficiently zoned industrial land.
Do you remember?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: The problem was on a
total acreage basis there is enough, but it's in the
wrong location.
COMMISSIONER VOLPEt So, as a part of what we
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are doing, I guess we talk about the urban areas and the
rural area, and we got enterprise zones in Immokales and
the like, we had had some people who came and I think
under our growth management program there is
opportunities to fezone agricultural property to
industrially zoned properties under certain
circumstances, so I guess as a part of the focus, if
what we are saying is that we are talking about economic
deYelopment, and I read in the Miami Meteld this morning
or in the Naples Daily News that although tourism
continues to be one of our largest single industries,
more and more manufacturing companies are relocating to
Florida and to Southwest Florida, so obviously we have
to get on the curve here.
CO~fi~ISSIONER MATTHEWS= We need to get our
share of that relocation.
COMMISSIONER VOLPEt Again, I think we really
need to focus on the economic element of our growth
lanagemen= plan and getting it developed and I'm not
sure of where we are on that, but I think it's the
number one priority.
MR. DORRILL= Burr, could you explain or
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elaborate on your concept of a council of economic
advisors? Because it's sounds intriguing.
CONI~ISSIONER SAUNDERS: I don't think it's
uncommon. I think most governments, and quite frankly a
lot of corporations have boards that are advisors to
them on ways to enhance economics and business
opportunities, but we can sit here and draft a
comprehensive plan element that says we want to increase
business opportunity, we want to provide incentives, tax
incentives, zoning incentives but we really don't have
the inhouse expertise because we are not corporate
C.E.O.s, we don't have -- Tim will be soon but we don't,
we really don't have all of the expertise to know what
business needs, we don't have the real expertise to be
able to take a look at some of our own regulations and
determine how these regulations work against the
objective of enhancing economic opportunities, so I
would see getting some real professionals, banking
experts, business experts, to advise the county
commission on what should be ~one in our economic
element of our comprehensive plan.
We did that with our regular comprehensive plan
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
and it worked successfully in terms of our general
growth management policies, advise the county commission
on what incentives businesses really are getting in
other communities and what we might do right here,
advise the County Commission on what problems our zoning
regulations are creating for businesses that want to
relocate here and also advise us on how we might take
advantage of the opportunity presented by the Tempe
University.
COK~ISSIONER VOLPE: Now, the economic
development council is working on that and they are
coordinating that effort and they are going to begin a
strategic planning session for that later in the spring
and early summer.
CO~ISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think the economic
development council is a primary component of this
advisory board, they have to be a member of that,
someone from the council has to be a member but I don't
think the Economic Development Council is really focused
in the way that I think the County Commission wants to
focus.
CO]~ISSIONER VOLPE: I don't disagree with
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that, but what I'm suggesting, I don't think that is
right, I don't think they are doing their own thing, I
think what they are trying to do is they are trying to
provide, to become the facilitator to bring in the same
kinds of people we are talking about. They are not
going to be operating in a vacuum, they are going to be
bringing In business leaders from throughout the
community as they begin to develop a strategic plan from
the private sector.
All I am suggesting is if that is happening
over here, it gets back to coordinating that effort. If
we begin to establish as a part of the economio element
an advisory body to the Board of County Commissioners,
it seems to me that that is happening over here in the
private sector, maybe we ought to involve ourselves in
what they are doing, rather than ---
CO~XISSIONER SAUNDERS: Let me put it in a
little different perspective. The Economic Development
Counsel consists of I believe 125 members, they tend to
be the larger businesses in the community because their
membership fees are rather significant, high, $600 to
$1,500 depending upon the size of the business.
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29
You have the Chamber of Commerce on the other
hand that has I believe 4,500 members representing over
40,000 employees, they have a little bit different focus
than the E.D.C. has, and then you have the other
Chambers of Commerce that have a different focus, you
have hotel/motel association that has a different focus.
I think we need to bring in all of those different
viewpoints on how to attract business and improve
economic opportunities, and I think that we need to have
the umbrella of the County Commission to sift all this
together, because if you have the E.D.C. doing their
thing, you have the Chamber of Commerce doing their
thing, we fail to have a coordinated effort and I think
that that council would provide that coordinated effort.
MR. DeRRILL: I think a good example of that
very early in my appointment to the county manager, we
were in final competition with several communities
around the state to have the corporate executive offices
of the L.P.G.A. -- you may have been chairman at the
time -- and on default we made it to the final two and
it was us and Daytona Beach, and we did not have a very
good development strategy.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
COKHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: We didn't have bike
week so they picked Daytona Beach.
COKHISSIONER SAUNDERS= I think you are right.
HR. DORRILL: I was in Daytona recently and I
went by their facilities and saw what it was that they
ended up with in Daytona, and we could have provided so
much better facility for the major sports efforts for
female professional athletes in the county and what they
ended up with in Daytona was half of what they could
have had here and we had the help of the Colliers
Reserves who were going to provide the corporate space
within their P.U.D., but the E.D.C. was hitting them
from one angle and we were trying to meet with them and
Colliers had and we didn't have a developed strategy at
all and the people in Daytona did and they steam rolled
us as a result of that.
COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE= I agree. I think we
need to have it under the umbrella of the B.C.C.
My only concern, and I think that I mentioned
that, I don't want this to take on a life of its own
like the Business Development Council or whatever it's
called up in Lee County. The amount of money they spend
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f
up there for the result they get is unbelievable. They
Just spent a pile of money and I assume you are looking
at this as a voluntary advisory council.
COHMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Precisely. I'm glad we
are having this discussion, as I think between now and a
week from tomorrow we can kind of sort out our own minds
what we want this counsel to do, so that on the 8th we
can have a meaningful*discussion on what direction we
would like this type of council to go and we can give
that direction, but I wanted to bring it up and I
apologize, ! didn't want to get the discussion focused
on that too much but I thought that it was inherently
part of the discussion of the economic development plan,
that this council would be an inherent thing, integral
part of it.
HR. DORRILLI We are kind of starting with that
topic.
The other thing intriguing to me is something
that Ns. Hatthews touched on which was developed as part
of this process, an opportunity to create endowments at
the Tempe University.
CO~i~I$$IONER ~ATTHEW$: We have a lot of
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32
opportunity.
COH~ISSIONER SAUNDERS:
real fast.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE=
It's going to happen
On the economic
development issue, we have touched on some of the A
through D, but on the increase in tourism, again, I
think we all acknowledge that that is something that is
very important in terms of how the Board of County
Commissioners works with the T.D.C.
Commissioner Constantine, you sit now as the
chair of the T.D.C.
COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Right.
COHNISSIONER VOLPE: We don't get very much
input, at least I have not seen very much input. Maybe
I have overlooked It, but in terms of what the T.D.C. is
and what they're doing and what kind of opportunity they
have, since that seems to be their primary focue, so I
guess what I'm suggesting, it's probably premature as
one of our advisory boards.
Mr. Dartill, when does the T.D.C. report to the
Board as to their accomplishments and the like?
MR. DORRILL= Well, from my perspective, they
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would fall under your reporting requirements and the
County Nanager's ordinance requires coordinating and we
Just did it here a week or two ago. They could fall
under that reporting requirement as an advisory board,
albeit one that has a little more clout.
CO~D~ISSIONER VOLPE: I am Just suggesting in
terms of the follow up, in terms of looking at some sort
of advisory group to coordinate the economic development
within the community. If there's somewhere the T.D.C.
fits into, all of these are separate bodies, I
understand, but if we could try to work with a more
coordinated effort at least in terms of updating and
reporting between the T.D.C. and the Board of County
Commissioners at least on an annual basis, I mean we get
tO see their recommendations and the like but I assume
~he¥ are do~n~ so,e 91annin~.
Are they doing some planning or is it sort of
waiting to see what happens and reacting that way7
CO~]~ISSIONER CONSTANTINE: More reactive. We
have only had one meeting since I was chairman.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Somehow if we can develop
a little bit of cooperation between the T.D.C., if we
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
34
are going to increase tourism, if that is the goal we
are eltablishAng for the Board of County Commissioners,
and that's our goal, and whether we work back through
the T.D.C. I'm not sure.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS= You said the T.D.C. is
reactive?
COMHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Again, I have only
chaired one meeting. Burr may be better to answer it.
My meeting was limply reactive.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: They have a specific
function and that is tO make recommendationl to the
County Commission on how to spend money within the broad
guidelines as established, so when you are saying they
are reacting, they are reacting to our policy and making
recommendations on how to Ipend money within these
guidelines that were established and so they review
independent specific projects, but they will discuss
ways to enhance tourAim and make representations but I
think there is an inherent good flow of information
between the T.D.C. and County Commissioners, they are
reacting to what we are telling them to do.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: One part in which
NAPLES, FL 33964
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY,
they had some planning was the ad campaigns which were
unveiled at that last meeting, as to what will be used
in the coming year.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Three of us have had the
opportunity to sit as chairs of the T.D.C. I guess the
real question is if this does become one of the goals of
the Board of County Commissioners, which is already I
think in part under the umbrella of the T.D.C.,
Commissioner Matthews, how would you, in consideration
of that goal achieved by the Board of County
Commissioners, how do we go about increasing tourism?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS= I have two items here
that I was hoping that we could get additional input on.
As you know, renouriehing the beaches, we are
moving in that direction and hopefully we will begin to
put sand next year, '95, and special attractions, this
year the T.D.C. approved and asked us to approve funds
for attractions but I believe that the only one I saw
that came to us that was new and different was the Jazz
festival that is coming up in '95.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Do you see, though, the
increase in tourism occurring through the efforts of the
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
36
T.D.C. or do you, as you put this thought together, did
you have a thought as to what we as a board could do
separate from what is occurring at the T.D.C. level?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Separate from the
T.D.C. or empower them with directions from us to
investigate other enhancements?
many ways to tackle the project.
