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BCC Minutes 03/16/2001 W (Growth Management)March t6, 2001 TRANSCRIPT OF THE WORKSHOP MEETING OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Naples, Florida March 16, 2001 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 WORKSHOP SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRMAN: James D. Carter, PhD Donna Fiala Tom Henning Jim Coletta Pamela Mac'Kie Staff present: Tom Olliff, County Manager David Weigel, County Attorney Marjorie Student, Assistant County Attorney Robert Mulhere Page 1 NOTICE OF BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS INFORMATIONAL WORKSHOP Friday, March 16, 2001 9:00 A.M. Notice is hereby given that the Collier County Board of County Commissioners will hold an informational workshop on FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 2001, at 9:00 A.M. in the Board Meeting Room, Third Floor, Harmon Turner Building (Administration) at the Collier County Government Complex, 3301 East Tamiami Trail, Naples, Florida. The Board's informational topic(s) will include, but may not be limited to, an overview of the following subjects: * Overview of Collier County Growth Mann~ement Plan (Elements/Sub_elements) * Overview of Florida Growth Management Act (Chapter 163, Part II) Overview of Florida Admini.~xative Code regulations implementing Chapter 163 * GMP Amendment Process · Overview of Future Land Use Map · Collier Concurrency Management System · Final Order and on-going Rural Fringe/Rural Lands Committees activities · Overview of alternative grown control measures - Rate of Growth Ordinances The meeting is open to the public. Any person who decides to appeal a decision of this Board will need a record of the proceedings pertaining thereto, and therefore may need to ensure that a verbatim record of the proceedings is made, which record includes the testimony and evidence upon which the appeal is to be based. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS COLLIER COUNTY, FLORIDA James D. Carter, Ph.D., Chairman "DWIGHT E. BROCK, CLERK By:/s/Maureen Kenyon Deputy Clerk March 16, 2001 CARTER CHAIRMAN: Good morning. Let us stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and we'll begin our workshop. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and through the republic for which it stands, one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Mr. Olliff. MR. OLLIFF: Before we get started, I think while you were here, David Weigel wanted to take the opportunity to just give you a little update on the upcoming closed session. So I'll just turn that over to David and then we'll get started with the workshop. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Mr. Weigel. MR. WEIGEL: Thank you, Tom, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. We gild the lily with our Sunshine Law application here. Because I mentioned to the Board on Tuesday that we had a request from my office for executive session in regard to litigation, I wanted to identify for the record the two cases: Kimberly Dalton versus Isle of Capri Fire and Rescue District with Collier County and also Maxi Homes versus Collier County. Those, in coordination with the chairman and the county manager in the agenda, would be brought forward at the next regular Board meeting, presumably under county attorney, as items to be handled at the end of all other action items of the meeting. And I thank you very much for the opportunity to put it on the record today. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Duly noted, Mr. Weigel, and we will -- Mr. Olliff will put that on the agenda. Well, well, we have some fine visitors at the table this morning. And Mr. Dunnuck, I'm going to turn this over to you and I'm sure that you will be able to address very, very well what we're going to do this morning. MR. DUNNUCK: Good morning, commissioners. Thank you very much. Today's focus of the workshop is on growth management. What we're trying to do today is to kind of bring you up to speed on what the actual process is from the state level all the way down to the local level. I have here with me today a very good group of panelists that I think are going to be able to do that very, very well. To your left down at the end is Bruce Anderson of Young, Page 2 March 16, 2001 VanAssenderp, Varnadoe & Anderson; Bob Mulhere, planning director; Dave Burr, director of planning for the Regional Planning Council; Tom Beck, director of growth management for the Department of Community Affairs; and Stan Litsinger, comprehensive plan manager. In addition, we've got Marjorie Student, assistant county attorney. CHAIRMAN CARTER: And a gentleman down here at the end that I've never seen before. MR. DUNNUCK: And before I forget, exactly, who is going to help, moderating this session today is George Varnadoe, of Young, VanAssenderp, Varnadoe & Anderson as well. MR. VARNADOE: Good morning. I hope we have an interesting and informative session on growth management, particularly the process and some of the issues that will be facing us. We're going to start off with Tom Beck. As John said, Tom is the -- I think actually the director of the division of community planning at the Department of Community Affairs. And he qualifies as an expert. He's more than 50 miles from home and he brought his briefcase. But, seriously, Tom is an expert. He's been at DCA since before it was DCA. He's been there more than 20 years that I know. His department is responsible for reviewing growth management plans, growth management plan amendments, DRIs. And he's basically in charge of the department that we have the most contact with when we do something in Collier County that affects our growth management plan. So he's the guy we look to and we can beat on if something goes wrong. Tom is going to give us a little history this morning of growth management planning in Florida and how we evolved to the Chapter 163.9(J)(5) situation. And then we'll have Stan talk a little bit about our plan and our plan amendments and then we'll go from there. But let's start off, if we can, with Tom giving us a little brief history, I think it will be very informative. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Tom, before you start, I think it would be important for our listening audience to know that Secretary Siebert was a former county commissioner, so he does appreciate where we all come from at the local level and has Page 3 March 16, 2001 been a big proponent of working these issues through at the local level. He wants a bottoms up versus a top down, so I think it's important for all of us to have that in the framing of our thinking. So thank you, Tom, for being here. MR. BECK: Thank you for inviting me here. It's really a pleasure. I need to get out and do this more often around the state; especially trying to work with and inform, you know, some of the faster-growing counties in the state. And there are a lot of them all over the state and more coming. What I wanted to do is really give you kind of a background of where we come from in this state on growth management. It's really only been rather recently, you know, from our statehood in 1845 that we began to really manage growth. Early in the 1800s and 1900s we promoted growth. We granted landowners state lands. Riparian Act along the shoreline. We gave land away at railroads, you know, to promote commerce, to create physical development, trades and this sort of thing. We set up authorities in districts to drain the Everglades, the wetlands systems, clear uplands and this sort of thing. And that was pretty much the way Florida and the federal government operated in Florida up until the late '60s and early '70s. And about that time a lot of factors came together. Governor Askew began to -- his staff began to express lots of concern about a lot of growth-related problems that were occurring in the state about that time. About 1970, '71, this state was facing a severe drought; kind of reminiscent of what's happening today. There were severe water shortages in south Florida. There were these huge platted subdivisions occurring mainly in central and south Florida; Golden Gate Estates, Lehigh Acres. And these were overwhelming the local government's ability to promote infrastructure and maintenance for these large-scale developments. There was a lot of growth occurring at that time. Rapid amounts of environmental degradation. Not enough infrastructure to support this type of development. And if you'll look statewide, about 1971, 25 percent of the Page 4 March 16, 2001 counties in this state were -- had no local land development regulations. You could essentially walk in the door and say, I'm going to do this and somebody at the county level would say okay. 25 percent of those counties were run largely unregulated and that translated into about 50 percent of the area of the state at that point in time was devoid of local land development regulations. And you had this massive amount of growth occurring. Very little local government ability to handle and address these type of concerns. So the State, the governor, the legislature began to get really concerned about how we needed to address these severe public problems that were occurring through this rapid growth. In 1972, I think again under the leadership of Governor Askew and members and leaders in the legislature, they created four important legislative acts. The first act was the Water Resources Act, a big drought going on. That act essentially created the water management districts that we have today. The second big act in '72, the Land Conservation Act. It essentially created the very aggressive land acquisition program that the State has today. The State of Florida has by far the most aggressive acquisition program of environmentally sensitive lands in the country. We even acquire more land than the federal government today, in spite of Bill Clinton. You know the things he did just before he left town. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, he did a lot of things. MR. BECK: They also passed -- the third act they passed was the State Comprehensive Planning Act. And what that set up was, the State should adopt a state comprehensive plan with goals and policies to direct growth and development in the state. The fourth act in '72 to try to get a handle from a state perspective on how to control growth was the Environmental Land and Water Management Act. And that act created the development of regional impact process and the area of critical state concern process, that are still in existence today, some 30 years later. A very critical state concern process allowed the State to Page 5 March 16, 2001 designate certain specific geographic areas. And essentially in some ways, I guess, would occupy that area and oversee every permit issued in that part of the state by a local government. It had authority to review and reject land development regulations and of course any comprehensive plan amendments in those areas. Today they consist of the Big Cypress, which is part of the western part of Collier County -- I mean eastern part of Collier County, the Florida Keys is an area of critical state concern. The Green Swamp in Lake and Polk Counties. And in the city of Apalachicola, which will probably be repealed shortly, is the fourth area of critical state concern. The other program that was part of that same act, Chapter 380, Florida Statutes, was the development of regional impact program. That program, basically its purpose was to regulate growth, not geographically, but by size of developments. And what was created, we've identified 14 different types of developments, and size thresholds were put on those 14 different types of development. So if a development was proposed above a certain size, then it had to go through an enhanced state and regional oversight process. In '72 the first growth management study commission was created, just after that legislative session. That study commission, the only one, it was called Environmental Land Management Study Commission 1, recommended that all local governments in the state should adopt comprehensive plans. So you had areas of critical state concern. You had developments over a certain size. And this study commission recommended that the rest of the development in the state should be reviewed through local comprehensive plans. Those local comprehensive plans would identify all future land uses in the jurisdiction and would identify the capital improvements programs that are necessary to serve all those identified future uses. Each local government would be required to adopt the land development regulations, subdivision regs, zoning, this sort of thing. And all development approved in those jurisdictions had to be consistent with the plan. The State, back in '75, when this local comp planning was first created, had no authority to reject plans. It could review Page 6 March 16, 2001 and comment on plans back in '75, but it could not reject or approve plans. So the first Comprehensive Planning Act was set up in '75. In '78 the State finally got around to adopting a state comprehensive plan. Governor Askew presented a state comprehensive plan with maps that indicated future development areas. The legislature looked at that and said, No way, Governor. We're not adopting that. So the state comprehensive plan in '78 was reviewed by the legislature, had no legal effect. It was advisory only. In '82 Governor Graham appointed the second growth management study commission, a so-called Elms 2 Commission. And their purpose was to look at the DRI program, the critical area program and the local government comprehensive planning program to see how well they were working. What they recommended was a lot of legislation to strengthen and improve some of these growth management programs. Probably the -- one of the early changes, and it resulted in t984 legislation, and that was the State and Regional Planning Act. And it at that time greatly strengthened the planning roles of regional planning councils, the 11 regional planning councils in the state. It gave authority to regional planning councils, among other things, to adopt comprehensive regional policy plans. In '85, of course, that's the big change. And we're all living pretty much with that system today. And that required that local governments must revise their comprehensive plans and those plans must be reviewed by the State for consistency with minimum state criteria. Of course today those minimum state criteria are contained in Florida Statutes and Rule 9(J)(5), which I'm sure you're all very fond of, right? But that study commission, that second major study commission, felt like the original act in '75 didn't really create consistency of implementation between local governments and didn't really -- local governments were adopting plans. Some were adopting land development regulations; some were not. And it was just kind of a hodgepodge still of regulations and plans throughout the state. Some plans were good and strong; some plans were fairly weak. And so in '85 they said the State Page 7 March 16, 2001 could oversee adoption of minimum state plans that met minimum state criteria. At the same time, in '85, the State adopted another state comprehensive plan, which is largely in effect today. It's found in Chapter 187, Florida Statutes. It also at the same time, in '85, the legislature improved the DRI process. It streamlined some of the review functions of the process and it made a statement, at least the study commission made a statement, that basically said the DRI process should be replaced. At that time where the new -- once the new local government comprehensive plans were in place and met all state criteria, that the process should be replaced or incorporated into that process. That was back in '85. In 1986 the legislature enacted concurrency, which you guys I'm sure deal with all the time. This was not part of the study commission, but this came up after the study commission in '86. And it of course requires that there be adequate public facilities available to be concurrent with the impacts of development. And that's been with us since 1986. So in 1986 we had a vertical, so-called vertical or top-down planning framework. Local government plans had to be consistent with regional policy plans. Regional policy plans had to be consistent with the state comprehensive plan, which were structurally -- that's how structurally it was envisioned it should work in the mid-'80s. Beginning in the late 1980s, local governments proceeded to adopt comprehensive plans consistent with state criteria. Of course the department had to review all of those. And by the early 1990s, about 450 local governments had plans in place that met state criteria. That review from the department's perspective and everybody else's perspective of course was not without controversy. There was a good bit of litigation to get those plans in place. Some local governments challenged the constitutionality of the planning process, some of the Panhandle counties. We all survived. And again, by the early 1990s, the comprehensive plans were largely in place. In 1991, Governor Chiles created a third growth management study commission. So you see the pattern, about Page 8 March 16~ 2001 once a decade we have a study commission. And this third growth management study commission, again, assessed how well the Growth Management Act was working. You know, what -- did it need to be tweaked, overhauled, revised, this sort of thing? And it pretty much left the -- its recommendations really left that process in place. It did provide more flexibility to local governments, sort of to deal with that one size fits all type of an approach, which was started in '85. Given the great sizes and different needs and requirements of our communities, local governments were given more flexibility to deal with their local community needs. Concurrency was refined and at the same time local governments were given more flexibility to adopt concurrency exception areas. At the same time regional planning councils' regulatory powers were curtailed. Instead of being viewed as a regulatory agency, regional planning councils were made to be multipurpose planning agencies. The evaluation and appraisal report requirements were detailed and specific. Of course this is the vehicle that local governments use to update and improve their comprehensive plans. The DRI process, interestingly, was recommended to be repealed and replaced with enhanced and stronger intergovernmental coordination elements of local comprehensive plans. However, the repeal of the DRI process did not take place a couple years later. The process that was set up to repeal the DRI process was itself repealed. So the DRI process continues as it is today. Beginning in 1995, most local governments have prepared -- began to prepare evaluation and appraisal reports to update their comprehensive plans, to revise them, to make them work better, this sort of thing. By 2000 most local governments in the state had updated their comprehensive plans and improved them, had made them work better and this sort of thing. December of the year 2000, Governor Bush appointed the fourth growth management study commission. And I know Bob Mulhere is going to say more about what that commission has Page 9 March 16, 2001 done. But again, I know the governor feels like we need to change the process that we have today. We've got to recognize that local governments have developed a tremendous amount of planning expertise and all the plans are consistent with state criteria. Local governments have had over a decade of experience with their new comprehensive plans and it's about time that we give some of the planning authority back to local governments from the State and look forward to a more bottoms-up approach to better address local community needs. MR. VARNADOE: Thanks, Tom. Tom is going to speak later about the State's role in reviewing comp plan amendments and also about what we might expect from legislation. But I think for purposes of continuity and to make this flow, what I'd like to do is go to Stan Litsinger and have him talk about our local comprehensive plan, how we do plan amendments in annual -- the situation of different types of plan amendments and then we'll come back to Tom at a later time, if that's all right. But after each one of these speakers, I'd like, if you have questions, let's go ahead and address them on the topics that they have talked about. And I have some questions on DRIs for the panel, but I think we can probably wait for those a little later. Start, as everybody knows, is our comprehensive planning manager. So if we're not being concurrent, that's where we ought to be talking, is Stan is the man. Why don't you talk to us about our local plan amendments and where we are, Start? MR. LITSINGER: Well, thank you, George, commissioners. First let me give you a little bit of quick history without getting into a lot of detail. As you know, being one of the 35 coastal counties, we were one of the -- we were the third county to actually adopt a comprehensive plan under the legislation that Tom talked about in 1986. It consisted of 11 volumes and 3,000 pages and it was adopted after 135 -- approximately 135 public meetings, on January 10th of 1989. And also, as we are usually a Guinea pig and in the forerunners in the contest with DCA, the plan was immediately found not in compliance. And since at that time Rule 9(J)(5) did not exist, as far as the guidelines were concerned, it took about a year to get the comp plan into effect. Page 10 March 16, 2001 In the intervening years, we set up -- of course we adopted all our land development regulations, which are now codified in the land -- Unified Land Development Code. We have in Collier County -- and I can't speak to all of the counties, we have a formalized amendment process where we know that once a year we will have an amendment process where public landowners can petition for changes to the comprehensive plan. And we also have staff-initiated amendments to the comprehensive plan. Now, there are a number of different types of amendments. Of course there are the standard amendments to the comprehensive plan that we do each year through our processes. And we're allowed two of those processes and we've only used the second process once and that was in this previous year to adopt the zoning overlay for the Bayshore Gateway redevelopment area. And depending on our schedule, we may use it again this year for the Golden Gate Area Master Plan, but that's not a topic for today. The types of amendments, in addition to our normal amendment process, we have a provision in the statute for small-scale amendments, as long as the land involved in the amendment is not over 10 acres and we do not have a total of more than 120 acres in small-scale amendments within a year. Plus some other restrictions which are fairly detailed, which I won't go into at this time. We also have a provision for emergency amendments and that is a situation where a crisis arises relative to the implementation or issues associated with your comp plan at the local level that are of such a nature that something needs to happen immediately. And as I recall, we have to get permission from the Department of Community Affairs to declare an emergency amendment process. In addition to that, we have DRI amendments, which are not restricted to any particular number per year. We tend to go several years without seeing one. I believe we'll be dealing with one this year. And those processes take place as we receive them. Also, the other type of amendment that we have is what we call compliance amendments or remedial amendments. And what that -- that results from a contest with DCA, usually Page 11 March t6, 2001 resulting in them having found certain of our standard amendments not in compliance. The way the process works is that generally we receive all of our amendment requests from the public by April 28. That's set out in a resolution and they have to be in by April 28. In the intervening period between the end of April and usually September, we review and prepare the formal amendment packages, along with any staff-initiated amendments. And of course each year we generally do a CIE amendment and a transportation element amendment to reflect our changes and our facilities needs. And we usually transmit -- you have to have two transmittal hearings on each amendment cycle; one before the planning commission and one before the Board of County Commissioners, which usually occurs in the October time frame each year. Once the DCA receives their transmitted proposed amendments, they take approximately 60 days to report back to us with what they call -- we in the trade call the ORC report. We get ORC'ed. And that is the Objections, Recommendations and Comments report. And it is the objections that we have to substantially satisfy, the DCA objections, and we try to do that through both negotiations and in our public hearing for adoption before the Board. Once we receive the ORC report, the county has 60 days to adopt the original amendments with changes, without changes or not at all. At that point the amendments become an ordinance. We have ten days to transmit them to the Secretary of State and to the Department of Community Affairs and they take 45 days to either find the amendments in compliance or not in compliance. And as a result of that process, there is an additional 21 days that must -- we must wait for any affected party with standing, which at this point is just about anybody in the state of Florida, to challenge the amendments. But at the end of that 21 days, if there has been no challenges, they become law or local ordinance and part of your existing comp plan. So that is generally the process by which we amend the plan. And I won't get into Marjorie's presentation, but