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BCC Minutes 06/18/2020 BJune 18, 2020 Page 1 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS Naples, Florida, June 18, 2020 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Board of County Commissioners, in and for the County of Collier, and also acting as the Board of Zoning Appeals and as the governing board(s) of such special districts as have been created according to law and having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9:00 a.m., in BUDGET SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: Chairman: Burt L. Saunders Andy Solis William L. McDaniel, Jr. Donna Fiala Penny Taylor ALSO PRESENT: Leo Ochs, County Manager Mark Isackson, OMB Director Nick Casalanguida, Deputy County Manager Jeffrey A. Klatzkow, County Attorney COLLIER COUNTY GOVERNMENT BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS FY 2021 BUDGET WORKSHOP June 18, 2020 9:00 a.m.: General Overview: Courts and Related Agencies (State Attorney and Public Defender): Growth Management: Public Services: Administrative Services: Public Utilities: Debt Service: Management Offices (Pelican Bay): County Attorney: Board of County Commissioners: 1:00 p.m.: Constitutional Officers: Elections: Clerk of Courts: Sheriff: Other Constitutional Officers requesting to address the BCC Public Comment Adjourn Page 1 June 18, 2020 June 18, 2020 Page 2 CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Ladies and gentlemen, the budget workshop will please come to order. I want to thank everybody for exercising social distancing. I understand now they're going to replace that with physical distancing as opposed to social. For some reason the word "social" doesn't fit. But social distancing is what we're doing. And I appreciate people wearing masks. I think it's the right message to send to the general public that we should, whenever we're in public, wear a mask when you can't social distance. With that -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: Would you like us to put ours on, too? CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: When you're out in public, yes. COMMISSIONER FIALA: No, I meant here. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I don't think it's necessary with us being separated. I know some local governments are. I was at an Estero council meeting yesterday, and all the council members are wearing masks. All the staff are wearing masks. COMMISSIONER FIALA: You mean while they're talking and everything? CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Uh-huh, yeah. It makes it even a little harder to understand. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yeah. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: But it's a good -- it's the right message to send to the public. With that, I'm going to ask our associate -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: Pastor. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: -- Pastor McDaniel to give us a little invocation and then lead us in the Pledge. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I'd be happy to. If you'd all please rise. If you'd bow your heads with me, ladies and gentlemen. June 18, 2020 Page 3 Heavenly Father, we want to thank you for the many blessings that you bestow upon us every single day. Help us, Father, to accept these blessings with the humbleness as we should in your grace. Father, we ask that you continue to protect our first responders, our nurses, our doctors, and those on the front lines that are helping the community as we move through this pandemic. As always, Father, keep and protect those who fight every single day for the freedoms that we dearly cherish. In thy holy name I pray. Amen. MR. OCHS: Amen. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: With me, ladies and gentlemen. (The Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.) CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Good morning. GENERAL OVERVIEW MR. OCHS: Good morning, Commissioners, and welcome to the Fiscal Year 2021 Collier County Budget Workshop. Commissioners, today's workshop is another milestone in a several-month-long process that leads to the adoption of your Fiscal Year 2021 Collier County budget. Your first milestone, of course, was your budget policy setting in March of this year. Following today's workshop, the next milestone will be July 14th when this board sets the maximum millage rate for Fiscal Year '21. Following that action in August, the Tax Collector will send out the Truth in Millage notices to the public and then, finally, in September you will hold two statutorily required public hearings. The final one, which will be held on September 17th, will culminate in the adoption of your Fiscal '21 budget. So, Commissioners, as we -- as the staff worked on developing June 18, 2020 Page 4 these next couple of slides in the briefing, which try to give some context to the influences that help shape the recommendations from the staff for the Fiscal '21 budget, I have to tell you I was reminded of years ago when my wife and I took the young kids to Universal Studios up in Orlando. The kids loved to ride the Incredible Hulk rollercoaster and, of course, my wife was never available, so I always got the pleasure of going on that ride. And as we put this together, it kind of reminded me of that because the ride begins with a steep ascent, fairly rapid, and then it takes a quick plunge over the cliff, and then you get into a series of spins and turns and loops, and then at the end it kind of goes into darkness. So you don't actually see exactly where you're going, but you have some confidence that when the ride's over you end up on terra firma. So that actually reminded me of that experience as we developed these next two slides, and I'll tell you why. Beginning of this fiscal year, FY 2020, was an excellent beginning of the year. October through February of Fiscal '20, I think the local econom y was actually doing very well. Unemployment levels were at record highs. Our bellwether industries were performing very well. We had the highest median income in the state, and our general revenues and our tourist tax revenues were tracking well above our budget plan. The real estate industry was strong. It's remaining strong. Home sales activities and pricing were good. Our median home price has stayed in that mid $400,000 range and, frankly, our luxury market was on pace for a record year. New construction permitting and inspection activity was steady in Fiscal Year '20 and on pace and on par with our prior year in 2019. And finally, the countywide taxable values for Calendar Year 2019 increased about 5.7 percent, and countywide taxable value is now at June 18, 2020 Page 5 the highest level that it's ever been at $98.5 billion. So we're moving along pretty well from October to February, and then the COVID pandemic -- the worldwide pandemic hits, and it hits hard in the United States, and we're no exception, obviously. So as you all know, March through May of this year we had a virtual shutdown of the local economy. Unemployment skyrockets as businesses are ordered to close; nonessential personnel are ordered to stay home. It has a devastating impact on our local hospitality and food service industries, and we're dealing now with a totally different economy and a totally different budget scenario heading into Fiscal Year '21. I'll talk about a few of those influences here as they affected the current year and what we're doing in terms of forecasts for Fiscal Year '21. State sales tax, which is one of the revenue sources that we rely on to fund your General Fund, are forecasted down by $9 million in the current fiscal year, and we have budgeted $3 million less for Fiscal Year '21 as a result of the impacts of the COVID epidemic. Your optional infrastructure sales tax, your one-cent sales tax, have a forecast for year ending 9/30/20 to be $21.6 million below the budget forecast, and those revenues are budgeted 10 percent less at 77.9 million for next year. Your general state shared revenues were reduced recently by the State of Florida. Those are revenues that go up to the State. They're redistributed, sent back down to all the counties. They were reduced by half from a million to 500,000 per month. That will result in a yearend revenue loss of about $2 million below our forecast. Your tourist tax revenues for FY2020 are below the budget forecast by $8.2 million. Fortunately, you have a very healthy reserve and a strong cash position in your family of tourist tax funds. June 18, 2020 Page 6 So through expenditure reductions and ability to look at cash balances and reserves, we're able to weather that storm. Department revenues and charges for services in your parks and libraries are down about $1.2 million in the current fiscal year. And county government, generally, is expected to incur about an additional $1 million of expenditures in the current fiscal year for additional equipment and service related to the COVID-19 pandemic. So that's kind of a tough look at the influences of the pandemic short term on the current year's budget and how those project into next year. The good news of that is is because of the way you have positioned your budget over the years, you're able to absorb these kinds of fairly sudden economic changes, and that's due to several of the policies that you have set for your budget guidance each and every year, including millage-neutral tax rates, continuing to insist on adequate reserve levels in your budget, and to provide the management and flexibility in the budget that you've set year over year. So now we're looking forward from this date through the end of the current FY. The Governor recently issued an executive order for Phase 2 recovery, so that allowed most employees to return to work. Some of the travel restrictions have been loosened, additional latitude for reopening businesses has been authorized, including retail and restaurant and bars, entertainment, and other personal services business. So we're beginning to see much more activity in the local economy. Also, billions of dollars of federal and state aid have -- in a variety of programs have been released, and we're continuing to monitor the effect of that on the local economy and to see how effective those dollars are in helping to mitigate the direct impacts to individuals and businesses in our community. So we look, then, at the outlook for the coming fiscal year, 2021. June 18, 2020 Page 7 And our crystal ball says that, you know, barring a huge surge in confirmed coronavirus cases or, you know, a series of significant natural disasters, we think that the recovery for our economy remains positive in terms of the outlook for Fiscal Year 2021. We say that because of a few fundamentals like the county population continues to grow. People want to come here. They continue to come to Collier County. We continue to grow at about a 2 percent rate each year. Our fundamentals are strong in our local economy. Your county public infrastructure has been positioned through strategic investments to accommodate economic growth, and the State of Florida Department of Revenue who does three-year projections on taxable values advises us that the three -year forecast for taxable values in Collier County continues to trend upward. So, again, those are good signs for the long-term recovery of the economy. So with that as a context and a background, let's move into some of the budget highlights for Fiscal Year -- CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Mr. Ochs, if I could ask you just a quick question before we go to the next topic here. MR. OCHS: Sure. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Your outlook looks fairly positive with the assumption that there are no major disasters, and that's really over a two-year period. That's -- or not two-year period, but two seasons. MR. OCHS: Right. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: That's current season and the next hurricane season. How well are we positioned in the event that we do have, maybe not a Hurricane Irma situation, but a significant storm that requires sheltering some people and that sort of thing? What are the plans for that? MR. OCHS: Yeah. Commissioner, we're very well positioned June 18, 2020 Page 8 both operationally and financially to deal with those disasters. We have, as I mentioned a minute ago, built into this budget enoug h flexibility in terms of your cash balance and, more importantly, your reserves. In your 200-plus funds in your county budget, you have over $200 million worth of reserves that we can bring to you and you can exercise as needed to deal with unexpected emergencies, and that type of financial flexibility allows you to deal with those situations and then carry us, if you will, until we can get reimbursements from FEMA or the State. So we're prepared for those kinds of emergencies, sir. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you. MR. OCHS: Thank you for the question. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Are we allowed to ask -- do you want me to hit my button? CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Yeah, I think -- let's ask questions as we go along. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: If that's okay. I know you have a plan. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Yeah. And if it gets to be a little bit too technical, it may be questions that will be answered in the presentation, so... COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Agreed. And that's where I was concerned. I just didn't -- you led the way, and I had a question. I wrote it down here. You spoke earlier about some of the additional expenditures that we know we're going to have when we're doing additional sanitation, employees, management with regard to the virus and the like. Hav e we had any luck and/or is there going to be information with regard to the CARES money that is being distributed from the State, the total amount and those requisites yet? MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. Commissioners have asked me about June 18, 2020 Page 9 that. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Yeah. We're going to bring that up at some point here. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. Then fine. MR. OCHS: I will add on that particular point, too, Commissioner McDaniel, the staff has prepared a separate agenda item for your County Commission meeting next Tuesday that deals specifically with the recent CARES allocation from the State, and we'll be looking for some guidance on that. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Carry on. I didn't -- MR. OCHS: Thank you. Again, in terms of your budget highlights for Fiscal Year 2021, your budget guidance that you issued in March has essentially been met for both your General Fund and Unincorporated Area General Fund budget operations. The budget is built, as directed, as under a millage-neutral tax rate for your General Fund and your Unincorporated Area General Fund. County Manager's agency has no expanded service requests in the budget with the one exception of the Board's previous action to authorize expenditures for the opening of the new regional park out at Big Corkscrew Island. There are some expanded service requests from some of your constitutional officers, and you'll hear those during their presentations later on today. As I mentioned a minute ago, we continue to try to build your General Fund reserves because of all the reasons we talked about to have that flexibility in the budget to deal with contingencies that are unforeseen, and this budget is no different. We've continued to build your reserves, including adding an additional five million set aside for long-term capital reserves recognizing our important responsibilities to keep our infrastructure investments in good June 18, 2020 Page 10 condition. Capital expenditures. This budget is very focused on the capital program, and we have in excess of $52 million in new money allocated throughout the budget for new capital expenditures, and we'll talk about a few of those in detail in just a minute. Debt issuance. The budget, as it's positioned today, has no new borrowing incorporated in it, although I will tell you that, as y ou know from your past experience, those types of bond issues or credit financing come to you only when they're ready, when we have projects that we know we've got a solid price on and we know we're ready to execute. So I would expect -- while there's nothing indicated in the budget today, I would expect sometime in Fiscal Year 2021 we will be coming to you talking about borrowing some money for some strategic land acquisitions that you've had us go out and do some due diligence on and some other capital facilities updates and replacements that are critical. One that I'll note right now is our aquatic systems. We have quite a bit of work to do in our aquatic systems countywide, and we don't have enough cash and carry capital to get that done, and we'd like to move that forward in Fiscal Year 2021, and I know you'll see that probably in the first quarter of 2021. I will note also that if, in fact, we come and ask for that ability, the debt service funding on that is already allocated in your budget. We would simply take the money that's available for cash and carry capital, convert that to debt service payments, so you wouldn't have to do an additional budget allocation to make that borrowing work. And finally, workforce investment. There are dollars appropriated in the FY 2021 budget for employee compensa tion adjustment to keep pace with inflation, and I'm pleased to report, again, for the eighth year that there's no health insurance premium planned in the FY 2021 budget. June 18, 2020 Page 11 Countywide taxable value, as I mentioned, in the countywide General Fund, taxable values have increased 5.7 percent. You can see the bar chart over time where we dip down in 2009, and then we've had a steady comeback, and it's kind of leveled out over the last three years. That projection continues in the State's projection for the next few years. In the Unincorporated Area General Fund, taxable values have increased 6.4 percent. Your millage rate history, you can see that this board and prior boards since 2010 -- so we're in our 11th year of no change in the property tax rate. That's allowed, I think, the Board the flexibility they need to address capital and operating contingencies as they develop. You'll see a slight increase after six years from FY '10 to FY '16 of .7161 millage in your Unincorporated General Fund. That bumped up in FY '17 so the Board could get after some of the median landscape capital improvements that had not been finished following expansion of the some of your major arterial roadways, and that continues. Let's take a look at some of the highlights from your general governmental operations proposed budget for FY 2021. And as I mentioned, the millage-neutral tax rate in the General Fund yields $19.2 million of increased funding in the General Fund, and your Unincorporated Area General Fund increases about $3 million as a result of the millage-neutral levy in the Unincorporated Area General Fund tax. Your constitutional officers, as I mentioned, have some expanded service requests, most notably the Sheriff, who is requesting 10 additional deputies to support the school resource officer program. You may recall, two years ago we talked about that when the state mandated those allocations in each public school and each charter school. So the Sheriff and I have been working on a June 18, 2020 Page 12 three-year plan to get him in a position to do that on a regular basis. The Clerk of the Courts is looking for 5.7 new FTEs, and one FTE is requested in your Supervisor of Elections budget. I talked about the allocation of new capital dollars, 52.4 million in the FY '21 budget, and we'll talk about some of the specific areas here in a moment. And, finally, your CRAs and some of your innovation zones, we have annual transfers from both the General Fund and the Unincorporated Area General Fund to fund up those operations. Those continue into Fiscal Year 2021. In fact, your total transfers out in your Fiscal Year 2021 budget out of both the General Fund and the Unincorporated Area General Fund for your contributions to the various CRAs and the economic innovation zones totals $9.4 million. Enterprise operations. Water and sewer rates have been adjusted in the 2021 budget by 2.9 percent. That is based on a previous board action and your budget policy. Landfill tipping fees are programmed to increase 2.9 percent as well, and your assessment for your mandatory solid waste residential collection for both District 1 and District 2 is scheduled to increase by 2 percent. Your building permit inspection and reinspection fees reduced by this board earlier this year. No changes in those rates are planned for FY '21. We talked about some of the capital program expenditures. One of those areas that we place particular emphasis on is your stormwater funding. This year we've increased the funding in the capital component of the stormwater program by $2 million to an all-in budget of $15.5 million. You recall that the Board last year allowed us to begin to take the stormwater program to an industry standard of maintenance and capital replacement. We are doubling down on that with some additional allocations that would allow us to June 18, 2020 Page 13 accelerate the Capital Improvement Program in your stormwater system, and it's badly needed. This is a little bit of an eye chart, but this shows you kind of the complete list of new capital money applied to the list of pro jects here on the chart. What you have here is a comparison between what was adopted in the current year and what is recommended in Fiscal Year 2021. I'll note a few of the highlights. The third line down, Sheriff facilities and helicopter, we are setting money aside over time to meet the Sheriff's request for an additional helicopter. So we have $2 million in new funding in FY '21 proposed for that. We have the Medical Examiner renovation and expansion. The Medical Examiner has outgrown their current footprint in their facility, and they need some renovations and some expansion. We'll talk to you a little bit about that in detail later. But there's two-and-a-half million dollars in new money to get that done next year. I mentioned down on the bottom, about four lines from the bottom you see your Stormwater Capital Program going from 5.9 million this year to 7.9 million next year, again, to accelerate the capital program for your stormwater system. In terms of position counts, you can see the adopted position counts for the current fiscal year, any changes noted in the proposed 2021 budget. None in the County Manager's agency. On the Clerk -- excuse me. On the constitutional side you see 16.71 total new FTE, again, allocated out between the Sheri ff, the Supervisor of Elections, and the Clerk of Courts, and they'll address those in their budget presentations. I mentioned the compensation adjustment recommendation. Commissioners, we have an annual index of the changing Consumer Price Index that we use each year looking at December to December. Based on that index, I'm recommending a 2 percent wage adjustment June 18, 2020 Page 14 for your workforce in FY '21 and also a set-aside of .86 percent payroll to make what we call pay plan maintenance adjustments. These adjustments to specific pay ranges that, through our annual salary survey, are identified as being well below the market and puts us at a competitive disadvantage for recruiting in those areas. So all in, that compensation adjustment for both your General Fund, Unincorporated General Fund, and all of your enterprise operations totals $4.5 million. I'm certainly willing and able to develop some options during the summer if the Board wants to talk about that more and bring you back some recommendations both in terms of the timing and the amount and the method at which adjustments might be made. But I think it's important to continue to invest in our workforce. I mentioned the healthcare program. We're proud of the fact that we've been able to hold the line on th e premium adjustments now for the eighth year. Jeff Walker has done a phenomenal job of managing that program and building up the adequate reserves to allow us the flexibility to deal with changes in healthcare costs year over year. Net county budget. Commissioners, net county budget projected for Fiscal Year 2021, $1.489 billion. That represents about a 2.87 percent increase over your Fiscal Year '20 budget. Let's talk about the General Fund for a moment. The General Fund recommendation for Fiscal Year 2021 totals $495 million. It's about a 4.2 percent increase from the FY 2020 budget. This is the pro forma, if you will, for the General Fund that shows the difference in expenses and revenues between the '20 and '21 budget. The expense category on the left of the slide, you'll note that reductions in that side of the ledger include reductions in the operating transfers out of the General Fund and increased expenditures. The last three items there are the primary drivers of expense increases in the June 18, 2020 Page 15 General Fund, and those include new capital money, transfers out to the constitutional officers of $10 million, and building your reserves by another $5 million next year in the General Fund. On the revenue side, obviously, we're driven primarily in the General Fund by property tax receipts, and you can see the projected reductions that I talked about at the beginning of the presentation on your state sales tax revenues and your state shared