I mean, there is many,
The advisory council
can take tourism under its umbrella also and find ways
to enhance it.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Some of which Commissioner
Constantine has shared. I mean, the concept of having
some sort of professional golfer establish his or their
corporate headquarters here obviously could promote
tourism to a point.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I think the whole
thing we keep reading about is to try to establish
Naples as the golf capital of the world. If we can play
a role in helping with that, that is going to increase
tourism.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: You are going to take
it away from Myrtle Beach?
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
There are a couple other
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
exciting things being introduced. Not only have I heard
the discussion about Gary'Player, but I have also
actually had some direct contact with Chi Chi Rodriguez,
who happens to live at Wyndemere, who is desirous of
establishing a Chi Chi Rodriguez -- I don't want to say
museum, but someplace where this is his home, he lives
here, and he has discussed informally the idea of
putting all of his memorabilia and the things that he's
done and having it located here and so there are some
discussions along those lines, which would also kind of,
it's tourism, but also would have, X think would support
a part of the economics. Xt would play a part of
increasing our economic base but it fits right into the
tourism aspects of our business, so there are a couple
other things being introduced.
COMmiSSIONER ~ATTHEWS: I will ask an
absolutely stupid question, but is there a golf hall of
fame?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
golf hall of fame.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
very good one.
I Just wrote that down,
I am a golfer, but not a
I don't know that, and this is his
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concept, to actually have thie kind of mueeum hall of
fame sort of thing with all of these professionals,
which trades on your name and you put up all the money.
COH]~ISSIONER MATTHEWS: That is something that
we would certainly consider, definitely.
COMNISSIONER SAUNDERS= Not a stupid idea.
We'd need to explore whether there was a golfing hall of
fame anywhere in the country, because if there isn't,
they're easy to run.
MS. EDWARDS:
one on the east coast.
MR. DORRILL~
According to Steve Hart, there is
He's not a golfer.
CO~]~ISSIONER VOLPE: Chi Chi Rodriguez is
legitimately interested in doing that, and we have had
some conversations about it, it's finding the location
and once we determine what the economic incentives are,
to allow him to do that, as I say Naples ie his home, he
lives here.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: If we have all these
people here who play golf and other than Steve Hart,
don't know, number one, whether it exists at all and Tom
is here saying it's Pinehurst, Steve is saying it's on
OFFICIAb COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES,
FL 33964
the east coast, can't wa develop something to snatch it
from them both?
COK~ISSIONER CONSTANTINE: A possible step
there is if there is a P.G.A. hall of fame or some sort
of golf hall of fame ---
MR. HART: I'm not sure if it is P.G.A., but I
know the State of Florida spends about $2 million a year
where there is an item in the state budget to spend a
couple million bucks towards it.
CON~I$SIONER CONSTANTINE: What we could do, if
it's not P.G.A. and ordinarily we could approach the
P.G.A., but if they do have one somewhere, with the
senior tours as popular as it is now, you could actually
establish a separate museum for the senior tour.
¢O~]~ISSIONER HATTHEWS: Well, the L.P.G.A.,
certainly the ladies need a hall of fame as well.
MR. ethel I don't know if it physically
exists, because they go by a certain number of
tournaments.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think all we can do
today is Item C, increase tourism. That is a line item
that Is Important and we have talked about the weight
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{?
4O
that we might give that but I think we need to get down
to the specifics, hall of fame or whatever, that we need
to hold that for a later date or we are not going to get
into the broad categories.
time.
COKHISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
It will eat up all of our
As long as we are
writing things down up there, I wanted to make sure the
fact that the Board gave the airport authority notice
that it's a priority to develop that Immokalee
enterprise zone and work on that. In my mind, that
should be a priority, economic development.
HR. CONRECeDE: Something else along the lines
of golf, in Nevada, there are two premier training
academy facility type places, very expensive, very
exclusive. One for tennis and one for golf.
There is nothing to say we couldn't do the same
That would tie in nicely with shoulder season or
thing.
the off season.
COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
Actually, the David
Ledbetter (phonetic) academy, which you don't see a lot
of prese on that, I mean, Nick Valdez, not all of the
biggest names, but quite frequently come down for
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4!
training, and we can have one of these right here in our
own backyards.
CO~XSSIONE~ BAUNDERS= Getting back to the
=ouncil, Bill Rasmussen, who lives here in Naples, he's
responsible or sponsored the Intellenet, if he was on
the Council of Economic Advisors and it was an
opportunity to do something with golf, that idea could
be pushed and pushed in right away
MR. OLLIFF: When we deal with our growth
management plan, you can look at any of the separate
elements like if you look at the environmental element,
there is a section in each one that deals with either
lands or how we are going to deal with the different
sections.
All this stuff eounds like it fits real nicely
in an economic development planning element that we
could develop and the idea of having a separate section
that telle us how we are going to deal with tourism, if
it is in our economic development plan, how we are going
to deal with incentives in there and it gives us a real
good opportunity.
When you all go through the exercise with an
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
42
ad¥isory con£ttee that you hear the professionals tell
you here is what we need from the county and you in turn
tell us what we need with certain deadlines, it seems
like our timing is real good, so when Tempe University
comes on line, we have industrial zoning where it should
be, we have got some tourism plans in place, we have got
some plans for having the work force in place, so that
when that Tempe University comes on line, we have got
sort of everything in place to pick up and move.
COK~ISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Let me throw out
something completely different as far as one potential
component. You made me think when you said Rasmussen,
bring in some of the entertainment industry here as far
as shooting on location. There are certainly any
number of areas that would be appropriate for that.
Many communities around Florida encourage it, but they
always charge for the use of their areas and I think
there is different ways of encouraging the movie
industry or television industry or whomever to come here
and use our area and the number of people they bring in
and the money they throw into the local economy while
they are doing that is amazing.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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As you know, I come from a little town in Maine
and Stephen King is from my home town and he brings --
this te where they do many of the moviee up in the
Bancot area now for Stephen King movies and the Impact
on that little town is Just overwhelming. When they
come in they bring a whole crew and bring all the
equipment in and they Just throw money out like crazy,
and It's a huge boom to that area and I would imagine it
would do the same thing here.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: You can go as near as
Dade County. They have a department over there and the
purpose of that department, or at least they used to, I
assume they s~111 do, wee to promote the film Industry
and they spent a lot of money attracting filming in Dade
County.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: The two actually go
hand in hand If it's done properly, not only as to
economic development but the bringing of tourism in.
As goofy as it sounds, Miami Vice helped
revitalize the image of Miami.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
MR. CLARK~
It's advertising.
In Tennessee, which I'm not very
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
44
familiar with Tennessee, but I have heard the story
several times from several people, that Nashville was,
still is, the big hub, entertainment hub for country
western. It had nothing particular to offer but they
did exactly that, focused in on one segment, and there
is no reason why we can't do that. Look at Pittsburgh,
all the steel mills closed and industry moved, Arkansas,
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Could we put that
Number S, simply expansion of the economic base and that
would include all things we are talking about.
COKMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Pittsburgh has been
through some major corporate relocations in the last ten
or 15 years. They have gone from essentially a steel
mill town to a very definitive third tier convention
city. Cincinnati has done the same thing.
MR. CLARK~ That doesn't happen with what
everybody is talking about, everything is centralized
and they have one plan where everybody gets involved
rather than piecemeal approaching it. I think that is
what we are talking about.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
may have missed this,
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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but in terls of what we want to be, I mean we can talk
about being the golfing capital of the world, we can be
the country music capital of the world, or we can be the
gaming capital of the world, as a part of our strategic
planning, I guess that fits, where do we want to try to
target these various industries, what is it that
complements the community as we understand it?
COMMISSIONER MAT~{EWS: I think we were Just
commenting that other cities in town have re-
established thelselves in a total different direction
from where they once were, and because we have seen that
happen, certainly we can do it, too. We Just need to
decide what it is we want to do and where we want to be
X-years down the road.
PROFESSOR ~ARTIN~ Turned out to be a pretty
big ulbrella, didn't it?
I have a suggestion at the expense of sounding
bureaucratic, but from a professorial standpoint, what I
have been thinking all along is somebody needs to write
a county business plan to economic development. We need
to put this into a planning document indicating all of
these in the form of a business plan. I can provide a
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY~ NAPLES, FL
45
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46
basic outline, if you care to look at it. We have some
printed material on that.
MR. DORRILL: We are developing an economic
element to the county comprehensive plan that would
probably be alBoet dead on that, but whether it's
drafted from a business perspective or ---
PROFESSOR HARTIN: It's a business, it's a
business, isn't It? It's exciting.
COHHISSIONER VOLPE: Yes.
PROFESSOR HARTIN: It's very exciting to think
about these things that you have been discussing and we
are going to need them because from reading the article
within the last few weeks about our great growth and
it's phenomenal what is going to happen by the year 2010
and 2019, because then we go upward toward 800,000
people. In fact, I thought about it a lot this morning.
That's what it says.
Where Is the article? It came from -- I have
it, let me see.
CO~ISSIONER MATTHEWS: That is 60 percent
higher than the last number I heard.
CO~ISSIONER VOLPE: ~aybe that is in the
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
47
region.
PROFESSOR MARTIN:
was in the paper here within the last two weeks.
it
I had the article here. It
Here
Between these two countlee, I'm talking between
Lee and Collier County, it's supposed to be around
850,000 people and our county would be 450,000. You
can't separate us from Lee County very easily, because
you don't even know when you go from one to the next as
you drive north on 41.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
goes up.