the issue Page 12 March 16, 2001 of noncompliance relative to evaluation and an appraisal report amendments is the reason we are dealing today with the final order direction by the government and the cabinet, which we'll also address later. MR. VARNADOE: Stan, while we're on it, talk a little about the AUIR process and the changes that have occurred annually in the CIE as a result of that process, while you're there, if you would. MR. LITSINGER: Chapter 163 -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Before you do that, define for our listening audience what an AUIR process is and what the other term was that I missed. MR. LITSINGER: Yes, sir. I will do that as part of the presentation. As part of the 1986 legislation, the -- and later 9(J)(5), which we had to operate under after we had adopted our plan, required that each county establish some manner of concurrency management system that met certain minimum criteria. And among those was to adopt level of service standards for five major capital facilities; and they were solid waste, drainage, parks and recreation, transportation and water and sewer. And as a result of that, the capital improvement element has to also identify for a minimum five-year period needed facilities to accommodate it, attract anticipated growth and also be financially feasible in that it contains not only the necessary facilities over the five-year period plan to be constructed to meet anticipated growth, but also contains valid revenues that are either in force or are available to the Board of County Commissioners to enact in order to make it a realistic, financially-feasible plan. And also as a part of that requirement, each county in order to implement their capital improvement element and their -- to make sure that they make the concurrency requirement, which is really the teeth of the '86 legislation, which really made it -- got everyone's attention prior to previous legislation, was the concurrency requirement. And as part of the process in Collier County and all other Collier Counties, we were required to develop a concurrency management system. And there are any -- all manner and different methods of concurrency management throughout the Page 13 March 16, 2001 state and here in Collier County. We elected to go with a once-a-year determination of concurrency, based on our experience through the previous year, available facilities, identification of new facilities and needed revenues. And that process is done through the AUIR, which is an acronym for the Annual Update and Inventory Report on Public Facilities. Generally that goes to the Board of County Commissioners in the late calendar year. We present the condition and availability of all the critical types of capital facilities, including also what we call category B capital facilities, such as libraries and things of that nature; which are not concurrency driven, but we like to maintain an adopted level of service. And as a result of our presentation to the AUIR -- the AUIR to the Board of County Commissioners, they direct staff to either include recommended projects in the capital improvement element and to amend the plan to include projects to keep us concurrent, and also make decisions relative to funding that may be needed that is not currently identified that will make the plan financially feasible. In the event that the Board gives the staff direction that we request in the AUIR that meets all the requirements, then we have the Board make a finding that we are in fact -- have a status that the county is meeting its concurrency requirements for the next 12 months. There are some other options which have never come up and that would be the option of the Board making decisions for whatever reason, policywise, whether it be unavailability of resources or a local concern for the over building of a certain type of facility, not to give us the recommendations. And in that case we have provisions within our concurrency management system to institute restrictions on development for the next period of -- or the period of time it takes to correct the deficiencies. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE.' Could I make two observations briefly? One is, you heard me talking about wanting to have a level of service for museums, you know. My thought would be that it would be in the schedule B, or whatever they're called, the not -- and frankly, if we can create a schedule C, you know. But we need to be measuring the status of our museums like we do Page 14 March 16, 2001 libraries. And so that level B that he's referring to as a facility is what I have in mind for museums. The other thing that I just can't help but point out because I did with the old Board on roads and they didn't like it, but I think this Board won't mind facing the reality of our AUIR system, that Annual Update Inventory Report. If our concurrency system worked, we wouldn't have a shutdown on sewer, plain as day. And the reason it doesn't work is because of this annual review and it's because of the three years -- if it's in the budget for three years, it's as if it were on the ground. And we need to do something about that, in my opinion. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I agree. I was sitting here listening to this and I was thinking, if we were doing all this, why is it I'm facing a five-year backlog in roads? Why is it we design -- and not really any reflection of people here today -- average capacity on a sewage treatment plant? I mean, I sit here and I go, Wait a minute. What did we do? COMMISSIONER COLETTA-' Don't forget the landfill, Jim. If we ever got examples of what not to do, we've seen them lately. CHAIRMAN CARTER: So I'm not faulting anybody. But I think you're right, Commissioner, is that we have to improve the process. It's one thing to work within the process. It's another thing to look at the reality of what's working and what isn't and see the signals. It is not that staff in the past probably didn't -- I know they gave them to us. Did we have our lights on? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, and the other thing too is when, for example, I was talking about the roads AUIR and the former Board didn't like that conversation, I think that they thought they were protecting the development industry. And in fact, what we're learning right now is that if we aren't straight, honest, truthful, real about our concurrency planning, there is how we can really hurt them because then we get brakes slammed on instead of moderation. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: You're right. A concurrency program would have efficiency noted sometime in the future so everybody can plan for it. I'd like to add to that particular list such things as medical facilities, schools, electric power generation stations, workforce housing. I think that we're missing a lot of entities on this that should Page 15 March 16, 200t be in place and they should have a broad scope. And when we see something fall out there a couple years out, we can bring it to the public's attention and everybody can address the situation. MR. DUNNUCK: I think this is kind of a perfect segue, actually, to talk a little bit about the process and actually the inputs into the process. Because I think it's less of a process issue and more of what we're putting into the process. It's a garbage in, garbage out type of thing. And I think one of the things the Board -- and what you've heard from staff over the last couple of months and over the last year regarding transportation and utilities particularly is the fact that some of the inputs we're putting in right now aren't helping us put out a good AUIR. And I have had discussions with utilities. I think last week Mr. Mudd had indicated that, you know, when we talk about average flows versus peak flows, we're not helping ourselves there. And when we talk about, you know, the actual -- who is actually, you know, from a standpoint of what they provide to Stan and his staff right now -- and Stan, you can talk about it a little more -- but on the utility side, why don't you kind of give us a history of what's happened in the process over the last couple of years and, you know, comparing the apples and oranges of where we are. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Stan, before you say that, one other thing I'd like to inject into this. If former Boards are saying we're trying to protect a group, one of the groups -- I think all of us were saying if we keep the ad valorem tax rate Iow, then we have protected the community. Well, we didn't. We didn't protect the community in not reviewing impact fees for eight years. We didn't protect the community by creating a false security behind Iow ad valorem tax rates. What we did was hurt the community. We have to be bigger picture here. We have to do what -- and I know it wasn't meant as a pun, John, garbage in and garbage out. But we, you know -- we've got to deal with that. So thankfully, we're dealing with it. MR. VARNADOE: I think Commissioner Carter, from the private sector, is absolutely correct. I've sat here and watched Page 16 March 16, 2001 Boards of County Commissioners for the 20-plus years I've been in Collier County and one of the things they've always bragged about is our Iow ad valorem millage rate. And I think that's always been one of the polls as far as is to keep that millage rate Iow. And I think sometimes we have done a disservice to ourselves by putting off needed improvements in order to keep that Iow. And I don't think, Pam, it was trying to benefit the development community. I think it was trying to benefit all of the citizens by keeping that millage rate Iow. And we've done it to our detriment on occasion. And unfortunately, I think this Board is the Board that's going to face up to that in the next few years as you have heard and you're going to continue to hear from your staff. And sometimes these things catch up with us when we put them off so long. So I think your comments are right on, Commissioner Carter. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And the comment I made about trying to benefit the development community, certainly that wasn't keeping the ad valorem rate Iow. What I meant by that is being unwilling to look at a more realistic concurrency program. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I wouldn't disagree with that at all, Commissioner. And I'd like to remind all of us, we live in a development ourselves. Somebody built it. The CBI members built it. Every home was built by someone. So we all contributed to growth and we're all here because we want to be here. What we have to do, as you are saying, Commissioner Mac'Kie, is do a better job of concurrency. We have to do a better job of protecting the environment. We have to do all of these things in synchronization with this and not look for some really bad person or group to say, they did it to us. Ladies and gentlemen, we did it to ourselves. MR. LITSINGER: Commissioner Carter, I agree with you. Where we are now was a team effort. What I've passed around to you is to give you a little demonstration of the issue of -- I personally feel, and I won't get into it, that our concurrency system is not broken, that it would work very effectively. It's the quality of what goes in is what comes out. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Absolutely. Page t7 March 16, 2001 MR. LITSINGER: I think our once-a-year concurrency system gives certainty to the community and it also can be very effective if we just make sure that we have good numbers, good information going in and we're not misleading ourselves with poor information. What I've passed around to you is an example of the AUIR that I would be presenting to you today if we were doing that. And I've taken as the example the north county sewer treatment plant because of the issues there. The first page you have here is, shows you the table that we've presented in the AUIR, and the one that we will present for the north county sewage treatment plan shows the level of service gallons, 145 gallons per day per capita. And you'll notice in parens I have, comprehensive planning peak population used here. As you can see, if we had presented you this report last year, we would have told you that we have a crisis in the north county treatment plan. And how we got into this situation of not giving you that information, if you look on the second page, you see the official numbers that we've been using since 1996. And this is really not to blame anybody, but in 1997, we adopted the Wastewater Management Facilities Master Plan and we went to an alternative method of projecting population in the sewer district, which was contrary to the standardized planning population figures that we use and as are prescribed by 9(J}(5} and the statutes. And the decision was made to use a peak service population in trying to project the actual number of customers as opposed to the population potential for the service area. And as you can see there, this year's AUIR, if presented to you using those peak service population, would show that everything is hunky-dory at the north plant, which is not the case, So what I'm trying to demonstrate with these two is not to accuse anyone of faulty processing or faulty analysis, other than the fact that we have to make sure that the information we're using is most appropriate. And that we -- Number 1, I would make a recommendation in the future that we use the peak population of the sewer district area in making our projections of the sewer treatment plant Page 18 March 16, 2001 capacity. And here on the front page, again, you see that the five mega gallons coming online next year will not in the long term serve our needs. And you will hear more in the future from Mr. Mudd and his staff on future needs. COMMISSIONER COLETTA'. How can we be assured in the future that we will be able to get accurate numbers? Is there some sort of accounting that can be done so we can find out if there is another disaster looming on the horizon? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I've got to say something about that. Because having been here when I looked at -- this is why I said the other day I'd like to get people in a room with an Uzi. Because the answer is, you aren't going to know unless you trust the people who are giving you the numbers and have a good reason to trust them. That's the bottom line. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I think we need an outside source that can do some sort of a physical audit. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I trust who we have now. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I do too, but I -- this may change. People come and they go. And how do we know that we're going to have accurate numbers in the future unless we have some sort of auditing process that we can have where we can make people accountable? We're only as good as the numbers that are presented. MR. LITSINGER: My staff in the community development division will take the responsibility to make sure that we have reasonable numbers and that the numbers that we are being provided -- in this particular case, the situation here, I believe, is that the decision and the numbers to use in projecting sewer demand were relied upon by a consultant as opposed to a staff decision. But in the future, I would propose that all projections of the facilities needs be based on the standardized population projections that we use in the county. MR. MULHERE: Right. That's the key, use the standardized and you also use independent sources as the basis for that standardized source. And those sources are, you know, well-respected sources. If you're talking population projections, in the outside of a census year, you have I think University of Florida, Beaver, as an Page 19 March 16, 2001 independent and well-accepted source for projections. And so those are the kinds of things that we need to do. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That would be the auditing process I was asking for. MR. DUNNUCK: And I don't want to lose sight. That's what Stan does. I mean, that's his ]ob, is to put those type of numbers together. MR. OLI. IFF.' And not only that -- and I promised myself I wouldn't do this, but here I am anyway. I wanted to make sure that you understand that from our perspective I think there is a certain amount of just plain common sense that needs to be added to our planning process. And there are different population numbers that may work with certain types of services we provide, but we don't need to have the same numbers that are used for every single type of service. In this particular case, if any of you have taken micro or macroeconomics, you'll recognize these kind of graphs. But what I've tried to show on this piece of paper is, if you take this line -- and assume this is a population line just going up. As that line goes up, obviously in a wastewater plant world, plant capacity goes down as population goes up. It's a fairly straightforward relationship. We've established a concurrency point that says, this is where we're going to call concurrency. Anything above this in plant capacity and below this in population, we're fine. But in reality, what we also see in our plan is that when we get to this point, as long as we have a funded plant expansion in place, that's still concurrent. So we can be concurrent anywhere during this period of time where your plant is not at capacity. And in addition to that, this line here tracks what we call population of permanent residents; where on a sewer plant capacity, you need to be planning based on your peak seasonal population, not your full-time residential population. So I think in a number of areas we just don't have a plan that takes into account the actual~ real common sense needs of who our customers are on the wastewater side. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Tom, I'm sure you can appreciate as a Board member, how in the heck are we supposed to know, when we get, you know, data stacked this thick and staff people Page 20 March 16, 2001 smiling and nodding, that we aren't getting that information? How -- I mean, I know we don't want to go too far into the who did what. But, you know, the only reason I want to look backward is to understand how I can have confidence in the future numbers. MR. OLLIFF: Well, in a lot of cases, I think it's because the Boards weren't willing to take the time like you are, sitting here today, to actually understand how your plan is developed, what are the underlying policies and philosophies underneath that. And when you look at things like this, I think it's more obvious to a five-member Board when you spend the five hours that it takes to actually understand especially something critical like your level of service standards for your level A facilities, you'll begin to see that. And I mean, we're doing our best to quit talking technicalese as well, so we're trying to get this down to plain English for you so that you can understand exactly what we're talking about. And hopefully, I think the last thing I'll leave you with is experience. We are in a position now in both transportation, solid waste and wastewater where the Board's awareness and the staff's awareness that we need to do something different is clear and obvious. And so you will be presented with plan amendments that will make sure that we, as a community, aren't in this position again. But the last thing, I couldn't help, but take the opportunity to-- CHAIRMAN CARTER: I really appreciate -- and I'll go to you, Commissioner Henning. I really appreciate that, Tom, and you need to interrupt us to get those points across because, you know, concurrency issues on -- we need to deal with. But planning for things like wastewater treatment is different than when you're planning for a road because you don't build a road to meet peak periods. If you did, the exorbitant cost is unbelievable. There isn't a community in the United States that does that. So we have to look at the reality, depending on the infrastructure that we're dealing with. But this is classic of when we might have lumped everything together in Boards' thinking in the past. Page 21 March 16, 2001 And as Commissioner Mac'Kie said, there was not a willingness to sit down and do what we're doing this morning because every time you mentioned workshop, you got a look like, Oh, we've got to go there and do that again. I was like, Oh, well, maybe I'm dumb, but I need this. And it didn't happen. MR. OLLIFF: The last thing I'll leave you with -- and I just couldn't help, but take the opportunity -- you were talking millage rates. And this is not ail a millage rate driven issue. Because most of the issues in your AUIR, a lot of those are either user fee driven or they are impact fee driven, so this is not clearly just a hundred percent millage issue. But this has been our target in this county for the last two decades, it has been this millage rate. And this is a list of every millage rate in the state of Florida by all 67 counties in order. I have to scroll down so that you can actually see them. But as you'll see as we get down -- I have to go a long way before you find Collier County. And there is Collier down at the bottom of the list and that has been our pride and joy. And that has been our single target in terms of everything that we have done. And I'm not saying that that's not part of the target and that's not important and that's not something the community expects from us, but I am telling you that I think that is not the only target. I think we have a responsibility to continue to provide some serious public services here that are going to require us to fund some things differently. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you. Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I'd like to have copies for the Commissioners of that. We need to demonstrate in the community where we are and why we have a shortfall. But where we're at with our sewer is because of our capacity, is directly related to tourism. And what the message we need to carry out to Tallahassee is, we need some flexibility on how we spend our TDC money. CHAIRMAN CARTER: That's being discussed at all levels right now, I can assure you, Commissioner Henning. It is at the regional planning council as well. We're doing everything that we can. And I will be lobbying in Tallahassee and that's on my hit list, to give us some flexibility and give us an opportunity to use Page 22 March t6, 2001 this source more across the board. It's good for the state when it's in one of our primary industries. So give us some flexibility. MR. VARNADOE: I know this is utmost in your minds and I don't want to downplay it. We'll come back to that a little bit. We can talk about some of the recommendations of the growth management study commission in regard to concurrency and a full cost accounting process. And Tom Beck can talk to us about any changes that might be found in the legislation. But if you'll allow me, let's go on a little more about the process of growth management and we'll come back to this issue later on, if that's all right. I'm going to ask Bruce Anderson -- if you want a history of utilities in the county. Most of you-all haven't been here long enough to remember that Bruce was the assistant county attorney in charge of utilities and he had a nickname which we can't repeat in public as a result of that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Some of us could tell him that on the side. MR. VARNADOE: Whenever he gets up, I have to remind him of that. But Bruce is going to give us a couple of examples of growth management plan amendments that have been processed by the private sector and how that works with the county and what you-all look at when you see those coming through. Bruce. MR. ANDERSON: Thanks, George. If you'll turn in your booklet to the section entitled, "Private Sector GMP Amendments." I've got the examples from our comprehensive plan of the three different types of amendments I want to talk about. The first one I wanted to talk about, as you've heard, the Growth Management Act limits local governments to two plan amendment cycles per year, with some exceptions. And Stan mentioned two of those that I want to go into some more detail about. In our county there is only one amendment cycle per year and the deadline for applying for that is the last day of April. The three plan -- types of plan amendments that I have in your notebook were all unanimously approved by the County Commission, found in compliance by the Department of Community Affairs, and they were unchallenged by any of the persons. Page 23 March 16, 2001 The first two examples that I'll discuss are exceptions to the limitation of two amendment cycles per year. And the third example of an amendment will be one that was submitted during the county's regular once-a-year amendment cycle. All of these amendments are site-specific amendments and that's typical of the kind of amendments that the private sector will find. The first amendment I want to discuss is one that was related to a development of regional impact or DRI. And that can be applied for at any time. And the final adoption of a plan amendment related to a DRI has to occur at the same hearing as the final approval for the DRI itself. The DRI amendment that's in your packet was related to the Fiddlers Creek project and it involved a change in the text of the future land use element, specifically to the text outlining the uses and density that are allowed in the agricultural rural area of the county. The Fiddlers Creek amendment provided that portions of two sections of land that were designated rural, meaning outside the current urban boundary, could exceed the otherwise maximum density of one dwelling unit per 5 acres; but it was only on the condition that no