Loading...
BCC Minutes 09/27/2002 E (Mosquito Control Funding re: West Nile Virus)September 27, 2002 COLLIER COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS EMERGENCY MEETING Naples, Florida, September 27, 2002 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Board of County Commissioners, in and for the County of Collier, having conducted business herein, met on this date in EMERGENCY SESSION at 1:00 p.m. in the County Commission Meeting Room, 3301 Tamiami Trail East, Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRMAN: JAMES COLETTA DONNA FIALA FREDERICK COYLE THOMAS HENNING JAMES D. CARTER, PhD. ALSO PRESENT: James Mudd, County Manager; Dr. Joan Colfer, Director, Collier County Health Department; And Dr. Frank Van Essen, Director, Mosquito Control District. Page 1 Collier County Government Department of Public Information 3301 East Tamlami Trail Naples, FL 34112 (941) 774-8999 Contact: Deborah Wight, Coordinator Public Information 774-8308 Sept. 26, 2002 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NOTICE OF EMERGENCY MEETING OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Notice is hereby given that the Board of County Commissioners of Collier County will hold an emergency meeting on FRIDAY, September 27, 2002, at 1 pan. in the Boardroom, 3'~ Floor, W. Harmon Turner Building, Collier County Government Center, 3301 East Tamiami Trail, Naples, Florida. The Board's agenda will include: A. Discussion and approval of funding for the Mosquito Control District to spray the portions of Golden Gate Estates and Immokalee areas outside of the current spraying areas due to concern for citizens' health, safety and welfare as it relates to the West Nile Virus. $26, 318 from the General Fund - Approved 5/0 All interested parties are invited to attend, to register to speak and to submit their objections, if any, in writing, to the Board prior to the emergency meeting. All registered public speakers will be limited to five (5) minutes unless permission for additional time is granted by the Chairman. Any person who decides to appeal a decision of the 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. Collier County Ordinance No. 99-22 requires that all lobbyists shall, before engaging in any lobbying activities (including, but not limited to, addressing the Board of County Commissioners), register with the Clerk to the Board at the Board Minutes and Records Department. ff you are a person with a disability who needs any accommodation in order to participate in this proceeding, you are entitled, at no cost to you, to the provision of certain assistance. Please contact the Collier County Facilities Management Department located at 3301 East Tamiami Trail, Naples, Florida, 34112, (941) 774-8380; assisted listening devices for the hearing impaired are available in the County Commissioners' Office. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONS COI.[JFR COUNTY, FLORIDA JAMES N. COLETTA, CHAIRMAN September 27, 2002 (Whereupon, the Pledge of Allegiance was recited and the meeting convened as follows:) CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay. This is a special meeting to address a medical emergency. Mr. Mudd? MR. MUDD: Commissioner, we'll -- we're going to address that -- to talk about that medical emergency, and this also has to do with allocating some funds out of reserves in order to take care that process. Dr. Colfer will -- will present the -- the information and the facts as we know them today in order to give you the information you need to make a -- a well-educated decision. Thank you. Dr. Colfer? DR. COLFER: Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Board, good afternoon. We're just going to take a few seconds from your time. We appreciate you giving that to us today. With me also is Dr. Frank Van Essen. He's the Director of Mosquito Control. But we are here to discuss with you recent findings from our surveillance programs for West Nile Virus. I have information about the disease if you want me to come back and talk about that, I can as well. But some of you will recall that when I first came about two years ago, we asked you to help us develop a surveillance program for this disease, the Sentinel Chicken Surveillance Program. We have flocks of chickens placed strategically across the county where we leave these chickens once a week to determine whether they have become infected with West Nile Virus. And, in deed, this week they have become infected. We have three birds, as of today, that are positive in Immokalee in our Sentinel Chicken Flock. We also have three birds at the Fairgrounds in our Sentinel Chicken Flock that are positive. In addition, as of about two hours ago, we also have five more birds that have been reported by the general public. I call it the -- the Page 2 September 27, 2002 dead bird pickup program. It's got a more sophisticated name, but -- but that's basically what it is. A citizen sees a dead bird, calls our offices, we send an environmental health person out to get it. We ship it to the state lab and it gets tested. All of these birds have been tested twice to be sure that they really do have this disease. They've all come back confirmed. So now we have this disease, basically -- I'll show you where throughout the