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BCC Minutes 06/20/2013 B (Budget Workshop) BCC BUDGET MEETING MINUTES JUNE 20, 2013 June 20, 2013 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Naples, Florida, June 20, 2013 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Board of County Commissioners, in and for the County of Collier, and also acting as the Board of Zoning Appeals and as the governing board(s) of such special districts as have been created according to law and having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9:00 a.m., in BUDGET WORKSHOP in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRWOMAN: Georgia Hiller Fred Coyle Donna Fiala Tom Henning Tim Nance ALSO PRESENT: Leo Ochs, County Manager Jeffrey A. Klatzkow, County Attorney Mark Isscson, OMB Director Troy Miller, Communications & Customer Relations Page 1 NOTICE OF PUBLIC MEETING Notice is hereby given the Board of County Commissioners of Collier County will conduct Budget Workshops Thursday, June 20, 2013 and Friday, June 21, 2013, if necessary, at 9:00 a.m. Workshops will be held in the Boardroom, 3rd Floor, W. Harmon Turner Building, Collier County Government Center, 3299 East Tamiami Trail, Naples, Florida to hear the following: COLLIER COUNTY GOVERNMENT BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS FY 2014 BUDGET WORKSHOP SCHEDULE Thursday, June 20, 2013 9:00 a.m.: General Overview Courts and Related Agencies (State Attorney and Public Defender) Growth Management Public Services Administrative Services Public Utilities Debt Service Management Offices (Pelican Bay) County Attorney BCC (Community Redevelopment Agencies, Airport) 1:00 p.m.: Constitutional Officers: Elections Clerk of Courts Sheriff Other Constitutional Officers requesting to address the BCC Public Comment June 20, 2013 MR. OCHS: Madam Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. Good morning. MR. OCHS: Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. (The Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.) CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Good morning, and welcome to our annual Fiscal Year 2014 budget workshop. We're going to begin with a presentation by County Manager Ochs, who will give us a general overview of the budget that's being present for next year for the county for the Board of County Commissioners. MR. OCHS: Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, Commissioners. Before I begin the budget overview, just a couple of housekeeping matters, if I might, Madam Chair. Anyone who wishes to address the board with a comment, please fill out a public speaker slip. They're available in the hallway. While your agenda, Madam Chair, provides for public comment at the end of all the budget reviews, traditionally -- and it's the prerogative of the chair, obviously -- we have speakers who sign up for particular division-related budget concerns or general budget concerns. So with the indulgence of the chair and the rest of the board, perhaps we could call on public speakers after each section of your agenda is briefed, and that way we can get the public service and let them get on about their business without having to wait for the end of the day. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Absolutely. I think that's appropriate. MR. OCHS: Thank you. And then just in terms of the general format, we'll follow our historical format where we will have the courts and the county manager agency budget briefs in the morning, and then we've reserved the constitutional officer budget briefs to Page 2 June 20, 2013 begin at 1 p.m. And if we need to roll into Friday, we can certainly do that, but the last few years we've been able to move through this budget presentation in one day, and that would be our goal again today. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: It certainly is. And I'd like to make one comment, and that is to thank the budget officers, Mark, and of all the constitutionals. They did an outstanding job putting the packages together. So we really appreciate all the work you did, and also the state attorney, the judges, and public defender; everyone really did an outstanding job this year. MR. OCHS: Well, thank you. And with that, Madam Chair, I'll move in, very quickly, to the overview of the budget. Staff is very pleased to present an annual spending plan for Fiscal Year 2014 that keeps your costs low, keeps your service levels high, continues to steadily retire your debt and reduce your cost of borrowing; it continues to build your General Fund reserves, provides funding to construct capital improvements that will maintain the level of service standards that you've outlined in your AUIR, it will provide sufficient funding to maintain and address the critical public infrastructure and capital-asset maintenance that you have an interest in, and it also provides discretionary funding to maintain a competitive pay and benefit program for your deserving workforce. Commissioners, each year we go through a several-month-long annual budget planning process that begins with an integration of your board-approved strategic plan, embeds then the operational planning that goes on at the division level, and also the fiscal and budgetary planning, and it is a continual loop that we build from each year on our budget planning. Of course, all of the budget is resourced around your organizational vision and mission. You're very familiar with these, and I will not read them, but it is -- it's instructed for the public to Page 3 June 20, 2013 understand that we start at the top with our vision and mission always. The board has outlined, as part of your strategic plan, six primary focus areas. You can see those on your screen. They include quality of place, growth management, community health, wellness, and human services, infrastructure and capital-asset management, economic development, and governance to include all aspects of your county administration and financial management. Again, your budget is essentially resourced and designed to help you maintain the service levels and the program and service delivery that you've got embedded in these six strategic focus areas. Commissioners, as I mentioned, the budget process is a process that spans annually over several months, and this is a quick planning timeline that guides our budget preparation and adoption process beginning in February of each year when the board sets the budget guidance. We move, then, applying your guidance to our preparation of budgets that you will see presented here in the workshop today. And July 1 we'll get the certified taxable value from the property appraiser. That will be used then on September 9th when you meet in public session where you set your maximum millage rates for the coming fiscal year. The property appraiser then takes that and prepares the truth and millage notice that goes out in late August, and then, ultimately, the process culminates in two public hearings by this board to adopt the final budget in September. Those hearings will be held on September 5th and then again on September 19th. Commissioners, let me give you a quick overview of the economic landscape that we are preparing this budget around and in. And it's generally an improved landscape from what we've seen over the last several years as we begin to climb out of the recession. A couple of points to note. Your taxable values have increased for the second consecutive year. That increase has been narrowed among the coastal and the inland districts, and that tells us that your Page 4 June 20, 2013 taxable value and your economic recovery is not just occurring along the coastline, that it is spreading to all areas of the county, and that's a very positive sign. Your median home prices are up substantially year over year. Sales tax and state-shared revenues are trending up. Your peak season visitation in our destination is up year over year over 6 percent. New construction permitting activity continues to escalate, and it's up well over 35 percent year over year. Our local unemployment rate is declining. Another good sign. And all in all, pulling out of what has been probably the worst recession that we've experienced here in Collier County over the last 80 years, I believe the organization is fiscally sound and leaner, more efficient, and positioned to continue providing the quality best-value services to both our residents and the visitors to our community. Some of the highlights of the 2014 budget in terms of your outcomes. The budget guidance that you set has been essentially met by our agency. We've maintained a millage-neutral tax rates for both your General Fund and your Unincorporated Area General Fund. Your General Fund reserves remains stable. Debt service continues to decline. It's both fully funded and compliant with the policy that you have set, and we'll talk about that in a little bit more detail as I move through the slides. We have for the first time since 2010 some expanded service requests for your consideration both in the county manager's agency and in the Clerk of Court's agency. We will get into some detail on that as we move through the day. There are no new or increased fees or service charges, and that includes water and sewer, your solid waste charges, your EMS transport charges, and other fees and charges. All of your unfunded mandates at the state and federal level have been addressed in this budget. The General Fund supported capital-asset spending is up substantially for the first time in many Page 5 June 20, 2013 years. I've spoken to you each year when I've stood up here and expressed ongoing concern about our ability to continue to defer capital-asset maintenance, and we did not want to get to a point where we were in a break/fix mode. That's one of the areas you obviously have to defer when you're working through the type of economic recession that we were working through. But we believe it's time now to reinvest in some of that capital-asset management, and we will show you that as we move through the budget briefs today. Then, finally, as I mentioned, there are some dollars available after we have addressed all the other issues to consider some modest employee compensation adjustment based on continuing increase in costs of living. Commissioners, I mentioned some of the emphasis on capital-asset spending in the 2014 proposed budget. These are some of the highlights of the proposed spending for improvements and maintenance in your capital assets. You can see that they largely feature improvements in your public safety systems and in your transportation and stormwater management systems. Commissioners, as I mentioned, after several years of declining taxable values and in some cases double digit declines, we're pleased that we are now, for the second consecutive year, seeing a positive trend in taxable values, and we are hopeful that that is a sign of good things to come in the coming years with respect to your taxable value. It is up in 2014 by 3.6 percent in your General Fund and 3.3 percent in your Unincorporated Area General Fund. Having said that, it's still important to note that when you look at your taxable value history over time, when you look at the Fiscal 2008 peak of more than 82 billion in taxable value, and even with the increase for 2014, you can see at the bottom of this slide that the variance between the peak in 2008 and what we're projecting for the coming year, it's still going to take several years of increasing taxable Page 6 June 20, 2013 values to get back to that peak value that we achieved in Fiscal 2008. This is just a quick recap of the millage rate history in both your General Fund and your Unincorporated Area General Fund. You can see that the tax rate has remained constant in your General Fund since Fiscal '10 and continues through the proposed budget for Fiscal '14, and the same for your Unincorporated Area General Fund, proposing no change in either one of your millage rates for these two funds in Fiscal '14. Let's talk about a few of the budget highlights that are proposed in this budget. Again, this is a millage neutral tax rate with a slight increase in taxable value that will net an additional $7 million in increased General Fund tax receipts and about $770,000 in increased tax receipts in your Unincorporated Area General Fund. As I mentioned, there are no new service fees or increased service fees in this budget. We're pleased that we do not have to face any reductions in front line services in '14, nor do we plan any facility closures or reductions in current operating hours of your programs. In terms of your workforce, funded positions in the county manager agency have increased in the current fiscal year by 19 and-a-half FTE. You will recall, Commissioners, that we added three positions for your tourism department as a result of increases in receipts of the tourist development tax. You've created your four-person economic development office in Fiscal 2013. We had added 20 positions in your growth management division that are fully funded by fees from the industry to keep up with the demand in growth and the demand for service in this particular organization. You had a half-time position added to your Metropolitan Planning Organization, and you actually had six positions eliminated from your parks and recreation department as a result of privatizing some of your concession operations at your marinas, and we've also reduced three management level FTEs in your public utilities division Page 7 June 20, 2013 by an optimization of the organizational structure over there. Now, for 2014, you can see below the blue arrows there are eight expanded position requests in county manager's agency in 2014; one in your museum system, and the other seven are employees proposed to service two new community centers that will be opening in 2014. One at Eagle Lakes Park and the other that's been recently completed for the South Immokalee Community Center. These are not surprises to the commission, as we have addressed those when we came forward with the capital project constructions award, and we're just following on what we committed to previously. This is another graph that shows in table form the changes in position headcount. You will see in the 2014 expanded column the eight positions that I spoke about in your public services division, and then when you move below the line, you can see there are six-and-a-half FTE -- expanded FTE proposed for the Clerk of Courts. Commissioners, I mentioned that the budget contains some discretionary funding for maintaining the competitiveness of your pay plan. We are suggesting that the board consider a one-and-a-half percent cost-of-living increase for your workforce in FY2014. The total cost of that is approximately $1.48 million. We would expect that that number would need to be doubled in order to provide the funding for a similar increase to the Constitutional officer agencies. That funding is available. It will erode the increase in your General Fund reserves that we have budgeted in FY2014, and we'll talk about that in a minute. Now, this is just a little bit more backdrop on the rationale behind the compensation proposal. As you know, over the last several years there's been a number of changes at both the state and the federal level that have continued to erode the earning power of your employees' pay, as well as increases here locally and their contributions to the health insurance program. You can see, when you factor in the effects of the 3 percent Page 8 June 20, 2013 contribution that the state now requires for pension, the offset of social security that has gone away and the effect of employee health insurance premium increases that they are required to cover annually. When you use a $52,000 mean salary and you run those numbers and you -- even if you add the one-and-a-half percent COLA that's proposed for 2014, there is still a net erosion in those earnings over the last five years as a result of some of these other factors that I just described. The point of this is only to tell you that we believe the one-and-a-half percent is modest and still is not something that will allow our workforce to gain back all of the erosion in the salaries over the last four or five years. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner? CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yes. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Leo, I believe you said -- and I could be wrong. You stated that -- in one of the slides that the tax rate will increase slightly. I think what you meant is the increased collection of taxes, but anyways. MR. OCHS: Yes, thank you, Commissioner. You're right. COMMISSIONER HENNING: But on this point, would you look at -- instead of a salary increase, look at offset healthcare costs for the same amount? Here's the reason I'm saying that. Any compensation, in some employees, will put them in a different bracket. By offsetting healthcare costs, you're spreading it equally across the board, and there's no, you know, tax implications. MR. OCHS: Commissioner, we'd be happy to do that, and this is a good breaking point. As we get these kind of requests from individual commissioners or the board as a whole, at this stage of your budget process what we traditionally do is take these inputs, work those options up over the summer, and then when you come back in September for your budget hearing, we will show you the impacts of those proposals, and then Page 9 June 20, 2013 you'll make those decisions, if that's acceptable. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Does anybody have a problem with that? CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: No. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I think it's great. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I'd like to make a comment as to what Commissioner Henning said. Leo, you're absolutely right. And any recommendations that we make here today, given that this is a workshop, will be incorporated into an analysis I hope you'll bring forward before the board. MR. OCHS: Yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And give us, you know, a number of options. I have looked at the payroll numbers both for the board and all the constitutionals, and I strongly advocate the COLA adjustment for everybody, for the constitutionals as well as the County Commissioners' staff. The -- I've thought about the statement you made that, you know, there would be a compromise to the reserves if we did it across the board, and that wouldn't necessarily be the case if we look at the capital-asset side. And I know we briefly touched on -- I believe that it was one of your first slides. Let me go back here. I had -- Page 8. On Page 8, you list out capital-asset spending highlights. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And if I look at the first few items, like ambulance replacement, helicopter replacement, the megahertz system, general vehicle replacement, you're looking somewhere in the neighborhood of$9 million. One thing that I would recommend as you're going through your analyses is that you consider a lease-versus-buy analysis or a buy with short-term money analysis versus a lease. And it doesn't have to be Page 10 June 20, 2013 leasing for the full life of the asset. Obviously, it would be a lease for, you know, a period of time. You've got some assets here which are subject to rapid obsolescence. I'm not sure that you want to necessarily invest in those assets. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And that would actually free up a lot of immediate cash for you that could go towards building the reserves. And then if you're looking, for example, at some of these assets being held for, say, three to four years and you're freeing up that liquidity, you could see a rapid increase in your reserves while, at the same time, having all the funding you need to provide for these COLA adjustments in whatever fashion we as a board, or the constitutional officers, would like to adopt. And, quite frankly, what Commissioner Henning said is really great. And it should be an option. If we as a board want to do it on, you know -- from the health standpoint, fine. If the sheriff would like to do it with respect to pay, fine. Give everybody the option. Because from a dollar standpoint, it doesn't make a difference to us with respect to the bottom line. MR. OCHS: Right. Commissioner, those are great suggestions. We have a finance committee that is composed of financial experts, frankly, internally from both our agency and the clerk's organization and some outside assistance. So I think that would be, you know, a great forum for us to evaluate the options on the capital-asset spending, both lease versus buy-out right. We can incorporate that into our analysis and bring that all back with some options and recommendations. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And, again, what you do is tie in the reserves -- MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: -- the capital-asset budgeting, and the employee raises. And, quite frankly, having analyzed all the Page 11 June 20, 2013 numbers, I think you will come out ahead across the board and will be able to do everything you want to do. MR. OCHS: That's right. And we will be pleased to do that analysis. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. COMMISSIONER NANCE: And excuse me. If I might make a comment. Mr. Ochs, I think it's also important on the capital-asset spending, as one feature that does not show in this analysis -- and this is a very nice analysis, and I appreciate it. But I think something that is important in each one of these items is to indicate among those which of them also are attached to future obligations in years in the future because, for example, in the helicopter -- I think the helicopter set-aside, for example, is one item where you certainly -- you know, you might incur additional expenses, and the 800 megahertz system upgrade, Phase 1 of 5, that's $3 million, but that's attached to a $15 million total expenditure over time. And I think that's very interesting information that the board members might appreciate and something that you might consider in the future. You know, you've got a big overview of big-ticket items. I think that will help with -- certainly will help with my understanding, and it might also help with others. MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. We'll be happy to do that. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Fiala? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes. First of all, I want to endorse, from my point of view, Commissioner Henning's suggestion. That was a great suggestion, and it really is a benefit to our employees not to have to pay additional tax on money that's just going to go to healthcare anyway. Why not pay it to the healthcare. I thought that was an excellent suggestion. And the second thing is just a minor housekeeping thing. I never got a copy of your presentation, your PowerPoint, and I was Page 12 June 20, 2013 wondering if somebody could make one for me. MR. OCHS: Sure. We'll get them to all the commissioners. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, okay, fine. Thank you. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner? Commissioner Fiala, if you look at a 1 .5 increase in salary from a director to that director's -- person that's on the street, there's a huge disparity there, and this is -- this would equal it out across the board. Because the healthcare cost for the person on the street versus the person that's a director is the same. COMMISSIONER FIALA: How will that happen with the Sheriffs Office, though, being that they already pay 100 percent of their healthcare? And how would you, then, change that 1.5 percent depending on their salary change? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, you couldn't. You couldn't do that. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So what -- to go to your point, Commissioner Henning, what you're suggesting is that all employees receive the same adjustment regardless of what their compensation is, meaning that at the lower end of the scale they're getting a higher percentage adjustment, at the higher end of the scale, they're getting a lesser adjustment on a percentage basis? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Correct, not do percentage, but do the same value. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And the sheriff, because the sheriff is paying benefits in a different fashion, can make a similar adjustment just on a cash basis with respect to the salaries rather than through benefits, and that's why I'm suggesting that each constitutional have the option of either doing the adjustment through their benefits or through salaries, whichever they choose to do. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah, and I think we need to talk to the sheriff about his benefits program, quite frankly. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And not only the sheriff. It's really Page 13 June 20, 2013 -- what I think we need to do -- and we've had this discussion at prior board meetings -- is look at the salaries and the benefits across the entire county. We're one government, and there should be, as Commissioner Nance once mentioned, equal pay for equal work. So we need to look at the salaries, for example, for an accountant between the sheriff, the clerk, the property appraiser, the board. I mean, everybody should be paid the same for the same type of work. Taxpayers shouldn't be charged more for the service that's identical between these agencies in one case over another. And then with respect to the benefits, again, a comprehensive analysis ought to be done by staff and brought back to us, because it may not be so much that the sheriff has to change his benefits to 80/20, but maybe there's some sort of hybrid solution where, you know, we come up, he comes down. And he's not the only constitutional that's not on an 80/20 template. It's only the clerk and the board that are on 80/20, and all the constitutionals -- and who else? MR. OCHS: Supervisor of Election also. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And the Supervisor of Elections. So you basically have three constitutionals that are on a different benefits template and three that are on the same. So I think, again, looking at the totality of how the county is compensating across the board and how benefits are being awarded across the board, I think, is a study that would be worthwhile to be brought back to us so that we can make adjustments to the budget. And then, of course, there's the issue of, you know, the raises where the board has awarded raises to the board's staff but the sheriff has not awarded raises to the sheriffs staff and that type of inequity. So, again, I think a comprehensive analysis is in order, and it should be brought back to the board, and then we can adjust the budgets accordingly. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. And, again, not to get off track here, but I will tell you, based on previous direction from the board on that Page 14 June 20, 2013 issue, there have been a series of meetings with the human resources staffs, joint meetings of the HR staffs of all the constitutional officers. I went and saw each constitutional officer; talked to them about this issue. We all agreed that the first thing we wanted to do was get our HR professionals in a room and share the compensation and classification plan for each agency, let them see and do their own internal comparison before we went out and recommended spending half a million dollars. If we didn't have a problem, let's not -- let's save that money and use it, you know, to equalize the benefits, for example. So that is ongoing. They've had several meetings, and they're continuing to meet on a quarterly basis, and that's the initial approach to get at this comparability inequity issue that this board has raised both on salaries and benefits. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Could we set a timetable for you to complete that study with them and bring it back to the board so, you know, adjustments can be made? Because, obviously, some people are not getting as much as they should and, you know, those people are suffering. MR. OCHS: Okay. Well, I can tell you that the feedback from Ms. Lyberg, our HR Director, is that all of the constitutional agencies are -- they've seen each other's pay plans, and they're all satisfied that their plan is competitive for them and working for them. The benefits side, we have not really peeled that back entirely, so that would be the next step. You know, the clerk made some adjustments, for example, to his pay plan that you funded a few months ago, and I think that's got his agency in line with where he wants to be and, in turn, we've done the same thing with all the other constitutionals, with the comparison of their salary ranges and pay plan issues. The benefits is still an area that needs some attention. Page 15 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So could we set a timetable to analyze those benefits and bring it back to the board? MR. OCHS: Sure, we'll work through the summer and try to incorporate that analysis into your presentation in your budget reviews in September. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That would be outstanding. Commissioner Nance? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes. I think it is very important that we work in that direction. I support Commissioner Henning's idea and everything, actually, that's been said. But one thing, I think, we need to do is -- certainly this is not something we can solve in a single year. And what's necessary is, to agree with the constitutional officers in principle that we're heading to some goal, I think, would be step one so that we can all agree that we're going to have an even playing field, and it's not disrupting something that they are actually interested in or they're disagreeing with that approach. If we can agree that we're going to move in that direction over a period of years, certainly we can get this done. But, you know, we can't be making changes in that direction if they're going to make changes in a different direction. So I think we need to agree in principle up front that that's in everybody's best interest. MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. I think a phasing plan is probably the best approach. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Fiala? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yeah. And when we're talking about benefits, I believe, from what I've been told anyway, that there are some -- like the Sheriffs Office, for instance, owns some housing, and in order to keep some of their people in a high-crime area, they'll offer that housing free to them. And, you know, there's a purpose to that, obviously, but maybe that should somehow be figured into the benefits as well, because that certainly does give their officers a better Page 16 June 20, 2013 pay scale. And I don't know how many or, you know -- but that would be another benefit analysis that could be figured in. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. Again, I think the goal that I hear from the board is equity and comparability. That doesn't mean that it has to be identical on every single issue, but there needs to be a general agreement that the plans are comparable and everybody is contributing their fair share across all county government. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I agree. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Absolutely. Commissioner Fiala is right. You know, we should look at non-cash compensation. And, for example, we have employees that have vehicles, and we allow them to drive those vehicles home. MR. OCHS: Home, yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Those are, obviously, part of the compensation package and have to be computed in the total analysis and, again, between agencies as well. So good point, Commissioner Fiala. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Thank you so much. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. MR. OCHS: So you all got ahead of me, because my next slide is talking about healthcare, and that's good. I did want to report for 2014 that your healthcare program is fully funded at the actuarially determined premium levels. That's important to maintain that actuary with your actuaries. Premiums, because of that, will increase by 4 percent. As the board directed, as part of their annual budget guidance, the cost share and split between the employer and employee portion of that annual premium is 80 percent employer paid, 20 percent employee paid. As we just mentioned, the board agency, county manager, Clerk of Courts, and Supervisor of Elections are currently in compliance Page 17 June 20, 2013 with that guidance. Commissioner, let's go quickly to some of the General Fund budget highlights. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Can I just -- before we shift out of payroll, I just want to ask one last thing as part of your analysis. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That you look at all the agencies and see how raises have been awarded over these past years between the various agencies, you know, on a percentage basis; if you could add that. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. MR. OCHS: Your proposed FY2014 General Fund is -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: Include skills in that, you know. You can't just go across the board. You know, what skills do they possess in a certain position that might say the same but maybe different skills are needed, so you'd have to analyze that as well. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: They're going to have a lot of work over the summer. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I know. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's cruel and unusual punishment. MR. OCHS: Your General Fund budget for 2014 is proposed at just under $319 million. It represents a 2.9 percent increase from your FY2013 General Fund budget. And it's still 76 million below the General Fund budget that you operated with in Fiscal Year 2007. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Leo, how much of this is going towards impact fee funds? MR. OCHS: Your loans from the General Fund to impact fee, to help support impact fee debt service, is about 6 million. MR. ISAACSON: It's about $4.6 million. Page 18 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: But we don't actually have that in the impact fee funds, so it's not really -- we have very limited -- I mean, we don't have -- we're not bonding -- MR. ISAACSON: Well, you have debt-managed certain of your impact fee funds, as we talked about during our impact fee workshop. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: But not a lot. I mean, is the debt service on those bonds 4.6 million? MR. ISAACSON: You have about $15 million in growth-related impact fee debt service that we're servicing each year. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And so of that we're actually allocating 4.6 million from the General Fund? MR. ISAACSON: As loans to offset that amount of money, yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. Thank you. MR. OCHS: Commissioners, this is the 30,000-foot pro forma on your General Fund expenses and revenues, and it gives you a little bit of a snapshot of where the expenses are directed and the primary revenue source is for your General Fund. We are going to get into this in some level of detail during the morning, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it right now. But you can see that reserves are up by $4 million, and that is before we make any decisions on compensation or additional capital expenditures beyond what we've already proposed in this budget. Your debt service is down over $2.7 million, and you can see $8 million, which I outlined earlier, devoted to improvements in your capital improvement plan and your asset management initiatives. Property taxes, sales taxes, continue to be your primary revenues along with fund balance driving your General Fund revenues. Let's talk about reserves very quickly. We're proud of the fact that even through a very difficult recession over the last four or five years and no increase in the tax millage, we've still been able to -- through hard work, to grow your General Fund reserves. It's important to maintain an adequate level of reserves for all the good Page 19 June 20, 2013 reasons that the board understands. You can see the trend line in General Fund reserve growth from 2010 through what is proposed in 2014. Again, I need to note the last sentence on this slide that, you know, the cost of compensation adjustments, if you choose to do that or if you want to make additional investments in capital assets, that will lower, incrementally, that reserve in 2014. This is another slide that just kind of depicts a couple of standards for what level of General Fund reserves an organization would like to maintain. The purple line is a line that depicts roughly 10 percent of your General Fund budget, and you can see that for FY14 we're just about at that 10 percent level. Another benchmark is to maintain a reserve that's equal to three months of expenses in your General Fund operating budget, and you can see that there's still a large gap and a long way to go to get reserves to that level. Frankly, our long-term goal, Commissioners, is to get somewhere in between those two lines. If we could get to the 45, $50 million mark in General Fund reserves over time, that will -- that will allow us to not have to continually look to make these midyear cuts that we've been doing over the last five years in order to make sure that we have the sufficient fund balance and reserves going into the ensuing fiscal year. And, again, why is it important to maintain General Fund reserves? The credit rating of the agency is important, the bond rating. All of the investment firms look at our General Fund reserve when they're doing bond ratings. It's the cash flow engine for the budget. It protects your beginning cash balance, allows you to address unforeseen mandates or emergencies, and it, importantly, is also the reserve for the constitutional officers, including the sheriff. Let's talk about your debt for a minute. As an organization and Page 20 June 20, 2013 an agency, you can see a positive trend line from Fiscal Year '8 to Fiscal Year '13 where your outstanding audited debt continues to be reduced. That is good news. And, again, as I mentioned earlier, you are well within your board-established policy for debt management and compliance. The debt for FY 13 is -- represents about 9.6 percent of your total bondable general governmental revenues. Your cap is 13, so you continue to whittle down and stay well below that cap. Again, that is a positive trend. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Leo? MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Before you move to the next slide, can I comment on our debt position. It is really great -- Mark, you and the finance committee have done an outstanding job in trending our debt down and also in refinancing our existing debt to reduce our debt service cost because of the low rates that we currently face. But there is a trend that suggests that rates are going to go up. And so what we need to do is re-evaluate what we do from a debt-management standpoint, to take that into consideration and question whether we want to continue reducing debt and look also on the investment side and what kind of return we're getting on our money. And I was wondering if you could talk to our financial advisors and to the clerk and bring back an analysis for us to give us an idea of what the best decisions will be for the future in light of the change in the market conditions. MR. ISAACSON: Be happy to do that, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. MR. OCHS: Commissioners, moving forward, this is a snapshot. You've seen this pie chart in past years. It doesn't change too much. You can see that our mix of general revenue sources is heavily reliant Page 21 June 20, 2013 -- continues to be heavily reliant on ad valorem revenues and revenues from sales tax and state-shared revenues. In terms of some of your specific revenue categories that feed your General Fund, ad valorem, as I mentioned, is up $7 million for Fiscal '14. Your sales tax budget is up about two-and-a-half million dollars. State revenue sharing is up slightly in 2014. These are all signs that the economy is improving. Your gas tax estimates are up slightly from the prior year. Impact fees as well are trending up due, obviously, to improving economy and the construction that follows that, along with receipts of some deferral revenue, as some of your impact fee deferrals for affordable housing that are 10-year programs. When those programs end or when those homes are sold, that impact fee comes back into your impact fee funds. Then, finally, your budget and carryforward of about $48.8 million has achieved the target that was set in 2014 for the budget. Moving along to your Unincorporated Area General Fund, again, just a few quick highlights. The proposed budget is a little over $39 million. It represents a 1 .3 percent increase from the prior year. Major changes include the increase appropriations for landscape and road maintenance, and your reserves are increased by about $1.3 million, and your operating expenses are down almost 33 percent. That is due largely, in part, to a transfer for your road maintenance expenses to the General Fund. This is your pro forma. Again, we'll go into some detail on this as we go through the budget briefs for each division. And then, finally, again, you're used to seeing these pie charts, but it's, I think, important for the public to remember that a typical unincorporated area residential tax bill contains millages from many other taxing authorities, and sometimes individuals that are uninformed think that it's the Board of County Commissioners that's responsible for the entire tax bill. Page 22 June 20, 2013 Again this year, the county government portion of that residential tax bill in the unincorporated area is less than 28 percent of the total bill. You can see it in another way here how it breaks down. You see the 27.8 percent of county government and then all the other taxing authorities that comprise the total tax bill for a resident in the unincorporated area. Finally, Commissioners, to conclude with a couple of ongoing concerns, as we do every year. Obviously, we are continuing to emphasize the need to catch up on deferral of fixed asset, preventative maintenance, and equipment replacement. Those deferrals began six years ago, and we are continuing to place, you know, high priority asset maintenance and equipment replacement funding in this 2014 budget. I want to assure you, and you'll hear this from your division administrators, that despite the fact that we are behind, your critical public infrastructure and public assets are being maintained to the safe and proper operating levels, and you will see in this budget that we have addressed all of your critical asset maintenance needs. And of course, as the board knows, you have authorized us to continue to pursue a better fixed asset management tool that will not only allow us to maintain realtime inventory of all of our assets, but we'll be able to depreciate those on a realtime basis, project a life-cycle cost of maintenance and replacement so that we're not just having to do this manually year after year after year but we have a system that we can rely on that will update your capital assets on a realtime basis going forward. Again, we talked about the need to -- as we come out of this recession and as the economy improves, there will be continuing pressure as private sector grows to compete for our best employees, and I think it's very important that we continue to keep focused on providing a competitive wage and benefit program for our employees. We need to, as the board has already indicated, continue to keep Page 23 June 20, 2013 in discussion to press for some equity on the health insurance premium split, continue to be diligent about addressing state unfunded mandates and cost shifting that comes from the state and federal government. You can see a few examples of those programs that impact your General Fund, Medicaid being one that we'll talk about in some detail as we go through the morning. As we've talked, again, in the past and I just showed you in the pie charts, your General Fund and your Unincorporated Area General Fund still are very heavily reliant on your property taxes as a primary source of revenue. As your needs increase and you continue to resist, properly, any millage increase, we're going to have continued pressure to, as the last bullet indicates, try to grow your reserves, maintain your asset funding and your asset management at the appropriate level, and still continue to reward and incent your workforce as you go down through the next several years. So those are the challenges that we see that are continuing. None of those are unmanageable. We've continued to manage them, I believe, fairly well over the last few years, and we'll continue to work on those. So, Commissioners, that concludes my summary. I'm happy to answer any questions. I'm delighted that we were able to take a few of those as we went through the presentation. And if you would like to move right into the reviews, Madam Chair, we can do that. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Coyle has a question or a statement. MR. OCHS: Yes. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Actually, the county manager answered my question the minute I turned my light on, but I would like to amplify on it very briefly, and that's the slide that shows the total breakdown of the recipients of property tax revenue. I was wondering where that was, and you did show it. Recently a Page 24 June 20, 2013 newspaper report said that Collier County Government had over 3,000 employees. This has always been a point of confusion for the taxpayers in Collier County. The point is that Collier County Government has a little over 1,500 employees, and the other figures include independent agencies like the sheriffs agency and the constitutional officers. But there are a total of 19 independent governmental organizations in Collier County, many of which have their own taxing authority that we have no control over. You've shown most of them here. If you break out the independent fire control districts, you get the others. But I just wanted to make sure that people understood that Collier County Government and the Board of County Commissioners is managing about 13.6 percent of the -- actually, more than that. It would be about 20 percent of the total budget, the property tax budget. So we get about 20 percent of the property taxes. Other people get the other 80 percent. And they need to understand who those people are who are getting that money and spending it. MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. And, again, this is Unincorporated Area General Fund residents. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes. MR. OCHS: If you live in a municipality, you have additional taxation from your municipal government. COMMISSIONER COYLE: That's right. MR. OCHS: Madam Chair, if I might, may we move forward then? Before we begin the individual presentations, I'd like to take just a couple minutes just to have Mr. Isaacson run through the table of your projected taxable values and millage rates. And then after that, Madam Chair, I know that all the commissioners have received a letter from a consortium of agencies that wanted to address you on the Conservation Collier Program. And Page 25 June 20, 2013 I think right after Mark goes through these millage tables very briefly -- he doesn't have to read them all -- they have registered to speak, and that would be a good time to take them before we get into the balance of the agenda today. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Absolutely. MR. OCHS: Thank you. Mark? MR. ISAACSON: Good morning, Commissioners. You usually don't see me up here discussing tax rates and the dollars raised and taxable values until the September hearing, but I thought it might be enlightening just to talk a little bit about the changes that are occurring within our family of property tax rates and taxing authorities. The bottom line number here, if you look at it -- and we've been fortunate over the last few years to hold your aggregate proposed millage rate lower than the rolled back rate. This year I was a little bit concerned, given the fact that the taxable value increase at a millage neutral tax rate was driving up our general fund revenue streams. But with Conservation Collier rolling off the books -- and as you recall in February we talked during budget guidance about the fact that our tax structure would change a little bit with this year being the last year of that quarter mill increase. As I like to say, that quarter of a mill increase was below the line; in other words, it was spelled out directly on the tax bill as a voter-approved initiative and never affected what I would call the above-the-line aspects of the General Fund tax rate or the other countywide nonvoter-approved levies. Conservation Collier itself incorporated two separate distinct levies on this particular presentation. One was debt service, which is not included in the calculation of the aggregate millage rate because it's voter-approved debt. And the other component is -- and it was that component related to the operational costs of the program. Both of those rolling off the -- our portfolio this year represents Page 26 June 20, 2013 roughly $14 million, and that was instrumental in helping us, once again, this year in not publishing what we might term a notice of proposed tax increase to the newspaper. These are all TRIM related/DR420 related issues, but I thought it was nice to at least let you know ahead of time that these are the things that -- the nuances of the tax rate schedule that are a little bit changing and evolving as we approach our September hearing schedule. MR. OCHS: So the bottom line, Commissioners, the .25 mills that you've seen that have been part of your aggregate millage rate for the last 10 years is not a part of your aggregate county millage rate for Fiscal Year 2014. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So in other words, to simplify, if that were included, we would not be millage neutral. We would actually have to increase our position from where we are now? MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. You would have to -- you would have to increase your General Fund millage as opposed to a voter-approved debt millage below -- as Mark said, below the line. So if you want to continue to operate that program and maintain that quarter mill, you're going to have to add that in, because it's not in our proposed 2014 budget. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Well, I think the board collectively agreed that we were going to be millage neutral. So the only way this could continue would be if it were, as it was done in the past, below the line by referendum to be consistent, because that is what the program is. It would be a very different program if it suddenly -- it would become, like, a division of parks if you rolled it into the proposal now and actually increased the millage, and then we would not be millage neutral. MR. OCHS: And, operationally, that's exactly what we've done. We've rolled those functions into your parks and recreation department for maintenance of passive recreation and conservation Page 27 June 20, 2013 areas; without the millage, though. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's very positive, because if you've actually been able to absorb those activities without raising the millage, then the question becomes, why would we even be considering raising the millage if you've been able to absorb the remaining operations for that program? I assume that there's a desire maybe to buy more land? MR. OCHS: I think you'd have to speak with the -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Is that what it is? MR. OCHS: -- proponents. And they're registered. This is probably a good time to call on them. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. Sounds good. Any comment on that, Commissioner Fiala? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, I was going to comment, but I'll wait until we hear from them. But, yes, it is about buying land. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. COMMISSIONER FIALA: They've bought certain portions of very environmentally sensitive land, but there's a lot more to go in order to make it a whole purchase and make it functional and effective, so -- but I'll wait till they get on there. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Would you like to call the speakers. MR. MILLER: Madam Chairman, your first speaker is Marisa Polgar. She'll be followed by Nancy Payton. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: How many speakers do we have? COMMISSIONER HENNING: On that issue. MR. MILLER: Two. MS. POLGAR: Good morning, Commissioners. For the record, Marisa Polgar on behalf of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. We appreciate the opportunity to participate in today's budget workshop. We realize that there are many important programs and projects that the county is being asked to fund and many difficult decisions that you must make in order to have a balanced budget that Page 28 June 20, 2013 addresses the critical needs of the county. We are here because one of those important county programs has been Conservation Collier. As we and our partners outlined in the letter sent yesterday on this matter, we support continuing the Conservation Collier program because there are many benefits to be derived from such a continuation. However, the key message for your discussion today is that in order to realize these benefits, there needs to be a placeholder for the .25 millage rate factored into the budget in order to provide the flexibility to reauthorize the program if that is the direction of the board based on input received from the community. Creating a placeholder now will allow this important discussion with the public to occur over the next several months before the budget is finalized in September. Maintaining the ability to reauthorize the .25 mill today does not in any way obligate you to continue the program. It simply gives you the option to do so in the future after further discussion. Therefore, the Conservancy respectfully requests that the board amend the budget to include a placeholder for the .25 millage rate to account for these actualities. Since you are at the start of your public discussion on the budget process, you can leave your options open on this matter. Thank you for your consideration. MR. MILLER: Your next and final speaker for Conservation Collier is Nancy Payton. MS. PAYTON: Good morning. Nancy Payton representing the Florida Wildlife Federation. And we, like the Conservancy, are a part of the partnership of Vote Conservation Collier that was established over 10 years ago to promote this program and encourage the program. It's Audubon, the Southwest Florida Land Trust, Ellen Goetz, who was the chair, is still involved, and Ellie Krier, who was the manager, is still managing us and keeping us focused and together. Page 29 June 20, 2013 Today our request is simple, is please keep a placeholder in the budget of a quarter mill for Conservation Collier and to allow the discussions to take place over the summer on how that quarter mill might remain, discussions about a referendum or not, comments from the public as to what they see the program has done or hasn't done, the projects that are left to be completed, and there are uncompleted projects and desired properties, how this program might be integrated into the watershed management plan conservation projects, also with other agencies. There are opportunities for Conservation Collier that exist in the future, and our request, again, is simple; please keep that placeholder in there. It's a temporary placeholder. And in September a decision can be made about whether it should remain, whether it should be less, maybe more, and what its purpose will be. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. MS. PAYTON: You're welcome. In the interest of brevity, only two of us are here today to plead the case. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: We collectively appreciate that. MS. PAYTON: I know. Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, it was my understanding there was a start and an end, and it's due to the end. And, quite frankly, I couldn't even support bringing it back to the taxpayers. Over 80 percent of Collier County is in reserves out of the tax roll. And, quite frankly, I've heard from -- and continually hear from people about the purchase of Pepper Ranch and not being very happy about that. So I can't support continuing the program or even asking the taxpayers. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And I think the issue of Pepper Ranch is, from what I've heard, is that the acquisition was well received but the price was outrageous -- Page 30 June 20, 2013 COMMISSIONER HENNING: Correct. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: -- and seemed to be disproportionate to what actually was paid for the property a few years earlier and, quite frankly, stripped the Conservation Collier fund of millions of dollars that could have been used towards the acquisition of properties today as a consequence of the bad deal that was made by the county. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah. And it's a program that will never have an end until you say no, and I'm saying no. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Nance? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes. I have done a lot of thinking and a lot of review about Conservation Collier, and I think it's going to take actually quite a large discussion for us to really realize the full benefit. It's my understanding that since inception we have spent roughly $138 million on the program that was supported by over 80 percent of the public. So I think the conservation of land in Collier County was warmly embraced by the public, and now we're certainly entering into another phase of it. In discussions with people that have discussed this issue with me and talked about extending it, I have indicated that the only way I would consider extending it in any way was if it was very sharply focused and it had a particular goal basically centered around finishing what we began, and that is that there are several conservation programs that are very tightly defined, like the Red Maple Swamp and Winchester Head, that are very good, and the completion of that is certainly a goal that is admirable and allows you to do other things and actually allows you to lower the cost of maintenance over the long term. That having been said, I have considerable concern over the direction that the maintenance of our publicly owned assets are taking going forward, and I have considerable anxiety over our conservation effort becoming something that's focused on recreation and a great Page 31 June 20, 2013 deal of spending -- centered on recreation and not, perhaps, what the taxpayers were led to believe the purpose of it is. So I could support something if it was very narrowly focused, but I have a lot of anxiety over how we need to maintain the public's asset, and I'm concerned that we not let the maintenance of that asset take on a life of its own going forward. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Fiala? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes. Maintenance, of course, is important in order to keep these properties pristine. You must remove exotics and so forth. They're also an area that is going to be responsible for some of our future water needs. And if you don't put them aside now, you're never going to be able to go back and get them. Once it's gone, it's gone. You mentioned Pepper Ranch. And, yes, we bought it at the high but, of course, everything at the time we bought it was high. And who would ever know that a few years later you could buy it for a third of the price. We didn't know that. The same with many of the other purchases. We were -- we were, at the time, in a situation where everything that you bought was high-priced. But it's also been used for the public. One of the things that the public said when they voted this in in the first place was they want to be able to access the properties. They want to be able to use the properties, and that's why they voted for it. And I think it's wonderful that they've been able to use, especially Pepper Ranch, for camping and fishing and for hunting and youth programs. And, yes, we paid a high price, but if we would have known we could wait three more years and pay a very low price, we would have done that, but nobody has the crystal ball at the time. I think it's very, very important to purchase conservation lands now while we still can before they get developed and then we can never go back and get them again, because they're gone. So I think we Page 32 June 20, 2013 need to keep that in consideration. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Coyle, would you like to comment? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. I don't find the request by the speakers to be burdensome to us. They're saying, give us some time to get some public input, have some public hearings, find out what might be possible, maybe make some changes to the program, and come back to you later in the year with some recommendations. I have questions also about the program. And I think that they deserve an opportunity to be heard, and I think the recommendations they might have could be helpful to us. So I'm willing to delay a decision on eliminating the percentage for Conservation Collier and keeping a -- what they call a -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: Placeholder. COMMISSIONER COYLE: -- placeholder there. It doesn't obligate us to do anything, but at least they'll have a chance to be heard. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I do think it -- there is an issue, because -- and correct me if I'm mistaken, Leo and Mark. We are going to have to decide what our millage is going to be, I believe, long before the Conservation Collier -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: Maximum millage, not -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Right, the maximum millage. And, essentially, what would have to happen is that quarter mill would have to be added to what we are proposing now as the maximum mill. Are you advocating that the millage rate be increased by that quarter mill over what staff is recommending? Because right now we're millage neutral. And as Mark explained, it was a below-the-line item. It wasn't included in our General Fund millage rate setting. So now we've got a very different situation. It wasn't there before. Now the proposal is to put it above the line and increase the millage if it were to go forward. Page 33 June 20, 2013 So the placeholder -- what's the deadline for approving the millage rate? MR. OCHS: July 9th, ma'am. At your board meeting of July 9th, you will adopt your maximum -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. MR. OCHS: -- allowable millage rate. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So, basically, we have between now and July 9th to decide if you want to either remain millage neutral, as has been proposed by staff, or to increase the millage a quarter point to allow for what Conservation Collier is going to look into. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. You asked me a question; let me respond. I would not advocate a millage rate that is higher than the current millage rate. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. COMMISSIONER COYLE: But what I would be willing to do is to carry the discussion into the time when we are going to make that decision on the final millage rate, which would be September. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: No. The final millage will be July. COMMISSIONER COYLE: No, it won't. MR. OCHS: No, ma'am. The maximum millage. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I'm sorry. The maximum, sorry. MR. OCHS: You could still lower it before you -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. MR. OCHS: -- adopt your budget in September. You can't increase it. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Right. But if the maximum millage that we're deciding on July 9th includes that 25, we can also exclude it later on, but we're not going to be millage neutral if we're going to adopt an increase of a quarter point. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. Just for order of magnitude, a quarter of a mill is about $15.1 million. So you have two options. You can, Page 34 June 20, 2013 on July 9th, raise your General Fund millage by a quarter mill to capture that placeholder, or you can tell us to develop that placeholder and still maintain a millage-neutral position, but that means that 15 million is going to come out of either your reserves or some other program or service. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: We can't do that. MR. OCHS: So those are your two options. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I mean, that is not an option. We are not capable of doing that. What you just -- that latter point you just made, we can't. So the only option, then, is to adopt a maximum including that 25. Is that what you're proposing? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Unless someone can make an argument -- someone from the Conservation Collier group can make an argument that they could survive off something less than a quarter mill, that would be a reasonable proposal to proceed with until we get to the final decision point. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Fiala, do you want to increase the millage? COMMISSIONER FIALA: No, you know -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You want the maximum? COMMISSIONER FIALA: No, I don't think anybody wants to increase the millage. We've been pretty steady about that. I'm trying to think of creative ways that we can make sure that we can handle our conservation needs now and not prolong them, because the opportunities might be lost. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Jeff, how many votes is that going to take at the budget -- the final adoption to increase the millage a quarter of a mill; do you recall? MR. KLATZKOW: I believe it's supermajority. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Supermajority. So I need to convince one more person to vote no on this? Page 35 June 20, 2013 MR. KLATZKOW: Well, depending upon where you set your maximum millage on July 9th. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Are we talking about the same thing? CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Does the maximum millage need a supermaj ority? MR. KLATZKOW: No. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I just want to make sure. MR. KLATZKOW: You're going to be setting your maximum millage at your -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: On July 9th. MR. KLATZKOW: On July 9th. What I think Commissioner Henning is getting at, when you set your actual millage, if you're going to -- if you want to increase it at that time, I believe it's supermajority. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Can you verify that? I think it's important that we know that. MR. KLATZKOW: Yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. COMMISSIONER HENNING: You know, the way to do this is not sneaking it in, but go back to the voters. That only takes a simple majority to put it on a ballot. MR. KLATZKOW: That's 2014, unless you want to go through the costs of mail balloting. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. And you're talking about properties, if I recall, that are wet. Wet wetlands. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So undevelopable regardless. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah. And, you know, what's the danger of them being built on? So -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Nance? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes. Commissioner Henning, I would support what you're saying, and Page 36 June 20, 2013 I will not support raising the millage rate at this time. Just let me let it be said; however, I would like the board to consider taking the time period between now and the obligated time we would have in 2014 if we were to take this back in the voters to have a wider discussion on this topic, because I think it really needs a lot of advanced discussion. I have a lot of problems with it. I will not endorse continuing it in its current form. I don't think it's appropriate. So I think if we could have a wider discussion -- I actually believe the public might support it if we took it back to them under different circumstances. I don't think the public -- it's unlikely, in my view, for my constituents to support it in its present form to continue. But I think if it's more focused and we engage some of the particular issues, I think they might. So I would support having further discussion on it; perhaps bringing it back in the 2014 election cycle, if there are others that would support that. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Leo, Mark, any comments? MR. OCHS: No, ma'am. Just, again, for full disclosure, when we talked a little while ago about our ability to continue the ongoing maintenance, embedding that into our park staff, we're able to do that because a portion of the quarter mill under the original ordinance was carved out for perpetual maintenance. So we have that money in a fund that's dedicated to perpetual maintenance. I can't sit here and tell you with certainty that there's enough money in there right now to allow the interest earned annually to fund the total maintenance on all of the lands that have been acquired. Finance committee is looking at some alternatives for that as well. So there is money set aside for maintenance. It's probably $30 million or so. COMMISSIONER NANCE: It's $33 million. MR. OCHS: $33 million. COMMISSIONER NANCE: The program is not going to Page 37 June 20, 2013 deteriorate or come to disaster in the interim. It's just simply not. There's $33 million in maintenance monies in reserve that fund it in an ongoing fashion. But I think it's deserving of, actually, a great deal of discussion to discuss not only how we're going to do that but, if we're going to go forward, how we would. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So, basically, what -- MR. OCHS: And theoretically, Commissioner -- I'm sorry for interrupting. To Commissioner Nance's point -- and this may provide a third way is if the board, after some discussion, decides that they want to pare down these land management plans or do less in these conservation lands that have already been acquired then, perhaps, with an ordinance change or some other policy change, some of the set-aside for the maintenance, a portion of that might be rededicated to, you know, an opportunity buy for land acquisition somewhere down the road without having to increase millage. But, again, it's very premature to -- you know, without thorough analysis to make that kind of recommendation at this point. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So let me suggest that we put this on a future workshop schedule. MR. OCHS: I already made the note, yes, for the fall meeting. That's exactly -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You are so ahead of me. We were ahead of you before, but now you're ahead of us. Thank you. One thing that I'd like to address at that time -- and this directly affects our budgeting -- is the mitigation banking. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: We purchased these conservation lands with the intent of being able to build our own mitigation bank so we wouldn't have to go to market, and it has literally been years, and these banks have not yet been created. So I think what we need is an update of where we are in the creation of these mitigation banks and how having those credits will Page 38 June 20, 2013 affect our budget by reducing our need to go out and buy those credits on the open market for future, for example, road projects. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. We had a recent discussion on that with regard to Pepper Ranch, and the news was all bad because there was some changes in the federal laws that are working against -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: But only with respect to certain credits, and there will be different type of mitigation credits. So we need a full analysis, we need to see what we lost that we paid for, we need to see what we can get, and we need a definitive timetable -- MR. OCHS: Sure. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: -- to get those banks established so we can start reducing what we're paying to outside banks for various capital projects. Commissioner Nance? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes. I don't want to belabor this topic a great deal more, because I think having a workshop is a great idea. But some of the things that I have heard suggested to me by people is once we have assets in Conservation Collier, if we could get together with the regulatory agencies and create a mitigation program value within the properties that we acquire, that could, with some creativity and some thinking outside the box, create a mechanism to take this program forward continuously. It would be like -- for example, like an environmental CRA, where we could take the programs, get some mitigation monies, and continue to acquire properties through an ongoing capture of value. And that's one of the things I'd like to talk about in the workshop. But I think there's a lot of ways to do this that we haven't talked about, and I welcome a workshop. Thank you for that suggestion. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And also solicit funding from other governments; like the federal government might have a program to fund us with some sort of grant funding. I don't like the idea of taking Page 39 June 20, 2013 money out of maintenance to buy additional land. I think that's deadly. But I think looking at alternative revenue sources is something that hasn't been considered, and if anything like this is to be ongoing, that should be -- it should be looked at very closely. MR. OCHS: Will do. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I was just going to say the same thing. As far as the mitigation banking goes, if we could get that thing in order and then the money that could be paid into it would then go to buy more land. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Absolutely. That's -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: That's funny that you just -- that's why I turned my light off. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Right. And so there are alternatives. You know, we've got the mitigation banking savings, we've got potential grant funding from the state or federal government. There are many different options that need to be looked at instead of raising the millage. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Can I ask why the mitigation bank didn't go forward? CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's my question, too. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. As we discussed at length at the board meeting the other day, there was a change in the code of federal regulations that essentially the -- my view is that the owners of the private mitigation banks were able to successfully lobby Washington for a change in those CFRs that stripped away most of the value of the mitigation credits that we were applying for by saying that if you already -- a local government already purchased that land for conservation and you approved the management plan that had several elements that would improve the environmental quality of that land, none of that could count towards the credits for a mitigation bank. And we had, excuse the pun, banked on that when we originally Page 40 June 20, 2013 proposed the acquisitions as being able to use that. And that regulation changed, and that's why it's become more difficult to secure those mitigation credits. There are still panther habitat credits and wetland credits through the state, South Florida Water Management District, that are being pursued, but the other wetland credits are not available right now. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: But like, for example, on Pepper, the panther mitigation was the key value there. So, I mean, we've got a lot at stake here, and we need to really capture those dollars. MR. OCHS: And we're still pursuing the PHUs on Caracara Preserve and Pepper Ranch. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. I'd like to suggest we take a 10-minute break, because now we're going to transition into staff, and I think it's an appropriate time. And our wonderful court reporter has made brownies for everybody, and they're low calorie, gluten free, and sugar free, right? Anyway, they're over there. Thank you, again, for bringing those. So we'll resume at 10:35. MR. OCHS: Very good. (A brief recess was had.) MR. OCHS: Madam Chair, you have a live mic. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. We're back in session. And we're going to proceed with a presentation and a discussion by the courts and associated agencies. We'd like to thank you-all for being here. If you could begin by introducing yourselves and stating the agency you represent. If you would like to make a brief presentation, please do so. If you would like to skip a presentation and just ask if there are any questions, you may do that also. Your budgets are all a matter of public record, and everyone has the opportunity to review them. And if you state who you are, then people, I'm sure, if they have any questions, can come and talk to you Page 41 June 20, 2013 directly as well. So would you like to proceed? Ladies first. MS. SMITH: Yes. Thank you, Commissioners. My name's Kathy Smith. I'm the public defender for the 20th Judicial Circuit. You have before you our budget for this year. Obviously, we are heavily funded by the State of Florida. There's a few things that the county are required to pay for as well, which is facilities, IT, and a couple positions with specialty courts. We greatly appreciate the cooperation that we have had with Collier County. And our budget, as you can see, is relatively flat from last year. So if you have any questions. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. Any questions for the public defender? (No response.) CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. MS. SMITH: Thank you. MS. GREIDER: Good morning. My name is Christine Greider. I'm a Circuit Court judge. I serve as the administrative judge for Collier County within the 20th Judicial Circuit. Sitting next to me is our Trial Court Administrator, Chuck Rice, and he'll be happy to address any questions that you may have. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Any questions on the part of the board? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER HENNING: We have a slight increase, and that's correct? MR. RICE: Yes, sir. And from the General Fund transfer. Our budget, overall budget, is requested down 5 percent, but the General Fund transfer is up this year, yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And what I see, that's attributed Page 42 June 20, 2013 to capital funds? MR. RICE: It's contributed -- and my understanding, we, last year, were eligible for a transfer of 177,000 more than what we took. We decided not to take that to assist other agencies make their target date. Also our revenue is down, yet another reason for that transfer being up from the General Fund. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. I see -- MR. ISAACSON: Commissioner, within the family of court funds, there hasn't been an increase in the General Fund transfer since 2009. And we've been trying to hold that General Fund transfer by making a number of adjustments within the court family of funds in order to do that. We just ran out of bullets this year. And I think the court folks have been extraordinary in their attempts to try and work with our office, and specifically Sherry Pryor in the budget office, to work this. It's just we ran out of options. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Mark, are we obligated to provide this funding, or is this discretionary funding on the part of the board? MR. ISAACSON: No. There's an obligation here to fund your court operations. And, again, I can't emphasize the fact that there's been a level of cooperation amongst the court folks that is very nice to see. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commendable. MR. ISAACSON: Yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commendable. Any -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: I'm sorry. What I see on Page 26, and it's the court IT -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Can we go ahead and put that on the overhead? COMMISSIONER HENNING: There's a -- your carryforward from 2013 is $362,000. What you're proposing is $627,000. MR. ISAACSON: Commissioner, the court IT fund is a Page 43 June 20, 2013 stand-alone fund. That's really governed by statute. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. This is not part of-- MR. ISAACSON: Right. The primary -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. MR. ISAACSON: -- contribution to the General Fund is the Fund 681, the court operations, which is a different subset. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Any further questions? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Nope. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thank you. MR. RICE: I'd also like to take a moment to thank Leo and his staff and Sherry from budget office for being very responsive and helpful to us also, and thank you for the Commission's support over the years also. MR. RUSSELL: Steve Russell, State Attorney for the 20th Circuit. My -- our funding is similar to the public defender's; we're primarily a state-based agency with the areas that Ms. Smith mentioned. We also have those areas through the county. I'd be glad to take any questions. I, too, would reiterate that we've had a great relationship with the county staff in working through this this year and the prior year, and we appreciate that. So if there are any questions, I'd be glad to take them. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Any questions on behalf of the board? (No response.) CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: There appear to be no questions. We would like to thank you all for the service you provide to the community. And, again, you've presented acceptable budgets, and we appreciate what you're doing. Thank you. MR. RUSSELL: Thank you. Page 44 June 20, 2013 MS. SMITH: Thank you. MR. RICE: Thank you. MS. GREIDER: Thank you. Good morning. MR. OCHS: Madam Chair, that takes us to the Growth Management Division. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Before we get started -- I'd like to ask growth management to come forward. But I would like to say, Leo, you've done an exceptional job over the last few years in changing your staff. You have experienced turnover. You have made decisions about replacing certain staff at the leadership level as well as throughout the organization. And the team that we have in place, which is a very different team than at least I can say when I started, has been exceptional. I mean, they have performed at the highest level. And throughout this recession they have maintained the level of service, they have been consistently cutting costs, and they have maintained, you know, positive morale in the most commendable way. So I'd like to thank you, because, you know, the leadership, whether it's Nick or Len or George, you know, Mike, Steve, everyone has done absolutely fantastic. MR. OCHS: Well, Commissioner, I appreciate that very much, and I just accept that on their behalf. They're the ones that are doing the good work every day. So I'm very honored to work with them. Thanks for that compliment. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Absolutely. And I think the budget that each of these divisions is representing here today is reflective of the effectiveness and efficiency of the new leadership and the new staff. So thank you all. MR. OCHS: Thank you. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Good morning, Commissioners. For the record, Nick Casalanguida, your Growth Management Administrator. I'll introduce our staff. To the far left we have Allison Page 45 June 20, 2013 Kearns, our Finance and Operations Manager; Gene Shue (phonetic), our Finance and Operations Director; on my right, Jamie French, Finance and Operations on the Planning and Regulations side; followed by Ken Kovensky, who's our Manager on that side. I'd like to thank the OMB staff. We couldn't do this without their work, hard work with us, as painful as that is sometimes for Mark, as he smiles as we get started. GMD is made up of 397 and a half full-time employees in 2014. And, perspective, FY 10 we had 474, and going back one more year, 583. So we're not nearly the size we were four or five years ago. Our total approved budget is about $170 million a year; up five million from last year. The positions that we've add were 21 ; 18 BCC approved recently for the development review on the planning and regulations side, two positions for your hearing examiner, one for the MPO. The rest of the workforce is through job bank contract services. Our revenues come primarily from development fees, gas taxes, tourist tax, ad valorem, impact fees, and grants. So it's important to have these two separate folks. They both sit on both sides of me, because these are segregated funds each having their own nuances, how they can be spent. Our management approach in 2010, P&R, has been mirrored now in construction and maintenance with Gene and Allison coming on board in the last year, about 12 months or so. We've centralized finance in both shops. It used to be the directors had their own budget, people that worked for them. Now they work for these folks. And we have our own mini budget hearings coming up for the budget. They actually request funds, and they almost compete for funds, and these folks here provide guidance, and we make decisions together as a team. So having that split does us well, and it provides us good checks and balances. And we've done a very good job of grants compliance. Page 46 June 20, 2013 I think the audits have shown that as well, too. I'll get into planning and regulation first, Commissioners. Your 113 fund, which is the building, is up 14 percent. It would have been more, but you've already approved the 5 percent fee reduction going into next year. So that's reflected in the FY14 budget. In 131, it's up over 35 percent. We'll review those fees next year as we go forward. To give you some perspective from 2010 to 2014, we had a negative burn rate in 2010 of two-and-a-half-million dollars. We were spending two-and-a-half million more than we were taking in; 2.2 million in debt in the building, the garage that we had; and 1.2 million in the 131 that we owed parks and rec. In this FY14 budget, all of that is paid off. So all of our debt service -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's great. MR. CASALANGUIDA: -- for both of those funds are done, and that includes that 5 percent fee reduction. So that is an agency-wide teamwork approach. Everybody has worked hard to make that happen. Some key points in the planning and regulations side. We are fully funded for vehicle replacements, as Dan Croft has recommended from fleet, as it is an enterprise fund. Our business plan remains the same, and this is important, because it's working out. We have our core FTEs, and then we supplement 10 percent with job bankers, and then we supplement that with on-call contracts. This year we'll probably put an on-call contract for 131, because that's what's increasing the most. And if a large project comes in, we'll use those services to cover that. One of the increases we have this year in the fund is FEMA 235. It's a General Fund increase that's in your planning and regulations side. We have submitted four more basins this year to FEMA, so we expect those -- as they get approved, we're going to have that same Page 47 June 20, 2013 influx of people coming forward asking for help, and the board in the past has provided that service to them. We also have to update our local mitigation strategy and floodplain management plan ordinance. We're going to outsource that. That will be done in compliance with EMS's local mitigation strategy. I'd also like to put on the record that code, while it's funded by General Fund -- and this is important for our viewers -- it does not take the fees that it collects and goes back into their budget. So they don't generate fees and grow their budget. We get a flat General Fund, and we've been cutting our General Fund submittal -- transfer to code every year leading up to this year. So it's been smaller. So it's not going after that. Now, our new code director, Jeff Wright, will start in a couple weeks. What I've asked him to do is look at the difference in service levels between before and after when we had anonymous complaints to see if we can reallocate some of the services that we provide. On the challenges in P&R, it's going to be chasing the curve. As Leo and I talked about -- you know, he asked me a couple years ago, how you manage the downturn is just as important as how you manage the upturn, because right now I think our ability to track, train, and retain competent help is going to be the biggest challenge to maintaining our service levels, because we are an enterprise fund. We will review the 131 fund going forward but, you know, there's a couple slides -- and I believe you were given a package. There were three slides that just show you what kind of increases we have in activity year over year. MR. OCHS: Nick, hold on. Here comes the package. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Okay. COMMISSIONER FIALA: We're getting it so late, we can't study it. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Not a lot really to study; I heard Page 48 June 20, 2013 Commissioner Fiala. It's just going to show you some trends, and that way you can kind of follow along with our thought process. There are just really three slides, and they just show you trend in one- and two-family home construction. We did about 1,300 units in FY13. We expect about 2,000 in FY14, so that's a pretty big increase. The second slide is all land development reviews, and you can see the orange line as it trends up at the end of March. What's happening is the complexity; the plats are coming online, as well as the reviews coming online. And then the projected review and inspection activity forecasted out to 2014. Now, here's the hard part when you're an enterprise fund and you're doing a budget that's not iterative every couple months. We expect -- with homes going to 2,000 units, there's probably about 15 developments that are plats right now that are going to be putting model homes in the ground, and they're all going to hit about the same time. So it's going to be hard for us to see what that absorption rate is until they're all there. And our goal is to manage that fee with the level of service and the quality of service we put out, so that's going to have to be an iterative process in '14 with the industry. So that's pretty much a wrap of your planning and regulations side of the budget; now I'll go on to construction and maintenance. We are in our fifth year of negative-to-flat budgets in a sense. Mark and I meet, and we talked about midyear cuts to give you a feel. Since 2010, we've given back $30 million to the General Fund between midyear cuts out of operating and capital. What we do is we complete a project, there's usually money left over in some contingencies. We'll do a sweep, and then usually it's reallocated to another project, but what we've been doing midyear is working with OMB and giving that back to the General Fund where it's General Fund. Page 49 June 20, 2013 We completed our high-level asset review in 2012. We did a report card which detailed all of our major categories. In the road resurfacing, we've got 2,700 lane miles of pavement, about 1,100 center-line miles. This year, 725 were rated. I expect some upside to come forward the next six months. I think we're going to find we're doing -- in better shape with our road resurfacing than we thought. We reinstated our limerock road conversion program. As a matter of fact, you have an item next budget meeting, what the board approved; we're going to give you the four or five roads that we're doing. On one issue, it's one of the slides in the back of the book you have, it talks about our landscaping. We have expanded requests from the General Fund of about 363,000. We're experiencing 25 to 35 percent increases in year-over-year costs. And when you look at that slide -- I'll cover it now and I'll cover it later -- it is really reflective. And one of the numbers that pops out -- Leo, you want to put that on the viewer. It's that green slide right there. At the very back of your book, our landscape and maintenance numbers per center line mile back in '04 averaged about 35,000, and it climbed as high as 60,000. Recently, in the past couple years, it's been about 27-and-a-half to 28, 29, fluctuating. FY13 we saw about 2, 3 -- about 5 percent jump. This year the two contracts we put up had jumped 30 percent. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Nick, I have a question on that. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Sure. COMMISSIONER NANCE: It shows the number of miles. Does that include mow-only miles? MR. CASALANGUIDA: No, sir. These are the landscape contract median prices. The mow-only miles -- our contract for mow-only is going to go back out this October, so I don't know what that hits until that goes back out again. Page 50 June 20, 2013 COMMISSIONER NANCE: Okay. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Fiala? COMMISSIONER NANCE: So this is fully landscaped median miles. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Does this also include shoulders of the -- MR. CASALANGUIDA: It includes the street trees if there are, but that doesn't include shoulders. COMMISSIONER NANCE: But the county right-of-way on the side of the road, if landscaped, is included? MR. CASALANGUIDA: Yes, then that's in that price. COMMISSIONER NANCE: But that's widely varying as to how much maintenance there is in any particular delineated mile? MR. CASALANGUIDA: Yes, sir. That's why it's an average of all. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: If I may, we've got Commissioner Fiala and Commissioner Henning who would like to address this issue. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Sure. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I do want to let the board know that we do have the discussion about landscaping scheduled for a future workshop and to remember that whatever we're doing with respect to the budget, you know, is subject to modification. The budget is a living document. So after that workshop, after we've analyzed what's going on with respect to this issue, we can make changes to our budget accordingly. I'm not sure who was first, Commissioner Henning or Commissioner Fiala. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner Fiala. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Fiala. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. Since we started farming out Page 51 June 20, 2013 a lot of our maintenance, and now -- because we -- you know, we felt that it would be less expensive to do that, but now that they're charging so much more, would it be something that we would want to consider to take a look at in-house again? We've found that we've had some problems with the farming out of the maintenance as well, from what I've been told. And so maybe that would be something that we could analyze and see if we should bring it back in-house. The second thing is, it's a surprise because, as we've ripped out all the grasses and put in those pricker bushes instead, which are unsightly -- you'd think that with going backwards like that, they would be less to maintain instead of more. So, I mean, you can see the beauty of U.S. 41 and Davis Boulevard. One is very unattractive, and one looks beautiful. MR. CASALANGUIDA: I think going back in-house is always a little bit scary because you want to see a trend. Where's our breakeven point? It doesn't get there until it almost doubles. The problem we have with contract labor versus us, you know, we treat our employees well. They work eight-hour days. Some of these folks and these contract people that come up, they'll work 10-, 12-hour days. And I don't know what they pay their people, and it's -- you know, we don't review that. But I can tell you, for us to be -- to do what we do in the county manager's organization to bring them in, the cost would be much higher. It would take a while before it was worth our while to do it. In terms of quality of the landscape, we definitely had an execution problem at the end of last year, and it was vendor related. I think we gave back a little General Fund. And Mark and I talked about that, because we put in requests for the vendors, and our contracts didn't have the penalties that we wanted in. So by the time we got to the end of fiscal year, while the requests went in two to three months before the fiscal year ended, a lot of them didn't deliver. They Page 52 June 20, 2013 just put us off. Now, that was the sign of the time. They're now starting to work for the private side. So this year we started three months earlier. You're seeing a lot of activity now; Pam and Liz are out there all the time, every day, and we're going through each segment. So we won't have that same problem this year. But costs are definitely going up. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER HENNING: The workshop we're going to have on landscaping, isn't that in the shopping centers, or are we covering the medians? CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: We're covering everything. MR. OCHS: We're going to try to cover it all, sir. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Everything. The intent was to address all the different issues related to landscaping, the funding, the standards. It seemed to make sense to make it all-encompassing rather than isolated to a single subject, since the issues have been raised over time at various meetings. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. Well, I guess that will be a perfect time to raise some of those, because I have different feelings than others. But I would like to see fruit trees a requirement in the Land Development Code in commercial so when I go to the grocery store, I can just pick an avocado. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That is -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: Rather than go buy it. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I just want you to know that is such a self-serving agenda, Commissioner Henning. I'm serious. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So I can make some guacamole and bring it in. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. Page 53 June 20, 2013 MR. CASALANGUIDA: Fruit trees, okay. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Nick, stay focused. Do not be distracted by Commissioner Henning. Just stay on target. COMMISSIONER NANCE: We've got an herb lobby. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Fresh orange juice everywhere. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. MR. CASALANGUIDA: All right. Bridges. We'll go to something that's a little dry. We've got overall a hundred bridges, depending on what you'd call a bridge or a culvert in Collier County. They're inspected by FDOT every two years. I've got one bridge report that was done as a follow-up. We took the top 25 bridges that FDOT had a concern, we took that down to a detailed study. We're doing 20 more coming up this fiscal year. Every bridge in Collier County that had any concerns has either been repaired, replaced, or is programmed and funded. So let me put that on the record. I'm very comfortable that the bridge program is covered in the budget. Jump onto page Capital 20. In your budget book, Page Capital 20 goes down, really talks about where all the funding goes. And there's a couple maps that I provided you, because I will tell you, if you just go through your budget book and look at these numbers, you won't know really where they are. There is your major project tab -- I don't know if it's a tab in there, but it should be your first map that opens up, and it kind of corresponds to this in the bridge program as well. Major projects that we have going into next year: U.S. 41, 951, and CR951 from Golden Gate to Green, as well as some of the bridges that are being replaced. Now, it's for your information. You can kind of scan when you go through, and it's more for you to follow up if you have questions later. But your Capital 20 breaks down all of those projects. Page 54 June 20, 2013 And I'm getting a wave from the county manager to keep this thing moving, so I will. Your major intersection enhancements are also on your Page 20 capital, and you've got a map in there as well, too, so feel free to ask questions if you're looking at it. Countywide stormwater systems. We've been getting a little more money from OMB. I think our biggest challenge is the big binder that's in front of Jean on the bottom. We did a study of Golden Gate city in 2008, and the biggest challenge we had is actually implementing that. We are committed to LASIP by permit through 2015. Golden Gate City is 15 to $18 million in present-day value cost to fix that. Fifty year old corrugated steel pipe drainage system that's starting to rot underneath the road. Our issue is some of those roads require resurfacing now. So do I resurface a road that I'm going to rip up to replace the drainage? The answer's no. So we're accelerating the Fund 60077 to be able to be flexible to do both of those, and that's in that page there as well, too, on Capital 21. There's $2.8 million in there. So we have 500,000 budgeted, but I think halfway through we'll take a look at that. I want to talk a little bit about asset management and the three-step approach we took. We did a report card; started in 2011, we completed in 2012. We basically took everything we've had and focusing on the critical projects first and then said let's break it down. Bridges was one, stormwater systems was another. There's a stormwater book that's over there that's got every single surface water asset we have with a grading in it. And then that -- we developed our five-year program. So, again, I'll say the same thing as surface water. If we're budgeted the way we are right now, every critical asset in the stormwater is covered in the next five years except for Golden Gate Page 55 June 20, 2013 City, and that's a transition from LASIP as we wrap up in 2015 going forward. We have one project manager that's assigned to that, Joe Delate, and that's going to be his focus, and I told him for the next five or 10 years, and he understands that. The third level that we have that we don't have the detail for -- and county manager's aware of this -- is things like signs, swales, lighting, and minor components. I think as we develop our asset management program, that will feed into there, and it's a bit bulky because, you can imagine, Collier County has a significant amount of signs and swales that -- but they're not health, safety, welfare related. Any ones that are we're taking care of. Challenges in construction and maintenance, inflating landscape costs, as I've told you. My fear is that we put out projects to bid, you will see that inflation start to develop in construction projects as well, too. We update our engineers' estimates every six months. And I can tell you, if there are 12 major developments that are getting contractors on there right now, I would expect to see an increase in those areas as well, too. Vehicle replacements in P&R. We're fully funded. To give you a feel, in C&M, 81 were recommended by fleet. We're only doing 14 this year; a bunch more, as the county manager's expanded budget is looking at. The challenge we're going to have is probably midway through when Mark wants to do some midyear budget adjustments, we will try and condense and clean some projects and probably bring to the board a BA to do some more vehicle replacements in midyear. Some of these vehicles are just getting broken down too much and too much downtime. So that's one of the other ones that I don't think we have fully covered on the General Fund side, but County Manager alluded to that as well, too. That's a high-level review. I could have gone into a little more Page 56 June 20, 2013 detail, but I'll leave it to questions for you right now if you'd like. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And also, to remind the board, of course you can visit with Nick and his staff to address any specific details before we finalize, and we can raise those issues during the discussion when we do finalize and approve this budget, if we don't get into the details here now. MR. CASALANGUIDA: And, Commissioner, one more comment, just so you know, we are probably the most diversified division you have. We do 75 percent of all your AIMS contacts that come through our department. Mark Chesney and Ebby Ebersino (phonetic) take care of those, but most of-- whether it's discussions about flooding, traffic, building permits, code enforcement, come through our shop, and I think they do a fantastic job, and I just wanted to recognize them. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Absolutely. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I just want to make two comments. The first is the fact that you have reduced your fees in your enterprise fund and are still maintaining that high level of service and still have had the ability to hire staff to keep that level of service up is commendable because that's, obviously, a win-win, and that's definitely worthy of note. The other thing you mentioned is you've brought in a new code enforcement director, which is great, and we definitely need improvements in what's been going on with code enforcement. There has been a lot of controversy and upset in the community over different code enforcement actions. So I think it's really great. I think your selection of Mr. Wright, who used to work for the County Attorney's Office and is very familiar with county operations, you know, obviously, and law, being an attorney, is an excellent choice. And I just -- going back to what you were saying in terms of, you Page 57 June 20, 2013 know, volume of complaints, I think what we have to remember is we, as a board, have established a policy that if staff identifies an issue, it doesn't go to code enforcement. The board's position is compliance. So you give the community the opportunity to comply, and it's only if there is no compliance and you, as the director, and the county attorney make that determination does it move to code enforcement. So that will, if properly enforced by staff or through staff, I should say, should reduce the volume going to code enforcement. And whatever policies you can come up with, you know, within code enforcement with this new leadership to make it, you know, effective and fair, the better for everybody in the community. You'll have a safer, happier community as a consequence. So I think, you know, overall this budget is very fair, very reasonable, and shows really good management. Any -- oh, I'm sorry. Commissioner Nance. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes, Nick, just one question in code enforcement I'm looking at, and I'm seeing that -- you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but a great deal of your expense under regulation is enterprise funding; isn't that correct? MR. CASALANGUIDA: It is all General Fund funded except for some fees that come in there. It's pretty much almost 95 percent enterprise funded (sic). COMMISSIONER NANCE: So, I mean, that -- MR. CASALANGUIDA: I'm sorry. Not enterprise fund, general funded. COMMISSIONER NANCE: General funded, okay. In code enforcement, under the section there -- I think it's Page 33, I notice that you have charges for services as a program funding source. What sort of charges for services; could you just refresh my memory, because I can't recall what sort of services code enforcement is billing people for. MR. FRENCH: Thank you, Commissioner. That is going to be Page 58 June 20, 2013 on your lien searches for your foreclosed properties. It's going to be for lot mowing of those foreclosed properties, and how code goes back through. We generate that in a revenue category, because we collect from them. There's a cost to the county that we pay that vendor to go forward and mow that lawn or trim the trees or do whatever it is to ensure that the blight is -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: Isn't a good deal of that coming back around full circle from the people that are the offenders, or no? MR. FRENCH: Most of that money is -- in fact, all of that money, for the most part, is paid for by the banks. Diane has done a phenomenal job -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: Agreed. MR. FRENCH: -- working with those folks. And we think that that revenue line will probably start to decrease as those homes become occupied. COMMISSIONER NANCE: All right, sir. Thank you very much. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: It's not really a revenue. It's really a reimbursement of the expenditure made by the county for a noncompliant property owner. MR. FRENCH: Right. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And, for example, in foreclosure. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Grass mowings as well, too. We charge and recoupe those costs as well, too. If we have to cut the grass for somebody, we bill them, and then it's a charge for service that comes back to us. COMMISSIONER NANCE: But that's not $43,000 a mile, right? MR. CASALANGUIDA: No. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Okay. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Just for the benefit of the viewing public, an enterprise fund is basically like a private business. It's Page 59 June 20, 2013 self-funding. You assess fees based on the costs. We don't assess fees greater than costs because we're mandated by law where our fees have to equal our costs. So there's no profit there. But it's basically a fee-driven initiative without any money coming from the General Fund, in other words, property tax. So thank you very much. There don't seem to be any other questions at this time. MR. CASALANGUIDA: We're extremely grateful. I've got a great team to work with. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You do. MR. OCHS: Commissioners, that takes us to your Public Services Division. Mr. Carnell. MR. MILLER: Madam Chairwoman, I do have two registered speakers for public services for Domestic Animal Services. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. MR. CARNELL: Good morning, Chairwoman, members of the board. Steve Carnell. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Steve, can you wait one moment. Just let everyone sit down. MR. CARNELL: Sure. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You've got quite a group here. MR. CARNELL: I brought several my best friends with me. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: It's a party. MR. CARNELL: Good morning. Happy to be before you this morning to talk about the public services division and our FY 14 budget. I'll give you a very high-level overview, and then, obviously, we'll entertain any questions from the board. The good news is that the division budget, our appropriation budget is within your budget guidance for the year. And we -- as a rule across each of the departments, we are maintaining existing service levels at the same or, in a few cases, lower costs. Page 60 June 20, 2013 Just a few highlights for the division in the new year in terms of changes or things that we're either adding or building on to. We are going to be establishing an operations group within my office to preside over the entire division and to support the entire division in terms of planning budget and activity and also looking for opportunities to improve revenue collection or improve our business efficiency and how we deliver services, and we've got several ideas we're already pursuing through that. In addition to that, our alternative transportation department is getting ready to open the transfer station here within the next few weeks in the government center, and in the new year budget we'll be embarking on improvements to the CAT facility at Davis Boulevard and be including a fueling island there and also adding some other improvements to make us more ADA compliant in the long haul. And our department -- I'm sorry. Domestic Animal Services group, as we've just been through, with the help of the board, the adoption of an updated Animal Control Ordinance, so we're going to be implementing that ordinance in the coming year along with standards of care that we'll be bringing back to the board in the fall. Our health department continues to perform at a very effective and admirable way on very limited resources, and Dr. Colfer and her staff do a great job of just managing a lot of different issues they have with funding and mandates and, of course, providing patient care in a highly professional and responsive way. Our HHVS department is really moving forward in a number of areas, and you're going to see some important initiatives coming from that group, a couple of which you've already seen, the victim advocacy organization, coming -- really coming into full bloom in the next year, and I think you're going to be very pleased with what you see from HHVS. Our library continues to operate very effectively, and I'm happy to report that we're -- this budget is allowing us to increase Page 61 June 20, 2013 expenditures for books and related materials considerably. We're going to be going from what was a budget of a little less than half a million dollars to almost $800,000, about a $300,000 increase, and we're really behind in on our book purchases, and we've had to scale them back because of the recession. So this is our first step towards recovery in that area. The library is also pursuing modernization. You're going to see us take the first step in the coming year in beginning to decrease our reliance on bar-coding and instead going to RFID chips for all books and check-out materials. We won't be able to do that all in this one budget year, but we're going to begin that process this year. Our adult summer reading program, which we initiated a year ago, has been extremely successful, well received. We're going to continue that. And more online learning opportunities for adults. Parks and Recreation staff is going to be diligently working to finish constructing and opening two new parks. The Immokalee South Community Center is actually a rebuild of an old structure and replacing it with a real live actual building, and we're looking forward to that. And that is on target to open in January, in your -- we're asking you to fund 10 months of staffing costs in anticipation of that. And then we also have the Eagle Lakes community center, which will be going out to bid for construction this summer and we expect to come online in the middle of next summer. And we have three months of funding -- staffing funding for that site. Our university extension group continues to work very actively across the county in reaching out and leveraging resources. Mr. Fleuch's done an excellent job of working with a number of resources in the community. We have a challenge, in my view, with Bryan's department in that Bryan wears two hats. He's the director, and he also is your sea grant extension agent. And I'm not sure that's really the best practice in the long term to try to have the director do both of those things. Page 62 June 20, 2013 So we're looking at alternative funding outside of the Board of County Commissioners. We are putting in an application through the Restore Act program to see if we can get some assistance to fund sea grant. Mr. Fleuch will still be involved in sea grant. He's very well received in the community, I think, as you-all know, so we want to keep Brian's face in the middle of it. But we will be trying to get him some help in terms of making sure we can keep sea grant growing and effective. So, in short, that's a quick flyover of where we are. I didn't mean to miss our museum staff. I think you know that they're going to be working very diligently this year to try to develop new revenue streams for the museum system, and we have four or five in particular that we're already pursuing, one of which is going to be taking one of the buses from the CAT system and, essentially, reconfiguring it and using it for tours out at our remote locations. And we do think that over time that's going to generate some revenue and some very goodwill in our community. So with that, we'll entertain any questions from the board. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER HENNING: What's the purpose of the extra person -- FTE for the museum? MR. CARNELL: The purpose is to support maintenance of all five facilities in a more effective manner and also to undergird and support the revenue expansion activity. Let me start with that second point first. One of the activities under revenue enhancement is going to be looking to rent out facilities, particularly the Naples Depot after hours, and we need a person who can help us with setup and takedown. We also anticipate some additional maintenance activity through increased use of the facilities. And the other thing is, we're really just in, I think, a little more cost-effective way doing what we're already doing. Right now we're Page 63 June 20, 2013 spending about $30,000 a year in operating funds to hire temporary staff to do maintenance. And so while we're asking for $50,000, it's really a net increase of$20,000, because we're lowering the operating expense side of the budget by $30,000. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Can you show that in the budget book where you're lowering that? MR. CARNELL: Yeah. I can show you -- yeah, I can show you in the line items, in the detail, yes. Yeah, there's a $30,000 reduction against that $50,000 increase. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Can you show also the revenue anticipated for these after-hours events versus this new hire? And also, please take a look at potentially, instead of hiring this person to do after-hours events to raise money, look at maybe a marketing person to raise money to be less dependent upon the tourist development tax, as requested by the Board of Commissioners just recently. MR. CARNELL: Well, of course, that is what we're intending to do. That's the purpose of the after-hour activity, to be less dependent on TDC revenue. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah, but is it compared to having a marketing person to raise monies to be less dependent on tourist tax? MR. CARNELL: Well, what we're -- it's a great question. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So just think about that and -- MR. CARNELL: Okay. COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- get back to -- actually, that's what I want. I'm not saying that that's what the others want. But I find that fundraising through marketing is more profitable maybe. I don't know. Once you do the analysis, maybe I'm wrong. MR. CARNELL: Well, let me just briefly address that, and it's a great point. We're taking the approach of taking our existing staff now and Page 64 June 20, 2013 building on them and using our existing structures and trying to leverage them as best we can and see what kind of results we get in FY14. We have thought very much along the lines of what you're talking about, Commissioner Henning, that if that does not create a revenue stream that is desirable either in the short or long term -- and it may take a few years to build all of these revenue streams the way we want them built, but the next approach might be to go -- I'll use the word "foundational," which may be, I think, what you're talking about COMMISSIONER HENNING: Correct. MR. CARNELL: -- with some type of either marketer or fundraiser. Mr. Jamro does have a marketer under contract, an outsource marketer who's already been helping us raise the profile of the museum. And so for the moment we're approaching these other -- we're taking these other avenues first, but that would probably be the next place to go if we wanted to try to continue to build museum revenue is looking at the foundational approach instead of trying to develop more long-term fundraising and donors into the system. COMMISSIONER HENNING: All I'm asking for is a business model based upon what you're trying to create. MR. CARNELL: Sure. And we can share more detail with you over time, absolutely. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah. And it should be realistic, projectionary. MR. CARNELL: Okay. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. MR. CARNELL: Understood. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Fiala? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes, two questions. Number one, Page 65 June 20, 2013 I'm thrilled that you're going to be buying more books for the library; that's great, because we really needed to do some catch-up there, and probably a whole heck of a lot more than this will afford us, but at least we can amortize it over a few years and be able to do that. The second thing is, I wanted to know, will the libraries be open any longer than they are now, you know, adding one day a week to some of them that are only open three days a week now, or is that something that has to be put off again? MS. MATTHES: We're getting -- this is Marilyn Matthes, Library Director. We're getting no new people. We don't really have the people to extend hours any longer, I'm sorry. COMMISSIONER FIALA: No, that's -- I was just asking. I know that -- MS. MATTHES: But staff is talking about a plan to increase our hours gradually, and what we should increase first and second and so on. And, actually, I talked about that issue with the Library Advisory Board yesterday. And so we're starting to make those plans for the good times to come back. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, that's wonderful. I know it was very disappointing to the community at large when we had to close -- of course, everybody understood, with our financial situation. And the last question is about the museum. I've long held that we should be open one day on the weekend, whether it's Saturdays and, you know, close on another day, the slowest day of the week -- I don't know what it would be, Monday or Tuesday or something like that -- and instead be open on a Saturday so that more of the community, the kids out of school and so forth, would be able to go to the museums. I'm just wondering if that's -- if that's something that's in the plans. Not any extra money, just change the days. MR. JAMRO: Ron Jamro, your Museum Director. Three of the five museums are open on Saturdays, one of which is Naples Depot, which is the most visited. Page 66 June 20, 2013 Saturday traffic at the main museum amount to about eight to 10 people, so we just made the business decision that that wasn't a wise way to put our resources to work, especially now. So there's no plan to expand that beyond the three museums. And that covers Naples, Everglades City, and Marco Island. So those are open Saturdays, and those are the three main centers. I think we have all we can provide there at the moment. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. I didn't even -- I knew Marco was open, but I didn't realize anybody else was. And so -- well, that's interesting. Thank you very much. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Nance? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes. I would like to echo Commissioner Henning's concern with the adding an additional FTE for the museum. That having been said, I am a great, great museum supporter. But I think we really need to think about doing that. I would like to see a lot more cooperative effort between facilities, for example, and the county and the museums, and I also encourage Mr. Wert and his TDC marketing to do a better job, including the museum, so that we can raise the profile on museums and enable you to capitalize on fundraising capabilities in this county, which are extraordinary. I think you've witnessed private entities that have just done an incredible job on raising funds, and I think that's an untapped resource for you. I would like to see some additional thought put into those sorts of things. As far as the libraries are concerned, I'm very concerned about my district. The library hours in the Estates branch library, for example, are comparable to others, but they are open when all of my constituents are at work and in school. They have absolutely no time to visit the library because that's when their time is already committed. So I would love if somebody could come up with some flex hours out there in the blue color portion of the county and realize that some of our students do need to go there in the evenings and use some Page 67 June 20, 2013 of the facilities and the technology that we have there that they might not have at their homes. Additionally, I would like to say that Mr. Fleuch at the county extension service is going to be a great asset to us. I think the University of Florida is something that we really need to capitalize on, build on our relationship there. I really look forward to working with him. And that's about all my comments. Well, actually, I have another comment. I would like to commend parks and recreation for working through the staffing and the FTEs on their transition away from marina operations to operating the new Eagle Lakes Community Center and the Immokalee South Park. I think if you'll notice, in total, you're only adding actually one FTE in that transition. And that's wonderful, because what we did was you privatized the marinas; am I right? MR. WILLIAMS: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER NANCE: So what you did is you took all that revenue and all that expense, which was basically a wash, but that activity made no contribution against six employees. You're now taking those six employees, you're able to staff Eagle Lakes and the new Immokalee South Park community transitioning those employees that were there. I think you should be commended for that. That's fantastic. That's what I'm looking for. I love that. I just think that's one of the most uplifting things I saw in this whole binder. And I thank you, sir, for getting that done. That's great. MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Well, we have Commissioner Coyle who would like to ask you a few questions. COMMISSIONER COYLE: As you probably know, we have received several messages recently about the Department of Animal Page 68 June 20, 2013 Services and Sunday hours. The arguments I've read seem reasonable. And I know that you have been looking at that. Can you provide us an assessment of the viability of having Sunday hours so we can increase the number of adoptions? Is it something you can do soon or never? MS. TOWNSEND: Amanda Townsend, your Director of Animal Services. We'd love to be open seven days a week to the public. We think that it's appropriate to be able to be open on Sunday for working families to be able to reclaim the lost pets and adopt new ones. We don't see the efficacy of closing another day of the week because we're going to limit service in some way that way, so we'd really like to be open seven days a week. And it's something that we could do as soon as the funding was in place by adding some staff. We have a complete staffing plan developed behind the -- you know, the request that you're going to hear from the public to have us open seven days. So it would be a matter of having the funding in place and hiring the staff CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, I think that can be accomplished; however, if you don't feel that it could be accomplished by closing one day during the week, I would recommend that we take the department and -- because it is an enforcement action, really, and put it under code enforcement. Of course, that's the county manager; however, we have the ability to cut the administration overhead and actually save money and stay -- open up seven days a week. That's two FTE positions that could be cut. You know, I -- I think it's very, very questionable about needing to provide a service seven days a week, okay. So if you really feel that way, consolidate your departments and save some further money. Page 69 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Leo? MR. OCHS: Well, obviously, that is not the staff recommendation, and that's not the recommendation you have in your budget. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I know it isn't. MR. OCHS: I understand. COMMISSIONER HENNING: But I'm not going to go there. I think it's -- you know, this is the same department that came back and said, we're going to have to kill a lot animals in one budget if we don't get more money. Now the same thing is happening; they want to increase service. And I'm just saying, well, we didn't provide extra money then, and the utilization, as far as I'm concerned, hasn't gone up, so I'm just providing another way to get to the same place, if you-all want to go there. MR. OCHS: Sure. I just, again, want to reiterate that what you're receiving is either public request or requests, perhaps, from your advisory board representatives, but the staff is not recommending in this budget that you go to Sunday service. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah. I don't think it's needed, personally. And if it is needed, do it through another day. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I just want to get a feeling of the board. Do you believe that seven-day service is required? COMMISSIONER NANCE: No, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Do you? COMMISSIONER FIALA: No. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Coyle, you do? COMMISSIONER COYLE: I think seven-day service would be good if it can be shown that you increase the adoption rate. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Right. COMMISSIONER COYLE: And I believe that you have a staff there taking care of the animals and cleaning on Sunday. I don't see the real need to have a big staff increase in order to do that. I think Page 70 June 20, 2013 there are ways it can be done economically, and there might be ways to increase fees a little bit to support that process. So if you make an argument that people are working and don't have time to get to the libraries at the times they're open, you can make the same argument that says that people who are looking for finding a lost dog or getting a dog for their family are most likely to be doing it on the weekends than on the weekdays. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Like, on a Sunday afternoon? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes, that's right. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: As opposed to Monday morning? COMMISSIONER COYLE: So I think the request is logical, and I think that if we put our minds to it, we could do it without increasing the budget. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So I think the recommendation seems to be -- I mean, if it can be done without a cost, it should be considered. But if it can't be done without a cost, it doesn't seem to be supported. Commissioner Nance? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes. Commissioner Coyle, to your statement, I agree with you 100 percent. I believe we need to have things open at the appropriate time. And the chair asked me if I supported seven days, and I really don't think seven days is necessary, but I'd certainly support -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Changing hours? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Moving it to Sunday if that's important. You know, when I mentioned the libraries, the reason I mentioned the libraries is the libraries in my district are not open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday or after hours, and that's a huge difference between being opening seven days, you know. So I do support them being open at the appropriate time. And if they can do that and raise adoptions, I certainly support it. But I'm unclear that open -- being open seven days is going to raise adoptions. Page 71 June 20, 2013 It might be more convenient and more expensive. But, you know, we're really at a point in this budget where we have to do what's necessary and not necessarily what's nice, and there's a difference. And I'm not trying to be hard about it, but, you know -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Leo, if I may summarize, I think what -- if you could show the board how this would necessarily increase adoptions and, secondly, give the board options how this can be done without affecting cost, it might be considered, but those would be the constraints, realistically. I mean, there has to be a benefit to doing it, and it, obviously, has to be financially feasible. MR. OCHS: Understood. That's exactly what we'll do. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. And bring that back. I'd like to make a couple of comments before we go to the public speakers. The first is, over this last year there has been dramatic change in your division, Steve. First, as you pointed out, the animal services ordinance, which is going to have an effect on cost and efficiency, was finally settled this year after debate over many years, so that's extremely positive. And it's a work in progress. We hope to do more. It's going to change again and, hopefully, the next change will be better. And, you know, inch by inch, everything is a cinch. With respect to grants with, you know, HHVS, I mean, you know, that division, wow. I mean, unbelievable. And if we're going to see savings there, it's without a doubt attributable to what Kim and her new staff has done. I mean, that -- between, you know, the VAO program that we've established -- and the first grant application is coming through for our approval at the next board meeting. The administration of the housing, the whole affordable housing fiasco that we suffered in earlier years that you have now cleaned up, I mean, tremendous. I think you're going to see your costs progressively go down, and hopefully bringing in an outside consultant, one of the big four firms, Page 72 June 20, 2013 as we discussed, which is now going out to bid, will even result in greater savings. So the trend is absolutely in the right direction. The same thing with CAT. I mean, you're looking at, you know, revamping the routes to make them more efficient and effective. I mean, you've established that short-term ad hoc committee where you're bringing in constituents or users to actually bring out what the purpose of the system is, which is to deliver for the customers, which goes to what Commissioner Nance said, you know, with respect to everybody. We're customer oriented, so we need to find out what the customer wants. If, you know, the customer is not going to come in at eight in the morning, we shouldn't be open at eight in the morning. If the customer wants to come in at eight in the evening, we should be open at eight in the evening, regardless of what it is. With respect to libraries, the one question I had -- and this is an issue raised in the past, and I'm curious, you know, as our funding sources begin to grow, electronic check-in, self-check, self-- you know, self-checking in, self-checking out, or checking out, I should say. Not self-checking in. Self-checking out is something other libraries have done. I think, like, for example, in Palm Beach County they have the electronic checkout. I would like to ask that you consider looking at that, because what you could end up doing as a consequence -- like you say, we don't have funding to have the libraires open for longer hours in certain instances, if we were able to, for example, bring in these electronic -- this electronic equipment, it's possible that we could, in the long run, you know, looking at payback period, of course, have longer hours without hiring more people and keeping the people that we have and just, you know, shifting the pool around. So I'm just adding that as a consideration. And you don't need to answer that, because it's something I'd like you just to explore, because it's not on the table right now. But through your advisory Page 73 June 20, 2013 board, bring back information to us, because that would address, you know, Commissioner Fiala's concerns, which is a concern of the community. MS. MATTHES: Actually, Commissioner, if I could say -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Sure. MS. MATTHES: -- part of the RFP process for the computer chips in books is really the first step to self-checkout units. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Good. That's great. MS. MATTHES: The barcode technology doesn't easily lend itself to security. The computer chips, RFID chips in a book does provide the self-checkout units as well as the security, and that's really part of the whole package that we're looking at, yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's great. So you're already looking ahead to what I'm thinking of, which is fantastic. MS. MATTHES: Definitely. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's super. The last comment I want to make is with respect to parks. TDC brought in a number of new employees whose focus is the sports marketing. As you know, I am sports obsessed. MR. WILLIAMS: That's great. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And as you know, I love the parks. So I think it's very important that we look at the synergy between Jack Wert's sports marketing division and our park system this year to improve the utilization of our parks to generate more revenues which, in turn, will be an economic development driver with respect to the tourism industry. I mean, there's a natural synergy, and I have been working on that and looking at that, and I'd like to sit down with you because, like I said, I don't see -- I don't believe we will see the revenue stream this year, so I'm not addressing it in the context of this budget. But this coming year I see as the working year, which will be the driver for revenue growth and correspondent economic development Page 74 June 20, 2013 in other arenas. So it's really great that we have hired those people, because it will directly benefit you in parks. MR. WILLIAMS: Absolutely. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Henning and Commissioner Fiala, and then I'd like to go to the public speakers. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thank you. I do want to remind you, a few years ago we had a discussion on the dais about the utilization of the parks and these outside professionals and balancing that for our residents who, through building their house, paid an impact fee -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- parks and rec, who pays their property taxes to augment that service. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And one of the things that's very interesting in the discussions I've had with the community is that the community actually wants these outsiders to come in because they want to compete against them. MR. WILLIAMS: Yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So they actually -- you know, like the Little League and the pro guys. I mean, now, as I mentioned at the last meeting, we have our very first sports franchise here in Collier County, which is Adrenaline, the soccer team. So, you know, we have been inviting teams in from other counties to play against our team, and that's where you've got, you know, the community and the outsiders both being happy, because it's a win-win. And you're absolutely right, we do balance that against interests of the local community to have accessibility, and all of that is being looked at in -- with respect to the inventory of what we have out there. So you're absolutely right, Commissioner Henning, and it's a Page 75 June 20, 2013 very important consideration that we can't lose sight of. MR. WILLIAMS: Commissioner Henning -- Hiller, just one other point to make regarding Commissioner -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You can call me Commissioner Henning anytime. MR. WILLIAMS: Sony about that. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I'll take credit -- every time that they have given him credit today, I'll take it. Not a problem. In the press when they say Commissioner Henning had such a great idea today, you know -- go ahead. MR. WILLIAMS: Okay. Now I can't say it. Commissioners, I just wanted to say just to Commissioner Henning's point, we do allow -- and Commissioner Hiller is correct in how she's describing it. The locals do like the competition that comes in. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Love it. MR. WILLIAMS: We have made available, though, North Collier Regional Park for that walk-on play that -- where people want to come in and find a place to play. So we do encourage that as well. COMMISSIONER HENNING: The only reason I mentioned that, the board has changed, but I'm not sure if the philosophy has changed. MR. WILLIAMS: Yes. That's all. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And we want to be sure. And we'll -- we're going to -- I'm personally going to do everything I can to bring forward that discussion, and hopefully we can have a workshop on it because we have a tremendous asset that we are not optimizing, and that really needs to be done. I mean, the parks are really going to help us tremendously in terms of being a driver, especially for tourism. MR. WILLIAMS: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. I have no idea. Page 76 June 20, 2013 COMMISSIONER NANCE: Commissioner Fiala was next. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Fiala. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And then we really must go to the public speakers, because I don't want them to wait any longer. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I don't think we're going to finish by noon with this section. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I'm confident we will. Go ahead. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I will quickly go and say, as a sidenote to that but another major issue, we've -- I've been going around talking with different businesses, and Rick Medwedeff over at the Marriott suggested that we try and attract actual businesses, not just teams to play one another, but actual sports businesses to the area, whether it be a team or actually -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Actually, I want you to know I'm doing that. I've got a paddle board manufacturer that I would like to recruit to Collier County. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, that's great. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And that's, again, so you and I can do yoga on the paddle board. Together, remember that's what it's all about. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. Well, we'll talk about that. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Just saying. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Anyway, so those are things that I think could be -- could also be pursued, but through our business development department. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER FIALA: But it definitely has to do with sports and a new type of business to be attracted to the area. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: No question. Commissioner Nance? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes. I want to make three brief Page 77 June 20, 2013 comments before we go to the speakers. One is, I hope that the library doesn't take this the wrong way, but I know that in a hundred years, there's only going to be one book in the library, and that's going to be the one that tells you how to use the Kindle, okay. We're going to have real small libraries that are going to have much more resources. So I hope we're moving in the appropriate way to do that, because that's, I'm sure, what's going to happen, and I don't think I'll be here. But the one thing I wanted to say is I wanted to make one more comment about parks relating -- and we've already talked too much about Conservation Collier, but I want to point out to everybody that the program here talks about the transition of four positions from the Conservation Collier land acquisition function to the maintenance function. And I think that's where we need to really take a look at what we're going on, because I see a lot of things in part -- and parks and recreation may be the successor that needs to do that. But I want to make sure that we realize that this asset is an environmental amenity with a recreation overlay and not a recreational amenity with an environmental overlay on it, and I think there's a significant difference. Finally, I just have a question on public services capital on the Capital Page 12, which there's just a line that says a large impact fee deferral is expected during the summer of Fiscal Year '14 in the amount of$231,264. I just want to ask you what that is. Somebody mentioned it, so I'm just following up. Somebody thought it was important enough to bring it out. What is that? MR. ISAACSON: I can't -- sir, I can't tell you what specific development that relates to in terms of a deferral back. I'd have to get the research on it. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Okay. I just wondered, because somebody, obviously, thought it was important enough to mention. I Page 78 June 20, 2013 was just inquiring as to what it was. And that's -- MR. ISAACSON: We'll follow up. COMMISSIONER NANCE: I don't want to delay the public speakers any further. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah. I'd like to close the discussion and move to the public speakers, and then I'd like to move to the next division, please. MR. MILLER: Madam Chairman, I'm -- Chairwoman, I'm not sure they're still here. Marjorie Bloom. She is still here. Thank you. She'll be followed by Stephen Wright. MS. BLOOM: Stephen is not -- MR. MILLER: So this will be our only speaker, then. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Great. Thank you. MS. BLOOM: Hello, Commissioners. My name is Marjorie Bloom, and I serve on Domestic Animal Services Advisory Board, but more than that, I am a volunteer there and have been for about four years. Saturday is usually our busiest day at DAS; lots of adoptions, lots of surrenders, lots of return to owners. We've been hoping to be open on Sundays because a lot of times people will say, well, we want to think about it -- which is a wise thing to do when you're considering an animal, because it is a commitment -- we'll come back tomorrow. And it -- we always have to say, I'm sorry, we're not open on Sundays. People work. Children are in school. Adopting a pet is an animal -- is a family type of thing to do. So we've got willing and able volunteers that really want to come in on Sundays and make that commitment. We also have employees that are there on Sundays. Even though we would need a few more, we just feel it would be really worthwhile and would serve, most of all, the community and the public. So we hope that you'll consider it. Thank you. Page 79 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thanks very much. And the other thing you can do, Leo, is a pilot. You can test market it. Try with some volunteers and maybe reorganizing a few hours and see how it works over a month. MR. OCHS: Sure. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: If it doesn't work, you can stop or continue accordingly, and we can adjust the budget as the case may be if needed, or not. Thank you very much. We really appreciate all the work you've done last year and towards next year. And what can we say? You guys are doing wonderful. Thank you. MR. OCHS: Commissioners, that brings us to your Administrative Services Division, Ms. Price. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Len, you have 15 minutes. MS. PRICE: Commissioners, I need 30 seconds. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: We'd be very grateful. No, you have a very simple budget, and we appreciate, you know, whatever you would like to contribute to us. MS. PRICE: I do not want to sell short the contributions that this division makes to both the community and to keeping the agency running, but I will cut short on my comments. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Just -- I think that you're absolutely right, and I think it is important that people understand the departments in your division and why they're so important. Would you like to list out the departments for the benefit of the viewers? MS. PRICE: Absolutely, the IT Department takes care of not only the computers and the network system, but also the telephones that operate the county for not only the Board of County Commissioners but also most of the constitutional officers. Facilities management provides us with all of our facilities, purchases, and sells land, handles building construction not only for Page 80 June 20, 2013 general office but also for the parks and recreations' department and provides security to the citizens and to the people who work here. Fleet management takes care of all of our equipment and all of our vehicles, as well as fuel distribution. I'm trying to go in alphabet order by the names of the -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You could just look at the people sitting beside you, and that would help you. You could just start -- why don't you just start by -- MS. PRICE: Interim makes sure we have people, that they are trained, that they are taken care of. The purchases department, every purchase that we make goes through our purchasing department. Our risk management department handles not only our insurance, our health insurance, but also the safety program, that has been so successful that our workers compensation rates continue to go down. Our loss -- our claims losses, as well as time off from work, are continuing to go down. We also have an incredible wellness program that is helping us with keeping our employees healthy, keeping our insurance costs as low as we can, and providing tremendous amount of training to our community. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: EMS. MS. PRICE: EMS, Bureau of Emergency Services. We've got EMS. I don't think I need to share what EMS does, but it provides a tremendous service to the community. Emergency management is in a tremendous position right now to take care of all of the emergencies. We've got strong partnerships in place, particularly with the school district, with the Red Cross, to make sure that our -- any emergencies that come up we will be able to handle. The facility that we have is perfect for taking care of all of those needs, and we have two fire districts that take care of small fire areas. Page 81 June 20, 2013 We've got the medical examiner who handles autopsies and the like. Did I miss anybody? Raise your hand if I missed you. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Fire departments. MS. PRICE: That's generally what we do for the community. Two things that I'd like to highlight for you before you start asking us questions. Thanks to our budget department for doing a good job with us. I think we've got a good, strong budget, and we are in a better position to handle some of the assets that we've been concerned about deferrals. We -- I think that anything that's critical we've got covered, and we're going to be in a position to start working towards handling some of the deferred maintenance -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Which is very good. MS. PRICE: -- as we move forward, so I'm very comfortable there. And coming up in the next year is going to be a focus on records and document management that I think you've asked for. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yes. And I think that's very important. We really need to centralize our -- or let me restate that. I think it's very important that we centralize how we handle public records requests, and we have a number of individuals in various divisions working independent of each other whenever we receive a public records request, and because we are all committed to transparency, it's very important that we are responsive in the most efficient and effective manner. So a consolidated separate public records department will go a long way to streamlining what has been a very difficult process because of the tremendous demand that we face. And I believe Leo has been working on that and developing a budget for that. Have you included that restructuring in this budget, or is that something that you were planning on proposing as an amendment Page 82 June 20, 2013 coming forward later after board discussion? What was your anticipation on that? MR. OCHS: Actually, hopefully better than that. We are already -- Len is already hard at work with that restructuring in doing so with existing resources. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Fantastic. MR. OCHS: And we should have that up and running by the time you all get back for your budget hearings in September. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's really great. MR. OCHS: We're very excited about that. I think it's going to bring great value to not only to the public, but great efficiency in the way we manage -- the way we manage our documents and our records internally. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And just for the benefit of the board, I had brought this to Leo's attention -- MR. OCHS: Yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: -- because I was concerned that, you know, our staff was overburdened and not in a position to be optimally responsive, and the outcome was, essentially, the restructuring that Len is going through. And to hear that you're doing it without increasing costs is outstanding, like, really fantastic. I just wanted to make one comment, and that is with respect to what you said about capital, you know, essentially, the capital budget. With the review of buy versus lease and maybe short-term financing, you know, rates being as they are, the ability to acquire the necessary equipment might be faster than the original timetable if an option other than an outright buy is considered, which would really benefit the level of service that we give the public. So in terms of the timetable, as Commissioner Nance was saying, you know, we're looking out so many years to acquire, you know, X, Y or Z. The reality is, by looking at alternative funding mechanisms, which would not overall increase our costs, we would be really doing Page 83 June 20, 2013 the community a service. MS. PRICE: Commissioners, we'll be working with the County Manager's Office on exploring all of those options. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thank you. Len, have you ever figured out what your hourly charge would be for, like, fleet management and maintenance department? In other words, have you ever figured out what your -- what it costs to run that particular operation, how many employees you have, and figure out an hourly rate like you were the private sector? MS. PRICE: Commissioners, fleet maintenance is, in fact, an internal service fund, and we do exactly that. COMMISSIONER HENNING: What is your hourly rate, and -- what would it be? MR. CROFT: Commissioner, Dan Croft, Fleet Management Director. Our hourly rate for next year is $76 an hour for vehicles and heavy equipment and $66 an hour for small equipment. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And, obviously, you know what the private sector hourly rate is? MR. CROFT: Yes. It runs anywhere from $89 an hour to about $120 an hour -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. MR. CROFT: -- depending on the type of equipment, heavy equipment. Our vehicles and heavy equipment we charge the same rate. COMMISSIONER HENNING: You charge your customers the same rate; however, the private sector is around $110 an hour average, I would say. MR. CROFT: I would say similar, yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. And that's how you check to see whether you're competitive against the private sector. Page 84 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's great. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And we're not competitive; we're doing much better. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's really good news. MR. OCHS: That's fully burdened, all in. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's great. That's really good. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And you can say the same thing with building management, whatever Skip does. I forget. MS. PRICE: Yes, sir. We remain extremely competitive with our building maintenance. We've been working on balancing between taking things in-house and external, and each year we look to make sure that we've got the appropriate balance. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Great. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Nance has a few comments. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes. I just have a few tabs of things that I would like to mention under administrative services. I take very seriously the comment that's made under fleet management, and I want to make sure everybody reads what you've provided us with, and it says here -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: What page? COMMISSIONER NANCE: It is Page 12. It's Fleet Management Department Fund 521 . And it says, service level, beginning in 2009 the county began deferring fleet replacements results in a longer service life for fleet inventory. It is expected that an upward trend of unscheduled higher maintenance costs could be incurred over time, and that repairs will become more frequent and complex, increasing the repair time required and parts cost as well as extending the vehicle's out-of-service time. I'm very concerned about asset management plans to handle that. And it's -- of course, it's followed up by a line under facilities management department which says, the budget as provided dictates a Page 85 June 20, 2013 break/fix service level that is limited to emergency repair with minimum preventative maintenance. Routine maintenance is similarly impacted with window, floor, carpet cleaning. So, you know, I would like to really understand where we are with those things. Additionally, going through to make -- I have one comment on EMS, and that is on Page 52 of the packet that deals with EMS. It makes -- it actually provided me with a staggering piece of information I did not know, and I think it's worthy of mentioning, that the operating costs of EMS are only 17 percent of their budget. You know, the bulk of the costs that we have is in personnel services, which is the highly trained staff that we rely on to get that done. I think that's an amazing piece of information. And also included in this is that the transfer from the General Fund for EMS that's requested for this budget is $11,333,000, which is a lot of money, and it just let's you know how important our ongoing discussions are regarding first responder management in the county. And, finally, on Capital Page 7, there's a mention of the 800 megahertz radio system upgrade, which is in this four-year '14 budget, $3 million, but it's -- I think it's the initial payment on a total cost estimate of$14.7 million over five years. And Ms. Price has kindly responded to my concern about this. But I wanted to express my concern about it because, to me, if we're making a commitment on technology that's over five years, all of you know what your smart phone that's five years old is like. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And that's exactly -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: It's a throwaway. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And that is -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: So I'm really worried about -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: But that's what -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: -- our approach to technology -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And that is why -- Page 86 June 20, 2013 COMMISSIONER NANCE: -- on something of this magnitude. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You're 100 percent correct, which is why -- and I raised the issue earlier, and I said it more generally, but obsolescence is a big deal, and for us to make such a material investment in a system which is likely to become obsolete very quickly doesn't make any sense, which is why I was hoping they would go back and look at a lease option which would save us that major capital outlay and, basically, also avoid us sitting with an asset that is outdated in a very short period of time. COMMISSIONER NANCE: You know, I do have a concern. And like I say, I have no expertise in this. Of course, most all of you know more about it than I do, but I am concerned because I just look around, and I know most people don't have any technology that's five years old. Five-year-old desktop computer is a throwaway. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Smart phone, throw away. Well, you and I have slide rules and things of that nature. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: No, but your point is really well made, Commissioner Nance. And that is exactly why we need to have the finance committee sit down with staff with Mark and do the lease-versus-buy analysis, because it does not make sense to acquire assets that rapidly depreciate and outlay all that capital when we have alternatives. So you make an excellent point. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Thank you. MS. PRICE: And we will be looking into that. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Thank you very much. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Coyle? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. I would like to support Commissioner Nance's position. I still have my slide rule, and it has never failed to operate. Never, never. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Never lets you down, right? CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You're one of the few people left Page 87 June 20, 2013 who know how to use it. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Excuse me? I resemble that remark. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. So I'm going to lump you in with him. COMMISSIONER COYLE: When I got my engineering degree, they didn't even have pocket calculators. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Really? COMMISSIONER COYLE: They had not invented the transistor. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I just want you to know you are dating yourself. COMMISSIONER COYLE: That's okay. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I mean, really bad. COMMISSIONER COYLE: That's okay. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Commissioner Coyle -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: Everybody knows I'm old. COMMISSIONER NANCE: -- we will certainly produce these items for the chair at a future meeting. COMMISSIONER COYLE: But I would like to make a serious comment. I don't think there has been a year since -- when I've been on this commission that we have not had a program to upgrade our radio system. Every year it seems to me that the budget includes an upgrade to a communications system. So you're absolutely right. We will -- when this is installed, we will have another budget item concerning the replacement or upgrade of this thing. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Well -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: So it just never ends. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yep, that's life. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Well, it's life with technology. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yep. Page 88 June 20, 2013 COMMISSIONER COYLE: But if you had slide rules, you wouldn't have these problems. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Point well taken. COMMISSIONER COYLE: But in any event -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Well, maybe I should say -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: You're absolutely right, it's a lot better to try to lease these kinds of things than it is to continually upgrade and upgrade every year. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Which even goes to our, you know, transport vehicles for EMS. I mean, those are all options we need to look at. With respect to the megahertz system, it is really imperative that we get that done as quickly as possible. There appears to be a history of the system, as I understand, malfunctioning. It goes to the Minnard case where, I guess, signals didn't come through, and there are concerns. And given that this is all about the public's safety, I don't think that this is a project that can reasonably be delayed in light of the problems we're facing with the existing communications system. And like I said, we don't expect you to come back with an answer to us today. We're just raising the consideration for you to go back, investigate, and bring back solutions to us so we can make the appropriate -- you know, or develop the appropriate final budget. With that, it's noon. I don't believe we have any public speakers. The board has no further comments or questions. And we really appreciate all you've done. Thank you. Let me just let the speakers exit. Leo, with respect to your division administrators and department directors, can you give me a list of who you have left to speak to under that category? I know we have George. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am, the big one is public utilities, and I "big"big just in terms of the size of the division. The briefing will Page 89 June 20, 2013 probably be no more than five to seven minutes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. MR. OCHS: And then the rest of them we will handle between Mark and myself and -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. MR. OCHS: -- obviously, County Attorney Klatzkow. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Let me ask, for purposes of our organization after lunch -- because we're now going to break for lunch for an hour. When we get back, would you like to complete the presentation for public utilities and then go to our constitutional officers and then come back to who you're going to cover? MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. That's exactly the way I would like to proceed. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: All right. And the reason I bring that out now is so you can alert the constitutionals to be here, and if George's presentation is going to be as short as you predict, then they will be right up after we return after one clock. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. The only other deviation that you may want to consider is you've got your CRA folks here, but they can -- if you want to sneak them in before we go with constitutionals, that's your call. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yes. Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah, and I don't see Brad Muckel here, and I don't see Chris Curry. In the past -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: They came at the end. COMMISSIONER HENNING: In the -- yeah, I don't know if they came at the end, but they were here, and I'm not -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Oh, I see your point. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah. I'm not sure -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: There he is. Brad just walked in. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Brad, thanks for being here, Page 90 June 20, 2013 coming all the way from Immokalee. And I'm glad we got things settled yesterday. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You make a very good point, Commissioner Henning. What we can do is have utilities and the CRA present, and then we can, at the end of the afternoon when Leo presents on behalf of the others, have Chris Curry present at the same time so he has the afternoon to get here. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I'm not sure if he's going to be here. MR. OCHS: Oh, yes, he is. Yeah, he called me this morning. He's monitoring, and he will be available when his time is called. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So would you like to schedule it as suggested, which is have George, have the CRAs, then allow the constitutionals to present, and then allow Chris and then Leo to conclude? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah. I don't care how it's done. I just -- now that I've got it straight. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And Jeff is in there. We'll put Jeff right at the beginning, because I know how -- we'll put -- oh, you want to be at the end? Okay. All right. You're a happy note. We'll put you at the end. MR. OCHS: He's the balancing number at the end. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah, he's the happy conclusion. All right. MR. KLATZKOW: You'll be so tired, you'll just -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Right. So what we'll do is -- in conclusion then, what we'll do is we'll do Chris Curry, we'll do the County Attorney's Office, and we'll conclude with the county manager representing the balance of the agencies. So let's adjourn and be back here at 1 o'clock. Page 91 June 20, 2013 MR. OCHS: Thank you. (A luncheon recess was had.) MR. OCHS: Madam Chair, you have a live mike. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. The Fiscal Year 2014 budget workshop is back in session. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: We're going to continue with -- MR. OCHS: Dr. Yilmaz and the Public Utilities Division. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. MR. YILMAZ: Thank you, County Manager. And good afternoon, Commissioners. For the record, George Yilmaz, Public Utilities Administrator. First of all, we have met the budget guidance, and our proposed budget is revenue centric, cost contained, and with no proposed -- I'm pleased to report, no proposed rate increases to all our water customers, all our sewer service customers, all our irrigation water customers, and all curbside garbage recyclable, yard waste, residential customers. And this is going into Year 3 we were able to sustain our rates in spite of macro and micro economical conditions where commodity, including parts areas continue to increase in unit cost or bulk purchases. We deliver best-value quality, life-sustaining services that meet our customer expectations 24/7/365, and we do everything we can to do better than yesterday. Our 24/7/365 service includes reliable and compliant wastewater service, reliable and compliant irrigation water service, reliable and compliant drinking water service. Every time we turn our tap, without hesitation, we want all of our customers to feel free to drink that water, and it tastes better than bottled water, as we won the Best Tasting Water in State of Florida and ranked fourth in the nation. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: It's called Ode to Collier, just saying. Page 92 June 20, 2013 COMMISSIONER COYLE: Only because he spiked it with vodka. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Makes for a happy crowd. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Go ahead. MR. YILMAZ: Thank you, ma'am. One of the leading solid waste services in the State of Florida, under this board's instruction, progress and continue to progress for best-value service, including twice-a-week solid waste collection, once-a-week single-stream recycling and recyclables collection, and bulk service as customers request. And we were the first county and solid waste organization initiated single-stream recycling under your direction and under my chief executive directive, and I'm pleased to report to you that we're not the leading edge; we are the cutting edge in the State of Florida, and other solid waste utilities and authorities following our lead. Furthermore, we have very effective and getting better and better household hazardous waste collection program and infrastructure being in place, and we can now do better as we move to the future going through our master planning process for Solid Waste Management and updating our integrated strategic plan that we will bring you -- before you. And also it's worthwhile to mention that the first time in Collier County we have our LEED certified landfill gas-to-energy program. We moved from a landfill that goes above and beyond compliance and became almost landmarked for the Collier County. Whoever's coming from 75 north or south, east or west, in that intersection, that stinks. And now we have a solid waste operation exemplary with gold awards nationwide that we have received that 24/7 we make sure there is no off-site odors. And as a commission and as one of the lead commissioners, Commissioner Henning from the start was instrumental along with Page 93 June 20, 2013 other commissioners, all of you included, supporting us in this endeavor. Not only we need to sustain what we have achieved, but continue to improve so we don't go back. All of the above-mentioned services provided with customer focus with no off-site odors, dust, noise emissions, as well as no SSOs and major spills. Furthermore -- furthermore, it's worthwhile to mention, without taking a lot of time, that we do, indeed, provide timely utility billing services leveraging our brand new technology, eBill and web-based system, and we have exponential growth in that area. Responsive customer service for water, sewer, and solid waste to acquiesce and meet our expectations is self-evidence that we're addressing 1,200 to 1,500 customers' inquiries, and my benchmark is how well we handle those if these benchmarks comes to my attention, but also, ultimate benchmark is, how many of them goes to my chief executive's office. And so far I'm pleased to report that this month I got nothing. That means we need to handle our customer service at customer service specialist level with appropriate training, understanding, sensitivity, and focus. And that has been our business model, and that has been the executive directive I got from my chief executive. In terms of planning and project management for best-value solutions for sustained compliance with concurrency requirements, and implementation of risk-based compliance during CIPs to meet the demand now and in the future and setting the conditions and foundation for GIS-based integrated enterprise asset management agency-wide, as we plan to have a workshop in September to give you a progress report and detailed talk to you more about it. Our progress has been very good, and I think that our anticipation with the approval of our chief executive in terms of content and progress, we will be ready for the workshop together with my peers, administrators, working with us as a team. Page 94 June 20, 2013 We continue to manage expenditures, fixed and variable costs, and revenues to maintain optimal AA Rating resulting in lowest possible interest rates to our customers as well as avoid negative impact on rate shock. As you can see on Page 6, overall public utilities total budget at the fund level, including reserves and how we manage the fund as the fund manager, shows marginal decrease of .9 percent. And on Page PUD 7, we have decrease in FTEs shown by three. All of those three are management level positions through resource optimization and setting the conditions for the rate study underway for recurring costs, next 10 years, equivalent to 5 to $6 million, making our position much better for the rate study that we're going to come before you and present you for sensitivity analysis integrated with master planning, also based on actual flows and sensitivity analysis and risk-based CIPs. Today I have good news for you. I'm pleased to inform you that as of yesterday we have received AA+ Rating from the rating agency. And Fitch Press Release was released yesterday and today showing that our Collier County water/sewer district continues to sustain AA+ Rating through effective proactive fund management, refinancing, and managing our expenditures in a cost-contained fashion, saving a great deal of nonproductive dollars called interest rate. And I'm pleased to inform that as our ex-officio governing board for water/sewer district, congratulations. And it is consistent with general guidance and executive directive I got from my chief executive that, George, I don't want to see that double A plus go down; otherwise, he may not buy me the lunch. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Which, by the way, would be legal now, just FYI. Just have to throw that in for good measure. No orange jumpsuits. Or I don't know, maybe it would be green. Go ahead, Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Mr. Yilmaz? Page 95 June 20, 2013 MR. YILMAZ: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Your contingency reserves is $3.2 million. I'm assuming that's in case of breakdown, so on and so forth, that you're expending that money, or am I wrong, or is there other things within that reserve for contingencies? MR. YILMAZ: The answer is yes, sir, all of the above. And the last two years we have looked at reserves and our financial outlook very carefully. Our reserves were 11 -- discretionary reserves were about $12 million in Fiscal Year '12, and on '13, we dropped it down all the way to -- $85 million to $68 million. We're down to $61 million with $10 million being the -- being the reserves that -- not only for Collier County Water/Sewer District, but solid waste operations contingency. And our goal, consistent with Fund 001, get close to three months of cash flow for operations. But we are, at this juncture in terms of water/sewer district, how many days, Joe, if I might, sir? MR. BELLONE: Seventy-three, George, on the water/sewer district side. MR. YILMAZ: We have about 73 days of-- MR. BELLONE: Cash reserves. COMMISSIONER HENNING: You're getting ahead of my questions. MR. YILMAZ: I'm sorry, sir. COMMISSIONER HENNING: That's all right. So I'm assuming -- my assumption is correct, reserves for contingency is in case of breakdown, and your -- it wouldn't be staffs time, because that's already included in there. That would be parts, correct? MR. YILMAZ: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And contractors? MR. YILMAZ: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HENNING: To do those repairs? Page 96 June 20, 2013 MR. YILMAZ: Yes, sir. Those are unforeseen, above-and-beyond planned emergencies and/or financial emergencies where we have shortfall in revenues, we have cash flow to go to compensate what we need to do for 24/7 compliant operations. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Right. But that would be a budget transfer that the board would see. MR. YILMAZ: Yes, sir, you would. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah, we would see. So what -- could you provide me your historical expenditures for this reserve contingency? You could provide it in a graph, if you want. MR. YILMAZ: Sure, sir, we can. And, Joe, I would request that you take that question, and if you need to put something on visualizer, let's do it. MR. BELLONE: Commissioners, I actually have a graph of reserves that kind of takes you from FY'12 to '13 to '14. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I just -- for the reserve for contingencies? Expenditures? MR. BELLONE: It looks at the -- it looks at the reserves as a whole. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I don't need it right now. MR. BELLONE: I have them, and we have them all on file. We can actually email them to the group of commissioners, if you will. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thank you. MR. YILMAZ: We'll get that to you. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thank you. My next question is reserve for cash flow. I believe you stated you had -- you want three-months reserves for cash flow; is that correct? MR. YILMAZ: That's the goal. That's where we want to go, if we can over time, consistent with our General Fund, but we're not there. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. So you're basing it upon Page 97 June 20, 2013 the rest of the organization that tries to have that head start funding until the funds come in, and in the county manager's case, would be until the ad valorem dollars come in; is that a correct statement? You want three months in advance just like any other department does? MR. YILMAZ: Yes, sir. That's been the goal; however, we have to manage the funds so that the -- we manage it wisely so that we don't put monies that are at the cost of everything else, and manage a risk-based financial fund management, so we have put only 60-plus days for us to be able to get the balance for the purpose of keeping the rates in my presentation as I have done. Five years from now, two years from now, 10 years from now, depending on the economy, macro, micro economical conditions, we might get that. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So you're trying to do that, and you're not quite there, you said, for three months? MR. YILMAZ: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HENNING: But you're not going to do that on the backs of the maintenance of the facility? MR. YILMAZ: Exactly correct. COMMISSIONER HENNING: You're not quite there. So when does your revenues come in? Are they coming in on a three-month basis, or are they coming in on a monthly basis, or are they coming in on a weekly basis from your customers? MR. YILMAZ: Our billing cycle is -- go ahead, please. MR. BELLONE: We bill once -- for the record, Joe Bellone, Director of Financial Operations. We bill each billing cycle on the water/sewer side once a month. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Once a month. MR. BELLONE: It's 20 days for -- before that bill is due. But think about if you bill someone in October, you're billing them for September's consumption. It tends to be a very low consumption month. October, as people start to return, tend to be a little bit more, Page 98 June 20, 2013 maybe a few more customers are back in November. We really only get the high-season flows until December, which we don't bill till January. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So it's different than the other organizations where the other organizations you're getting a lump-sum payment every year when ad valorem and sales tax comes in, or -- well, tax comes in, you know, monthly, but not -- but you're getting yours on a monthly basis. So my final question is, if you're getting it on a monthly basis -- MR. BELLONE: Yes. COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- why are you preparing for having a cash reserve for three months' basis? MR. BELLONE: Commissioners, our operating expenses generally are fairly average from month to month but the collections are not. The collections are, obviously, heavier in February, March, and April although we have been -- we are experiencing operating expenses, salaries are regular every month. They are the same in March as they are in October. So keep that -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: So you can provide the board with your operating expenses monthly then, correct? MR. BELLONE: SAP -- our financials are on a monthly basis, yeah. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. Well, I mean, I still continually question year after year of why you have to have so much reserves, and if your revenues are coming in monthly -- I understand they fluctuate from year to year -- why do you need three times the -- or actually twice the amount -- no -- yeah, twice the amount of revenues, the way I look at it? So -- and I don't need a response now. I just -- I just don't -- I mean, what is it $13 million in cash flow, $13 million? So, you know, if you're -- again, if your revenues are coming in different than anybody else, everybody else, why do you have to do Page 99 June 20, 2013 what everybody else is doing on your revenues? That's all. And I just need probably a detailed explanation so I don't have to ask this question every year, because I -- MR. YILMAZ: Commissioner, I got your intent, and we'll prepare comprehensive and targeted reserves management portfolio for you, and we'll provide that to you and copy our commissioners. If there's any follow-up questions, we will respond to it promptly. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thank you. I will -- if there's any follow-up questions on that cash flow reserves, I'll forward that to the county manager. MR. YILMAZ: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thank you. MR. YILMAZ: Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Nance, before you speak, can I comment on -- if you'd allow me to. COMMISSIONER NANCE: By all means. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I think the points you're making, Commissioner Henning -- hang on a second. I'm not sure if you can hear me clearly. I think the points you're making, Commissioner Henning, are right on target. And I think what needs to be done -- and you do raise this every year, and I remember you saying exactly the same thing last year. The bottom line is, we have to have a policy for how we develop our reserve standards. And I think what really ought to happen is Mark should work with each department, because all the departments have different cash flow needs and, as a consequence, different reserve requirements, and I think what we need is a comprehensive policy with respect to reserves that is part of budget guidance every year, because it should not be arbitrary. There should absolutely be a rational basis for why George should have three months as we have three months. And it can't be just because we have three months. It has to be based on how Page 100 June 20, 2013 the monies come in. And I see Mark nodding his head. So if you don't mind, I'd like to elaborate on what you're proposing -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Please. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: -- and that is, not just to limit this discussion to George, but on a countywide basis, look at all the divisions, look at the departments within the divisions. For example, Nick has an enterprise fund also. I mean, he's got permitting, which is -- I'm sorry, six enterprise funds, sorry. I just lump, you know. So I think it's very -- were you talking to me? MR. CASALANGUIDA: I was going to say six months reserves for us. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Oh, six months of reserves. Forget about the six enterprise funds. It's six months reserves. COMMISSIONER HENNING: We forgot to pick on him. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah. And, actually, let me tell you, I was looking at -- as you were talking together, I was looking at your reserves, Nick, to -- you don't have to explain, because we don't need to discuss this here and now. What we need is for Mark to work with each of you and come up with a division/department policy that makes sense based on how you do business, and that will become the basis for your future budgeting and possibly amendments to the current budgeting rather than having this discussion year after year after year. I think that's what's missing, the standard. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Great idea. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Then I can really comprehend it. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah. And then -- you know, then it's really straightforward. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah, that's good. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: It becomes policy. Page 101 June 20, 2013 COMMISSIONER HENNING: That's a good way to -- good approach. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So, Commissioner Nance? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes. Dr. George, I just wanted to -- I want to make a -- I have a few tabs here on things -- a few comments that I would like to make. Number one, I would certainly like to give you the highest accolades, and these are things that occurred before my service here, but I would like to give the Board of County Commissioners, prior to my arrival, and solid waste highest accolades for the work at the landfill. I think it's extraordinary. I don't think it could be any better. I think it's been a model, and I'd just like to reiterate how much I appreciate it and how much I respect what you accomplished there. The second thing is, I would really like to say something great about your GIS-based asset management effort. I'm -- you are certainly the entity that, providing the services that you have to do, we really need a program to keep that in perspective, including a depreciation and replacement of major infrastructure over very -- a long period of time. So I look forward to following your program, and if it's as successful as I hope and think that it may well be, that it will be a model for looking at other assets and making it a lot easier for us to get our hands around what it is that we have to accomplish. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Can I comment on that? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Sure. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Because what you have brought up was brought up by the board over the last few years before you were elected and, in fact, it was something that I had addressed because I was concerned about the exact same thing that you're concerned about, and that is, you know, do we have an appropriate inventory, do we have an appropriate aging of that inventory, and Dr. George basically has been developing that template, and it was with the intent Page 102 June 20, 2013 that the other divisions use the model that he adopted. And I believe he's already been working with Mr. Casalanguida in growth management, using the template in that division. So they are moving in that direction, and the county manager has indicated that he is going to come back to us with that information and make that presentation at a workshop. COMMISSIONER NANCE: That's great, because I think it is essential, and it's really going to keep us exactly where we need to be. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Right. COMMISSIONER NANCE: A third point I would like to make is, I'm very, very interested and excited about a potential for our irrigation quality reuse water program. It is -- the work that public utilities is going to do in this area is going to affect many other cost centers that we have and expenses that we have long term in the county. You know, we're going to have a landscape workshop coming up, but the use of this reuse water and the comparison and impact that it makes on reverse osmosis water that we have to make today and how much of that reverse osmosis water that we manufacture actually ends up being used for irrigation, which is a very, very bad thing. It's a very wasteful energy. I'm really looking forward to understanding where we are with the irrigation quality reuse water program, what we can do to maximize that under this enterprise management system so that everybody pays a fair share for its full development. But I think it's essential for our sustainability. And, you know, if we want to protect our environmental assets and enjoy them for the future, we certainly need to maximize that. Two things of a constructively critical nature. One of them is, looking at some of your capital improvement programs, I noted an item, Project No. 177, which is a bio-solids reuse facility. In my view, programs and interests like this are something that really should be Page 103 June 20, 2013 best if we could have that done by the private sector. I think we have a lot of people that are pioneering this sort of thing, and it's a chance for us to take advantage of that without generating another agency of government. And, finally, the only other remark that I have is, our recycling centers and the costs infrastructure and associations, I would just like to make a constructively critical remark and remind everyone that our recycling centers are handling things that we no longer want; it's garbage. And I think we need to really critically look at our costs of our infrastructure, how we're approaching it. It doesn't have to be an artistic or a sensory experience when we throw things away. And we need to really hone in on our unit cost for providing that service and getting those things removed from our community. And other than that, very nice. Thank you very much. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I believe we have a public speaker. MR. MILLER: Yes, ma'am. We just did have one registered speaker come forward. Bob Krasowski. MR. KRASOWSKI: Good afternoon, Commissioners. Bob Krasowski, for the record. I'd like to ask Mr. Yilmaz to touch on the zero waste workshop design charette that was performed here in approximately 2003; it's so long ago I can't actually remember. But this was an effort from -- put together by the public, and we, the few people that were involved, secured funding to an extent that we were promised 10,000, it dropped to $5,000, we threw in 2,000 of our own money to have the workshop design charette, which was a two-day event, and we brought in zero wasters, engineers, people with PhDs in economics from the State of Washington, from California, which is very progressive, especially compared to what we were doing at the time, and some people from Delaware and Upstate New York. And over the course of two days, we heard presentations from the Page 104 June 20, 2013 county and the city, what they were doing, and then also the -- we heard from the zero wasters. Then we had workshops. And we also visited all the facilities, landfill and recycling, that was going on at the time. And a lot of the county people attended, like Jim DeLony, who was our -- I believe our solid waste director at the time. Jim Mudd, who was our public utilities director at the time, was there. I have it all on videotape. And I actually made a condensed version of it and distributed it through the County Commissioners and the school board members, because later on my wife is a teacher, and I evaluated the school board system and approached them with different things they could do. But you never hear anything about that. And as far as I'm concerned, that was the nexus of the evaluation of options and assigning values to certain behaviors in the solid waste department that led to Jim DeLony -- to many other things, you know, but also to how Jim DeLony then assessed the landfill value. He put sort of like an imaginary bubble over the landfill and then identified each square yard as having a value, because once you filled that up, then you had to move to another landfill or do something else. So that was factored into analysis, and it's very useful in the way we manage the landfill. So I'd like to hear from my good friend Dr. George Yilmaz, who I spoke to many, many times prior to the design charette who contributed and helped carry forward the actual activity and the aftermath and hear from him. And the reason -- the main reason I'm bringing this up as opposed to just glorifying myself is that this is the type of project that I envision to hold -- which I will do, public again -- on the beach renourishment issue, the beach -- coastal zone beach management that incorporates the needs of the public, but the needs of the wildlife, nature, the turtles, and all that stuff, because, man, we have come to a dead end, and it's been a lot of bad thinking and practice that has Page 105 June 20, 2013 brought us to where we're at today. So we need something like this. But, George, if you could chime in on that for a moment. MR. OCHS: George, hold on. Madam Chair, do you want to get into this right now, or would you like us to prepare a report -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I would love a report. MR. OCHS: -- and provide that to the board? CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I think that's more appropriate, because this is off subject with respect to what we're addressing right now, which is the budget. But it's definitely something we would appreciate, if you could prepare a report for it, and let us know what was done and how it succeeded and how it could be applied. MR. YILMAZ: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That would be very, very good. MR. YILMAZ: And my appreciation goes to Mr. Bob Krasowski and all the options that was found to be feasible, proven where construed and have been incorporated into a process, and credit goes to this gentleman and his leadership. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Great. MR. YILMAZ: And we thank you for that. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you, Bob. MR. KRASOWSKI: Thank you, very much. Thank George very much. I don't know if a report's necessary after that. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Well, I think it would be beneficial for us, because any tool that, you know, allows us to do better is something worthy of us reviewing. So since the county manager has offered and George is willing, I think it would be beneficial. And, you know, who knows how it could be applied in other arenas. So thank you. MR. KRASOWSKI: Design charette. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Got it. We got it. MR. KRASOWSKI: Okay. Page 106 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So thank you very much. There are no further questions from the board, Dr. George. You and your staff have done a great job, and I'm sure, you know, you'll get good guidance from the county manager and our budget director with respect to your reserves, and the end result might be that you may find that there's more cash available to do certain projects than you anticipated. So thank you very much. MR. YILMAZ: Thank you, Commissioners. We appreciate your support very much. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. MR. YILMAZ: And thank you, County Manager. MR. OCHS: Thank you, George. Commissioners, that takes you to your presentation from your community redevelopment agencies, and your airport executive director is also here if you want to cover that budget before we move into the constitutionals. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Since he's here -- we do have several of the constitutionals here. We have the Supervisor of Elections and the clerk also waiting. And, I mean, I'm -- we did say before lunch that we were going do the two CRAs and then do the airport afterwards. MR. OCHS: That's fine. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So I'm not sure -- I would like to ask the constitutionals, because they've taken away from their day to be here at the time that we specified. Dwight, Jennifer, would you be willing to allow Chris to present along with the CRAs? Would that be acceptable to you? Dwight, are you on schedule? MR. BROCK: I don't know if on schedule but, Commissioner, I'm here at your request, so I'll do whatever you want. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay, great. MR. BROCK: Just let me know. Page 107 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. Then why don't you just stay and enjoy the show, and we'll call you up. MR. BROCK: I'll go back to my office for a few minutes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You can do that, too. MR. BROCK: Somebody told me -- I don't remember who it was -- that it would be about 15 minutes to one when I was going to be before you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: They lied to you. MR. BROCK: Okay. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So what we'll do is we'll have Leo's staff give you a call when you're up. Let's go ahead and begin with the Bayshore/Gateway CRA. Jean, would you like to present? MS. JOURDAN: Of course. For the record, Jean Jourdan, Interim Director for the Bayshore/Gateway Triangle Community Redevelopment Agency. I also have with me Ms. Ashley Caserta, who is our Project Manager. As you know, the CRA has encountered significant budget issues, one being the decreasing taxable values since 2008 and the other being the outstanding debt. As a result, staff has been reduced from five to three; however, based on the tremendous support from the budget department, the debt has been restructured and, thank goodness, the taxable values are beginning to stabilize. Our FY 13 budget was modest, to say the least, but the CRA will need to continue to operate on a modest budget in order to diligently work towards paying the debt through the sales of lands without having to sell the properties at what Commissioner Hiller once called a fire sale. So, basically, although we are going to have constraints on our budgets -- and that reason being is because the way the loan was restructured, there were constraints which tie a formula to how much Page 108 June 20, 2013 operating budget we can expend. But we feel the CRA will be fine with that because in the interim that will allow us to do some strategic planning. Additionally, we have a redevelopment plan that is 13 years old. We have updated our Land Development Code regulations and the Growth Management Plan, but we haven't updated our redevelopment plan. So we will focus on those issues as we continue to manage the two MSTUs, which is the Haldeman Creek MSTU and the Bayshore Beautification MSTU. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I believe Commissioner Fiala would like to say a few words. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Just a fast comment. And I'm delighted that you were able to restructure your loan. And I know that we would like to get the loan -- you know, all the debt paid off before we move ahead; however, when you -- I was just in Albany this past weekend -- and just there for a visit with my son. And what I did notice was when you invest in the community and you upgrade it or re-gentrify it or whatever you're going to do, redevelop it, it's amazing what happens, because the appearance changes. As the appearance changes, all of a sudden businesses recognize that they -- that they would want to come back to the area which has been depressed. And then as they come back to the area, which had grown into a depressed state but now is picking up, their -- of course, their taxable values pick up then, and the crime drops. It's amazing to watch. And I want to make sure that as we deliberate, we don't shoot ourself in the foot to pay off the debt and then can't recognize any benefit and say, well, you know, they never went anyplace. Because you've got to invest in the area. We've only got a short period of time to do it, or we lose, and that area loses. So I've got my secretary now looking at some analysis on this Page 109 June 20, 2013 whole area and finding out what they did, what the results were, and how it bettered that area and was able -- were able to bring businesses back. Thank you. MS. JOURDAN: You know, to address that, Commissioner Fiala, if I may, although our operating costs and expenses are going to be down, the CRA staff is going to continue to move forward. For instance, this past year in FY 13, we did a $2.7 million tertiary stormwater project. We're, additionally, seeking more grants. So the CRA is going to continue to be making improvements to the area. And as far as paying down the debt, it's important, because that will also revitalize the area, because it's key catalyst sites. And we have had so much interest in the CRA area lately. Right now I can say with absolute certainty if I wanted to sell the CRA properties for people who have been coming and making offers to the CRA, which I've tried to keep the commissioners apprized of, I could pay off that debt right now. But the restructuring of this loan will give us the time to strategize and get what we want there and make sure that the area continues to improve. Additionally, in conjunction with the MSTU, we're doing -- we're going to be doing three major street improvements this year. So we're going to be continually updating the area. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, that's exactly what I meant. We don't want to sell off the properties just to get the money. You want to make sure that you sell them to organizations or to homebuilders or whomever that will build the area up instead of bring it back down to where it was. MS. JOURDAN: Correct, and that's what we're really focusing on. We've been meeting with some very interested investors who are actually coming around to want to develop what we want, so that's Page 110 June 20, 2013 very positive. So we're just taking our time and, like I said, we're going to make sure it gets done right. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Great. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And I just want to comment, Jean. You have done an incredible turnaround. I mean, when I started, that CRA was in a horrible state. And I remember when we first identified that it was really in a financial crisis, you know, the community was in denial and didn't even understand or realize. And, you know, since you have taken over this CRA and what you have accomplished with, you know, restructuring the debt and, you know, basically, you know, tightening your operating costs and soliciting outside grants and, internally, awarding grants limited to commercial development so we focus on that economic growth of the area has really been a very successful strategy. I mean, we are so -- in such a different state of affairs than where we were two and three years ago. COMMISSIONER FIALA: But let me add to that. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I think you've done an incredible job, so I want to -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: Of course, we were in the depths of a recession then also -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah, but -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- and the property values had plummeted to a point where nobody could pick them up. And let me say Jean has done excellent job. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: She has. COMMISSIONER FIALA: But -- with what she was dealt with. But you can't blame it on the CRA for being that far in debt. You have to -- because at the times that they bought it, the property values were high, and the interests were high, and everything was going along. Whoever dreamed that all of a sudden, as a door would close to any more funding and you just go down into the depths of recession Page 111 June 20, 2013 -- and then there's pulling yourself out. I think Jean has done an outstanding job. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah, she really has. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I didn't mean to take that away, but I wanted to point out that, you know, the recession did have something to do with property values. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Well, the recession definitely did reduce the stream of income that was coming into the CRA, but the decision to purchase land in really what was a speculative venture was probably not the most prudent approach, and to so highly leverage the CRA, which put it in this, you know, fiscal crisis, was, you know, in hindsight, clearly not the best business decision. The point is, you have done a great job working through this recession, notwithstanding the reduced income stream, to tighten your operations and to manage the situation appropriately to bring yourself out of what was a very deep rut in a very positive way. And all the decisions you've made, you know, how you're proposing to sell, you know, how you're proposing to continue to solicit capital improvement grants, all philosophically, are the right way to go about CRA business. So really good. MS. JOURDAN: Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Huge difference. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I just have to stick up for them one more time and say many of the properties -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: For who? COMMISSIONER FIALA: The CRA. Many of the properties that they purchased were only to get the derelict properties out of the area which then, of course, reduced the crime immensely, cleaned up the appearance of the area, and that needed to be done, because you can never make a winning success over something unless you first get rid of the problem areas, and that's something that was done. And you helped in that, by the way. You were guiding that thing along as far Page 112 June 20, 2013 as getting rid of the flophouses and everything. MS. JOURDAN: I'll take credit for all the good. All the bad -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I think there's consensus that there's only good. So thank you. MS. JOURDAN: Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you very much. And the next is the Bayshore -- I'm sorry, the Immokalee CRA. MR. MUCKEL: Good afternoon, Commissioners. Thank you. I'm going to start off by thanking staff and our advisory board at the Immokalee CRA who volunteer their time. You'll notice from the budget numbers before you today that our CRA is an agency in transition. Most notably is our reduction in property -- I'm sorry -- in overall operating expenses to the tune of 40.9 percent for Fiscal '14. Additionally, we will realize a 22.5 percent reduction in TIF revenue expenditures in Fiscal '14 while substantially increasing our physical and programmatic improvements to the Immokalee community. While our TIF expenditures are projected to be 568,000, our grant expenditures will be over $3 million in Fiscal '14. The icing on this cake is that -- to all this is that there is a projected 18 percent increase in taxable values for the properties within our community redevelopment area next year. Overall, our CRA will maintain budget compliance by operating in a proactive, lean fashion which will, in turn, allow us to meet the expectations of the Immokalee community. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. Commissioner Fiala? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yeah. A while back you had -- you had a project that you were going to buy property for, I think you already did, for those two street corners and really beautify the area and make it more or less like central areas where people could Page 113 June 20, 2013 congregate and a community could feel more like a community. And we saw the designs and everything. What happened to those? MR. MUCKEL: The first of those two projects, Commissioner Fiala, will be out to bid in two weeks. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, that's wonderful. MR. MUCKEL: Yeah. And the second one we have yet to find funding for. But we still own the property, so -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, now that you're going to have some increase in TIF funds, just maybe that will come about, too. MR. MUCKEL: Hopefully, yeah. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Nance, it's your district. Would you like to comment on -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: I sure would. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: -- that, because I'm sure you have a lot of thoughts. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Brad, I would like to -- I would like to commend you for making the hard decisions and moving the transition of your business unit forward. I think the community is reacting to you very well. It was my pleasure to visit with the advisory board yesterday. I think there's positive feelings. You've got a lean, mean plan for 2014, and I think you're well positioned in the community being at the Southwest Florida Work Center to be together with other agencies that I think are going to provide some synergy for the community. So thank you for your work. I've been here just a brief time, but I appreciate your honesty and forthcoming work with me and introducing me to the whole business unit. Thank you. MR. MUCKEL: Thank you, Commissioner Nance. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Fiala, did you want to speak? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, no. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: The speaker light is on. Is there a Page 114 June 20, 2013 speaker for -- MR. MILLER: No, sorry. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. Thank you. Are there any further questions or comments by anyone with respect -- from the board with respect to the Immokalee CRA? (No response.) CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And so the next item on the agenda -- are you with the airport also? MS. BRUEGGEMAN: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So the next item on the agenda is the airport budget, and that encompasses three airports, which is Immokalee and Marco and Everglades. Chris, would you like to present? MR. CURRY: Chris Curry, Executive Director, Collier County Airport Authority. Also in attendance from the airport is Krystal Wise, Financial Manager, and Debbie Brueggeman, my Executive Assistant. The airport has met the goals that were established by the Board of County Commissioners, and we have decreased our reliance on the General Fund. So I'll take any questions that you have. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: And, of course, you're going to come back in January (sic) and make some other proposals on top of-- COMMISSIONER FIALA: January? MR. CURRY: Yeah, I won't be around in January. COMMISSIONER HENNING: You won't be around? MR. CURRY: Not as far as I know. COMMISSIONER NANCE: July. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I'm sorry, January. COMMISSIONER NANCE: July. COMMISSIONER HENNING: July. Page 115 June 20, 2013 MR. CURRY: Okay. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Is that a true statement? MR. CURRY: Which one, that I won't be around in January? COMMISSIONER HENNING: No, we're beyond my mistake of months. MR. CURRY: Oh, no. I intend to bring you back a plan for July. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I think that's really unnecessary. MR. CURRY: I do plan to bring you back a plan for July. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And, Commissioners, if you don't have any questions at this time but, you know, have any questions between now and approval, of course, I'm sure all the members of staff that are here today will be willing to sit down and answer any of your questions or concerns. There being no further questions, thank you. MR. MUCKEL: Thank you. MR. CURRY: Thank you. MR. OCHS: Commissioners, we can move now to the constitutional officers. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Let's go ahead and start with the Supervisor of Elections. And could you please contact the other constitutionals and have them -- MR. OCHS: It's already underway, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. You're very kind. Hi. MS. EDWARDS: Good afternoon. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Good afternoon. We just want to know who's going to win in 2014, and then you can go. MS. EDWARDS: Oh, let's see. Which commission race do we want to talk about first? Page 116 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Don't even go there. MS. EDWARDS: I'm not. Good afternoon. For the record, Jennifer Edwards, your Supervisor of Elections. And I have with me Tim Durham, Chief Deputy, and Melissa Blazier, who is my Assistant. We present to you today our budget, which is $3,182,500, and this is a $160 (sic) decrease, or a 2.7 percent decrease. It includes, of course, our operating budget as well as the cost for the 2014 primary, which will be in the next fiscal year. I'd also like to bring you up to date on our voting equipment. Traditionally, voting equipment will last about 10 years. You can ask any vendor that. And what -- most of our equipment was purchased in 2002, and the voting system which we use is ES and S, and they're in the process now of upgrading their software and their equipment. So we currently have money in the 301 capital budget, and we'd like to maintain that level as well as -- we've done a cost estimate, and to purchase what we estimate we'll need for the 2016 election cycle, but we would need to implement the year before, we're going to need about 300,000 more dollars in the next fiscal year capital budget. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Got it. MS. EDWARDS: And then, of course, the third topic I'd like to talk about is space. I've mentioned this to most of you before, and I had a few minutes to speak with Commissioner Nance about it, too, this week. And what -- as you know, we work out of three different facilities. It's very inefficient, and we have asked for a number of years that you look at that with us and help us. And we have, over the last few months, met with county manager's staff and talked to them about our challenges, and we discussed proposals. So we're waiting to hear back from Skip Camp and Len Price on that. Page 117 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Fiala and Commissioner Coyle both have comments, but I would like to just ask a quick question from the county manager so he adds information to allow them to, you know, maybe better formulate their questions or address their concerns. County Manager, in the various proposals that you have received, are you contemplating any of those projects for the current year so that the Supervisor of Elections will be in a better state going into the 2014 election? And if so, what are you considering? MR. OCHS: Ma'am, I don't have any solid answers for you right now -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. MR. OCHS: -- I'm sorry to say. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's okay. MR. OCHS: We're continuing to evaluate those along with Jennifer and her staff, but -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: What is the timeline we're looking at to accomplish your needs? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Last year. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah, I know, but I'm just -- I'm talking -- and you're absolutely right. We had this discussion last year, by the way. COMMISSIONER FIALA: And this is what I wanted to say -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Go ahead. COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- you and I both -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Agreed. COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- were solidly behind buying the DeVoe building. We found out that it went for half of what we wanted to -- what was -- what they were asking for. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah. COMMISSIONER FIALA: And yet we turned them down and are allowing that now to go into different hands when it would have Page 118 June 20, 2013 accommodated the Supervisor of Elections -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Perfectly. COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- beautifully right there on the campus. And I don't know how we can be so penny wise and pound foolish. But I'm just very, very upset about that yet, especially because we both had said we needed to buy that building. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah, absolutely. COMMISSIONER FIALA: We could have found the money in reserves, and we did not. Don't let that happen again. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yep. MS. EDWARDS: I appreciate your comments. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And I just want to add, Commissioner Fiala and I both agreed that you needed space. MS. EDWARDS: I know. And I really appreciate your support, but what we would need to look at and work with the county manager's staff is work around our election cycles. Other than that, we are ready and able to help. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I'll make a deal. You can take our offices, and we'll move into the courthouse, and then we'll move the clerk down into your old offices. And I think that would work out just perfectly. No, very seriously, I mean, there is an issue, and it does need to be addressed and, I think, needs to be addressed in this budget cycle, the reason being is that the next -- well, actually -- maybe I'm wrong about that, because actually this budget cycle does go into the election, so that would be inconvenient. And so really what we need to do is plan now to make that transition in the 2015 cycle. MS. EDWARDS: Correct. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah. So it's my mistake. So it's not something that would be ripe for this budget but definitely has to be addressed now so we can anticipate it properly for the next year. MS. EDWARDS: And we've discussed options with the county Page 119 June 20, 2013 manager's staff. So we've sent them information, which they're reviewing now, is my understanding. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Fiala, did you want to make any other comment? COMMISSIONER FIALA: No, I just had to make that on the record. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Sure, of course. Commissioner Coyle? MS. EDWARDS: Thank you. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. I'd just like to remind the board that barely seven months from now we're going to be providing guidance for the 2015 budget. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's right. COMMISSIONER COYLE: So we've known for a long time that Jennifer needs space. The only way she's going to get space is if we tell staff to get her some space. Now, it doesn't have to be in this budget if Jennifer finds it to be inconvenient to move during an upcoming election year. But if we don't provide guidance to staff about what we expect to happen, there won't be anything in the Fiscal '15 budget either, because nobody will have finalized a plan to do that. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You're very right. You're very right. So let me make a suggestion to advance this project. Why don't you give me the information, and I will put it on the agenda on behalf of the board to direct staff to get this done so that -- and that it be implemented on whatever is a mutually agreeable timetable, you know, budget permitting. MS. EDWARDS: Okay. Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Jennifer, you have enough Page 120 June 20, 2013 space, but it's just not put together in a form that you find it to be efficient for your operation; is that correct? MS. EDWARDS: We don't have adequate space. We have -- and because we're separated into three different buildings and we lease 3,000 square feet that needs to be improved upon -- my answer to that is we do not have adequate space and the fact that it's -- what we do have that is inadequate is over three different locations makes it extremely inefficient, and it's stressful on the equipment. We've had to actually do some retrofitting because we have to move the equipment back and forth so many times. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So how much additional feet do you feel you need? MS. EDWARDS: That's in the report. We're looking at -- we're asking for just under 40,000 square feet. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Total? MS. EDWARDS: To meet our needs, yes, sir. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Or additional? MS. EDWARDS: Total. COMMISSIONER HENNING: What do you have right now? MS. EDWARDS: We have about 30,000 square feet -- 27- to 30,000 square feet. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Twenty-seven to 30,000. MS. EDWARDS: Twenty-seven thousand feet to 30-. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. So you can provide us, if you have 40,000 square feet in one location, what the monetary efficiencies would be, correct? MS. EDWARDS: We can provide that, but I will tell you right now, it's not a great deal of money. What we're dealing with is inefficiency of movement of resources, which includes people and equipment. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, that efficiency of resources, personnel, should show some kind of efficiency. Page 121 June 20, 2013 MS. EDWARDS: Yes. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. You could provide that, right? MS. EDWARDS: Yes, we will, yep. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Nance? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes. I was able to enjoy a very nice discussion with the supervisor prior to this meeting. And in my view what the Supervisor of Elections' main problem is is not a space problem. It's a logistics problem and, of course, those are inextricably combined. What she needs is she needs a very -- a well and a complete thought-out analysis of movement of materials. She has a situation where she has sensitive equipment, she has security issues, she has storage and movement issues that are on a highly restricted time frame, and I think it's more of a logistics problem than a space problem. I think if you can solve the logistics problem, the space will follow. And I believe we need to dedicate some resources to her. And I believe there's all sorts of economies and efficiencies that are not only going to allow us to, perhaps, save money, but certainly allow her to function in a reasonable way and take the burden off her a little bit. I think she's in an untenable situation. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And the other thing to remember is that the space that Jennifer is using that we don't lease obviously becomes vacated, and because it's directly on campus in prime location -- in a prime location, it should be used to some other end that could materially benefit the county. You know, maybe that's where you might consider -- well, maybe some sort of an economic development visitor center. I mean, I'm just throwing out options. There are other things we can do with that space where it would not be wasted because, I mean, it is absolutely a first-class location. We could move the commissioners in that space if we don't move Page 122 June 20, 2013 the clerk there. I'm just saying, before we start redecorating. I don't see any further comments. There are no public speakers. And so I want to thank you very much. And it seems that -- it must be the middle of the afternoon since everyone is starting to break out in like -- I won't say tears, but laughter. Thank you again. MS. EDWARDS: We will provide you with the information. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yes, if you would. MS. EDWARDS: Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And what we'll do is we'll -- I'll get it on the July agenda, and that way Leo has direction to move forward. And, you know, whatever the needs are will be evaluated and, of course, facilities will work to make the right decision. MS. EDWARDS: Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. Who would have guessed that going through a budget workshop would actually be amusing? Just saying. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Must be the hockey. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah, it is the hockey, by the way. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Rum-and-coke lunch. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I wish I had eaten. COMMISSIONER HENNING: When I get home tonight, I'm going to put on the -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Replay. COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- replay -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So you can fall asleep tonight? COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- while I fall asleep. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah, I was going to say. It definitely -- yeah, it definitely works. We have before us the Clerk of Courts, Dwight Brock, Crystal Kinzel. MR. MILUM: Ray Milum. Page 123 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And, Ray, what is your position with the Clerk's Office? MR. MILUM: I'm the Accounting Manager. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. Thank you. Clerk? MR. BROCK: Commissioners, I've spoken to most of you, and I think my staff has spoken to the rest of you. I don't want to take up any more time than is absolutely necessary. We're here to answer any questions that you may have with regard to our budget request. I mean, our job hasn't changed. It is appreciably the same, and it has been there since the constitution was originated, so -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Fiala? COMMISSIONER FIALA: I just -- I've spoken to Crystal at length. I've got all my questions answered. I just wanted to make sure that your employees got the same raises as we got; Crystal confirmed that. And she told me about the extra employees, what they're needed for. That was fine with me. You know, you have to operate an efficient department. And as we're growing back again to where we should have been, you have to have the employees, so I'm fine with it. MR. BROCK: Commissioner, since you brought that up, there's something that I would like to say. I have seen a transition take place in the last year, year and a half-- year, probably, in the operations that exist between the county staff and the Clerk's Office. You know, the input I get from my people is that we have a better working relationship today than it appears that I've had in 20 years. I actually had Mark Isaacson come to our office and ask us for assistance in trying to solve some of the cash problems through Crystal. When I need something, I call Leo up. I don't think that's ever happened, that I can recall, that I felt comfortable just calling the county manager up and speaking to him that way. I don't know that that was intentional or anything of that nature. Page 124 June 20, 2013 As you could have seen in the back, I get along with the directors of your departments better than I have gotten along with them in years. And I think it is beneficial for the community for it to operate that way. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: There's no question. And what I will say is, you know, we have -- in effect, really a new county. That's what I was saying earlier to the county manager. We have, you know, really all new directors, new staffing, and the county manager brings a different way of doing business, which he has been developing. You know, we have new board members. I mean, it's -- if you look at the totality of the change, it's really refreshing to hear that it has had a spillover impact in the relationship between the Clerk's Office and the board which, historically, prior, really, to this year, has been very hostile. So we're delighted to hear that it's working positively and, you know, that's what it's about, working together for the benefit of the people. MR. BROCK: I agree. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So if there are no further questions, thank you very much. And we're also -- I just want to say I'm very happy to hear that the issue of equal pay for equal work has been resolved, because that, obviously, was a concern. MR. BROCK: That will continue to be an issue that we will continue to work with. But I mean, we have met with county staff. Actually, Leo's people initiated the process. You may not know -- and I probably ought to tell you this at this point in time. You know, when we came in asking for the funding to establish parity, I had a personnel director -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yep. MR. BROCK: -- on staff who's no longer there; he retired. So I have a new personnel directer who is working with Leo's people and trying to pull together the information, and that will be a continuing Page 125 June 20, 2013 process. So -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And just again -- MR. BROCK: It should be. That's the way it should work. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: The emphasis -- and this is during our opening remarks where we talked about this as a board, this is an issue that is a countywide issue. Whether it's an accountant in the Sheriffs Office or the board's office or your office, you really have to have equal pay for equal work. MR. BROCK: And I loved Commissioner Henning's suggestion to do it through the insurance. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's brilliant. MR. BROCK: I thought that was a wonderful solution to the process. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: What I really liked was that when that one guy called me Commissioner Henning and, you know, him getting all the compliments. So if you want to call me Commissioner Henning and repeat that, I'm okay with it. You don't mind, do you? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Just don't call her Mrs. Henning. MR. BROCK: Did they call him Commissioner Hiller? Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Oh, I love that. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Just don't call her Mrs. Henning. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That would be bad. That would be very bad. MR. BROCK: I mean, even with the commissioners, you know, I want to thank you for, you know, having an open door when we need to convey information to you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Absolutely. MR. BROCK: That -- you know, it just makes everything work so much better. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Absolutely. And thank you -- MR. BROCK: Thank you. Page 126 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: -- also -- thank you for being open minded to the change in the process on the audits, Dwight. That will really benefit us to have it ahead. MR. BROCK: Not a problem, Commissioner. If I'd have known that was what you wanted, we'd have done it a long time ago. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Hey, sometimes you just have to ask for the order. MR. BROCK: You got it. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. Leo? MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. That would take you to the Sheriffs Office, who would be the final constitutional officer you'll hear from today. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's great. Thank you. MR. OCHS: Sheriff, good morning (sic). CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Sheriff, would you like to come forward with your team. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Good afternoon. If you can give us one second, we have some things we want to show you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I highly recommend the clerk's approach, which is, if you have any questions, and if you don't thanks, goodbye. That works, too. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Good for us. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: If it were only so simple. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. Thank you for the opportunity to come before you today. You know, it's extremely nice when I can come before you and affirm for you that we have had an incredibly successful community safety plan. And as you know in the past, that plan has been created by the residents of Collier County to address crime, traffic safety, information, prevention, and youth programming. Page 127 June 20, 2013 But, you know, we don't do that alone. And in addition to the residents and the businesses who help each and every year, I wanted to take a moment because I think it's very important to thank a number of people and groups. And I will tell you the first that comes to mind is the county staff. Everyone from facility management who maintains our building, to parks and recreation that help us with our summer programs, and everybody in between does a terrific job. We have a great relationship with the county manager and his management team, and that makes it very, very easy for us to continue to give the level and quality of service that not only you expect for Collier County residents, but Collier County residents as well. We need to thank our peers in law enforcement, fire, EMS, because, again, all of public safety works together. Thank you to the board for the support you've given throughout the years, throughout the last year, the men and women of the Collier County Sheriffs Office who do this every day, 365 days a year, and my management team that you see before you today because, without them, I'd never be able to get to go on vacation. I, at least, like to take a couple of days off. You know, FY 14 marks the second year of submitting a flat budget. And I know everybody throughout the county has done the same great work in trying to reduce those operating costs. If we remember back to FY08, we're actually down about $20.6 million as we stand here with you today, and that's a savings to the taxpayer of more than $48 million and still providing the level and quality of service that everyone expects. But, you know, just like in any other business and operation, there were costs that had to be absorbed even when we were able to submit and meet the goal that you established for a flat budget. The most significant of them was a $2.4 million increase, state-mandated increase to retirement. In most cases throughout the state, unfortunately, that is passed through. We, in Collier County, Page 128 June 20, 2013 have chosen not to do that. We've got a couple other projects that are coming up. As you know, we've submitted for a grant for some additional school safety officers. We've offset that matching dollars for that submission. Hopefully we get that, because that could potentially be an additional cost. We also are looking at, with your help from facilities, a HVAC system renovation at the jail, and the overtime costs that we're going to need to cover that, we've absorbed that as well. So as we move along, again, I have to recognize the ladies and gentlemen right here and those on the street who know exactly how important it is to manage the budget properly and on behalf of the taxpayer of Collier County. Crime remains down 10.4 percent. There are still only 12 counties out of 67 that have a lesser crime rate than we do here in Collier County. That continues to be a mainstay of where we have focus. We look at our road safety, which was another element of the community safety plan over the last five years. We've seen a 35 percent reduction in traffic fatalities overall and a 16.4 percent reduction in traffic crashes. And as we've talked before, that is a great combination of engineering through the Department of Transportation, enforcement with our people, and we'll say education, but we really prefer to say prevention information that gets people to pay more attention to driving rather than operating cell phones and texting, as well as other things that they do. Our youth relations program, you know, it comes down to staffing, training, and one of the best partnerships that I'm aware of throughout the entire State of Florida. As you already know, we have 48 law enforcement deputies assigned to our school system. We have 20 crossing guards. And this year we have trained 35-plus liaison Page 129 June 20, 2013 deputies who can supplement when we need them to visit our schools on a random basis and to supplement where we need them. So that was a terrific concept. We were the first in the State of Florida. We held the training here in Collier County. And it was a terrific outcome. Our youth programs, we continue with Summer Fest. The driver -- the teen driver challenge, our youth leadership programs, our youth resource center. We continue to regularly contact more than 40,000 young people a year, and only four years ago we were making contact with 5,000 a year. So we continue to look at that as, again, a direction that the community has given us. And in the end, it pays us dividends that we'll never ever know except that we have great young people to lead our community. Reintegration programs. We've really headed out on this avenue this year. As you know, as we can contain the number of inmates in our jail facility, that continues to allow us to keep one of our facilities closed except for overnight holds. One of the ways in the future of corrections that we are going to be doing this nationally is to stop people from coming back to jail. It's very simple. It's a very costly process. We can't do it with everybody. Some people need to be there. Some people will stay there for a long time. But those that qualify and get involved in things like the cell dog program, get their GED, get their certificate for culinary arts so that they are employable upon release from our facility and learn the seven habits on the inside, which is a partnership with Cubby (phonetic), to get people thinking about how they take care of themselves when they're not incarcerated. All of that together helps, one by one, one person at a time. And this year we have had more than 70 people come out of those programs, and that's a great accomplishment for our corrections staff. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Sheriff, can we go back to that one moment. I want to mention something. And you and I had spoken Page 130 June 20, 2013 about this, but since you bring this up, I think it's, you know, worthy of stating publicly. The Pugh Foundation has been working on a pilot program in several states to develop a new approach to budgeting called evidence-based budgeting. And one of the programs that they targeted was exactly what you're describing here as a -- the impact of reintegration on recidivism and how that lowers the cost of basically managing your jails. And I had the opportunity to see their presentation on that. And I think you really need to see what they're doing. I'll give you the name of the contact. And maybe you want to use this reintegration program as a pilot program, if you will, for this evidence-based budgeting to show that if you can justify that you're going to reduce your jail costs by introducing programs like this, that it be will a net benefit to your bottom line as well as to the community. So it's actually a very, very smart way to do business, and I would encourage you to look at it. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: We absolutely will, because we agree fully with that conceptual idea. And, thus far, it's working pretty well. But we need to get out a full year with the individuals -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Of course. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: -- out of incarceration to really give you some better stats on that, but absolutely. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Sure. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: You know, with all of what we have done, that's great, but we're not going to stop. We certainly want to maintain the great programs that we've got. We continue to invest in technology, because that helps us reduce the need for bodies for certain functions, and that becomes very, very important, as well as improving connection with the community and information to and from the community, that exchange that we look to so that we can provide the best service. Increased community engagement. That's never ever going to Page 131 June 20, 2013 stop. We have had great benefits, and we're going to do even more of that in the future than we've done in the past. And we certainly -- as the economy improves, we know that the State of Florida's going to be looking at hiring of law enforcement officers, and we want to continue to recruit the best that we can for Collier County. And so those are just some of our goals for the coming year. Bottom line is Collier County remains a great and safe place. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Fiala? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Just a couple comments. You were talking about school crossing guards and so forth. I just want to say what an asset it's been at the East Naples Middle School where the kids were hit by cars. And so you guys jumped in when it was reported to you, and you provided that safety measure. And it was so appreciated by the parents of these children, because it's kind of hard to cross Davis Boulevard with the morning rush-hour traffic and no -- SHERIFF RAMBOSK: It is. COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- you know, and nobody guiding them along. And the second thing I wanted to compliment you on is the YRDs. That's a great program in these schools. And I've been working around with the East Naples schools and the principals, and they just feel it's one of the best assets that they have, and they're so pleased that you provide that service, and so am I. Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Nance? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Thank you. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes. Sheriff, thank you for everything that you do. We already touched on this earlier today, but I wanted to, perhaps, drag you into the fray today on the 800 megahertz radio system. I assume, sir, that you're the largest consumer of this Page 132 June 20, 2013 communications network that we're engaging in? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Yes, sir. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And I'd like you to opine a little bit about, you know, where you think we are with it. You know, your agency probably knows more about it than anyone. Can you help us get some comfort with where we are and, you know, what -- please tell us what you think. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: You know, I think you and I had a brief moment to talk a little bit about the future of communications, and I think that's where we all need to be focused. It's not what we need today. Today, if we look at buying a particular piece of equipment, is that going to be viable, usable to its fullest extent five years from now? I'd say 10, but in five it will change. So wherever we go, whatever system we look at, we have to make sure that we can -- it's automatically able to integrate with what we've got or where we're going, but more so, we have to strategize, and we have, where do we want to be in the future? You know, I will tell you that five to 10 years down the road, hand-held communications devices through the Internet, even for public safety, will be the operating plan, I believe. That's a personal opinion from all the information that I've seen. We have actually established a committee, and members of the county manager's staff are on it, in our agency. We've been working on that for probably the last six months where I open the meeting and overviewed where I thought our vision for communications should go, where technology is going that we know so far. So when we had the opportunity to talk, we were right on board with you about looking at the right direction to make the right decision. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes, sir. Well, I just hope we can all -- my hope is that we get to the very best outcome, and thank you very much. Page 133 June 20, 2013 SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Thanks. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I actually am going to make a comment which is probably surprising. I'm actually concerned that your budget -- don't be in shock because I know you've probably never heard this from a commission before -- could be too low. And my concern is payroll and your staffing. And while I really appreciate your very successful numbers, my question is, is how stretched is your staff? Because you did let a lot of people go. You did put a freeze on hiring. You haven't been giving raises, while the county has been giving raises. And so my question is, you know, is your staff stretched? Are they getting tired? Will we be able to sustain the standard that you have set for the community if you keep going without hiring more people and without compensating them proportionate to the contribution that they're making to the community? And I can't be the judge of that, but I raise that, because I remember several years ago we had a conversation in this room during budget hearings, and you basically said, you know, down the road we will not be able to continue in the manner in which we're operating now, that this is basically a short-term situation. So I have concerns. I have real concerns. I have concerns about the adequacy of your staffing (indicating). I have concerns about the adequacy of your staffing. I have to be very honest with you and question whether the proposed budget from a personnel standpoint is the right budget going forward. Let me add, the profile of the county is changing. Tourism is up significantly, which means in season our population is growing far more than it did during those prior years. And we're beginning to see an uptick, I believe, in population growth. A trend of what was is clearly changing. And we also are seeing a change in the profile of the community which suggests, you know, a future uptick in crime in certain areas. Page 134 June 20, 2013 COMMISSIONER HENNING: What? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Not many areas. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Not many. Very few. We'll scratch that. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Don't jinx us, Commissioner. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I'm not jinxing you. COMMISSIONER NANCE: I'm not getting insulted here, am I? Are you disparaging my district? CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: No, I'm not. Actually, all the murders are in mine, so I just want you to know. Isn't that true? Where's our homicide team? I just -- I would hate to see the trend change because we're being penny wise and pound foolish. And I don't know what the right number is, and maybe I'm completely wrong, but I need to hear from you what the answer is to the dilemma that I'm presenting. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: There's a lot of information to respond to your questions. But let me begin with we are at that point where we need to look at all of those things you mentioned, because the county is growing, things are changing. We've already established a plan not only for this year, for next year, for the year after, because we look three years out. And as I stand here today, I can tell you that I will be seeking an increase to budget at the next session for the next fiscal year with specific reasons and bases for that. One of the issues that we have right now, we're doing as much hiring as we can find qualified candidates. Our dilemma is not that we can't -- we don't have the funding to hire. We can't find candidates to pass the examination process that is set forth for security and guidance through the FBI, through our local organization. We get about -- well, less than 10 percent of those who apply actually wind up with a position. And so it will take us at least that throughout this year to catch up to that. Page 135 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And you're looking beyond? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Yes, and we're looking -- and we're looking well beyond that. And I will do what's necessary. And if that means coming to you and saying, look, we have 10 highly qualified candidates, and I'm asking for additional dollars prior to the end of the budget year, I will absolutely do that. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: But I won't do it unless I need it. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Of course. And that's up to you to determine. I just want to be sure that that's being properly weighed, and you're telling me it is. What about compensation for your current staff? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: We also were able to provide a 2 percent increase that was consistent throughout the county last year, and we've included even that in the absorbed cost for this year. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So have you given your staff a 2 percent increase for the current year in the current budget? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So if we give the COLA adjustment to all the constitutionals, as I suggested this morning, would that then give them an increase of 3.2 percent? If we give you -- or is that 1.2 that I'm suggesting inclusive in the 2 that's being proposed? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: I would see that as being inclusive in what you've proposed and maybe offsetting some of the state-mandated $2.4 million cost. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So what you have presented to us in your current budget includes the 1.2 percent, whereas, this morning when we were talking, the county manager didn't present it to us in that fashion, because his presentation was that we would be considering it, that none of the budgets actually included that at this point. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: No, that is correct. I mean, in order to Page 136 June 20, 2013 meet the objective that you set forth for guidance, we had to absorb all the costs that I overviewed with you. But if you're going to increase that objective, then certainly we would add that above what we've got. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. Because that's a little bit different than what you said earlier, because what you said earlier is that that 1 .2 was incorporated in that 2 percent. And Leo is nodding, but what I'm hearing you say now is that 1 .2 would be on top of the 2 percent. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: I don't think I said 1.2 was incorporated in the budget. All I said was we gave a 2 percent increase like other agencies did. MR. OCHS: This year. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: This year. We're not talking -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I'm talking -- okay. You and I are using -- it's semantics. When I'm talking about this year, I'm talking about this -- the budget that we're talking about now, the 2014. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Yes. There is nothing included there to meet your guidance for an increase. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. So right now your salaries are flat? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Comparable to this year? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: This year, yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So that if we as a board decide to give a 1 .2 percent increase across the board, that would be on top of the budget currently presented by the sheriff? MR. OCHS: That's correct. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Yes, you're correct. I'm sorry. That was my fault. I thought it was funding for this year. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah. You were about to short yourself. Just saying. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Okay. Page 137 June 20, 2013 COMMISSIONER NANCE: They would have reminded him. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: But again, I just want to go back. It is -- because you really haven't been giving your staff raises -- SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Correct. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: -- at all where we have. MR. OCHS: Wait a minute, wait a minute. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Have we been giving our staff raises? COMMISSIONER FIALA: He just said he gave a 2 percent raise. MR. OCHS: We are keeping pace with each other. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Yeah. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. Well, that's what I'm asking. Someone needs to tell me these things. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: All right. So there is parity; we're giving the same type of raises? MR. OCHS: Yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: All right. That's good. I just wanted clarity on that. Just checking. Just checking. COMMISSIONER NANCE: You're taking this under advisement, right, Mr. Ochs? You're going to come back to us with an analysis of this so we understand what year we're talking about and so forth? MR. OCHS: Yeah. We'll get your calendars correct. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Thank you, sir. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I just don't want to see morale adversely affected because they're -- you know, your staff is not getting paid. And I understand and so much appreciate how conservative you are, because you know fiscally I'm conservative also. But, you know, as I see it, people are your most important asset. So, you know, while we sit here and we talk about bridges and roads Page 138 June 20, 2013 and stuff like that, yeah, that's important to you too, but not as much as people. So I want to make sure that, you know, it's all being properly addressed and that we're not, like I said, being penny wise and pound foolish and stopping a trend, which is great. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Right, and we agree. And since we've been able to keep up, if you are going to grant something, we certainly want to be included in that grant. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. Well, it is my proposal, and I will bring that forward as a motion, you know, when the time comes, because I do believe we have the funding to be able to do that. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: The last clarification I'll make, and it probably just makes it worse, but it would not go on the top of a 2 percent next year. It wouldn't be 3.2 percent. It would be whatever the percentage is that you grant above. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I don't even want to discuss it further. You are so confusing me. I'm like, you know -- is there anyone blond here? I feel like a blond, so -- with all due respect. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I'm blond. Just to mention. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I forgot. But let me just -- only her hairdresser knows for sure. COMMISSIONER NANCE: You're forgetting Commissioner Henning. He just reminded me. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You know what, I'm going no further. We're done. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I think maybe this is a good time to stop. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: It is. Thank you so much. I don't think there are any further questions. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Thank you very much for your support. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Leo? Page 139 June 20, 2013 MR. OCHS: That now takes us to your debt service and your management offices. Commissioners, I -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Wait a second. What about the property appraiser and the tax collector; are they going to present at all? MR. OCHS: No, ma'am. They don't get transfers from your General Fund. And, in fact, the tax collector's not even required under law to submit his budget till August 1st. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. MR. OCHS: So we typically don't have them join us during your June workshops. It will be appropriated into the budget itself. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I didn't know -- and I didn't know if they just publicly presented their budget just to let the public know whatever they're doing with -- I mean, you have them on the list here, so that was why I was asking. COMMISSIONER FIALA: We received one from the property appraiser. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah, we did. COMMISSIONER FIALA: But that's just to -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I do want to ask a question. And we did receive the budget from the property appraiser. In fact, I have it right here. But I have a question before you begin with respect to revenues, and this is really a question directed both to the property appraiser and the tax collector. I would like information on the appraised values and the taxes collected on oil and gas rights. And I think it's really important that we have an understanding, because right now there's all this discussion about drilling for oil and -- so I think we need to have that information. I would like to know, for example, what we have assessed and collected over the past five years. And I think that information should Page 140 June 20, 2013 be presented to the board. And if you think that there's any further information with respect to that that we should request, please let me know. Commissioner Nance? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes. I would actually like to add something to that discussion, because it came to my attention in dealing with the various questions from the community about the status of mineral rights in Collier County. And it's my understanding that the lands that were transferred to the Department of the Interior that make up the Big Cypress National Preserve were originally slated to become part of the Everglades National Park. And they did not become part of the Everglades National Park for the simple reason that the Department of the Interior was not willing to compensate the property owners for the underlying mineral rights which, apparently, are substantial and may be getting more substantial as time and technology allows them to be extracted. So I think this is a realistic thing that we need to evaluate and understand what the value of this is and what the implications are for us, because it's a vast part of our county. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yes, it is. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Jobs. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yep. Well, you know, if you -- I mean, look at Pepper Ranch as an example. You know, we were talking about that earlier this morning. When Pepper Ranch was sold, the owners of the property were allowed to retain the mineral rights. Well, those have value. You know, what's the present value of those -- that potential future stream? And my understanding is the owner of those rights is supposed to be taxed based on the current fair value, and it's supposed to be a separate tax bill separate and apart from the property. So I think it's very important that, you know, we're assured that those rights are Page 141 June 20, 2013 being assessed and that those taxes are being collected, because that is potentially a large revenue stream if they're not. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. I will -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So let's find out what's going on. MR. OCHS: I've got both of those constitutional officers and -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. MR. OCHS: -- we'll get the board's questions answered. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And if you could report back to us and let us know, that would be great. MR. OCHS: I'd be happy to. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Before you begin, I think we need to give our court reporter a break. Commissioner Fiala, notwithstanding that she's blonde, reminded me. So we're going to take a 10-minute break, and we'll be back at 2:50. MR. OCHS: Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Thank you. (A brief recess was had.) CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: The 2014 budget workshop is now back in session, and we're going to begin with a question from Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Leo, I -- correct me if I'm wrong, when we were cutting our budget, maybe 2009/2010, didn't the sheriff give his employees raises? MR. OCHS: Oh, boy. Commissioner, let me check. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Because if we're doing this for parity reasons, why are we starting now? Why didn't we do that? And I mean, I just -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Right, I agree. Everything should be fair. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And is it your understanding this is above and beyond what the printed budget for the sheriff is? Page 142 June 20, 2013 MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. He came in with a flat budget that, from what I'm told and what I'm able to read in the budget document, doesn't include any appropriation for salary adjustments. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Right. So we need to know how that's going to affect our budget, what we need to cut. MR. OCHS: Well, no. What I indicated this morning, Commissioner, you've got -- the '14 budget adds $4 million in reserves COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, it does. MR. OCHS: -- to your General Fund, and your sheriff is always funded with a transfer, as you know, from your General Fund to cover the cost of his operations. What we said this morning was that if you apply that one-and-a-half percent adjustment to our agency, it's about $1 .8 million. Just doing quick math, we have about half of the total number of employees. Constitutionals have the other half. We figured it would take another million eight. So you're looking at 3.6, so you'd still have a half a million dollars of build-up in your reserves in '14, not obviously the 4 million. As I mentioned this morning, anything that we do in terms of pay adjustments or additional capital expenses would come off of that reserve. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And, Commissioner Henning, if I may, part of the analysis is that if you look at leasing some of those assets which have a -- the risk of rapid obsolescence as opposed to purchasing them, and we have them as purchases now, then what happens is you free up that capital which can be applied to reserves. So you satisfy your reserve objective while still being able to give everyone the very same COLA adjustment. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Which -- oh, are you talking about the bio? No, that's a different one. Which capital improvement? MR. OCHS: No. Commissioner, we had proposed a set-aside of Page 143 June 20, 2013 $3 million as the first of a two-year set-aside to purchase a replacement helicopter. We had budgeted $3 million to upgrade your 800 megahertz public safety radio system. That was only Phase 1 of a five-phase program. Some equipment, heavy equipment replacement. There was about $9 million worth of capital expenditure that Commissioner Hiller had asked us to look at instead of an outright purchase, some kind of a lease/purchase -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. MR. OCHS: -- where we wouldn't have as much upfront capital outlay. You could spread the cost over a reasonable number of years, and I think most of the board was in agreement that we ought to evaluate that at least. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And maybe -- right. And what we could even consider doing, like I said, as an example, the 800 megahertz system, which we discussed with the sheriff where, you know, if we know five years from now whatever system we have won't integrate with whatever equipment will be, you know, the equipment of the moment, why even buy it? I mean, why not a short-term lease and then, you know, in three years upgrade to whatever the next best system is that integrates with what we're doing, so we're not committing 15 million to something that would be a complete waste. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I got where you're coming from, so you can apply that to your reserves. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Right. COMMISSIONER HENNING: By the way, my desktop is 2004. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Well, when you come back with your evaluation, sir, though, if you're going to report to us on where you think the inequities are, like I suggested earlier, we may have to move over a number of years. We might (sic) be able to accomplish this in one bite, depending on what your evaluation shows and Page 144 June 20, 2013 recommendation may be. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Right, of course. COMMISSIONER NANCE: You know, I think, if we're dedicated with the constitutional officers to move in the proper way, everybody can agree, you know, to a pathway to get that done, and -- MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Coyle? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. I'm certain you're going to take into consideration the issue of taking one-time expenses for capital improvements in expenditures and applying that to recurring obligations forever in the future, because an adjustment to salary is a recurring revenue every year, whereas a capital improvement is generally a single payment, and saving it doesn't happen every year. So, of course, that's going to be part of your analysis, but there might still be some economies there that are significant, so -- MR. OCHS: Yeah, I understand. COMMISSIONER COYLE: I support continuing, but just -- you've got to keep that point in mind, okay? MR. OCHS: Absolutely. That's a good point. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Fiala, and then I'd like to go ahead, and we've got a number of staffers waiting to speak. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes. And while you're analyzing these things -- now, Commissioner Henning suggested maybe that one-and-a-half percent instead would pull down our health insurance costs, I mean, you know, rather than having to pay a tax on it; whereas, in the sheriffs office they don't have any health insurance costs. Are those -- are those wages even? Now we were talking about everybody -- about parity, but if they already make the same as we make but their insurance is paid a 100 percent and ours is paid 80 percent, now are we talking parity? So while you're analyzing, I think it would be nice if you would check into that as well. Page 145 June 20, 2013 MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And there's a difficulty with that, because, you know, they have a different type of employee than we have. So you can't very well, for example, compare a homicide detective to, I don't know, one of the -- to one of Len's staff. I mean, so the -- you know, what is fair as to what their pay is is something -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: But they probably get compensated for, you know, danger pay, you know. I'm -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I'm not sure. I wouldn't know that, but I just think -- again, the objective -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: I just want to make sure it's fair for everyone. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Right. The objective is fairness. I mean, we want to make sure there's equal pay for equal work. We want to make sure that, you know, if we're getting a COLA, they're getting a COLA. We want to make sure that -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: And the clerk. For instance -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Just fair, right. COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- if the clerk -- you know, he doesn't have anybody in danger pay, but, you know, he would want to make sure that he gets the same pay also for his employees. And if everybody's -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER FIALA: You know, if somebody's getting free health insurance and the rest of us have decided, you know, as we did a few years back, to cut it back to 80 percent, and there are other constitutional officers doing the same thing, where their employees get 100 percent, then our employees shouldn't -- and the same with the clerk's office and the elections office -- shouldn't be getting less pay when you figure health insurance isn't included. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And, you know, I just thought of this. Commissioner Fiala raises an interesting point. If, for example, Page 146 June 20, 2013 the sheriffs payroll has been held lower, and he is basically making up for that lower payroll by giving that health benefit at that higher percentage, he may be doing that for the very reason that Commissioner Henning recommended, which is so that these people, you know, are not receiving it as part of their paycheck but rather as -- and I don't know. Is it a nontaxable benefit? MR. OCHS: What's that, ma'am? CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: The benefits, the health benefits. Like, the portion that we pay for their benefits, that's nontaxable, right? That's not considered compensation? MR. OCHS: No. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So, you know, it may very well be that he's doing that for the very reason that Commissioner Henning is suggesting we do it at the county. And I don't -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: Should we evaluate all of them so that it's fair and square? You see what -- MR. OCHS: It's a complex task, and we need to hurry up and finish this meeting so I can get started. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Isn't that what the auto -- yeah. Isn't that what the auto -- isn't that what the auto industry did? Like, one of the companies in the auto industry -- someone was telling me that in the auto industry they were, like, constantly upping the benefits instead of the pay, and then there were all sorts of problems. I don't know much about these payroll issues, but it's something our HR and, quite frankly, our County Attorney's Office should look at. COMMISSIONER NANCE: I'll make one more brief comment, and I will just say, in Silicon Valley where they have some of the most progressive companies, a lot of them have salary and benefit determinations, but they really have a cafeteria plan where some benefits are more important to some people than others, and they get an option to select among a menu of benefits that are equivalent and fair and honest. Page 147 June 20, 2013 But, you know, some -- one person might not need insurance for some reason or another, where another, you know, it's a great benefit and it's preferable. So not to make things needlessly complicated, but there's a lot of companies out there really examining, and what it does for them is it actually makes them more attractive in the workplace for employees than another competitor might be. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So, Leo, here's a suggestion. Cancel your trip to Las Vegas and get to work, okay, because I'm telling you -- MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: -- our board has been very fruitful with ideas today. COMMISSIONER NANCE: He's already got workshops through December already. MR. OCHS: Exactly. You guys have filled up the workshop calendar. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Next item. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Come on, let's go. Let's move on. MR. OCHS: Commissioners, we have three items left. The next two are your debt service and your management offices. I'll try to kind of roll those real quickly into a couple of succinct summary remarks. Your general governmental debt service for FY 14. That's the interest payments on your principal debt for general governmental debt, not enterprise debt, is down $17 million from current Fiscal Year '13; that approximates about a 30 percent reduction. You saw the bar graph during my presentation this morning. This board continues to retire its debt at an aggressive pace, and we also have worked under your guidance to aggressively restructure debt to take advantage of historically low interest rates over the last few years. You'll see another utility bond re-funding on your agenda next Page 148 June 20, 2013 Tuesday. So the news is generally positive with regard to the trends in both our overall debt and our ability to manage our debt service well within the 13 percent cap on all bondable revenues that the board had set several years ago. So unless there's any other questions on general governmental debt service, we can move on to the management offices. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Good work, Leo. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah, but we are going to come back with the analysis from our investment advisors as to what the future ought to be. MR. OCHS: Yes, absolutely. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: The debt management. MR. OCHS: And then the next item on the agenda is your management offices. You have the directors of those areas sitting in the front row. And, again, I would tell you that these consist of the Office Management and Budget that Mark runs; your Tourist Development and Tourism and CBB, with Jack Wert; Communications, Customer Relations with Mike Sheffield; Pelican Bay Services. Kyle Lukasz is representing Pelican Bay Services; and your Office of Business and Economic Development, Bruce Register. In terms of their budgets for next year, there's no expanded service requests, no new position requests. All of them are essentially in compliance. Your remittance payments for some of your economic incentives are bumped up next year because they've performed to the next level in their contract. Other than that, there's nothing remarkable about those budgets. They're here to answer any questions that the board has. If not, we can move on to -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: I have a couple of things. MR. OCHS: Okay. Page 149 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Coyle would like to COMMISSIONER COYLE: How about the County Commissioner's office? When are we going to do that? MR. OCHS: Right after -- MR. ISAACSON: We can do that right after or now, sir. MR. OCHS: We can do it right now. Let's do it right now. COMMISSIONER COYLE: I don't have any questions of these guys. They're all good. COMMISSIONER NANCE: I have a couple things that I would like to inquire about. MR. OCHS: Sure. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Under economic development, we've talked about, you know, beginning with that, and basically what I would like to address is the Seminole contact money, which I see is being applied to the Economic Development Incentive Program. And I think that's really a misuse of this money, and I will tell you why. Out in Immokalee where we're blessed with a great many not-for-profits that, quite frankly, own some of the most significant buildings in the Immokalee urban area, we have a situation where these people are not contributory to things like the fire district, and it puts a tremendous burden on the citizens out there. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Do they contribute to TIF? COMMISSIONER NANCE: I'm sure -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: CRA TIF money? COMMISSIONER NANCE: I'm sure that they impact the value of the community. There's absolutely no question about that. COMMISSIONER FIALA: But they don't pay taxes, right? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Well, they don't pay fire assessments. You know, the fire -- the fire and rescue district out there has to have equipment to address the structures that they have to Page 150 June 20, 2013 protect. And, you know, there's a situation there where, in these rural fire districts, these people actually pay an extraordinarily high tax rate for services because there's not enough of them, and they're spread thin, and the services are required. In addition, you'll note that the MSTU in Immokalee is for beautification. And one of the reasons, clearly, that the beautification was done was to set the stage for things like the Seminole Indian Casino, which is a big attractor and one of the greatest destinations in our county. So I really think it's a travesty that this little bit of money that we receive from gaming revenue in the amount of$265,000 is taken away from that area when they need it so very desperately to do a few things in that town. Those people -- you know, they pay a lot of taxes based on their income and their ability to pay, in my estimation, for things like beautification. That's pretty tough out there for them right now. And I really think that the dedication of this money from the tribe should be reevaluated. I certainly support funding for economic development. I think we need to come to grips with it. But I think to pick off a little sum of money like $265,000 from Immokalee is just unfair. MR. OCHS: Well, Commissioner, I will tell you that, obviously, under the gaming compact, it's general revenue -- discretionary general revenue to the Board of County Commissioners to put wherever you want. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Agreed, agreed. MR. OCHS: A couple of years ago when we began to talk about economic development and how we would begin to develop some funding separate and apart from ad valorem revenue, I just suggested, since this was new revenue that was generated by visitors to the community and people from all over the community, it should come Page 151 June 20, 2013 back to the board as a general revenue to decide where they want it to go. COMMISSIONER NANCE: I understand. I -- MR. OCHS: At that time they decided to begin to put it away so we could develop a potential for some incentive; if you find a company, even one that wants to come to the Immokalee airport and develop or some other place out in that area of the community, you could use those funds to incent out there as well as you could anywhere else. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Understood. MR. OCHS: Board policy decision, bottom line. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Henning? Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner Nance, I hope that you would encourage the fire departments to consolidate. And I think -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: I absolutely do. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And you ought to ask the question, if we give this to you, where are you going to put the money? What are you going to do with the money? I think that's a fair question. Like Immokalee, Golden Gate has a beautification MSTU started by the citizens to beautify the area. It was an initiative by the citizens. And I think Immokalee has been probably there since the '80s. It's been there for quite a while. But like Golden Gate, it wants to bring up the community -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: Absolutely. And don't get me wrong. I do not have anything that I would -- if you asked me, what would I do with this money, I'd have absolutely no answer. I hadn't considered it all, actually. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And, you know, it, quite frankly, going to the fire department, maybe it probably is a worthy Page 152 June 20, 2013 one, but you'd want to know -- I would like to know if that is being proposed. COMMISSIONER NANCE: I'm not proposing that. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. So where are you proposing that money to be -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: I'm not proposing it to go anywhere. I'm just responding based on the sentiment that a lot of people out in Immokalee reacted to. You know, they looked at it and they thought, wow, you know, we're -- you know, we're in support. We're spending our tax monies to help this be successful. It's the only thing we've got going on in town. Isn't it a shame that the money disappeared on us? That was the reaction. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, there's nothing wrong with earmarking it for economic development in the Immokalee urban area, period. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And then, Leo, you would have to find another source of revenues to fund the economic development office. MR. OCHS: No, ma'am. Not a penny of this has ever been spent. We would -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Oh, you were just building the reserves for payment of incentives; I understand. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. In case you get a company that you would want to consider. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. So that's how you have been -- yeah, that's fine. So why not just earmark it in exactly that manner? That makes sense. Is that acceptable? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Sure. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Is that acceptable? MR. OCHS: Well -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: Let's think about it. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. Page 153 June 20, 2013 COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. Let me just make an observation. The Unincorporated General Fund is made up of taxes paid by people from a very, very broad area. And Immokalee gets a fair portion of that. As a matter of fact, I think if you were to take a look at the amount of money flowing into Immokalee from other communities, it would far outweigh the total taxes paid by the people in Immokalee. COMMISSIONER NANCE: I have no doubt of it. COMMISSIONER COYLE: So there are other people who are paying to help Immokalee improve, and nobody is complaining about that. So I would be careful about trying to earmark General Fund money to a particular community. Certainly if it's brought to the board and you have a good reason for it, we would approve it just like we approve the building of park facilities and other kinds of things in Immokalee. But I am weary of taking money and just earmarking it for anything specific, because at some point in time that becomes unfair to other communities who are being taxed. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Commissioner Coyle, I understand exactly what you're saying, but in many respects the service standards that we have in the urban coastal zone are not the service standards that we have in Immokalee. And I hear it in subtle ways all the time. You know, I hear about the quality of the equipment that shows up at our parks and recreation facilities. A lot of times they're hand-me-downs, okay. And the people are reacting very poorly to that. They understand that they don't pay the taxes that the people in the urban coastal zone pay, but they also don't ask for a lot of the services that the urban coastal zone asks for. But they do want to -- they do want to be treated -- they don't want to be -- to feel like they're always being treated like second-class Page 154 June 20, 2013 citizens. In a lot of cases, I'm sorry to say, that I think that they actually are and, you know, I have to advocate for them. So I just want a little consideration. I'm sure Commissioner Fiala has areas in her district that the people feel the same. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, let me add, in Immokalee only -- you know, I never thought about it till you mentioned it -- there are so many not-for-profits, and they don't pay any tax. And they do contribute to the welfare of the community, but they don't pay a tax. And same with the Seminoles; they don't pay a tax. They give us -- they give us an amount to compensate for not paying any taxes. So now you've got -- and then you've got a lot of people that have properties that probably, by the time you take your homesteading and so forth, they don't pay a tax. So now you come to very few taxpayers but a lot of needs. And so, you know -- and that -- I can understand what they're saying. I think that the county has really responded to their needs. They have three lovely parks, and they've got a library. I mean, I wish I had three parks that had community centers in them. I do not. But I think the county has tried to do what they can to support a better life in Immokalee but, yet, there's hardly any taxpayers to give extra money to it. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Let me remind you of one other thing, and then I don't want to belabor this discussion. But our CRA out there that really needs to be focused on economic development finds itself competing with 15 or 20 not-for-profits out there, and they're going head to head for those grants. So the CRA, a lot of times, doesn't get the grants for economic development. The social service agencies receive the grants. And granted, those are very, very important services. The people out there need social services. But let me tell you what they need the most. They need jobs. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Jobs. Page 155 June 20, 2013 COMMISSIONER NANCE: They need jobs. We need to get some money into economic development out there. You know, we need to give them a hand, not a handout. And I'm not -- and I'm not -- I'm not criticizing those social service agencies out there. They are magnificent. But our CRA economic development has to compete head to head. And it's tough, because they're good not-for-profits. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Now, let me feed on that one, because if there aren't taxes being paid, then there aren't TIF monies being paid; is that correct? And so, if there aren't TIF monies being paid, then the CRA is not getting the benefit of tax -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: Well, the TIF comes from the raise in the value of the taxable properties. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Of the taxable. But not-for-profits don't pay tax. COMMISSIONER NANCE: That's correct. COMMISSIONER FIALA: And the Seminoles don't pay tax. What I'm trying to say is -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: What about -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- they're less funded because -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: What about all the ag exemptions out there? COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, I don't even know about the ag exemptions. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Well, sure, because -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: But they certainly pay an agricultural -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yeah, but it's teeny-weeny, because COMMISSIONER FIALA: That's what I'm saying. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: But you don't -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: You're both saying exactly what I'm saying is, they have such a less advantage because the money isn't Page 156 June 20, 2013 going into TIF or it isn't going into taxes to support community. And, of course -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: I respect what Commissioner Coyle said 100 percent. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Right. COMMISSIONER NANCE: My intention was not to snag this money. But what I wanted to say was, that I think there just should be some consideration made about it at some point in the future before it's just out of pocket dedicated to this without another thought. That's all. No -- I don't have any plans for it. Not trying to steal it. I just -- I think we need to think about it. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Good thought. The next item on the agenda, then, is the discussion of the Board of County Commissioners' budget. Is that what you wanted to discuss next, Commissioner Coyle? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. I just have some questions that are not -- there's not enough information in the budget to answer my questions, and that relates to how the budget is going to be put together and who is going to be responsible for doing that. We understand how the salaries work, we understand how expense budgets work, but I'm not certain about how you deal with general things like postage and paper and proclamations and the proclamation paper and frames and general office things. Those aren't, I hope, being allocated to specific commissioners. I would hope there's -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: I hope not. COMMISSIONER COYLE: -- there's a catchall for all of this miscellaneous stuff, so -- faxes and telephone calls and all that sort of stuff. If you can just explain to us how you're going to do that, I think it will solve my problem. Page 157 June 20, 2013 MR. ISAACSON: Commissioners, the -- remember when you had this discussion -- I don't recall when it was, Leo, when it -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: It was the second meeting in March at 9:45 in the morning. MR. ISAACSON: Right. And then there was -- and then there was direction from the board that talked about separating into five cost centers for personnel services, and then those specific appropriations that relate to each one of the commissioners, travel, et cetera. And then we talked about creating a sixth cost center that is essentially what we call a general cost center for items, Commissioner, that you just mentioned. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Overhead -- MR. ISACCSON: Yes. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: -- essentially. MR. ISAACSON: Now, we've also talked subsequent to that amongst us, including some of those -- some of your executive assistants, sitting down with them and saying, what would be appropriate to put in that particular cost center? That discussion is still ongoing in terms of what would be appropriate for that particular cost center, and that's how we're going to handle it moving forward. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's fine. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. MR. ISAACSON: I don't know whether that answers your question or not. COMMISSIONER COYLE: So you're working on it, but the general concept is, you take all that miscellaneous stuff, lump it into one cost center, or one line item, and manage it that way? MR. ISAACSON: Yes. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Which is fine. That's a logical way. I can't imagine people taking the time to decide how much paper or postage each of us -- MR. OCHS: No, that's not the intent. Page 158 June 20, 2013 COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. So you're not going to do that, good. All right. Then you've answered my question. I approve of the budget. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: The next item on the agenda, I believe, is the County Attorney's Office. Hi. You have a really nice budget. MR. KLATZKOW: Same as last year. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: It absolutely is marvelous. And what's interesting about your budget -- because I actually do read those reports that you put out with all our litigation listed -- is that you have been able to basically service us without changing our staffing and without expenditures towards outside counsel, notwithstanding the volume of litigation we have. That, in some instances, you know, has increased. MR. KLATZKOW: I have good people. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You have very good people. I'm personally curious to see -- I remember when we had a different county attorney, and we had a lot more people working under that county attorney. I would be interested in seeing how things have changed, if you have any information that would show where we are from, say, you know, five years ago in terms of people and productivity. MR. KLATZKOW: We've lost one-third of the office and one-third of the budget, and the work is identical. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Oh, wow. MR. KLATZKOW: The work hasn't changed. We track our work through what we call RLSs, requests for legal services, and it hasn't changed. And I think the explanation for that is twofold. I mean, first of all, we were -- in my opinion, the office was mismanaged before and we were overstaffed, and we've gone through that. Page 159 June 20, 2013 But there's another core issue here, and that's that with the county manager's help over the years and this board, we've spent a lot of money in IT in this county. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: We have. MR. KLATZKOW: And the productivity I can get out of my office compared to five years ago or 10 years ago is remarkable. I mean, we don't use fax machines anymore because they're too slow. I mean, we just -- it's instantaneous now with electronic email. We've got a wonderful database system that the county manager's people service, and I keep losing people, and I keep losing people, and I'm making it up because of-- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Efficiency tools. MR. KLATZKOW: -- this IT we have now. And I think the country's finding that out, too, because you're going through a bit of a recovery here, but the employment numbers aren't changing. And I think what's happened in my shop is happening to some of Leo's shops and it's happening throughout the country where we spent all this money over all these years on IT, and we never realized what a big productivity gain it really was until we started having to shed people because of budget, and then we found out that we just don't need as many people because it's just faster. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: That's a very interesting observation. MR. KLATZKOW: I started out years and years and years ago in high school. I was a messenger in New York City. I worked at a law firm in the World Trade Center. And I can't imagine that job even exists anymore because now -- it used to be they would give me a contract, and I'd get onto the subway, and I'd go midtown and deliver the contract and wait and then come back. This is all electronic now. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Right. MR. KLATZKOW: You just take your contract, you zap it up, it zaps right down. It's just -- it's a different world now. Page 160 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Yep. Very interesting. Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Not to anything on county attorney's budget, but getting back to Commissioner Coyle's question. Are we still going to have to separate out office supplies such as Commissioner Coyle needs a ream of paper, I need a ream of paper, there's two different POs for that -- for two reams of paper? MR. ISAACSON: No. We should -- we would have that all on one central cost center where -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. The only thing that we're separating out from the individual commissioners is salaries and travel, and the rest of them will be combined? MR. ISAACSON: Well, there will probably be other things. MR. OCHS: You might have cell phones, maybe, sir. There's a few things, but most of the general commodities will be one consolidated cost center. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. So Commissioner Nance's aide can order a ream of paper for Commissioner Coyle and myself? It won't be a problem? MR. ISAACSON: Well, right now, I think -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: That might violate the Sunshine Law. MR. ISAACSON: Right now I think there's -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: As long as there's nothing written on it, Commissioner Coyle. MR. ISAACSON: We actually have held back -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: It's probably still a Sunshine violation. MR. ISACCSON: This particular fiscal year we've actually made the separation with the exception of some of the operating cost centers, and we're waiting for some training to get done with some of the assistants so that everybody is on board and can do the same types Page 161 June 20, 2013 of things, so -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: My last question, would anybody object to having this landscaping workshop called the edible landscaping workshop? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah, I would object to it. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, we're still talking about canopy trees. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You mean the ones that are -- that get canopies when they're 70 feet high when my grandchildren are born? COMMISSIONER FIALA: How about if we have an item under the category of landscaping to discuss edible landscaping. COMMISSIONER HENNING: That's fine. I mean, I'm just thinking as far as the tourism marketing thing is, geez, you know, we came to Collier County or came to Naples, and I went to the store to buy some suntan lotion and -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And pulled an avocado off the tree. COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- and I picked a navel orange off the tree. Nowhere else in the State of Florida I could have done that. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Or there were oranges all over my car, and it stained my paint job. COMMISSIONER HENNING: But it smelled really good. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Oh, boy. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Or a visitor was eaten by an alligator trying to pick a coconut. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Are you guys in the audience asking me to bring order to the forum? I mean, go ahead. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes, please. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Are we going to invoke -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: I have one more comment. Page 162 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: -- the code of conduct here? A secret code, by the way. No one knows what it is, so don't tell anyone. Go ahead, Commissioner Nance, and then I have a comment. COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes. I have one more general comment that I was waiting for this meeting to -- as the newest member of the board, I have worked diligently to be in this office on a very, very regular basis during my first six months, and I will tell you that there are several vehicles that are parked out in the parking lot. I have parked next to them daily. And during my first eight months in your service, I will tell you that each one of those cars -- one of them I think has been moved once, and the other one certainly less than a dozen times during that period of time. I would suggest, in the spirit of efficiency, that we repatriate those vehicles into the motor pool. And if one of the commissioners here, which don't people seem to be using these vehicles now, should need one, they should go to a rental car agency and rent a Bentley, because we would be saving money, because birds are making nests on these vehicles out there. I mean, they're having birthdays, and they're not being used. So we should either use them for a better purpose, sell them, take the money, buy some paper for Commissioner Coyle, whatever we can do, and gain a little bit of a something, because right now they're just in the way, and they're deteriorating. Really, they're deteriorating, and they're not being used. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I think that's an excellent observation, and you're absolutely right. It is a wasting asset, and they should be put in the motor pool. And to the extent any commissioner needs a vehicle, Leo arranges for a car to be pulled on an as-need basis and eliminate that from our budget. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Can I make a friendly amendment to that motion? COMMISSIONER NANCE: Yes, sir. Page 163 June 20, 2013 COMMISSIONER COYLE: Why don't we use the money that we save from that to build a shed over our parking spaces? CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Oh, I like that. COMMISSIONER COYLE: It would save me a fortune in car washing fees, because every time I park under that tree, you're right, birds just -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: And then the berries, when the berries fall off at a certain time of year and stain it. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. I'm kidding, but it's something that somebody, if you come up with extra money and you don't have anything else to do, keep that in mind. MR. OCHS: Well, we have some gaming proceeds in Immokalee. COMMISSIONER NANCE: See, there we go. COMMISSIONER FIALA: What'd you say? Say it again. COMMISSIONER NANCE: It all comes back to you, doesn't it? COMMISSIONER FIALA: What did he say? MR. OCHS: I said, we have some gaming proceeds from the casino in Immokalee. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I do -- I have one question. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I think the meeting is deteriorating. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: We're desperately looking to figure out how to get to 5 o'clock. The question I have relates to ongoing litigation. Jeff, can you give us an update on -- and I know the state has been knocking on our door and asking for that $11 million. Where are we on the $11 million de-obligation by FEMA related to the beach renourishment? And where are we on the $9 million that they have denied us related to beach renourishment? Basically a total of$20 million that the feds are pulling out of your budget. And then my question after that is to Leo. Where or how have you considered the contingent liability of the $11 million that we need Page 164 June 20, 2013 to pay back if that is -- if that request does have to be followed through on? MR. OCHS: Commissioner, you have $11 million sitting in a reserve in your Fund 195, beach renourishment fund. That's earmarked for nothing other than to pay that back if and when we're required to or some portion thereof. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. MR. OCHS: The $9 million was money that we never received. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Correct. MR. OCHS: So there's no loss of revenue or return of revenue, per se. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: But no anticipation of revenue either. MR. OCHS: No, we did not budget that. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Right. And I just wanted to make sure that we've earmarked to pay back and that we haven't in any way reflected the potential recovery of the nine. MR. OCHS: No. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Commissioner, could I just ask, we've got a bunch of people still sitting here. Do we -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: They're done. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, you're all done? CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Well, did you -- MR. OCHS: They're done, yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: They are done. We went through it. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, okay, fine. I was going to say -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Unless there is anything -- that's why we had moved on to the next item. COMMISSIONER COYLE: We are done, too. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Well, almost done, because I want to know from Jeff where we are on that litigation for the 11 million. Page 165 June 20, 2013 We don't have any litigation related to the 9 million; we just have a denial. So with respect to the 11 million, my understanding -- is that correct, we're on the third appeal on that? MR. KLATZKOW: I wouldn't call it an appeal. We're going through an administrative process. We're in the Atlanta offices right now. We've hired outside counsel who's working with staff hand in hand to see what we can do. He tells us he doesn't think he's going to get a decision for a year, year and a half, because FEMA has other issues right now they're dealing with, and this is very low on their priority. But it's going to be a very slow and lengthy process. But we'll see. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: So in the meantime those funds can't be used, is your point? MR. KLATZKOW: I wouldn't touch them. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Okay. I just wanted to confirm that. So that basically, you know, remains as a contingency reserve for litigation. MR. OCHS: Yes, ma'am. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: All right. Is there anything else that you would like to discuss, Leo? MR. OCHS: No, just to thank the board for their time and their indulgence is always -- it's a long document, and we do appreciate your focus and questions, and we look forward to bringing back good answers to your questions in September. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Well, staff did a very good job this year in staying on point and, you know, within the guideline. County Attorney, is there anything you'd like to address with respect to the budget? MR. KLATZKOW: No, not at all. Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Members of the board, are there any additional comments that you would like to share? Page 166 June 20, 2013 COMMISSIONER COYLE: A question. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Nice -- CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Go ahead. County -- I'm sorry. Commissioner Coyle. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Just a quick question. I have a copy of the Chapter 2013-193 laws of Florida. I am not certain that this is a requirement in our current procurement procedures, but it certainly -- I'm just interested in knowing if this is something new. And, essentially, they're saying that if we're letting a contract for any public work for the construction of public bridges, buildings, or other structure, we must specify that contract lumber, timber, and other forest products produced and manufactured in the State of Florida must be used. Do we have a requirement for that in our procurement procedures now, or is this a new requirement? MR. OCHS: I'm not familiar with that requirement, Commissioner. I'll have to research that. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. It might be part of a proposed bill, but it is something that we should be aware of if we're going to do that. MR. OCHS: Yes, if I could get that citation from you. COMMISSIONER COYLE: I'll give it to you after the meeting. MR. OCHS: Okay. Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Commissioner Henning? COMMISSIONER HENNING: You know, you bring up something, Commissioner Coyle. With the economy really turning around in Collier County, I think it may be time to do away with the local preference as we had. And the location for professionals could be an asset to -- on pricing, if that's one of the criteria for professionals. But the preference, I'm getting the gut feeling that we should amend that. And just trying to get some feedback whether I should bring that back or not. Page 167 June 20, 2013 CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: I think it may be premature. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Premature? CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: You know, we're just really starting to see the benefit of the recovery. And to cut out that sort of economic incentive to the local community -- down the road definitely. I mean, if it doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense. But for right now it probably is premature. I don't think we're quite there, but it's a point that really should be -- COMMISSIONER NANCE: I think we should talk about it, because there's a lot of nuances that, you know -- I've had several discussions with staff members recently about bid processes. And, you know, I'm sure when we get to our meeting on Tuesday we're going to be talking about our success and failures in bidding. And, you know, some of these things may have some advantages to us that we haven't tapped in -- you know, maybe we can have a discussion about it at that time, but I've got a couple thoughts about it as well. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I agree with Commissioner Hiller as well. If other counties who are not doing as well as we are still had their preference in place, that means that their people can come in and take our jobs, but our people then have no place to go to try and get other jobs. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Exactly. COMMISSIONER FIALA: So I think maybe it is a little premature. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: And we should just monitor what's going on and, you know, definitely not take our eye off that ball. But we don't want to hurt our locals as they are emerging out of this very difficult time. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. Thank you. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: But it's a good point. I want to conclude with what I got out of the only thing I eat during meetings, Page 168 June 20, 2013 which is chocolate. And thank you, Leo, for providing sustenance. This is straight out of Dove. And it says -- and it's really a great saying, and that's why I have to read it. The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. So something positive. COMMISSIONER NANCE: I thought you were going to say, you live long life and prosper. CHAIRWOMAN HILLER: Right. This meeting is adjourned. And thank you very much. ***** There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 3:35 p.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFF X10 GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SP ,: CIL DIST UNDER ITS CONTROL zr ii GEORGIA HILLER, CHAIRWOMAN ATTEST '' ' DWIGHT E :BROCK, CLERK 4 IPP -41 k > , „„ : _„,19hair est as to Chairman's''' f P & iinu es a s : oved by the Board on S-4 O O[ as presented � or as corrected Page 169