revenues. Constitutional officer turnbacks are projected to be down by almost $4 million. And you can see that the other large revenue increase is your beginning balance or your carryforward of $7.7 million. General Fund reserves, I just mentioned those. We continue to look to build your General Fund reserves including both contingency and cash flow reserves. You'll note in the bar chart the steady drive to increase those reserves year over year, and it's extremely important that we continue to do that. Those reserves are up a little more than $5 million in FY '21 over FY '20. Overall your reserve level is about 12.9 percent of your total General Fund operating expenses. That's within the range that the Board had set in their guidance. We looked to keep our General Fund reserves somewhere between 8 percent as a floor and 16 percent as a ceiling. So you're at about 13 percent, so you're in a relatively good range in terms of your General Fund reserves. And why is that important? Again, we mentioned talking about going out to borrow some money potentially next year for some capital improvements. The General Fund reserves is one of the key indicators that financial rating agencies look at when they issue credit rating, and that determines our interest rate and our cost of borrowing. So it's important to have strong reserves for that reason as well as the other items listed here, including protecting your beginning cash balance. All of you know that we have obligations to transfer cash to constitutional officers at the beginning of your fiscal June 18, 2020 Page 16 year well before we receive any of the property tax receipts. So we need to have beginning balance, and the reserve levels help us make sure that we have those cash balances when we need them at the beginning of the year. Your total outstanding principal debt recommended for Fiscal Year 2021, $514 million. You can see, Commissioners, in FY '19 and FY '20 we issued about $179 million in new debt for such things as the acquisition of the land for the new sports complex. In 2018, we also issued a bond to build the complex. We issued some utility bonds for the northeast service area utility upgrades and expansion and, finally, the Golden Gate Golf Course acquisition also late last year. Debt service policy, we are compliant with the Board's guidance and their policy on annual debt service. The Board had set a policy that the ratio of your debt service to your bondable revenues cannot exceed 13 percent. You can see that with the current debt service load recommended for FY '21, we're at approximately 6.6 percent of total bondable non-ad valorem revenues. Let's look quickly at the revenues that drive your General Fund. As I mentioned, your ad valorem dollars are up $19.2 million for FY '21. Your sales tax dropped $9 million or projected to drop $9 million at year end FY '2020. They have been budgeted at $38 million for FY '21. State shared revenues, again, we're forecasting about a $2 million reduction in the current fiscal year over plan budgeted at $9.5 million for FY '21. Gas taxes are projected to remain about the same as they are this year for FY '21. Your impact fee budgets project a slight decline for FY '21, and your beginning cash balance in your General Fund, or what we refer to as carryforward, is $82.1 million. That's a 19.8 percent of forecasted FY 2020 expenses. And, again, that's in the range of between 15 and 20 percent that we shoot for in our June 18, 2020 Page 17 beginning cash balance. Let's take a quick look at your Fund 111 Unincorporated General Fund budget highlights. The recommended FY '21 budget, 63.7 million. It's about 2.4 percent increase over the current budget for your Unincorporated Area General Fund. And remember, 5.6 million of that is specifically earmarked to continue your median landscape program that you started a few years ago. And the other -- we'll take a look at the pro forma first. This is your pro forma for the 111 fund, your Unincorporated Area General Fund. You'll note on the expense side on the left that the transfers to your median landscape capital program are up. Your transfers to your community parks capital program are up. And the largest increase there is $1.8 million of additional fundings to your stormwater capital program. On the revenue side, we're almost entirely driven by property tax receipts. The communication services tax, which is the other primary area of funding in your Unincorporated Area General Fund, is down about $500,000 for next year, and that item is continually under attack every year in the legislature, as you know from your briefings on the legislative session each year. We mentioned earlier the Collier County school resource officer funding. For FY '21, the funding in the Sheriff's budget for that program is about $13.6 million. We're in the third year of a three-year buildup in that fund to allow the Sheriff to staff up to cover all of the requirements that he has in the school system both public and private here, and I think that is the last earmark, if I'm not mistaken, of the three-year program. We're in year three? MR. ISACKSON: Well, there may be -- I'll let the Sheriff speak to that this afternoon, but there may be another add-on to the -- CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Mr. Ochs, we have a question from Commissioner Taylor. June 18, 2020 Page 18 MR. OCHS: Yes. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Mr. Ochs, I noticed your second line or your third line that says the district has selected the most expensive option provided in state law. That determines how many deputies are at the school; is that what determines the expense? MR. OCHS: When I say "the most expensive," the legislation allowed the school district to choose among a couple different methods of securing the facilities. One was to hire their own security personnel, and they chose not to take that option. Another option was to work with the Sheriff and have certified deputies in the school, and another one, frankly, was, you know, to allow school personnel to carry weapons and try to, you know, protect facilities that way. So given those options, the school district and the Sheriff had recommended that we use certified deputies in the school. And I think, you know, that's a prudent decision, but it also happens to be the most expensive of the three. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Are they sharing costs with us? MR. OCHS: Well, they get an allocation from the State. It's the second-to-the-last bullet on the slide, Commissioner. We get about $1.8 million from the school district in the current fiscal year. We'd expect that to continue into next year, but you can see it's considerably shy of covering the cost of providing that service. And we talked about that with this board last year. And, finally, the last slide, and I'll end here, Commissioners. I always end with a few reminders of the continuing challenges we face in our financial planning in budgeting going forward. We continue to have a significant reliance on your property tax to fund your General Fund and your Unincorporated Area General Fund. As long as taxable values hold up, we're able to make that work. But it is a heavy reliance on a single revenue source. And then, of course, balancing the competing interests of June 18, 2020 Page 19 continuing to invest in new capacity expenditures for a growing population while we're also trying to maintain our existing asset base and fund new operations needed to provide those services to new residents and visitors continues to be a challenge. And with that, Mr. Chairman, that concludes my remarks, and I'm happy to answer any questions, or we can move into the rest of your program. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. I don't see anybody's light lit up here, so we'll -- MR. CASALANGUIDA: Yeah. Mr. Chairman, you've got some speakers on the call, several here, several on the call, and they've listed the Board of County Commissioners and the gene ral overview, so... CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Let's go through the public comment, then. PUBLIC COMMENTS MR. CASALANGUIDA: Very good. Your first public speaker will be Melissa Alamo. MS. ALAMO: Hi. Good morning. Can everyone hear me? CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Yes, we can. Good morning. MS. ALAMO: Great. Thank you so much. So, good morning. My name is Melissa Alamo, and I'm a community member of Collier County, specifically a proud member of Golden Gate City. And I am coming before you today to present something that I believe in and think is so important. And given the current times that we are facing as a country, we are beginning to have the long overdue conversation of especially police brutality. And I'm asking that as a board you take the necessary steps to critically examine the June 18, 2020 Page 20 Collier County Sheriff's budget. So according to the Fiscal Year 2020 gross operating budget, the county spent over $200 million on the sheriff's department but less than $5 million on healthcare and mental health, yet Collier County has one of the lowest crime rates in the nation. And the reality is that we rely on the police as a nation to also be the responder for many other aspects of our society, including taking on the place of social workers, mental health responders, amongst many other professions, when the reality is that we alre ady have people in these important roles that have the proper training and education to meet the needs of the community members in a nonviolent and effective way. And so I'm asking that the Board considers an emergency budget conference to reallocate funding from the Collier County Sheriff's Office. I believe that there are better ways that our taxpayer dollars can be used by going to other important sectors in our community such as the public services budget, including the Community and Human Services and Health Division, the Affordable Housing Special Revenue Fund, Golden Gate City Economic Redevelopment Fund, as well as the Collier County Continuum of Care Grants Program. Additionally, there are other examples of productive ways to reallocate these funds, and this can include building healthcare infrastructure, wellness resources, neighborhood-based trauma centers, drug and alcohol treatment program, investing in teachers and counselors, as well as investing in youth programs that promote learning, safety, and community care outside of just engaging with the police. And so my second request is that there is not an increase in budget for the Sheriff's Department. According to the proposed budget for the '21 fiscal year, there is a recommended increase o f June 18, 2020 Page 21 $9,142,100 for this new fiscal year that would specifically be added to the General Fund's constitutional transfers which includes the Sheriff's Department. And so one of my biggest questions that I really -- especially, like, for consideration that should be had is, what is the reasoning behind adding an additional $10 million to that budget when that money alongside the actual Sheriff's budget could be reallocated to invest in the community and be put to better use? And so, in conclusion, I have presented to you three requests today: One, that the Collier County Sheriff's Department does not receive a budget increase for the '21 fiscal year and that further funds are reallocated from the Sheriff's budget that does get approved and reinvested into other sectors of our community that require it the most. And, finally, that as a Collier County community, especially starting with you, the people that have the power to start these important conversations, that we begin to not only center the voices excluded in our community but also begin shifting our thinking into long-term sustainable and community-based public safety approaches outside of just relying on the police for safety. I ask that you please take these considerations seriously and follow with actions. And I would like to thank you for your time and consideration today. And this concludes my comments. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you very much. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Mr. Chairman, your next speaker is first initial J, last name Zellers. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And, Mr. Chair, can we just remind our folks, even that are coming digitally, that there's a three-minute -- CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I'm going to do that with the next. June 18, 2020 Page 22 Is J. Zellers on the line? MS. ZELLER: Yes. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: J. MS. ZELLER: Good morning. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Ms. Zellers, you're limited to three minutes, and I'll let you know when that three minutes is up. MS. ZELLER: Thank you. I'm a born and raised Collier County resident of 21 years, and I echo Melissa Alamo's recommendations in that I am urgently requesting that Collier County take immediate action to defund its police force and reallocate those funds in other areas of the county budget. The police are complicit in this country's prison [sic] industrial complex system that functions to impress [sic] black indigenous communities. The police are branded as a force that works to protect and serve communities when, in reality, they only protect and serve a privileged white few while criminalizing systemic issues of poverty, mental illness and drug abuse, among others, that disproportionately affect people of color, black and indigenous people in particular. In Collier County, home to a large number of those privileged white few, it is tempting to argue that our cops here aren't like the bad ones up in New York or in some other large more diverse city, but to deny the inherent hostile makeup of policing systems as a whole is an act of violence against the black, indigenous, and nonwhite members of our Collier County community. The current budget allocations for mental health and the Health Department combined make up only 1.4 percent of the health, safety, and welfare allocations. It does not make sense for the Health Department and mental health expenditures to make up 1.4 percent of the health, safety, and welfare budget. Furthermore, the public defender's budget is crumbs compared June 18, 2020 Page 23 to the Sheriff's Department budget. How can you justify that this is in the interest of protecting and serving our community when people are unable to have access to a public defender to advocate for them in the case that they become involved in a punitive system that is increasingly criminalizing more and more aspects of their life? I'm asking the county to reallocate money to resources that will build up and strengthen the health and safety of our county to reduce instances of crimes that result in punitive measures and incarceration which ultimately further drain our county and state budgets. I'm asking for the county to invest in the prevention of situations that become criminalized. For example, Collier County police respond to 911 calls involving mental health crises. Why are we involving law enforcement officers in mental health crisis situations instead of involving mental health professionals. I must emphasize, however, that an appropriate response would not be to invest more money into police for additional training or reform, as this has been proven time and time again in many police departments across the county to be ineffective at reducing misconduct on the behalf of the police when they respond to such calls, let alone it reducing instances of mental health emergencies altogether. Instead, let's invest in public health initiatives to work on addressing the problem at its root. I would also like to bring up the defunding of the 287(g) program which is a further strain on our Collier County community, as it diverts local and state funds away from public health and safety initiatives and dedicates them to a program that has resulted in widespread racial profiling according to a Department of Justice investigation and that threatens community safety. Thank you. I yield the rest of my time. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you very much. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Mr. Chairman, your next public speaker is Denise McLaughlin. June 18, 2020 Page 24 CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Denise, are you there? MS. McLAUGHLIN: No comments. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Thank you. Any other speakers? MR. CASALANGUIDA: We have several. They're not logged in. I'm just going to go down the list and see if they've logged in. Your next speaker is Barbara Karasek. (No response.) CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Pat Hill? (No response.) MR. CASALANGUIDA: And the last one is Dr. Joseph Doyle. (No response.) CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. And if any of those come online, let us know, and we'll interrupt and permit them to make their presentation. MR. OCHS: Mr. Chairman, I turn it over to Mr. Isackson to begin the program. MR. ISACKSON: Thank you, County Manager Ochs. Chuck Rice and the court agency is up first. While Chuck's coming up, let me just mention -- CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Let me interrupt for just a quick second. This won't affect this presentation, but we have three seats there. That's not going to comply with the social distancing. And so I want to make sure that we do have that 6-foot separation. It looks like there's about four-and-a-half feet. No mask, but -- JUDGE FOSTER: I can put my mask back on if you'd like, Commissioner. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Well, if you're going to be sitting close together, then I would, but you-all aren't. And when we have June 18, 2020 Page 25 three people come in, we're going to need to figure out something else. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Spatial distancing. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Spatial distancing. COURT AND RELATED AGENCIES MR. RICE: All right. Well, good morning, Commissioners. For the record, my name's Chuck Rice. With me to my left is our administrative judge, Joe Foster. We're here. Obviously the Public Defender and State Attorney's not here today, so we're here to present also on their behalf and from the whole court system. We're presenting $5.7 million budget today, combined. That's just over a half percent increase from our request from last year. We are facing some of the same challenges that the county government's facing with our revenue sources being down. That's why you see some of your General Fund transfer increasing to cover that shortfall. I'm here proud to say that our court system has been functioning throughout COVID-19. We're doing a lot of unique and neat things with technology, holding proceedings with -- remotely. All of our -- I also want to just give a shout out to all of our co-colleagues and stuff, the State Attorney, Public Defender, our judges, the Facilities Department with the county, G4S, Sheriff's Department, and the Clerk. We wouldn't be able to accomplish what we've accomplished the last three months or so without everybody buying in and doing their part. So it does take a village, and everybody's been just a pleasure to work with. So thank you, Mark and Leo and your staff, for that, and thank the commissioners for your continued support. I'll be brief, but I know last year I think Commissioner June 18, 2020 Page 26 McDaniel -- I talked about our problem-solving courts and how well they're doing. And you know the impetus of that came from the leadership of this board and your support, and you spearheaded that. Well, right now, some of our stats -- I think you asked me last year about putting a number on it. Well, I have something for you today, Commissioner. Basically our stats from October of 2018, the national average of success graduation rate is 60 percent. Our combined problem-solving courts, that's with drug court, mental health court, and veterans court, is roughly about 70 percent. So we're about 10 percent above the average combined since October of 2018. Now, the number we put on it for the cost savings diverting these people from jail, how we calculated that real quick, is just we took $122 a day to be housed in the county jail and the number of days participants were in the program. And that comes out, from October 2018 through May of this year, a cost savings to the jail of 4 -- over $4 million, right over $4 million. So thank you for your continued support in spearheading that in, you know, the beginning of those stages. With that being said, you know, our probation department continues to work closely with our Sheriff's Department, and our number-one goal with probation and law enforcement is public safety, and I think we're accomplishing that. So with that, if you have any questions, we'll be happy to answer any at this point. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commission McDaniel has a question. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Not a question. Just a comment. I want to thank you. MR. RICE: You're welcome. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: As we all have discussed on a June 18, 2020 Page 27 regular basis, the data that's coming at us is, at best, subjective. And I asked you for that information because I personally am very data driven on the programs and processes that we have in plac e, and that correlation is remarkable for us to be able to continue to make decisions on how we can best appropriate taxpayers' money. So I applaud what you -- the efforts that have been done, the savings that are attributable to those efforts, and thank you, sir. MR. RICE: You're welcome. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I don't see any -- Commissioner Solis. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Well, just -- I'd like to thank you for the great job, and also on the treatment courts and what a great benefit that is to the community. And have any changes been made in terms of those courts kind of becoming part of the -- I know there's different courts. There's civil side, there's a criminal side, there's family court. Have any kind of structural changes been made? I know that that was being discussed at one point. JUDGE FOSTER: Commissioners, I would echo what Mr. Rice said. By the way, the COVID situation for us, as for everybody, has been very, very challenging. We have been up and functioning since the beginning. We operate under the guidance of the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court. We are in what we're calling Phase 2 of a four-phase process as well. We are still wearing masks in the courtroom anytime we have public proceedings, even when we're socially distanced, to make sure that everybody who comes to the courthouse is safe. Much for the same reason, you can choose to go to the grocery store. You can choose to go to a restaurant. You're forced to come to court. And so we are going above and beyond to ensure that everybody who steps into our building is safe and protected. June 18, 2020 Page 28 COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: You know, Your Honor, I'd say that that's a choice. JUDGE FOSTER: To come to court? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: At some stage there's a choice. JUDGE FOSTER: I appreciate that. But in relation to the treatment courts, I actually have the privilege of serving now the mental health court judge and the veterans' treatment court judge, and the structural changes you asked about, we have now incorporated those into the felony division. I have assumed mental health court and veterans treatment court. Judge Martin has maintained the drug court. She is in the process of a national certification process and wants to see that through. I think you all know that the drug court is also a national mentor court, which is awesome. But on the -- I really appreciate the statistical side as well, but let me give you the person side. Yesterday in veterans treatment court, I had the privilege of graduating three members of the veterans treatment court. All three gentlemen who were in that court were all very, very happy because none of them had services prior to being involved in the veterans treatment court. They had stayed away. They didn't know the services existed. When they come into the veterans treatment court, they are now linked with the VA. They're linked with services. They're given a support network and a support base, and we work with them. In each of those cases, we were with them over a year to get them up and running. I mean, two of them are in school. They're -- I mean, they're becoming very, very strong and productive. But for the opportunity of the veterans treatment court, they wouldn't have gotten into those services. We also had the ability to graduate two mental health court folks yesterday as well. June 18, 2020 Page 29 This is all very interesting to me because we were actually shut down for about six weeks. So these folks were still going through the process. They were still working with treatment via Zoom, a lot of remote stuff. We're still doing those courts remotely as well, so no one's in the courtroom. But they still were able to maintain their progress because of the support system they had in place and because of the things that we've done and what treatment has done for them. And so, yes, it's a great -- it truly is a wonderful cost saver. It does truly move people away from a path that they're on. But as a personal connection, several people yesterday commented, without this program they would now be dead, and they probably may. I can't speak for that. I just know that the program -- and it's not me. It is the team that is assembled: The folks from the David Lawrence Center, from the VA, from probation, the Sheriff's Department who identifies the folks. And to one of the callers earlier, the Collier County Sheriff's Office has a wonderful mental health court team -- I'm sorry, a mental health team that helps to identify folks who are in need of services gets them those services. They don't just arrest them and lock them down. So very, very fortunate to work with the people that we work with. We're very fortunate here in Collier County. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Just two quick questions also. Number one, I'm just curious, what were the ages of the veterans that graduated, just out of curiosity? JUDGE FOSTER: Two of the veterans, actually, they're probably in their 30s, and the third veteran was a World War II vet. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Wow. Amazing. And then, lastly, has there been an uptick in the folks that are coming through just because of COVID? I mean, we're always concerned with the effect that it's having on the mental health in the June 18, 2020 Page 30 community. JUDGE FOSTER: There is definitely an uptick in issues of domestic violence. There's definitely an uptick in the issues of substance abuse, stress-induced things, of course. We also -- so I told you I graduated three people in veterans treatment court and two mental health court. I brought in three new mental health court folks yesterday. Last week I brought in one veteran and two mental heal th court folks. So we are -- we are identifying as we can. We bring them in. As you know, there's certain criteria they have to meet in order to become part of the program. We also have some folks who come into the program but immediately go into resi dential treatment for an extended period of time and then they come out. Once they come out, then we work with them as well. So it is -- this is not one size fits all. We identify what Joe Foster needs, and we try to fit those needs for that individual. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Great. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I think Collier County has been pretty proactive in trying to deal with the mental health issue. Commissioner Solis has been the leader on the Board in bringing awareness to that and trying to expand the drug courts and the veterans courts and getting more mental health services to those who need it, and perhaps, Commissioner Solis, sometime down the road, you could give us an update on how well Collier County is doing. We've had a couple callers talking about, you know, obviously, stuff that was -- that we would not even want to talk about, defunding the police and that sort of thing, but they do raise an interesting point in terms of getting more mental health services to the people that need it, and I think we're doing that. And so, I think we need to -- COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Be glad to. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: -- let folks know. June 18, 2020 Page 31 COMMISSIONER SOLIS: And I just -- as a quick comment, and Judge Foster mentioned it. I mean, the proof it in the pudding. I think the fact that the court -- our treatment courts have now become essentially a mentor court and nationally recognized as a mentor court. To help other communities do what we're doing is, I think, an indication of how well it's working. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: So, perhaps, in September when we're back -- COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Glad to. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: -- you could give us an update on things that are happening and let us know what else we need to do. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: I'd be glad to. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. And I want to say, I don't want to make light of a circumstance, Your Honor. You and I are friends. And I made a comment about the choice aspect. And there are those that don't have a choice, obviously, and I stand corrected in that. I want to applaud you, all of our partners that are helping with this. Chuck, you and I, remember when we started -- when I started serving on the Collier County Public Safety Commission, these efforts all -- the efforts were really brought to light. My ask for you today is let us know -- because you're the folks that are on the ground. You said it very well, Your Honor; there is not a one size fits all, and we need to know where the deficits are and how we can then assist with those processes to best fit as many as, in fact, are possible. So, please, from me, continue to share that. As you see those deficits, let us know so that we can necessarily appropriate where we can. JUDGE FOSTER: I appreciate that. And actually you used a word that I -- there's a group that I forgot to thank. In our veterans June 18, 2020 Page 32 treatment court, one of the reasons they are so successful, we have actual veteran mentors who take the gentlemen and ladies under their wing and help them through the process, and without them, we would not be a success at all, and I would be extremely remiss if I did not mention them, because they are a tremendous asset to the veterans treatment court. And I wanted to say thank you, and sorry I forgot to mention them earlier. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: From listening, Judge, to your comments, it crossed my mind how different the dialogue is today than maybe even five years ago. JUDGE FOSTER: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: And that's not to say that we weren't doing a good job five years ago, but I think -- I think with the leadership of Commissioner Solis, two years, three years in the making, the court system who came together and said, we can't keep putting these people in jail; we've got to do something different. I hear it today, and it's very rewarding. It's so rewarding, because you spoke what you do, and it isn't, you know, off with his head. Go -- he goes to jail. It's looking and evaluating and understanding there's a menu of services there and customizing that to the person standing in front of you. JUDGE FOSTER: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: It's a very emotional time for me. I think it's just -- it just -- it just touches my heart. Thank you. MR. RICE: I'd like to add before we close, you know, I put a dollar value on some of the cost savings, but there's a term out there that we use, "restorative justice." And if you can ever hear testimony from some of these graduates, the impact on their lives and restoring their lives and their families and employing other people, the value to the community is far higher than that dollar amount that I June 18, 2020 Page 33 put on it. So thank you-all. JUDGE FOSTER: Absolutely. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: You know what would be an interesting statistic would be, what is the rate of recidivism for folks that go through that program; how many lapse and go back into the court system? JUDGE FOSTER: I'm sure we have that somewhere, and I can find out for you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I'd like to hear that happen at some point. JUDGE FOSTER: It is -- based on my experience in the felony division, it is much lower. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Right. That's what I would expect. JUDGE FOSTER: And, again, the whole process is putting a system of support in place, recognizing that everybody makes mistakes. And I tell everybody this when they come into the program. I make mistakes. You make mistakes. They make mistakes. Recovery is a process. It is not a destination. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commission Solis, when you're giving us an update in September -- (Simultaneous crosstalk.) JUDGE FOSTER: I'll see what I can do to find that for you, Commissioners. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Because there's an even larger savings there. Well, thank you very much. I'm going to ask the commissioners, when you speak, you push your buttons down, but when you're finished, if you will push them again. We have a novice over there in charge of the -- COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Oh, so he's the problem? June 18, 2020 Page 34 CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Yeah, he's the problem. This thing is called a -- this thing is called a deliberator, and we have a novice deliberator operator over there, sir. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Mea culpa, sir. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And just to protect Mr. Casalanguida, he just hasn't figured out what buttons to push to make us go away. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Oh, he knows which buttons to push. MR. CASALANGUIDA: If you want to let me start pushing buttons, sir, I'm happy to do that. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: He's a master. MR. RICE: Thank you. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: And while the next speakers are coming up, I would just like to thank my colleagues for supporting these efforts in the last three years, because it really has made a difference, and it's really all of us that have been involved in this. So thank you for supporting it as well, because it's not just me. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Mr. Chairman, Dr. Doyle has joined the meeting, and he wanted to talk about the general budget. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And, Dr. Doyle, you have three minutes, and I'll remind you when that three minutes is up. DR. DOYLE: Thank you. Good morning, Commissioners. Dr. Joseph Doyle, Naples. As you remember, on October 24th in the early days of the pandemic, you adopted a budget policy that I thought was too rosy, and I let you know through an email. And then, of course, came the "safer at home" lockdown on March 17th and, as such, our local businesses suffered huge revenue losses during the abrupt end to the prime tourist season -- CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Dr. Doyle, if I can interrupt for June 18, 2020 Page 35 just a second. Are you on a speakerphone by any chance? DR. DOYLE: Well, I'm on a computer mic. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Because you keep kind of coming in and out. So if you could get closer to your microphone and kind of stay in that position, perhaps we'll be able to hear you a little better. DR. DOYLE: Okay -- when the tourist season came to an abrupt end, and as we know, a lot of our businesses make most of their money during tourist season to carry them through the summer. And despite the gradual reopening that we've had since May 4th, many restaurant and retail employees are still laid off. And, of course, as Mr. Ochs pointed out, sales tax revenues are down. It is anticipated that we will be doing social distancing and wearing masks as the new normal for through the remainder of the summer. People are still fearful to dine in restaurants and to attend events. So it's hitting slow to get the economy up and running. And the tax revenues will be low till the end of the current fiscal year ending on September 30th. The situation really probably won't be much better for Fiscal Year '21, especially if we get a second wave of the pandemic, from November through April, and extreme social distancing and "safer at home" recommendations persist for residents over the age of 60. State and local economies across the country are being badly damaged and many even permanently. I still think we have a little rosy outlook here that is unrealistic. As you know, our essential services are public health, sanitation, storm and sanitary sewers, potable water, law enforcement, and EMS, and unlike the first two speakers, I do not believe in defunding our law enforcement, especially with what's going on with the country these days. Nearly all other services, projects, and programs, I feel, should June 18, 2020 Page 36 be placed on hold for '21 since the financial fallout from the pandemic is still unfolding. Unlike their neighbors in the private sector, county employees were fortunate to avoid furlough and receive full pay during the time period; however, you know, we have many people who are still unemployed, small businesses are still having a hard time getting up and going. So rather than giving everyone a 2 percent cost-of-living adjustment, I feel salaries should be flat at best. And we may need to actually consider a 10 percent pay cut depending on what happens with the fallout from the pandemic. Of course, that would be a pay cut for all positions except for law enforcement and EMS, because those are hazard-related conditions. So I feel that the budget really needs to be reworked for the September tax hearing. We have some time to do this. Let's look at living within the rollback millage. You know, millage neutral's fine, but with property values going up, it's still a tax increase. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Dr. Doyle, I'm going to need you to go ahead and wrap up, if you could. DR. DOYLE: Yeah. Well, it still says I have a minute on my timer. But anyway, like I say, renters and business owners pay the brunt of property tax increases, and these are the people impacted most by the shutdown. So, you know, I'd like to see some of these projects put on hold that are nonessential and just stay with the essential -- essential services for the rest of this year as well as Fiscal '21. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you. MR. ISACKSON: Commissioners, your next department is your Growth Management Department. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Good morning. June 18, 2020 Page 37 GROWTH MANAGEMENT MR. COHEN: Good morning. Thaddeus Cohen, for the record, department head, Growth Management. Appreciate this opportunity to discuss with you our preliminary conversations on the GMD budget. The accomplishments of GMP department would not happen without the professionalism, talent, and dedication of the women and men with whom I serve. Our budget supports division and priorities as laid out by the Board of County Commission and directed by the County Manager's Offices. GMD's Fiscal Year 2021 budget message highlights some of the plans to continue providing exceptional services to the citizens of Collier County. GMD continues its efforts to enhance the quality and sustainability of the environment. The Pollution Control section confronts threats such as blue-green algae, red tide with a robust sampling, testing, and monitoring program. Enactment of the fertilizer ordinance will provide opportunities for neighborhood and industry-based educational programs. The Coastal Zone Management team will further their far-reaching work with the Corps of Engineers to develop a 50-year beach resiliency plan. We continue to lean forward with technology to leverage efficiencies in our delivery of services to the community. The budget promotes reduction of manual operations and aggressive revamping of processes to maximize the use of available technology. The Development Services team will strengthen their processes by engaging the public and business partners with expanded e-permits and review initiatives, and I think you saw that with the startup of the COVID-19. We were able to move from a 60 percent June 18, 2020 Page 38 in e-permitting to now in May some 84 percent in e -permitting. And then, clearly, we follow your example with being able to have Zoom meetings. I think our first Planning Commission meeting went very well with remote access. And so that technology we've been working with, I think, enhances that delivery of our services. Planning and zoning technology improvement in their online offerings will increase residents' and business access to information and improve document review coordination. Our Code Enforcement teams have expanded their outreach working with community groups and neighborhood cleanups and educational efforts, and that's part of -- again, part of the COVID process. We've been able to partner with delivery of services and supplies working with Dan Summers' group. So we've got a robust program through our Code Enforcement team to be able to assist us to do that. The budget continues to support the intersection safety improvements through our traffic operations team. I think you may have seen in our newsletter whether or not, as you drive through our community, is it luck or is it science that allows you to hit all the traffic lights. So we're kind of excited about some of the technology that we've moved forward on that. Our comment is that it's science, not luck, you know, when you are able to get down Airport. Added attention will be given to energy savings through our replacement of existing streetlights with LED fixtures. Resources are provided to the Transportation Engineering to continue design of major arterial roads and the construction of important local networks -- network links, excuse me. Design and replacement of aging bridges continues a pace. Road and bridge assets maintenance keeps pace with past funding years. The landscape median program, as the manager indicated, is funded with in-house crews to curtail cost. That was one of the issues that came up last year as to whether or not if we brought -- I June 18, 2020 Page 39 think we added four FTEs to help us reduce the costs on our maintenance program. Unfortunately, we had to reduce the capital program, but I think we're starting to see the benefits of those cost reductions. And that's a challenge in being able to maintain the scenic beauty of our community. We will finish the current capital projects and then shift the resources as we continue to do that to our existing lane miles. Repaving surface program is funded to respond to the stress of growth -- I'm sorry. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Let me interrupt for just a second. We have a question. Commissioner Taylor? COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Yes. It could have gone to the end, but basically the question is, are we looking at all in implementing electric charging stations within at least areas that we control, which are government buildings? MR. COHEN: Well, that issue has come up. I got some documentation yesterday from the County Manager that there's a public petition that will happen, I guess, at your next commission meeting. I'm reaching out to some folks that I know that will provide me with information as to what other communities are doing. One of the places I just left, Key West, has charging stations at their city hall, which was a renovation project. So I've reached out to their sustainability coordinator, Alison Higgins, to see, you know, what else is taking place. So by the time that young lady does the petition, or shortly thereafter, I'll be able to reach out to the manager as to what possibilities we may have. It's a conversation that I've also had with Steve Carnell some months ago as to, you know, where there's opportunities. I know the Deputy County Manager, at the sports complex, is looking at charging stations there as well. So it's something that's in the forefront of our minds, and I think it's June 18, 2020 Page 40 something that we'll be able to at least provide some level of recommendations as to how we can move forward on that. MR. CASALANGUIDA: They will be installed at the sports complex, and we're looking at the government operations center as well as Heritage Bay. So the first install will be at the sports complex. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Great, thank you. MR. COHEN: Okay. The FY budget will improve the maintenance of our stormwater system. As you've heard, we've got an additional $2 million to be able to help us continue on the capital side as well as on the maintenance sides to move us, as you and the Manager have indicated, towards an industry standard. That system will help us to protect life, property, and improve water quality. The GMD stormwater capital, we've been partnering, for example, with the City of Naples, Collier County Public Utilities Department to leverage our ability to extend services to residents and reduce construction disruption. We look forward to the completion of the new terminal down at Marco Island in Fiscal Year '21. The budge t will bolster our partnership with DOT and FAA as we seek funding to improve our runways at Immokalee and the airside facility at the Immokalee airport. In closing, COVID has changed the course of our lives in the community in which we serve. It is often said a budget reflects our values. I think during this time, history will record how we've cared for one another, and that will be the value that will be remembered. And with that, I conclude my comments. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I don't see any questions from the Commission. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Mr. Chairman, you've got two public speakers for this section. June 18, 2020 Page 41 CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Your first public speaker will be Mr. Brad Estes. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Brad, good morning. MR. ESTES: Good morning, Commissioners. Brad Estes. I'm the secretary of the Poinciana Civic Association, and I'm here to reflect and also convey our sincere appreciation to what's happened in the last year: Major change in terms of the responsiveness of the stormwater group -- the ability of the stormwater group due to additional equipment and additional funding/staffing. As we speak, there's a crew working on the final phase of our swale restoration, and that is a very precise -- if you've ever watched that, it's very interesting. It's a very precise task because you have to have the proper elevations to make sure the swale drains when it should and doesn't drain when it shouldn't, so it retains and detains. So we are looking -- and we're also looking very much so at the $250,000 budgeted for 2021 for the valuation of our stormwater system because there has been always the question, is it properly designed, and can there be changes made that actually correct those issues? We have had already one storm that flooded our streets, so it's a public-safety issue. There was 10 inches of water on our access streets, and people are confused because they're not supposed to -- they're told not to drive through water, but how do they get home or get to work? So we're very, very appreciative of this and look forward to the changes in the coming year. That's really what I have to say this morning. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: How did Poinciana Village fair last Saturday afternoon? MR. ESTES: It went very poorly. And, actually, it was June 18, 2020 Page 42 June -- I think June 2nd. It was a Saturday. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Yeah, Saturday, last -- MR. ESTES: Very poorly. That's when we had 10 inches of rain, and it was only two-and-a-half inches of rainfall, but it's very fast. And we're still -- there are issues -- current issues with drains that are dysfunctional. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Okay. MR. ESTES: So there's maybe some maintenance issues that can be handled more quickly than waiting on whatever renovations and installation of new drains occurs in the years to come, so... COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: I know this won't give you much comfort, but my neighbor launched a canoe, and across the street a child had his little paddleboard with his dog on it, and they had a lot of fun. MR. ESTES: Well, we had kids playing on paddleboards all over with paddles, actually, padding down the swales, yes. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Yes. MR. ESTES: And this is not a complaint. We're looking forward, and this is the first time in my memory that a county manager has brought forward and executed -- brought forward and executed a plan that will remedy our many years of dealing with flooding in our village, and thank you so much. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you. MR. CASALANGUIDA: One more speaker, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Kevin Bittner, remotely. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Mr. Bittner? You'll have three minutes -- MR. BITTNER: Yes, Commissioners. This is Kevin Bittner. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: -- and I'll let you know when your three minutes are up. MR. BITTNER: Okay. Thank you, sir. June 18, 2020 Page 43 My name is Kevin Bittner. I'm the president of the Orchards HOA, which is located right off Vanderbilt Beach Road kind of across from Tiburon Golf Course. I met with several of you and then subsequently spoke at a Commissioners meeting months ago regarding getting safer access to our development. The traffic is increasing dramatically on Vanderbilt Beach Road, as you all know. We had briefly pursued access going through Piper's Grove. That proved too litigious, so we moved on to constructing a traffic signal at our entrance, which is on Vanderbilt Beach Road and Groves Road at that intersection. We have done traffic counts and have received approval of the needs, the warrants of that signal from the county, and we've moved into the design phase of that project at our own expense. We do plan to follow through on this project at our own expense as well. We have received preliminary plan and cost estimates of the signal. But I would request consideration of at least a portion of this project being funded by the county, and there are three points that I believe warrant that: The increased traffic on Vanderbilt Beach Road from the additional groves [sic] that the county has approved; the proposed signal actually serves two communities: The Orchards and Piper's Grove. We are coordinating with Piper's Grove for potential cost sharing; and the third is that the county transportation staff is requiring a U-turn lane for eastbound Vanderbilt Beach Road traffic. This does not serve the Orchards at all. It simply serves existing Vanderbilt Beach Road traffic. So the total cost of the signal project right now is approximately $620,000. The U-turn accounts for about $120,000 of that. That's according to our preliminary estimate that Mr. Trebilcock has worked on. So we're just simply asking for consideration for any potential June 18, 2020 Page 44 funding that the county could have available, in particular the $120,000 that the U-turn has added to the project. So the Orchards is a working-class community, and it definitely has a need for safer egress/ingress, and we're simply asking the Commissioners to consider that need in their upcoming budget. That's all. Thank you very much for your consideration and time. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you. MR. CASALANGUIDA: That's it. MR. SHUE: If I could, I'd like to make one quick comment. Gene Shue, Operations Support Director. I always feel obligated this time of year to tap the horn of the airports. This whole -- this budget represents the seventh consecutive year that we'll have an operating profit, so that's no operating support from the General Fund. We continue for the Fiscal Year, FY '21, to have support on the capital side, but as we project ahead, we don't see that even being necessary for the next seven to 10 years. So I think that's quite a turnaround from 2014 when growth management first got involved. And I give 100 percent of the credit to the management team. So I'll throw their names out there: Justin Lobb, your executive airport manager; Andrew Bennett and Kate Whitson, managers of the Marco airport and the Immokalee airport, and those guys have given the county world-class management that has really turned around. And years ago, my boss at that time told me, run the airports like a business, and that's exactly what we've done, and the results are self-evident. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Congratulations. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you. MR. OCHS: Mr. Shue's a bit modest. He's the one that's leading that whole financial group over there. MR. SHUE: Well, I hired that group. I'll take credit of that. June 18, 2020 Page 45 MR. CASALANGUIDA: Awesome, Gene. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I think we may be due for a court reporter break. So we're going to come back at 10:35. And, Mr. Ochs, as I mentioned on the presentation table there, if we do have three people, we're going to have to figure something out. MR. OCHS: We won't have three. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. All right. Then we'll reconvene at 10:35. (A brief recess was had from 10:25 a.m. to 10:35 a.m.) CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Ladies and gentlemen, if you'll take your seats, we'll reconvene. Good morning. MR. OCHS: Mr. Chairman, we move to Mr. Carnell and the Public Services Department. PUBLIC SERVICES MR. CARNELL: Good morning, Commissioners. I have Kim Grant with me who's our Director of Operations and Veteran Services and my financial manager guru for our department. I want to begin this morning by saying that I think in the Public Services Department we are consciously focused on embracing the new normal. And I mean "the new normal" meaning life with COVID going forward. We don't know how long this virus is going to be with us, threatening us, or affecting us, but we're in it for the long haul, and that's going to mean a number of things for us. That's going to mean continuing to adapt to the progression of the virus and tempering some of the traditional expansion of programs or modification of programs that we had more freedom with, say, a year ago. We'll continue to monitor, of course, the social and economic and societal trends that relate to the virus, and then one of the most June 18, 2020 Page 46 important things is we've adapted to the virus, and we will continue to adapt, and we're also going to retain some things from this adaptation process that I think our customers like with or without a virus, and I'll tell you about a few of those things as we go through this morning. Our operating budget is within compliance and aggregate across the department. We have had -- we have small increases of less than 1 percent to our operating budgets in fund -- in the General Fund and the Unincorporated General Fund. We've had revenue reductions that midyear, most notably the museum division, reduced operating by over $450,000 because of their loss in tourist tax revenue. And for next year's budget, the museum will be scaled back by about $300,000 for the year. Our parks budget has been -- revenue budget has been reduced, between the two funds, the General Fund and the Unincorporated General Fund, by about $450,000 for the coming year. So with that, though, we are moving forward. We'll be fully operating as close as we can to full operations. And I want to begin with our Community and Human Services Division. A couple things there. The big picture thing there is that, as the County Manager alluded to earlier, there are several state and federal grant funding opportunities coming our way. Many of them are COVID related. There are six that are on our radar now that are COVID related. We've talked about a couple of them in passing already this morning. Then there's going -- there's a couple related -- there's hurricane mitigation money still coming forward from the state and federal government as well. These are all going to have significant opportunities -- present significant opportunities for us as an agency, not just my department, but as an agency, to improve the infrastructure in our community and with the CARES Act type funding to address programs and needs in the community that have June 18, 2020 Page 47 been accentuated by COVID. I mention all that in the context of community and human services because that group is going to be managing all of these budgets from cradle to grave on behalf of the agency, and the beneficiaries will be not just county departments who will be administering the programs but our constitutional officer agencies, our local municipalities, and, of course, all the residents that they serve. That's going to be a big rollout for them this coming year. There's going to be a requirement for additional temporary staffing resources that will be funded through those grants, and we'll address those as we bring them to you. MR. OCHS: Steve, let me just jump in and interrupt. Commissioner McDaniel and Chairman Saunders, you had asked about this in the introductory briefing. Steve is referring to the recent allocation of CARES dollars to counties and cities below 500,000 in population. We have, as I mentioned at the outset, a detailed executive summary in your packet that you received last evening for next Tuesday's agenda that rolls this out in detail, and we'll be able to have a full discussion on that. But this initial allocation from the State is about $16.7 million in CARES funding and, as I mentioned, we'll be able to recommended some allocation areas for you to consider next Tuesday and give us some guidance on how you'd like us to proceed with the allocation of those dollars. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I'd like to just make a quick comment in reference to that, just so everyone on the Board will have my thinking as we go through this, and we'll be making some decisions perhaps as early as next Tuesday. But we're getting -- we're getting 16.7 million, and I think that number's going to go up. And I'd like to see us consider making sure that all of these dollars go into the individuals that need money as opposed to June 18, 2020 Page 48 reimbursing ourselves for expenses we may have incurred. And that goes for the cities as well. They're going to be looking for fun ds to reimburse -- to be reimbursed for some of their expenses, and I'd like to plant the seed that my view is that we need to get all of this money that comes in through the CARES Act into the communities that need services, that need, you know, rent abatement, perhaps, food, things like that that are very critically needed by people as opposed to reimbursing governments for their expenses. So I just want to plant that seed, and we'll have some discussions next week. MR. CARNELL: Okay. MR. OCHS: Very good. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Oh, I'm sorry. Commissioner McDaniel is lit up. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes, I am, and I concur, with caution. When we talked about this last week, I'm sure you've had an opportunity to see the laundry list that's coming from the federal government with regard to how and when and what those monies, in fact, can be spent on, and we obviously need to manage through that as well. I would like to see the priority of the expenditure go towards those who are in need and not reimbursing the government particularly. MR. OCHS: Understood. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: But that is fulfilling a need at the same time, so there's certainly a balance that can be struck. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor? COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Yeah. And that's the balance I was just thinking. You kind of took the words from my mouth. There was a report today on the news on the NPR, matter of fact, of the damage that are being done to children that cannot go to camps; how children learn from other children; how they need that June 18, 2020 Page 49 socialization; how it is critically important that we maintain some kind of normalcy for those children. And I would say that probably applies to teenagers also. In fact, I've also had a pretty in-depth conversation with Coach Kramer who said the worst thing you can do is quarantine children. And so I think as we move forward, giving it to those who need most might mean giving it to programs that we can staff in order to keep some semblance of normalcy in this very un-normal time. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Thank you. MR. CARNELL: Well, thank you. And I segue off what you just said, Commissioner Taylor, on the other end of the age spectrum. We had to discontinue our senior congregate meals program at the outbreak of the virus in March because of lack of social distancing and, frankly, our clients were uneasy being around each other at that point. So we adapted to a home meal delivery program, which is good in terms of providing seniors nutrition, the food they need, but it doesn't deal with the entire intent of the program. The program is food, and the program is fellowship. It's connecting people to one another. So we -- that was a temporary measure. We have reopened three of the four meal sites with appropriate social distancing, and the last site in Golden Gate is going to reopen at the end of the month, and we've been adapting from passing out unperishable food to frozen food, prepared, to now hot cooked meals, so we're back to a regular level of service for everybody. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: How are you going to handle the socialization aspect? Or they just come and pick it up and then leave again? MR. CARNELL: Yes. There will be some limited room -- I'm sorry. There will be room for a limited number of people spread out who can sit, and if they want to talk to each other six feet apart or June 18, 2020 Page 50 more, we'll be positioned to do that, but a lot of it will be pick up and take home. So that is where we are presently with our community and human services. Again, we'll have that program in its new normal state by the end of the month in full across all of our sites. Our Domestic Animal Service Division, the first lead item here is good news. We still have an incredibly high live release rate; 96 percent of all the animals. Twenty-four out of 25 animals that come into our shelter go home to a good home. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Wow. MR. CARNELL: And we're very pleased with that, and we thank not only our staff but our partners in the community, all of our rescue groups that work with us diligently to make that happen. We've been -- also, we have a new staff veterinarian beginning on Monday. We're very excited. Dr. David Robinson is coming to us. Twenty years experience in running public shelters. He's very excited, and we're looking forward to his arrival. And as Dr. Robinson arrives, we'll be making plans to reinstate some of our programs that we run out of clinic, including our public vaccination programs. We'll be starting rabies vaccinations at the end of August. We'll have our first monthly event on August 28th. And then the rest of this, really, to share with you is kind of COVID-19 related. We've been adapting, as I've said, to the virus. And in the world of DAS that's meant a couple of differ ent things. We have, number one, installed a telephone app that we provide to all of our customers who come to the shelter now so that they can queue up in the parking lot, and when we're ready for them to come in, we page them through the telephone app, and this has allowed us to spread people out and keep people safe. We also have, really, ad libbed with our adoption population. And we've turned to our foster care families. And I don't know how June 18, 2020 Page 51 familiar you all are. We have a number of families in the community who are fostering volunteers who will take animals in our population for a short period of time. And that's typically been for animals that needed a little special attention that weren't quite ready for the kennel environmental. We've expanded that in March, and the director adapted and, essentially, farmed out almost the entire shelter population to the foster families. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Wow. MR. CARNELL: So these dogs and cats have been spoiled rotten the last three months. And we are tremendously indebted to our foster families. We're also not wanting to wear them out, so we are bringing animals back into the shelter in small quantity. And, obviously, we have certain animals that have to be housed in the shelter. We have stray animals and dangerous animals. But the foster population is still -- the foster -- our foster families are still carrying a good deal of the load right now. And part of the reason, necessity for that is that we lost our kennel cleaning support from the Sheriff's Office in March because the inmates who were coming in doing the cleaning, the Sheriff couldn't take them off site because of the virus, and we totally understand that. He's targeting -- Sheriff's Office has been targeting a return of that support to us at the end of July, but we're looking at alternative ways to get that done for the future. In the short haul, we're doing it because, again, some of the restrictions of the virus in our operations have actually helped us manage the kennels. We have been limiting our community patrols, and this has been at the guidance of the National Animal Association that we are members of. And we have been limiting patrols to picking up stray animals and emergency calls, dangerous calls. We -- and that's helped us because the control officers have been available to help us in the shelter with some other June 18, 2020 Page 52 activities. But we're going to be needing them back out on the street. And I would anticipate by October, by the FY '21 you'll see regular patrolling in our animal control officer group going and happening each day. So that's where we are right now with DAS. We've been doing an awful lot of our adoptions online as a result of the virus, and that's the kind of thing that we anticipate, we'll retain that and try to encourage as many of our future adoptions, do your paperwork, do all your preselection ahead of time, and then that way we can limit your time in the shelter when you come t o get the animal. Our Library Division is moving forward. As you all know, we reopened our regional branches at the end of May, and I'll be updating you on Tuesday. We'll be opening -- we've opened Golden Gate and Marco Island, and we'll be opening Golden Gate Estates branch by the beginning of July, and we anticipate by October 1st all of our branches will be reopened and functioning. We -- our COVID impacts beyond what I've described to you already, as I mentioned to you in previous briefings, we continue to have to quarantine materials for a period of three days to allow them to decontaminate, if you will, to the extent there is any. But that, again, has presented some opportunities. We've had to alter our service delivery. We're not able to offer face-to-face programming in our libraries the way we had in the past, but we've been doing more virtual programming online. And one of our big success stories has been with Hispanic story time, we're getting over 300 views a week on story time programs that we're posting. And this has been interesting, because the library staff has struggled for years to engage the Hispanic community in story time, and we've offered in -person stories in Spanish, but the virtual window has changed everything. June 18, 2020 Page 53 And there's a great deal of demand and great deal of interest from our Hispanic families -- our Spanish-speaking families in the community. So we're -- again, we consider that a blessing of this whole virus thing, another opportunity to deliver service in a way that's been very well received. So we'll continue to do those kinds of programs, but we won't be doing, really, any in-person programming until our social distancing guidelines are a little further relaxed. So that's with the libraries. Moving over to museums, they're in kind of a similar boat. They're somewhat of a restriction and a limit. I think you may know the Governor's most recent order on crowd sizing was to raise the number to 50 -- 50 people. We're still under the 6-foot social distancing limitation. And the museums is operating under that restriction. And to that extent, we're going to be re -- we'll be reinitiating our lecture series for 50 people or less and, obviously, you know, in environments where we can space people out sufficiently. But you'll be seeing some lecture series activities and some other activities in the museums where we can control the crowd and keep people safe recommencing. And I think by FY '21 by October that will be going at a little bit more rapid rate. This budget, though, has taken quite a hit. It's probably taken the harshest hit of any in my group. In the current fiscal year, as I mentioned in the beginning, we had to reduce the budget by a quarter; $464,000. That was mostly accomplished by eliminating certain capital projects. And for next year, we're going to start $300,000 adopted budget lower than it was to begin FY '20. We've done that through capital project reduction. We've also scaled back our marketing funds considerably. And we'll be making do with what we've got with marketing. We're going to just focus entirely on social media and see if we can get as much of the job June 18, 2020 Page 54 done that way with a little help from Mr. Wert. He's going to help us with a little more out of the CVB budget for marketing as well, which we appreciate. One last thought on the museums. As you all know, the museums are capped right now, a hard cap, $2 million annually in tourist tax revenues, and we are -- we're at the ceiling right now. And, in fact, the COVID has kind of accelerated that, if you will. We knew we were heading towards a place where we were going to have to start cutting expenditures, and we're at that point now. We'll be able to continue to operate all five sites in FY '21, but we'll have very little discretionary funding available for programs or activities. And we plan to address this in more depth with the five of you in the fall in terms of a more long-term view. We're good for now, but we'll need your help and guidance, and we'll be talking to you about that after the budget is adopted. So that's where we are presently with the museums. Again, all five sites are open and functioning. Briefly, our operations and veterans services group. This is Kim's team. I just wanted to tell you that we transitioned our veteran client appointments to entirely online or telephone at the outbreak of the virus, and that's gone extremely well. As you can imagine, most of our population is reticent to visit us in person anyway right now. And so this shift has been well received, and we believe it's going to continue indefinitely at this point. There may be a point in time where in-person appointments reopen, but right now there's no demand for that. Everybody's very comfortable with the way we're doing it, and so we're pleased to be able to deliver services safely to folks. Kim's group is also working internally on centralizing all of our financial resources and staff. We're spread out across the department, and she's bringing them in. Kind of each division at a June 18, 2020 Page 55 time is becoming -- growing into her team, and her team's going to be providing increased financial support. We think that's going to help with some efficiency, and it's going to give the department head a little better visibility across the whole operation of what's happening financially at any one time and will help us with future planning. We're also doing some technology planning in centralizing. I think you-all will remember we have an enterprise asset management system, and we've got it up and running in all of our divisions right now. Our parks and our museums are the most active users of it directly, and we're using that system to essentially classify our assets, get a better handle on where our repair costs are and what kind of things we need to do to abate those costs moving forward. The Parks Division, of course, that's our largest division. And I've got to just toot everybody's horn in the Parks Division for them for just a moment. They just successfully created -- I'm sorry -- completed successful reaccreditation through CAPRA, which is the Commission for Accreditation of Parks and Recreation Agencies nationally. This is a big deal. There are almost 10,000 parks and recreation agencies in the United States of America, and only 171 of them out of 10,000 are credited. We're one of them, and this is a reaccreditation. This is not anything new. We just went through a very extensive process with participation from staff, from our PARAB members, and other community sponsors. And we got a perfect score on all 151 standards that were reviewed. So my commendation to the Director Barry Williams and the assistant director, Jeanine McPherson, who ran point on that. We've got a good operation in our Parks Division. The Big Corkscrew Island Regional Park, you know, is opening in two phases. We had a discussion at the last board meeting about that. I'll just briefly reference that Phase 1 is, as we talked about last week, it's opening in two pieces, two stages. The first one will be in June 18, 2020 Page 56 Thanksgiving time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We'll be opening soccer fields, baseball fields, picnic area, restroom, concessions, essentially the north end of the property, if you will. And then the southern end of that property will be opening next summer, in July, and that will include your aquatics center, community center, event lawn, children's playground, hard courts, and maintenance building. So we're obviously excited to see all that coming on board. Speaking of aquatics, as you all know, we have three community pools. We have one water park, Sun-N-Fun, and one water feature at the Vineyards. The Eagle Lakes aquatic facility celebrated its second anniversary yesterday. And we've had a great deal of traffic at Eagle Lakes over the two-year period. Most recently we had -- last year we had 41,000 visits to Eagle Lakes, and we just continue to be very excited with the progress of that facility. Eagle Lakes is the baby in the group. Everybody else has got some age on them. Sun-N-Fun opened in 2006. The other pools at Golden Gate and Immokalee are at least 30 years old, and they're showing their age, and we're really to the point of having to make a concerted effort to address these problems. Right now Sun-N-Fun is really the most severe. We've got a need to tend to all the pool sites. All the water features need work in one form or another. We need to do work with our deck, with our pumps, our motors, the bridges and all the infrastructure in -- on the complex. We're going to begin that process this Tuesday with you. We have an agenda item on to award a contract to repair the bridge over the lazy river. That will be about a $300,000 project. And you could say that's the kickoff to project rehab Sun-N-Fun, but we've got several other projects that we need to address there. At present we do not have identified funding the rest of those projects. We have some design money budgeted, but the rest of it is June 18, 2020 Page 57 not budgeted. And as the County Manager mentioned to you, we'll be coming back to you in the fall with a plan but -- for dealing with all the activity at Sun-N-Fun. We also have a project at Golden Gate that's near completing the design. The activity pool, which has been closed for some time now, we've got a design ready to rebuild that. We're going to need to find money. That will need to be part of this funding plan discussion in the fall. But we are going to need to close Sun-N-Fun and keep it closed. Right now it's been closed for COVID-related reasons. Our other pools are open. But we need to close it in order to effect these repairs. And, again, we'll be talking more to you-all about that in the fall. But the general plan is to try to take the next year and get Sun-N-Fun completely made over to where we could reopen it next summer. And as we reopen it, Big Corkscrew, the aquatic facility will be coming online at the same time, and at that point we'll turn our attention to the community pools with any remaining projects we have there. There are some projects, like at Golden Gate, the one I just mentioned, the activity pool, which we'll do sooner than that if we can find the money. But the rest of them we may have to close those pools for a period of time after Sun-N-Fun is reopened, after Big Corkscrew is online so we make sure that we're giving our citizens at least a decent number of choices at all times for pool locations. So more to come on that right now. That is really the single biggest capital priority in my department for the coming year is to get our arms around aquatics and get them back where they need to be. The good news is that when we go through this process and we're done, we'll be largely done for a while. We'll need to fix something here and fix something there, but it will be nothing like this for quite a while. So that's where we are with aquatics at the moment and our June 18, 2020 Page 58 Parks Division. Just a couple others. Your Public Transit and Neighborhood Enhancement group, right now, as you all remember, we discontinued collecting fares in March because of the virus, and we are now in a position where we're looking to reinstitute fare collection in July. We need to create, essentially, some plexiglass barriers between the drivers and the fare boxes to keep the drivers safe and the public. So we're in the process of putting those into the buses. And we're anticipating that we'll be able to resume fare collection in either July or August. In either case, your budget you're approving here is predicated upon the revenue collection -- the fare collection resuming next year. Beyond that, I mentioned adaptation. There's been quite a bit of adaptation in your CAT bus service and your para transit with increased sanitation of the vehicles, providing more social distancing on the buses, spreading people out, and really trying to make a concerted effort to educate drivers -- I'm sorry -- passengers regarding the use of social distancing and separating from each other on the bus. We're also looking to implement, as we return to fares, a touchless fare system that can be done without any human contact. Anyway, so those are some of the things that we're working on with Collier Area Transit right now. There are some upcoming projects as well, and part of the CARES funding provides us the potential opportunity to start bus service in Everglades City, regular bus service. We've had queries about that. Yes, Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Major yay. MR. CARNELL: Yes. More to come on that. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. MR. CARNELL: We'll be talking about that more as grants get awarded. We've been in communication with the community down June 18, 2020 Page 59 there, and I think there's some interest. We'll start with kind of a van-based service and see where that takes us in terms of growth. So there's Public Transit and Neighborhood Enhancement. And then last, our University of Florida -- I'm sorry, question? CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: No, go ahead. Go ahead and complete your -- MR. CARNELL: Okay. I'm almost done here. University of Florida Extension. This group has been rebuilding since Hurricane Irma, and you'll remember the devastation to the complex there. They moved back in in February a year ago, and we're still, though, working through a number of improvements. The kitchen that was damaged in the hurricane is being rebuilt as we speak, and we're expecting that will be done by the end of July, a new kitchen that will allow for more 4H-type food-related programming and other local food groups using the facility. We'r e also -- we rebuilt the multipurpose room there. And now, if you've been out there and haven't seen it, it kind of looks like a sports bar. You know, we have this big giant wall with 24 TV screens that we can use for educational programs and all kinds of different uses, and that was done as a joint effort with our Information Technology Division, which we greatly expect their -- appreciate their help. And then they're going to be rebuilding their greenhouse that was blown down in the hurricane, grant willing. We are pursuing a grant for that, along with redoing the parking lot out there. The parking lot, we need to look at putting some type of pervious grass parking in that will drain better, and also we need to improve the lighting. So those are coming forward in grant requests that you'll be seeing shortly. Excited about all that. And there's also a chance to build a little bit of a storage facility out there, not only for the equipment that the university extension uses, but also some space for Mr. Summers to June 18, 2020 Page 60 store, essentially, emergency response/disaster response vehicles, particularly for fire response. So that's what's happening with University Extension. With that, I'll just take any questions you have. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes, three. Number one -- I'm going to go backwards. And I think I'm going to start -- County Manager, I'm going to start talking to Steve about the bus transport, because you looked at me crooked when I was asking for a route into Everglades City, and now he's making it happen. So I'm -- I think I'm just going to go right around to him. MR. OCHS: That probably works better. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Thank you, by the way. That's going to be immeasurable for our community d own there. MR. CARNELL: It's not a fait accompli, sir, but we are going to pursue it. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I understand. Just the sheer fact that it's on the horizon is wonderful, because it wasn't -- it wasn't before. So thank you. And, by the way, you know I am joking, again, because the County Manager's the one that makes all this happen -- MR. CARNELL: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- so I just want to thank you both. MR. OCHS: You're welcome. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Number two, museums. When I was -- you said you're going to come back to us in the fall and talk to us about the museum budget. I only see four noted locations of museums in the budget process, and I know we have five. MR. CARNELL: That's correct. June 18, 2020 Page 61 COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And then you have an aggregation of administration, operations, so on and so forth at the top. So when we come back in the fall, I would like to see -- as best as you possibly can. There's no definitives with regard to the appropriation of staff administration, who does what, but a little bit of a segregation per museum. MR. CARNELL: Absolutely. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And that will help us in our deliberations with regard to that. MR. CARNELL: Sir, I can give that to you today. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Not today. Not today. MR. CARNELL: Okay. Fine. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I'm just -- but that would help when we actually -- because you were talking that, you know, there are shortfalls in those budgets, and I just -- if we knew where, when and how we would better -- I would better be able to maybe help and administer along those lines. And, third, I'd like you to look into some kind of a capital investigation. I'm very good friends with Paul Hiltz, the director of NCH. They have two, he calls them bug zappers, and they are an ultraviolet machine that they take into hospital rooms that whack every microorganism in the facility. And that may help us as we continue, as you say, to deal with what our new norm is, in fact, going to be with the virus. Having one of those means either on contract and/or available, that might be something that we, as an organization, want to have a look at, especially with the public services -- public surfaces that we have to, on a regular basis. Now, he is very careful to say, it's a one-time shot. When you go through with that machine, it works then, and then once people start coming around again, then those microorganisms pop back up. June 18, 2020 Page 62 But it's certainly something that we could have a look at to provide for some additional security for our community. And our -- so, just -- I would like to have that looked at as well. MR. CARNELL: Sure. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Thank you, Mr. Chair. MR. CARNELL: I'm writing that down: Bug zapper. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Bug zapper. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. Anything else? If not, I'll move to -- MR. CASALANGUIDA: Mr. Chairman, you have three public speakers for this section. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I'm sorry. Keep your seats. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Our first public speaker is Miryam Haarlammert. Miryam. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And you'll have three minutes, and I'll alert you when your three minutes are up. MS. HAARLAMMERT: Okay. Can you hear me? CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Yes. MS. HAARLAMMERT: Okay. Great. Hello. I'm Dr. Miryam Haarlammert, and I'm speaking in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and with larger global abolitionists movements, all of which focus on eliminating slavery and exploitation in all its forms all across the world. I am also speaking as a scholar and as a mother of a young child who will soon enter the school system to begin his educational journey. Calls to defund/abolish police rightfully include the demilitarization and policing of our schools. The message here I'm standing behind is not cops but counselors in our schools and for our county budget to reflect that call. We have learned from many rigorous psychological studies that children cannot thrive in fear of being threatened if they feel unsafe June 18, 2020 Page 63 and if they lack access to resources. Some of the resources mentioned now in the public services, the libraries, specifically Spanish-speaking reading time. All those things deserve more funding than the policing of our schools. In 2018, Florida became the first state in the nation to require armed staff or law enforcement officers to be present in every K-to-12 school in the state. Collier County schools should remove police, both public and private, from our all schools. Children need empathy, understanding, and nurturing for their safety, not fear, ignorance, and the imposition of state agents and the violences [sic] that guides for safety. We need to humanize our children, and the presence of police and lack of resources create a dangerous combination for them; therefore, we should allocate funds to make life -affirming resources accessible for all students, and these include school-based mental health providers such as school counselors, psychologists, nurses, and social workers who have the knowledge, skills, and expertise to work with students. Our taxpayer money should be allocated in ways that reflect our respect for our youth as a society, and that's not wh at's happening right now. All of this is in an effort to create a fear or more democratic society starting at the very beginning in places like schools, which matter a great deal in the lives of our children. Thank you. I yield the rest of my time. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Mr. Chairman, your next public speaker is Eliven Cruz. MS. CRUZ: Hello. Good morning. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Yes, you'll have three minutes. MS. CRUZ: Okay. Thank you. Hi, I want to reiterate what Miryam had said before me. I want June 18, 2020 Page 64 to reiterate what Melissa Alamo and, I want to say, J said a few -- like an hour ago. I'm also here calling to defund the Police Department for Collier County. I'm looking at the budget, and it shows the Sheriff's Office is the only department or, you know, facility that has 100 million -- 200 million allocated funds. Everything else is single digits, maybe double digits, and I want to express my need for allocating some of those funds to services like parks and rec, like the museums, like library services. I am from Golden Gate. I live in an immigrant population city -- immigrant populated city. I want to see more services, you know, that benefit them. I want to see more services benefiting, like, the region of Golden Gate, Lely, Immokalee. You know, I came from a single-parent household. My parent couldn't take me to the movies. She couldn't take me to Disney. She couldn't take me to Universal Studios, as it was mentioned before. And I would love to see more, you know, community outreach coming from parks and rec, in the way that -- you know, I would want to see movies on the lawn. I would want to see jazz in the park. I would want to see yoga in the park. Just things like that to, you know, benefit the community even more just because a lot of the people that come from these communities don't get to see that. They don't get to go to Cambier Park and all the events that they do downtown because they don't have the means to do even simple things like that. So I express my need for the defunding of the Police Department. I think that budget is outrageous. There is no need for a, you know, department to have that much of our -- it is almost half of our entire budget for the Collier County. There's no need for that, you know. And I am a person of color. I've been afraid of the police my entire life. I would love to see, you know, these funds June 18, 2020 Page 65 allocated elsewhere. Thank you, and I yield the rest of my time. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Mr. Chairman, your final speaker is Mr. Scott Burgess here. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Scott, good morning. MR. BURGESS: Good morning. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. I wanted -- for the record, Scott Burgess, CEO of David Lawrence Center. And I wanted to say thank you to the Commissioners for all that you've done in supporting mental health and substance use disorders in our community. Across time, we've already had a number of folks that have talked about this morning about the importance of those issues. And we have as a community, I think, done an amazing job in advancing initiatives in this regard. I want to thank you for the recent passage of the strategic plan for Collier County, and I think that provides us a roadmap on how we can attend to these issues even better year over year. I thought I would mention just a couple of things in relationship to David Lawrence Center specifically. We have had another year that we're projected to have significant service increase. Two years ago we provided 265,000 services, last year we provided 277,000 services, and this year we're projected to provide 294,000 services. So as our community continues to grow and really as we're having success with a lot of our diversion opportunities that we're working on with the Sheriff's Office, we are getting people tracked into treatment rather than the criminal justice system whenever possible. So we have seen increase in referrals from the Sheriff's Office for folks to get the treatment that they need. Success rates have been June 18, 2020 Page 66 very high, and we've reported out on recidivism data and other types of data to the County Commissioners so that you can see what we're doing in real time. And you've already heard about the success of our drug court, which is now nationally recognized as a mentor drug court. There's only eight of them in the entire country. And, basically, what the federal government is saying is, go down to Collier County, learn what they're doing, because what they're doing, they're doing well; better than anyone. So we will be actually training others across the nation on how to do this and do this well. So, again, this is a partnership. This is collective impact that we're mobilizing, and we couldn't do it without the support of the Sheriff, the judiciary, human services, the county staff, County Manager, and our County Commissioners. So we thank you so much for your leadership and your support. There's a number of successes that we've had across time, and I'll be happy to present those to you. I was very encouraged to hear we might have an opportunity in September or October or whenever you decide for us to do another workshop specific on this issue. We've made great advancements. We are making great advancements each and every day. And also, just really quickly -- and I know my time is very tight here. I'm not going to go into too much depth, but related to COVID. I know it's certainly something that's already been discussed and some of the mental health aspects of COVID, and it was alluded to the terminology even of social distancing versus physical distancing, and the reason that people are encouraging the change in the language is because we don't want to socially isolate. Social isolation is really leading to an increase in depression and anxiety. You look at all of the data, all the research. These issues are significant. So we want to maintain safety from physical June 18, 2020 Page 67 distancing, but socially we want to stay very interconnected as much as we possibly can. So we moved -- everything's been -- I see your hand. I'm going to -- CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: You really -- MR. BURGESS: Okay, sorry. Related to our services, we had no service interruption. So all of our services, emergency services, in-patient services, detox, 28-day program has maintained itself in full functionality live with all the precautions. We've done well with that, and we moved all of our outpatient support and community-based support to virtual. We went from two clinicians that were providing tele-virtual care to 100 clinicians in about two weeks. So we've been able to swiftly adapt to this new normal, and clients are receiving it well. And I'm happy to answer any questions. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: I was just going to thank Scott again for the amazing job that David Lawrence Center does and that you've done and specifically in terms of the creation of the strategic plan. I mean, I still am amazed at the job that the committee was able to do. A 19-member committee, I think it was. MR. BURGESS: Yeah. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: I mean, it was a huge lift to get done in one year, and you did it. Thanks to your leadership as the chair of that committee and that -- what really, I think, is important for everybody to know is that committee, although the advisory committee was sunsetted because the plan was done, continues to meet and will continue to work on these issues and provide feedback, which we'll need. And I think the commitment of yourself and everyone else to this process is really amazing. And I think it's showing in, as Commissioner Taylor said, the conversations that June 18, 2020 Page 68 we're having now. It's just changed the entire discussion on how we deal with mental health. So thanks for everything you continue to do and all of the services that you provide to the community. MR. BURGESS: Well, thank you for your leadership. And the continuation of those -- the committee and the initiatives has allowed success to happen. One quick example is that we had a more successful homeless count this year. We were able to rally some more support and really garner more accurately the number, and now we're going to be able to see some additional resources come this way. And it's been able to demonstrate to the VA that they should be providing a little bit more support in our community as well. So all of these things that we're working on really have amazing ripple effects as well that we're going to continue to benefit from as a county. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: And one last question, too. If you do have more data on just the impact of what COVID-19 and, you know, the distancing and all that has had in terms of the number of requests for services and things, I'd really appreciate that, because I -- it's good to keep up on that. MR. BURGESS: Yeah. We'll provide that. We moved our intake process to virtual as well. So before you had to physically come on campus and fill out forms and go through your assessment. We moved that to a fully digital platform as well. And just since COVID started, we've engaged a thousand more individuals into treatment just in the last about two-and-a-half months. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I made mention last fall with regard to the homelessness in our veterans population and suggested that we start -- that we then take some proactive steps by the end of the year, and I know that that didn't, ultimately. I would like to, as June 18, 2020 Page 69 we move into the final adoption, make sure that we have provisions in place. Homelessness in that population is -- we all know and understand that some of that population doesn't want to come in for any kind of services. But every -- I want every effort to be made to ensure that we are accommodating with regard to that, please. MR. BURGESS: Absolutely. It's all working in conjunction. We want to thank the county staff and the folks in human services for their recommendation for a slight increase this year, and we're talking with them and working actively on trying to garner those additional grants that Steve talked about to bring in additional resources to the community as well to help. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you very much. MR. OCHS: Mr. Chairman, we move ahead now with the administrative services. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Wait. Could I ask a question of Parks. I meant to do this before. MR. OCHS: Sure. I'm sorry, Commissioner. Go ahead. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I'm sorry. I didn't have my button on. I didn't realize we were finished. I just wanted to ask a couple questions. Just stay there, Steve. It's not important. At Eagle Lakes, I know we've been talking about building something so the children can get inside. There's an empty room in there, but the kids can't go to play summer games or anything because it's -- they don't have storage units or anything like that. And they've been talking about trying to get the kids in -- well, for years, actually, for years, but I don't see anything on the budget about that. Can you tell me about that? MR. CARNELL: Yeah. What we have budgeted presently is to engage a consultant to do some public outreach this fall, as people June 18, 2020 Page 70 come back, and find out what they'd like to do with the space in the community center. We do have a small footprint behind the existing building where we can expand that community center, and we want to get some public input. There's probably enough room to put a small gymnasium back there or something along those lines, but we want to get input as to what the community would like, and we'll be engaging that process at the beginning of the fiscal year. COMMISSIONER FIALA: My purpose is, it's -- like, for instance, once we built the swimming pool, everybody was saying, oh, no kids even go to the park. Once you gave them something to do, they flock in there, but they don't have anything else to do. There's no games or anything to play. They can't get inside from rain, lightning, nothing. And so -- there's an empty room, but that's it. And then go on to the East Naples Community Park, and that's another thing. Now we're tearing down everything that the kids use to play in, and there's no place for them to go. And so you've got -- you've got a community full of kids. We've got -- let's face it, we've got, what is it eight, nine -- I think it's -- what is it -- elementary schools, we've got two middle schools, and a high school, but there's -- we don't have -- we have very, very few things for the kids to play in. It's nice that we're having all these other parks, except they can't get there. I'm just wondering when you're going to rebuild all the stuff you're tearing out of East Naples Community Park for kids to go to. Right now I know we're redesigning it for pickleball, and didn't I help bring that thing in here, yes, but I never thought of sweeping the kids out, you know. I'm hoping that you have a plan in plac e. Do you? MR. CARNELL: Well, right now we're -- it's going to be predicated in part on how the master plan moves forward for June 18, 2020 Page 71 the -- what you mentioned a moment ago with pickleball. As we make those changes, we'll be displacing, for example, the playground, and we'll have to find another place for it. But right now we don't need to do that until such time as we're into the master plan implementation for their pickleball. COMMISSIONER FIALA: You see, the kids don't have a playground in their backyard. They don't even have swing sets, because we're talking about kids of very low income. I'm trying to do something for them. And it's wonderful that all of the other parks are getting these great things. What about these kids, you know? And they don't have anything. I just think it's awful. MR. CARNELL: Well, just to be clear, we have a playground in East Naples Community Park that we'll be reopening shortly. We'll talk about that on Tuesday. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I thought you were saying you were tearing it down. MR. CARNELL: Eventually, yes, ma'am. COMMISSIONER FIALA: What's eventually? MR. CARNELL: Well, I don't have a date yet, and we don't have funding for all of the master plan yet for pickleball, so we won't be doing that until there's funding in future years, ma'am. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I see. MR. CARNELL: All right. And we also have a playground at Sugden Park, which is less than a mile away, and that park has been refurbished in the past year. Those are going to continue to operate. In fact, Sugden has already reopened. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Of course, at Sugden you can't go inside because there's no place for the children to go inside, but -- and they do have -- they do have a playground there, and that's it, you know. No games or anything. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel. June 18, 2020 Page 72 COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. And maybe when we come back in the fall -- because, again, these are all good points that Commissioner Fiala is bringing up. We have master plans for all of our parks, if I'm not mistaken. MR. OCHS: Yes. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And I'm a minute concerned about going and hiring a consultant to ask to pay them to tell us what we already know we need. And so I would like -- and I know there is a certain amount of consultation that is a requisite in everything that we do. But I think a quick consultation with your favorite commissioner three away from me would help us with regard to that, and maybe we can even have some discussion about hurricane shelter dual-use facilities that are there for that expansion at the same time, so... CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor. MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Just one maybe final thing. I'm not sure. But it is for me. Do we have any data on number of children using the playgrounds? Can we get some kind of data going forward over the summer just so we can understand the use and what they're doing? I know we took out -- they can't play soccer at East Naples anymore, correct, but they can play it at Sugden, correct? COMMISSIONER FIALA: No, no, no. MR. CARNELL: Eagle Lakes. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: At Eagle Lakes. But there's also -- I guess it's the school next door that has the field, correct? MR. CARNELL: Yeah. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: And we're not -- we cannot use that; the children cannot use that field, correct? MR. CARNELL: No, that's correct. June 18, 2020 Page 73 COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: But they do. MR. CARNELL: Yeah. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Okay. All right. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Thank you. While the next group is coming up, we have the constitutional officers scheduled for 1:00. Does the Board want to take a break at noon for lunch? MR. OCHS: Yes. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I haven't eaten in three days. COMMISSIONER FIALA: What did you say? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I haven't eaten in three days. I'm joking. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Good morning. Let's see if we can get through as much of this as possible and -- MR. OCHS: Yes, sir. Go ahead. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: -- between now and noon. ADMINISTRATRIVE SERVICES MS. PRICE: Good morning. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Good morning. MS. PRICE: For the record, Len Price, Administrative Services Department head. And a great man once told me, be brilliant, be brief, and be gone. And, certainly, I do not want my budget to stand between you and lunch, so... COMMISSIONER FIALA: That's good. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: We'll remember. MS. PRICE: With all of that said, let me just say that the budget that we've presented you, I believe, will allow us to continue to provide the same high level support you've gotten accustomed to, June 18, 2020 Page 74 and there are a few projects that we have underway that we expect to be able to get accomplished during the next fiscal year. Obviously, our focus over the last three months has been almost exclusively on COVID reaction response, taking care of our people, taking care of the community, and moving forward. We're taking that and working it into our hurricane planning. So, you know, we'll give you a briefing at your final board meeting to just let you know exactly where we stand with that, but we have been working very closely with the state, with FEMA on the guidelines to follow for hurricane sheltering, should it be necessary, under a COVID environment. The school district has been incredibly cooperative, and we've got -- you know, we've got a lot of planning underway, and that's really the focus right now is how do we integrate those two concepts. With that said, there's been no interruptions to our services. We're very pleased to be able to support the staff with everything that they needed to improve our remote and virtual capa bility. As you see, you know, the remote participation that we've had with our various meetings, we were able to adapt to that very quickly and really just be able to move into this new normal, I feel very cliché in saying, but it's where we are right now. So unless there are any other questions, I'm here to provide what you need. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Taylor. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Just a comment. Indeed, it's remarkable where we were when Zoom was a word that we didn't understand less than a year ago into where it has become what we do here with webinars, and your staff has made my life so simple. Always, when I've needed something, you're right there. So congratulations, and thank you for your support system. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Any other questions? I don't see June 18, 2020 Page 75 anybody's light on, so thank you. MR. OCHS: Thank you, Len. MS. PRICE: Record? MR. OCHS: Very good. PULIC UTILITIES Mr. Chairman, that brings us now to your Public Utilities Department. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Good morning, and no mustache. When did that happen? DR. YILMAZ: New look, sir. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: You're defining yourself from your staff, correct? DR. YILMAZ: Good morning, Commissioners. George Yilmaz, for the record. In Fiscal Year '21, the water/sewer district plans to produce 9.8 billion gallons of quality safe water, treat 7.7 billion gallons of wastewater, and turn it into at least 5.3 billion gallons of irrigation-quality water that will recharge our aquifer systems, especially on coastal zone. And we have a saying: Every day it rains in Collier County. Tremendous work by our utility folks and crews 24/7/365. I just want to take this opportunity to thank them on behalf of our leadership and our governing board; that they are all listening and tuning in, 600 strong including our temporaries, never stopped producing water, collecting wastewater, and providing essential services as if normal did not change. We continue to operate with normal as it was. Our department will provide 13.6 million curbside collections under our Solid Waste Management leadership. That's about 44,000 June 18, 2020 Page 76 collections a day. We touch our customers and your constituents 45,000 average every day, and they are very personal about their recycling cans and very personal about their garbage cans. And our goal is none of that as a complaint escalates to my bosses, Deputy County Manager, County Manager, ultimately, our governing board and Board of County Commissioners. I'm pleased to report our Solid Waste Department worked above and beyond during pandemic. We opened our recycling centers, at least two locations, Mondays where we were closed. So we end up with providing additional services with same resources during pandemic because of the fact that our customer base needed those services. Moving along, our department maintains 4.9 million square feet of space including constitutionals in compliance with ADA, OSHA, indoor air quality more and more requirements and security in government facilities. Outstanding and diligent work by our facilities team. They stepped up. These challenging, trying times was the ground zero for our Facilities Division. I just want to put that emphasis and thank -- your team in Facilities have done outstanding, exceptional job keeping our workplace safe, responsive, and making sure that continuation of operations as directed by our County Manager and Deputy County Manager did happen. I'm also pleased to report that during pandemic, we received two prestigious awards, which we shared with our leadership. And under the current challenging conditions, we have continued to provide life-sustaining essential services to our customers, again, as if our normal did not change and will not change. We continued to operate as we have done 24/7/365 provide life -sustaining service working for you through our County Manager and Deputy County Manager serving our customers with full customer focus. June 18, 2020 Page 77 With that, I have one of the best finance directors we can have in this county, Joe, with me. If you have any questions, he's ready to answer it, and that ends our short script presentation, and Joe has about less than 4.3-minutes presentation; however, I'll leave it up to Board. If you have any questions, we'll go there, or presentation we can make. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Does anybody have any questions? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I do for you, Dr. Yilmaz. DR. YILMAZ: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: If you would please, just -- because I was trying to take notes. And if you would highlight the highlights, email those highlights to me with regard to water and sewer collections, produced water, so on and so forth, solid waste, again, collections the statistical -- those highlighted numbers, that would be -- I would really appreciate that. DR. YILMAZ: Ten-four. Consider it done. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: You whipped through those, and I wasn't able to get them all down. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. If there are no questions, does anyone on the Board need any further information, or should we move on? COMMISSIONER SOLIS: I was just going to point out that as I'm looking at this, you're actually a little under the target budget, right? DR. YILMAZ: We are in compliance with overall budget requirements set by the Board. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Yeah. DR. YILMAZ: And, Commissioner, your overall assessment is right and, yes, we're doing -- we're doing with same, as much as possible, more. I don't have to have the challenge, however, from June 18, 2020 Page 78 the Board to do less with more, so that will be challenging. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: No, no, no. I don't mean it that way. I just wanted to point out that that's -- with everything that the Utilities Department does, that's a great job. Well done. DR. YILMAZ: Thank you, sir. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Gentlemen, thank you. Commissioner Taylor. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Yeah. Just one quick thing. We're moving into hurricane season. I don't know if you're going to be before us in the next two meetings, but just give us a rundown of how things have changed for generators since Irma to now as we're moving into the summer. DR. YILMAZ: Thank you, ma'am. We're positioned to manage Cat 4 and Cat 5 dry storm much better than we have done Wilma, Irma. And we are positioned to bring additional assets from contractual services where we need it as needed. So to answer your question, sure, we are ready for Cat 4. Cat 5 has different variables that we may never be ready for, depending on conditions. However, I can tell you that we are ready for Cat 4 direct hit. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you very much. DR YILMAZ: Thank you. MANAGEMENT OFFICES MR. OCHS: Mr. Chairman, we move to your management offices for a brief presentation. Mr. Dorrill and Mr. Callahan. MR. CALLAHAN: Good morning, Commissioners. For the record, Sean Callahan, executive director of corporate business operations. June 18, 2020 Page 79 CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Good morning. MR. CALLAHAN: Happy to tell you this morning that overall your management offices are operating within the -- are in compliance with the FY '21 budget that you've set forth. We've remained flexible to respond to the ongoing challenges that COVID-19's presented, and we've continued to restructure and centralize some of our different operations to get more leverage out of all of the tools that we have across the spectrum. In your -- just briefly I'll touch on a couple of different points that I think are important today. Your FY '21 budget takes into account the ongoing downturn in collections of tourist development taxes. We've adjusted this current fiscal year down about 30 percent, and we're projecting that the budget's going to be down about 12 percent next year. We've been monitoring this on a weekly basis with as real-time data as we can and working with our budget staff, have been making adjustments and projections since March. We see no further adjustments that are needed at this time. The good news is your TDC capital funds have significant reserves that will allow us manage beach renourishment and beach park projects going forward. And when the time's right, we will bring forward an emergency plan for recovery from this pandemic for our tourism division. Happy to say that we're opening a world-class sports and special events complex next month. Given the support that we've had from this board, we look forward to welcoming you-all out there. After that's opened next month, construction will continue for future phases of that complex, and we're generating a lot of interest. Our staff's on board, our contract operator's on board, and we're ready to move forward. In your Bayshore CRA and MSTU, we are tracking the closing June 18, 2020 Page 80 on one of their catalyst properties this year. We're very excited about the structure of different capital projects that will enable us to execute for the remainder of this year and moving into FY '21. Your Bayshore MSTU has a construction project underway on Thomasson Drive right now, and we will continue that project on Hamilton Avenue in the next fiscal year in a partnership with our Parks and Recreation Department to increase the parking that's available for boat trailers at Bayview Park. The Immokalee CRA and MSTU, we have a redevelopment plan update slated for FY '21. We have significant reserves there that we're looking forward to doing some different planning activities that will allow us to take advantage of some of the different federal grant opportunities that we see coming down the line, and I'm happy to say in your FY '21 budget it does include an $836,000 project that we've done in concert with CDBG funds out in Immokalee that's been long awaited by that community. Your Corporate Compliance and Internal Review Division has gone through and set a baseline of internal controls to ensure that we have risk-based compliance across the agency, and we'll continue to refine those at a high level to make sure that we're meeting the different objectives that are set forth by the Board. In an economic development, happy to say that we have a multitude of new initiatives that we've been working on and we'll be bringing forth in the new coming year. The culinary accelerator has seen an uptick in interest given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as restaurants begin to try to refocus and relaunch some of their different operations. And the different innovation zones will have zoning overlays that are associated being brought in the fall that we're very excited about turning those over and getting those going with some different development activities in there. June 18, 2020 Page 81 So with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Dorrill and see if he wants to make any comments about the Pelican Bay budget. MR. DORRILL: Very briefly. Good morning, Commissioners. As you know, we are primarily a public works and conservation stewardship entity managing almost three million square feet of horticultural landscape areas in Pelican Bay as it relates to the budget. Our non-ad valorem assessment will actually decrease next year, taking advantage of some undesignated fund balance that will be spent, in addition to, and as a result of your generosity last year, to participate with us through a contribution in aid of construction of $6 million worth of new pedestrian pathways in the community. I want to thank you for that as well. And then as it relates to the conservation areas, you actually own in fee simple interest one of the most unique conservation areas and the smallest natural inlets on the entire west coast of Florida in Clam Pass. You hold the deed. And I think that this board has done a very good job as it pertains to stewardship in that regard. This is a very environmentally sensitive community. One final thought: We will be under new leadership next year. We have a new chairman in Michael Fogg. Michael Fogg is a fairly new member and resident and a member of the golf course, which is important. I think they've been underrepresented in the past. He comes to us from corporate America with a background in accounting and finance and is very talented. We want to thank publicly Scott Streckenbein for the past two years of his leadership. And then also with me today and in the back of room with the Nick Casalanguida haircut is Chad Coleman. Chad Coleman is the new operations manager. If you can let me brag on him just for a second. He's a Collier County kid and a product of the Collier County public school system, having graduat ed from Gulf Coast High School, who married his high school sweetheart, who was June 18, 2020 Page 82 adorable and a cheerleader there, but who enrolled following graduation in defense of America following the attack on 9/11. He's a marine. He is an accomplished and recognized combat veteran with four tours of duty in both Afghanistan and Iraq. I look forward to your working with him further. This young man comes to us from a fairly long career with CenturyLink. We're delighted to have him. He has not only the skill sets but, frankly, a sense of urgency that has been a breath of fresh air there. I'd be happy to answer any other questions that you might have. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And his experience in Iraq I'm sure will prepare him for public service. MR. DORRILL: Advisory board meetings at Pelican Bay Services. MR. OCHS: From Pelican Bay, yes. MR. CASALANGUIDA: No question. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: He's agreeing. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Battle tested. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I don't see anybody's lights lit up, so thank you very much, and congratulations on the new person working with you. MR. CALLAHAN: Thanks, Commissioners. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Roll tide. COUNTY ATTORNEY MR. OCHS: Mr. Chairman, that takes us to the County Attorney. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And, Mr. Solis, just a couple minutes before 12:00 I'm going to need to step out. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: At that point, if you could just June 18, 2020 Page 83 take over. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Sure. MR. KLATZKOW: Commissioners, I'd like to really thank the County Manager, Nick, entire County Manager's staff, they're a pleasure to work with. They're as good a public service as you could possible have, and it's an absolute pleasure every day to work with them. It's a pleasure to work with this board. Our budget's essentially flat from last year, and I would ask the Board to approve it. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Is there a motion to defund the County Attorney's Office? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: All in favor, say aye. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I'm not sure how much of a savings we could find. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: I don't know. You attorneys, you know how to -- you know how to sharpen your pencils and cross things out. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Any questions for the County Attorney? MR. OCHS: Couldn't make it without him. That's all I've got to say. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you for your service as well. All right. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS AND DEBT SERVICE MR. ISACKSON: Commissioners, I'll make a couple of comments on your Board budget and also on debt services, and then I'll take any questions you might have. The Board budget's in compliance when you strip out the contributions of the Naples CRA. That brought you out of June 18, 2020 Page 84 compliance, but you really have nothing to do with that, nor do you have any control over that. So on the debt service side, the County Manager in his presentation had a couple of slides from there. I think we're positioned nicely on a debt service side. We are working on plans, working with the departments, making sure that engineering studies are brought forth so that adequate planning is available before we go to market on some of these issues. You'll be the first to know when we're ready to go. We'll bring that back before you. But the budget will be done -- will be amended at the appropriate point in time when debt service will be recommended. So that's all I've got with debt service and with the Board unless there's any questions. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I don't see any. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: No. MR. OCHS: That wraps up the morning, sir. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Oh, okay. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: We're all going to leave a little bit before noon. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Yeah. So we'll reconvene at 1:00; is that the plan? MR. OCHS: For the constitutional officers, yes, sir. And no other registered speakers? MR. CASALANGUIDA: No, sir, not yet. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Then we will be in recess until 1:00. (A luncheon recess was had from 11:48 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.) MR. OCHS: You have a live mic, sir. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: The budget workshop will come back to order. Good afternoon. MR. OCHS: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. We're moving June 18, 2020 Page 85 on to budget reviews for your constitutional officer agencies beginning with your Supervisor of Elections. Ms. Edwards. SUPERVISOR OF ELECTIONS MS. EDWARDS: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. For the record, my name is Jennifer Edwards. I am very proud to be the Collier County Supervisor of Elections. And I'm going to begin by telling you how much our budget is for the new year. It is 4,216,400. It has decreased about $300,000 over the current year budget, and that's because the current year budget has two elections in it, and the new budget will only have the November general in it. COMMISSIONER FIALA: You know what, say that last thing again. MS. EDWARDS: I'm going to take this off if that's okay. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Thank you. MS. EDWARDS: The current budget we're working under has both the March presidential preference primary and the August primary in it, and the new budget will only have the November general election in it. That's why there's a little decrease in the amount. We have budgeted for one new position. That will take us from 23 to 24 positions. We've budgeted for that for the new government center that's being planned for Heritage Bay, and we will only fill that position when the facility is ready and we need the position. What we do is we rotate our customer service staff one week at a time to the satellite offices, so Orange Blossom, and we'll do the same thing for Heritage Bay. And the other thing that I want to share with you is in the 301 June 18, 2020 Page 86 fund we have $550,000 that will -- we will be using to purchase a new mail sorting piece of equipment. And we've planned that for several years. That concludes my comments. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Any questions, comments from the Commission? I don't see any, so we will see you -- MS. EDWARDS: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: We'll see you in September when we start doing the final approvals. MS. EDWARDS: Okay. Thank you for your support. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you. Oh, we do have -- I'm sorry, Commissioner Taylor. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: It's not a question, but you gave it so eloquently to me the other day. Tell me what the deadlines are, mail ballot, the whole spiel. MS. EDWARDS: Okay. We have -- for the primary election, which is August the 18th, we will be closing the books, and what that means is if someone wants to vote in the August 18th primary, they have to be registered to vote by July 20th. If someone wants to change their party to vote in the primary -- we are a closed primary state -- then they must change their party by July 20th. Also, vote-by-mail requests need to be into our office by 5:00 on August the 8th. That's a state mandate. And then we will begin early voting at nine locations, the same nine locations we have used for several election cycles. We will begin on August the 8th through the 15th, and we'll begin at 10:00 in the morning and go through 6:00 in the evening. And then, of course, we have Election Day on August the 18th, and the polls will be open from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: And you can bring your mail June 18, 2020 Page 87 ballot into the early voting place? MS. EDWARDS: Yes, ma'am. Yes. There was a change by the legislature a few years ago that mandates we accept mail ballots at the early voting locations. We have purchased some very sturdy ballot boxes, and they are manned at each of our early voting locations. And in addition, we have a very sturdy box in front of our front door at the 3750 Exchange Avenue, and we will be emptying that in the morning and in the evening where people can just drive up, jump out of the car, and drop it in that box instead of coming into the office, if they choose. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: And so the mail ballot dropped off, the last date is August the 8th for a mail ballot to be mailed into the office? MS. EDWARDS: No. That's the last day that someone -- that a voter can request we mail one to them. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Okay, good. MS. EDWARDS: We have some significant requests. We have about 74,000 requests now, and so it's increased. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: What is that percentage? Is that about 50, 60 percent or -- MS. EDWARDS: It's about 40 percent, and we anticipate a 50 percent. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Fifty percent. MS. EDWARDS: We've got 210,000 registered voters, so we've got almost 75,000 requests right now. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Have you -- MS. EDWARDS: But we know it will go up. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Have you noticed or ever experienced any particular problems with mail-in ballots? Any fraud or anything of that nature? June 18, 2020 Page 88 MS. EDWARDS: No, sir. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. And are you promoting more vote-by-mail participation? MS. EDWARDS: We sure are. We sure are. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: How we doing with your COVID -- with your workers, poll workers with COVID? MS. EDWARDS: We have a few that have said, don't want to risk it. As you all know, in a primary election, we have low turnout. COMMISSIONER FIALA: You have all the what? MS. EDWARDS: Low turnout. Not many people want to get out and vote in a primary election. So between the increase in mail ballot requests and then we have a low turnout in a primary, we feel that we're going to be okay for the August 18th primary. But now moving forward to the general election may be another question. We just have to wait and see. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Yeah. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Thank you very much. MS. EDWARDS: Thank you-all. Thank you again for all your support. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Good afternoon. CLERK OF COURTS MS. KINZEL: Good afternoon, Commissioners. For the record, Crystal Kinzel, your Clerk of Courts. And I have with me Derek Johnssen who's the finance director for the Clerk's Office. MR. JOHNSSEN: Good afternoon. MS. KINZEL: I have had some conversations with you all, and I just wanted to say the budget that we have submitted was obviously June 18, 2020 Page 89 prepared pre-COVID. We're willing to work with the Board over the summer. We'll see what the revenues are. We're flexible. I know there was some inquiry about the 5.7 positions. Those are, again, for the satellite expansions. But I understand those might be delayed and put off as well as a couple of positions in accounting. We have an implementation of governmental accounting standards, Pronouncement 87, due by next year, so we were looking for some help with that implementation; it's mandatory. So -- but I'm willing to discuss any of those expanded positions as we progress through the summer and see where we go economically, because we do appreciate that it may well be a tight year in a lot of the revenues that come forward. So we just appreciate it, and we're here to answer any other questions. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Are there any questions from the Commission? (No response.) CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I don't see any, so... MS. KINZEL: Thank you, and we'll just keep working with you when we see what the revenues bring. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner Solis. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: So I'm just thinking logistically here. I mean, if this was a pre-COVID budget, then how do we -- you know, if we -- if we budget now for the 5.7 added FTEs, I mean, I'd rather probably do it the other way. I mean -- MS. KINZEL: You can always go down in your budget at the hearings in September, but you can't go back up if we're doing well and we see that things will be constructed before that. So I would appreciate if we could work through the summer and see where we are at the budget hearings. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: How about, Mr. Manager, what's -- MR. OCHS: Well, the latest estimate we have on the June 18, 2020 Page 90 construction of the Heritage Bay satellite center is that it most likely won't open until November of next year, which would put you into your Fiscal Year '22 budget. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Right. MR. OCHS: So you might want to take that into consideration, both Ms. Edwards and Ms. Kinzel's expandeds, at least related to the opening of that new satellite facility. MS. KINZEL: That would be two positions, but they also do require training, so... CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And when we get back in here in September to do the final budgets. We'll have at least two budget hearings -- MR. OCHS: Yes. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: -- that are required, and at that time we'll have a better understanding of what the revenues are going to look like because the economy will be fully opened at that point, and we'll be able to at least start to see some trends. And if we need to anticipate reduced revenues and need to cut budgets, we'll have plenty of time to do that in September. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: My question was really about the Heritage Bay. I mean, if these FTEs aren't going to be needed until the twenty twenty -- MR. OCHS: Two. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: -- two budget, my question is, would we include them in this budget if they're not -- MS. KINZEL: We were originally told midsummer of 2021. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Right. No. Understood. MS. KINZEL: That's why I said we'll remain flexible on those, because if it isn't open, we wouldn't need to hire them. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. The logistics of this are such that you're going to have an executive summary or two coming June 18, 2020 Page 91 before you regarding Heritage Bay. At that point in time, whenever the timing of that is, if the Board feels to entertain the additional bodies necessary to staff that through the Clerk of Courts or through the Supervisor of Elections, you simply do a budget amendment and you give them more money. That's simple. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: That was my question. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay. MR. ISACKSON: That can easily be done. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay. So that -- that was my suggestion, then. So rather than include them and then take them out, I think -- as Mr. Isackson is saying, I think we should plan on not needing them, and then if they're needed, we can always do an amendment. That's -- that's the flexibility that's built into our budgeting process. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Any problems with that? MS. KINZEL: No. Just that the taxes, if you assess a certain millage plus or minus, but I think you've got enough in reserves and other funding that that would be available. MR. ISACKSON: You don't need to worry about that. When Heritage Bay opens up, my guess is there's going to be a whole flurry of fiscal impacts connected with that. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Sure. Sure. Okay. MS. KINZEL: And we're fine with that. We'll work with you on those. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Good catch. Anything else? COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: I do have one question. With this -- this auditing process you're preparing for that's governmental -- MS. KINZEL: The inspector general? We've actually reduced the budget for internal audit by one position that we have devoted June 18, 2020 Page 92 over to the Courts. So the budget that is before you is actually less than last year for the internal audit function. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: But what you're preparing for that's supposed to happen next year, you mentioned that you wanted to hire somebody for that. MS. KINZEL: No, not for the inspector generals, no. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: I don't know if it was that. MS. KINZEL: Oh, the computers, SAP implementation? We are going to be looking at the SAP conversion with the systems to implement some of the payroll, employee self-service, and integration. We've been working on that with your staff and the committee countywide. That would be a countywide implementation. And one of the positions that we have in accounting would be to oversee and assist with that implementation countywide. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Okay. All right. MS. KINZEL: Yeah, that's that one. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yeah. I just wanted to maybe address what Commissioner Solis was talking about. I mean, this is -- because you've got five-plus-or-minus new FTEs included in this. MS. KINZEL: Yes. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And then what I heard was that after more information is coming with regard to openings up of Heritage Bay and so on and so forth, that those potentially could be moved out. MS. KINZEL: Two of those are in relation to Heritage Bay. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: So plan on them now and then take them out if they're not necessary -- (Simultaneous crosstalk.) June 18, 2020 Page 93 COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- in the September. I mean, because today we're just -- we're actually looking what the Clerk is proposing. We're not approving or doing anything other than hearing what's going on. But those can be removed in the September hearing. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I think -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: That's what she's asking. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: That's right, but I was saying that let's -- I was suggesting that we do it the other way because we know, at least we're being told now, that the Heritage Bay, if it opens, won't be until the 2022 budget. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Right. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Those won't be needed, so why -- MS. KINZEL: Two of them. We're fine. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: You need two [sic]. So let's just reduce her -- that request to two new positions. MS. KINZEL: That's new information. We were told mid next year. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Okay. MS. KINZEL: If it's moving into the subsequent year, I have no problem removing those two. And if it moves up in between, we can come back to you and let you know where we are at that point. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: So you have 3.7 going forward. Okay. MS. KINZEL: That .7's critical, but -- no, that's an allocation between the courts and the non-court. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. MS. KINZEL: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Seeing nothing else, thank you very much. MS. KINZEL: And it is good to work with everyone, so I did June 18, 2020 Page 94 want to put that forward. I know there's some facilities issues coming up that you've addressed earlier this morning, and we've worked also with the courts on the whole COVID, so that's been a switch. They did tell us today we'll probably be going back to some jury trials, though, by July, so that will be great for our court side of the operations. So I did want to let the public know that. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Thank you. MS. KINZEL: Thank you. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Zoom trial -- do a Zoom meeting with jury trial. COMMISSIONER SOLIS: Zoom trial. SHERIFF’S OFFICE MR. OCHS: Mr. Chairman, the Sheriff's Office is next. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Sheriff, good afternoon. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Good afternoon, everybody. Kevin Rambosk, Collier County Sheriff. As in the past, I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here today and provide you a little update as to what we've been doing, even though I've been able to meet with you on a pretty regular basis over the last several months. But I certainly, on behalf of the Sheriff's Office, want to thank you, the County Manager, and all of the county staff for assisting us, supporting us, you particularly, enabling us to provide the necessary public-safety services that our community expects and helps keep us safe in the quality of life at the level that we want. You know, as we look around, it's really the responsibility of each of us to make sure that there is respect, fairness, and equality in everything that we do in a community. And I will tell you, and you June 18, 2020 Page 95 already know it, we've been doing that as a community for quite some time. Certainly, at least the last decade that I've been with you in this position, and even longer than that. And when you look at public safety and you look at particularly our mission, which is to preserve and protect those of our residents, their lives, their property and, most importantly, their constitutional guarantees, that is what the basis of today's public safety is and as well into the future. So, you know, I want to thank the men and women of the Collier County Sheriff's Office for doing an outstanding job. I want to thank our executive team, our command staff. And, you know, most years I bring the executive team with us, and you have a chance -- I have a chance to thank each of them here in front of you and the public, but because of the restraints of space, they are unable to come. But I want to thank them whether they are here or not, because each member of this agency, and particularly the people I work with on a daily basis, our executive staff, our colonel, our chiefs, our -- all of our members, our directors, they are the ones that allow us to continue to provide the level and quality of service that we all want in our community, so -- but they can't be here. We've worked together for many years with the public but, you know, I thought about what we would do as far as highlights, and since I have been here the last couple of months giving you updates, over the 12 -- last 12 months, six of those have been with special events, let's call them, that we've had to deal with. So, you know, rather than that, I'd like to do a couple of highlights from each of our departments: Administration, corrections, operations, community engagement, and investigations. But I'd like to talk a little bit about where we have come over the years to build the community that we've got, because I think it's very June 18, 2020 Page 96 relative to what our residents are interested to hear today in today's environment. I know you know them all because we've had a chance to brief you, but I'd like to do that. But, you know, to start off with, we have a very strong volunteer organization as part of the Sheriff's Office. And, in fact, they have contributed this year 24,000 hours over and above. Those are our residents that participate as volunteers in our organization from every walk of life, every cultural background, and they assist us in everything that we do to make the best organization that we can be. We -- this year our victims services and victims senior advocacy group was nationally recognized by the Organization for Victim Assistance. That is truly a great accomplishment. We continue to build positive relationships with our young people. We have done that for more than 35 years now. As you all know, that was put in place to develop those relationships and build a stronger community and make sure our young people are comfortable with law enforcement and public safety, and we've had a terrific time at doing that. You've been very supportive. We've had our tragic events throughout the nation over the last 30 years, the last being in Parkland. We will never forget that. We meet and exceed all the requirements for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act, again, with your specific support to make sure that we not only work together with our young people for the future, mentor them, direct them, guide them, but we also safeguard them each and every day and in every single school building in Collier County, and we appreciate that. We certainly are awaiting new schedules for this year. I k now that the superintendent and her staff are working diligently trying to figure out how they cover and meet the CDC's requirements. That certainly has the potential to impact our staffing. So we are going to get it done no matter what it takes. If I ha ve June 18, 2020 Page 97 to come back and brief you as to what that will take, I will do that, but my goal at this point -- our goal is to accomplish that within the budget you are providing us. So we thank you for that. We have had some use supporting fire rescue this year already with the wildfires. Our Huey helicopter has been able to be used in dropping 340 buckets of water on fires that were trying to get out of control. And our Fire Rescue Service and EMS, they do a fabulous job. They are a great partner with us. They did a lot of work there. And we are always proud to help with our equipment to get them the necessary help that they can get. But I will tell you, this is probably one of the best investments that we have ever made in this community from a wildfire perspective. I might mention that all of our aircraft, which is surplus, is aging. There is no more or little replacement parts, and we need to be thinking in the future of replacing some of that, and even including the capability to drop water and make rescue. But other than the Huey, all we have, really, is an observation platform, and we know how the Huey has moved forward there. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Go ahead. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: And I want to say, personally, thank you. If any of you are interested, I have video of that Huey diving into the smoke of a fire that was a half mile to the west of my home with winds blowing out of the west coming my way, and that -- CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And they had an opportunity to -- they blew it. They didn't let the fire take its course? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Take out my house? No, correct. And I just wanted to say, you know, there again, there was a lot June 18, 2020 Page 98 of -- there was a lot of discussion about the validity of that acquisition. I have talked to North Collier -- both of our Fire Departments, the Forestry Department. This apparatus has allowed virtually instantaneous service to our community. The Forestry Department has a Huey, but it stays over in Okeechobee somewhere. It's an hour away. And this -- that -- there was a 40-foot wall of fire coming across, and it was just amazing. I have some really cool little videos. And I'm sitting on the berm over by the orange grove watching it all come down. And so from me to you, thank you. And it was hugely instrumental in our fires that we had in Golden Gate Estates, though we did suffer considerable loss there. But it actually helped us manage that to be not as great a catastrophe as what it could have, in fact, been. So thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Very good. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: One of the other areas that we have invested a lot of time, and you have as well and Commissioner Solis, was mental health. Working together with yourselves, the courts, the David Lawrence Center. You know, if we think back, we really made a significant investment starting about 11, 12 years ago, and it's taken us that long to create an environment in this community where we have over 1,100 40-hour Memphis-model-trained law enforcement officers, corrections officers, and civilians, because we are now, today, involving civilians, our community service personnel, along with hiring -- we've hired one clinician. I've talked to Scott Burgess. We're about to hire a second clinician who have formed teams that, when appropriate, can respond into the community, and they do today already. We've been doing this for the last two years to help those that need it. If they're in crisis, get them to a location that can help them. If they -- if there's more violence involved, obviously, we take a little different June 18, 2020 Page 99 approach, but we continue to look at what's occurring around the nation with structures that will get people to the right help that they need. And, of course, it then doesn't impact the jail either where members of our community with mental health crisis should not be, and so we continue to work on that. We appreciate all your support there and working towards moving forward. We are a nationally and state-accredited organization. I won't go into all of them, but I can tell you that every professional element of Sheriff's Office is accredited from the communications to road patrol. As you know, that requires us to engage in best standards and practices, and we are audited with visits on site to make sure that we not only have the policy and procedure, but we're acting in accordance with our procedures. And that is one of the things that people are looking at today to make sure that law enforcement and public-safety agencies are using best practices. We have been doing that. We have been doing that for many years. And we are accredited with the gold standard from CALEA, and that is a national accrediting organization. That also allows us to, on a regular basis, review our policies and procedures, look at world and national events, and change them when we believe that they need to be changed. And I've made a number of those changes in the last month to make sure, even though we were doing some of them or we had them in our code of ethics or in other elements of policy, to very clearly delineate, for example, that every law enforcement officer in the Collier County Sheriff's Office has a duty to stop an act that is improper or incorrect or unlawful. It's always been in our code of ethics, but we wanted to make it extremely clear about what would and would not be tolerated and what our duty is, because our duty is public safety and ensuring that for our members. June 18, 2020 Page 100 A couple of things I think are really important. We are participating in trying to reduce substance abuse. We have for years as a member of the Community Drug Response Team. We have distributed Narcan and have save 251 lives in the last two years. That's by your deputies in the street responding to emergency medical calls, and that would not have been as successful if we were unable to do that. So we have participated in the Heart Safety Community that Dr. Tober established more than 25 years ago. We've put AEDs in every car, which we did not have 10 years ago. And we have had 350 deputies over that time, the last 10 years, that have been recognized with lifesaving awards and recognition. Those are -- those are our residents who, when delivered CPR and an AED in less than 10 minutes due to the response time of deputies out in the field, have increased the number of lives saved dramatically in and throughout Collier County. We have always participated in community engagement. You know, we have 83 of our members that are, in some form or fashion, whether a board member, which is what they mostly are, or partnershipped with non-profit boards, committees, like the United Way, the David Lawrence Center, the Make a Wish Fountain, that 41 local non-profit organizations that we work together with. We are a part of this community, and we have been one for a long time. And that's what helps to make the difference in Collier County. We are part of the Building Bridges Program where the county staff and we went to Washington, D.C., to look at how we could intervene with opioid problems that are going to jail and not go to jail but go to a treatment center. Again, to save lives and save money. And there are only about a dozen organizations or so that are in there. Our jail population has reduced significantly over the last 10 years. Again, saving money and getting people to the right treatment June 18, 2020 Page 101 and the right place that they need to be, and that certainly is working with the courts, the judges, and what we do each and every day. So we continue to look at our philosophy of community safety service. Service to others before self. That is the new direction of 21st century policing. And, quite frankly, we've been in it for a dozen years, and we're making it better every day. I open it up to you for questions. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. I don't see anybody jumping in with any questions or any comments. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Mr. Chairman, you have a few public speakers on the line. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Okay. Your first public speaker will be Cyndy Nayer. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: And, Cyndy, you have three minutes. MS. NAYER: Hello. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Yes. MS. NAYER: Good to see -- CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: You have three minutes. MS. NAYER: Thank you very much. I'm asking a question. I've looked at some of the data around youth participation and youth -- not participation, but youth being picked up, and some of the information is disturbing to me because it shows an increase in pickups of children five to 12 years old. My question to you is very direct. Can you help us understand what kinds of problems these kids are having so that perhaps as a community we could come together and help to solve this? Because five- to 12-year-olds do not belong in jail. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: I don't know what you're looking at as far as statistics. I can tell you -- June 18, 2020 Page 102 MS. NAYER: Okay. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: I can tell you we do not put five-year-olds in jail. So if you could provide us that information, I'd be happy to do that research and get it back to the Board and to you, because we have programming, and particularly in the area that you're interested in, we created a youth resource center for at-risk children. That was about 10 years ago. And it's to help families, particularly parents, and keep, again, our young people out of the criminal justice system. So if you could get us that information, we'd be happy to let you know and let the Board know. MS. NAYER: I will do that for you. Thank you very much. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Thank you. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Mr. Chairman, one more speaker on the phone, and I think we don't have anybody in the audience. Michelle McCormick. And, Ms. McCormick, you have three minutes. MS. McCORMICK: Yes. Hi. This is Michelle Eddleman McCormick. And with these brief three minutes, I will focus my comments on a couple specific areas of concern. One, the lack of affordable housing funding with, previously, what was about $200,000 in the budget, and then zero dollars for housing grants, zero dollars for human services grants. Another area of concern is the gross underfunding of the Public Defender's Office in comparison to the State's Attorney's Office. And in order for there to be a balanced justice system, this has to be rectified. It can't be imbalanced. Another area is the $2 million, only, that has been allocated for impasse for the mental health services for the entire county, and that appears to be in the form of direct support to just the David Lawrence June 18, 2020 Page 103 Center. Mental health services are a critical component of our health and safety in our community, and the need is dire, and we need a first responder's unit that can -- you know, specifically trained to address 911 calls that are related to people having an acute mental health crisis. And I heard Sheriff Rambosk, you know, comment about having some specialized, you know, people on staff, but I've personally been witness in the last two years alone to multiple cases where I've even requested, isn't there a specialized unit that can deal with this, you know, level of escalation? This level of force is unnecessary, and at least one of those instances a very elderly woman was tackled to the ground, and in every instance that I've borne witness to, they were all taken into handcuffs in the back of a patrol car -- SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Absolutely not. MS. McCORMICK: -- rather than having their acute -- I've witnessed it. I see you, Sheriff Rambosk, shaking your head, but I stood there and witnessed it and spoke with the officers and pleaded with them to handle things differently, but they didn't have the training. It's not their area of expertise, which is why I'm saying that we need an actual unit of mental professionals that can respond in a crisis that is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That having been said, I realize what I said is an expensive proposition but, nonetheless, it's necessary. And another area that seems to never have, you kn ow, a concern with being too expensive is the Collier County Sheriff's Office. We've got, you know, 16.5ish million dollars for school resource officers, which is really a misnomer because it's an armed sheriff deputy inside of a school rather than social workers and mental health counselors that are desperately needed. And, you know, it's almost entirely funded by the county, and so June 18, 2020 Page 104 I feel like it's a gross misuse of resources. Statistically, we have seen both nationally and in Florida the presence of armed officers in schools results in the criminalization of children when law enforcement is the first to respond to situations. They very readily could have been handled differently. The effect is what, you know, has become known as the school-to-prison pipeline, which vastly disproportionately affects children of color, particularly black boys and girl. The other area of funding -- CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Ms. McCormick, I'm going to need you to go ahead and wrap up, if you would. MS. McLAUGHLIN: I will. The domestic violence trust fund looks like it's just continuing to accrue funds and roll over from one year to the next. My question is, why have those funds not been used for their intended purpose which is to provide training for response to domestic violence when there's roughly $400,000 sitting in the budget that just continues to roll over from one year to the next? And, finally, since you're there, Sheriff Rambosk, end 287(g) and stop using CCSO as hired mercenaries for ICE. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. Ms. McCormick, your time is up. Thank you very much. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Mr. Chairman, no more speakers. One more registered under public comment. That's it, sir. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Sheriff, I don't know if you want to kind of respond in any way. And you don't have to, but this is a good opportunity to talk a little bit about -- SHERIFF RAMBOSK: I think it's important that we let the community know and reinforce that for 10 years we have embraced mental health, how to redirect those in crisis and those in need. I've been here many times with you. We are a part of your advisory June 18, 2020 Page 105 group that are working on that together. I can tell you that we are one of the only law enforcement agencies that have this many trained 40-hour Memphis-model CIT trained law enforcement officers, and if you look at all of the cities involved, there are no other communities like ours. That I can assure you. So I believe we've made the investment. We've made more than an investment. We've made a commitment, and we've done it for the last 10 years, and it has absolutely proven to be positive because we are getting people to where they need to be, to get the help that they need to be, except in those situations where violence has occurred. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Commissioner Taylor. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Yes. I think it would be helpful for the Sheriff and for our County Manager to address the issue of the guards that are now being put in the schools and the increase of those personnel by the budget -- the Sheriff's budget. So I think I'll turn it over to the County Manager, because I'm sure our listeners heard your explanation this morning of what happened and why this -- who made that decision? And the Sheriff can speak. MR. OCHS: Sure, I'll just briefly begin and turn it over to the sheriff. But just by way of background, the legislature passed a law that required all charter schools and public schools to have a public-safety official in that school full time. And the school district had a series of options on which they could choose to fulfill that legislative obligation, and the one that they selected was to have the sheriff deploy deputies in the school. So, at that point, the Sheriff does what he always does, he acts responsibly and expeditiously, and he fulfilled his obligations under the statute, and that led us to where we are today, which is funding the last tranche of resources that he needs to make that happen on a June 18, 2020 Page 106 regular basis as part of his force deployment. Sheriff? SHERIFF RAMBOSK: The only thing I would add onto that is school safety has certainly always been a part of the Youth Relations Program, but it was started to positively interact with young people, and that has been our philosophy from day one more than 35 years ago, to help mentor, to answer questions, to develop relationships. And you ask any one of our youth relations deputies that 20 years later the young people that went to the school they were assigned, they come up to them and they talk to them, and those that they've worked with let them know how much of a difference it made in their lives. So does there need to be safety and security in the school system? Unfortunately, we know that 106 miles from here, from right here, they needed more than they got, and we're not going to let that happen here. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: I've interacted with several of the school resource officers over the years, and recently as a matter of fact, and they're all very dedicated. And I genuinely believe that the teachers and the students really appreciate having that presence there, because the most important -- one of the most important things for kids is to -- when they go into school, is to feel safe, and I think this gives them a little sense of safety. So I -- it's an expensive proposition, but I can tell you the worst thing we could ever do is find out there was a school shooting in Collier County, and we want to make sure that never happens, and you're doing a great job to that. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: It's expensive, but it's necessary. Commissioner Fiala? June 18, 2020 Page 107 COMMISSIONER FIALA: Yes, thank you. I get into the schools a lot. They're very nice. They let me visit. Let me watch. I communicate with teachers and so forth. No matter when I go into the schools, the deputy is around someplace or another, and the kids are going up to the deputy. A nd, number one, he earns their trust. Number two, if they see somebody maybe having an instrument in school that could be dangerous, they know that they can tell the deputy without getting in any trouble themselves, and that is very, very important. They also know they can go to the deputy if they're having problems in their home that they don't -- they can't handle themselves, and that is so important. And I just want to tell you, you don't want to take that away from these kids, because this helps them. Many of them come from families where they don't see the parents very often. They're all alone. And so it's so important to have somebody that -- an adult that they can go that they trust. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. Anything else? Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Yes. First off, I want to say thank you. The job that our Sheriff's Department does, it's -- to me, personally, I believe it's the number-one duty of a local government to provide for the safety of my families in neighborhoo ds, and you have done that. If I'm not mistaken, we are number one in all 67 counties. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Well, we're not number one but, you know, in all of what I presented to show where we are, I failed to tell you that we lowered our crime rate again last year, and there are only 14 counties that have a lesser crime rate, but there are no metropolitan counties in the state of Florida with a lesser crime rate than we have. June 18, 2020 Page 108 COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Thank you. It's important, I think, that our folks know and understand just how blessed we are. You shared something with me many, many years ago shortly after I got elected, and it had to do with the mental illness and substance abuse that's prevalent within our jail system. And I just would like, if you would, please, just share a little bit -- if you did say it during your presentation, I missed it. So if you would, please, share the efforts -- the percentage of population that we're dealing with in our jail system that are suffering from mental illness and substance abuse and then the additional training and such that you've done for our officers. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: You know, unfortunately, around the nation jails become the largest mental facilities in a community. We are no different in our community even with all the efforts that we do have in place. And they took a snapshot, and it's probably the information that I gave to you, that at the time our inmate population was about 750, and 480 had reported or been referred for mental health issues at all different levels. A hundred and twenty-six of those at that snapshot were on psychotropic drugs. So when you look at the responsibility that we have to ensure for their safety, we certainly don't have the ability for treating them to get them to a place that they can return to their community. So we have put together reintegration programs. We've put together overdose mapping to identify and intercede in potential areas of the community that have drug problems. We have adopted a policy whereby if you are addicted to drugs and you contact law enforcement, whether you notify them in the jail or whether you notify them in the street, and you tell us you want help, we do not arrest you. In fact, we take you and deliver you to the David June 18, 2020 Page 109 Lawrence Center who can help you get off drugs. So all of that put together is one of the reasons why our jail population is down, and our services for drug safety rehabilitation -- and we don't do treatment, but we help in all those areas. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Thank you, sir. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Thank you very much. SHERIFF RAMBOSK: Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Do we have another speaker? MR. CASALANGUIDA: Not under the Sheriff. Two under public comment. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Okay. MR. OCHS: And we have arrived at public comment, sir, on your agenda. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Very good. We have one on the line. Mr. [sic] Callahan Soldavini. MS. SOLDAVINI: Hello. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Would you state your name for the record, and you have three minutes. MS. SOLDAVINI: Thank you, Commissioners. My name is Callahan Soldavini. I grew up in Naples watching this community develop into what it is today. I left to get a master's in human rights from Northwestern Law and returned to my hometown to work as a public-interest attorney at Legal Aid Service of Collier County. Under a grant from the Florida Bar, I represent nonprofits dedicated to serving low to moderate income communities in Collier free of charge. As such, I see the astonishing work our nonprofits achieve daily. I would like to discuss a different Collier County, one which strategically reallocates resources away from CCSO and towards our June 18, 2020 Page 110 social service agencies we heard from this morning and various nonprofit agencies. We pass every societal failure off on our police officers to solve, and it's too much to ask of them. Policing was never meant to solve all of our problems. Often the police are ineffective and can cause ongoing violent disruption. Have you ever hired someone to do a job and they made matters worse? Well, police enforcement is often the same. Our community organizations, with the proper funding, can be the ones to relieve the burdens we put on CCSO. These organizations are best equipped with boots-on-the-ground knowledge as opposed to strangers armed with guns who likely do not live in the communities they patrol. Let's empower our mental health providers, social workers, victim advocates, and religious leaders who make up the fabric of this great community who are already doing this work but the appropriate funding to do more effectively. To really fight crime in Collier, we do not need more officers. We do need more jobs, affordable housing, education, community centers, and mental health resources. For example, mental health calls are 20 percent of the calls to CCSO. My clients are dedicated to these causes as well as after school programs, food pantries, restorative justice, veterans issues, disaster relief, and more. Each has a specific area of expertise it can handle, instead of asking our police officers to try to understand each of these different areas and appropriately solve them through a law enforcement framework. You may have noble intentions and think trends like implicit bias training, police community listening sessions, and systems to identify problematic officers are all we need, but we have half a century's worth of evidence these reforms and the ones CCO [sic] has referred to today are insufficient. Even with them, we watch as our June 18, 2020 Page 111 county and country protest outrageous budgets and lack of transparency and accountability. You may think more policies will mean less violence, but police, like everyone else, break the rules all the time. Turning off body cameras, shoving the elderly on camera, arresting journalists and peaceful protesters. We are Collier County, and we can make sure we are better than that. Commissioners, what would it look like if you had millions of extra dollars to spend on Collier parks, housing, employment, and education, especially after COVID-19? We have unprecedented momentum to make this happen. When we look back at this moment, will we look back with pride or disappointment. The answer is within your power, Commissioners. Thank you for your service. I yield my time. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you very much. MR. CASALANGUIDA: Mr. Chairman, your last speaker is here, Mr. Keith Flaugh. Mr. Flaugh, you have three minutes. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Good afternoon. MR. FLAUGH: Good afternoon, Commissioners. Keith Flaugh on Marco Island. I just have two different comments. One, as you deal with your budget issues in the shortfall from COVID, as you get money from the federal government, please earmark that for helping the businesses in our community rather than spending it in some other way. My second comment has to do with the budget item, I think it was on Page 29 of your information put out, dealing with the Collier SRO program. Every one of us has a God-given and Constitutional right to defend our life. Gun-free zones are a magnet for disaster. Based on extensive testimony by Sheriff Gualtieri, who was the head of the Parkland Commission, to both the House and the Senate both June 18, 2020 Page 112 last year and this year, it's very clear the Guardian Program with trained teachers and administrators is a must, and you can listen to him say that over and over again. The average incident that involves multiple facilities -- fatalities, excuse me, is less than a minute and 30 second. It's very unlikely that an SRO is going to be in the right place at the right time on a large campus to stop that. In the last 20 years of 40 mass shootings, over half were stopped by citizens and school personnel on the spot. Some, it cost them their lives. The Guardian Program requires 144 hours of training in specific live-shooting situations, more than a new SRO gets. Collier County School Board has an ideological bias against this issue. You have a constitutional responsibility to allow each and every citizen to defend their lives. Collier County School System, by any measure, is bloated administratively. So don't allow them to come to you and the taxpayer to violate the constitutional rights of their employees and students. Thank you. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Thank you. COMMISSIONER FIALA: What's an SRO? CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: School resource officer. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: School resource officer. I'm sorry, sir. MR. CASALANGUIDA: No more speakers. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: We have no more speakers. Anything else, Mr. Ochs? MR. OCHS: Nothing else this afternoon, sir. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: All right. Any questions or anything from the Commission, because we're ready to adjourn if not? June 18, 2020 Page 113 COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I got a -- CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: We're an hour and four minutes early. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Okay. I'll hit my button. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: Do you want to speak? COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: I do. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Commissioner McDaniel. COMMISSIONER TAYLOR: We're now an hour and 20 minutes, really. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: An hour and -- oh, quit. I won't go that long, I promise. I just want to say one thing with regard to the traffic operations. It's not science. It's not luck. It's having Harris on speed dial as you're coming through town. He works over in traffic ops, and he can make the lights go green when you need to go. Just so you know. COMMISSIONER FIALA: One, Harris, oh, yeah. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: Now, I'm not done. I'm not done. Again, I waited till the end here just to say a few points, and these are things I -- you know, we've had a lot of discussion about different things, and I would really like -- I have some -- and I'm not sure, County Manager, if I've given it to you yet. But I have a copy of the merit pay resolution that Charlotte County has adopted for their employees. And I don't know if I've gott en that to you yet or not, but it would be something that I would like for -- it's something that I've lobbied for, for quite some time as opposed to -- not that our employees aren't worthy of raises and the like, but I'm a huge advocate of incentive pay along the way, and merit pay is something -- and Charlotte -- and every time I ask our County Manager about something he says, well, who else -- well, Jeffrey asks that. Well, who else is doing that? And so I actually have a June 18, 2020 Page 114 resolution from Charlotte County that I would like to be explored, and -- MR. OCHS: Sure. COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: -- see if it's something we can integrate. The landscape median item, budget item in the Fund 111, I'd like to have a little bit more detail about that at some stage as to how we're appropriating that. I know we at one time talked about the discontinuance of the capital expenditures and the re-appropriation of those funds over into the maintenance side, but the maintenance has been ticking down. When we did that, the ma intenance was running $75,000 a linear mile, and I believe now it's down around 55,000. So I'd just like to have us revisit that and then make a decision as a group as to how and if and what we're going to do as far as continuing on with that capital expenditure. And last, but not least, and that has to do with the CARES money. I concur with you, Mr. Chair, with regard to that, and I'd like to see that appropriated to the community as much as is possible on an as-needed basis and not just reimburse the government. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: There are significant restrictions -- COMMISSIONER McDANIEL: There are, yes. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: -- on that. And so I -- hopefully, the manager will be able to give us some guidance as to how those funds could be allocated into the community to help the people that really need it. MR. OCHS: Yes. If you take a look at your agenda packets for the next meeting, you'll see an item in there that lays out some suggestions for Board consideration in that regard. CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: Wonderful. All right. Anything else? (No response.) June 18, 2020 CHAIRMAN SAUNDERS: If not, we are adjourned. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 1 :59 p.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL .4-4•)/tA"'4" BURT SAUNDERS, CHAIRMAN ATTEST'. f/� CRYSTAL KINZEL, CLERK 4 r c . , • '•f � 'j Attest as to tif ' an's, signature only,. These minutes app ved by the Board on �(,�,� 4 4,202O , as presented or as corrected TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF FORT MYERS COURT REPORTING BY TERRI LEWIS, FPR, COURT REPORTER AND NOTARY PUBLIC. Page 115