PROFESSOR lIARTIN:
Not until that toll bridge
Would you want to continue
with this discussion on this subject?
MR. DORRILL: Should we try and backup and
develop a one or two sentence economic development goal
etatement?
I don't know what the Board wants to do,
whether we have this anywhere in an outline form or will
you want to have it more in a narrative form?
Ms. Matthews has sort of followed the narrative
form, she has goal statements and then task objectives
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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48
under that and I think numbers one through eight would
sort of be task objectives, but I don't know whether you
want to have more of a goal statement or Just leave it
as it is.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Isn't the goal statement
Just to encourage economic development?
HR. DORRILLc ! don't know, I'm asking. If you
are happy with that, then I am happy with it, but then
you have the individual tasks.
COMJ~ISSIONER HATTHEWS: Something that we may
want to consider is to try to take the 8 items we have
there and prioritize them, and one method that I have
seen used is something that they call dot voting or
multi-voting where we have eight items there that maybe
we each get ten or 12 dots. You can individually put
your dot wherever you want. You can spend all 12 of
them on one item if it's that important and then when
all of a sudden we finish doing that and we look at
which items have the most dots and that's the most
important, then break them down from there.
Once you have done that, then you can do it
further. Some method of how you are going to achieve
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES,
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that and rearrange them along the way and build an
inverted pyramid with how you are going to get there,
and then at the end of the program you break up into a
group and write a paragraph as to what it really means.
CO!(NISSIONER VOLPE:
is that the next step?
CO~ISSIONER MATTHEWS:
Do we do that today, or
Long term.
COHHISSIONER VOLPE: Just in terms of using
that determination for assessing our priorities.
COHHISSIONER MATTHEWS= The priority we might
try to do today, and then telling us for the next
meeting how we prioritize them and maybe coma back March
31st with your post-its of how we are going to
accomplish it, and then we start rearranging the
post-its and over three or four months you finally get
to the answer. It's not easy.
MR. NORRISs We hays been sitting horea day
and-a-half so far and seems to me we have not
accomplished anything.
COM]~ISSIONER MATTHEWS: It Just seems like a
day and-a-half. It's not that long.
MR. NORRIS= This thing to increase lndustria!
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5O
commercial economic base, 40 percent in the next five
years, that is a goal. It has got e measurable amount
and it is has got a definite time, and until we set a
definite time, until we start meeting time deadlines on
these things and assign somebody the task of getting the
Job done, we have not accomplished anything. So, it's
fine to sit here and talk about we'd like to do this and
We'd like to do that and this sounds good and we are all
in favor of that, but we have got to set these time
lines and then assign the responsibility.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
to prioritize that.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
That's why we have got
I would have to
respectfully disagree, because this is a process that is
going to take more than a day and-a-half.
NR. NORRIS= I was Just getting around to
asking the question, when are we
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
going to do that?
We can come up with the
objective statement and the eight or nine things under
it, if we can do that wish three or four different
categories today and at some point then prioritize them
and place time lines, I don't think we have to place
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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51
time lines on then today. I don't think it,s going to
be possible for us to do all that today.
WR. NORRIS: I'm sure it's not. My question
is, are we going to get around to doing that and, if so,
when?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
what is most important in order to put a time line on
it.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
We have not yet decided
What planning time frame
are we operating under? Are we operating in a five
year planning time frame, one year or, X mean, in terms
of what our mission is here?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: What Professor Martin
talked with me about is that we are operating in a five
year plan. The further away we get, the more muddy it
becomes but I think our goal in having these meetings
over the next six or nine months is to firm up that
first year.
COMI~ISSIONER VOLPE: We already have one time
line and that is five years.
MR. NORRIS: We have a start.
MR. DORRILL: For example, let's Just look at
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33964
the Economic Council of Advisors, if the Board were to
decide that that is going to be one of the objectives of
an overall economic development goal, then I think that
it would be incumbent upon the staff to come back with a
program of work and tell you by this date we would have
advertised and by that date we would have interviewed
and by a certain date they would have their first
meeting and we have got to come back in with that little
definitive road map with these dates that Commissioner
Constantine always likes to see.
COHHISSIONER VOLPE= These are the tasks. I
mean, that I guess is the commissioners' tasks. As I
understand the process, we now will prioritize those
tasks or those objectives, then I assume we will put
time lines, those that are easily accomplishable within
the next six months or year and some of these will
take ---
COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE= Commissioner
Matthews, I think I understood, we priority now and at
the point when we know what the priorities are, we can
start setting deadlines.
COHHISSIONER HATTHEWS: Dr. Martin is running
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33964
the program, but it would seem to me we have got eight
items on there and we don't know what the most important
items are and we are all looking at it maybe a little
bit differently and, to me, for this particular portion,
I need to know how the five of us feel about these eight
items, and then we can develop further strategies on it.
COH~I$SIONER VOLPE: Can I suggest, rather
than trying to do that today, that maybe the next step
would be for us to, if we can agree on these eight, to
use that e¥stem in terms of our individual priority and
then bring that together on the 3let, if that is when we
next meet and then we can establish these priorities,
unleee you feel we can do it today.
COHMISSIONER NATTHEWS: Actually, if you use a
multi-vote or dot vote method~ the whole process takes
about five minutes to prioritize these eight items. It
doesn't take long at all. I didn't bring any dots with
me, though. I mean, that's a method I have seen used
but there is other method that works as well. The thing
is that each of us, rather than ranging these one
through eight, one to be the most and eight being the
least, we're going to come to a point where we are not
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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54
sure which one is more important than another one, and
the neat thing about a multi-vote, when you have more
votes to cast than there are items, and you can spend
them anyway you want, you get some very definite
patterns.
COK~ISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Even though we don't
physically have dots, why don't we all Just assign each
one of us 12 points or 15 points and we can take five or
ten minutes and mark down what it is?
we can do that now.
MR. DORRILL:
as an example.
Go ahead and
I mean, I think
try one and use it
COKNISSIONER NATTHEWS: What we can do is give
ourselves 15 minutes and we can take the eight items and
we can assign a point value to them, and then we can
Just add up the points.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Each write down the
vote, put our initials on the page, get them into
Mr. Martin.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: On this dot system, does
it make any difference whether it's five, ten or 157 I
mean ---
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COHHISSIONER MATTHEWS: The only difference is
that you have more votes than there are items.
COHNISSIONER VOLPE: Okay.
COHMISSIONZR MATTHEWSt We can chose to have
ten items or 12 votes, whatever. The idea is that you
have more votes than there are items.
COH~ISSIONER VOLPE:
write these down?
CO~ISSIONER SAUNDERS:
Where do you want us to
We might need to kind
of define each of these so we all understand.
example, fees.
what that is.
PROFESSOR HARTIN: Impact fees.
As an
think X have a good understanding of
Okay, then I didn't
I might clear eomething up
The first hand out, and you
COHHISSIONER SAUNDERS:
understand.
PROFESSOR HARTIN~
for Commissioner Norris.
mentioned the five year plan, I had indicated the five
year plan and my first suggestion was if we had enough
time that we could meet, enough time to nail this down
that you could put your operational strategic plan into
operation for the next physical year, October 1st, and
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that would be your operating year and then four years
after that would be your longer range, that was my
original suggestion, so there is a basic approach to the
time and then you could extend into the other years
those things that needed to go beyond the next operating
year, but nailing them down into one of
it's at all possible.
~R. DORRILL: Ultimately you are going to have
to nail them down as part of your program budget
priority. I would like to think that as we develop the
tasks oriented plan that Commissioner Norris is anxious
for to us do, that in any instance it's going to
required to be a budgeted program and priority budget
program that the Board can see this
COHMISSIONER HATTHEWS= What is that
"coordinate" up there?
PROFESSOR I~ARTIN= Coordinate all of the
agencies that exist in the county now and their efforts
for economic development.
COK~IS$IONER CONSTANTINE:
that as part of number one?
number one, too?
Am I alone in seeing
Incentives are part of
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COMMISSIONER VOLPEt What was that, so maybe we
ought to consolidate them, is that what we are saying?
COHMISSIONER SAUNDERS: We are talking about
this advisory council, developing and coordinating as
well.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: That is called sifting and
wlnnowlng.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Any objection to
winnowing five into number one?
COMMISSIONER VOLPEt No.
MR. NORRIS: Will most of these things actually
end up being undsr the responsibility of the Advisory
Board once it's established, thought
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE= I guess there will
be elements or there will be things considered.
COMMISSIONER HATTHEWS: We need to let them
know, too, what we view as most important.
COKMISSIONER VOLPE: Are we consolidating these
now? So we have consolidated one and five?
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Let's mark it in red which
One and five are the same,
ones they want to vote on.
then, right?
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Just yet.
COMMISSIONE~ VOLPEt I'm not sure where we are
COMMISSIONER HATTHEWS: We're putting one and
five together. It becomes one, how is that?
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Okay.
COKMISSIONER MATTHEWS: So now we have seven
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Expansion of the economic
base, that seems like that is the goal. Number eight
seems to encourage economic development. That seems to
be part of the narrative. I mean, I realize we have got
it by attracting film industry, but then we have got
golf hall of fame, and we have got airport authority.
Those are all intended to be expanded.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: How about this7
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: There is a lot of
different things going on there. I don't know.