additional density was claimed for the two rural sections that were being added. Instead of claiming density for the two rural sections, the plan amendment merely allowed units that could be built in the urban area to be shifted onto the newly added lands and cjustered there. This concept is known as density blending and it resulted in a net density reduction by eliminating dwelling units that could have otherwise been built on the two new rural agricultural sections. What you really wind up with is the same number of units or less that could be built in the urban area portion of the project being spread out over a larger area; thereby, allowing more green space overall in both the urban and rural sections. Another plan amendment involving the concept of density blending was filed last year for the Florida Rock property on Immokalee Road. And it involves one section of urban land and three sections of rural fringe land. That amendment is pending with the rural fringe assessment process. The second type of amendment that I have included in your packet is what's known as the small scale plan amendment. And Page 24 March 16, 2001 the key difference for a small scale plan amendment is that it only requires one hearing by the County Commission and it doesn't have any review by the Department of Community Affairs. It becomes effective 30 days after it's adopted by the County Commission unless someone files a petition for an administrative hearing. As Start told you, that amendment cannot exceed 10 acres in size and it can only be a change to the future land use map without any change to the language of the comprehensive plan. In the second example that I have included for you, the applicant was a local physician who wanted to build his own medical office on an estates zoned lot that laid next to the interchange activity center at Interstate 75 and Pine Ridge Road across from the entrance to the Vineyards and Cleveland Clinic. The smaller scale plan amendment enlarged the activity center boundary on the map and the map labeled the lot that was added, quote, for medical use only, unquote. This amendment enabled the doctor to build his clinic on a lot that was transitional in nature because of its proximity to the activity center and exposure to Pine Ridge Road. But at the same time, it addressed planning staff and neighborhood concerns about other commercial uses that could have conceivably occurred by placing the medical use limitation directly on the map. The third example of a private sector comprehensive plan amendment involves both a map change and a change to the language of the future land use element. This amendment was applied for during the regular amendment cycle, which takes about a year to complete. This plan amendment was for a 31 acre parcel in the northeast quadrant of the intersection of Pine Ridge Road and Goodlette-Frank Road and it was to allow a combination of retail and office, commercial uses. Now, in support of this plan amendment, the applicant submitted a market study by a local real estate appraiser, who demonstrated that a residential use on this parcel was not economically viable; and therefore would have been a taking. Because, Number 1~ the property was adjacent to the North Naples Fire Station. Secondly, it had a depth of less than 500 feet. And of that 500 feet, approximately 100 feet was taken up Page 25 March 16, 2001 by an FPL overhead transmission line easement. And the fact that it was at the intersection of two busy roads. In order to address planning staff concerns, the amendment goes into considerable detail as to building heights, square footage limitations, and it provides for a transition to office uses along the northern boundary. Just an editorial comment, this amendment really required more detail than is appropriate for a comprehensive plan amendment and it's the kind of detail that you should normally place in the PUD. Because when you go into that amount of detail in the comprehensive plan, if during the site planning process you find that there are, you know, some physical characteristics that require you to make a change in your plans, you might have to go back all the way and amend the comprehensive plan to eliminate some of those specific details and that would take another year. This kind of an amendment was necessary to allow commercial development on what you would normally think would be an obvious location for it because of the limitations under the current comprehensive plan that limit almost all new commercial zoning to the designated activity centers, which are at the intersections of ma]or roads. Even through this property was at the intersection of major roadways, it was not a designated activity center. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Bruce, we took some action on the Golden Gate Master Plan at our last public hearing. One property that I want to give you an example is Golden Gate Parkway and Santa Barbara, the John Jazzy (phonetic) project. And what they are asking for is a more intensive use than what they got. Are you saying in that process we should not have looked at the uses, we should have just looked at the amendment to the -- transmittal to the DCA? MR. ANDERSON: I don't know the details of that amendment. Did you have specific land uses listed in there? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yes. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And we took some out. It got real specific. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah, we got -- a specific is, we went to office uses instead of -- what they were asking for was Page 26 March 16, 2001 more intense uses. The reason that I went there is because of the traffic issues that we have at that intersection. Besides, it abuts single-family residential. MR. ANDERSON: I would respectfully suggest that perhaps you could have used language that says it shall be a use that is transitional in nature of Iow intensity office type uses. But I don't think you should have extracted -- if you did this, in fact -- take uses out of the Land Development Code and list those in the comprehensive plan amendment. MR. VARNADOE: This is a good subject to discuss, particularly because we've got people from the region and DCA here. Because your comprehensive plan is supposed to be a planning document. It's supposed to guide your decisions much like the Constitution does. And then we have laws, your LDC to implement that. That's on the one hand. The other hand, our 9(J)(5) requirements and Chapter 163 requirements have these measuring standards so that the State can, with its top-down approach Tom described, can say whether you're doing your ]ob or not. It's always kind of a balancing act of how much you put in there. And of course, you know, I think what Bruce is telling you, the more you put in there, the more State oversight you get, the more cumbersome it is to change if you want to change; whereas, if you do that in your LDC or in the zoning process, that's fairly easy and you don't have the State oversight and you can't weigh down that document too much. Now, I understand the concerns you had there. And I think it's always a balancing act, in my opinion. This leads right into the next topic and that is, we have -- let's say we've done a plan amendment, whether it's been staff initiated or private-sector initiated. And I want Dave Burr to talk about it from the regional planning council's perspective when they get an amendment, what their role is, what they do and perhaps a little background on what the regional planning council is. For those of you who aren't familiar with the regional planning councils, there is, what, 11, Dave, around the state. We are in the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council with seven counties. MR. BURR: Six. Page 27 March 16, 2001 MR. VARNADOE: Six counties, okay. And he can tell you a little bit about that process. Let's come back to that. This is a really good discussion. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I also need to clarify on the Fiddlers Creek as an example that you gave us and I think I heard is the action the Board took, it prevented cjustering. MR. ANDERSON: No. We allowed it. COMMISSIONER HENNING: It allowed cjustering? MR. ANDERSON: Yeah. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So that was a good change between the rural and the urban. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Can I have just a question -- Donna, you go ahead. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. When they first created the new concept of activity centers and they thought this was going to be the greatest thing that hit Collier County since sliced bread, have we found that indeed it is or have we found that maybe the traffic it creates is maybe not the greatest thing for an activity center or an area around the activity center? That's not a good question. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: If we had implemented activity centers the way they were actually planned, it would have been better. MR. MULHERE: I'll take a stab at it, if I may. Everything is an evolution and during that evolution some things that perhaps your professional staff feel might better have been included in the concept of activity centers, that fell out of the concept, we now are looking at as tools for smart growth and new urban growth. Those would be, A, and primarily very important, a mixed use concept, not simply commercial, but high density residential mixed in with the commercial and other uses so that you have a mixture of uses and you minimize the impacts on the infrastructure, but you also maximize the efficiency of the use, the economy of the existing infrastructure. The second thing would be from a transportation perspective -- and I think these are issues that Norm has been bringing to your attention lately relative to activity centers -- would be the creation of such things as either service roads or belt roads around the activity center, other types of access, Page 28 March 16, 2001 shared access that would minimize the impacts on the intersection, but would allow for people to go around the intersection or access various parcels in the activity center from one another largely and rather than having to go out and, you know, impact the intersection. Pine Ridge Road, if we all just use that example, Pine Ridge and Airport, we can all begin to appreciate these things. So there were some things that I think probably should have been included that ended up not being included in the concept. And that's water under the bridge. We have mostly these activity centers that are largely developed, though we might have opportunities in the future for redevelopment where we should include mixed use concepts. And we have some activity centers that have not fully developed where we should include these concepts. And those are things that we are bringing forward to the Board for consideration, through the transportation revisions. I know that Norm and I have talked about the concept of activity centers. I mean, we can certainly call them something else, but they will remain activity centers, but activities not strictly regulated to commercial. MR. VARNADOE: Commissioner, I think Bob is absolutely right. I think the one thing that we did not do was sufficiently integrate the transportation aspects into the land use aspects. Because if we had, I think he's right, we could have made these work better. And I'll give you an example. I think, is it Edge Wood Drive that goes around from Home Depot on Pine Ridge and goes around to Airport Road? If we had those kind of -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Naples Boulevard? MR. VARNADOE: I'm sorry. Naples Boulevard. If we had those kind of beltways around these activity centers, that they would have worked better. As far as them all becoming commercial, that's something we did to ourselves. We didn't have -- we had very, very limited opportunities in the county for commercial to go anywhere else through our land use plan. So we told the development community, if you want to do commercial, you've got to do them there. So it became so valuable for commercial that nobody would do this. So we did that to ourselves. I'm not talking about we, the Commission. I'm Page 29 March t6, 2001 saying we the community~ we did that to ourselves. And I think in looking back at it, was that the smartest decision? Maybe not. But I think the real problem with them that we had was just not integrating our transportation facilities in with our land use. COMMISSIONER FIALA: At least we're learning by our mistakes. MR. VARNADOE: Exactly. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I have a question for staff and maybe Bruce, I don't know~ about the private sector applications for comp plan amendments. Would it be a terrible idea to require that the PUD rezone come in at the same time with the private comp plan amendment? Because then we could keep the constitution, you know - keep the comp plan as the constitution while still covering the issues we're concerned about. Does that hurt the developers? Is it hard for them to do? I don't know. MR. MULHERE: I'll take the first stab and then I'll let Bruce talk about it from the private perspective. I can't talk about it from that perspective yet. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Yet. MR. VARNADOE: Sorry, your hat is getting larger. MR. MULHERE: In many cases we do see the PUD and the comp plan amendment at the same time, so oftentimes you will see them. It's a calculated -- perhaps a calculated risk on the part of the property owner, the developer because there is an expense to incur by moving forward with the PUD at the same time as the comp plan amendment~ should the comp plan amendment not be approved. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But my question is~ why don't we, as a county, require that? MR. MULHERE: I'm not aware of really any good reason. Perhaps Bruce could come up with one. Other than, as I suggested, from the private property owner's perspective, they would like to have the ability to know that they can come in. And of course, when they come in on the PUD, you have the same opportunity to regulate that PUD that you had, you know, post comp plan amendment as you would simultaneous to -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It might be a different Board. MR. MULHERE: It could be a different group of people, yes. Page 30 March 16, 2001 MR. BECK: Commissioner, we require that development to regional impact be reviewed concurrent with the local comprehensive plan amendments because it gives the local commission much more data and analysis and information than you would if you had a broader land use decision with less specific analysis and data, so it gives you guys more information. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It's something I would like to see unless there is a horrible reason I haven't considered that we shouldn't. CHAIRMAN CARTER: No, Commissioner, you're on really a great track. And Commissioner Fiala, I understand why they wanted to have an activity center because they didn't want to spread commercial out, strip centers down the road. We didn't want to be there. Nobody wants to be there. So we ended up going the other way and saying, Let's do this. And we could have done a better job in finding that. But we do have opportunities. Let's take Pine Ridge and Airport. There are still some major tracts in there that I have been talking with the EDC and encouraging them to talk to the owners of that and developers to establish what we call a smart park or a high-tech kind of center there. Where now you will have people coming there from the residential community that wouldn't have to go all over, but may come there to go to work. And then immediately because of the interconnectivity of Naples Drive to get a lot of their shopping done and decrease the impact overall. We can take what we have left and better reconfigure or work with this and follow some of the things we're talking about this morning, then we have an opportunity to do the best we can with what we've established. I think the second part of that that was so rightly addressed, whether it was you, George, or someone else, we did it to ourselves. We didn't look at long range, where do we want commercial business, smart park activity? Have we really encouraged pulling that together or industrial parks? We didn't have it there. And so from the economic feasibility side of that stool, where did people go? They went to what we said, this is where you can be. They didn't go and build that stuff because, Hey, we want to spec it. They built it based on numbers that we project and use in everything that we do. Page 31 March 16, 2001 COMMISSIONER HENNING: I think we got into that problem because we let the industry drive instead of the Board make those tough decisions. That's what we need to do in the future. CHAIRMAN CARTER: We all didn't do everything we needed to do, I would agree, Commissioner. Now we have an opportunity to change that. And what Commissioner Mac'Kie is saying, let's bring a bigger picture to the table instead of bringing these things in piecemeal so we can make more intelligent decisions. MR. VARNADOE-' I think that one thing this really points out -- and we'll get Tom to talk about it a little bit later on -- is that your comp plan, at any point in time, is a document in transition; that you don't just do it that's good forever because we evolve. They're -- I don't know of any of these that I've ever worked with that are perfect. They are all imperfect and all need to be refined as we go along and become smarter and react to the needs of the community. I think that's really -- I think everybody is saying that same thing. It can't be static. We've got to learn from what's happening and make some refinements so it does reflect what we want to see. CHAIRMAN CARTER: And I think, George, let's always keep in mind the three legs of that stool -- and we often don't keep it in perspective. When I say, "livability,' that's quality of life that's a factor. Environmental sensitivity, we need those who address that to be into that process with this. And you can't discount economic feasibility. And if we bring everybody together when we're doing these things, I think we've got a far greater chance for a community to work in harmony than we do being -- pulling at each other and saying, I am -- absolutely have the right position. Not there, folks. We've got to work more together. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: You're right, Jim. That's the reason why we're having the Golden Gate Master Plan up for review, so we can handle one section. Maybe we ought to look at this as an opportunity to set together some master plans for some of these other areas. I think we would have been better served if we had them throughout the county. I really do. MR. ANDERSON: I would like to answer Commissioner Mac'Kie's question. It's a matter of time, expense and detail and Page 32 March 16, 2001 time because the comprehensive planning process takes a full year for regular amendment. And I don't encourage my clients to begin working on a PUD to follow in the comprehensive plan amendment until I know that at least the County Commission has approved it for transmittal to the Department of Community Affairs. Because otherwise, you know, they've spent twice as much money and essentially thrown it away. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I could live with it if we had the PUD by adoption hearing even. MR. ANDERSON: I frequently encourage my clients to do it that way. MR. VARNADOE: I think that's a good approach, particularly on larger amendments. I know that you-all have somewhat of a difficult time. You took some time the other day to talk about the commercial at Vanderbilt Beach and 951 and I think that's the kind of opportunity that's of a size and nature that if you had had the pin product at the same time, it would have been a lot easier for the Commission to either approve or disapprove. Which would have been a lot -- your results would have been a lot clearer as to what you wanted. Because I think there is another sense where we got way down the road in the comp plan as to what we wanted the zoning to say. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Too much data. MR. VARNADOE: That's a very fine line we talked about. MR. LITSINGER: Am I hearing a policy decision that before we advertise the final adoption public hearing in our application process, we want to require submission of a PUD? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You're hearing that from me. If you hear that from a majority, we could bring it back at a regular meeting. MR. VARNADOE: You wouldn't want to do that for small-scale amendments? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Actually, yeah. That's like the Jazzy project that we saw. COMMISSIONER HENNING: That was around 6 acres and the community has been struggling with it for two-and-a-half years. And I did a very unpopular thing for which I'm going to take a lot of hits in the paper, but I made a decision where I thought -- Page 33 March 16, 2001 CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, thank you. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Which I thought was best for the community. I know where you're at. And you are hearing that from me too. I would like to see some details before we do some transmittal to the DCA. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Or before adoption. MR. MULHERE: Before adoption. MR. BECK: Keep in mind, if you have a huge proiect like a DRI and you've got a land use amendment necessary to do that, at that public hearing you not only have the benefit of the land use analysis provided by your own staff, but you have an incredible amount of analysis provided by the regional planning council with very specific impacts and analyses that have been coordinated by all state and regional agencies. And you have all that information at your public hearing in order to make the most informed decision that you can. So you ought to set up -- for projects that are not that large, your PUD or some kind of site plan analysis, you ought to have that information at the public hearing also. MR. LITSINGER: What I can do is, we have a resolution that governs this process, and an application. We could probably bring that to the Board on executive summary with proposed changes and be specific with the requirement that the applicant will be notified upon submission of the comp plan amendment that their amendment will not be advertised for final adoption until we have received a satisfactory PUD application, if that's the case. MR. MULHERE: Start, I just want to add one thing in not a lot of detail. But when you say, "advertise," I think what the Commission is asking for, if I'm not mistaken, is at the very same hearing, they want to have ail the same information at the adoption hearing. You would obviously do the comp plan first and then move into -- but you could discuss them simultaneously. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right. MR. MULHERE: That's fine. If you want to say it has to be submitted prior to advertising, but you also need to say that it will be heard on the same commission date. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Right. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: If I may. As far as the advertising goes, I'd like to see us change, when we're going to Page 34 March 16, 2001 advertise it, we also post it on the lot with a 4 X 4 sign that people can plainly see the number of directions that this is going to be taking place. There is too many times out there they say, No one every told us. We've seen this down at Vanderbilt. MR. MULHERE: I've got a comprehensive list of changes in terms of citizen access that we're going to go over at the development review workshop on April 12th. MR. VARNADOE: And interestingly, that's one of the specific recommendations from the growth management study commission, is that on site-specific growth management plan amendments, that they be posted on the site. It's amazing they got into that kind of detail, but that was one of the things they recognized for more citizen involvement, was to try to get people noticed of what was happening. CHAIRMAN CARTER: For staff direction, with the approval of the Board, could you bring this policy change to us? I would certainly like to do it in a way that all of the community is well aware of that policy. If that means to groups who are desirous of seeing that up front, whether it's wildlife, whether it's the Conservancy, whether it's -- it doesn't make any difference who. But there are various groups who often come to us at the 11th hour and say, I didn't know. I wanted to know. I wanted to review it. I want their input. So we have a better idea of exactly what's happening. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's our next workshop. MR. MULHERE.' That's also going to come up as part of the -- MR. BECK: If I could comment on that too. I think you're exactly right. One of the big benefits for citizens on the growth management study commission is that they strongly recommended that citizens be noticed at the time of application, not at the time of public hearing. It's too late by then. COMMISSIONER HENNING: That's where we're going. MR. BECK: And I think that's important. That's a big important issue in resolving litigation, preventing litigation, working it out. MR. VARNADOE: It's 10:30. Before we get into Dave Burr and the region's role, why don't we take a short break? CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. (Thereupon, a short recess was had and the following Page 35 March 16, 2001 proceedings commenced.) MR. VARNADOE: I think we're going to get started back and get with Dave Burr of the -- planning director for the regional planning council. And before Dave was planning director, I know he was the DRI coordinator because he and I have had a lot of meetings over the years. I'd like Dave to give us a brief explanation of the regional planning council system, the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council in particular, and talk about their role in reviewing comprehensive planning. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Could I just interrupt you for one moment and say for us new Commissioners, we're so happy that you came down to do this for us and with us because it's been a great help to all of us. We were just saying how beneficial this whole workshop is. We thank you all for that. MR. BECK: I need to learn more around the state what's going on in every county. We may be able to better assist you too if we know what your problems are. COMMISSIONER FIALA: That's what it's all about, working together. MR. VARNADOE: Transitioning from the top down -- or as some other Commissioner called it, the plan down planning approach to bottoms up and being more partners in providing technical assistance, in which Tom and his staff have a great deal of knowledge about planning processes and different forms of concurrency that they can help. I think Secretary Siebert, as Jim Carter mentioned, having been a county commissioner in Pinellas County, is very familiar with the problems and the issues that face county commissioners. And he's a lot more empathetic to the needs than some of his predecessors. Dave, I didn't mean to interrupt you. MR. BURR: No problem. I think -- I'd like to echo, thank you for inviting me. And this is what growth management is about. It's not about rules and regulations. I mean, we can talk about rules and regulations all day long. It's a quality of life, you know, and trying to make those tough decisions. I grew up in Miami. I'm a Florida native. I did my master's research in Collier County, so I've been around since -- studying the county since about 1970. And lucky to be with the regional Page 36 March 16~ 2001 planning council since 1975, right after the DRI process came into play. And the regional planning council, which was -- actually the regional planning council was formed by interlocal agreement. I mean, the State abolished regional planning councils and that's fine. We don't care. We were born by interlocal agreement, not by any State statute. We came together as an agreement between our counties. Prior to the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council in '73, is when we were formed, Collier County was actually part of the South Florida Regional Planning Council. And I believe the counties over here got together and said, We don't want to drive to Miami to attend meetings. We want to do them over here. Basically, the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council is a six-county area. We cover Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee, Collier, Glades and Hendry. It's a very interesting, very large regional planning council. We have not only urban issues to deal with, we have rural issues to deal with. This county is no exception. It also has urban and rural issues. I mean, we're mainly talking about urban issues, but the rural issues are being really discussed in oversight committees that you have and realistically in -- the growth management study commission looked at rural issues. Right now we kind of feel like they looked at them maybe a little bit wrong and they maybe need to take a little bit different look at the rural issues. Because it seemed like, to address your rural problems you become urbanized. We're not sure that's what the growth management study commission really intended. I think the rural character and maintaining the rural character is something that the rural areas need to make their own decisions about, what they want their character to be. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Can I comment on that quickly for the Board that wasn't here when we did the governor's order and went through all of that? We are the model for the state of Florida on rural government issues. You know, as we go through this Immokalee committee and rural committee, the eastern Collier properties and all of that stuff, we really are going to be looked at as a model for the whole state on how to deal with agriculture and transition. And, you know, we've got to do a really, really good job at that Page 37 March 16, 2001 because it's important. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And what I see is what we are doing is piggybacking on what the governor's growth management commission is doing. Now I hear that we're doing the wrong thing. MR. BURR: Well, just an opinion. I didn't say we were doing the wrong thing. I iust don't want to make it seem like to solve the rural issues you become urban. It's not just economic development. It's a quality of life issue. CHAIRMAN CARTER: What we have is the rural counties and we have the urban counties. And Collier falls in the middle of that because we deal with both issues. And Commissioner Mac'Kie, you're right, we will be a model. There are also some people on the national level beginning to look at this as a model. And I don't attend any state meetings that this issue isn't brought forward and asked, how are we doing and where are we? Because we're a little reluctant to move in the process ourselves until we find out how this is resolved in Collier County. And what you're addressing is so critical in the regional planning councils. Because I will tell you, yesterday there was a decision made by a subcommittee, which Commissioner Coletta and I both are on that council, but I'm on the water council. We are bringing back a recommendation to the council which we will carry forward that will require legislative action, but it will strengthen our regional planning effort on the whole issue of water, which will fold into not one water district, but three, in terms of looking at managing the process instead of being driven by the ordinances in the process. And it is a major step forward. I think you'll really be proud. The communities will be proud as we take this forward. So regional planning councils are critical to this process, absolutely critical. And you're going to address all that and how we hope to become even more important in where we're going. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Jim, I would like to invite our fellow Commissioners if they'd like to loin us on our monthly meetings. I think you'll find it very interesting to see, if you get an agenda of what's going on. And if you have an interest in any one particular subject, that you get the information on it. And they move right along in Page 38 March 16, 2001 there. They're well informed down there. I think we'd all benefit from this. MR. BURR: The beauty of the regional planning process and the regional planning council and why I've liked it so long and why I've stayed there since 1975 is because it allows you to step back, take a picture -- a broader look at the picture. And you can typically, with jurisdictions, and why the DRI process is still around, even though I hear since 1985 they've wanted to get rid of it, the regional planning council plays a critical role in that process in that we coordinate the review -- we coordinate with all the different agencies. We coordinate with the local agencies. We coordinate with all the jurisdictions. So we get all the jurisdictions involved in the review process. The process came about because local jurisdictions were making these decisions on large-scale developments that really had impacts that went beyond their boundaries. It affected their neighbors. And realistically that's why regional planning councils came about. Basically our main documents that we have that we use as a guide is our strategic regional policy plan. We're in the process of updating that. Yesterday we had a discussion on the transportation issue. Next month I get the pleasure to talk about the natural resource issues. And then we also talked about hurricane evacuation or emergency management portable housing in the committee. Those are our strategic issues. We were told to be strategic back in 1995. What we did before then, we had a comprehensive plan which mirrored the state plan. Had about 26, 27 goal areas, which covered everything from children, the elderly, health care, but we were told we had to be more strategic. In essence, though, we kind of rebelled. We did cut it down to five issues, but then we took our 26 and crammed them into five, I think is what we did. Part of the reason we did that is because we're a review agency and in '95 we were noticed as Florida's only intergovernmental coordination agency, regional planning councils. MR. BECK: Multipurpose. MR. BURR: Multipurpose planning agencies, which means we get applications from federal government to federal Page 39 March 16, 2001 government in which we're supposed to review as one of our many things that we do in our applications to do things, grants for the elderly or grants for children. We still have to comment on those things, so that's one of our many roles. We have about 12 or 13 different roles. Sometimes it seems like more than that. But basically the development of regional impact is one of our main roles and I think I'll come back to that. I think we want to have a discussion about DRIs. We do have local plans. That's one of our other primary roles. We get local plans and review them for consistency with our regional plans. We do not use 9(J)(5) and 163. We don't want to go off of a checklist. We feel like once a plan has been adopted, you've met that test. You know, you've answered all the questions. Once you amend your plan, why do you have to look at all of those -- that checklist again? We want to hone in on the changes that you made. And realistically, you know, if we find something in compliance that the Department of Community Affairs doesn't find in compliance, that's because we feel like you've furthered or forwarded our regional plan or you're compatible with our regional plan. We're not trying to use those same checklists. We also provide technical assistance to our various counties and cities. Not all counties and cities are lucky enough to have a planning staff like you have. Especially our rural areas have less opportunity for planning staffs. Sometimes we offer to even help prepare their comprehensive plans when they need assistance. We do this in our governmental coordination review. On top of that we kind of blend in with the ICRs, what we call -- short for intergovernmental coordination review, federal consistency with coastal zone management law. So that we look at all the different applications for federal funding or federal permitting, but we also like to look at some of the state applications because we know eventually they'll lead to the federal type of applications. So we want to try to get in there from the very beginning and look at these things. We also do special studies. I know when someone -- we've done things such as manatee protection plans for small counties and cities. We do special reviews. We are, under the statutes, Page 40 March t6, 2001 one of the agencies that looks at pipelines, electrical transmission lines. We did the -- we reviewed campus master plans for universities. We do special coordination roles. For example, we -- when this Florida Gulf Coast University -- we called it Florida 10th University first. When Florida's 10th University came into town, we did the siting studies for that to help the Board of Regents to decide which site to pick, which sites had shortfalls and which sites had -- were stronger. We played an advocacy role. Transportation has been one of our main advocacy roles. Now we're finding out water is our new evolving one that we provide advocacy for. At the same time we're a forum. We just help get people together and talk about the issues. For example, we have a thing called a Beaches and Shores Convocation. I think we're using the word "convocation" almost religiously when you get together and talk about beaches. The same with land acquisition~ and wetlands should be set aside for acquisition purposes. We're supposed to be a dispute resolution agency. We have a dispute resolution process. Luckily, we haven't had to resolve any disputes formally. We're able to get in there -- since we have these connections with our local iurisdictions, a lot of times we can assist in just the communication between various local governments to get something done. For example, I think at one point in time it might have been this county that said, We charge $250 for a copy of our local plan. And we wanted to get a copy for an adjacent county and we were able to intercede and get them a copy without them having to pay 250 bucks. Too bad they're so big that you have to pay 250 bucks to get a copy. And interestingly enough~ in the different things that we've looked at and different aspects -- and things are constantly changing. And even the governor's growth management committee started throwing this thing in that kind of made us nervous on~ you know -- we've kind of gotten a hold on roads and water and sewer, kind of, not totally. How about broadband telecommunications? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I was thinking about that too. MR. BURR: How do you -- I'm not sure how to do an Page 41 March 16, 2001 assessment on that one. But we do have Internet access in our office, so we've brought ourselves forward. Basically that's a broad multipurpose type agency. I think the real -- the reason why we're still around and we're still -- I think will still be around is the fact that we meet monthly. We are -- the regional planning council's board is -- two thirds of our board membership are local elected officials. We have two distinguished members on our council that are very active council members. One-third of our board are governor appointees and typically these will be people from all types of businesses, lawyers and developers, you know, of course they get in there. But we get teachers and consultants and just everyday people that do get on our board occasionally and give us a perspective that is not necessarily a political perspective, but one that we really need to have. And I think that getting together and communicating, how do you do things in Sarasota County? This is how we do things in Collier County. Oh, you have a resolution that addresses something that we're looking at right now. You know, you have an ordinance. Can you give me a copy? You know, just that type of thing. Plus the regional planning councils get together periodically for the Florida Regional Council's Association, FRCA, is one of their names. So they get together and are able to share experiences. So it's a real good communication forum. And getting back to growth management. I grew up in Florida. And growth management used to be floods. You know, we had floods and that -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Droughts. MR. BURR: And that kind of kept the population down until we figured out, well, we can drain the place. But then it still was not a real hospitable place to come until we figured out mosquito control. We had to have mosquito control. But before that it was growth management. And then air conditioning. That was the thing that really changed everything. So now that we've got air conditioning, people can live here year-round. Growing up as a kid, I can remember sleeping on a terrazzo floor during the summer, the hardest thing known next to Page 42 March 16, 2001 diamonds, because it was cool at night. But unfortunately now growth management is turning into 1-75. I had to come here from Fort Myers and I got here at 8:30 because I was nervous because there might be an accident on 1-75. And I had my cell phone, which I don't like to turn on~ but I do have it just in case I had to call somebody here and say, I can't make it because I'm on 1-75. And by the way, I can't get to 41 either because everybody else is getting on 41. We have 1-75 and 41 to go north or south. And I know people want to have a 951 extension. It sounds like a great idea, except for the fact that, you know, when you extend that thing, the only routes that, you know, from Lee to Collier are going through wetlands. And it's -- unfortunately I've heard people say that when traffic is bad and they hear there is an accident on 1-75 or just getting through rush hour on 1-75, and you get up, it's amazing how much things have changed over the years. That from 951 it's almost faster to take Immokalee Road up to Immokalee and get onto 29 and then get back on 82 and then go back into town. And let's four lane that. Maybe that's a better idea. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Don't tell them that, David. MR. BURR: But basically the DRI process is one that I think I saw on here. It's something that nobody has ever really liked that I can recall. I think we've had a few conversations about the process, that nobody really likes it, but it's still around. And it hasn't really -- the process gets all the agencies that might even look at it in the future involved early in the business. It's a conceptual review. I've heard you talk about comp plan amendments and having this full analysis. And I know when you do a comp plan for DRI, you can do the DRI analysis the same as the comp plan review. But the DRI process realistically -- and maybe it's changing here in Collier County. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We're running out of land. That's enough to make a DRI out of-- MR. BURR: A lot of the times a DRI was a very, very conceptual process. We went through the details. We looked at the transportation and all the different impacts. But what you see is not always what you get. Page 43 March 16, 2001 And a lot of times you're going like, Why are you doing this? Well, we've got private property rights. You can't tell me no. Okay. We'll put these conditions on. But they usually come back because they are market driven just like anything else. They have an idea of what they think it's going to be. Market changes. They've got to come in. It's not quite what I wanted to have there. I want to have something slightly different. So that's the nice thing about the DRI process, is that if you change your mind, you do have to come back and you do have to get approval. And you have to go through this process again to make sure that your impacts are being addressed. The reason it hasn't gone away is because we haven't been able to figure out a way or another process that really replaces the DRI process. This thing about local governments getting together was quashed. But realistically there are things in the current~ existing DRI legislation, in the rules that could have the process kind of going away. Once a local government has -- there is a certification process that the local government feels like, you know, they have the ability to do the DRI process, coordinate with everybody effectively. The regional planning council and the Department of Community Affairs say, Okay, you can kind of do the DRI process for Sarasota County. That's the one we've gotten closest to. They have a planning staff that created a development of county impact process, which very closely mirrors the development of regional impact process. We've got them to the point where they submit their report to us. We put our cover page on it. I don't think we changed the fonts yet, but maybe one day. We kind of put our -- we look at it. We do the oversight. But basically they've done a lot of the analyses for us. That's not always the case in some of the other counties because they just don't have the ability. I think this county perhaps is one of those counties that could also be certified in the process. And it's interesting there is -- there was a change in the DRI process and there have been several changes. At one time DRI was anything that had a regional impact. And I can remember Page 44 March t6, 2001 sitting in this Commission chamber addressing a County Commission here before on a project that I said was a classic DRI the day after the banding rule came in which said, well, a certain size of a project determines whether it's a DRI or not. This was the one that was a project that was located in Collier, but its entrance road was in Lee. I felt, well, you know, that was kind of a regional impact. But the numbers then the next day were just Iow enough to say, Well, we're not a DRI, nah, nah, nah. But anyway, there are things in the process -- there are ways that we can have the process be streamlined. I think that, you know, we've made offers to applicants in order to streamline the process that perhaps we could do some of the analysis for you. If you don't want to hire a consultant, we have the ability to do transportation analysis, hurricane evacuation. I think that realistically the DRI process, when it first started back in '73, our main emphasis was on the environment because of the large platted lot subdivisions that just came in, were made out without any respect to the environment whatsoever, you know. Engineers, God bless their souls, and I am an engineer, environmental engineer, had to have straight roads and canals were straight, and right angles, you know. They didn't have French curves, if anybody remembers what a French curve is. You could draw a line that was a curve that would go around a wetland or go around something that was environmentally important. Our landmark DRI that really kind of set the tone was the Estuaries DRI in Lee County. It was a 6500 acre project that had only about 600 acres of uplands. And that was my first day on the job, that was plopped on my desk. And that was a thing that was about this tall and they said, Dave, what do you think? They got the best environmental consultants that you could buy -- excuse me -- hire at the time. And I said, This doesn't look right. And we had the ability to go out and to get consultants in, our own consultants in, our own experts in. And that project is now a CARL purchaser, land purchased for conservation and recreational land. So I think we have a good track record when we recommend Page 45 March 16, 200t a denial of a proiect -- and there really hasn't been that many that -- what we -- you know, when we came to that conclusion that that wasn't a good idea, eventually everybody came to the idea that that wasn't a good idea. But in the DRI process, we were able to first look at environment and I think now we have the environment and those -- we have a permitting process. I think, you know, the development that took place back in the '60s doesn't take place now. I mean, much more environmentally sensitive. Transportation wasn't really looked at. I think we pushed transportation impacts. We have transportation fees now, impact fees now. One of the main reasons is because in a DRI we would assess your transportation impacts and say, You pay. And the development interest said, Well, that's not fair. I'm a DRI and I have to pay. Why doesn't everybody else have to pay? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Okay. MR. BURR: Okay. Everybody pays. Hurricane evacuation, that was another thing that really wasn't closely looked at in the development process. And we started pointing that out and doing our hurricane plans, you know. If you listen to Dan Trescott, who does that, everybody is going to die. Because we can't get everybody out in a worst-case scenario. We're lucky if we've got 18 hours to get everybody out. And by the way, 18 hours before a hurricane hits, that hurricane is down in the Straits of Florida and we don't know where it's going. Affordable housing is another one of those issues that really wasn't looked at and we've been able to have people kind of take a look at it. Education was another one. I think a lot of times in the '70s, a lot of the school sites that you got were because the DRI had them set aside as school sites. Not always did the school board say, Oh, we're going to build a school there. But we did have a school site there. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And they had something to trade for a school site. MR. BURR: Right. They had something to sell. Now, in the DRI process when we recommend denial, that doesn't mean that you stay vacant. If we recommend denial, we Page 46 March 16, 2001 have to say, Well, what can you do to be approved? So the DRI process, even though it was hated and you could get denied, it kind of did lead to some kind of eventual approval. Once you got your development order, you were in. I mean, I think a lot of these large projects back in that time, when the banks were looking to invest in a project, they would ask if you were DRI. And if you said yes and you had your DRI approval, they said, Well, you've got a good chance of going forward and getting approved and becoming a real project. Again, DRIs were very conceptual. Most of the time we didn't believe people when they said, This is what our project was going to be. We're planners. We're not, you know -- we're not able to -- we're not clairvoyant, but we're planners. The market guys say, Well, you're not market analysts and you don't know what's going to happen. Okay. We don't. That's true, we don't. And things will change, but I think the process has been a good one. It can go away -- I think can be truly going away if local governments wanted to really grab the responsibility to do it. DRIs that we really thought were going to happen were really those things that were maybe now what you're talking about, something that wasn't a 20-year build out. When you're talking about a project that has a 20-year build out -- look at the changes that have gone on in this place in 20 years and how much different you thought it was going to be from back in those times. Malls, when they came forward and said, We want to expand, those we kind of took seriously. And I think of all the different kind of DRI types, the mall expansions -- and those were usually the fastest. They would take, like, a six-month review period for a mall. Now, clearly the whole process doesn't take place in six months and it is a year -- for a DRI, it's probably more like two years, you know, help me if I'm wrong. But it's probably more like a two-year process. You have to start out with your people first and develop an idea, develop a concept. Because you have to come into, before you apply for a DRI, a preapplication meeting. And at that point in time we kind of ask you, you know, What do you intend to do? And you really have to Page 47 March 16, 2001 have some study and time and effort going into your project before you just come in and say, Well, you know, I want a theme park, you know. And you look at them, like~ Okay. You're not Disney, but there is a lot of time and effort that goes into the process. I think you've heard that -- the criticism that it costs a lot of money to go through the DRI possess and I'm sure it does. But realistically that time and effort and that money that is spent in the front is time and money and effort you were going to have to spend a little bit later in the process of your development if you're going to go forward with it anyway. I mean, you're going to have to get all the different permits from all the different agencies, so you're going to have to do the homework. And with that I'll shut up. MR. VARNADOE.' Thanks, Dave. I appreciate it. Dave has been instrumental in the DRI process for a long time. The first one I worked on was Pelican Bay. In reviewing that not too long ago, it's really interesting that was finally approved in 1976 and the projected build out was 20 years. I think that WCI, the successor to Westinghouse, actually sold their last parcel in 1997, which with a 20 year build out, it was real close. And you wouldn't have -- we went through some Iow times and some high times. But when you looked at it over that period of time, it really was fairly close. And I think that David is right. It seemed like every couple of years we had a different hot topic. It started off with the environment. Then it was transportation. And then it was something else. And the last one I think has been hurricane evacuation and then affordable housing. There was always some new topic and I think that the region and state have been good in identifying for local governments the kinds of impacts that you should look at. And now of course the county looks at all of those impacts on all of their projects, not just the DRI. But the DRI process probably has -- the one big benefit that I've seen in the DRI process, it has focused local governments on impacts that development does have that you might not have otherwise focused on to the extent that you did. We don't want to spend all day on DRI. Tom, why don't you talk about plan amendments and what DCA's role is in review? Page 48 March 16, 2001 MR. BECK: As I mentioned earlier, the department reviews local plan amendments to ensure that they meet minimum state criteria. Now, what does that mean? Minimum state criteria are mainly contained in a 53 page rule, in Rule 9(J)(5) in the Florida Administrative Code. We also look at the statutes, Chapter 163, the state comprehensive plan; and all of that is part of a compliance decision ultimately in judging the land use amendment. Let me say too, though, the -- going back to what Bruce and Start were saying about small-scale amendments, let me urge you guys to try to adopt more small-scale amendments, those less than 10 acres, especially in your urban areas. Because that's where you want to revitalize straight lines and provide a sentence to do that. We don't review small-scale amendments and so the time of transmittal to the time of adoption is probably about three or four months for small scale. If you go to the large-scale amendment, it could take nine months going through DCA. You have one hearing versus two hearings, for large-scale amendment. And if there is some way you can promote those, especially in your urban areas, I would certainly encourage you to do it. We review anywhere from 10- to 15,000 land use amendments per year at the state level. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: How many people on the staff that work on that? MR. BECK: We have about 60. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That do 10- to 15,000 -- MR. BECK: Per year. And of course, that's twice; once at the proposed stage in the planning commission and then at the adoption stage for compliance. It's way too many for us. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Are you allowed to go home on the weekends? MR. BECK: Well, we've gotten it down a little bit better. It's been a learning curve. It was very difficult at first. So Bob will say more about that later and maybe I will too. But we're looking -- and the growth management study commission recommended that we focus on the very important state issues and not look at all, you know, of the amendments that we're looking at per year. Perhaps we can reduce our workload from 10- to 15,000 to Page 49 March 16, 200t maybe 1,000 per year and focus upon the state natural resources and the major transportation facilities and also that critical issue of disaster preparedness. And then leave, you know, other types of planning issues to the local governments, since local governments today are much better equipped and experienced at addressing a lot of these local issues that we have to spend time reviewing today. When we do get a plan amendment at DCA, one of the things we -- and of course we get lots of map amendments, amendments to the future land use map. And we get a lot of text amendments. We get a lot of amendments from your valuation appraisal report updates. In some local governments we get amendments to adopt sector plans, which are an area of the county below the jurisdictional level. And we treat them differently. But essentially, one of the first things we look at is, say if you're proposing a change to your rural area. You want to add more residential, more commercial. We look at the information that you've provided in your application. Is it supported? Is there -- does your population projection support that need for that type of use at that location? And those population projections that -- your staff will probably use the University of Florida population projections to do that. You can generate your own population growth rates, but I think most local governments have used the University of Florida projections. But is there a need for that amendment? Do you actually need more residential use? Do you already have twice the amount of residential units in your land use plan than your population projections would indicate? So that's one thing we look at. We look at urban sprawl. We have an urban sprawl rule and that's part of Rule 9(J)(5). And it sets out some indicators of what urban sprawl is. It also sets out what urban sprawl is not. For example, it goes through an elaborate analysis of the indicators of urban sprawl. And at the very end of the rule it basically says, If you create multiuse integrated planned areas, that -- when you have higher density, it's not Iow dimensional sprawl. It's integrated multiuse. You have opportunities for other modes of transportation, other than the automobile. And you create things like new Page 50 March 16, 2001 towns, satellite communities, edge communities, cjustering concepts. If you do those sorts of things, then our law and rules basically say, If you can expand your urban area in a very good growth pattern, that would not be considered sprawl. That's, I think, important to remember. We also review land use amendments with regard to suitability. What are the natural features of that land, given the land use that you're proposing? Is it in a flood area? Is it in a flood way? Is it -- does it contain listed species habitat? Is it mostly wetlands? This sort of thing. Is that land suitable for the land use that you're proposing? Land use compatibility. We try to stay out of land use compatibility issues at the State level. You know, whether you should have a commercial development next to a residential neighborhood is very difficult for the State to judge, but that is a requirement of the comprehensive plan. And certainly your citizens won't let you forget to make those local compatibility issues. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: If they get notice of the meeting. MR. BECK: If they get notice of the meeting, right. We also look at internal plan consistency. In other words, are you using the same population projections for your housing needs as you are for your infrastructure needs as you are for your future land use needs? Is the map amendment that you're proposing consistent with the conservation protection policies and that element? So your plans all -- your elements within your plan have to be internally consistent too. We look at that. We look at whether the amendment can be supported, you know, with adequate public facilities. If you're proposing a large new development, is there adequate water, sewer, roadways at the community established level of service? Schools will be a new one coming up, I predict, soon, in the next few years. There will be another major public facility. We'll have to judge whether the land use will support whether there's adequate school capacity to support that land. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Again, the local government sets the level of service. So if we wanted to say, if our comp plan said, we only want to build roads or we're happy with roads that are congested, then you would read our comp plan amendment to see if it meets that standard. Page 5t March t6, 2001 We can't count on the State to say, You must build to a safe standard. You only tell us whether or not we're complying with the standards we've adopted for ourselves. MR. BECK: Generally you have great discretion to establish a level of service on all of your public facilities except for the Florida interstate highway system. DOT establishes that level. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: And I know that there is -- the concurrency law has -- if it's in the budget for three years out, then it is concurrent, but there is nothing that would keep a local government from having a more stringent standard than that? MR. BECK: Not at all. The statutes and rules spell that out very clearly. You could adopt more stringent standards. Again, we're only judging against minimum State criteria and many communities have gone beyond those criteria and exceeded them. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: We will too, right, Pam? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I'm ready. MR. BECK: And we'll be glad to help you, if you would think it would be appropriate, to be innovative and try new approaches to that. We also look at amendments in the coastal high hazard areas. And your plan has a map of your coastal high hazard area where you have to order evacuations during a Category 1 hurricane event. And if you're proposing increases in density in your coastal high hazard area, then we have a concern. We look at it to see, you know, how you've analyzed it with regard to your evacuation times. How would this affect your evacuation times? Have you considered that? We will look at your shelter capacity. Does this require increased shelter capacity to compensate for that increased density? Those sorts of things. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Can we stop there for a minute? Because we got into an area of redevelopment in a coastal region. And so you're saying that if we increase the density or increase the use, then we also need to take a look at shelter areas and things of that nature. MR. BECK: That is a great question because the State has two competing goals there. When Florida first settled in our coastal areas, and that's where the oldest rundown development Page 52 March 16, 2001 often is in the greatest need of redevelopment and revitalization. At the same time the State is responsible for trying to figure out how to safely evacuate people and shelter them. In trying to balance those two, we have to look at the analysis, if you're going to redevelop it, how much density, how much residential density do you need to increase? Can you compensate that by increasing either operationally or structurally your evacuation time? MR. LITSINGER: A good example of that, Tom, was their recent amendment of the zoning overlay for the Gateway redevelopment area. And they warned us, as we call ORC'd us, as we call it, because they had set it up for an increase of about 2000 dwelling units in the slosh zone. And we had to modify that and do some demonstrations in data to demonstrate that the evacuation issues were addressed and the fact that we changed the boundaries of that enough so that we didn't in fact increase the overall density in the redevelopment area inside the slosh zone. CHAIRMAN CARTER: And balance that against sprawl issues, balance that against needles in the sky versus things spread over the ground. All of those issues come to us and I'm really pleased you're addressing them, that we do have conflicting State objectives. Somewhere they have to walk between them and we have to walk between them. That's our challenge. MR. BECK: It's the same sort of issue we often face competing State issues and you have to do the best job you can. As a wrap up, one of the most important things as a county that you can do is, when you send a comprehensive plan amendment to the State, is support it with data and analysis, with as much information you can provide to support the need for that amendment, the rationale, you know. Or are you promoting and furthering the vision in your comprehensive plan? Is this amendment going to get you closer to where you want to go as a community? These types of approaches. And again, I would hope you'd find ways to streamline the process by looking at increased options for small-scale amendments, especially in urban areas, that would reward and incentivize (sic) your urban revitalization. And then try to Page 53 March 16, 2001 support our efforts to reduce our overall oversight of comp plans to give us some relief of our workload. We just review too much. It was good in the 1980s and early '90s. I think with the sophistication of local governments today, they're experienced with the State approved comprehensive plans. There's really no need for us to be as involved as we once were. MR. VARNADOE: Mr. Chairman, it's 11:30. How much time -- maybe we can kind of tailor this and move along faster. I don't know what -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Why don't you tell us what the critical parts are to cover, and I will ask the Board what your time schedules are and what you would like to make sure that we accomplish out of this workshop and not shortchange anything? MR. VARNADOE: I'll tell you what -- the rest of what we had planned and that is, we wanted to talk some with Marjorie Student addressing about, you got the comp plan amendments. Now, if somebody challenges them, you know, what the standards are with the roles, what happens. We wanted Bob to cover the growth management study commission, some of their recommendations, what you might see coming down the road as far as changes in growth management and what you -- both in the state level and the local level and what you might be dealing with in that regard. And I wanted Tom Beck to talk a little bit about the -- MR. BECK: What might happen. MR. VARNADOE: What might happen in the legislature this year. What the one thing that we might put off to a different time that I think is vitally important that we talk about is this rural assessment and rural policy because I'd like you-all to know how we got into that and where that's going. But that probably adds an hour to this discussion, that we might put off to another forum. And at that time we also might get the interveners and that to talk about that from their perspective at the same time. But I don't want to leave here today unless you-all are going to give us some time to discuss that. CHAIRMAN CARTER: John, why don't you address that? Because that will segue into another statement that I would like to make and let John make his. And then if we can accomplish what we need to do in the next hour, let's say, end by no later Page 54 March 16, 2001 than 12:45, 1:00, what does that do to everybody at this table? MR. VARNADOE: I think we can do that if we don't get into the rural assessment. COMMISSIONER HENNING.' Maybe the committee can give us an update at a regular meeting. CHAIRMAN CARTER: We can do that, or John has another suggestion to make to the Board. MR. DUNNUCK.' The main focus of the rural fringe we were going to address was the natural resources workshop coming up next month. We think that's the most appropriate place to talk about that. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: John, if I may, will the environmental community be involved in this committee? MR. DUNNUCK: Absolutely. They're going to be very involved in that process. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Right out of my mouth, Commissioner. What we wanted to make sure that everyone listening in the environmental community here understands, we in no way are leaving you out of the growth management process. We felt that that topic in itself would be best addressed under the natural resources workshop. And we want the environmental community to be doing what we've asked Mr. Varnadoe to do here and others, so that they will be -- that part of our process. And I think everyone on the Board would certainly want that to happen and I know all of the community wants that to happen. And if there was any confusion on that, I certainly apologize as the Chair. We would in no way shortchange your opportunity to educate us in everything that we need to know. Growth management is such a huge topic. That's why we have divided it up into all the different elements, so that we could deal with transportation, water, affordable housing, everything that you've heard this morning that everyone has to review and how we're addressing it. MR. VARNADOE: Mr. Chairman, if we can, we'll go forward with Mar]orie Student and let Marjorie, who is your assistant county attorney, who has been involved in all of your growth management plan amendments and all the challenges, talk a little bit about the challenge process and the different standards of review, depending upon whether you've been found in Page 55 March 16, 2001 compliance or not by the State. So I think that is something that this Board should hear. MS. STUDENT: And I'll talk in more detail about the EAR. In the interest of time, as part of the natural resources because that's what that's really about. Thank you, Mr. Varnadoe. Yes, I've been here since 1988 and I was hired by then county attorney Ken Cuyler their handled growth management issues, so I have been through all the challenges that we've had to our growth management plan. And what I will say is the starting point for a challenge to our plan or plan amendment, as the case may be, is when the notice of intent is published. And DCA publishes that in our newspaper, the Naples Daily News. And also local government receives a copy of the notice of intent, whether or not the plan or plan amendment is in or not in compliance. And if it's in compliance and nobody challenges, then nothing happens and that's it. But there is a 21-day period permitted by the statute to allow an affected person to challenge a comp plan amendment. And what I want to clarify here is that there are two procedural tracks set up in the statute. The first is if the amendment is in compliance and the second is if it's not in compliance. And we're talking about the in compliance situation here. Collier County has had both. So if there is a challenge within that 21-day period, it's filed with the DCA. And then the DCA sends that on over to the Division of Administrative Hearings, which is another State agency which is really charged with conducting the administrative hearings. And the hearing is held right here in Collier County. So after the plan amendment is adopted and if there is a challenge, it moves from this chamber over to Building L over in the courthouse. And the administrative law judge comes down and sits in one of our courtrooms and conducts the hearing. And it's conducted much like your regular trial type hearing, where evidence is taken as it relates to the challenge, depending on which Rule, 9(J}(5), or statutory section is at issue or if it's a provision of the regional policy plan or state comp plan. Now, when the local government has been found in compliance by DCA, the fairly debatable standard attaches to the Page 56 March 16, 2001 amendment and that's what the administrative law judge must utilize. And that's a highly differential standard to local government. And it basically means that if it's so bad that nobody can debate about how bad it is and it doesn't comply, then we have a problem. Otherwise, if people could debate over it, then the hearing officer, administrative law judge should defer to our judgment. After the administrative -- the hearing is concluded, there is no decision immediately, but rather there is time given to submit proposed recommended orders. But you have to wait until you have the transcript of the proceeding because the proposed recommended order is based upon the findings of fact and conclusions of law that you want the hearing officer to come up with in his recommended order, so you submit proposed ones to him. After that time, he has quite a bit of time to issue his recommended order. And again, that consists of findings of fact and conclusions of law that have been an outgrowth of the hearing. After he submits his proposed recommended order, then all of the parties have an opportunity to file exceptions to the findings of fact portion of that proposed recommended order. And in the case where the plan has been originally found in compliance, it then goes -- all of this goes to DCA for them to render the final order of compliance. And there have been cases I'm sure Tom could allude to where the agency may have started out finding that a plan was in compliance. And then as a result of an administrative hearing, there may be some things that come to light and -- I don't know how often this has happened -- but where the department has changed. MR. BECK: Not too often. It has. MS. STUDENT: And they have issued then a finding, Well, gee, we find now that it's not in compliance. And that hasn't happened with Collier County. But in that case, I believe then it goes on to the Administration Commission for further action. So that's the situation if we're originally found in compliance. Now, we've had this happen to us as well where DCA finds us not in compliance and of course that's published and we're notified as well. And we have pretty much the same process. Page 57 March 16, 2001 The DCA forwards the notice of intent finding us in noncompliance to DOAH and we have a hearing again before the administrative law judge. One of the differences there is that any affected party, that Stan alluded to, that could be just about anybody in the state of Florida because there is broad -- what we call standing rules -- can challenge. You don't have the 21-day window, but for the inability of a challenging party not to introduce any new issues that weren't in the notice of intent. If they wait until after -- they can only introduce new issues if they come in within that window period. After that they can just kind of hook on, if you will, to the objections that the DCA had. And the procedures are very much the same, that the hearing officer hears the evidence and the testimony about the allegations in the case. And you have the opportunity to submit the PROs, as we call them, proposed recommended orders. He issues his recommended order and there are exceptions and so forth. One of the differences, though, is the standard of review. And in that case, we don't have the differential standard of fairly debatable, but it's a preponderance of the evidence standard. And in law school we always said that meant you had to have 51 percent on your side to be a preponderance of the evidence standard. And another difference in that case, the administrative law judge then submits his recommended order to the Administration Commission instead of to the DCA. MR. BECK: To the governor's cabinet. MS. STUDENT: Which is the governor's cabinet, takes it up. And that's what happened to us. In your base amendment at least two of our Commissioners -- Commissioner Mac'Kie was with us on that. Commissioner Carter came on board as we were in the middle of that process. So the Administration Commission then issues a final notice setting forth what the local government must do to bring its plan into compliance. And you have the final order in our EAR case at Tab 6 in your packet, if you would like to consult that. And we have a certain amount of time to adopt a remedial amendment, otherwise local government can suffer sanctions. Page 58 March 16, 2001 And in the final order that's in your packet, all of the sanctions were recommended; and they include such things as no state funding for roads, bridges or water and sewer systems, no grants under the small cities community development bond grant program or the recreation development assistance program. No revenue -- forfeiture of revenue sharing and that includes gas, cigarette tax, transient rental tax. And no beach renourishment funds. So these sanctions are fairly -- I want to say fairly Draconian. They can be Draconian. And