county. Let me see if I can zoom that. That's a map of the entire State of Florida, and I'm going to try and zoom in here for you. Okay. We should be able to see -- you should be able to see the Sentinel Chicken Flocks. That's perfect. Thank you. The little chickens. See the little chickens there? There's -- there's three in Immokalee and then three at the Fairgrounds, and then the round circles are the dead bird pickup program's, so there's eleven all together. That is -- that is worrisome to me, together with some information that Frank Van Essen is going to present to you in a second. The other counties -- the other Gulf Coast counties, from Pinellas, Hillsborough, Charlotte, all down to Lee County are all already under medical alert. We are not yet, but I suspect that we will be shortly. The State makes that determination. It's based on a variety of things, including these statistics and -- and whether they also have horses and human cases. We don't have human cases and we don't want to have human cases. And I'd like Frank to present his data. He also has surveillance information to share with you. DR. VAN ESSEN: Good afternoon. I'm Frank Van Essen, Director of Mosquito Control. We've been setting traps in Page 3 September 27, 2002 Immokalee and surrounding areas for several weeks now because of the West Nile activity in the state. And we have the capability of sending some of these off for virus analysis to a lab in Tampa. And we also have the capability of counting these numbers and quanit -- counting these mosquitoes and quantifying them. At the present time, we have three positive groups of mosquitoes that were collected in Immokalee that are positive for carrying the virus. So not only do we have three positive chickens in Immokalee, we have three mosquito pools that show that the virus is there. In addition, we have traps that collect these mosquitoes and we can count them, and one of them a couple of days ago had 5000 of the particular species we believe will carry the virus, and that's the highest number we've had in the county this year. That's a very high number, and a lot of our other traps, we're getting hundreds as opposed to 5000 here. Recently we just brought a trap in. We actually have it in the back. You can take a look if you'd like, from a two-day catch. It apparently has 10,000. So in combination with the chickens and the positive mosquito pools for the virus and the number of actual mosquitoes that we have, we think it warrants trying to reduce the mosquito population out there. While you are looking at those, let me make a couple of comments. MS. FIALA: One got out. COMMISSIONER COYLE: You trying to kill us or what? DR. VAN ESSEN: Yeah. We can dump those out just before we leave. COMMISSIONER FIALA: One just flew out of there. DR. VAN ESSEN: One thing is, what we're going to do is mosquito control, not mosquito eradication, so we cannot control every mosquito in -- in the county or even when we spray Page 4 September 27, 2002 Immokalee. So what that means is, people still need to take personal precaution measures because we cannot reduce the mosquito population to zero. Also, it depends on the weather conditions, you know, if it's pouring down rain or we have very high winds, then we may have to delay a day or so, so we have to look at the weather conditions before we actually spray. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Mr. Chairman, I would move for approval expending $23,318 from the General Fund to do the necessary spraying as recommended by Dr. Colfer and the Mosquito Control District. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Absolutely second. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Okay. I have a motion from Commissioner Carter and a second from Commissioner Fiala. And I do appreciate you doing this. We had an emergency meeting yesterday when this came to my attention. I asked to meet with Dr. Colfer and Mosquito Control and I -- I deemed this necessary for the emergency meeting.. Thank you very much for enduring it. All those in favor-- I'm sorry. Comment from Commissioner Coyle. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Why is this just limited to Golden Gate and Immokalee? How about Everglades City and Goodland and Copeland and some of the other places where people live? DR. COLFER: It's -- it's really a good question and a very good point. I mean, certainly, Lee County, our neighbor, has one single Mosquito Control District and sprays border to border. We made our recommendations based on what the -- what we felt were where the majority of the population live, and geographically what was feasible. The population figures I have for Immokalee at this time of the year are 23,000 people. Page 5 September 27, 2002 We estimate -- and it is an estimate, that anywhere from 5 to 10,000 people live in the Estates area that are not currently sprayed, and so those were the bigger numbers. Frank, you want to talk about the geographic issues related to Copeland and those places? DR. VAN ESSEN: Yeah. Actually, Goodland is in our district already. Everglades City is not, but they're going to have -- most of their mosquitoes are going to be Salt Marsh Mosquitoes, which is not the species that will be carrying this virus. Whereas, in Immokalee, it's going to be mostly Fresh-water Mosquitoes, which is the one that can carry, so we're not that concerned about Salt Marsh Mosquitoes down there. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. Thank you. Is this--this something that should be ongoing? Should -- should we have all these units in our mosquito control? CHAIRMAN COLETTA: May-- may I address that? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: You're right. You're absolutely correct. Without a doubt, it should be ongoing. COMMISSIONER COYLE: How do we do that? CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Well, I did it back about six years ago. I moved six miles out into the Estates when I was president of the Civic Association, and very much would like to move it forward again. What I would like to do is have this Commission address that issue. We'll bring it back as a discussion item at the next meeting. Then we'll direct staff at that time -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: -- to go back at it. Because I -- I can almost see that we might have to do it two more times this year, and we'll be having possibly emergency meetings again just to address that. Page 6 September 27, 2002 And the people out there should be paying the fee for this, but they're not set up at this time. It's a very small amount. I think for my house it's something like about $22 for a whole year for Mosquito Control and it's well, well worth it. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. Good. DR. COLFER: Thank you very much. MR. MUDD: Commissioner, just -- CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Thank you. MR. MUDD: Jim Mudd, for the record. Just to give you some information, last year around this time, we did another -- we did a spraying of the same area. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: No. Just Immokalee, sir. MR. MUDD: Just the Immokalee area. Because of-- because of the same kind of thing with West Nile, and I think before Dr. Van Essen leaves or Dr. Colfer, maybe a question, is this getting worse? Every year, are we seeing more and more? CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Yeah. MR. MUDD: Because we are going to talk about a mosquito district and we're talking about expanding it. The last expansion we had was with Commissioner Coletta's help before he was a commissioner and -- and got that extended out to 14th. Southeast, southwest is the far-- CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Just about the Fairgrounds. MR. MUDD: Just about there on the other side of Orange Tree. We have some areas in DeSoto and Immokalee that aren't covered, and if it's getting worse and-- and we haven't found a cure yet, then I think it would probably be a good protection effort for the public out there to understand that, yes, this is probably a good thing for them. This isn't a bad thing. Page 7 September 27, 2002 And -- and I don't know if the -- the Board's going to keep doing emergency meetings and -- and they need to kind of take their welfare in their own hands to -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: Can we -- can we mandate the extension? CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We have that power. MR. MUDD: Dr. Van Essen? CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Within-- DR. VAN ESSEN: Well, normally the procedure we go through is to try to gauge the will of the people in that area, and when we've expanded before, we always did a survey to see how many people really are interested in that. Because a lot of people move into areas like that because they don't want mosquito control. They don't want other things. They want to be out by themselves. You can't assume that everybody wants -- CHAIRMAN COLETTA: If I can help this. I -- I worked on this for a long time. If we run it through your agency -- DR. VAN ESSEN: Right. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: -- we got about a year and a half delay. If we do it as a commission, I think we can speed it up considerably, and David Weigel will give us that information. I -- I don't -- I'm willing to talk about it for as long as you want to today, or else -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: No. I don't want to delay the proceedings today. I -- I think the purpose of the emergency meeting is to do something immediate. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Uh-huh. Right. COMMISSIONER COYLE: And I'm -- I'm fully supportive of that, but I also think that this is a health, safety and welfare issue for the entire county. Page 8 September 27, 2002 CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Ongoing. COMMISSIONER COYLE: And -- and I think if we -- we're going to get serious about -- about protecting the people in Collier County, we've got to step up and make the decisions necessary to do that. And -- and I don't necessarily think a poll is a way to do it, so I think I would support your efforts to get this thing done and get it done quick. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Thank you very much. And with -- do we have any speakers before we take our vote? DR. VAN ESSEN: Could I make one other comment? CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Please. DR. VAN ESSEN: We had a few cases last year. There was actually 12 cases in Florida last year and there is eight this year. There will probably be more by the end of the year, but that doesn't necessarily mean there will be more cases next year. We don't know. West Nile Virus has only been in the US for three or four years. It's only been in Florida for two years, so every year's going to be different. There could be no cases next year. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: But then again, we -- MR. VAN ESSEN: But we can't assume it's going to be worse next year. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: But if we're going to err, we are going to err on the side of caution. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. DR. VAN ESSEN: And -- and our board needs to be involved in the decision-making. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Oh, very much so. Very much so. But I -- I think we're looking for to move this along very expediently and, of course, my staff will work with your staff and I'm sure will come up with something, but we'll direct them at the next meeting. I Page 9 September 27, 2002 think it's premature to do it at an emergency meeting. If we have no speakers and there's no -- Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I think we do have a speaker. Dr. Nino Spagna from the Golden Gate -- CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Would you like to speak on this, Mr. Spagna? We would love to hear your opinion. Mr. Spagna is the president of the Golden Gate Estates Civic Association. He's been involved in Collier County in planning for many, many years now. MR. SPAGNA: Thank you and good afternoon, and I appreciate the chance to be here. I think you've probably already done what I was instructed to come up here and speak with you about. But I would like to give you just a little bit of background, because it seems now that the service area is getting extended or expanded to other areas. Our group did, last summer, I believe, petition the Mosquito Control District to make a survey to see whether or not the boundaries could be extended eastward to include most of the area that's in the Golden Gate Estates. It -- at that time, it sort of fell through the cracks because the -- I -- I believe and I hope I'm saying this correctly, but I think the Mosquito Control District just felt that at that time, was not the time to undertake a survey and presumably, it would come at a more opportune time. So, I think as far as the Golden Gate Estates Area Civic Association is concerned, we are very supportive of whatever you can do to protect the people out in the area, particularly the Immokalee area, where a lot of these people and their children are out in the open much of the time working and playing. Page 10 September 27, 2002 And where they're probably exposed more to the elements of-- of contracting this then some of the others that are more or less working inside and not outside all the time. I think I would certainly -- I think the group would support whatever effort it takes to cover the entire county, and I think that's the direction that you-all seem to be headed. Whatever it takes to get that done, I think they would be supportive of your efforts in that respect. And I do thank you. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Coyle. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Just a question of the Mosquito Control people. How quickly could we expect this spraying to -- to proceed under the emergency order? DR. VAN ESSEN: Oh, we -- we would probably do it Monday or Tuesday night. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. Weather permitting, I presume. DR. VAN ESSEN: Yes, weather permitting. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. Well, that's pretty good response. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Any other questions? With that, I'll call the question. All those in favor, indicate by saying aye? THE BOARD: Aye. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The ayes have it five to zero. Thank you very much. Thank you, Frank. Thank you, Joan. Thank you, Nino. COMMISSIONER COYLE: You need to adjourn. COMMISSIONER CARTER: You want a motion to adjourn. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Now we are adjourning the special meeting and we're reconvening our previous meeting on checkbook and currency. Page 11 September 27, 2002 Whereupon, the emergency meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair - Time · 1' 15 P.M. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZON1NG APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL JAMES~AIRMAN ATTE ST ;........,,,:~,,,, DWIGH~.~~~,~, CLERK zh~si_..~'"~¢ approved by the ~oard on As presented ~ or as co~ected . Page 12 September 27, 2002 STATE OF FLORIDA) COUNTY OF COLLIER) I, Kimberly J. Lowe, Professional Reporter, do hereby certify that the foregoing meeting was taken before me at the date and place as stated in the caption hereto on page one hereof; that the foregoing computer-assisted transcription, is a tree record of my stenographic notes taken at said proceeding. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I hereunto set my hand this 1 lth day of October, 2002. Kimberly J. Lowe, Professional Reporter Page 13