Expanding the economic base may be a little bit
different than encouraging economic development. We can
encourage economic development from within, but to
expand the economic base we need to bring the other side
in.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
COHHISSIONER SAUNDERS: That is the point we
are talking about, film industry, a lot of different
economic opportunity, and what they all wound up doing
is expanding the base so that if there is a downturn in
one industry, it doesn't effect our entire economic
base. It's diversification.
COKHISSIONER HATTHEWS: Diversifying the
economic base, not really expanding.
COHHISSIONER VOLPE: Okay. So does that then
become number two?
HR. NORRIS: You have to decide that with your
15 points.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE= X was wondering if what we
are trying to do, I think the discussion was expansion
of economic base through economic incentives, increasing
tourism.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE= I guesses six and
eight might, golf hall of fame or film industry, those
things are very similar.
COKHISSIONER VOLPE: Commissioner Saunders and
Commissioner Hatthews said expansion of economic base
through diversity, is that then ---
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COHNISSIONER SAUNDERS: i think it's a separate
item. It's different than increasing tourism. We
already have an economic base and tourism, we want to
expand the tourist business, we are talking about
diversifying into high tech industry or other type of
industry like the film industry so that we're not Just
relying upon one.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: So which leaves increase
tourism as one of them and then do we have a separate
category, then, that I guess ---
COKHISSIONER HATTHEWS: How about if we change
the wording to number eight, diversify instead of
expand?
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE~
categories.
COHHISSIONER HATTHEWS:
going to use?
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE=
HR. DORRILL:
for incentives ---
So We have seven
15.
How many votes are we
Fifteen.
Again, the corporate relocation
COMMISSIONER VOLPEt It's going to work with
That's the way it's going to work.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 3396,
MR. DORRILL= In the event of a tie, we will
operate like A~erica's Funniest Video, the staff will
break the tie. We can all hum the final theme song.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Shall we pass our
sealed bids to Jennifer?
HR. DORRILL: John and I were holding out,
Pepper says we're going to have a million people here,
John and ! want our own N.F.L. franchise.
(Laughter)
(Whereupon, the Commissioners voted.)
PROFESSOR HARTIN: We have 75 votes.
CO~ISSIONER MATTHEWS~
clear picture.
COHMISSIONER ¥OLPE] So now we will have 41
advisory boards.
MR. MATTHEWS= Forty-two after the airport
authority.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE= Let's not talk about
consolidating them.
COHHISSIONER SAUNDERS:
of government efficiency, we have been eliminating
advisory boards now for three years.
Well, Z think we have a
That is a good example
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HR. DORRILL= We'll call this one council of
economic advisors, it Just sounds so much better than
advisory Board.
CO~04ISSIONER VOLPE:
net worth of a quarter million dollars to serve on the
board?
MR. DORRILL: And at least a gray pin stripe
suit.
PROFESSOR HARTIN:
now or take a break now or what?
COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
break.
You have to have a minimum
Neil, do you want to proceed
It's 10~30.
Let's take a brief
(Whereupon, a short recess was had.)
PROFESSOR HARTIN= Are we ready? If we are
ready, we're going back to our list again, this is where
The next subject of your
Economic develop is whipped.
we started the morning out.
cholcs.
MR. DORRILL=
We have an hour
One hour.
Do you want to try and
COHHISSIONER MATTHEWS:
and-a-half left, roughly.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
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tackle this, or do you want to tackle potable water?
COMMISSIONER COtISTANTINE= I think we can get
rid of education pretty quick because I think four out
of five didn't want it last time, so we could see on
that and see if we can get a check mark there really
quickly.
COHHISSIONER SAUNDERS: I have got education
under efficient and responsive government.
itc own.
COKHISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
COHHISSIONER SAUNDERS=
I didn't see it as
will tell you what,
if we are looking for a category, we have got the
workshop on water reaourcse coming up next, this week.
We could probably hold that one for then. We could do
that but ---
COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE= We can do it now
because Betrye and I won't be there then.
COHHISSIONER VOLPE: Can I ask a question about
that? That is at 6 o'clock on Thursday and
7 o'clock is the town meeting, same day.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Town meeting is March
10th.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
COM]~ISSIONER VOLPEt
trying to figure that out.
is at 7:00.
PROFESSOR MARTIN:
It was changed. I was
This one is at 6:00 and one
Well, at Commissioner
Constantine's suggestion, do you want to vote on
eliminating education or keeping it in? What would be
your ---
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I think education is
important.
COK~ISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I Just didn't see it
as its own ---
COK~ISSIONER MATTHEWS= It's part of another,
which is why I wound up with only for major categories,
because I found it is a part of efficient and responsive
government.
PROFESSOR MARTIN=
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
PROFESSOR MARTIN:
category.
Is there a consensus?
To eliminate it?
No, to put it in a different
COKMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: No, to make it part
of efficient and effective government.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Also, didn't it also fit
64
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65
X7
under the economic development? Didn't we recognize
Tempe State University? I assume that's generally as
you develop an economic element, you need to provide a
good educational resource for prospective employers.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I would think when we
finish with our strategic planning we are not going to
have clearly definable lines of things fitting only
under one category, I don't think that is going to
happen, because even under economic development, if we
provide incentives to get more corporate headquarters
hare, it means we are going to have more people here, it
means we are going to have to provide more essential
services, more public services, more of this, more of
that.
There is no clearly defined pattern here, so
for education to be part of the economic part to me
makes sense because we need to provide a work force to
get the corporate headquarters here.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: I'm agreeing with you and
disagreeing I think with Commissioner Constantine, who
said he wanted to put it under ---
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I am Just saying
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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66
it's probably not its own separate category.
COHMISSIONER VOLPEt
efficiency of government.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
You were saying under
We can put it
anywhere we want, I Just don't think it's in it's own
category.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Since Commissioner Matthews
started out with her lilt and potable water is number
one on your list, would you like to continue in that
vein?
COMMISSIONER VOLPEt Can I interrupt Just a
moment? I think loneone pointed out, we may not have a
full Board but we have a separate time for that. I
would like to spend a little time, a little time talking
before -- I as Just lugglaring and then you all can
disagree with that -- X would like to spend a little
time talking about the role of government. I mean, in
terms of where we are in terms of government.
We are the policy makers presumably in the
county and I think that left of -- if we have a vision
as to where we are in that regard. I mean, that's Just
a suggestion.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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COK~I$SIONER MATTHEWS= I would think with the
environmental workshop coming up here Thursday night,
while ! won't be in attendance, I do intend to listen to
the tape or watch the television tape or what have you
and I think that after Thursday night we will probably
all be better informed about what we need to do and that
might be a subject best left for March 31.
COKMISSIONER SAUNDERS= That's fine with me.
MR. NORRIS: Yes, that's fine. Perhaps we can
go to solid waste. That's an important one I think we
all agreed on before.
COHHISSIONER VOLPE: I would Just suggest in
terms of what we are about as a group and in terms of
the dllcussion about coordinating the efforts of the
private sector as relates to the economic element, it
seems to me that a part of our mission should be where
the Board of County Commissioners can provide the
leadership generally and the coordination between the
city and the county, the county and the county, the
Board of County Commissioners and the School Board and
we have talked about the fact I think in a different
context, that is a part of what X understand is
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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68
required, is the entire governmental coordination and
cooperation and that seems to me the issue of
governance, which we had on our list which I think falls
under that category, but we can talk about solid waete.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
solid waste on there.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
I think you had
I think it's part of
the government's role and efficiency. I've got solid
waste and the crime issue under that, and, geez,
education, essential services and public services. I
have them all under that, only because we are the policy
makers and these are all policies.
COMmiSSIONER VOLPE: The other part of that is
that, you know, as it relates to, for example, crime,
obviously the chief law enforcement officer is the
sheriff, so we need to -- tomorrow we are going to be
discussing boot camps and so on so I think in terms of
how we interface constitutional officers and the other
governmental bodies, and maybe to do it better. Maybe
that can be, what I'm trying to direct, maybe that could
be the discussion as to how we coordinate our mission
with those that have eome specific responsibilities
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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under our general mission, i.e. the sheriff, School
Board, city.
COIO~ISSIONER MATTHEWS: I agree. I am not
opposed at all to delving into that role of government
at this point because that is where we're going to, I
think that is where we are going to find a lot of these
little nooks and crannies. X mean, they're not little,
solid waste is certainly not a little issue, it's a
rather large one.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTIHE: Will that qualify as
a nook or a cranny, those two?
COMMISSIONER HATTHEWS: Xf the nook has 180
degrees instead of 90 degrees, probably.
~R. DORRILL: Pardon me if I am wrong, I
thought my notes from last time was that the role of
government had more to do with the efficiency and
productivity and privatization as opposed to trying to
be all encompassing then because you can put anything
that you all do under the role of the County Commission.
I thought the initial focus of that was more with
economic and productivity type matters as opposed to
individual topics. Solid waste for that matter is more
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,9
of an environmental issue, Just trying to get them
grouped.
COHNISSIONER VOLPEt So what you are saying,
that topic under the role of government, I'm not sure I
followed that, and efficiency.
MR. DORRILLc I thought the role aspect was
something that Ms. Matthews talked about several months
ago would be trying to deterline and evaluate the
productivity initiatives or the opportunity to explore
and evaluate privatization, those types of things.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: And delivery of services,
is that what you're ---
~R. DORRILL~ I'l sorry?
COIiNISSIONER VOLPE: Delivery of services?
NR. DORRILL~
productivity issues.
CON~ISSIONER CONSTANTINE~
we're going to take on?
linutss.
Budget issues, fiscal
Is that the topic
We drifted for about ten
Is there any objection to taking on the role of
government and then we can decide your question?
MR. DORRILL= What it Is.
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COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE= Let's do that.