the first time when we had an issue with concurrency, we did some checking on what the monetary amount of the sanctions would be back then, which was in like 1989, t990. And that would have been about $17 million a year. This last time we checked what the amounts of the sanctions could mean to the county and it could have been up to, I believe, $24 million a year. So as I said, they are Draconian. So anyway, that is an overview of what happens in the process after a plan is found in compliance or not and it's challenged. And if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them. And as I said, we're going to ask the EAR specifically, and that process and the contents of the final order and how that's laid out in a natural resources workshop. MR. VARNADOE: Marjorie, what's the time frame for challenges on a growth management plan amendment? MS. STUDENT: When it's been found in compliance? MR. VARNADOE: Yes. MS. STUDENT: You have a 21-day window from the date the notice of intent was published in the paper. MR. VARNADOE: And what about the time for challenging a land development code amendment on the grounds it's not consistent with the -- MS. STUDENT: I believe that's a year. MR. VARNADOE: Does everybody here understand -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: No. MS. STUDENT: There is a difference. If it's in compliance, you have the 21-day window from the date the notice was filed to challenge. If it's not in compliance, there is broader latitude, but you have 21 days to challenge if you have to raise some additional issues that the DCA didn't catch. Other than that, you can come in at any time. And we had a Page 59 March 16, 2001 couple like -- or one like that. It never went anywhere. But it was a group in Immokalee -- Immokalee, I believe, that was challenging some aspect of the housing element. MR. VARNADOE: The other -- and not to get too far afield, but your Land Development Code, you amend your growth management plan, that often triggers Land Development Code amendments to be consistent with the growth management plan. And those Land Development Code amendments obviously have to be consistent with your growth management plan, just as laws have to be consistent with our Constitution. As Marjorie was saying, you've got a year period to challenge those on the grounds that they aren't consistent with the growth management plan. Much longer of a time frame -- a pretty short time frame on growth management plan amendments themselves. MR. BECK: And your development order has to be consistent with all of the above. MS. STUDENT: It's a town system all the way. You have the comp plan, the LDRs and a development order, so they are all supposed to function together and work together. MR. VARNADOE: So if you have a development order, Marjorie, be it a PUD or rezoning, what is the time frame for challenging that? MS. STUDENT: Okay. We have some of those going on right now and I believe my able co-counsel, Mike Pettit, and I will be working on some of those. But what has to happen is, you have 30 days to file with the local government. And I'm sure down in the Commission offices you've seen some of those come in. We call them 3215 challenges because they're pursuant to that section of the statute. Then we bring that to you within 30 days to get your recommendation as to what you want to do with the development order. And it's always been that you find that what you did was correct and the development order is consistent with the comp plan. Then after that, the party has to file another complaint in circuit court and we have a regular trial type hearing, which takes place from that point on. CHAIRMAN CARTER: And we may be engaged, I understand, in one or more of these at the current time or present time. MS. STUDENT: That's correct. We have a few. Maybe Mike Page 60 March 16, 2001 can give us an exact figure. MR. PETTIT.' I think at least two. MR. VARNADOE: Are we too far afield? I'm looking at the timetable that Commissioner Carter gave us. Unless you-all have questions of Mar]orie, I think we really would like you-all to hear from the growth management study commission because it is on growth management. It is to certain challenges that, as Tom said, Governor Bush thought we ought to have another study committee look at this and we seem to do like every ten years. MR. BECK: Once a decade. MR. VARNADOE: They usually end up with some legislation that becomes a lawyer's relief act in that next ten-year period. It's really good. But I think you may end up with some changes to your Growth Management Act that will influence what you do and guide what you do and changes you make to your growth management plan. Bob, do you want to -- I would be remiss if I didn't say that, you know, Bob's gleaming white hat is getting a little bit gray as he approaches his departure to the dark side. MR. MULHERE: Thank you. I apologize, as I'm visually challenged. I'm sporting the latest in optical assistance wear here. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I love that. You'll set a trend here. MR. MULHERE: But they work. I just want to reiterate that really from the staff perspective, our intent here was largely to provide particularly the three newer Commissioners, but also two Commissioners that have more experience, with a procedural overview of growth management. And I think, as you alluded to, Commissioner Carter, that the more specific policy issues we have dealt with and will deal with in very specific workshops because we've spent a lot more time on those issues. So again, solid waste, utilities, natural resources and other more specific issues we're dealing with in separate workshops. This is really more process oriented. Which does bring us to the growth management study commission which the governor created and appointed 23 members to and three nonvoting members, which was Secretary Page 61 March 16, 2001 Siebert, Secretary Strews (phonetic) and Secretary Crawford. MR. BECK: Actually Siebert was a voting member. Strews and Crawford and Berry. MR. MULHERE: And Tom Berry with DOT. They basically created at the outset five subcommittees. The first was state and regional and local roles. Second was an infrastructure subcommittee. The third was focusing on citizen involvement. The third on -- the fourth on rural policy. And the fifth on urban revitalization. And in the final report, those five subcommittees provided -- they provided their final reports to the commission and the final report translated the information from the subcommittees into the following major topic areas. The first being an area entitled Preparing Florida for the New Economy. The second, Enhancing Citizen Involvement. The third, Redefining the Role of Local Government in the Growth Management Process. The fourth, Creating More Livable Communities. And the fifth, Developing a State Rural Policy. When we get into the actual report, there were, I think, 89 recommendations. And it's some 41 pages long. Basically, the governor, in recognizing that the growth management process as it exists today has not translated -- and universally there seems to be some support or acceptance of this premises that it has not translated really to the kinds of control of growth management results that we all would like to have seen. Whether you represent an environmental perspective or you represent a development perspective or you represent just a perspective of the general citizen, we all collectively have felt that the process has not resulted in what we would like to have seen. And I think we share that position in Collier County. So that was basically quoted as the governor's rationale for creating this committee. And I'm going to go over briefly some of the major recommendations. I don't think we really have the time to go over all of the recommendations in detail. But again -- and Tom is going to talk a little bit about what I think might come out during the legislative process. We already have the bill submitted by the governor and more bills probably forthcoming. Under the ma]or title of Preparing Florida for the New Page 62 March t6, 200t Economy, one of the major recommendations is to create a process that in fact this Commission had talked about several times over the last few years, and that was a process that would do a better ]ob of providing the true costs and benefits of development for your consideration where you're making a local government decision. What that has been referred to through the growth management study commission is full cost accounting, true cost accounting or a cost and benefit analysis. I prefer cost and benefit analysis because true or full are probably difficult to achieve. But that is the intent. The committee recommends that the legislature create a process really managed by or led by the DCA which would be a pilot program initially to -- utilizing six diverse jurisdictions throughout the state to create a model that could be used by all jurisdictions in the state to plug in inputs and result in outputs that really do define the full costs, the benefits and the costs of development in making a decision. The growth management commission actually alluded to this process being one that would replace concurrency as we know it today. Whether or not that actually shakes out through the legislative process as an end result of this full cost accounting or whether this simply is utilized as a tool to make better decisions remains to be seen. Either way, at this point I think it's strongly supported and in some cases guardedly viewed as, yes, maybe this could be a beneficial tool. So that was really one of the major recommendations under that first heading and that would be field tested before it would be implemented statewide. MR. VARNADOE: Bob, while we're there, just kind of an alternative, I guess, to concurrency or an add on to concurrency, it was really interesting that the growth management study commission recognized that concurrency really wasn't a great planning tool. That it was really interesting they said that, Number 1, that there hadn't been any when we implemented that in '80 -- MR. BECK: Concurrency? MR. VARNADOE: Yeah. MR. BECK: We passed it in '86 and implemented in '89. MR. VARNADOE: '89 it was implemented. That we had Page 63 March 16~ 2001 statewide a backlog of deficiencies then and it didn't do anything about funding or getting rid of those deficiencies. All it said was you had to take care of the new stuff. So you just kept this, you know -- this -- nothing for funding those deficiencies, which continues until today. They also recognized that as the state has grown and become more affluent, that all of us are using more infrastructure than we did then. I think the sessions I heard was that in the past X years the population had doubled, but we had -- we were -- we had five times more travel on the road. That means that not only are newcomers using the road, but we're using the road more as we buy two or three vehicles and we have kids. That six out of every ten children are not coming from people who have moved here in the last two or three years. They're from the population here. So, you know, impact fees are taking care of the new people, but we're not taking care of our own population's expanded use of our infrastructure. I think that's one of the other things that concurrency never accounted for, or was never supposed to account for. So that they did recognize that it really wasn't a great planning tool. The other thing that they recognized was that, at best, they said concurrency -- road development from where you had constraints to where you had excess capacity and that in some way encouraged sprawl as you looked to areas where you weren't constrained by deficiencies. So it's interesting that we all learn as we go along and we try to find better and different methods for balancing, as Bob said, the cost of providing the -- for new population growth with the benefits that derive from that, whether it be taxes or impact fees or whatever it happens to be. I'm sorry, Bob. MR. MULHERE: That's okay. That brings me to some of the other major recommendations under that heading of Preparing Florida for the New Economy. I forgot to mention that one of the recommendations of the commission was to create a -- I guess the Bush administration likes the A plus name for it because we have the education A plus plan. And now the recommendation here would be to have -- actually this came from the commission and not the Page 64 March 16, 2001 administration -- but would be to create the GMA plus commission, which would be, I'm not sure how many members, I think nine. MR. BECK: I think it's come to nine. MR. MULHERE: A nine-member commission that would be responsible for overseeing this process and other processes that would evolve through the next few years of legislation dealing with growth management. As George said, the commission did recognize -- in fact, under recommendation number 12 it says: The commission recognizes the current infrastructure deficit statewide and believes that new developments should not pay for past infrastructure deficits. So we have that boldly stated right at the outset that there are deficits that need to be addressed and that new growth is not responsible for paying for those deficits. They're also talking about giving local governments greater flexibility to provide -- to find additional means of funding to address these issues. By the way, I think what you can infer from this, the local governments must find a way to pay for those shortfalls. There are four specific areas that they recommended for review and consideration by the legislature. That's: Local government shall have the flexibility to impose multiple local option sales surtaxes. Counties that pass local option taxes for the provision of infrastructure may be financially rewarded. Consider increasing the documentary stamp through a real estate transfer fee to generate funds for infrastructure. And redirect portions of intangible tax C to be used for infrastructure projects. So they got very specific in terms of ways that might be adopted to help local governments help to take care of those issues. And also lastly under that maior heading, they recommend the creation of an incentivized (sic) infrastructure development encouragement area for ideas. Those areas would focus on maximizing and enhancing the existing infrastructure in those urbanized areas that need redevelopment and particularly be the most appropriate location for that. And there are a bunch of incentives that were recommended. I'm not going into them in great detail, but Page 65 March 16, 2001 fast-track permitting and financial incentives are a couple. The second major area that we talked about was Enhancing Citizen Involvement. I think we're going to deal with, from a county perspective, these issues at the developer review workshop. I can say just generally speaking we are moving very much in the right direction and very much in a direction that is consistent with the recommendations of the governor's growth management study commission when it comes to enhancing opportunities for citizen involvement and notifying citizens much earlier in the process. You'll see the specifics of that next month. They basically -- I'm not going to go over in great detail all of these issues, but basically it was use technology to provide information to citizens more than we currently do, notify citizens earlier in the process, require involvement of the citizens. Put the burden of involving the citizens on the applicant really earlier in the process by making information available. And having, for example, meetings at the time of submittal with the neighborhood associations. So there is a lot of-- quite a few recommendations specifically that deal with enhancing citizen involvement. They also get into -- and I just want to touch briefly on creating a more equitable process of judicial review for quasi judicial land use activities, really, particularly folks in quasi judicial. And I think it's important to note here that they strongly recommend that local governments use a special master or hearing examiner process. And I think, again, we're -- it's something that this Commission has directed to staff to move forward with and shortly we'll be bringing that information forward to you in terms of amendments that are necessary to accomplish that. There is a lot of specific recommendations that relate to that special master process and both the county attorney's office and the planning department have reviewed these and are incorporating these where we deem they're appropriate. In fact most of them we do deem to be appropriate and we had already addressed prior to these recommendations. MR. VARNADOE: Bob, why don't we let Tom deal with redefining the State's role in the growth management process Page 66 March 16, 2001 because I know a lot of that came out -- MR. MULHERE: That is the next major area. MR. VARNADOE: That is the next major area. And I think Tom -- I know that probably came from Steve. Maybe he would be better to summarize that for us. MR. BECK: Again, the State reviews 10- to 15,000 comprehensive plan amendments per year. And given the evolution and expertise and experience of local government today compared to way back in '85, we don't need to review as many amendments. But instead, there are some important big picture issues that the department needs to spend more time reviewing and doing a better job of. And the commission recognized three areas that the department needs to -- in working with DEP and DOT, to do a better job handling and not reviewing so many of the other, more local amendments. Those have to do with statewide issues of -- involving natural resources. And we'll need to define those over the next year. What are those statewide resources of significance? Major transportation facilities, such as the interstate highway system. Some of the intermotive facilities, seaports, the airports, especially the deep water seaports and major airports. We need to define those working with DOT and try to focus our reviews on land use amendments that would affect those major transportation facilities. And we also need to do a better job and focus more on land use amendments that would affect the coastal high hazard area. Land use amendments that would put more people in harm's way of wildfires. And what areas of the state are most susceptible to wildfires and other types of natural disasters? So I don't think there will be any statutory changes this session to reduce the department's review scope. Instead, I think the governor's three agencies, DOT, DPA and DEP will work together over the next year to try to define where our review needs to be better focused and to enhance resources and facilities and natural disaster preparedness types of issues. Then bring you back to the 2002 legislature. MR. VARNADOE: Bob. MR. MULHERE: I think Dave had alluded to some recommendations regarding regional planning councils. There Page 67 March 16, 2001 are recommendations to really enhance the role and -- in some degree enhance the role of regional planning councils to allow them the opportunity to provide for really interlocal dispute resolution and probably in a more formalized process. I think that's what I gleaned from the report. That that would also be coupled with this repeal or potential repeal of the DRI process as it's known today. That once we have the full cost accounting in place and then -- and we have the creation of interlocal agreements between local jurisdictions as coordinated through the regional planning council, they would then perform a dispute resolution function. I think they do that right now to some degree, but this would be just a little bit more formalized in terms of taking the place of the DRI process. Once again, I have to put on these glasses here. Creating More Livable Communities, that's where we get the focus -- it starts out with a focus on bringing school concurrency into the growth management process and ensuring that there's capacity for schools. And that's one of the most important objectives that the governor has stated is of great concern to him and is included in his draft bill. There are recommendations to enhance mobility and alternative transportation. And the last major category is one that we're not going to deal with a great deal today because we'll deal with it more at the natural resource, but just to briefly touch on it, developing a state rural policy, I just wanted to bring a few things into perspective. I believe the State is approximately 70 percent agricultural land use. And another, I believe, 14 percent is in conservation. You're talking about a total of -- that really means that a fairly small percentage of the state is in urban use. But primarily the growth management process is focused on those urban issues. And only in the last couple of years really -- in Collier County we've experienced it probably since our EAR process -- but statewide in the last few years the rural landowners and the agriculture industry has really begun to come up to the table and address their concerns and try to bring their concerns into the process. And what this report recognizes is that the methods that we Page 68 March 16, 2001 have used to date have not worked well to protect rural and agricultural lands and we need to look at other opportunities to do that. And this report primarily focuses on the use of incentives to retain agricultural operations and to cause good stewardship of the land. There is a couple of consents that are involved in that. One is that there probably is not enough money for the State to buy all of the sensitive lands that exist out there. And many private landowners in Collier County were blessed with large areas of very valuable natural resources and with that comes the responsibility to protect those. And we have a lot of private landowners who have been good stewards of the land for many years; and as such, the process that's in place today largely does not reward landowners for that but in fact penalizes them. Because lands with natural resources in a market economy as things are today actually are of a lesser value from a market perspective than -- other than lands that don't have those qualities; whether it's species, whether it's wetlands or other attributes that -- natural attributes that make them very valuable from a natural resource perspective. So we, as a state, and we, as a county, need to look at creating the types of incentives that will bring all of these divergent interest groups together and that will allow those landowners to recognize a benefit for retaining those highly valuable natural resources, not always in the form of outright purchase, but in other types of things. And that's where we get into a transfer of development rights. And that's where we get into cjustering. And that's where we get into conservation resource -- resource conservation agreements and those types of things. And we're going to talk in greater detail about those things in the next meeting. And I think that kind of wraps up my summary. MR. VARNADOE: Really, the commission spent a lot of time on their rural policy because they recognize that the State really doesn't have a rural growth management policy. It's going to be one of the big issues facing the State in the near future. And of course we're going to face it earlier than most because of the constraints of the final order that we have to deal with it. And as Bob said earlier, the State is kind of looking for Page 69 March 16, 2001 us to be a poster child, asking me, how is that rural assessment going down there? Are you guys on track? I say, Yeah, we're on track. It's a little slower than some of us would like, but we're on track. But Bob is right. It really is an incentive. They look at incentives. They recognize that down zoning really causes conversion of rural lands to other uses. And they have looked at the various incentive programs. Perhaps you get X amount of transfer density rights. And if you agree that the property will be used only for open space conservation, you get something less. If you agree it would only be used for agricultural purposes for a certain point in time. They looked at a variety of mechanisms that I think you'll be looking at in the future as this rural assessment comes to you. I would encourage everybody to look at the rural policy subcommittee's recommendation to the growth management study commission, which is included in part of your packet, isn't it, Stan? Right behind the recommendations, I think, and to look at the rural policy recommendations particularly prior to this workshop you're going to have where you're going to discuss that subiect. It's not that lengthy, but I think it gives you a good exposure to some concepts that they're -- that the growth management study commission looked at to maintain the rural economy and the rural nature, as David said, without allowing premature conversion; protecting our natural resources, but yet maintaining a vital economy. And as everybody knows, that rural -- at least the agricultural economy has shifted and will continue to shift as we -- as NAFTA has developed more statistics that startled me more than anything, is that south Florida ten years ago provided two-thirds of the winter vegetables for the world. We're now down to one-third because it's coming from South America. When you look at that and its impact on the rural land, you can see that other pressures that have been brought in to work on uses of those property. We need to take those into account. I didn't mean to get off on that topic, I'm glad we've got a few minutes because I want Tom to tell us with his crystal ball what's happening in Tallahassee and Page 70 March 16, 2001 what we're likely to see coming out of this session and maybe next session, as it usually takes more than one year, as a result of the growth management study commission recommendations. What you see, Tom, for growth management legislation, particularly this year. MR. BECK: I think as Bob said, the 89 recommendations in that report are not going to pass this session; some of which will probably never pass. And it will probably take several sessions to pass much of the study commission's report. The governor has prioritized two issues of his for legislation this session out of the report. One being better integrating our land use decisions with availability of public school infrastructure. And there are probably three aspects to that that will find its way into a bill. One is that probably initially the high-growth counties, those with the greatest unmet need for schools will probably have to submit a school facilities element and adopt it in their comprehensive plan in collaboration and cooperation with the local school board. That will probably be on a schedule set up to do that by 2003, early 2003. Secondly, that local governments would be given authority in that bill to deny rezonings and land use amendments which would increase residential densities in those parts of the jurisdiction where there is not adequate school capacity. You don't have the authority to do that today clearly. Orange County, though, has proceeded to do that under the former chairman of the county commission, Del Martinez. And it's being challenged in Orange County right now. But clearly, the governor wants to give local governments statutory authority to in fact do that. In the third issue with schools -- MR. VARNADOE: School concurrency? MR. BECK: No, it's not. Because concurrency is done at the permit level. And strictly speaking, this is basically ensuring that your plan amendments and your rezoning is supported by adequate infrastructure, just like we do with schools and water and sewer today. Concurrency technically is a -- whether you issue a permit or not, and this wouldn't affect school concurrency in a very narrow, technical sense, I guess. Page 71 March 16, 2001 MR. VARNADOE: But doing the same kind of planning, then, that we do for roads, we're doing that for schools; is that what -- MR. BECK: Doing it at an earlier -- well, yeah, concentrating at an earlier stage in a planning sense for schools. MR. VARNADOE: And who is going to be responsible for that, the school board or the local government? MR. BECK: You've got the reach -- the local government has to reach an agreement with their local school board on that issue. But in fact it would be the local government that would be denying the rezoning in the land use agreements. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I really like that because it pulls two separate governmental entities together with very, very similar needs as you go through a growth process and now we'll be able to work in harmony -- we hope in harmony to address that as we go. And I think that is pretty cool and has been lacking in the prior process. MR. BECK: And to do that, the legislation will not only amend the planning requirements, but the school board's requirements under Chapter 235. So that will be amended to mirror and be analogous to the changes under the planning statutes. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Anything that will help the school boards address their whole capital issues, I certainly believe that they will welcome. Because many times they're driven by a State process which made absolutely no sense on the local level, where they can't do one thing before they do the other. And they're the ones that catch enormous flack over it. MR. MULHERE: I have a copy of the governor's draft bill. If anyone is interested, I can e-mail it to you. It's fairly lengthy, but it's very interesting. MR. VARNADOE: I think I interrupted Tom right in the middle. We got to two of his three points. What's the third one, Tom? MR. BECK: The third one is -- I think you alluded to it, but the Department of Education has fairly strict one size fits all site requirements for the size of the site for schools and that sort of thing. And the bill would also provide more flexibility to allow local governments to make that decision on how large of a site you need for a school. The idea of urban schools, you can't meet those size Page 72 March 16, 2001 requirements that the DOE has -- currently has in their rules. So it will provide more flexibility to work those out too. The second part of the governor's bill would deal with what Bob was saying, true cost accounting. And again, this is a multiyear phase-in period that the way it's laid out now, it wouldn't be until after the 2003 legislature that this would be implemented on a statewide basis. But it would -- the idea is, it would give local governments the fiscal tools, the fiscal model to add up all the revenues, fees and this sort of thing generated by that development. It would then -- you'd determine the cost on infrastructure to the community, not only the infrastructure capital cost, but the maintenance of that infrastructure over some time period. And then it would just allow the community to judge and have the full information, the commission and its citizens, to understand what it's going to cost the community, if anything. You certainly could make exceptions. I mean, affordable housing projects won't pay for themselves. And that's a social issue that certainly local governments would have the prerogative to, I would say, keep the social benefits in mind when they do that. We would field test it. The department would -- the department is already working with experts throughout the country that have done this on a limited basis. It's never been done on a statewide basis anywhere in the country today. And the idea is that we would, in working with experts, develop a model or several models, field test those, based on the recommendations of this new nine-member commission that would be appointed by the governor and legislature. Bring those field tested results back to the 2003 legislature, get it approved, based on this new study commission's recommendations, and then implement it. Hopefully, 2003, 2004 we can give you a CD. We can plug it into your computer, Stan, fill in the blanks and -- with the particulars of a land use proposal or a development proposal and it will spit out at the end the cost of doing that to the community versus the benefits of doing that to the community; a cost benefit type of an approach. It's got to be user friendly. I mean, you know, little towns in North Florida like Mayo, Chiefland and Marianna, those little Page 73 March 16, 2001 places, I mean, it's got to be very user friendly. So that's the challenge for the State and the local governments, to come up with a model that's useful, that benefits the community and exposes or clarifies the true cost of development. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Is that going to come out of DCA? MR. BECK: It's kind of a two-step, three-step process. DCA will propose a model, have it approved by the next A plus study commission. And field test it and then it goes to the legislature for final approval. So there is a tremendous amount of dialogue, of public comment, changes to models and this sort of thing. MR. LITSINGER: I'm a little confused. It will ultimately identify a cost and benefit, but how is that to be applied by your Board of County Commissioners in making decisions to approve or deny proposals? MR. BECK: Well, the bill right now would give that discretion to the local government. There is no preset requirement that if the cost -- if the benefits aren't enough to offset the cost, that you have to deny that development. MR. LITSINGER: But they could use it for, say, actions or something of that nature. MR. MULHERE: Also, let me give you just one practical example. Without getting into the actual amounts, it's been documented through studies that, let's say, a purely residential community, while enhancing the tax base on the short term, because of the services that are ultimately utilized by a purely residential community, over the long haul there is a cost to the community associated with a purely residential rezoning. On the other hand, a mixed use development which incorporates some other types of land uses, such as commercial or industrial or other types of uses, institutional or whatever, may have the result, and this uniform cost accounting model would reveal that information to us, offsetting the negative aspects of that rezoning over the long haul. So that's one practical example of how that might be able to be utilized. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I hope the Commissioners heard that loud and clear because that's exactly what we have in Golden Gate Estates. We have all residential out there and there are no services out there to the benefit of the community, so what we lose out on is an attack on our infrastructure or our road Page 74 March 16, 2001 system. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Commissioner Henning, I certainly agree. To me, it's like in the private sector. We always look like this is one tool in the toolbox and it was weighted against everything else and put in perspective as to how you made your final decision. But it is a critical tool in the toolbox and without it, you have a lot of information -- a lot of questions that you really can't answer. MR. VARNADOE: In talking about travel, lanes, miles. So if you improve a project with the Estates is today, for example, what you're saying is that those people, although it may only be one single-family house, that may be a lot more of an impact on the infrastructure because of how far the people have to drive to take kids to school~ to shop, to do whatever. As opposed to what Bob was saying, if you have a mixed use project where you can satisfy your daily needs within the confines, you're not using that public infrastructure. So I think the county is getting a lot more sophisticated in, you know -- that was the purpose of the DRI. David, as you know, we always try to identify the benefit, whether it was a tax loss or a tax profit, to the local government from DRI and what you did to mitigate that if it was in the negative. And I think we are just trying to make it more sophisticated with that and get, like you say, Commissioner Carter -- give the government one more tool in their toolbox to look at whatever is being proposed and decide whether to approve it or not. Or you may end up with impact fees that attempt to make up that difference when you have the different kinds of projects. MR. BURR: It's going to take some field testing. Because we did have some impact models and we used to run tests. And invariably when we ran the models, you know, consultants can -- people can tweak the models to make it look good. Typically for a residential development we found out that, you know, in the beginning the project didn't pay for itself, but after 20 years it was raking in the cash. And eventually every single one of the economic analyses that we had showed the same thing and it got to the point where we just said, We can't trust that. And -- but I don't think it was a real, true cost accounting. And whether it was a real, true cost is not just money. And there Page 75 March 16, 2001 is other costs that are involved and that have to be considered in the true cost accounting. MR. VARNADOE: Tom, I have one other question. Public projects as well as private development, is that in the bill? MR. BECK: Yes. MR. VARNADOE: That's interesting. So when you do the DRI for this government complex here, if you did it in the future -- MR. BECK: I didn't say it was a public benefit. CHAIRMAN CARTER: We'll see a lot of public benefits. MR. VARNADOE: You've already got a DRI. CHAIRMAN CARTER: You know, George, what it really gets down to, I mean, I grew up in a neighborhood in my early life and working career, I was a lunch bucket crowd. We never thought about this stuff. You know what my family thought about? Where can we afford to live and how can we do it? And that's what drove our decision-making process. None of these other things. We just did it based on our ability to pay for what we could afford. So you have a lot of people who move eastward in the county. They're doing the same thing. It's more affordable. That's where I can live. That's where I can have a higher quality of life for my kids. And if we don't address how we can do it better, then all you've said is, Let's sprawl everybody out. Let's exacerbate the problem. And you know and I know that's not what's going to happen. MR. BECK: If I can continue that -- that the governor's two main legislative proposals will be introduced by Representative Paul LeGoffrey, (phonetic} from Lakeland. And in the House, in the Florida House too there are several other bills. What's going on right now is that people are filing what we're to call placeholder bills. They have nothing in them, but they're to be filled in later through legislative negotiations. MR. VARNADOE: A player to be named later. MR. BECK: The substantive committee in the house, it's the committee on local government and veterans affairs, will be filing probably at least two bills, two separate bills. Representative J.D. Alexander, who was a member of the study commission like Paul LeGoffrey, has filed a placeholder bill and probably will be addressing the rural policy types of issues Page 76 March 16, 2001 that Bob laid out real well. In the Senate there have already been three prefiled bills, mainly by the members of the Senate comp planning committee. Lee Constantine will be a major player from the greater Orlando area, a major player in the Senate in terms of growth management. Lisa Carlton, from Sarasota County, has filed a placeholder bill. And that committee actually also filed a third bill to expand a program that you may or may not know of, a pilot program called sustainable communities demonstration program. And right now the department was authorized a few years back to designate three to five communities in Florida to work with and provide enhanced technical assistance on. And in return, the department would not review comprehensive plan amendments in their urban areas. And it would allow the local governments that were designated to take on the role that the regional planning councils have today in the regional DRI process. (sic) MR. VARNADOE: What do you see having a chance of passing this year? MR. BECK: Out of all the stuff, the governor's two priorities have the best chances. MR. VARNADOE: Anything else? MR. BECK: I think some of this rural policy recommendations from the growth management study commission, I think some of those have a good chance of passing. I think the idea of being able to transfer development credits within urban areas and less suitable to more suitable sites gives farmers more value for their land, to make loans and that sort of thing. I think there is a lot of interest groups on all sides who are looking at that and working out something that they could reach consensus on. So I think it stands a pretty good chance, with the department supporting it, and trying to work with all the interest groups to make it happen. I think there will be some changes to the DR! process. I see maybe some types of developments being eliminated from the DRI review; such as airports, petroleum storage facilities, marinas. I think those three are already heavily regulated by Page 77 March t6, 2001 other state and regional -- state and federal agencies. And I see maybe some of the DRI thresholds being increased so that fewer developments have to go through DRI review, in recognition of local governments' expertise to review those types of impacts. MR. VARNADOE: It's hard to argue unless you have environmental impacts that a 1,000-unit project located in south central Collier County really has any regional impact beyond the jurisdiction of Collier County, in this day and age, that are not accommodated by the local government's review. I think raising those thresholds makes sense. One of the things we've been looking at for a couple of years is with airports and petroleum storage facilities and to a certain extent marinas. If you've got this whole state and federal programs that are set up to do nothing else but that, and it just seems like a duplication. You're doing it twice. MR. BECK: We just don't see a lot of benefits statewide. MR. VARNADOE: Let me say this. When you hear the name Representative Dockery, that is the spouse of Mr. Dockery, who is the sponsor and driver of high speed rail. She is a powerful, articulate, persuasive person and she has already got them thinking about taking $70 million away that would have ended up going to the counties and using it on that project. And I found that out yesterday in the regional planning council. So have your antennae up, folks. And be sure to recognize when you hear that name, it is not to be discounted in any way, shape or form. (Brief recess.) MR. VARNADOE: Mr. Chairman, unless the Commission has any more questions, I think as far as the panel discussion, I think we've pretty much discussed everything that we can this morning. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Before we thank ail of you for your being here, let us go to public comment and then answer questions by the Commissioners. And recognize, again, our guests for being here and their contributions. So may we go to public comment at this time? MR. DUNNUCK: Sure. First up I have Nancy Payton, followed by Bob Krisowsky. (phonetic) MS. PAYTON: Good afternoon. Nancy Payton, representing Page 78 March 16, 2001 the Florida Wildlife Federation. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Good afternoon. MS. PAYTON: I want to read back a few phrases that I heard earlier today. Mr. Henning, you said in the past we let industry drive the decisions. Mr. Carter, you said there was an opportunity for change, bring everybody together, got to work more together. Folks, I look at this table and I don't see that. Your words belie your actions. The only public sitting at that table are Mr. Anderson and Mr. Varnadoe. To add insult to injury, Mr. Varnadoe not only coordinated this discussion on growth management, he is the moderator. We did talk about public participation in the planning process, but we heard about discussions about how the amendment process might be more friendly to developers. We heard about the growth management commission, but nobody told you that there is an environmental group in the state of Florida that embraced that commission's study. In fact, my recollection is that the local chapter or the state chapter of the APA didn't embrace that report. Also, Charles Lee, the one environmental representative on that commission, had a minority report raising concerns about it. Mr. Beck, take note, Collier County still is the poster child for concerns about local control, that we need DCA for checks and balances because we're still not comfortable. We're still not -- we're still leery of more local control for growth management decisions. Florida Wildlife recommends different tasks on these workshops in the future. We ask that they be limited to Commissioners, staff and other agencies such as DCA or the regional planning council. It is also appropriate that the county's consultants be included; dover Coal, for example, with the natural resources discussion. From our perspective, it's not appropriate when the natural resource discussion is held that Wilson, Miller be sitting at the table because they're not the county's consultant. They are a private consultant for private landowners; and therefore, they're not the county's consultant and they should be in the audience, just as Florida Wildlife is, the Conservancy, Collier County Audubon Society and other interest groups. Page 79 March 16, 2001 I appreciate the comments, Mr. Carter, that you made a little while ago about making sure that others are involved in the process. Natural resources shouldn't be thought of as a growth management issue in and of itself. It transcends into other issues; school siting, water and sewer issues, land planning, future land use element. So natural resources is a component that is a major component of growth management. I appreciate the fact that it's having its separate discussion, but I want to stress that it's part of the bigger picture and we want to be mainstreamed. I have one other comment and I can't find it on my notes, so I -- well, yes, it was about~ again~ stressing citizen involvement and more discussion about how citizens can become involved in the planning process. I understand the development review process. That's very important. And I look forward to more discussion in detail, discussion about citizen access. Thank you. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, Ms. Payton. And as always, your comments are valued. Maybe as a point of clarification, again, we felt that the growth management process was one of enormous impact on this community and that's why we separated it into sections for discussion with the Board and the public. We also would not disagree with you that natural resources is a critical part of the growth management process. And when we have that workshop, your groups will be focused and be involved at the table with us and consultants or anyone else will not be, like Wilson, Miller. We are going to take this section by section and deal with groups who really have helped us throughout all of this process so we don't leave anybody out. So if that was not clear in my communications, I want to assure you that you're valued and we want you here and we want you in that natural resources workshop, which is broad based and encompassing and makes huge impacts on our growth management plan. Thank you. Next speaker, please. MR. DUNNUCK: Bob Krisowsky, followed by Mark Morton. MR. KRISOWSKY.' Hello, Commissioner Carter, hello, commissioners~ and hello, ladies and gentlemen. I'll just chime in along with -- I'm Bob Krisowsky. I'm a local citizen. I have Page 80 March 16, 2001 somewhat of an interest in environmental issues and just local government. It's kind of a hobby for me. I'd just like to chime in with what Ms. Payton had mentioned. I agree wholeheartedly with her. I think that we need a balanced representation on all of these issues at all of these meetings. I was a little disappointed to see today that this meeting was a bit different from the ones I've been watching on television on your water workshop and some of these other issues, that the environmental community was not seated, even though the development community was very well represented. I see room in here for this table to be made a little longer and a little wider. And I know you don't want to get into debates, but I certainly think that you could have selected a couple of environmentalists to sit here with you today and it would have been a better situation. But after today, I'm going to forget this because I don't think it's your intention to poorly perform in this regard. And as things go on, I hope we'll walk the walk and not just talk the talk. And it will be more inclusive. I expect that to happen. I'm curious to know if these gentlemen here from the DCA and the regional planning council will be in attendance at the next meeting when the environmental issues will be addressed. Gentlemen, do you plan to attend? MR. BECK: I'd be glad to if the Commission wants me. MR. KRISOWSKY: Because, you know, to have you not here and to have you here at this meeting and then the environmentalists come up, it kind of makes the environmentalists the stepchild, you know, of this whole operation. I guess that concludes my remarks. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I think you're right. I was kind of surprised they weren't. I made a point to make sure the Conservancy would be here. I talked them out of going to a meeting for the Save the Manatee to come here. I assure you, if I have a say in it, there will be a representative on future battles. MR. KRISOWSKY: I know that's your style and what you're aiming for. And I know, Commissioner Carter, you speak of that often too. So that's why I was surprised, not just here thinking, well, it's business as usual. And on top of the development community playing, like, a Page 81 March 16, 2001 first role, to have them here without that -- the environmental element and have them invited or set up to be in that role by our development staff, you know, just makes things feel a little awkward, okay. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you for your comments, and an extended invitation to the DCA and our regional planning council. And if you could be at any and all of our workshops, we'd certainly value you being here. Because it does add another dimension. Because there's not anything that we do in Collier County where it stops at the county line. Everything is affected in the region, for the most part. So if there is not any problem with that, I think it's a great idea. MR. BECK: Has the date of the workshop been set? CHAIRMAN CARTER: We will provide all of those for you. We will provide the next one in our county -- MR. MULHERE.' I'm sorry. I just feel the need as a short-timer to make a comment. And that is, again, I have to reiterate that this workshop was intended to focus on the process. And to the degree that we did not sufficiently focus on citizen involvement, though I know we discussed it and talked about it here, I can accept that criticism. Conversely, I would assume if we're going to have a natural resources workshop, you would want to see agencies more involved in protecting natural resources, such as DEP, and perhaps the Game Commission, et cetera, et cetera. They're not here. They're not here because this workshop was intended to focus on process and not on natural resource protection and environmental issues and not on water resources and not on solid waste resources. So I want to reiterate that, again, for the public who may be viewing this out there, that we're talking about a different philosophy here. This was to look at process. And to the degree that someone has a comment on the process, I would certainly accept that criticism and welcome it. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, Bob. MR. DUNNUCK: The final speaker, Mark Morton. MR. MORTON: Good afternoon. I would agree with what Bob Mulhere just said about this being about process, although I Page 82 March 16, 2001 truthfully didn't know that that's what it was about. In terms of when I put it on my calendar to come up, I thought it was a growth management study -- I mean a growth management workshop. I didn't know it was going to be just process driven. I understood that as it evolved. But I think there is a lot of things that growth management decides to process. And I think you're hearing that from everybody. I know there is two citizen groups sitting here and they'll want to be at the table in a bigger discussion that goes beyond process. I think that's of course a legitimate request. I wanted to commend the Commission on running the workshops. I've been here in Collier County for about 15 years plus and this is the first time I have ever had the pleasure of sitting and having all the Commissioners get together and actually get a presentation on the process and on all these different things. So I really want to commend you-all for taking your time and doing that. I think it's the only way to learn what's going on. You're touching on something in a few hours that really you could probably do about eight workshops on for eight hours each. I mean~ it's the same with the transportation workshop the other day. You're really still just kind of scratching the surface when you're getting into the issues, but you're scratching a lot further than past Commissions have done, so I want to commend you on that. I'd also like to commend you on your recent idea of setting up these commission committees on these different issues. That's fantastic. I was watching that on TV and heard County Manager Olliff say that, you know, Listen, we're so busy putting out fires and trying to get our infrastructure in construction and everything in place as far as staff goes, we need your leadership on these particular issues. Can you head up some committees? Well, I've heard some discussion in the public. Are these committees going to be different than any other committee? How come these are going to be effective? We've sat on 60 or 100 of these committees and nothing ever happens, you know. I would submit that because you will sit at those tables and you will come to every meeting, that that will be the dramatic difference on those committees. And so I'm hopeful that that's the way they will evolve and that is the way I understand them to Page 83 March 16, 2001 be, I want to compliment Tom for coming up with the idea to have all these workshops or if it was the Commission's idea, whoever's idea it was, it's really fantastic. I don't want to take up all of your time. Like I said, it's a big issue. I've been real involved in this for years and I've got a stake in it from where I work and also from my family. I did attend ail of the growth management study commission meetings and I attended all of the rural sub -- policy committee meetings, so I may have a little different take than possibly Tom would have, though Tom attended more than I did because he was there in all of it in the back room and typing and working on it. And the staff did a great job assisting that commission. Several of you talked in the past, we attended something about -- I guess it's six months old now. It's called the Future of Florida Assembly. This was a statewide effort which created a temporary high-powered think tank of 120 people from every aspect of Florida you can imagine. And we all met up in Tampa for three days and we said, Where are we going in the state? And we were supposed to take stock of its challenges and the opportunities in light of what appears to be a turning point. And this is a period of tremendous accomplishments and you know, about breakthroughs for us because of technology and everything that we're heading and all the growth strains we're having. I thought it was interesting. This was the Florida Association of -- Chapter of Association of Planners put this together and their idea was to get this topic out and really look at it broadly. The growth management study commission was looking at with as many stake holders as possible, versus I had to go to every meeting on my own. And there were a lot of people that didn't get to go to all the growth management study commission's meetings. It was interesting how close the two came to the same conclusion of what's important in the state. And you could take this report, the Future Florida Report, which is also online, and you can substitute the word "Collier County" in here for every word where it says "Florida." You could take the growth management study commission, I encourage you to do this, read it and put the words "Collier Page 84 March 16, 2001 County" in everywhere it says "state" and you will see that it tracks us right on the money. And the ideas are similar to the ideas that we are going to be considering and changing. But I think the basics it came down to, which I was pretty impressed with the growth management study commission, which I think was a very diverse, well-meaning group of people. John Manning, ex-county commissioner of Lee County, was on it and he sat on the rural committee. The Florida Game sat on the rural committee. Charles Lee sat on the rural committee. The Department of Ag was on the rural committee. There was one legislator on the rural committee. And our final report -- I say, "our," because we were real involved from a -- participating as a citizen, it was presented to the growth commission by Charles Lee of the Audubon Society, because J.D. Alexander, the chair, couldn't make it that day. And I remember sitting in the room and they put it up on a big screen and they -- actually the document. And Charles Lee was heading up the meeting that day. And all of the different interest groups were in the room and they were changing words in the sentences and getting to a collaborative consensus. And that was the final document everybody said, This is what we can present to the commission. I would say the current legislation that is coming out is very close to that document. There were some things that happened at the end in the final meeting that caused Mr. Lee to have to not vote for the Commission report. But he has since said, Listen, in the lion's share I'm in agreement with the report. There is a few areas I just cannot be supportive of. And I think that that, you know -- to his -- where he comes from, I think that he had to do that. You know, I mean there are things that he can just say, I'm not in agreement with. So I didn't have any problem with him saying he wasn't in total agreement with the report. 50 million -- let's see -- 50 percent -- let's see. 16 million to 23 million people over the next three decades coming to Florida. It's going to be great. They're all coming here. It's a wonderful place to live. Where are they going? Where are the 23 million people going to go? Are they going -- they're going to go to coastal areas. They're going to go to rural areas. We have to comment and Page 85 March 16, 2001 think outside the box here and be prepared for them. The Commission believed -- and this was interesting. The Commission wanted to substitute for the entire state comprehensive plan one visionary statement. And that was that the State's highest priority is to achieve a diverse, healthy, vibrant and sustainable economy, by promoting a climate which provides for economic stability, maximizes job opportunities and increases income for its workforce. Florida will be in a better fiscal position to address the other major challenges of our state, which are education, infrastructure, the environment, public safety and social services. That really is our hinge pin. When we think times are good, the people will vote for a half cent sales tax. If times are bad and we're in the middle of a recession and people's pockets are tight, they're probably not going to want to be looking to add any funding. So I think that the conclusion of everyone was, you -- how do you get better schools? You need money. How do you buy environmental lands and protect them? You need money. It all comes down to funding. And where do you get the money from? Well, you don't get it when you're in a recession or in an area that has poor economic viability. As Tom knows, when you're looking at the rural policy, there is a whole state. There are rural areas that are so depressed in the state of Florida right now, that is a Godsend to them. And there is other areas that are booming and they don't have much of a rural land left because they're grown up against it, that they are not even rural, you know, no environment left. So everything is different. How do you write up a growth management policy that covers the entire state? How do you write one for Collier County, that has diverse regions? North Naples is doing one thing. The Immokalee area is a different area. The rural fringe is different. The Estates are different. It's a great challenge. And I'm really happy to you see you-all stepping up to the challenge and getting into your committees and addressing it. As far as citizen involvement goes, I found an interesting quote from Thomas Jefferson in t820 and he had summed up the importance of, we the people. Page 86 March 16, 2001 I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves. And if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with the wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform them better and inform their discretion. And that's what you-all are doing. We've had years here, I would say of the citizens not -- we're not hearing their voice, but we're not hearing all stake holders' voices in these issues. So when we talk about the natural resource day, I look at the rural policy and I think to myself -- where I'm in agreement with Ms. Payton is why is that going on natural resource day? The final order said economic viability of rural lands. What's going on with the agriculture in rural lands? One component of it was the natural environment, but we've pegged that as a natural resource day. And I think it's -- it has components of whether -- what is that going to be in the future. It's not just for observing. So I would submit that that's something that needs a little bit more flushing out, I would hope. Again, I commend you-all and thank you for your time. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you. Comments from the Board? COMMISSIONER HENNING: None from me, sir. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: It's me. CHAIRMAN CARTER: It's you. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yes, it is. Just a brief note. I didn't want to get away from the subject, but I'll be gone all next week. At the last meeting we passed that Florida Forever Act. At that point we had two different acts in front of us; one was the original and the other one was the amended version that I -- the Conservancy agreed to. And it met a lot of the human issues that were missing from it; such as the right of access, the guaranteed seller program. It's going to be coming back up before us again and I wanted to pass out the copies so between now and the next meeting you'll have a chance to review it. There will be a change to that. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think the question was, which version did we pass? COMMISSIONER HENNING.' I did a motion on the first one, Page 87 March 16, 200t the one I sat down with, maybe from the Conservancy. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: The amended one was approved by the Conservancy. It was the final draft. It was the one that had the strike out on it. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Is that the one where there would be no access? COMMISSIONER COLETTA: No. It didn't say anything about no access. It said access, reasonable access. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I see passive recreation stricken on there and I believe that -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Not recreation. COMMISSIONER HENNING: That the citizens bought this property and the citizens have the right to access the property they bought. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Right. And we substituted "citizens of Collier County" for "Collier County," so we put the human aspect back into it. Where it says Preservation 2000 is afforded an opportunity for all citizens in Collier County for recreational access. And there was some things that were removed from there because passive recreation is a little bit restrictive to the point where, you know, how do you define passive recreation? Reasonable is also a restrictive word too. Opportunities opened it up. Whereas the state land acquisition program under both Preservation 2000 and Florida Forever is a willing selling program. And that's very important to the people that live out there, that that's put back -- put into it. We guaranteed access for those people and permitted land use for the landowners not selling. And that's all contained within it, but it wasn't mentioned in this particular document. But it's very important to the individuals out there. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Right. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: That was the reason for these particular things. And it was e-mailed back to the Conservancy. They came back and they said that was just fine the way -- with this change and that's the reason why. COMMISSIONER HENNING: When the Board has things dropped on us at the last minute -- Page 88 March 16, 2001 COMMISSIONER COLETTA.' I agree with you, Tom. COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- it should not be discussed. The time when we have review is the time when we get our packet. This is what circulated from the Chair. It's the first one and that's why I made a motion. Because we didn't have time to review it. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Your motion at the time was to approve it. I didn't hear you particularly naming one particular article, which is fine if you did. COMMISSIONER HENNING: That's why I sent out the memo to the Board and also to the county attorney. And I think the county manager is the first one because we want it approved. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Fine, Tom. That's okay. I can understand where you're coming from. But the thing is, between now and the next meeting, we need to take a look at it so we can correct what we were missing the first time. And we'll have more time to discuss it. I'm sure you were acting in the best interest of everyone at that time. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, Commissioners Coletta and Henning. And for those who feel that we're always one-sided in how we initiate these, the Conservancy came to me and asked to have this -- have a resolution put on our agenda. And at the end of that conversation, I said to the person who came to see me, I want you to draft the resolution. I want you to give us guidance in what you're asking for. So at the end of the day they agreed to both. But it was not one that I said, Oh~ I'll write this up and take it to the Commissioners. I gave it to the people who came to me. And I, you know -- again, I really tried to give everybody, regardless of what their position is, an opportunity to do this. So I'd like everybody to know, the people who initiated it were the people who I asked to do it. MR. SIMONIK: Mr. Chairman, if I could speak. Michael Simonik from the Conservancy. We presented your resolution that you passed the other day~ yesterday at the ARC committee it's called. I can't remember what -- Acquisition Recreation Council. It's the old committee. But we presented it I think with the changes because you had asked for changes during the discussion prior to the vote. So the changes that we agreed to~ we changed those in the Page 89 March 16, 2001 submittal to the State. So they got what you passed with the verbal changes and then we made them in writing, in written form prior to submittal. COMMISSIONER HENNING: There were two different resolutions, am ! right? CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, originally there were, but there was one with changes. And when the changes were requested, Commissioner Coletta and the Conservancy met and brought it to us on Tuesday. And ! made an assumption that we were voting on the one that had been amended and the Conservancy, which had worked with Commissioner Coletta, that's what we were acting on and the other Commissioners understood that. And it was a wrong assumption on my part. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Is that what you understood too? MR. SIMONIK: That's what we delivered to the State, was your amended -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thank you very much. I have no reason to carry this thing any further. You did the right thing. Thank you, Michael. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Any other comments from staff? MR. DUNNUCK: Yeah. In an effort to be proactive in knowing that Tom likes lists a lot, I've kind of created my own list of some of the items that we need to address as we come out of here. I think what I heard from the Board earlier was the fact that we want to look at bringing back an item that addresses bringing the PUDs back at the time of comprehensive planning amendments at the adoption phase. Additionally I think as staff we said that we need to bring back additional inputs into utilities and transportation type elements of the AUIR that is less of a garbage in, garbage out process, that we can show you, you know, where we're going to make changes in that process so you'd have a little bit better level of comfort. And finally, I think we anticipate bringing back an AUIR in November during the next cycle. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Members of the Board. MR. MUDD: Commissioner, before you leave, real quick, you asked me to come today to tell you a little bit about sewer. At Page 90 March 16, 200t the last meeting you said, on Friday, we could talk for just a second. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Yes, sir. And you are, for the record? MR. MUDD: Jim Mudd, public utilities administrator for Collier County. We've had a meeting with the CBIA and their task force. Commissioner Henning attended. And some ideas were laid out on the table and we're pursuing those. We have another meeting today with them at 4:00. In the meantime we had a letter drafted for you with an interlocal agreement with the City of Naples so that we could interconnect our systems together. That interlocal agreement as we sent it there came back with their critique and we've since sent one back to them. It looks like it will be on a temporary basis. It will be a 90 day and then there'll be some terms in there where we can go back and negotiate an extension. That's what's going on right now. Not necessarily the best thing for the county because it's a temporary basis. Now, they have some -- they have some angst over the fact that our peaks are their peaks. They get peaked out at the same time during tourist season, so it could put their plan out. So they are basically saying they can take our stuff as an equalizer on the off-peak hours. We have to work out how that process is going to work. What we can do in that regard is to -- if we send peak load to their -- from our north side in, I can draw out of an interconnect from the south side to bring to our south plant, so we basically draw some in and we use that system as an interconnect between all three plants. So if we took -- if they took three million gallons off at the top end in the north, I'd be drawing three million gallons from the south at the same time, so we could kind of avoid that. We're talking between their utilities folks and their experts and ours. We're also in the process of developing a plan for a permanent interconnect between the north and south collection systems. First we'll do it with an interim. We already have a 16 inch effluent line that's laid down on Livingston. We'll Y it off on both ends and hook it to sewer to take some of the peak off in that regard. Page 91 March t6, 2001 And then we'll put a permanent one when we do the Santa Barbara expansion of the roads. We have a permanent easement put in a big main pump station in around the 2003 time frame. In the process levels, we're taking a look at using our collection system for storage and implementing a SCATA system, which is an automated telemetry system. We do it now by conducting windage, not necessarily the smartest way to control your system to take the peaks off. So we'll have that on board by January of next year. We're using trucks to haul it right now. We're talking about a half a million gallons a day out of the north plant and taking it to the south plant. That's working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We're also going to start a program to inspect the restaurants during the summer and fall. We need to be proactive with the restaurant association to make sure and assist with their pump outs for their grease traps. Part of the way we got around some of the heavy organic loading in the north plant is, we basically asked the port-a-potty industry and we've asked some folks not to bring that concentrated septage to the plant and they've taken it to Lee County. Well, that increased the rates. And the hotel folks said, Well, we'll wait until the county gets done. And if their traps get overfull, it goes into the system, into the sewer system and it's even worse. We found out that we've got about a 30 percent increase in loading as far as grease is concerned over what we had last year. So sometimes some reactionary things that you do cause other problems, so we've got to be more proactive with that process in the fall. Some other issues we're taking a look at, and we've already said we're going to come to you with a change from three million gallons to eight at the south plant, to bring that on. If you look at the sheets that John and Start gave you early on, you get to the south side and you look and it says, Well, in '99-'00, two million gallons came online. Not so. That two million gallons did not come online. The plant was not permitted for that two million extra. And the best we're going to be able to do is a peak load at two million more. Page 92 March 16, 2001 So if you take a look at either one of those scales, you'll see that we're in a hurry down there and we really need to get on with it and take it to build out. The next thing we're going to take a look at -- and we've already talked to the Department of Environmental Protection. They're going to set up a meeting with their director -- their local director in Fort Myers with Mr. Olliff and myself and Dr. Amati (phonetic) going to it to lay out how we're going to get around this process to see if we can't get back in the wet permit mode. And there is some other things we could talk about offline. But I will tell you from the time we had the last Board of County Commissioners meeting to today, some very proactive steps have been taken in order to get us over this process. And I will tell you that the community is involved in that process and they're helping us get it fixed. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, Jim. Two things. One, I will be presenting this to the Naples City Council at their regular meeting this week. Secondly, Dave Ellis, CBIA, asked me to say a few words at 4:00 this afternoon at the CBIA meeting, which I will do, just to commend everyone for working together to try to deal with the situation. And it just is a lesson well learned that not only what we can do now, but when we have, quote, a natural disaster, I think we're going to have some things in place that will even do a better job for us to deal with as a community. So, Jim, thank you for all of your energy and effort on this. And again, we're always pleased that you are here because you grab the issue and you go with it and you don't mince any words about what the problem is or how we need to fix it. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I also would like to thank you, Jim. And if it's possible, Mr. Henning has quite an interest in this. He's been following it. When you have that meeting in Fort Myers, possibly you might -- if Mr. Henning's schedule permits, you might be able to take him along so we have feedback from a Commissioner. MR. MUDD: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: You don't mind me volunteering you, do you, Tom? COMMISSIONER HENNING: That's all right, Jim. Paybacks Page 93 March 16, 2001 are hell. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Any other comments or any other business in front of this Board? I would thank again all of our guests who are here and assisted us in this process. We value all of you, whatever your points of view in this community are. And we want to give you an opportunity always to be a part of what we're doing. So thank you. It is appreciated. And this meeting stands adjourned. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 1:15 p.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL JAME~~hairman E. CLERK ~' ' - ~, ~lr~ ~ ." " --~*:-T.. ~ese ~imlut.~s approved by the Board on ~P~ l~, Z~ , as present~ *~ ~* ~ or as corrected . TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF GREGORY COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC. BY TRACIE MOUNTAIN, RPR Page 94