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BCC Minutes 06/05/2001 W (Community Character Plan Implementation & GMP/LDC Amendments)June 5, 2001 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Naples, Florida, June 5, 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 9:14 a.m. in WORKSHOP SESSION in Building 'F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRMAN: VICE-CHAIRMAN: James D. Carter, Ph.D. Pamela S. Mac'Kie James Coletta Donna Fiala Tom Henning ALSO PRESENT: Tom Olliff, County Manager Amy Taylor, Principal Planner Page I NOTICE OF BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS INFORMATIONAL WORKSHOP Tuesday, June 5, 2001 9:00 A.M. Notice is hereby given that the Collier County Board of County Commissioners will hold an informational workshop on TUESDAY, JUNE 5, 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: Community Character Plan Implementation Amendments to Growth Management Plan/Land Development Code 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, FLOR/DA James D. Carter, Ph.D., Chairman DWIGHT E. BROCK, CLERK By:/s/Maureen Kenyon Deputy Clerk June 5, 2001 (The meeting commenced with Commissioner Coletta and Commissioner Mac'Kie not present.) CHAIRMAN CARTER: We're live and ready here. Good morning. Hello, hello, hello. Our sound system is working about as well as our computer system. There we go. Good morning. Welcome to the workshop on community character and design. If you'd all loin me in standing for the pledge of allegiance, please. (The pledge of allegiance was recited in unison.) CHAIRMAN CARTER: In update for our listening audience and for members of our audience here this morning, this is a second session that we've had on community character. The original report was presented to the Board of County Commissioners a few weeks ago in which we accepted the report to bring back to this workshop for more in-depth discussion. So we welcome all of you here this morning, and we look forward to your participation as we go through and get some direction in terms of how we're going to use this document. So at this time I will turn it over to Mr. Oliff, our county administrator, manager, whatever term he prefers, and we will move forward. MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. Just a couple of housekeeping items first. Anyone interested in speaking, there are some speaker slips at a small table right up at the front of the room. And if you're interested in speaking, there will be an opportunity at the end of the workshop for you to loin us here at the table and make your comments. If you'd just fill out one of those speaker slips and turn it in to John Dunnuck. John, if you'll raise your hand so everybody can see who you are. Just -- the other housekeeping item is just to let the commission know the balance of the commission -- Page 2 June 5, 2001 Commissioner Coletta, as he told us earlier, was not going to be able to be present at the workshop; and Commissioner Mac'Kie, as a good thing, who is at a ceremony recognizing her daughter's scholastic achievements, won't be able to be here until ten o'clock, but she will join us at ten. This is the 12th in a series of workshops. This is a follow-up workshop to the presentation from the Dover Kohl group on community character. I do want to take an opportunity to point out that Jim Rideoutte, the chairman of your Select Committee, is here in attendance. If you've got any of the real hard technical questions about how we got to this point, he can tell you the painful details of how we got here. But we wanted to try and take that plan and make sure that it didn't become just another dusty plan that sits on the shelf alongside a number of other long-range-type planning studies that have been done and perhaps haven't been acted on nearly as effectively as we had hoped when we initially started those. And I know from discussions with Jim and discussions with our staff, it's a goal of ours to actually see some real meaningful results come out of the effort and the money that was spent by this commission. Part of this effort is -- you could actually look at it as a two-part implementation plan because the Horizon Committee that's also being created for smart growth and growth management will take on, in my opinion, some of the long-range goals and comprehensive planning-type changes and efforts that will result from the Community Character Plan. But I think there are some intermediate and short-term things that can and have already been done from community character, and I think that's what the focus of our workshop here this morning is going to be. With that, Mr. Chairman, I turn it over to Amy Taylor from your long-range planning staff. Page 3 June 5, 2001 CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you. Good morning, Amy. MS. TAYLOR: Good morning. I'd like to offer an opportunity for John Dunnuck to provide any introductory remarks. MR. DUNNUCK: In the essence of time, I think, you know, Tom's covered it quite well, and we probably should just get into the study. MS. TAYLOR: Okay. Just as a -- as a brief background, many of you have followed this through the course of the last two years that the development of the study was occurring. There was a citizen committee, much like what -- what is now being formed, the Community Character/Smart Growth Committee. Their main focus was to get a plan developed with strong implementation guidelines and strategies included. And the main intent of that was that oftentimes these -- in Collier County's experiences as well, several very good plans have been developed, and they've sat on shelves. This Community Character Plan has the basic recommendations and strategies for implementation. It includes several basic major items: Community design, mobility, greenspace, and implementation -- and the implementation component for each. What we'll be going over today is the implementation strategies and, more specifically, the type of coordination, at what level this will have to occur. I think this is a very -- each and every one of the recommendations are very, very complex, and they would require a high level of coordination of staff and of citizen community involvement. The first one is the community design manual. Included in the community design manual is just a conceptual iljustrative settlement map of where -- some of the ma]or recommendations of the Community Character Plan, where those different types of community development would occur. This would be a general guideline as Growth Management Plan amendments are Page 4 June 5, 2001 developed and Land Development Code amendments are developed. This would be where those specific recommendations would apply. One of the main goals of the community design manual is, over time, to create and continue to create great neighborhoods with great architecture, world-class streets, and memorable centers. The first implementation series of recommendations are in regard to revitalizing mature neighborhoods. And just to focus you a bit -- I know we've seen these slides a thousand times, but these are just an example of where we could -- what we're going to be discussing and the impact of these implementation strategies. These implementation strategies would allow communities to have various tools to improve their communities over time. And keep in mind, generally, that this plan is not a l-year plan. It's not a 5-year plan. It's not a 20-year plan. In some cases it's a 50-year plan, just as in this -- particular older neighborhoods have been around for 50 years and more. And we now have an opportunity in time to take a bird's-eye view of how we develop over time and see how we can do it differently. This -- this plan will take us to that point and, generally, with a very, very long- range vision. There are some opportunities for improvement today, and with the revitalizing neighborhoods, that's one of our first opportunities. The main goal that was accepted and endorsed by the commission was on revitalizing and reenergizing neighborhoods by using various techniques to improve the communities. It would begin with support in our Growth Management Plan and recognition of the typical types of improvements that maturing neighborhoods may need and acknowledging their -- these various communities as being important to the overall Collier County area. It would be -- there would also be an addition to the Page 5 June 5, 2001 Growth Management Plan allowing for community plans to be developed. As -- as occurs now currently, two or three communities come to the Board of County Commissioners per year and request community plans. This would develop a process, an administrative process, whereby communities would petition, survey themselves, and apply to the county to -- for their consideration and eligibility for a community plan. The financing issues on this are -- and the Community Character Plan recommends that this happen this budget year so that it is an immediate consideration -- is 250,000 to fund these community plans. One of the first, as we all know, neighborhoods that are interested in this is Naples Park. Now, the 250,000 would not go to improvements. It would go to a planning process. It would assist a community -- actually, several communities -- with development of a community plan for improvements such as improved drainage, improved sidewalks, street trees, possibly zoning overlays. If they have commercial fronting a highway, this could also be included. And oftentimes the commercial is -- is aging, as well, and could benefit from a zoning overlay to -- for example, when right-of-way has been taken over time and they don't have enough room for parking and setbacks and so on. So they need to take a relook on how they can -- how they can redevelop. Community plans would also -- could be used for industrial and commercial areas where they do need improvements over time. Some of the funding mechanisms that could be used for the actual improvements after the planning process and a consensus has been built with the -- the owners is grants, MSTUs, current county programs such as our neighborhood park program and our pathway program. There are tree planting grants, national tree Page 6 June 5, 2001 planting grants, that could be -- that you could be eligible for too. A community may, as a result of the community planning process -- and understanding that the scope and the willingness to -- to do maybe more costly improvements, might be willing to tax themselves through MSTU or MSTBU funding mechanisms. MR. FEDER: To get some specifics here, you're noting two hundred fifty thousand for community plans, seven hundred fifty for matching funds. Typically in the past what we've looked at is the MSTU or MSTBU. What are you proposing here and what kind of match ratio? If I'm a community, what do I assume this new program's going to do? If I go out and ask for a plan, what funding am I expecting from the county? MS. TAYLOR: The 750,000 was recommended by the -- was a recommendation in the Community Character Plan, and that's why it's up there for our consideration. The -- this was to be available for the next fiscal year, not -- not this fiscal year. It may be that once we begin to develop an administrative code that would include what the communities are responsible for and paying for and what the county would be responsible for -- for example, the county would be responsible or may want to take on the responsibility of funding a community-wide improvement. Say there's -- there would be -- they want to open up an interconnection roadway that would improve traffic. That might be something that the county would want to -- want to take on as a cost. That could be identified through that community planning process. CHAIRMAN CARTER: So what you're saying, Amy, is first you have the plan; secondly, which we're going to fund, have a budget, 250,000 for communities who want to do the planning. MS. TAYLOR: Right. CHAIRMAN CARTER: The implementation or matching funds at 750,000, now, that is from the county that is available as it Page 7 June 5, 2001 would match if they have an MSTU or have grants or whatever -- MS. TAYLOR: Right. CHAIRMAN CARTER: -- mechanisms they establish? Am I tracking that right? MR. TAYLOR: They would have to be identified, what the community's responsibilities would be. Now, if the community needs assistance through matching grant funds or, for example, a countywide benefit improvement, then that funding would be available. But it would not -- could not be identified until that community planning process, you know, was completed. MR. FEDER: Have you thought about a revolving fund, loan fund, maybe with something like the seven hundred fifty that would be a revolving loan opportunity for improvements as opposed to necessarily something that's paid out to one community rather than -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Have you taken a look at CRAs for these neighborhood redevelopment areas? MS. TAYLOR: I think that could be identified through the community plan process, whether it would be a necessary move. The benefits of the CRA -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: And let's define CRA for our listening audience. MS. TAYLOR: It's a community redevelopment area, and it has to be identified as -- it has to go through an application process and a review process to identify that it's blighted, that there are certain deficits within the community that need to be, you know, really major capital improvements. It could be sidewalks. It could be drainage and various things. So that has to be identified. And the community redevelopment agency is the Board of County Commissioners in our case, in our county, and the community would have its own advisory board. It allows the Page 8 June 5, 2001 community to benefit from increases in property values over time. The increase -- their increment increase in their property values, that funding goes toward improvements of the neighborhood; whereas in an MSTU, the community agrees to additionally tax themselves for particular types of improvements. MR. LITSINGER: A couple comments on the CRA. Probably we would find as a result of our community plans that the implementation of a new CRA district -- for instance, we already have a CRA in Collier County. There's only one. Before we would add another district, probably the examination process would look at what improvements, from a capital standpoint, the local community was willing to pay for. And probably in most cases those achievement -- those could be achieved through the MSTU mechanism. But, of course, a new CRA district is also available in the background. But you also have to keep in mind when you take a very large neighborhood and put it into a CRA, that all the tax increment for that particular part of the county, however large it is, goes directly back to that neighborhood and thereby requires for the Board of County Commissioners to pull from somewhere else to meet the countywide needs. But, yes, CRA districts are an option in implementing the plans that would be developed through this process, perhaps second behind MSTUs, and mechanisms of that type, grants, and loans. COMMISSIONER HENNING: The reason I bring this up is, you know, I'm concerned about the capital needs that we need countywide. And recognizing some of these redevelopment areas, neighborhood redevelopment areas, is a community benefit. But the $750 (sic) is a concern that I have, knowing the capital needs needed to -- countywide. MR. LITSINGER: I think it would be key that a policy issue, a policy understanding, in implementing any of these studies, that Page 9 June 5, 2001 communities that were chosen -- for instance, whichever community would be chosen for the first community plan -- would understand that wide-scale capital improvements to realize the plan would be garnered primarily from the residents indicating a willingness to tax themselves. A prime example would be the Bayshore MSTU. Those folks were willing to tax themselves to have improvements to their neighborhood, and that would probably be the main mechanism that we would look at first. COMMISSIONER HENNING: How would you survey the community to see if they want to be deemed a redevelopment area? MR. LITSINGER: There are a couple of ways that it can be done. I'm speaking more from the standpoint of the MSTU approach. Depending on the number of residents, you can have a petition come to the Board of County Commissioners where you have -- 50 percent of the property owners plus one, by standard certified public petition, can request that the board establish an MSTU or, as happened with the case over in Bayshore, you had a group of concerned and involved citizens that came forward and demonstrated the need. And the board, through its own initiative, I believe, on a supermajority vote, can establish an MSTU also. CHAIRMAN CARTER: But I -- MR. OLLIFF: I think-- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Go ahead, Tom. MR. OLLIFF: I think the commissioner brings up a good point, that in a lot of these -- two points: One is that at this level you're probably not going to be able to say exactly for each specific character plan, neighborhood plan, what is the appropriate or the right funding mechanism because there's a whole menu of funding options that are out there, including ad valorem taxes for something that may be a community-wide Page 10 June 5, 2001 benefit that we would want to do anyway. There may be some park projects within there that there may be park impact fees that are available, maybe special assessment districts, MSTBUs, CRAs. There's a whole menu of things. And it's going to change, and it's going to be a case-by-case basis on what is the appropriate way to fund the improvements in a particular neighborhood. But the second and probably more important thing is to make sure the neighborhood that is going to be the subject of the neighborhood plan is a partner and, frankly, a driver in that plan because we want to make sure that they want to participate before we're trying to force something down their throat. It's important for them to buy in and want this improvement. And, frankly, it's up to us, you know, to, I think, explain clearly the benefits of, in most of these cases, a redevelopment district for the property owners in that district because the improvements in their own taxable values and their neighborhoods and all of those intrinsic type benefits are there. It's just up to us, I think, to explain a lot of that. But I think the commissioner's right. Some sort of a survey tool, some sort of a form to find out what the actual property owners in that area want is going to be very, very key. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Absolutely. I think it all starts with a plan. First of all, the community has to develop a plan. Then I would equate it much to what we have to participate in as a county with the state on road funding. If you have the local initiative -- the more initiatives you have in the community, the better the prospect you are to get funding, in this case from the county, because you have demonstrated as a community that you want to do these things. And whether it's the parks or whether it's whatever it is that's going on, the mix, as -- Tom, as you're pointing out, we have a Page 11 June 5, 200~ whole laundry list of funding mechanisms. And if the community doesn't want to do something, I am the last commissioner that's going to say, you know, "You have to do this because it'll make you look better." That's up to the community. That's their decision, and they have to be in concert with it. And once the community makes a commitment, then we can move forward. It's like a checklist. MS. TAYLOR: As staff we were discussing the various -- when we do develop the administrative code to implement the community plan program, there was discussion of how important a survey process would be to end it -- to understand if the community is committed. Also, there are other community plan programs throughout the state that require that there be a homeowners' association before they'll enter into an agreement to do a community plan, with that homeowners' association, you know, approved by a majority to move forward. So we could build that into -- we could certainly build that into the process. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I need to say that civic associations, in my experience, you know, maybe doesn't represent the communities at whole's feelings. So, you know, I've been involved in community -- or civic associations for a number of years, and I enjoy it, what they want to do to improve the neighborhood. But, again, let's check the sense of the community as a whole. MS. TAYLOR: Okay. CHAIRMAN CARTER: You're right, Commissioner. I have a burning example in my brain about that, so you don't -- MR. OLLIFF: Well, I don't think initially you're going to find any reluctance from some of these older neighborhoods to want to participate in the planning process. But when you actually get down to paying for the improvements necessary to bring it up to speed, then that's when you're really going to have to make sure Page 12 June 5, 2001 you have the pulse of that community because the commitment won't be nearly as strong when it gets to actually writing the check. CHAIRMAN CARTER: When the rubber hits the road, then we'll find out just what they want to do. MS. TAYLOR: This is just to demonstrate the level of coordination that would be involved in -- in actually putting together the community plan process. It would involve both community development services, public services division, with the involvement of the neighborhood park program, transportation services really becoming involved if the community requires traffic calming. Traffic transportation planning department, pathway program, and interconnection opportunities would also be looked at throughout -- or during the community plan process. Transforming plans for conventional subdivisions. The Community Character Plan contained a typical PUD subdivision with a disconnected street network and showed ways in which that street network could be more interconnected and provide more opportunities for free flow of traffic through the neighborhood and additional access points. The ways in which the comm -- the Growth Management Plan and the Land Development Code would need to be amended are also outlined in the plan. This -- it recommends that we add objectives and policy to commit to improving typical subdivision techniques and establish stricter terms before establishing the life of a nonbuilt development that are no longer consistent with the Growth Management Plan and LDC. There have -- it makes an additional recommendation that we -- we have a five-year sunset rule for our PUDs, and there's been - - there is a recommendation here that we shorten that to three years so that we can have an opportunity to examine the PUDs in Page13 June 5, 2001 light of new Growth Management Plan and LDC amendments as a result of the Community Character Plan and other initiatives. The importance of putting this in the Land Development Code gives the various staff departments, whether transportation or community development services, the -- the basis and the mandate to look carefully at -- whether it's new development or an expiring PUD and recommend various changes that will improve that -- that devel -- but not only for -- from an architectural standpoint or street level connection standpoint, but for the entire community as well. Is there a question? CHAIRMAN CARTER: Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I know that we've discussed this in a regular board meeting, about the sunsetting in three years, and I think that we had a majority. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Yes. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So please bring it forward. MS. TAYLOR: Okay. The level of coordination is -- tightly requires coordination between the community development services and transportation services division. There would be a number of Growth Management Plan amendments along with consistency reviews that would be the responsibility of the comprehensive planning section and current planning section. The current planning section would take the lead in the Land Development Code amendments that -- that could move forward with these -- with these amendments. Transportation services division would be responsible in assisting with Growth Management Plan amendments so that their -- their needs and -- would be met, review of expired PUDs for consistency with the regulatory changes, improvements to interconnectivity, sidewalks, access, and what we'll get to later is the new thoroughfare plans. If an expiring PUD or a new development, Page 14 June 5, 2001 there's an opportunity for an interconnection and it's part of the new thoroughfare plan, that can be incorporated into that plan. Norm, do you have any comments on this or additions? MR. FEDER: No. One thing I will hit on, when you're talking about modifications on the PUD, you do want to look at interconnection as a big part of the issue here. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Norman, you're going to need to get closer to the mike. MR. FEDER: Thank you, Commissioner. Am I on? While we need to promote greater interconnection, we also need to look at the balance of what we do, how many access points we're creating on the arterial system, so that's one issue that I'll raise here as we look. MS. TAYLOR: And I think that's important, too, that they're-- we are in a situation now where many of our major subdivisions have their main access point off of major arterials. We would be looking at opportunities for spine roads and interconnections where those access points would come off of those roads and not our major arterial system. Now, the Community Character Plan recommended a certain type of neighborhood design where there would be lots of interconnection and good circulation through the neighborhood and walkability to various resources like parks and -- and civic structures and -- and different types of architecture within neighborhoods so that over time you're -- you're honoring and highlighting the street, which is visible for everyone in the community, and the civic structures and public facilities such as parks within a community and encouraging more -- more involvement in a community rather than, you know, single, gated communities with dead-end streets and so on and so forth. They would -- they recommended developing Land Development Code amendments and Growth Management Plan Page 15 June 5, 2001 amendments to support that, that would allow this type of condition to occur. In many cases, we -- we don't have the basis for these types of developments to occur. It wouldn't preclude other, you know, standard developments that we see today to occur, but it would provide that opportunity for -- for example, you know, limited setbacks in a community, more sidewalks, street trees, garages in the back, you know, various things that may not be allowed in our current code but would be allowed now with these changes within a PUD. It has a number of future land use recommendations, and this is key, too, with regard to any development that occurs, not just a specific new, urbanist-type of development. Right now we get a PUD, and we don't have a real understanding of what the street network will look like. This will require that that -- that -- submittal of a conceptual street and block pattern at a PUD rezone stage and would require technical evaluation of a PUD plan and site development plan as to spacing and connectivity of local streets and interconnections with adjoining neighborhoods. And it would amend the traditional neighborhood design subdistrict to reflect new strategies and allow, throughout the urban area without a rezone, a traditional neighborhood. Now, this is a big one. It would -- if -- if the traditional neighborhood design subdistrict was used by an applicant, they would have to meet certain specific criteria, and they could come in without a rezone. The Community Character and Smart Growth Committee would work on developing some guidelines with staff to bring that before the Board of County Commissioners for their consideration at a later point. That's a real big step that may not at some point have the type of neighborhood or adjacent property owner involvement that we like to have or are used to having with a rezone process. But this was a way in which the consultants felt we could encourage this Page16 June 5, 2001 traditional neighborhood design with commercial and multifamily and single-family mix. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Would this be part of the Horizon Committee -- MS. TAYLOR: Yeah. CHAIRMAN CARTER: -- challenge to work on this, Tom? MR. OLLIFF: I think so because that's one of those -- well, that could be done a number of different ways. But that's one of those Growth Management Plan zoning-by-rights issues that we had talked to you about as part of the actual presentation of the plan. And there's two ways that you generally get developers to do things: You either do it by incentives, or you do it by mandate or by stick. And this is more of a carrot way to do it, provide certain incentives in your plan that gives a developer some benefit for providing a development that's designed like you want to see it designed. And in this case giving a zoning by right is something that is very new in terms of concept for Collier County but something, I think, that has some merit. MS. TAYLOR: The -- I don't want to get the first two points lost in that one; require conceptual street and block pattern at the PUD rezone. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think that's real key, Amy. I mean, I like what I'm hearing, that you're forcing it through a process where we establish a criteria that has to meet the checklist, and if it's -- and the new stuff, to me, is a given. You don't come to us unless you've done it. If you have one, don't bring it back unless you have done this because it's going to be turned down. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I think that we can add some of the elements to that as far as interconnectivity to other neighborhoods, you know, community parks, and that kind of mixed use. Is it conducive to the neighborhood or the proposed land use change? Page 17 June 5, 2001 MR. LITSINGER: Perhaps we could bring all of these bullets items to the Horizon/Smart Growth/Community Character Committee to further evaluate and flesh them out in terms of what we might want to propose to the board in terms of growth management amendments. CHAIRMAN CARTER: And I don't want to hold up your presentation because I think the objective here is to find certain things that we could give you direction on today because I don't want to hold up some of these. I mean, I feel like we're kind of like a duck in the water here with our feet going, and I would like to see us be able to implement what we can and then look at the longer range stuff. MR. FEDER: When it goes to committee, I think you're going to need to look at the issue and the part of identifying your street layout. Do you have enough information about the nature of the development and, therefore, the trips it's going to generate and how it's going to relate to the rest of the system? To know the way out and number of connection points and other issues, that's something the committee's going to have to evaluate. CHAIRMAN CARTER: And I would expect as a commissioner, before I see that, that would have gone through your litmus test. MR. FEDER: That's why I'm saying if you try to bring it to the PUD level, you need to understand what level of information you have then. Can you bring it to that level and still be able to answer those questions? The follow-up committee's going to need to look at that. MS. TAYLOR: And, of course, at the time that it does go to committee for the development of the Comprehensive Plan amendments, the Land Development Code amendments, there would be real high-level coordination between the planning department, both community development services and Page 18 June 5, 2001 transportation, in order to do that. Regarding gated communities, the objective that was endorsed was most recent developments provide only one way in and one way out and install a security gate at that point. Newly approved developments should instead have open street connections along spine roads about every quarter mile. Multiple gates can be used to secure individual blocks or portions of neighborhoods provided these gates do not block access to adjoining neighborhoods. And we got into this a little before, what it would involve in terms of implementation, Growth Management Plan amendment, and Land Development Code amendment. The previous PUD requirement for street interconnection conceptual would go a long way in assisting that this be implemented. Designing great streets. This -- we're going to get into this a little bit more when we get into the mobility, but just setting the course, great streets are the backbone of a well-designed community. There should -- they're public spaces that should be designed as a unified whole with sidewalks and street trees. And streets should be of such quality that they are genuine amenities to the neighborhoods they serve. This, of course, involves a dollar figure. There's a cost attached to, you know, making a beautiful roadway. Much of what we design today has many of various components. What we do have right now -- and we'll get into this more with the mobility strategy -- is one adopted roadway elements section. The Community Character Plan recommends several roadway sections depicting the types of roads -- whether it be a local road, a collector, an arterial, and so forth -- and a different type of collector or arterial. Some of the future land use and transportation element amendments would be to recognize as favorable commercial Page 19 June 5, 2001 development or redevelopment along major roadways with little or no setbacks, parking lots moved behind or aside buildings, and buildings more than one story tall. The purpose of more than one story tall is -- you can -- it pretty much stands out quite a bit on 41 where you'll see the typical strip commercial, Iow buildings, and you have a wide street section, I think in some cases 180 on 41. It doesn't create that public realm that a couple-story building would. It just -- people generally have the concept that you still -- you maintain your small-town character if you have one-story buildings and so forth, but that's not really necessarily the case. You don't have -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: No. MS. TAYLOR: -- to have a-hundred-foot buildings -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: No. MS. TAYLOR: -- but typically the ratio is 3 to 1. The street section -- if it's 120, you would have, you know, 35- to 40-foot buildings, three to four stories. The setbacks are an issue too. This would mean much of the parking in the back or to the side, little or no setback, and landscaping. But you can accomplish the design, you know, because this does -- like I said, this is a 50-year plan, really. You're going to have a lot of this zigzag. But you can accomplish that same feeling with the street trees, with the taller street trees, as you begin to develop closer to the street over time. COMMISSIONER HENNING: If I can say that I'm really excited about this element of it, and I can see that we are going to look and feel more as a community by having residential over commercial or offices over restaurant with some element of -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: Boy, I so agree, because I remember back in the Dark Ages when I was a little girl, we used to have -- we used to have trees along the sidewalks, and this -- neighborhoods were -- were -- had less crime because people Page 20 June 5, 2001 were walking. People knew who lived next door to them. People kind of looked out for one another, whereas now we don't have anything facing the street. Everything's facing the back yards so we don't have to look at our neighbor. We don't have to look at what's going on on our street, and we can shelter ourselves from everything. And, you know, they always say that what goes around comes around. What used to be the style in the 1900s comes back again. Well, it seems like we're looking back into the '40s and '50s and seeing that they had a successful thing, and we're -- we're taking a long look at seeing how we can implement that. It is wonderful. MS. TAYLOR: Right. And, you know, with our -- with our summer heat and even our spring and fall heat, it really does make a lot of sense to have shaded pathways. You're not going to get people walking and using their bikes and -- along of stretch of asphalt on a concrete sidewalk. It's just too hot. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Mr. Feder. MR. FEDER: This is probably one of the most important things that we need to raise relative to this concept. There's an orientation to trying to take the arterial and turn it into something that its function and purpose doesn't accommodate. I would submit to you the one thing we need to look at is trying to flip around the logic that we're trying to play here. An arterial shouldn't be tried to be made into a public area. Now, that doesn't mean arterials shouldn't have the landscaping with the trees, with the lights, with sidewalks. But, nonetheless, the development around it ought to be oriented back to the collector road system, its access off of a collector road system, and made part of the neighborhood, not the other way around, trying to make the arterial part of the neighborhood when we have definite constraints on capacity. Page 21 June 5, 2001 So we ought to be looking at this concept, not about reducing the setbacks and orienting that movement on the arterial and putting on-street parking on major arterials and other issues I see here before you, but rather turning that orientation around and having that orientation back to the community such that the regional activity center is part of the community, the neighborhood activity center, and making that orientation off of the collector road system, not off of the arterial. COMMISSIONER FIALA: So let me just -- let me understand if I heard what you just said, and that's -- because I thought that's where we were going. Where people can walk on the sidewalks which are separated from the street with grass and trees, and they would have covering so that -- because of the heat and so forth, yet the parking would be behind, and that would lead to the roads that would then bring them out onto the major highway; is that -- is that what -- MR. FEDER: Out onto the arterial. But what's being looked at here is taking the buildings, bringing them up closer to the arterial, trying to convert the arterial to a public space when that puts it into a conflict with its primary function and purpose. Rather, I'm saying the orientation ought to be the other way around, moving away from the arterial as your point of access and activity, but rather having your access and activity off of a collector road system and, therefore, focusing the attention back into the neighborhood of that activity center rather than having that activity center be focused on the arterial itself. COMMISSIONER HENNING: A good example is Fifth Avenue being a local road to where they have parking on the street. And the other example would be U.S. 41 where we have our commercial; to create a parking lot on the street, then we create gridlock. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, another example-- Page 22 June 5, 2001 MR. FEDER: Eighth Street, if you will, also. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Another small example is if you go up to Vanderbilt and Airport and you look at the northwest corner of the commercial development in there, you'll see that is -- when it's finished, it's really going to be a model where people can come off collectors, go into that, park, walk around, do whatever they want to do. And it also has interconnectivity for the Pelican Marsh community to come across into that and never get out on the arterials. And so it's a step in the right direction, and I think that's where we're trying to go, is create that smaller town or community within -- within the communities. And, you know, whatever -- MR. FEDER: I think we're agreeing. I don't want to take too long on this, but I will focus it back. I'd almost say that what this plan wouldn't allow would be the prospect of turning your building around, having the back of your building with heavy landscaping up against the arterial and having the building focusing back on into the community. There's no reason that you have to structure the building facing and oriented to the arterial. And if you stop that process and establish that, that will start the beginning of the development requirement for a collector road system that you can then establish with an expanded system. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So some of that we're going to have to really look at and model in the community. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yeah. Because doesn't that -- if the backs of the building are facing the street and the sidewalk, doesn't that more or less talk you out of walking down the street? Because why would you bother wanting to be on the street and shopping in the little shops if everything has an entrance in the back? MR. FEDER: Because basically you're oriented back to where you're coming from, which is the neighborhood. The Page 23 June 5, 2001 arterial isn't where you want people so much, although you need to provide sidewalks and streets, walking from point to point. You want them walking within the neighborhood to this commercial, focusing it into the neighborhood as opposed to out to the arterial. MS. TAYLOR: There's-- MR. FEDER: We're talking on major arterials. MS. TAYLOR: There's ways in which you can have, I think, both. You can have a finished facade in the front of the building. So that you don't have the -- the trucks and the -- and the trash receptacles in the front, you could try to landscape buffer that on your major arterial. But you could have the finished front, and you could have a finished side, and you could have, you know, your various early-hour operations in the back or in the interior. There could be a way to do both. You wouldn't -- particularly on roadways -- and I want to stress, you know, my value on this. Particularly on many of our major roadways, we don't want to impede the flow of traffic. So on-street parking, such as they have on Fifth Avenue, on our-- many of our major collectors and most -- with maybe a segment or two that might be eligible, which would have to go into further study. But most would be totally unimpeded by a 3-to-1 ratio of building to street and sidewalks and setbacks to the street. There would be activity on the front of the street as well as the side of the street. There would be encouragement -- or actually, probably, a requirement for the development to finish off the side and the back so that there -- and the interconnection and access -- shared access points between businesses so that there would be a lot of activity around the back and the sides of the building and opportunities to -- to reach your -- if that's your destination, reach that destination without using the major arterial. So I think we could have both. Page 24 June 5, 2001 COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I think a good modeling start would be Naples Park, that commercial area right on U.S. 41, and how can we incorporate that into the neighborhood and still have flow of traffic. MS. TAYLOR: Yeah. Many of our ma]or businesses have -- have really worked real hard in keeping some of their signage requirements down, you know, the sizes and the types and so on and -- because they can put beautiful buildings on the street where they get a lot of drive-by advertisement. So that's one aspect of it, too, that we might -- that we might want to respect because their -- their building -- the front of their building is their advertisement as well. Anyway, rethinking the corridors. This is a drawing of, really, a typical shopping center without parcels, with minimal landscaping. And we probably have a little bit more landscaping than this one does, but this is actually a drawing of the Naples Towne Centre, and this is how it could develop over time. Now, this is what we would call a boulevard, and it may not be appropriate in Collier County. And there has been studies that they are safe and that they move traffic. How they work is that the middle lanes have a free flow of traffic. There's minimal access points to a side road with on-street parking. So instead of having six lanes with multiple access points, you have four through lanes with very limited access to the commercial and multiuse buildings. Again, this is a 50-year plan. This is not going to happen overnight. But with changes to our architectural design and working with these aging shopping centers and commercial areas and industrial areas through the community plan process, for example, this would be a great opportunity to work with shopping centers like the Naples Towne Centre through that process to develop something like this. Page 25 June 5, 2001 CHAIRMAN CARTER: It's almost like you take a bulldozer to the existing structure, you flatten it, and you say, "1 now have a piece of ground to work with, and here's what it needs to look like in the end." And that's expensive, I realize, but at some point in time there'll be somebody that'll figure out that the numbers work, and they'll be ready to do it. MS. TAYLOR: Now, the Community Character Plan consultants actually divided up, by ownership, the Naples Towne Centre and showed how each piece could be developed over time and -- just on its own by owner, so that's part of that component, too, and would be part of a community plan process working with each individual owner. The objective that was endorsed was Collier County's major roads can be functional yet beautiful corridors that residents are proud of and visitors admire. Even failing commercial strips can be transformed into grand boulevards, converting visually blighted areas to premier mixed-use public places. Partnerships with adjoining landowners are a key to such transformations. And I want to get into the issue of this -- this object -- just saying grand boulevards. While they're -- that should remain an alternative, that certainly doesn't have to be the only alternative and can't be the only alternative. As you'll see later on with the - - with the various road cross sections that have -- that they're asking for consideration, a grand boulevard would just be one of them. A major six-lane arterial with no on-street parking would be, of course, another. The implementation measures would encourage transformation of aging commercial centers into mixed-use developments; provision of community planning assistance, as I stated; include outline of steps for transforming aging commercial areas; and encourage moderately priced housing to reduce travel demand. So in these areas that are really Page 26 June 5, 2001 throughout the county, there might be opportunity for, you know, work-force housing, for affordable housing in a multifamily configuration or density. It would take a high level of coordination of community development services. Both the comprehensive and current planning section and transportation division services will come together to begin to implement, through the Growth Management Plan amendments process, and to review and participate in the development of community plans. And the Community Character Plan also provided a diagram on how activity centers could be transformed into mixed-use centers over time. (Commissioner Coletta entered the boardroom.) MS. TAYLOR: This is the -- one of our activity centers, Pine Ridge and Airport. And I think, Commissioner Henning, you had stated about -- no, I'm sorry, Commissioner Carter, about, you know, flattening out everything and starting over. Of course, that one isn't ready for that yet. But, actually, this would be an alternative to use what's already there and to -- to improve it over time and as we grow and as our commercial properties become more and more valuable and that space used for big parking lots becomes more valuable than to be used for a parking lot. And over time you would have lighter buildings, interior circulation with greenspace and landscaping to encourage walkability and bicycling and so on. And the existing buildings are there. Of course, they -- I think they demolished the Teddy Bear Museum up at the corner but -- with this diagram, so don't pay attention to that. And this is the -- the setting-the-course item. Despite the original mixed-use concept, most activity centers are dominated by huge parking lots and retail stores and restaurants. New activity centers and redeveloping the existing ones can have a complimentary mix of uses. And this -- the Growth Management Page 27 June 5, 2001 Plan amendments would require definition of different center types, not from just activity center level, but all the way down through to the rural crossroads. We just have an activity-center- based commercial, which its original intent has been mixed use. Right now at these -- at these major intersections, there's a -- there's a great deal of pressure on those -- on those intersections in terms of traffic movements. And the original intent of having it more mixed use might have proved a little bit -- a little bit better. You would have had office uses and retail use and -- and multifamily and entertainment and so on with -- and connected -- interconnected at these ma]or activity centers. And as they redevelop and as we develop -- begin to develop new ones, we can ensure that this mixed use occurs. Right now the Land Development Code says encourage mixed use. MR. OLLIFF: And that's the point I want to make for this board who wasn't here ten years ago when we -- when the county put together the activity center concept. The concept was for mixed use at these major intersections and a lot of the same type ideas that you're looking at and talking about today, but I just want to stress to you the importance of developing language that actually results in the kind of development that you want it to be, the kind of development that you envision, because I will tell you that what was envisioned in activity centers ten years ago when that language was developed was not what ended up resulting in the activity centers that were built. And so when I keep telling you that we need to spend a lot of time talking about policy and Growth Management Plan language, Land Development Code language so that you are very, very comfortable and sure that what's going to end up being out there on the ground then is what you think it's going to be, just continue to look back at the activity center language. And I promise you, the vision that the board had at the time was not Page 28 June 5, 2001 what ended up being developed there. And I will also tell you, too, though, that the planner's recommendation at the time had a number of other portions to the activity center concept, including side service roads and other alternative transportation systems throughout the activity centers that didn't get adopted as part of the activity center concept. And as a result of that, you have, I think, the congested intersection-type, heavy commercial that you have that was, I believe, just completely opposite of what was -- what was envisioned originally. CHAIRMAN CARTER: We sure don't want to repeat the mistakes. That's for sure. And I would look to the Horizon Committee and the process to establish that language and make sure -- I mean, we finally approve these things. Ultimately, the Board of County Commissioners makes those decisions. And, you know, maybe as commissioners change, we lose sight of that. We have to have a system in place, no matter who sits in these chairs, that it's there, that says this is the framework in which you operate. And there may be variations to it, but I would hope that ten years from now someone isn't sitting out there saying, well, let's see, in 2001 they were talking about. And it's 2011, and that's 20 years, and we're still doing this. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Can you, at some point in time, let us know how that happened so we don't fall into the same rut or into the same errors? If you'd identify how -- you know, what went wrong there. MR. OLLIFF: We can do that, and there are plans, and everything's a compromise. I will tell you, and you know as well as anyone, that in this business everything is a compromise. But I do firmly believe that there are planning principles that you can put in place in both your comp plan and Land Development Code that provide a profitable development plan that is also Page 29 June 5, 2001 advantageous for how this community wants to build out in the future. So, you know, I don't want it to appear at all that we're getting ready to try and stifle any ability for a property owner to be able to do something reasonable with their property, but I think that there is a good balance here where we can end up with different and better type development than we have seen in the past. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Always has to have economic feasibility. That's one of the three legs of stone. You can have quality of life. You can have environmental sensitivity. But if it's not economically feasible, there isn't a businessperson in the world that if the numbers don't work, they're not going to do it. They're not stupid. So you have to have everybody at the table. And sometimes I really get frustrated that we leave that element out, that we just don't address that, like they're all Darth Vaders out there, that they're evil people. They're not. They're saying, "We will do this, but it has to make sense." COMMISSIONER COLETTA: You know, Commissioner Carter, if I may address that, too, I can give you a perfect example of how you have to hold the course on these things. When they were designing the Golden Gate Master Plan and Golden Gate City itself along the Parkway, they set a standard for building that was way over what was acceptable at that point in time, and we took a considerable amount of flak on it. It took ten years before they started building on the Parkway the kind of buildings that were needed to be able to meet the needs. We waited that ten years, and we're getting quality now. And we may have to do the same thing. We may have to set the course and then wait for everybody else to catch up with it. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Is there support on the board to -- for the Horizon Committee to take a look at these activities and deem some nonconforming to -- so we can try to get to the goal Page 30 June 5, 2001 of the interconnecting -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think you're on the right track, Commissioner. Is there anything that the board's heard thus far that they wouldn't be willing to -- I'm going to say -- endorse the staff to move forward through the Horizon Committee to pursue, to bring back to us in policy and LDC changes, etc.? MR. LITSINGER: In con]unction with the committee, we will craft language for consideration by the board as to whether it will ultimately become GMP and LDC language. And, of course, we have the -- in a broader perspective, relative to the issue Commissioner Coletta brought up with the whole Golden Gate restudy, we'll be looking at the entire future map of that area. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Mr. Feder. MR. FEDER: We're looking for mixed-use activity centers. When we allow access to them almost exclusively off of the arterial, you're going to get the commercial that is basically taking up that capacity of the arterial and focusing totally on it. You're not going to get the other uses because that intense commercial is what's going to focus there because the access is off the arterial. If you start limiting that access off the arterial, requiring it off of a collector road system to be developed, it not only starts to develop that collector road system, but it then orients to the different uses that, in fact, might be developed there that are not solely oriented to capturing that volume and, by the way, taking up an awful lot of capacity with the movement on the arterial. So one of the big things you can do very quickly to respond to that and to meet some of your other desires in developing a collector road system and the like is to take a very strong position relative to access connections to the arterial and to focus on the arterial, as I mentioned before, on design. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Very good point. Page 31 June 5, 2001 CHAIRMAN CARTER: So I would say the movement, the transportation network, becomes the anchor point in terms of getting this other to evolve, so that seems, to me, a step one in the planning process. What does that have to look like? The rest of this will evolve out of it so that we can accomplish the objective. How are our ma]or fingers doing? MS. TAYLOR: The consultants also looked at our commercial and architectural standards, and they applauded them. They're excellent, and they're state of the art. But they can be improved to encompass various other considerations, like placement of building, you know, orientation of the building, and so forth, and be improved somewhat. We would need direction from the county commission to move forward with -- with updating our architectural design standards to include such considerations as the larger buildings, commercial buildings, and really encompass the street pattern that supports those businesses and operations as well, tying in the design standard with the orientation of where it is. For example, I was driving on 41 in Fort Myers, and there's this nice corner building set back about 25 feet with a significant parking lot in the front, and it looks completely out of place. The orientation of the building, the placement of the building to the street just -- just doesn't have any impact that it would if it was placed correctly. So you could have beautiful architecture, but you need to just tie it into its placement, its orientation, its environment. MR. OLLIFF: MS. TAYLOR: MR. OLLIFF: So that -- those improvements -- pardon me? Let me make sure I understand this one because when I read it, I didn't -- I wasn't sure I understood it the first time around. I was on the East Coast recently. And in Page 32 June 5, 2001 certain new commercial developments in -- in I guess it's western Broward County, they've got these developments that are large commercial tracts, but they had built what looked like public streets, almost, through the middle of what is, you can tell, a unified-ownership-type development plan. But then they are almost street block-type developments with separate commercial sections that are functioning almost independently within that block. And then you move to the next block, and they've almost all got smaller instead of these huge parking lots. And is that what this is saying, that we've got to encourage that type of commercial development? MS. TAYLOR: Yeah. That's more -- that's more resilient. It lasts longer. It can be redeveloped easier because you have -- your infrastructure, not only, you know, your roads, but your water and sewer and so on is not kind of, you know, haphazard. CHAIRMAN CARTER: There's a great example of that -- probably the same thing that you saw, Tom -- running out of 185 out of Atlanta east. And I don't know how far out it is, but you come off the interstate, and you have your major collectors, and then you have this great development process in there which is like moving into a community. The architecture is beautiful. The network of interconnectivity is great. And I can't -- Jaine says, "We're trying to get to where we're going." And I says, "Yeah. But I got to -- this is awesome. I got to drive around and look at this." So my road trips become elongated because I have to go look at these things. But I don't know whether DeBartolo is doing that or what, but whatever is going on in this community is the right direction, in what they're trying to accomplish. So I would hope two things: One, we involve the architectural community here -- they have a society or group -- that that would be a fold-in in this process, that we would begin Page 33 June 5, 2001 to review all that to take good standards to even make them better and make this a part of the program. So I don't know how the rest of the board feels but -- MS. TAYLOR: As far as internal functionality, it's wonderful for the businesses and the -- the folks that live and work in that area. And what came to mind also is -- is -- with the comprehensive planning section is developing smart park Growth Management Plan amendments, and that would be a perfect park-type setting with a street and block pattern like that to accommodate both large and smaller buildings. CHAIRMAN CARTER: And the design standards that you end up doing when you go into these places, whether it's a McDonald's or I don't care what it is, you wouldn't recognize them. They are -- they're beautiful. I mean, you say, "This can't be a McDonald's." But it's -- see, I am convinced that the people want to be in those areas. They're going to build what you want if you set high standards. If not, they're going to come in and give you good old McDonald's 101 with a red roof and a big sign. But if you tell them what you want, they're going to do what you want, and they want to be there because the numbers tell them, "1 want to be here." There's no question in my mind they want to be in Naples. MS. TAYLOR: I'm not going to get into the Golden Gate Estates too much because that really is the purview of the -- the newly forming committee to update the Golden Gate Area Master Plan, but just that it will cover consideration of rural-designed commercial opportunities, parks, and other public facilities to support the growing Golden Gate Estates area. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Where are we going to put that bridge at in Golden Gate Estates? MS. TAYLOR: Oh, yeah. Geez, that was a mistake, huh? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Isn't that the 1-75 bypass? Page 34 June 5, 2001 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Thanks, Tom. MS. TAYLOR: Anyway, so the facilitation will be by the comprehensive planning staff in coordination with various other departments through the citizen committee. The community character recommendations will just be on the table for them to examine and put through further analysis, see if it'll work. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think what's key for the board here is that that evolves and, Commissioner Henning and Commissioner Coletta, is that we make sure that is all coordinated, and we all have the benefit of everyone's thinking so that, you know, we get this overall picture for Collier County. Because, you know, I envision, as Commissioner Coletta does someday, you're going to have the City of Immokalee or at least something close to that. And they have a great opportunity, as they redevelop and do these things, to incorporate many of these ideas so that they really truly become one of these beautiful little towns you drive down Main Street, you see these things. And, yes, it is a more rural setting and rural community, but it's something that's very -- really is very pleasant. So they've got, I think, a great opportunity for all the things they're doing. MS. TAYLOR: And there's opportunity for Golden Gate Estates citizens to consider, you know, is it a rural crossroads country store? Do they want to have, maybe, a rural center, town center of some kind in some location with more concentrated commercial with it designed appropriately to fit into that area? So that is something for the Golden Gate Estates citizens to consider over time and how it will serve -- serve that community. And it's going to be a big challenge, I think. But the next section of the Community Character Plan, of course, was the mobility manual. The first item is connecting neighborhoods. And this is, essentially, you know, our typical unconnected neighborhood with one way in and one way out or Page 35 June 5, 2001 maybe two ways in, and it's compared with a more connected system. The principle that was endorsed is new neighborhoods should be connected to their surroundings rather than being isolated. Where possible, existing neighborhoods can also be connected using traffic-calming techniques to prevent excessive or speeding traffic. Adjoining commercial parcels should have an integrated system of connections before new buildings are constructed. The issue of traffic calming with -- interconnecting to existing neighborhoods, that's really going to be a difficult challenge to try to bring about more opportunities for these interconnections with existing neighborhoods. If there was a specific policy in place that would have certain specific traffic-calming measures, not the speed humps, not the -- you know, the -- you know, very, very harsh traffic-calming techniques but more moderate ones -- like street trees are a beautiful, easy way to -- to modify a street. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Roundabouts. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Where the streets go. MS. TAYLOR: Street narrows and comes out. The streets are actually built -- the design speed is correct, that you can only go 35, that you don't have the streets wide enough. The hallway through that promotes speeding. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Mr. Feder. MR. FEDER: This is a difficult one, trying to design speed. I can give you some examples of where you designed it for very slow speed, but reality doesn't do that. I think the important part on this one is -- under way already is a look at the functional classification of our roadway system here in Collier County, an update of that for the Land Development Code and the plan, because what we need to do is identify those roads that are truly going to serve as collectors. And while we can do traffic calming, some techniques on Page 36 June 5, 2001 arterials as well and, therefore, collectors and local roads, we need to understand when we say excessive volume, what is the purpose and function and let people know what roadways we either currently have as collectors or which ones are going to be developed in the future as the collector road system, which are going to have higher volumes. The issue of speed is going to take a lot more than just design, although you can have some design features to it. But the key is we need to start identifying up front so that people know what are the roads that we're looking to carry some additional volume besides just the arterial system, before we have everybody trying to turn them into local roads as well. CHAIRMAN CARTER: And that'll get back to community planning. MR. FEDER: It will. MS. TAYLOR: So this would just be a series of Growth Management Plan amendments that would support that local- level interconnectivity and require that -- that new PUDs and expiring PUDs provide that where possible. This is a just a conceptual demonstrating a need of a more enhanced network with a secondary collector system. The main principle is that Collier County should create a more balanced road network by improving its network of principal roads while simultaneously creating a secondary network of smaller roads that link neighborhoods. Right now the transportation division is beginning, along with identifying roadways and their function, a thoroughfare plan, study. So it's just -- this is just repetitive of what the transportation division is moving forward with as we speak. But this -- the new thoroughfare plan could then -- and through the review process we could begin to identify opportunities for -- for collector -- preserving existing collector roads, ensuring that newly developing areas have a proper Page 37 June 5, 2001 collector network, and retrofit at least a minimum collector network where opportunities still exist. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Do you think all of our audience knows the difference between arterial and collector and local roads? MR. FEDER: That's part of what we're doing in this study. When we do the thoroughfare plan, it has to be combined with the functional classification and that information getting out. Arterials most people can figure out, although we've got some classified as being collector roads in the county, but arterials, I think, are fairly clear. Local roads are generally fairly clear. But trying to define that grayer area, which is your collector road system, major and minor collectors, and even some of your minor arterials, is what we need to do and have that function and purpose help drive some of how we approach some of the development around those facilities and some of our response to control of traffic in the way of neighborhood traffic and the like. But we still need to define that system. Right now we haven't. (Commissioner Mac'Kie entered the boardroom.) MR. FEDER: And it's a good question because if you live on a collector in newer areas, there's a local road. What is its function and purpose? And based on the whole system and need there, define that and then try to, one, work with it and how we engineer changes and issues on the roadway; and, two, as we allow more development to progress and how it'll function consistent with that purpose. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Right. I remember one of the first questions I asked you, what was an arterial road? You know, I knew ma]or road and neighborhood road, and that's what I -- and so I thought maybe other people were, you know -- MR. FEDER: That's probably a common mistake since all we have is arterial local roads here in Collier County, so that's what Page 38 June 5, 2001 we're trying to do and part of what this plan is raising strongly, and we do concur with that. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Thank you. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think Commissioner Fiala makes an excellent point, and when we try to communicate with this, we're going to have to work on it by taking our TV channel, 54, and we're going to have to put together programs. We're going to have to go to the neighborhood meetings. We're going to even -- perhaps even put out, I'm going to call it, a manual or a guide that says, you know, "You can't totally define everything, but this -- and here's what we mean by a collector, and here's some examples" so that people will begin to grasp and get some understanding of what it is. And they may not like what the road ends up getting defined, but the reality is not all the people are going to be happy campers when we get done with this because it is what it is. And maybe when you bought your home it wasn't a collector road, but it is today, or maybe today -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: That's me. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Or maybe when you look at this and somebody says, "That's an arterial," you'll say, "Well, I didn't know that was going to be an arterial." And maybe 20 years ago it wasn't an arterial, but today it's evolved, and that's what it's become. So that's a reality of living in a beautiful area where people want to come and be. MS. TAYLOR: And really their recommendations -- the Community Character Plan's (sic) recommendations really coincide with what the transportation division's already moved forward with; as I stated, the thoroughfare plan and adopt its map into the LDC so that there actually is -- PUDs and various opportunities for development would not be evaluated on a case- by-case basis in terms of interconnection or new opportunities Page 39 June 5, 2001 for a collector. There would be a basis and a mandate for completion of that thoroughfare plan over time. Encourage the use of development agreements to allocate costs of transportation improvements that are required because of new development, and amend the road impact fee ordinance to help pay for a new collector road system. MS. WOLFE: The issues with encouraging the use of development agreements is one that we in the past several months had problems dealing with in coming to terms with all of the impact fee credits that are out there. Going and following that kind of a path has tended to lead us down the development deciding where road improvements go versus where they truly need to be at, so we need to be very careful in consideration of that being an implementation mechanism. The third point inasmuch as the new collector road system, our current impact fee ordinance provides for any facility that's on our thoroughfare plan on our major roadway network to be able to be implemented from that revenue source, so there's -- you know, it's not the creation of a new funding source. It's an existing funding source, and the creation of the secondary or collector system is not going to have an impact on the fees collected. It is not a component of how we calculate those numbers. So it won't be generating more dollars; it'll just be identifying more roads we can use them on. CHAIRMAN CARTER: And you have already made recommendations to us on the amount of dollars per year that we will allow, quote, in impact fees. I know you put a cap on that, Norman. MR. FEDER: Yeah. We looked at about a 2 million. CHAIRMAN CARTER: About 2 million on that, and then there's a whole system in which that works. And for our listening audience, that says we're bringing that under-- what I call under Page 40 June 5, 2001 control, and we are guiding the process, meaning the Board of County Commissioners. Collier County government is determining the direction where we're going versus letting the evolvement of any development say, "This is where you have to go." We're bringing it back under our control and saying, "We want it, and this is how we want it built and when we want it built. And if you want to do it sooner, there's an additional cost that you'll have to incur to get there." MR. FEDER: And you're also giving opportunities, if they want to do it sooner, to allow some flexibility. But, generally, you're bringing that back under your control where it should be. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Right. And that's what I think all of us have heard on the commission over and over, is that it's out of control. What we're trying to communicate is we're bringing it under control so that we have in the guided management planning growth process that that's -- you know, we can't stop the growth over and over. But what we can do is have control of it and take it where we want to be as we build a better community so that people will better understand that, you know, all these folks want to come here, and this is how you come here, and this is how you do it. MS. TAYLOR: And another point, too, is it currently is a matter of negotiations between staff and -- and developer in terms of road placement or needs or whatever. If a thoroughfare plan is adopted, then -- adopted into the Land Development Code, then there -- there would be very limited room for that -- that -- that negotiation or whatever. It would just -- it would be adopted. This is where the road generally will be, and this is how -- how it will function as and so forth. So that -- that could be, I think, great assistance to -- to continue with that thoroughfare plan in terms of not just what the county's responsibility would be as far Page 41 June 5, 2001 as funding through impact fees, but what -- as we develop over time, what the developer's responsibilities will clearly be. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Amy, before you move on, that last statement there, I have concerns about that. A PUD or a development coming on-line, those collector roads, is it a community-wide benefit, or is it a development benefit? And I think that's -- where this board is trying to go is to identify putting the pavement on the ground that the whole community benefits. And, you know, the collector roads is something that we need to do, but we really need to take a look at who benefits from it. MS. TAYLOR: Well, I think overall -- and Norm can answer this better than I, but overall a functioning collector system helps with our traffic on our major arterial system. So those folks that are traveling cross county or even just a couple of miles would greatly benefit if the network of collector roads within a particular area was enhanced. MR. FEDER: Commissioner, what I'd add to that is as development comes in, it needs to provide for its proper access. And if that becomes the development of a portion of the collector system to a level rather than just a driveway to the arterial, then that becomes part of what is their responsibility. As they go beyond just what they would need to access their individual property and development apportioned to that collector, then that becomes a community value, and that's already built into your processes. It just needs to be reinforced and would be even more reinforced if we modify our access to the arterial system. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I think that's where this board is at. MR. FEDER: I appreciate that. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I'd just like to add one more thing, but it's your words, Jim. I'm just repeating them. You've said a Page 42 June 5, 2001 couple times already -- and I love this phrase -- as we're trying to tackle this growth -- this growth thing and -- and shape it for the future of our community, manage it a lot better. It's like taking a giant ship, and we've -- each five of us have been handed a paddle, and now we've got to take that ship and move it around. And for some reason the community has thought that we would -- you know, we came on board, and now we're going to just change this, never thinking we had 127,000 homes already permitted out there, and we have to change the LDC and the Growth Management Plan. And I hope that they see that we're working hard at trying to do that. But that ship doesn't go around just because you change faces. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, Commissioner, and I think that's exactly where we are. You know, when you keep talking about this, Norman, I also think of the road that runs between Vanderbilt over to Pine Ridge, I believe, the one that fronts the Vineyards. That, to me, is an excellent collector system. It brings all your traffic out of that development, takes it to either arterial, also provides people with a collector road to travel across between the two places. And I think in my -- in my vision, if I'm going the right direction, that's the kind of things we want to see more of, where you pull that out. And yet people -- and Pelican Bay is another one where you can have gated communities within the community, yet you have a collector system that brings you out to your arterials. And it makes so much sense to be there that hopefully we will drive the process in the future where we will encourage that, and it'll make a lot of sense for people to follow that pattern. MR. FEDER: Commissioner, I agree, and I think what you're talking about is the interconnections on those ma]or facilities. The other thing we're hitting -- and I believe it's Naples Drive (sic) Page 43 June 5, 2001 there between Pine Ridge and Airport, that's an example of a lot of what I'm hitting on where you have that focus off of the arterials at the intersection. So we need those major connectors, like you've mentioned, and we also need the collector roads and those other patterns as well. (Commissioner Mac'Kie left the boardroom.) MS. TAYLOR: The next item is designing great streets as part of the mobility recommendations. They have a series of streets in a -- in a -- what they call a palette, an alley being at the neighbor -- small-scale-neighborhood level, even at a block level, opportunity where alleyways might be provided for access to homes from the rear instead of -- instead of the front, all the way from -- you know, continuing with the neighborhood two-lane street to local street to divided connector street to divided connector street without median to major arterial. Many of the elements in here are interchangeable. Like, you have a street tree in the median on both sides. You have -- you have -- just as in your roadway elements design, you have a whole bunch of things that you'd like to have. It may not always fit. It may not always be appropriate. In this case for each function of roadway you have a palette of things that you could include within that roadway. I think a mandate, in my personal opinion and hopefully will be directed, would be street trees everywhere as -- as feasible. But in terms of the width of sidewalks, the on-street parking in some cases -- in most cases, those would be just part of the -- part of the choice but not -- of course these shouldn't be looked at as a required, you know, street section. What it also does is define what your general right-of-way width would be. And what we have now -- I'm not sure, I think it's about 160 square feet of right-of-way width. That isn't always a necessary right-of-way width as far as planning for acquisition Page 44 June 5, 2001 for future road improvements. So you -- you have a basic idea of what your need would be for the future in terms of right-of-way width as well. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Could I ask a question about sidewalks while we're right here? And we're now -- we have these pathway advisory boards meeting continuously -- I think there's one coming up next week Friday -- with their final suggestions. And what I was concerned with is when they put in the sidewalks, I think they're -- we should, if we can as a board, always provide for some kind of -- type of grassy space between the streets and the sidewalks. We're talking about -- for instance, right now Broward Street in -- in Naples Manor, and there's kids walking down these streets to school. And they're thinking of putting the sidewalk right there by the street where the kids are speeding to school in their cars, as well. Same as on Linwood, where the people are using these big trucks to get down to the -- to the businesses at the other end, and there are a lot of little children in that area because that is a work-force housing community. And I feel that these should be planned so that there's grass in between the sidewalks and the streets. Is that something we can put into this plan? CHAIRMAN CARTER: I direct that to Mr. Feder. MR. FEDER: What I will tell you is obviously one thing that's being raised by this is -- is allowing some flexibility in what you're doing in your design structure. I applaud that. I've got some concerns on it. But going to your question specifically, Commissioner, what we're starting to do now is also called for in this plan we had already started doing, which is doing corridor studies before we work to expand any roadway. And in that corridor study we are looking at the various alternatives and, along with the community, come to a plan. Page 45 June 5, 2001 To your issue on sidewalks, you need to know that we're not starting, unfortunately, with a clean sheet of paper. We have right-of-way restrictions. In some cases we're going in and retrofitting sidewalks, not to the ideal. The ideal would be to separate them back, have the shade trees, have the lighting. And I'm looking at the monies to try and afford even those issues. But where we have those children walking, we're far better, even if it's not separated by a grassy area, to have a sidewalk rather than having them on the street. So sometimes we're working on the interim rather than on the ideal, to be responsive. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Norm -- MR. OLLIFF: The simple answer for that, I think, is that in older neighborhoods we don't own the land. The right-of-ways where the road is are generally, what, 30 feet, probably, in that neighborhood. And in order to be able to build a sidewalk off pavement in that particular case, you're going to have to go through a long, long process of getting access and ownership to the property that somebody else owns in hundred-foot-wide lots all the way down the street and us to go through the process of actually buying those strips of land or condemning those pieces of property in order to be able to build a sidewalk that would be off pavement. So in older neighborhoods we're, frankly, stuck in doing the best we can, and in some cases that may be on- pavement sidewalks. In new neighborhoods we are trying to recognize that up front and carve out enough right-of-way to do it the right way. MR. FEDER: And even in the older neighborhoods sometimes we're asking for a perpetual easement, and people don't want to provide that. And it just takes a couple of them to stop your ability to provide it. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner Fiala gave some examples, and I want to go back to -- one of them is Naples Park. Page 46 June 5, 2001 What you have is the stormwater ditches by the road. And, you know, let's take a look at it and see if there's any more property in the easement on the other side to where a sidewalk can go so we do have that separation. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, we'd like to do that, and I've wrestled that and with that community ever since I've been in office. And as far as I know, the land's not there. We're right back into you have to -- you know, if somebody wanted that, Commissioner, you'd have to get every property owner to say, "I'm for the good of this community. I'm willing to give up Y number of feet so we can put a sidewalk through here." And all it takes is one or two that says, '1 don't have any kids. If you don't like it" -- you know, and then it stops it. So you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I'd rather not put a sidewalk on their particular property but still have the rest of it have sidewalks along it just so that we have a safer area, when especially it's predominantly children. And in those older neighborhoods, that's about all the area that our work force can - - can live in. CHAIRMAN CARTER: And I wouldn't disagree with that. But I think it'll get back to a community plan. And you can use Naples Park, or I can take you over to Palm River and some certain of those areas. If that community would work together and take it section by section and work with us, establish an MSTU, do all of these things, there's an amazing number of things that we can accomplish. But if the community is not willing to do that, we, the county, cannot force them to do it, and, you know, that's a message that needs to go out there. We will work with any neighborhood or any group to do what we can in retrofitting an old area. The citizens in that area have to say -- and sit down with us and say, "Okay. Here's Block A. Page 47 June 5, 2001 We will do this, and we've only got one holdout." And maybe that's what we end up doing. We pave it right up to that old holdout and skip over it, and at least you've got it. But until that happens, Norman Feder and his group are restricted into -- this is all we can do. I mean, it was the same way with the drainage in Naples Park. There are folks who never want to expend the money to do -- covering up or doing some of those things, and the plan's in place. And you can't force them to do it, and there's a lot of opinions about how much it should cost to do it. But there's folks who have done it, and there's folks who haven't done it, and that's -- until the community says, "This is what we want," it's very difficult for us, the county government or Board of County Commissioners, to, "Oh, we got to work within that." The hand that you're dealt -- as the great country western singer says, you know, do you hold them or fold them? MR. OLLIFF: Amy, if you could get us to a break point, I think we'd probably take a five-minute break. MS. TAYLOR: Actually, we can break now. That would be fine. MR. OLLIFF: Thank you. CHAIRMAN CARTER: All right. Let's take a short break, and then we'll be right back. How many public speakers do we have? MR. DUNNUCK: Zero so far. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Zero so far? I imagine that'll change at the break. (A break was held.) (The proceedings recommenced with Commissioner Henning and Commissioner Mac'Kie not present.) CHAIRMAN CARTER: If everyone would be kind enough to take your seats, we're going to start again. I've got a quorum. Let's proceed. And Amy tells us she's got about 20-plus minutes, Page 48 June 5, 2001 and then we'll go to public comment. COMMISSIONER FIALA: She has how many minutes? I'm sorry. CHAIRMAN CARTER: About 20 minutes, a little more maybe. It depends on how much we interrupt her, which we'll try not to do. All right. Let's go. MS. TAYLOR: The next setting-the-course item was planning road corridors, and essentially we don't really need to get into this too much because the recommendation was to do more corridor management planning. And what this -- what this item would do, with amendment to the Growth Management Plan and the coordination with transportation services and community development services, would provide a mandate for this to happen within our Growth Management Plan. It would amend the FLUE to expand the scope of corridor management plans, just as our transportation division is doing now, but it would be reflected in our Growth Management Plan. It would include-- it would -- plans to include plans conducted concurrently with or integrated into the project development process of our roadway improvements. The transportation services division could assist, through coordinating with the comprehensive planning section, Growth Management Plans, preparation of corridor management plans with assistance from the community development service division as considered necessary. Corridor management plans would include all of those various elements that not only accommodate traffic, but accommodate people and the movement of people. It would include the sidewalks and the street trees to make it comfortable. It would include transit accommodations. We have a relatively new transit system here. So it would include all of those various components, not just the number of lanes. Page 49 June 5, 2001 (Commissioner Mac'Kie entered the boardroom.) It would also consider, most importantly, the types of land uses along that corridor and whether it's commercial or mixed use or residential, and it would be a different kind of design based on the type of land use and to serve different needs. We'll move forward to the greenspace manual. The greenspace manual, as you know, went from neighborhood parks all the way through to conservation and natural areas. The big idea was to provide meaningful useful open spaces within a walkable distance of residents -- this would be your neighborhood parks -- provide access of multimodal linkages to and between community greenspaces and natural areas -- those are on-road and off-road pathways and greenway pathway systems -- provide large community parks and centers for active and passive recreation -- we're doing a great job of doing that right now -- protect and restore originally significant wetlands, uplands, and flow-ways; and protect habitat and corridors for panthers and other listed species. Beginning with the urban area and neighborhood parks, the plan identifies, based on our number of neighborhoods and what our current inventory is, that we would need approximately 30 -- needed 30 additional neighborhood parks. This could be accomplished through new development and through the neighborhood park program that -- that -- through our parks and recreation department. There's currently generally one park that's acquired per year, and it's being proposed to be expanded to two parks per year with an additional budget. And this is -- exactly reflects with the Community Character Plan I've recommended, so there's no big surprises. Through the community -- you know, this also reflects how this whole plan kind of integrates together. Through the community plan process, a community could apply to have a Page 50 June 5, 2001 neighborhood park, but it could also decide that it wanted -- if it wanted additional neighborhood parks or other amenities, it could tax itself through an MSTU or apply for grants and so on. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'm sorry to interrupt you. Why is it that Everglades City doesn't show any community parks, or am I missing something here? MS. TAYLOR: Well, it is a -- MR. OLLIFF: Incorporated city. MS. TAYLOR: -- incorporated city. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We contribute to their park construction, but it's their park, I guess. Isn't that basically it? MS. RAMSEY: We don't maintain them. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But we've, like, put in the equipment. We've done a lot of stuff out there but -- even though it's technically a city park. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'm looking at -- if we could move the overlay picture that we have on there, or isn't that possible? MS. TAYLOR: Oh, yeah. Hold on. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: And forgive me for this interruption, but the one thing I'm seeing is down at the far end -- I'm not too sure if that's actually -- at the end of the road there, what's that, Chokoloskee? MS. TAYLOR: 29. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Yes. You follow 29 down, you've got the one little circle at the end, or is that just Everglades -- no. That's just Everglades City itself. I see. Okay. Forgive the interruption. It's something that we need to give special attention to as we go into this. MS. TAYLOR: Okay. Maria, if you'd like to talk about generally what's being proposed now, it's 500,000 annual allocation for the neighborhood park program. Page 51 June 5, 2001 MS. RAMSEY: The last two budget years we've put in approximately $200,000 for the enhancement of the neighborhood park. We do it through -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Maria, I think you're going to have to get closer to the mike. MS. RAMSEY: I'm sorry. We have a criteria for neighborhood parks that allows the neighborhoods to come to us and petition for a neighborhood park. We put -- just recently we put one in the Golden Gate City area, Rita Eaton Park. We have Livingston Woods Park that we're looking at. This year we actually have two requests that we're coming to the board with, one in Isle of Capri and one in Willoughby Acres, which you'll see reflected in the budget this year as you come forward. Since we didn't have to buy the land for the one in Willoughby Acres -- we're using existing county-owned property -- the budget's only 350,000. But in future years we would be requesting 500,000 to purchase land and also develop it. CHAIRMAN CARTER: How much acreage do you need for a neighborhood park? What's the rule of thumb? MS. RAMSEY: Well, our policy states we'd like to see 3 to 5 acres. But in reality, in a lot of these older neighborhoods that we're going into, we're lucky to get a lot. So a quarter acre or a half an acre is some of the sizes that we're looking at currently. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Tell us what you're doing in the Isles of Capri as far as -- I know that you're going for the park. I know that they've been wanting one for quite some time. How are you going to build that there? Did you find a piece of property? MS. RAMSEY: Not yet. There's, I think, three or four lots that are available, and we have real property researching those currently. Then once we have it purchased, then we'll have the community help us design, which is what we're also doing in the Page 52 June 5, 2001 Livingston Woods, asking the community to help us determine whether it's going to be a passive park or an active park or a combination of both. (Commissioner Henning entered the boardroom.) MS. TAYLOR: So -- and what would involve Growth Management Plan amendments would be to include a neighborhood park goal to the recreation and open space element to make it part of the county's program and a long-term commitment to neighbors in terms of providing parks through the parks and rec department and through new development and so forth; also, provide coordination between -- and Maria does a beautiful job of this -- between schools, churches, and other recreational facilities to enhance that -- that inventory of parks -- neighborhood parks that we need. In addition, the Land Development Code would be amended to require recreational civic facilities in new neighborhoods so that we wouldn't continue to have a deficit. And it could either be privately owned and maintained or publicly owned, if the location and design is approved by Collier County. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Counsel may have to answer this question for me, but in very large PUDs that come for development, can we request a community park within that? I see a nodding of heads, I guess, Counsel. I don't need an answer, and that's just a good mental note for me. Thank you. MR. OLLIFF: If you'll notice, there's sort of a theme here, and the county went through a -- a process several years ago where, for economic reasons, it was pushing everything to drive- to facilities. And in your park system, for example, you have neighborhood parks, community parks, and regional parks. Those are the three types of parks you have. Community and regional parks are drive-to-type parks, and the board made a Page 53 June 5, 2001 decision that it was no longer going to be in the neighborhood park business because of the higher than average maintenance costs, if you will. A crew has to actually get in a truck, physically go from neighborhood park to neighborhood park in order to be able to mow the grass, empty the trash cans, and then maintain that park. So recognize that in order to be able to change philosophy, which is what you are doing as part of this plan, where it is much more pedestrian-, bicycle-, neighborhood-oriented in keeping the public off of arterial roadways in order to be able to access services, whether it be private or public, there is a higher cost involved. And so for every change philosophically that we make here, understand that we are making it consciously knowing that there is going to be a little higher maintenance cost, a little higher construction cost in everything that we do here. But I'm not telling you -- I'm not dissuading you at all because I think it's a good planning direction to hit, and I think it's where the community wants us to be. CHAIRMAN CARTER: And I think we might look at some joint maintenance agreements with communities on some of these. After all, it does specifically benefit a smaller group of people, and I would believe there would be an overall willingness -- if we built this into the PUD, that there would be some responsibility going for the community to have a joint agreement with the county in sharing that expense. So I think that's got some possibilities. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, what about a -- what about a policy that for any PUD of more than a certain number of homes, that a certain amount of acreage is required to be set aside for a neighborhood park? I mean, if we had that as a policy in either our comp plan or our LDC, it would just become the natural way that things happen. Page 54 June 5, 2001 COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I think you're right on the money on that, Pam. Also, too, I think a lot of these parks we're looking at can be passive with Iow maintenance, xeriscape. The citizens of Collier County deserve it, and I think they expect it now. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, you're right. Conners Park is great example of that; passive park, beautiful community, right on the corner, and that a whole group of people can benefit from. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Where is that? CHAIRMAN CARTER: Conners Park at the corner of Yanderbilt and 111th. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Now it's going to be so crowded you'll never get in there. You had to let the secret out of the bag. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: But if the majority of the board likes that idea, then we just need to ask Mr. Dunnuck to get it on his list of amendments that he's proposing. And my idea, you know, it would depend on the neighborhood. The developer would choose. If it's a family-oriented neighborhood, then you would probably have playground equipment. But if it's not, then you might just want to have a trail system for, you know, walking through, exercise, and that kind of stuff. But if we had it as a requirement that at a certain threshold a neighborhood park is required, then it happens. MR. OLLIFF: As you know, we have a park impact fee, and it's great to have a park impact fee. But in most cases as this community develops in the urban area, we need land a whole lot more than we need the impact fees. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Absolutely. MR. OLLIFF: And I can have an entire fund set aside in impact fee monies, but if I can't find the properties where they need to be, this whole idea of being able to get there by foot or get there by bicycle has kind of been thrown out the window. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, that's great if we get the land, Page 55 June 5, 2001 then we could use that impact fee for the capital expenditure of the equipment and stuff to go into it. I don't know if you can use it for maintenance, but at least you can do it for capital expenditures. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: The other thing, just while we're on this -- if it isn't too far off the subject; if it is, just pull me back -- is I think that I have finally realized that in our comp plan for parks or our level of service for parks, we count everything in the Big Cypress. We count everything. All of that preserve land gets credit -- yeah. You guys are nodding. It does, doesn't it -- for being a park. So when we look at the level of service every year when we get our annual inventory report on roads and parks and everything else, we are never going to be told that we're out of -- we're below our level of service for parks because we're counting the whole stinking Everglades as a park. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I didn't know that either. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I mean, I figured that out. That needs to change. MR. OLLIFF: And I'll tell you, that was not the way the plan was originally proposed. The Citizens Committee that created the plan originally showed this county being in a deficit position in terms of its inventory of park land. And when -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Sorry. MR. OLLIFF: That's all right. As -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: We're not playing kneesies here. I'm trying to figure out who's kicking the cord. MR. OLLIFF: As part of a budget process probably 12 years ago, the board was faced with having to fund the purchase of parklands out of its ad valorem tax fund and, rather than do that, proposed to amend our Comprehensive Plan to include and take credit for all of the state and federal reserve parkland which -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Isn't that crazy? Page 56 June 5, 2001 MR. OLLIFF: I was absolutely amazed that DCA actually approved that. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Wow, that's -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Boy, that is classic smoke and mirrors; right? Now you see it; now you don't. Boy, oh, boy. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Are we able to go back and separate those? COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: We could change it in our next comp plan cycle, if the board wanted to. MR. LITSINGER: I think that's in the regional park inventory. MR. OLLIFF: Right. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Either that or start putting bicycle paths through Big Cypress. I like that idea. To interconnect with our roads that we still have there. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Mimi just fell off her chair. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think this is a direction there, Mr. Dunnuck, that says let's deal with the reality of that. And thank you, Commissioner Mac'Kie, for creating that awareness, because I didn't know that. And I would have sat here fat, dumb, and happy, I guess, thinking we've got an inventory, and we don't have it. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner Carter, I would like to see -- let's take an inventory of what we do have, of what kind of parks, passiveness or more intense use, and match it up with the number of full-time residents that we do have here and see if it, you know, is conducive and, you know, do we need more passiveness and the Big Cypress or whatever. And I know that's state lands, but that has an added value to the community. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Sure. It's not parks. CHAIRMAN CARTER: It's not -- I think we're in the right direction here, and I think it's a good point, Commissioner Henning. Page 57 June 5, 2001 Particularly if you're talking a regional or community park, you need that inventory. But in the neighborhood park situation, that's one that can become very much controlled through policy in terms of future development, so these people have something in their community in which to go and participate in. And the others need -- we need that inventory, and we need to know what we need as you feed the system. I mean, we're going to have a big regional park in the north, but what other community parks do we need besides Veterans and the one in Golden Gate and those others and Sugden? And so, you know, I see them, but are we servicing the growing areas? And particularly when I look to the north and I see all the intense growth there, even though we have a regional park and we have Veterans Park, we do not really have another community park that fits that pattern somewhere. And it may be too late, but at least we could establish some neighborhood parks. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Talking about three areas real quickly as we're talking about this, that as you're adding these things up -- for instance, on the Isles of Capri, those little strip things that might be considered in the park system because they're under your jurisdiction, but they're not actually anything anybody can use. So you've got the Isles of Capri, they're a half an hour away from the closest park. Nobody could walk or bike there obviously. And same with Goodland. Goodland is stuck way down there. They're at least a half an hour away from the closest park. So I would like to see -- as you're counting it up in those little tiny strip things, maybe you can mention that they're not really passive or anything because you can't use them for anything. And then you talk about another area. I'm going to get into the triangle just a little bit and say there's a whole area with tons Page 58 June 5, 2001 of children and no park. And many people might say, "Oh, yeah, but Shadowlawn has one." Well, that's the poorest example of a park that I could ever think of. There's an area that -- there's not even a playground area there for the kids to play in, and they call that a neighborhood park. So, I mean, I would like to make sure that those aren't counted in your total tally. Thank you. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Or that we improve them if we're going to count them. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I'm in. COMMISSIONER HENNING: By partnershipping with the school board. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yeah. Put their feet to the fire. Their other playgrounds are pretty nice. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Did you know that you do have access to the schools' playgrounds and facilities after hours? This is a secret that not many people know about, and I'm probably going to lose my tennis court now, but so be it. MR. OLLIFF: That's not true system-wide. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Oh, it isn't? MR. OLLIFF: No. In most cases the schools have decided to lock those by fence after hours primarily because there's nobody there to maintain them or watch over them or to manage the site. But Maria has been very aggressive and done a phenomenal job of working with the school system in terms of executing joint agreements where we now manage and maintain a lot of the school properties after hours. When the school bell rings, they become public parks. And as we go through the budget, I'll give you a list of those, and you'll be surprised at how many we actually manage and maintain for the school system after hours. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I'm sorry. If I may, what would be the possibility -- and I know probably the funds don't exist, but who -- maybe somebody could create some magic where we Page 59 June 5, 2001 might be able to take a look at that. Is it Little Palm Island that we're talking about there? Palm River, that one development there where we have the -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: The hole in the doughnut. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: -- the hole in the doughnut, possibly where something could be raised over by that particular piece of property that would be -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: We -- Commissioner, we looked very hard at that one, but it does serve -- it does serve the community, but the price tag far exceeded what we could put into the budget to do. There are some other efforts being made there, and only a time line is going to see what we finally end up with. It's not going to end up being a community park, but we may get a solution to the problem through another -- through another opportunity, so we're just kind of in a wait-and-see pattern. You're right. It would have made a great community park -- neighborhood park, but when you talk 5 or $6 million for the land, that kind of put us out of the picture. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Just in case -- you know, I was on a roll there with things that I wanted to see changed. One other thing -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Don't stop now. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: -- and I don't understand why it can't work this way, is when we talk about -- somebody tell me the difference between a passive park and open space in the urban area. And when we have all this -- don't we have a lot of money in our -- well, I know you're spending it now. Historically we have had a lot of money in our impact fees. I just don't understand why we can't use parks' impact fee money for open space acquisition in the urban area. If we redefined parks to include that, wouldn't that money -- I mean, we just said a park might be just an area where you can walk a trail. Why isn't that a Page 60 June 5, 2001 funding source for greenspace in the urban area for some portion of it? MS. RAMSEY: Well, currently neighborhood parks are not part of your Growth Management Plan, so impact fees are not eli -- funds are not eligible for -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE.' But we can change that, which we're about to do. MS. RAMSEY: Once you change that, yes, it could be. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Well, how does the board feel about that? CHAIRMAN CARTER: You asked a question about how much money you would have available. I would like an analysis by staff which I would be comfortable with, but I want to know how many dollars we have to work with and what are the demands and how would we best use -- COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: It would still come to us for decisions on how we're going to spend the money. All I'm saying is wouldn't it be nice if a piece of land were out there that we could acquire for open space, passive recreation in the urban area, if we had the option of spending park impact fee money on it, which we don't today. COMMISSIONER FIALA: But I have to tell you -- and I'm one who loves the greenspace, obviously. But if it was going to be to build a park in the triangle and we had only one pot of money and there was only enough money to do that or buy an open space, I would say first accommodate the people in the area, the citizens who need it. And that would be -- you know, I would have to say that we have to weigh that very carefully. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think you're both right. Commissioner Mac'Kie is saying let's have a policy that gives us the option, and the ultimate decision maker is the Board of County Commissioners. And staff would come back and say, Page 61 June 5, 2001 "You have Y number of dollars and you have X choices," and you will have to then determine how you're going to use the dollars. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: Just to open the door to the possibility. Right now we might not have the money, but in five years there may be money that -- you know, just looking long term. Gosh, can I think of anything else I've been wanting? MR. OLLIFF: Amy, it's time to move on. CHAIRMAN CARTER: It's time to move on here. COMMISSIONER FIALA: You've really helped us a lot, Pam, to identify things that we weren't aware of. Thank you. MS. TAYLOR: The community and regional parks, the Community Character Plan analysis just judged it as a very, very good solid effort, commendable effort on our -- the locations of our existing parks, the amenities in our existing parks. One of the problems that I think that was identified, and Maria is very much aware of, is the need for more community parks and the difficulty when you are trying to serve a larger and larger area because you're cramming a lot of -- a lot of improvements onto -- onto the limited parklands that you do have, so ball fields, active recreational amenities in a park. And that -- that greenspace or that passive areas within our community parks is diminished somewhat. So it just -- but it just emphasizes the point that we do need three to four more community parks to serve our population, actually within the next six years. So the Community Character Plan recommended a pretty aggressive approach beginning to -- the planning for purchasing and improving one to two parks per year for the next several years. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Could you give us the difference between a community park and a regional park, please? MS. RAMSEY: A lot of it has to do with size. A community park is -- that we have currently in our system are anywhere Page 62 June 5, 2001 from 30 to 40 acres. Regional parks are larger, like Sugden, which is 120, and then North Naples Regional Park, which happens to be 212. Then you're able to provide a lot more passive element into a regional park if it's larger and have a lot more elements to it. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: If I may ask you, how are we proceeding with the negotiations on the community park land for OrangeTree? MS. RAMSEY: I really left that kind of up to real property. I know that they were negotiating with the landowner on the lake itself. COMMISSIONER COLETTA: Well, that's part of the necessity, to have that lake there. MS. RAMSEY: Right. And I know that the school system, we're also working with them in conjunction with that, and the utilities department. So it's a pretty large -- I've kind of stepped out of the negotiations and -- COMMISSIONER COLETTA: I kind of hope they'll involve me in the negotiation before they put a sewer plant right in the middle of my lake. MS. TAYLOR: Moving forward, the --just as -- Commissioner Mac'Kie, you were talking about -- and of course, Maria -- talking about putting goals in the Growth Management Plan, namely for neighborhood parks, that was a recommendation, but also for a community park as well so that you have identified clearly that those are your goals, to maintain an inventory over time to serve your population. The capital improvement recommendation scheduled the acquisition of one community park every two years so that needed sites are acquired by 2006, and schedule the design and construction of the new park as it is acquired. So it's -- it's a pretty aggressive, you know, active program over the next six -- Page 63 June 5, 2001 five, six years. So, Maria, did you have anything to add? MS. RAMSEY: The only thing on that is that, again, remember, we not only purchase the land out of the impact fees, we also develop the land out of impact fees. And currently we're getting about $5 million. That's what the cost of the regional park land was, and a lot of that money is now being leveraged to help with -- with the reimbursement of the loans as well as development costs as we go forward. So it's not as large of a pot as it used to be as we continue to leverage that. But the other thing is that as we look at acquiring additional pieces of property -- and especially two of them are out in the estates area -- we're going to have to be a little quick on that, otherwise you will be putting 2 1/2-acre and 5-acre parcels together which will be a very time-consuming process. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Maria, you said $5 million. Is that per year is what you're getting for impact fees? MS. RAMSEY: Yes, that's correct. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. So would it be the best interest to buy the raw land now instead of buying the land and development? MS. RAMSEY: We're trying to do some of both, if we can. Like I said, with the North Naples regional park, we're going to try and develop that one as we're continuing to try and purchase land. Then the other option of that, of course, is to relook at the impact fees because construction costs have really gone through the roof. And when you look at square footage costs to put up a building, two years ago it was scheduled at 120, and now it's running somewhere around the $200-per-square-foot mark. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Now, is this -- this goal, is it doable? MS. RAMSEY: Yeah. Page 64 June 5, 2001 COMMISSIONER HENNING: Because of-- MS. RAMSEY: One of those four community parks that we've been looking at is really being identified is -- if there is any surplus landfill -- land down the road, that's one of the locations that we were looking at. So we were looking to purchase three additional. We've already kind of got our eye on two of those three. MR. OLLIFF: What's a typical community park construction budget these days? What did Eagle Lakes cost us to build? MS. RAMSEY: Like Eagle Lakes? Well, we're not done with it. We've only done one phase. We've already spent, just in the construction side of it, almost 4 million on that particular parcel. And we don't have a community center there yet, and we don't have -- a lot of the shelters and the pathways are not completed. So I think by the time you're done, you're looking closer to 10 million. COMMISSIONER HENNING: What size property is this? MS. RAMSEY: About 40 acres. COMMISSIONER FIALA: That doesn't include the purchase of the property; right? MS. RAMSEY: No, that does not include the purchase of the property. MR. OLLIFF: No. That's construction cost only. So if you're talking about four parks in the next six years at $10 million apiece on just the construction side, you're looking at $40 million in construction plus land cost. That tells you how aggressive that is. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I think that the board was told that we're going to be taking a look at not just transportation impact fees on a regular basis, but all impact fees? MS. RAMSEY: We'll be coming back probably in the next 12 Page 65 June 5, 2001 months with park fees. MR. OLLIFF: Especially if the board wants to start looking at inclusion of neighborhood parks as a regular part of its construction plan and wants to look at the options for open space and passive recreational parks, because your impact fee right now is geared strictly toward what we would consider to be active recreation opportunities in community and regional parks. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Also -- I'm sure you are doing this, Maria -- I would look for any kind of grants anywhere that might be used as matching funds to this. I'm very cautious about impact fees from this perspective. Every time you raise an impact fee, you drive up the cost to the new homeowner. And I caution this board, where people who already have theirs think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, those who don't have it are the ones that get punished the most. So I'm very -- I don't want to diminish that income stream, but I am cautious that if there's any other opportunities to match off of that, I'm going to be looking for that anywhere that I can. And there may be other revenue mechanisms that we have to seriously consider based on what other communities do not only in Florida, but other parts of the country. We've got to really find any and all vehicles. MS. RAMSEY: Part of what we're also looking at is when we get into the natural lands, we have actually added some of the urban parcel -- passive parcels into that. So if we go forward with an ad valorem bond issue when we come to the natural lands, we have actually identified probably 20 urban parcels to try and purchase through that avenue rather than through impact fees. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Sometimes there are various trusts. I know Jackson Hole, Wyoming, has a program, and maybe it's statewide in Wyoming, where there is benefit for families who Page 66 June 5, 2001 want to take land and donate it to this type of thing, that there's some tax breaks. So we need to be very creative in looking at all of this to see if there's some other ways to acquire land. And if we can do that, let's not leave one stone unturned in this process. I'm going to say, "Get outside the box, folks. Do everything you can." COMMISSIONER FIALA: Regarding impact fees, will we ever have a conversation about it? My concern mainly, kind of echoing something that Jim has said, is that if we have the same impact fee, $8,000, on every single house that's built, whether it be an $80,000 house or an $8 million house, I would think that limits us as far as our affordable housing goes because is it -- you know, by the time you add so many impact fees on, it doesn't become very affordable. So I was just wondering if we'll have a conversation about that at some time in the future. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I'm sure we will, and impact fees are sliding. The more you -- the bigger and the more expensive home that you build, the more of an impact you -- fee that you pay versus somebody having a lower priced home in the scale. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I thought it was one flat fee, period. MR. OLLIFF: It depends on the impact fee. Where there's a legal way -- for instance, in wastewater it's tied to the number of toilet facilities you have in your house because there's a legal rationale, then, for charging people per toilet because they have more impact on the system. COMMISSIONER FIALA: But not according to the price of the house, huh? MR. OLLIFF: No. Because you have to have a legal rationale for what you're charging in the impact fee. But as you review each of the individual impact fees -- and most of those will be coming up over the course of the next year -- we can have that conversation about if there are any opportunities for sliding- Page 67 June 5, 2001 scale-type fee structures. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, I stand corrected. I thought I saw -- somewhere I saw a sliding scale. I'm dutifully corrected that it doesn't apply across the board. MR. OLLIFF: It's about 12 of 12, and we had promised to try and get you out of here by noon, and you have four registered speakers. So I'm going to ask Amy to go ahead and finish up her presentation. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you. MS. TAYLOR: I'll just sum up in the next two, three minutes. The next one is linkages, and it just -- it recommends developing a greenway system and an off-road pathway system which, again, could -- the funding sources could be through grants and through -- through the referendum if it does get approved. There are opportunities along our canal banks and along FP&L easements. And just to have a coordinated plan would be a good, positive first step. And we'll be bringing this back to you. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Mr. Feder. MR. FEDER: Just very quickly, I wanted to acknowledge a lot of good discussion here today and just add that an awful lot of the focus on the transportation items, efforts are under way, whether it's the functional classification, looking at corridor studies, and other issues of the sort. But what I do want to do is also bring the focus back a little bit. With all this discussion of how we want to see the modifications and issues addressed, we're faced right now with a shortfall of almost 300 million over the next five years just to address what has already been approved and structured here in this county. And we need to acknowledge this, plan for it, continue the processes to address it, but not lose sight of the fact that we've got some 27 projects over the next five years that we have to address just to get ourselves in a position to start Page 68 June 5, 2001 going towards refinement, to address the backlog that we have out there. And I just wanted to throw that out for your consideration as we look at a lot of these expanded opportunities, many of which have a price tag associated with them as well. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I think you're absolutely right, Mr. Feder. That all gets shut down quicker than light if we can't find the funding to do it. And we can plan, we can set policy, and if we don't have the funds do it and the community is not willing to support the expenditure of funds to accomplish this, then it's not going to happen. And that's a message that we need to get out and work with folks and let them understand. I think people always need to know, "What am I getting for the tax I have to pay?" So we have to begin to be very specific in saying, "Here's what's in it for you." And if you can do that, I think a lot of reasonable people out there will go with it. There are some folks that will never go with anything, but that's just a fact of life. MS. TAYLOR: I did want to mention really quickly about the need for more access to the waterfront beach. The objective is that the county should aggressively pursue additional access, and I think we're continuing to do that. Maria Ramsey works on that and has quite challenging experiences with that. But that -- that was held strongly as a commitment that the county should continue to move forward with. It recommended there be some -- some changes to the transportation and Land Development Code -- and this is in regard to linkages, and I somehow got -- okay. -- to -- to our pathway network. We have a 2020 pathway plan, and we -- this Community Character Plan recommends modifying the -- and updating the 2020 plan. I think it's -- the most recent update was '95 or '96. It could be modified to include an off-road pathway Page 69 June 5, 2001 system that could identify funding. There used to be a five-year pathway work program. It no longer -- I don't think that's developed. I think an annual work program is developed at this point. A five-year pathway work program, you know, might work a little bit better. And really encourage, you know, as we've identified in earlier portions of the Community Character Plan, shaded sidewalks in existing and new residential areas near schools, parks, and commercial areas could be your priorities for retrofitting; explore the creation of an urban greenway network along canal banks and power easements, and with regard to the Land Development Code, community interconnectivity through on- and off-road pathways. One of the issues that came up in various meetings and in discussions with the consultants was what kinds of -- of nonautomobile-using people do we have in Collier County? There are children. There are older people. There are families. We do provide bike lanes along many of our improvement major arterials. But, really, the sidewalk is where you're going to see the bicyclists as well as the pedestrians, and the more those are shaded and -- and connected to meaningful places for people to travel to and from, the more they're going to be used. So that -- that's probably going to be an issue that comes up through the Horizon Committee. Natural lands, the -- this is just one of the last slides that was developed from using the historical water -- water flows, the endangered species telemetry data, and various other methods to identify natural conservation areas and buffer areas that would be a good thing to look at for acquisition through either -- or conserving. I shouldn't say "acquisition." -- either through direct acquisition of property rights, through a referendum, or through best management practices, and they've identified Page 70 June 5, 2001 areas. This, I'm sure, will be coordinated with our rural assessment committees as they move forward. These are just areas that were identified through the best available data and merging all that data together. And I don't think it's so different from what I've seen coming out of the rural assessment committees. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I would hope that through Commissioner Mac'Kie's efforts, to let's take a look at the possibility of not acquiring these lands, but providing monies to -- to the private owner for maintaining these lands. And I think we could get a lot further where we want to be in this community by not expending by the county being a landholder, but a partnership with the private sector for managing these lands. MS. TAYLOR: That's a very, very good viable alternative in a conservation easement through many of these lands and -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: You know, we've got some great opportunities already that the lands are put into land trusts, and I would take you up to North Naples. I will tell you all the acreage that has been set aside by Signature Properties as a part of the PUD agreements, several hundred acres up there that are now all in -- in perpetuity, they cannot -- and as long as they have it and the areas that affect them -- of course, they will clean out the exotics and maintain them. But the huge tracts in there, that if you wanted to make those passive recreation areas or develop in a way that people could have walking trails and canoeing and whatever might else be in there, that requires money and ongoing maintenance which even your land trusts will say, "We'll hold the land but we don't want to pay for cleaning it out, and we don't want to pay to maintain it." So the challenge is, how do you get the dollars to convert some of that? And what Commissioner Henning is talking about, Page 71 June 5, 2001 what Commissioner Mac'Kie has been talking about, to then turn them into areas where people can enjoy and participate in it. And we don't have any answer at this point on how to do that. But we do have the lands, and they are set aside, and this is nothing we had to purchase. This was part of the negotiations, that we acquired all that. MS. TAYLOR: The financing issues in regard to that would be if there was a land-acquisition referendum approved by the voters and if there was not. If there is, dedicate a portion of the proceeds towards restoration and maintenance. And if there's -- if there isn't one approved, seek the funding from state and federal sources and work with private landowners to develop best management practices along privately owned buffers, you know, along greenways and, just as Commissioner Henning suggested, possibly including best management practices along with our strategy if a referendum was approved. The -- the GMP amendments that were recommended is to add a new goal to the conservation and coastal management elements supporting purchase of property rights where needed to protect county resources. We could include, you know, other mechanisms that would allow us to do the very similar things as well in that Growth Management Plan amendment. This is the very last slide. It's the future of the future land use map. And if you recall from the meeting where the -- the Community Character Plan was accepted, there was -- there was a section in the Community Character Plan that was put into a technical memorandum -- and it's in your packet -- titled "The Future of the Future Land Use Map." And if you want to refer to that now -- and its -- and its intent -- the boards had -- had directed that its intent be included in the discussion of the workshop today. The intent, which is on the second page, is new suburban and urban development should be kept within the Page 72 June 5, 2001 current urban boundary rather than being allowed to creep further into the countryside. Redevelopment and vacant acreage inside the urban boundary should be used to accommodate most anticipated growth. The intent and purpose of that language is for premature conversion of rural lands. Much of what it -- what will be possible in improving the urban area over the next 10, 20, and 50 years will be the result of -- of, frankly, land values continuing to increase and becoming more valuable; people wanting to improve their properties over time instead of having suburban development continue to develop further and further out in the county. So there's -- there's sort of a -- there has to be sort of a balance that's struck. And this -- this language was introduced as sort of a -- as a bell ringer so that we know that there is a cost associated with -- with premature conversion to the provision of public services, the cost associated with that, as well as the continued improvement and value.enhanced community that we'll have in our urban area over time. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner Carter, we -- we have a governor's order that we need to address. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I just whispered that to Mr. Olliff, and I want -- and Miss Student is going to remind the board where we are. Thank you, Commissioner. MS. STUDENT: For the record, Marjorie Student, assistant county attorney. We are under an order from the governor and cabinet on a Growth Management Plan consistency case where these matters are being addressed by virtue of a -- an assessment. And the county has broken that assessment down into two parts, that for the rural fringe and also for rural lands, and has established two committees that are studying that. So I'd say for this portion it doesn't mean that you can't consider it; Page 73 June 5, 2001 it's a timing issue. And, indeed, next week you will be having a report from the rural fringe. So I guess I would just say hold -- hold that thought. CHAIRMAN CARTER: What Ms. Student is saying is let's not discuss it any further until we get to where we need to be, and then it can be incorporated into our discussion. Thank you, Commissioner Henning. MS. TAYLOR: That's -- I did want to bring that up just because it was directed, and I thank you very much for the opportunity to present the Community Character Plan to you in terms of implementation and coordination. The -- the next steps will be to bring together the -- the Community Character/Smart Growth Committee. And over the next couple of months, the Community Character/Smart Growth Committee could then prioritize these various Growth Management Plan and Land Development Code amendments and bring those forward to the commission for their approval, and then we can move forward with the development of these strategies. And thank you very much for the opportunity to -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, Amy. And we do need to go to public speakers. MR. DUNNUCK: First up is Loretta LeLeux followed by Vera Fitz-Gerald. MS. LeLEUX: For the record, I'm Loretta LeLeux, and I'm a resident of Naples Park, and most of you know how excited we are that this has finally come to fruition. Over a year ago, we came to the commissioners and asked for some changes to be made in the zoning, etc., throughout the park, and we were asked if we would please wait because the Dover Kohl study was going to be undertaken. We've come back to you and asked -- we are very, very interested in being a pilot for a program to redevelop Naples Park. Page 74 June 5, 2001 We have a committee right now that's working on parks and looking out for properties that are available to make -- create neighborhood parks in Naples Park. So we're looking forward to being in a study so that we can have planned development rather than chaos development in our neighborhood. And we appreciate everything, and we're looking forward to working closely with you in the future. Thank you. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, Loretta. Next speaker, please. MR. DUNNUCK: Vera Fitz-Gerald followed by Brad Cornell. MS. FITZ-GERALD: I'm Vera Fitz-Gerald. I think Loretta just about said most of what I wanted to say. Except I did want to -- besides Naples Park and how excited we really are and that we do have a wonderful committee with some very good, professional people involved in it, one thing I do want to say about parks -- and Maria Ramsey's heard me say this before -- is that, gosh, it would be nice to be able to go around the countryside and just see a nice, green park that you could walk in. I drove up to St. Petersburg, and you go through the city, and there's green parks everywhere. And I think, "Gee, this is really nice." But Naples, it's always been the developers could put in a golf course, and this was the greenspace. This was the park. But they're all private, so there's no parks. So we really need to do that. And we have this -- every time we do put up a park, it always ends up being baseball diamonds and soccer fields. And I know there's a need for that, but there's also a need for greenspace. And we have these beautiful canals that could be beautiful, but right now they're just ugly because unfortunately the stormwater manager, John Boldt's, idea of maintenance on these canals is to drive down with a truckload of poison and just spray Page 75 June 5, 2001 it. But it could be maintained, and there could be lovely walkways along there. I hope that Eagles Lake will be maintained. Right now it's -- the ponds are choked with exotic weeds, and it needs some money on that. So there's some good stuff here, and I sure look forward to the implementation. Thanks a lot. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: I just have to say, John Boldt would love for us to budget him enough money to do a beautiful job of maintaining these canals. Frankly, his department has been so underbudgeted historically that we've been grateful in the last few years to have money to spray the poison and the machinery to do it. We didn't even have that for a long time. So John will do as good a job as we will give him the money to do. COMMISSIONER HENNING: May I just ask -- and I think we probably do have a majority of support to use Naples Park as the first implementation of efforts between long-range planning and citizens in that area. How long will this process -- when can we get started on it, get the citizens involved? CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, what it takes is to set up and approve the $250,000 planning budget. They are set up. They're ready to go. I have had conversations with the community. Now we need to develop a plan. And that is their challenge, develop a plan on what they want to do, how they want to do it, and what will be the funding sources. So as you heard Loretta, as you heard Vera, as you will hear from others, they're ready to do it. All we need to do is help them with the planning dollars to -- to make it happen. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So you're talking about the budget season this month when we -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: That's right. COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- make sure that we have the money for staff to -- Page 76 June 5, 2001 CHAIRMAN CARTER: And that was the very first part that said we need to set aside $250,000 to help any community. MR. LITSINGER: I'll defer to the county manager on this. We had initially put in a sum for this particular activity, and I don't know at this point whether we will be bringing that to the board or not. MR. OLLIFF: It's still in there. It's in the budget for you to take a look at. I believe you start your budget workshops on the 20th of the month, 20th, 21st, and 25th, I believe, are the dates. You'll see that as part of the budget that you'll review. CHAIRMAN CARTER: So it'll be our call, Commissioner. MR. DUNNUCK: Brad Cornell followed by Bob Krasowski. MR. CORNELL: Hello, Commissioners. I'm Brad Cornell. I'm here on behalf of Collier County Audubon Society. But I will say I also live in Naples Park, and I vote with them. I think this sounds great. And I also want to thank Amy Taylor for a great presentation. It's been very informative, and she's been also very helpful in disseminating information, so it's been good for the public to learn about this whole process. This is very, very exciting. And in my view, I think this is something that looks to the future. You know, it's a proactive approach to planning for Collier County. It's expensive. It's going to take a lot of work. It's going to have to involve everybody in our community, but that's what's going to give us something worthwhile. And I would encourage you to implement every part of this that you can. This is great stuff. I have just a couple points that I want to make. In reading through this plan and listening to the discussion today, the Dover Kohl plan, this Community Character Plan, ties in many junctures with the final order, as one point was already made. A couple of these would be the transfer of development rights concept, Page 77 June 5, 2001 TDRs, to protect rural resources is going to need the smart growth recommendations from this Dover Kohl study implemented to make them viable. You need to have livable urban receiving areas if you're going to have sending areas to be able to protect. The -- now, this is a little tangential, but affordable work-force housing goals are not going to be achieved unless you have these kind of community character livability standards that are going to make them work. And if you're going to increase density in urban areas for affordable housing and work-force housing, we've got to make them livable areas. We don't want to just pile things on top of each other. We want to have a plan that makes this appealing and makes everybody want to live and work with that. Protecting natural resources, water supply, recharge, flood control, and listed species habitat requires better and more livable and efficient use in the urban area and urban development. It takes the pressure off the rural area. We want to concentrate on infill, redevelopment, and the proper planning for our urban area first before we start to look east. And greenspace recommendations that we just heard about emphasize several vital elements that Collier County needs to protect its -- and preserve important rural resources, fire breaks, habitat and flow-ways in northern Golden Gate Estates, connections of habitat corridors, recharge zones, flow-ways, NRPA reserves, etc. I want to mention a point here that hasn't been discussed, but I think it's something that's going to be coming up next week, and you can consider it in connection with this too. To ensure the feasibility of this plan and the rural assessment amendments that are going to be coming out over the next year, we need to recognize what Governor Bush's state growth management Page 78 June 5, 2001 committee, that Susan Pareigis just sat on for us, recommends on the concept of full-cost accounting and evaluation of policies. And we need to evaluate our recommendations that we have in front of us now in that light, and we need an objective economist capable of such full-cost assessment to evaluate these ideas and the ideas that are going to be coming out of our rural assessment. I think that, you know, a very objective economist that understands full-cost accounting is -- is really necessary for this effort. And, finally, with reference to the Technical Memorandum No. 3, this future of the future land use map, cjustering is a very valuable tool for protecting lots of things. And if you're talking about rural resources, whether it's agricultural or natural resources, cjustering can be useful. However, the way it has been proposed and the way it has already been used in rural areas, it starts to look like sprawl and urbanization in golf course communities where they don't really have a place. So, again, I mentioned this when you discussed this before, but I do want to caution us on the concept of the cjustering. It can be useful, but there are two different kinds of cjustering. There's good cjustering and bad cjustering, as it says in the report, and we need to be very distinguishing about that. Thank you very much. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, Brad. As an update from the legislative report yesterday, the legislature did approve setting up a cost accounting committee to look at what that entails, what it means. And that was really the only action that was taken by the legislature on the Growth Management Plan in this last session. So they're moving in that direction. We may be able to, you know, follow that -- follow that idea. I think it's a good one to have an economist look at these. The other thing I would always remind people is that as you Page 79 June 5, 2001 develop within an urban boundary area, you increase the intensity of use of a piece of land that is there. And I'm going to translate that real quick. That's more people in a given area, more people within the boundary line. And whereas I hear a lot of people say, "That's great," and they say it's good and then it happens in, quote, their neighborhood, and then my phone calls rise to the ceiling, e-mails are flooding the place, and say, "This is terrible. Why are we having all these people here?" Well, there's some tough decisions to be made here, and I just want to remind our listening public, our community, that these are -- when we talk trade-offs, we want to do it right, but don't expect the numbers of people to go away. 253,000 people live here year-round, and that's the latest census data, so keep in mind. The next speaker, please. MR. DUNNUCK.' Bob Krasowski. MR. KRASOWSKI: Good afternoon, Commissioners and staff and whoever else is sitting at the table and here today. My name is Bob Krasowski, and I'd like to take the opportunity as a private citizen to congratulate you for having this workshop. This workshop series has been very beneficial to my understanding of my county government, and I appreciate it because I know you're not under mandate to do all of these. Much of this is just what you've decided to do, and I think it informs you as well. And I'm also looking towards next week when we'll have our solid waste workshop, and I hope to get a lot out of that. And I hope that many of the people here today will turn a critical eye on what's involved in the waste management issue, whereas the community might be committed to a $200 million incinerator. So if you're interested in finances, you should come and keep an eye on what's going on in that regard. As a private citizen here, what draws my attention to this Page 80 June 5, 2001 issue most is my experience of wild -- wilding development. I live here in Collier County, and I can appreciate the interest of other people to move here and to live here and the interest of development in this area. But when the development takes place similar to what's been recently, as an example, experienced along Golden Gate Parkway -- or is it Boulevard? The Golden Gate from Airport Road out towards 1-75 -- Parkway where we had a scraping of the earth's surface for acres and acres and then the wall, you know, it just reminded me of 'Gorbechev, take down this wall." You know, it's like this huge wall goes up, and the corner of Immokalee Road and 41 in North Naples where that huge corridor of that intersection was just scraped. I don't see why the green buffer zone couldn't be put in first before the scraping occurred, just to be sensitive to the experience of the people that already live here. I mean, there are people here trying to live out their lives, communities that exist, and we should recognize the quality of life of these people and not just be totally motivated or overwhelmingly motivated by the interest of developers or whoever's responsible for doing this. I, also, in the past when this study was presented, asked questions about the tension for the infrastructure. Today I noticed there was some mention of how the different parts of the county government would become involved through various processes, and I think in the future we'll be having -- well, we should pay attention to when you bring these people in of what we're going to do with their wastewater, where their garbage is going to go. You talk about backing these different commercial developments up to the roads. Well, that means their dumpsters are going to be in the back and the places where they store things oftentimes. So I don't think that would be very attractive. Page 81 June 5, 2001 And then also in residential areas, how are you going to accommodate recycling and -- and futuristic things that we have planned for the community? I was hoping to hear more today about the potential for trading zoning densities in the rural and the fringe area with the urban area, but I believe -- yeah, that was addressed by Ms. Student, and I look forward to hearing about that, and I'll be here to speak on that as well. Nice to see you all, and we'll see you later. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Thank you, and thank you for the promo on next week's workshop. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I had one more question, if I might add. We didn't touch, really, on work-force housing at all. And I was wondering if the community character in some way is going to make provisions for work-force housing to be located in PUDs in the future, if that's something that we're going to be adopting, if -- if it has -- has ideas and suggestions for the content in areas like villages, like work-force villages, locations for them, suggestions for new villages as well as mature areas that could be improved. So I was just wondering if maybe -- MS. TAYLOR: Yeah. There's a couple of areas in the plan that would address that. In redeveloping these older declining shopping centers and areas for mixed uses, you would -- you would have an opportunity for multifamily housing. Possibly more affordable housing, and that would be throughout Collier County. And another recommendation, which would have to be looked into once we begin to develop the Land Development Code and gone through committee, is requiring that the PUD, that it -- that a PUD offers a variety of housing types and costs. CHAIRMAN CARTER: And some communities do that. On large-tract developments, they require, as a part of that plan, a certain percentage of homes to be at a price level, entry price Page 82 June 5, 2001 level, that would fit into what we would call prof -- you know, work-force housing is better than what we were used to -- used to call it, but what we're trying to do is find housing that will help people in the starter homes kind of projects. And it was not unusual in many developments that I've seen where you had a range of homes to buy and you had -- let's say No. I home would be your least cost to get into the development; No. 5 might have been your most expensive. And they did not necessarily segregate these in the community. They usually built them along a thoroughfare where you could really hardly differentiate except that No. I was a smaller home. So it was a neat integration of the concept of the ideas. So that potential is there, Commissioner Fiala. The other, as Commissioner Mac'Kie brought up at a prior workshop, is that if you increase the density of the use of a piece of property, the number of units within the urban boundary area in select sections, you can create some work-force housing in those areas where people can afford to buy. Now, it might be a town house kind of concept. If you go to Columbia, Maryland, you will look at their development up there, they have certain sections that are what I would call town house concept, and they're not just row houses. I mean, they're built in a way -- architecturally they're very attractive, and yet you have a higher intense use of the land, more people in there, but it fits into the overall development of that community. So I would hope that we identify some of those in the community, be able to look at those, and find out how we could make those work because it would have a price level that meets economic feasibility and all of the other considerations. So I think we -- I'm with you; that's where we need to get, we need to be. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner, I think the Page 83 June 5, 2001 recommendation here from staff is to work with the Horizon Committee, and I just support that -- that effort. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Well, I think -- Mr. Olliff, would you like to sum up for us? I know you usually take very good notes, and we can kind of wrap that up and complete the workshop. MR. OLLIFF: I think I'll close, being smart, by not saying a whole lot. I think the -- there are some short-term things that I think we will bring back. And I think the board has clearly given us some direction on issues like pathway funding, funding for the two neighborhood parks, funding for the neighborhood studies; those kinds of things you will see as part of your budget reviews in June. But the balance of these issues are primarily Land Development Code and Growth Management Plan amendments that we will see as part of the Horizon Committee work over the course of the next year or two. And so the only thing I want to leave us with is -- is encouragement that we need to -- to keep the faith here and keep moving forward on this plan, but recognizing that in each and every one of these issues, when you start talking about Land Development Code and Growth Management Plans, those are not items that get changed over night. And we are talking about a long-range planning document that we need to amend, and it's going to take a number of years in order to make the policy changes necessary to begin making real change in our community. But we need to make the commitment now. We need to go ahead and start doing the work now because two years is two years, no matter when you start it. And the faster we start it, the faster we get it finished and get it in place. We appreciate you taking the time. Our next workshop is -- do you know? COMMISSIONER HENNING: June 12th? MR. OLLIFF: June 12th, well, that's actually a Board of Page 84 June 5, 2001 County Commissioners -- CHAIRMAN CARTER: Board of County Commissioners meeting. June 11th is an evening meeting, six to nine. So, Commissioners, remember this will be an interesting period for you as you have an evening workshop and then come back for a board meeting, which as I understand, we'll have, you know, a full day's work on it, as per usual. So you might want to bring your sleeping bags. We may -- but it's not anything that is not accomplishable. I mean, we can do it, but just remember it will be a pretty intense period. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: You said six to nine; right? CHAIRMAN CARTER: In the evening. COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: To nine. MR. OLLIFF: To eight. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Six to eight? Well -- (Speaker from the audience.) COMMISSIONER MAC'KIE: That's what I was afraid of. CHAIRMAN CARTER: I would hope that it would not take longer than two hours and have a very comfortable direction on it, but I'm not an optimist. That's why I said nine. MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, you could adjourn this, and no one would argue a bit. CHAIRMAN CARTER: Okay. We stand adjourned. Page 85 June 5, 2001 There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 12:24 p.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S} OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL '~' :.JAMEs D. CARTER, Ph.D., CHAIRMAN ATTEST: ~' DWIGHT E'-BROCK, CLERK Attest a~ to Chairman's signature onl$. These minutes approved by the Board on as presented / or as corrected TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF DONOVAN COURT REPORTING, INC., BY BARBARA DRESCHER, NOTARY PUBLIC Page 86