KR. DeRRILL= The reason I said that, going
back to what the Board had said last time, there were
three commissioners who had individual government
efficiency proposals, one of them was streamline
governlent, cut fat, trim middle management, develop and
and ilplement strategies and programs to insure
increased efficiency and cost effectiveness, develop and
implement plans to accomplish downsizing and economic
That's Just where I thought we left last
efficiency.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE= Well, government typically
is cast in the role of providing essential services,
solid waste, water, sewer, isn't that where we begin in
terme of providing essential services?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Health and welfare.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: We picked that up I think
on E, under your promote most efficient and responsive
local government in Florida in terms of improving
essential services provided by Collier County.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS= Well, I think it's a
given that government provides essential services. We
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
19
also provide public services that are not essential, and
we assumed that responsibility some time ago. I guess
that item number two on there are public services, do we
continue them, do we expand then?
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Give us an example of the
type of public service that you envision.
COK~!IS$IONER MATTHEWS: Parks and recreation.
Nil. OLLIFF= We can also categorize them as
essential and non-essential.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I ha,,e a little bit of
difficulty between the distinction between essential
services and public services. I don't think any of the
services the government provides, I think all services
that government provides should be essential services
and I think parks and recreation fits that category of
essential services and if we say to the public, here are
the list of essential services that we provide and here
are the list of non-essential because that's the next
category, then you are going to have people asking why
are you providing those non-essential services,
shouldn't government provide only essential services.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Maybe that's a good
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question to be asked.
COKMISSIONER SAUNDERS: It may very well be for
certain things, but I don't think the broad category of
parks and recreation and libraries. There is a whole
list of things that are not geared towards public health
and safety that we do provide and that fall into the
welfare classification and that would be parks,
libraries and if we make that distinction, I think we
are opening up a whole dialogue as to whether we should
even be providing those.
MR. NORRIS: I think what you are saying,
Commissioner Saunders, is that almost all of the
services that we provide are essential but some have
obviously a higher priority than others.
CO~ISSIO~[ER SAUNDERS= Absolutely.
MR. NORRIS= I believe that is what you are
say~ng~
CO~[~ISSIONER MATTHEWS: I can accept that.
They are all essential. I mean, if they weren't
essential we wouldn't be doing them, only because if we
don't provide them there is no one who would provide
them and I don't have any problem with that. I was
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
74
Just trying to segregate those health and safety issues
iron the other issues that are sometimes described as
welfare but there is also some concern, at least from
prior years that the private sector provided many of
these services and there is some question whether we
should be providing then.
I'm not saying that we should or we shouldn't
at this point, but certainly I agree, libraries and so
forth are a service that we do provide and it's a
necessary service. I would not say it's essential.
MR. SMYKOWSKI= Could you talk about perhaps
as a quality of life type service, that kind of
dovetails with the vision statement of Collier County a
premier place to live and all that.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think we can take
libraries as an example, you said that is not
necessarily an essential service but certainly is an
important one. ! think you can make an argument that
libraries serve to help eliminate certain activities,
such as Juvenile delinquency and crime and that sort of
thing. ! mean, they're necessary to give people an
opportunity to do things other than to be out on the
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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streets, so you can tie in libraries and parks with
public safety.
I don't think it's a real stretch to say parks
and recreation over the course of time probably helps to
prevent some Juveniles from becoming criminals, giving
them something to do.
COK~ISSIONER VOLPE:
I don't disagree with you,
Commissioner Saunders, but Just for the discussion, help
~e to focus on what we can all agree are the basic
essential services to be provided by government. I
mean, police protection would be one of them. I mean,
that's not a role that we as Board of County
Commissioners has but I assume police protection is an
essential service.
COKMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think it's probably
the Lost iaportant ayeelf.
CO~]~ISSIONER VOLPE: I'm Just trying to get
through that, and like water and sewer, water and sewer
is an essential service, transportation, essential
service, transportation network, do we look along those
categories?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Sure.
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:0
COHHISSIONER VOLPE: Solid waste? What else
would fall into the categories of, you know ---
COHHISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think parks and
recreation and I think libraries do. That is the
distinction I'm trying to make, that it's not really
essential versus non-essential, it's more a priority.
Obviously, police protection is more important than a
library, but they are both important.
COHHISSIONER VOLPEI But I guess the way I look
at this, again, I'm not dieagreeing but Commissioner
Hatthews lade the statement that essential services,
that is a service that wouldn't otherwise be provided
which people traditionally would look to their
government to provide. I'm not sure. I mean, there are
certain types like police protection we know is a
government service, fire protection. Perhaps -- I'm not
sure about emergency medical services, ! don't know
whether that is really an essential service in in the
real traditional sense. Parks and recreation, I guess
that is, you know, we as a Board of County
Colliestoners, we provide public parks, if you will, but
the school Board provides for the young people in the
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
community, you know, certain recreational programs
during the majority of the year, 180 days a year
primarily, the YNCA provides for certain other types of
recreational programs, so I guess what I'm trying to get
at is there are certain services that can only be
provided by government. There are other essential
services, using Commissioner Saunder's everything is
essential, that government can work with the private
sector, if you will, to provide those essential
services. Certain of them you can't. I mean, I don't
see that ---
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: You can take that to
an extreme, though. I mean, there are security
companies out there so, in theory, you don't need a
sherlff's department. Private ambulance companies.
There are, like you say, the YMCA to offset parks.
There are private utility companies out there so, in
theory, to take it to an extreme, almost nothing Is
essential. There is somebody out there that would
provide something.
CONNISSIONER NATTHEWS: Even under the category
of fire protection, my husband did a needs assessment up
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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78
in Knox County, Tennessee last summer and they have a
subscription fire service, and trust me, you don't want
to have a fire and not be a subscriber. Trust me, you
don't.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: I can Just see
looking up on the computer, nope, they didn't pay their
subscription this year, sorry, guy.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: So even fire in that
particular area they consider it to be an essential
service.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: My point is being, I
don't want to knit pick. I agree, I think it's a matter
of priority not a matter of what is essential, I think
they are all essential, but to say ---
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: It's how we define it.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Yes, it's a matter
of priority and I obviously feel much more comfortable
with the public providing crime prevention than hiring a
security firm in accordance with each neighborhood's
ability. I think that goes on, you can stretch that all
the way to parks and rec.
Some people in Golden Gate and Immokalee and
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1
different parts of the County can't afford to pay dues
to the YMCA so parks and rec provides the opportunities
to them that wouldn't otherwise exist, so on either side
you can take it to the extreme.
essential.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
think they are all
So the trick, then, is
to list the services that we provide and then provide
the priority to those, as opposed to trying to use the
distinction of essential and public or essential and
non-essential.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Do we need to
prioritize those? I don't know where we're going with
that. Acknowledging that is one facet of our role, and
then what are the other facets other than those basic
essential services? I don't know.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
COMMISSIONER MATTNEWS~
I agree.
I had looked at what I
had done as, number one, I broke them down, which isn't
really necessary, because you will notice that the
categories under them are very similar and that's to
prioritize wherever feasible and form coalitions with
other public, with other political subdivision. That
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
8O
may help us either be more efficient or more responsive.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think the three
categories that you have, privatization and coalitions
and volunteerism, would fit under there. I would like
to use a word other than privatization wherever feasible
because as Tim has pointed out, it is feasible in every
element of what we do, privatization is feasible. The
question is whether it's practical cr makes any sense.
I know what you meant but feasible is a much
broader term, so I would suggest privatization wherever
reasonable or wherever practical.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Where practical makes
even more sense because it can be something reasonable
and not really be practical.
MS. EDWARDS: Are these your sub components,
then, under essential services, those three?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Yes.
MS. EDWARDS:
volunteerism?
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
Privatization, coalitions and
The government provides
eesential services, however we define them, and then the
manner in which those essential servicee are delivered
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
comes into the three categories of privatization,
wherever practical, is that what you said?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Right.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: And then the coalition
with other political subdivisions.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: Do you want to list the
essential services first before those three categories?
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: I think we sort of agreed
that ---
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Everything we do is
essential services.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: So you don'b need a laundry
list, then?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: That's correct.
MR. NORRIS: That's what we are saying. We
feel that anything we are involved in is going to be
ultimately essential.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Maybe we Just want to
add, I guess we are talking about public health, safety
and welfare.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think part of another
category would be to eliminate unnecessary programs. I
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think that is definitely a role of government, we do
that every year in our budgeting process, so that if
there is a service that we are providing that we
deternine is not at all essential, we shouldn't be in
that business.
HR. DORRILL: That's what ! had, as part of
your zero based budgeting concept, that you ultimately
review annually and pull out and prioritize where you
want your spending, and that way your spending is a
reflection of the most essential things of what you have
done.
COHHISSIONER VOLPE: We give fodder to the
local media to write about.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: That's an important
role.
COHMXSSIONER MATTHEWS: That's an important
role, isn't it?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Divert them from the
real issues.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: Without reading about
what we do, X can go through the paper in two seconds.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: After you get passed the
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real estate section.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
comics, so ---
COKMISSIONER VOLPE:
record, though.
PROFESSOR MARTIN:
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS:
(Laughter)
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS:
before it can be erased.
That's Just the
Don't put that down on the
It's already down.
Erase that tape.
We need 18 minutes more
Volunteerism, I Just have some comments here of
how to enhance and solicit people to become more
involved in volunteerism, Just to make it friendly and
easily accessed, recognition and incentives. I don't
think we have any programs right now for recognizing
volunteers or providing incentives for volunteers that
Just do an outstanding Job. I don't think we have
anything right now.
MR. CONRECODE: There is a program that was
used in Colorado a number of years ago where
particularly the elderly could get credit on their
property taxes for volunteer time, they could do
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tutoring in schools, they could do public service type
Jobs that we would otherwise have to hire staff for and
they got a $500 credit towards their property taxes.
COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: There is actually
one recognition program in the works right now that I
think Dick and his people are putting together right now
and that is due on the agenda within a couple weeks, so
you are right, we do that like with the Golden Gate
Chamber, we have special Christmas things for them, we
have a luncheon and Just different things to recognize
them and let them know we appreciate what they are
doing.
COMMISSIONER HATTHEWS: Yes, that you
appreciate what they're doing.
COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE= Yes.
HR. BRIGHAH= You passed a resolution recently
that allows us to recognize volunteerism.
MR. OLLIFF= Yes, that executive summary that
we sent to the Board about the volunteers and public
service. I think they said they could come back to you
in April and try to provide you with at least a
representation of what all the volunteer impacts are
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county-wide. Volunteer week is in April, so we are
starting to move in that direction. We don't have it
real coordinated at this point.
MR. CLARK: What we've proposed, like the civic
associations, Commissioner Norris, I am sure all of you
do in all of your areas, like the Adopt A Road Program.
They do an immense service to the community to keeping
our roads, I'm sure they assist George's group, East
Naples civic Association, Golden Gate Civic Association,
Naples and a lot of them have and we're proposing an
award that the Commission would grant in recognition of
these efforts and set up some criteria by different
groups and by that you could encourage citizen
participation and obvious recognition for those
services.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: May sound kind of
trifle or stupid, but like the 1,000 Points Of Light
type program where they recognized real contributors,
maybe we ought to do something. We don't want to
single out people and then not recognize other people,
but we should be doing something to recognize these
volunteers.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Could I suggest that, does
this represent our priority in terms of essential
services through privatizerich, coalitions and
improvements of volunteerism, is there -- in terms of
that order, does that represent any priority or is this
Just the way ws have put them up on the board?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I did not put any
priority to them.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Do we want to establish
any priorities within that?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Probably after we get a
list of different items for the role of government, we
will probably have to prioritize those the way we did
before.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE~ I know we've got an awful
lot of volunteers and whether they are volunteers who
are working in the library or with the museums or
working on our advisory boards, again I'm not sure to
the extent that we have been very fortunate in the
community to have a lot of citizen participation and if
it isn't actually contributing services, whether it's
through some of the civic groups and that's what I think
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Mr. Clark is talking about, so we haven't really
fostered -- people have been willing to come forward so
what we are saying is we have begun the process of
trying to acknowledge the contribution that they have
Bade but can we actually look at areas where we should
try to increase the delivery of services through
volunteers? I mean, that's ---
CO](MISSIONER HATTHEWS: I would think as our
population grows, our need for more personnel is going
to grow also, and especially in areas like the library
and the museum and maybe even some other governmental
services, volunteers to come in and do some of that
work, number one, they get great Joy from doing it, the
citizens get the service, and we have not had to put out
public dollars to pay for that service.
CONMXSSXONER VOLPE: Where would you put
Captain Day'a progra= in thia concept? Does that fit
under volunteeris~ or does that fit ---
CO~ISSIONER NATTHEWS: Well, they are going to
be paid, ! don't see that as volunteerism at all.
COMNXSSXONER VOLPE: Doea that type of a
concept, does that fit anywhere in, you know, is that --
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
does that fit any place in that, in one of those three
categories? That's a question that I don't know.
CO~ISSIONER MATTHEWS: I see Captain Day's
program as an enhancement possibly of our government
employee structure, but not part of this at a11.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE= Okay.
MR. NORRIS: The last meeting we had, we have
been presented a recapitulation of all the things that
we talked about that morning. We don't seem to be
addressing all of these items again.
How does that, how does it integrate with what
we are doing today with the documents here that
Commissioner Matthews has brought? Have we now
abandoned the ones that we talked about on our last
meeting and moved over to this? Exactly what or how
are we doing this? Some of this is not the same.
MR. DORRILL~ I think they could certainly be a
number two. Let's say, for example -- flip that back,
Pepper, Just a second to where you were -- under role of
government you could have a number two that would say
develop and implement strategies and programs to insure
increased efficiency and you might want to highlight
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89
under that the Citizens Productivity Committee or
further performance auditing with the individuale.
I think that you are going to have to go back
to your old notes and then try and get them on today's
list and build some other numbers under the role of
government, but number two could certainly be the
productivity angle and then what you want to do from a
productivity perspective to respond to that.
NR. NORRIS: Well, this is what we did the
first meeting and we seem to have gotten away from that
and started off going with all new statements, and I'm
not sure why we are doing that. Rather than expanding
what we did on the meeting before, we Just have
eseentially done it all over again.
PROFESSOR ~ARTIN: Well, the two main points
that we had on this original from the last meeting was
effective and efficient government and we have not even
touched that subject. I think that is what you are
getting at, Commissioner Norris.
it,
MR. NORRIS: Exactly.
MR. DORRILL: We didn't want to forget about
I'm Just suggesting that a number two or number
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three on today's list in terns of our role, outside of
identifying essential services, the other role as
previously expressed would be one of productivity.
Maybe productivity ought to be number two, but I think
you need to respond, you know, within productivity do
you want to continue to emphasize the productivity
committee for performance?
you will need to do.
COM)ilSSIONER MATTHEWS:
Those are some things that
Under government
efficiency last time we were talking about streamlining
government, cut fat and trim the middle. It would seem
to me that at least under the essential services
category that privatization, where practical, was going
to accomplish whatever streamlining we can do under
essential services and maybe what we have come to here
is not that we are, not so much we are not talking about
the same thing, we are Just talking about them in a
different order and we really didn't talk too much last
time about essential'services and ways that we could
enhance or be more responsive or what have you, so I
think we are talking about it but we're talking about it
in a different sequence.
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COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Where you have
~nsure and increase efficiency and cost effectiveness, I
think some of those go hand in hand.
MR. DeRRILL: Are you all suggesting that maybe
number two under the role of government would be a
continued emphasis on productivity?
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: I would think so.
Productivity and keeping that as high a level as we can
make it is very i~portant and in my mind the next
subsequent one to that would be respo~siveness. I mean,
our goal here was to make government responsive and
efficient.
CO~7~ISSIONER SAUNDERS= We should be Just
listing those without worrying about the priority.
MR. DORRILL~ Why don't you show productivity
and then maybe sole subs under that.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE= I think the manager
mentioned, I mean we have been through a performance
audit of our utility department or division, have we
found that to be -- we will find out a little bit more
about it as we begin to assess the performance audit but
aea part of the productivity, do we want to look at
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performance audits of other divisions within county
government? Transportation services, is that one of
those areas that we should be looking at?
You know, Commissioner Norris, I think you at
one point when you had the idea of doing a performance
audit and maybe you did as well, Commissioner Matthews,
was that the idea we will look at it here and take the
performance audit concept into the other divisions?
CO~D~ISSIONER MATTHEWS: Yes. Yes, I mean we
can even, we can even look at it not being even as a
performance audit, but merely put together a stream for
the paper flow, not really, not so much looking at it
perfor~ancs-wiae but Just to look at the way the paper
flows through a particular process, to see if, from an
outside perspective, we are moving the paper in the most
efficient manner.
COK~ISSIONER VOLPEt I guess maybe when we are
talking about streamlining government, cut the fat and
trim the middle management, that seems to be what the
performance audit was able to identify, and it would
seem to me that the concept of a performance audit as
was envisioned with ut£11t£ss is something that we
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93
probably should be looking at within, you know, rather
than us getting into the bowels of the building to
determine what is efficient and what ~s not efficient,
It seems to me that we really need to have that outside
resource look at us from the outside to see whether in
fact there are things that we have being doing that
could be done a little bit differently with a view
towards streamlining.
COH~ISSIONER MATTHEWS: Those kinds of things
often happen when you have a fresh set of eyes and you
have a procell that has been ongoing for quite sometime.
MR. DORRILL= Don't forget your advisory, your
Citizens Productivity Committee because I think you want
to continue to emphasize that.
COMMISSIONZR MATTHEWS= Yes.
HR. DORRILL= Can we show that as maybe a B?
COK~ISSIONER VOLPEt Could I ask the question
on the Citizens Productivity Committee? Each year we
kind of give them certain assignments, as I recall,
certain areas that we have asked them to focus on.
HR. DORRILL= Sometimes. You usually leave it
up to them to go and prepare areas and subcommittee
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4
assignments and they do that pretty much, they freelance
their own subcommittee work aa opposed to the Board
directing them in any particular area.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: When they -- so, in terme
of those areas, I mean one year it was in development
services that they were focused, they were focused in
utilities. How do we establish for the Productivity
Committee what, as our advisory group, we'd like them to
do?
MR. DORRILL: We have not, but there is no
reason, based on the way they're constructed
MR. CONSTANTINE: It might be a good idea.
HR. DORRILL: You are not limited, but you
typically are not.
CO~ISSIONER VOLPE: If we have got a
Productivity Committee, which we do and I think the
consensus is that the Productivity Committee serves a
very valuable role in helping to identify areas to
increase productivity, if you will, and we ought to
decide to dispatch them into a certain area and whether
it's transportation or whether it's parks and
recreation, whether it's environmental aervIces or
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95
whether it's human resources. I mean, it seems that
maybe we can give them a charge as a part of
implementing our strategic plan.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS= We could do that, we
could ask the prcductivity committee to set up a
cyclical investigation of various departments so that
every department is looked at at least once every three
or four years or what have you on specific years,
different departments would be looked at. We could ask
them to establish such a rotation.
COMMISSIONER VOLPEt
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS= Yes.
COMMISSIONER VOLPEt I wonder if that has any
specific direct~on.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS~ I think the ordinance
basically says that they are to review all departments
of county government on a rotating basis so they don't
review everything every year but they do try to rotate
through the various departments.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Maybe what we can do, and
not to get lost on this issue, but maybe what we should
It's an ordinance that has
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do is ask them to make recommendations to us as to what
areas they think they would like to get into.
COHNISSIONER MATTHEWS: They are already in a
pattern now. I mean, we may not know what that pattern
is, and maybe we need to know nothing more but a listing
of what their intentions are in 1995 and 1996.
COHNISSIONER VOLPE: And we can put a monitor
on it and say, that's great, that's what we really want.
CO~ISSIONER SAUNDERS: I think what we are
trying to get at is we need to find a way to utilize the
services of that committee more effectively.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: Exactly.
CON]~ISSIONER SAUNDERS~ We all recognize the
value that committee does provide and the value it can
provide in the future, but we want to maximize that and
perhaps we need to formalize the way they review the
various departments.
MR. SNYKOWSKI~ Since they're presenting a
report tomorrow, won't they be gearing up for the next
cycle, they're looking for tasks?
MR. McNEES: I want to throw something out for
everyone's consideration. I have worked with that group
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
a few years now.
There lea real tendency for them to want to
get bigger and bigger and bigger in terms of the issues
that they are looking at and that has been influenced a
little bit recen=ly by some of the things that you all
asked them to look at in terms of the helicopter, the
M.I.S. issues, and that's a fine function for them, but
it's easy for them to get away from what I believe is
the initial intent of creating them, looking at some of
our processes. Sometimes it's as simple as, you know,
how do you make a widget Just a little bit more
efficiently and how do we streamline this or that and
they have already gotten away from some of that kind of
analysis and, yes, it's not as sexy or as much fun
sometimes as the big picture issues, but then again
everybody Is advising you.
CO)dMISSIONER SAUNDERS{ You are correct, that
was their original charge, to look at policies and
procedures, steps taken by the various departments and
eliminate those steps.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: That currently exist.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: And make
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
recommendations on how to improve.
MR. McNEES= They have gotten away from that.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: We are asking them now
to investigate more things that we are anticipating
doing.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: We created a
subcommittee to look at technical issues such as 800
megahertz and that sort of thing and that was in
addition to the original charge.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: As a part of that, I
think the point that Mr. HcNaee makes is a valid point.
We have got a number of other, 41 or 42 advisory groups
and somehow they must be looking at, you know, whether
it's the parks and recreation advisory group, there is
an E.~.S. advisory group that is relating to certain
issues as it relates to E.M.S., so those advisory groups
are out there, and they are to be advising the Board of
County Commissioners and we get reports from them
annually and then we review them, but we get, isn't it
rotating? It's rotating. We don't get annual reports
from all of the advisory groups. We stagger them, and
like the last time they were on our consent agenda, in
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99
terms of the reports of certain of those.
I guess the thought process is they are there
and if the Productivity Committee is supposed to be
looking at current standard operating procedures to see
if there are ways that we can improve the way we are
doing business, and then there is a subcommittee to look
at certain directions it would give them to look at
800 msgahsrtz or H.I.S., are we making the best use of
all of these advisory committees that we have or groups
in ter~s of the information and what they are doing,
that's really a question. I mean, they're obviously,
they have an important role but in terms of getting that
information to either the staff -- I mean, is there
somebody on the staff that relates to ths advisory
groups?
HR. DORRILL~ There is typically a start
liaison for every advisory group.
One of the things you are touching on might be
what I would call a third area in terms of the role of
government which would be public participation and in
addition to a review or analysis of the advisory boards,
another thing that the Board does is the annual citizen
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survey.
survey?
CO~ISSIONER VOLPE: Is that the telephone
HR. DORRILLI I would kind of think that as a
role of government, public participation or citizen
participation ought to be an area on your chart and I
would lump advisory boards and the voter survey and the
things that you do to gauge or measure the public
support or involvement outside of Just essential
services for productivity, I would call it more public
participation.
MS. EDWARDS=
Consensus?
COKHISSlONER VOLPEI Are you suggesting in an
organized way, Hr. Dotrill, of public participation in
terms -- we have it through our volunteerism, we have it
through our advisory groups -- are you saying that
somehow the Board ought to tap into those resources on a
regular, ongoing basis?
HR. DORRILL: Have more of a plan, not only
concerning that we do some things but it Just seems to
be a little scattered and maybe bring public
participation a little more in focus and have a plan and
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
lol
put more of a focus and whether it is a priority of the
Board is something that is going to remain to be seen.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE= The whole idea, as I
understood it of the telephone survey, part of what is
intended is to solicit from the community issues that
the community has identified as being important, and
then helping the Board to prioritize those issues as
perceived by the public and I think that has been an
effective tool.
MR. DORRILL: I think it's important. I
brought part of that today. For example, the top five
public concerns expressed to the survey this year,
number one and number one for every year has always been
road improvement and maintenance programs, a concern of
practices. Growth management and growth control were
number three. Law enforcement is number four but up
substantially. Law enforcement has historically been
nine or ten, it was up to four. Water supply concerns
were number five.
Typically, those arm the types and I'm Just
saying that, as stated goals and objectives, that public
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participation te real important to what you ought to do
and to have it as number three.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS: You are talking public
participation other than the voluntary work that we want
to establish?
HR. DeRRILL= Yes, and maybe even could be
broadened through, you know, we are anticipating trying
to inprove on public education as part of that and
trying to develop some plans to present to the
Commission about what to do with this new Channel 54 in
terns of program enhanced broadcasting over the local
cable C-Span equiplent and that can be a public
participation type objective of the County Commission as
well.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS= Okay.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE~ I don't know If it's
necessarily related but as long as you are talking
about public participation, it seems to me that our
district commission meetings, if that is what we are
calling them now, have been really that opportunity,
and ---
HR. DeRRILL= Town hall meetings.
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 3396.
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COMMISSIONER VOLPE: That seems to me to be
another vehicle. It seems to me as you look back over
the last 12 months we haven't touched on all the
communities yet but, I mean, I sense that the Board
feels that that is a worthwhile exercise and as a part
of that we ought to plan on developing that on a regular
ongoing basis because it seems to me that going out into
the various communities is important to solicit the
public participation even though we get the very narrow
issues sometimes when we are out there but I think it's
really helpful for us to get a little better sense of
the individual communities within the overall
communities, so again you are talking about an
interactive, you know, phone your County Commissioner,
hello, sort of thing.
phone calls.
MR. CLARK:
We will be taking all these
County government and the
commissioners, we all have had a lot of the civic
association meetings, we all attend a lot of these so I
think there is a great deal of public participation both
ways. We come here, they go there, they call, and I
think there is a great deal of it but as Neil stated,
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7
Laybe to better utilize that infoNation or centralize
that infomarion so we can get a more cohesive view
point of what the public wants at various times.
Sometimes it's parochial, in fact probably most of the
time but collectively there may be some general things
there.
CO~ISSIONER NATTHEWS: I think as County
Commissioners, I would like to see, of the broad issues
that we handle, a better handle on whether we are
hearing from the noisy minority and what about this
great silent vote out there, do they really take what we
do or do they Just think it doesn't matter what they
think or want, we're going to do what we think anyway.
I mean, that publio participation may be a real goal to
try to get more and more of the general public involved
in running their local government.
Sometimes I really feel like we hear mainly
from a very noisy minority and it sounds like a lot of
noise, but I'm not sure that we are really hearing it
fro~ a real representative population.
CONMXS$IONER VOLPE= Again, at one point we had
discussed some sort of a public formality, I'm not sure
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105
if it's related to this but in terms of you have got the
chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, you have
got the constitutional officers, you have got the
president of -- I guess is what he is called -- of the
School Board or chairnan of the School Board and you
have got the mayor of the City of Naples, and you have
got the Mayor of the City of Everglades, you know, there
may be that opportunity to have those individuals, you
know, somehow, because they are providing, we are all
providing some of the lame letvices to the same public
in a way and again I don't know where that fits or how
it fits. You know, that might be something.
MR. OLLIFF= That might be something.
It's sort of the lame thing, but we provide
services, we divide them up and we laid we wanted these
services to be more efficient and of course more
effective and under the effective heading we are also
talking about you can be as efficient as you want but
you may be providing the wrong service, so it's
developing some kind of a mechanism that you are hearing
in the public so that you know that we are being as
efficient as we can but we arm also providing the
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
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service that they wanted us to provide. We are making
decisions they want to us make, and so we are trying to
develop internally some type of Leasure that we are more
geared towards developing some systems so that we hear
from the public and we are making sure that is funneled
back up to the County Commissioners and on the other
hand, that you will have these things fall into two
~aJor categories, making sure we are providing what the
public wants and on the other hand that we are doing it
as efficiently as we can.
When X look at this, and I may be way off base
here but when you talk about the the role of government,
yes, we are going to provide essential services and I
think everybody seess to be saying the same thing, we
want to provide them as efficiently as we can, we want
to provide them as effectively as we can and X think all
of these provided under these two major headings under
efficiency, it talks about productivity efforts, citizen
reviews, trying to make sure we are as efficient as we
can and the effective side we are talking about using
volunteers more, public participation and make sure that
we are hearing from the public, talking about advisory
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board use, coalitions with other suNivisions, that is
making us more effective. That may be the way to think
about how to show that.
COHNISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Some of that is
going on now. Last week Net1 and I met with some
members from the School Board and we do that quarterly.
CONHISSIONER VOLPE= Yes, that's good, I agree,
but what that lacks in my view is that that is fine for
all you to meet and as we all have and I think that
should continue, but I'm suggesting that there should be
a public forum for that to occur as well. You know, the
idea of the exchange of an Idea and sharing of
information has been done, I think that that is
important but again we are talking about the public
participation and what ws may not be able to draw from
the citizenry as the Board of County Commissioners as
perhaps are school boards, citizens committees. They
don't get a lot of overall, you know, statements may not
be accurate but participation and if you had a forum
with these Issues where you had the chairman of the
Board of County Commissioners, School Board, mayor, I
mean you might get more of an opportunity to solicit and
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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elicit that public input.
HR. CONRECODE: If I could throw one item out,
it's fitting into none of the categories but somehow,
some similarities.
I Just kind of wrote down the word influence as
a body. This Board has a lot of influence on a lot of
issues, like Tempe University, South Florida Water
Management issues, D.O.T. priorities, input to the
legislative delegation, coordinating with the School
Board and a lot of these issues which are a role of
government but a significant role that you play as a
body influencing the outcome of some of these things
that really affect inter-agency cooperation and
coordination.
COKHISSIONER VOLPEt That may be true, but ---
MR. CONRECODE= I think recognizing that as
one of your roles and maybe going off of that and
saying, okay, if we have a role to influence outcomes
like the location of Tempe University, the D.O.T., then
in recognizing that, and the cooperating, that is the
direction we'd like to take for Collier county.
COMMISSIONER VOLPEt Or how to coordinate that
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influence, right?
MR. OLLXFF= We have never done a real good
Job of that. Florida Legislature gives us a lot of
things that would impact but have we ever said as a
Board here is the position we want to take?
COKNISSIONER VOLPE: Sometimes as an add on
item on our agenda we have done that.
CONI~ISSIONER NATTHEWS: I will agree, it would
be nice to know there are things coming up in a week or
two before they really are coming, so that we have the
opportunity to think about what it is we want to do and
how we want to approach it. Often what happens is, yes,
it's On an add on and one of us is saying yes, we ought
to do that and I think it sounds good and the rest of us
are agreeing because it sounds good but we really may
not understand all of the different facets to it, merely
because it's an add on item and we get 30 seconds to it.
CO~NISSIONER ¥OLPE: But if you had, I mean,
those issues are very important, then through the
collaborative efforts, you can really kind of peddle
that influence a little bit better if it were a bit
coordinated, from working with a certain body whether
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11o
it's the legislative delegation or whether it's with
some other of the groups to do that.
COMMISSIONER MATTHEWS= Certainly, if we have
got that kind of influence and we are not using it, we
ought to look at trying to find ---
MR. CONRECeDE= Set a goal or task, you
thereby direct staff to coordinate with the legislative
delegation on funding issues, coordinate perhaps at a
higher level to influence the priorities of funding and
some of these other llSUel.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE= One of the things we have
not done as a Board is we really don't have, and I have
had this discussion with the manager, committee
assignment. If you look at those rules of procedures
that we share, there are various committees and
different commissioners have different responsibilities.
For example, serving on the finance committee or serving
on some other committee and as a part of the
evolutionary process, we have gone from, you know, being
commiseioners at large to being district commissioners
now, there may be the opportunity for better use of the
committee structure at the Board level and working
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
together, you know, once we become a bit more familiar
with what the staff is doing on a particular issue.
There iea downside to that and I understand
that but in a meaningful way being able to report to the
four others as to this is where we should be and what
the priorities should be, and using the influence but
again the manager has I think some feelings about the
use of the committee structure at the Board level, and
maybe we could -- can you share with us, Mr. Dotrill,
your thought procese about the committee structure at
the Board level?
MR. DORRILL: In terms of having individual
COHHISSIONZR VOLPE: Yes.
MR. DORRILL~ There's some counties that work
that way. It can be very difficult, and my experience
with it has been it has a negative aspect where you, I
don't know, you would have eight commissioners
responsible for a particular area and then somehow they
would be the experts on an area and they would hold
separate meetings with the staff to develop and review
agenda items or ordinances before they could come to the
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
3.12
full commission, and I know there are sole communities
that do that. My experience with it or my observation,
X know that one time Lee County kind of had a system
like that, it tended to lake specialists of certain
commissioners or certain commissioners ended up with
very important committee assignments, be it public work
or community development and then there are a lot of
side issues in Lee County and then it was who ~ould be
responsible for ths board authorities up there, which is
a big deal in Lee County and X don't know that it always
works that way, but X know that Lee County has tried
something like that.
COHHISSIONER VOLPE:
That is the downside.
COHHXSSIONER SAUNDERS: I think we are
struggling with do we licro manage or do we macro manage
and I think if we start getting into committee
assignments, we are beginning to go in the direction of
lore micro management and I think what one of the things
we are trying to do is find a way to free up County
Comlission time to do more long range planning and I
think perhaps a role of government should be to engage
in development of policies and procedures, to implement
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
33964
various programs, and then to provide oversight for
these but once these directions are given to the
manager, the day to day operations of those programs
will be the manager's. The end result would be for our
review and maybe we need to talk in terms of the role of
government in terms of development programs and
procedures or policies, and in a general scope, and then
providing oversight for these programs, getting away
from the day to day micro management.
An example of I guess what I'm talking about is
we spend, perhaps we spend an inordinate amount of time
dealing with issues that affect a very small number of
people. For example, variances, we might spend an hour
or an hour and-a-half of a board meeting dealing with a
variance that affects only one person, and once the
policy is established in terms of how variances will be
approved, the County Commission shouldn't be dealing
with that very detailed issue that affects practically
no one. We need to find ways to free up our time so we
can develop these general policies and procedures.
I would like to list something there as a role
of government in terms of developing these general
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL 33964
114
quidelines and procedures.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Right now what we
need to do is try and sum up today and where we are
going to from here because it's Just about time to go.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Jennifer, that would be
develop policy and procedures and then provide oversight
of results or review of results.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: That kind of fits into
what we are doing now. There is a little bit more long
range but I assume you back away from the long range
five years and bring it back to one year and that is
kind of where we are.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: That's what was pointed out
in that first hand out. You are talking about master
planning and then you are talking about implementation
of these plane with report backs, how are we doing, and
I think that we have deviated although of this is very
important.
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: We're on the role of
government and I think role of government should be
master planning.
PROFESSOR MARTIN: It's well documented in the
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115
paper I got from the attorney's office as to what these
plane should be.
Have you all got a copy of this, from the
standpoint of what people are expecting? Maybe we
should do that. I'm sorry, we can provide you a copy of
this, that I received at the time I got the assignment
from the attorney's office with regard to your major
responsibilities in this area, and like you say, we need
to put this in a five year plan with the time element
you are talking about in order to make it strategic and
I would hope we could have the initial part of this in
writing in time for October let.
COHHISSIONER VOLPEt
whatever it is?
PROFESSOR HARTIN=
Can we get a copy of
Yes, I will ask Jennifer.
MS. EDWARDS= Let me explain what this is. In
working on the video we're doing for Channel 54, I asked
the County Attorney's Office Just to describe the
function or the role of the Board of Commissioners so
they have very succinctly written a few paragraphs and
that is what we are using here. ! will make a copy of
it for each of you.
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107
COHNISSIONER VOLPE: So you are summarizing
MS. EDWARDS= Yes.
COHHISSIONER CONSTANTINE: Do we need to
summarize this and also where are we headed from here,
what is our next step?
COHHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Our next date is, what,
March 31st?
COHNISSIONER SAUNDERS: No, March 28. The
Tuesday before the 31st.
COHHISSIONER MATTHEWS: Oh, okay.
CO~ISSIONER SAUNDERS= It seems ~o me that we
are go~mg to, on the 292h, continue this 1~s2, l~st the
pr~ortties after we do ~he dot vo~ng and ~hen go to the
~ext category.
CO~ISSIONER MATTH~S= I guess the question
becomes do we continue with the maJo= categories and try
to define theB, or do we drop back and try to define
addi~onal tasks and ~ethods by which we are going to
achieve the~. My preference is to continue w~th the
~aJor categories un2~l we get them clearly defined and
then we'll drop back and ---
OFFICIAL COURT REPORTERS, COLLIER COUNTY, NAPLES, FL
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COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE:
agree with you.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE:
I think I would
So we have got three other
categories that we have identified, major categories?
We have done one and-a-half right now, is that what wa
have done?
HR. DeRRILL: Almost two.
COMMISSIONER VOLPE: So, on the 28th or 29th we
will pick up with the balance of them and go through the
same process?
COMMISSIONER SAUNDERS: Those will probably go
much more quickly than the two we tried today.
COKNISSIONER MATTHEWS~ The economic factor
really, that was the shortest one.
COMMISSIONER CONSTANTINE= Thank you, and we'll
see you the 29th.
(Whereupon, the meeting was concluded.)
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118
STATE OF FLORIDA )
COUNTY OF COLLIER )
X, Jaclyn M. Ouellette, Deputy 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 colpurer assisted transcription,
consisting of pages nulbered 2 through 117, inclusive,
is a true record of ~y Stenograph notes taken at said
proceedings.
Dated this 16th day of March, 1994.
ty Official Court Reporter
20th Judicial Circuit
STATE OF FLORIDA
COUNTY OF COLLIER
The foregoing certificate was acknowledged before me
this 16th day of March, 1994, by Jaclyn M. Ouellette,
who is personally known to me.
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33964